A Tragedy of Memory

Abstract

Agostino Lombardo investigates the manifold uses of memory in Antony

and Cleopatra which range from the historical and literary tradition, which

lie behind the play, with which an Elizabethan audience would have been

familiar, to the specific theatrical recollection of the performance of

Shakespeare’s own Julius Caesar. The inclusion of memory as well as

enriching the experience of the play itself expands the possibility for the

theatre to be an image of life which, like the theatre, takes place in the

present but is nurtured by the past.

Keywords: Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Memory, Theatre, Collective

imagination