Critical Essays on Shakespeare's A Lover's Complaint: Suffering Ecstasy (review)
the protagonists, even “‘criminality’ for Cleopatra, ‘satyriasis’ for Antony” (28). Further, however, Rosenberg shows how the Yeas and Nays pattern is intrinsic to the divided world of the play — Rome and Egypt, patriarchal and matriarchal cultures, cold reason and hot emotion, hero and villain — while the overflowing language of hyperbole, antithesis, and oxymoron mirrors the “vastness” (11) of the personalities, of the geographic space, and of the emotions evoked in the play. Scene by scene (with three additional chapters focused on Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavius), Rosenberg progresses through the play, urging the reader to speak aloud the crucial lines of the play in order to discover whether the words resonate as a Yea or a Nay for the reader of the book and examining the critics’ Yeas and Nays at each turn. From the beginning, Rosenberg does not hide his own conviction that Shakespeare intended his play as a grand Yea: a play in which the actor, reader, and audience share with Antony and Cleopatra in “a profound experience of life and love, of hurt and healing,” and “a deep caring for their people” (33). Students of literature and actors may well find Rosenberg’s process a valuable experience, for it comprises both a sustained personal interaction with the play’s text and a scholarly survey of critical-theatrical responses. The last chapter, “Is Anthony and Cleopatra a Tragedy?” offers the student a good model of genre debate, written by Mary Rosenberg as an interaction with her husband’s notes on the subject (she is a self-confessed Nay). The appendices are most valuable, perhaps, to scholarly research: “A Note on the Historical Cleopatra 69 BC–30 BC,” a “Critical Bibliography,” and a “Theatrical Bibliography.” The “Critical Bibliography,” while it is not intended as a comprehensive survey, nevertheless contains around a thousand entries. The “Theatrical Bibliography,” again not an exhaustive list, nevertheless spans four centuries, six continents, and thirteen languages. The Masks of Anthony and Cleopatra offers teachers, directors, actors, and students a refreshing model for the enthusiasm and passion for Shakespearean language and scholarship that creates excitement in the classroom — Rosenberg was teaching a freshman seminar on the play through much of his drafting of the book — and on the stage. Most valuable, perhaps, is Rosenberg’s demonstration of the vast scope, not only of the play, but also of the reactions of the viewing and reading public. Cleopatra’s “infinite variety” (2.2.246) is well demonstrated to be an intrinsic quality of this magnificent play itself. TITA FRENCH BAUMLIN Missouri State University