"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
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. She lashes out and threatens him with a knife even though it's quite clear it is not his fault. "Like a doting mallard,Leaving the fight in height flies after her. She may be afrai!d that the same thing will happen again, it is purely human nature to try and protect yourself from hurt, Shakespeare may have been suggesting the theme of human nature. 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. 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. There is ultimately no way of knowing what Cleopatra was really like and whether or not she actually meant to do the damage she did. This is the common perception of her in Rome so the fact that she says this to a Roman might be significant in this case. There would have been no was she could have ruled Egypt if the people thought that Antony was more in control of the country than she was. I believe it is fair enough to say that Antony loved Cleopatra, but was Cleopatra's "supposed love" actually love or just lust? It is easy to be sympathetic of Antony, he was driven over the edge by the news that Cleopatra was dead, and his whole career went downhill from his first meeting with her. 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. Romeo kills himself thinking Juliet is dead, and Antony kills himself believing Cleopatra to be dead. "His legs bestrid the ocean, his reared armCrested the world; his voice was propertiedAs all the tuned spears,"These cosmic images of him show her public displays of him, and how wonderful he was.
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Acceptance Essays
