Virginia Woolf's “A Room of One's Own” offers a major literary analysis with an eye on the ever-changing role of the female author. During her discussion of writers past and present, Woolf repeatedly refers to the work of William Shakespeare, particularly his play Antony and Cleopatra, as a model of an "ideal" style of writing that authors should revere. In her essay, Woolf makes clear that Shakespeare possessed a rare form of authorial style that few could match, repeatedly calling Shakespeare's writing "incandescent" and "free of all obstacles." Her writing was truly successful, Woolf claims, because of her ability to express true creative genius without allowing her personal beliefs, prejudices, or agenda to interfere with the integrity of her work, and thus allowing interpretation ultimate which emanates directly from the reader. By viewing specific passages from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, readers can witness his use of deliberately indistinct words in character descriptions as well as the use of metaphors that serve to illustrate this incandescent, "unfettered" style that Woolf held in such high regard throughout her career. the course of his own writing. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay To begin analyzing Shakespeare's unique writing style, readers must first identify Woolf's plea as well as how she describes it in "A Room of One's Own." » For example, while describing to readers the "ideal" circumstances in which successful literature is produced, Woolf cites Shakespeare as a typical example. She declares:. . . The spirit of an artist, to achieve the prodigious effort of releasing all the work that is within him, must be incandescent, like the spirit of Shakespeare. . . Perhaps this is why we know so little about Shakespeare. . . it is because his resentments and his antipathies are hidden from us. We are not helped by some “revelation” that reminds us of the writer. Every desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim a wrong, to pay a bill, to make the world witness a trial or a grievance is born of him and consummated. This is why his poetry flows from him freely and unhindered. If ever a human being was able to fully express his work, it is Shakespeare. If ever a spirit was incandescent, unfettered, I thought. . . it was the spirit of Shakespeare” (Woolf, 56). These lines serve directly as the basis for Woolf's opinion of Shakespeare as an author; however, they also open a wider door for readers, as Woolf fails to reveal how Shakespeare's writing is interpreted as "incandescent" or "unobstructed" – it is up to the reader to delve into the specifics of Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare in order to search for evidence. of these terms to which Woolf so often refers. To find examples of this style of writing, readers can simply look to specific descriptive passages embedded in the text of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. One of the main methods Shakespeare uses in his verse is his deliberately ambiguous characterization of the key players in the play. In other words, Shakespeare deliberately uses terms that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Woolf praises Shakespeare's ability to show no prejudice in his writing; thus, his character descriptions are heavily laced with careful wordplay so as not to promote a specific view or characterization in relation to aother. This aspect of Shakespeare's writing allows his own opinions or preferences to remain latent in his writing. For example, using a specific pun to describe his characters as constantly evolving in Antony and Cleopatra, therefore they cannot be defined in just one dimension; and change as with the readers' points of view from scene to scene. Through this androgynous-like description of the character, Shakespeare ensures that readers can use a multitude of lenses to view his characters through, rather than just one dimension. Particularly visible in Antony and Cleopatra, the resulting opinion on how certain characters should be defined is ultimately left to the reader's own literary devices and interpretations, as Shakespeare's language makes it increasingly difficult to assess what 'he feels. about the characters as author – the signifier, according to Woolf, of a successful writer. For example, in Act I sc. I, Cleopatra, a character who demonstrates her special ability to transform into new personalities throughout the play, makes a comment to Antony about becoming his future queen, stating: "But sir, forgive me, / Since my futures kill me when they do not look kindly upon you” (Shakespeare II52-53). Although this phrase could be read as a simple comment on Cleopatra's ability to suit Antony as the new queen after the death of his ex-wife, the word "become" produces multiple meanings, also referring to Antony's own transformations. Cleopatra's fluids within the piece, its constant evolution. the changing moods and the many versions of herself she presents to readers. While it may be easy to see Cleopatra as a manipulative seductress in one scene, it's just as easy to see her as a star-struck lover in the next, accentuating her uncanny ability to constantly change and transform, and further proving the ability of Shakespeare's character. language to do it. This is why Shakespeare's language becomes so important: it helps promote his characters in a variety of ways, rather than through a single accepted definition, even if the language appears in a unique way on the surface. Another example of Shakespeare's deliberately ambiguous wordplay. occurs in Act II, during Enobarbus's description of Cleopatra's personality. Enobarbus declares: “Age cannot wither it, nor outdated customs / Its infinite variety. Other women disgust / The appetites they feed, but she makes you hungry / Where she satisfies the most. For the vilest things / Become themselves in her, that the holy priests / Bless her when she is riggish” (Shakespeare II.iii.276-281). The phrase “infinite variety” in this passage also deserves further interpretation. By inserting this phrase, Shakespeare assures readers that there is more to Cleopatra than just a definition. The word "varieties", for example, has no accepted connotation and can instead be interpreted at the reader's discretion. Shakespeare's continued emphasis on the changing "varieties" of his characters from scene to scene allows readers to determine for themselves how these characters should be characterized. It is for this reason that Woolf describes Shakespeare as being without prejudice or writing about obstacles. Readers do not perceive Shakespeare's personal point of view through his characters, and by adding words that attest to their mutability and fluidity, the play is able to take whatever form a reader interprets, rather than a unique point of view or sympathiesspecifics that Shakespeare wanted. convey: his personality exists and is shaped through the eyes of the reader. Additionally, Shakespeare also uses this play on words to describe Antony's ever-changing personality and actions. In the final lines of Antony's play, he states: "Here I am Antony, / Yet I cannot hold this visible form, my servant" (Shakespeare V.xv.13-14). Once again, Shakespeare's decision to use the phrase "hold this form" helps to define Antony as, so to speak, indefinable. Throughout the play, this pattern is true for both Antony and Cleopatra: neither can have a defined "form", allowing readers' points of view and analyzes to also change from form from one scene to another. This ambiguity creates a broader definition of his characters, leaving them as the product of their ever-changing and unpredictable actions and how readers interpret them, rather than how the author does so. By allowing Antony and Cleopatra to have such a variety of portrayals, Shakespeare cleverly puts their final characterization in the readers' hands, not his own. At the end of the play, it is up to the reader to determine whether Antony dies a war hero or a mad lover, or Cleopatra a political tactician or an overzealous actress. Shakespeare allows no gospel or personal grudge to “shape” his characters, thus proving his ability to check his prejudices and sympathies at the door. His characters speak for themselves, rather than Shakespeare speaking for or through them. In combination with Shakespeare's tactfully presented wordplay to enable the movement of his characters, his use of metaphor to aid in their description also demonstrates Woolf's depiction of her writing as purely "incandescent." Shakespeare's use of the form of metaphor both as a descriptive tool that allows for reader-based interpretation of specific characters or scenes, as well as offering a more unique form of writing compared to a free verse description of the same event or character. The fact that Shakespeare presents his characters in such different lights throughout the play is reinforced by his use of metaphor to describe and assist this very phenomenon, thus giving his writing its creative or "incandescent" quality Shakespeare uses the form. metaphor as a unique perspective that allows readers to form their own interpretation of a character, based on an individual, personal interpretation or metaphor. For example, Antony's lines in Act V do not simply serve to describe Cleopatra as her character intends to do, but can also be applied in a broader sense to the thematic shift of actions and emotions characters from one scene to another. Antony, through a statement about clouds, also strives to describe the heart of the main characters in the play, stating: Sometimes we see a cloud that looks like a dragon, / A vapor sometimes like a bear or a lion, / a citadel with a tower, a hanging rock / A forked mountain, or blue promontory / With trees on it that nod to the world / And mock our eyes with the air. You saw these signs. / These are black vespers competitions. [ … ] He who is now a horse, / even with a thought / The support fades away and makes him indistinct / As water is in water. / (Shakespeare IV.xiv 3-14) It is through a metaphorical description like this that allows Shakespeare to penetrate boundaries. Allow readers to understand that they can see a “dragon” Cleopatra in one scene and a “lioness” in the next,.