“Cleopatra despite her supposed charm and beauty is a character deserving little of our sympathy” Do you agree?

“ We all know that Cleopatra was a great coquette and subjugator of men” this is because of her power, not just her power over men but her position of power. She achieves her power by using her charm and beauty, which is the main cause of her attractiveness to men. She also has very impulsively indecisive moods, which help her to achieve and hold on to her position of power.

This in turn gives her the right to “dispatch, reward, punish and command” exercising terror within her kingdom. Her powerful use of words is very significant as she has a very sharp tongue and can often do more damage with it than she can physically.

This is her crude description of Octavia. Although she does not give her feelings away by speech and so can be interpreted many ways. She has no soliloquies and talks only when others are around so it is hard to judge when she is being sincere or insincere. She is in a position of power and so keeps this feeling of power throughout the play, so, she cannot be seen to make wrong decisions or really reveal her feelings to the people around her. Everything she does say could be seen in two lights. The only facts that can be deduced from her speech are that she is crude and tempera

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She may have been a very pleasant person but due to her position in power she could not express the way she really felt and her true personality. She plays on Antony’s obsession for her and when she sends Antony the false news of her death she is giving us a prime example of her juggling with his love. To be overthrown by her people would change her lifestyle entirely and she would be better off treating Antony!

this way than suffering the consequences that may occur. The difference in the circumstances, in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet fakes death so she can be with Romeo, while Cleopatra is almost testing Antony’s love for her, she is playing yet another of her little love games. In a world ruled by men it would have been hard for a woman to rule without having some way of ruling that men don’t have that would make her a good ruler and gain respect. This makes it hard for us to sympathise with her character.

“…I drunk him to his bed;

Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst

I wore his sword Philippan.

I don’t agree with this statement, as there is not enough evidence to prove that she actually was the way she is made out in the play.

I never saw an action of such shame. So ultimately Antony’s downfall was not his fault but indirectly the fault of Cleopatra and her manipulative nature. ”

This is another example of the crudeness in her language and her sexual dominance in bed, but she has also completely bewitched Antony’s mind, as Scarus points out. So therefore she would need to appear to be more in control than him, her way of achieving this was to show domination over their relationship.

Also to say that the queen flaunted her beauty or used manipulative tactics may be an over exaggerated statement, she may have just been asserting the fact that she was queen of Egypt. ”

Cleopatra must be so bewitching that she can actually make a warrior turn around and “surrender” by doing so herself. This would explain why she continuously played with him and upset him, so her people know that she is the one in control of the country.

Approximate Word count = 1222
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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