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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what field of battle does Antony proclaim he will engage Caesar in Act 3, Scene 7?

2. In praising Antony, Cleopatra says in Act 2, Scene 5, she has dispraised whom?

3. To where does Antony send Ventidius in Act 2, Scene 3?

4. To whom is it proposed that Antony be married?

5. Which of the following accompanies Pompey at his house?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Enobarbus tell Menas that that which has caused amity between Caesar and Antony will likewise "prove the immediate author of their variance"?

2. For what reason does Antony spurn the news that has come from Rome at the play's beginning?

3. What characterizes the manner with which Cleopatra reacts to Antony's decisions?

4. Why is it suggested by Agrippa that Mark Antony be married to Octavia?

5. What does the sight of Thyreus kissing Cleopatra's hand provoke in Mark Antony?

6. In what way does Antony compose himself in Act 4, Scene 2?

7. For what reason does Cleopatra send Alexas to Italy?

8. What causes Antony to flee the battle of Actium?

9. What is the meaning and significance of "a Lethe'd dulness" as Pompey uses the phrase in line 27 of Act 2, Scene 1?

10. Under what condition would Caesar grant lands in Sicily to Mark Antony?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

An essential element of the tragic play is the evocation of pity from the audience. In order to evoke pity, the audience must be enabled to relate with the characters caught up in the tragedy. In a broad-minded and considerate essay, analyze the means by which the play makes those involved in the tragedy, principally Antony and Cleopatra, but also Enobarbus and Eros, as well as any others caught in the struggles between mightier characters, sympathetic to the audience or reader. What scenes demonstrate the unfortunate nature of these characters' sufferings? How do they portray the characters as pitiable? What is the fundamental root of relation between the audience and the pitiable characters in these scenes? What does this reveal about dramatic tragedy and its relationship to human nature?

Essay Topic 2

Throughout Antony and Cleopatra's stormy relationship in the play, it is shown that their love is always a hair's-breadth away from becoming hate, and vice-versa. In a well-developed analytical essay, examine the nature of Antony and Cleopatra's relationship insofar as it alternates from one extreme to another. What propels the characters to launch from one condition to another? How is hate assuaged and love incited? In what way are the two conditions similarly portrayed?

Essay Topic 3

Keeping in mind that a tragedy is a story of human action which, by the means of free will and fate, results in exceptional calamity and the death or disintegration of the life of an extraordinary man, analyze the relationship between the story of Antony and Cleopatra with the archetypal indications of tragedy in a well-thought-out essay. What indicates the story to be a tragedy? What is the significance of all the central elements of the story insofar as they relate to tragedy? In what does the play's tragedy specifically consist?

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