『앤토니와 클레오파트라』에서 앤토니를 움직이는 동인으로서의 수치의 감정

Abstract

Antony is driven by shame. Shame is an emotion that results from the situation when the subject does not live up to his own ideals or expectation of the society. Furthermore, shame arises when there is a realization that a subject is seen by the others and that he lost his power, because shame is a social emotion. Antony is filled with the emotion of shame from the beginning to the end. He feels shame because he knows that he does not live up to the people’s expectations as a Roman leader/hero. He has his ideal self in contrast to his true self. The gap between his ideal self and his true self causes his shame. Furthermore, the fact that he flees from the Actium War causes him to have a sense of shame. As a shamed one, he is angry about himself and others around him. He blames Cleopatra, because shamed person blames others not to lose his self-esteem. Antony is also a narcissist who is grandiose about himself at the same time very depressive. He alternates the attitudes of grandiosity and depression. Therefore, even after he loses at the Actium, he wants to challenge Caesar to fight one to one. It‘s because he thinks himself not as a loser, even though he is a loser. After he feels grandiose about himself, he becomes so depressive that he is even sure of his failure at the coming war with the soldiers of Caesar. Antony even kills himself to evade his strong sense of shame. With the portrait of Antony as a shamed person, it can be concluded that he does not live up to the Roman expectations as a Roman hero. He has never been a real hero. Secondly, he is not insightful about himself and his emotion. He is only driven by shame. His shame is caused by his mis-recognition about himself. Lastly, Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra represents well the early modern subject who is easily influenced by the emotion of shame, because honor, the opposite of shame, is the social phenomenon in the early modern period. A subject who loses honor has to have easily the sense of shame in that period. Antony and Cleopatra is a piece that well represents the early modern period, and Antony is a character who represents well the true aspect of the male subject in the early modern period.