William Zak’s new book on Antony and Cleopatra begins where his most recent study, A Mirror for Lovers, left off: with a discussion of the sonnets. This is a natural move since he regards these two texts as the second and third installments in a Shakespearean sequence on love, lust, and narcissism that began with Venus and Adonis. Love is ... Read morenot love if it constitutes a ‘cunningly hidden self-absorption’ or an ‘imperious desire for possession,’ but can we always trust ourselves to tell the difference between them?… Toward the end of his book, Zak formulates the normative framework of temperate love that seems to form the backbone of his argument (and against which the shortcomings of the protagonists have been measured). True lovers, he argues, are capable of commingling love and strife.... There is something to be said for this piece of practical wisdom, as for many other arguments in this interesting and illuminating book.
Renaissance Quarterly
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