Talk:Antony and Cleopatra

The article as it stands contains the sentence:

Frequently vain, self-dramatizing and histrionic, the audience must sometimes laugh at her, but other times consider her a true tragic heroine.

Can we fix this? As it stands, it says that the audience is vain, self-dramatizing and histrionic, not Cleopatra, as presumably intended. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.179.168.52 (talk • contribs)

Freemasonry

fireteddy: in my edit I removed the link "proving" Antony & Cleopatra has a masonic subtext, as it is conspiracy theorist mumbojumbo useless to an information-based article in an encyclopedia. If whoever first posted it needs it to be there, I'd recommend that it be placed in the External Links and not in the main body of the text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fireteddy (talk • contribs)

• Fireteddy could you please tell me the grounds for your assumed expertise on Elizabethan Freemasonry? As a matter of fact, there is good evidence that literary patrons such as the Lord Admiral, Lord Derby, the Earl of Oxford, King James and William Herbert were all deeply involved in Freemasonry. There is also evidence that Shakespeare's literary peers, such as Thomas Nashe, John Lyly and Gabriel Harvey, were very familiar with the craft [1]. It is against this background that I interpret some of the esoteric allusions in the play to have a Masonic raison d'etre. I believe the two quotations from the (apocryphal) book of Esdras cited in my article are profoundly important keys to an understanding of the play. This is not useless 'conspiracy theorist mumbojumbo' at all, but based on reasoned argument. Do you have any knowledge of the occult philosophy in the Elizabethan age? Shakespeare is not so precious a literary icon that he cannot be subjected to interdisciplinary research. He was a man of his times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kit Marlowe (talk • contribs)
  • If people want to delete large sections of text from the page to which this discussion relates, would they kindly attempt to justify their actions beforehand. Unmerited deletion is a form of vandalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kit Marlowe (talk • contribs)

This is a blatant violation of WP:V. I hope I don't have to argue about that with you. 68.166.50.142 17:08, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

RfC

This article has been listed on WP:RFC/ART for the Freemasonry conflict (so this section should already have been created). Personally, I don't think the sources cited by User:Kit Marlowe at present qualify as reliable sources, so this should not be included.Trebor 20:52, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The first source [2] cited by Kit Marlowe is a self-published website and thus not acceptable in an encyclopedia (see WP:V). Kit needs to find a peer reviewed article on the subject. The second source [3] might be more acceptable if The Hermetic Review is peer reviewed, but since it doesn't refer to Antony and Cleopatra it's not very relevant here . The Singing Badger 20:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

(Here via RfC.) These don't pass my idea of WP:V (well, okay, I suppose I could write off for the Hermetic Review CD) and WP:NOR. There are some more details about The Hermetic Review at the Alchemy website. Although I don't need the assistance of Google to recognise the name of one of the regular contributors to the magazine as a published author in the field of occultism, I don't think the magazine is peer-reviewed in the way Wikipedia likes. If this is a common theory (and there was something about Shakespeare and freemasonry in The Independent newspaper this weekend, oddly enough; although it was in the context of "batty theories about Shakespeare" in a piece presumably timed for his birthday, and not terribly helpful here), there ought to be something else from the field of English literature or drama which can be cited to support this. Telsa (talk) 22:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)