ABSTRACT
By the time that the third of the trumpet calls which at the Globe1 would mark the beginning of Antony and Cleopatra has died away, two recognisably Roman figures are on the stage, and one of them is shaping into a very Roman rhetorical form his distress and exasperation at Antony’s conduct. The propositio, ‘this dotage of our general’s/O’erflows the measure’ is strengthened, as by a further triple sounding, in a threefold amplification; and each of these enlargements of the thought ends in a resonant phrase, the adaptation to a stress language of the majestic Latin cursus: ‘tawny front’; ‘gipsy’s lust’; ‘strumpet’s fool’.2 Though all three statements embellish the same idea, they show a logical progression. Antony, having been captivated by Cleopatra, has abandoned conquest to become her lover, and now this ruler of the world is her slave.
