The Failing Messengers of Antony and Cleopatra

Abstract: This article studies a series of failed messengers across William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. It argues that these figures are fundamental to how Shakespeare engages with the play’s genre by negotiating the play’s relationship with classical and neoclassical tragedy. Antony and Cleopatra is in close dialogue with classical sources, such as Aeneid 4, as well as a tradition of English neoclassical Cleopatra plays by Mary Sidney, Samuel Daniel, and Fulke Greville. Through his emphasis on the role of the messenger, Shakespeare engages with an aspect of dramaturgy that was of great interest to neoclassical theory, as exemplified by early modern readings of Horace and Aristotle, as well as by Castelvetro. By writing a series of failed messengers in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare establishes a creative relationship with neoclassicism that is productive of his play’s unique form. The essay ends by offering a close reading of the messenger missing from Antony’s death scene. It argues that this messenger is modelled on a messenger missing from Sophocles’s Ajax. By putting the messenger under erasure, Shakespeare achieves the generically complicated representation of Antony’s shown death.