Shakespeare uses set design in several ways to create dramatic effect in "Antony and Cleopatra". Jacobean stages were very simple, not much more than an empty wooden platform pushed into the midst of spectators with no scenery to raise or lower. The absolute emptiness of Shakespeare's stage and the absence of scenography focused the audience's attention on the actors. This creates a dramatic effect as the audience focuses on the play's dialogue without being distracted, which allows them to focus entirely on the play. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The actors were supposedly dressed in a combination of contemporary and "classical" costumes, which helps the audience visualize the nationality, rank, and gender of the characters. Although Cleopatra's command to Charmian, 'cut my lace', indicates that she wore the type of tight bodice favored by Queen Elizabeth, there was some attempt to provide her and her entourage with 'Egyptian' clothing as well as 'coloured fans '. held by the eunuchs who assist him on his first entry. Antony and Cleopatra's exchange of clothes, which she recalls with amusement during her absence in Rome, in Act 2, scene 5, is, for Caesar, a sign of their degeneracy. Clothing conveys information as well as creates spectacle, and it is important that Philo and Demetrius, with whose conversation the play begins, are identifiable as Roman soldiers commenting on the enslavement of their leader by an Egyptian queen. Although there were no visual impressions created by the scenery, the opera is filled with expressive groups of characters that the audience can focus on without distraction, particularly when Cleopatra and her gentlewomen lift Antony high into the temporarily private refuge of his monument. Shakespeare is also quite specific in his stage directions, as when Pompey and Mena enter "by one door with drum and trumpet" and the triumvirs and their supporters enter "by another... with soldiers marching", in scene 6 of Act 2. The sounds and images of war thus accompany this first meeting between the opposing sides. In their next and final meeting, Act 2 Scene 7, the representatives of both sides, placed "hand in hand", join in singing a drunken song before helping each other stagger down from Pompey's galley. This portrays the unity between the characters as they rejoice. Once again, the entrance direction in Act 2 Scene 3 specifically instructs Antony and Caesar to come with Octavia “between them,” a visual expression of divided loyalties, which must trouble her more deeply. as the action develops. Eugene M. Waith argues that the Longleat manuscript, which appears to depict a performance of Titus Andronicus, "gives us a more vivid impression of the visual impact of Elizabethan acting". The illustration shows the two Roman soldiers on the left and the two captive sons on the right of the main characters, suggesting that the stage groups were kept as symmetrical as possible. Such normally symmetrical arrangements would have highlighted occasional asymmetries, as at the end of Pompey's banquet when a conference, formally begun, ends in disorder. Being present at a performance of this tragedy is an auditory as well as visual experience created not simply by the counterpoint of the various voices but by the musical accompaniment, which Shakespeare's stage directions require. The initial entrance of 'Antony and Cleopatra' is heralded by a 'Flourish', which ironically in its context proclaims the imperial theme; as well as the release of the.