What It Is About "Antony and Cleopatra"

W.H. Auden on what is special about Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra:

We see malice and ambition in Richard III, ignorance in Romeo and Juliet, melancholia in Hamlet, ambition in Macbeth, paternalism and the demand for love in Lear, pride in Coriolanus, the desire to be loved in Timon, and jealousy in Othello. These are pure states of being that have a certain amount of police court cases or psychiatric clinics in them, but we are not likely to imitate them. … Antony and Cleopatra’s flaw, however, is general and common to all of us all of the time: worldliness, the love of pleasure, success, art, ourselves, and conversely, the fear of boredom, failure, being ridiculous, being on the wrong side, dying. … We all reach a time when the god Hercules leaves us.

W.H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare 241 (Paperback ed. 2002)

Note to self, make time to say more about this remarkable book.