The Fictional Character Cleopatra Essay - 1428 Words

The Fictional Character Cleopatra The fictional character of Cleopatra has captured the imaginations of people the world over. Helen of Troy was said to have had ‘the face that launched a thousand ships.’ Cleopatra was not simply a beautiful and passive face, but indeed commanded navies as well as the heart of the powerful Mark Antony. Looking at these two facts from the play one may see the political brilliance in her affections, but also the dichotomy. Which one of her loves is true, and which is of an illusory nature? There is a constant battle between her passion towards the mighty Roman and her yearning for sovereignty and the glory of Egypt on her own terms. This question certainly embroils the†¦show more content†¦As the ‘virgin queen’ she bore no heirs, and curiously Shakespeare’s works have a distinct lack of mother characters. Cleopatra, historically the mother of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony’s children, is only referred to as a matriarch once and briefly in this particular play. Motherhood was not a new theme for women characters, but power, lust, learnedness, intelligence, and ambition were somewhat more novel. Cleopatra is seen by people of the 21st century as the last symbolic link with the glorious and opulent empire of ancient Egypt. This view would have been largely shared by the audience of the 17th century as well. There has always been a human fascination with power and abundance. Antony and Cleopatra is richly endowed with imagery of this. The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggared all description. She did lie In her pavilion-cloth of gold, ofShow MoreRelatedCleopatra Confesses By Carolyn Meyer Summary1604 Words   |  7 PagesCarolyn Meyer wrote the book â€Å"Cleopatra Confesses,† published in 2011. Although this book is a historical fictional book, the story holds some legitimate truths and emotions could have definitely existed during the times of survival mode and obsession for authority. The book starts in the first century B.C and Cleopatra is the third children of six and is the one that is chosen to be the future queen of Egypt. However, when the Pharaoh King Ptolemy, is involuntarily ex iled, the future queen is leftRead MoreAnalysis Of William Shakespeare s Hamlet And Macbeth 1854 Words   |  8 PagesReference to their Fitness for Stage Representation†: â€Å"The things aimed at in theatrical representation are to arrest the spectator s eye upon the form and the gesture, and so to gain a more favourable hearing to what is spoken : it is not what the character is, but how he looks; not what he says, but how he speaks it.†1 I believe what Lamb is saying is that he has a problem with the way â€Å"theatricality†, or perhaps more accurately staging, can serve as a distraction to the spectator from the actual writingRead MoreThe Divine Comedy : Inferno Ira2454 Words   |  10 Pagesventure to the second circle of hell, which is reserved for the lustful. In the second circle, Dante finds souls being tortured and sentenced by Minos who decides which circle of hell they are condemned to. 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He also comments on the women in Shakespeares works. He believes that these women were not wanting in personality and character. The narrator agrees with his analysis. She points out that great women such as Cleopatra, and characters like Lady Macbeth, and Phaedra were all powerful women. However, despite women being glorified in fiction, in real life they still were not part of history. I think the narrator is makingRead MoreKing Solomons Mines Analysis2535 Words   |  11 Pagesbestseller in England and printed over half a million copies in Haggards lifetime (Haggard vii). Other notable books include She (1887), Jess (1887), and Allan Quatermain (1887) all based in Africa. In several novels he wrote of ancient Egypt such as Cleopatra (1889). In 1891 the death of his mother and son Arthur John were devastating blows (Haggard viii). He continuously wrote books, but his writing had lost momentum. Haggard was a skilled farmer, and knew a lot about farming and agriculture. 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To explore the issue, Woolf invents a fictional and mythical sister, Judith, for William Shakespeare and compares the barriers brothers and sisters would have encountered in achieving success as playwright. Imaginatively, Woolf despairs of Judith’s having possessed a genius equal t o her brother’sRead MoreGreek Mythology: Influences and Effect to Greek Civilization5325 Words   |  22 PagesMycenaean culture through the Trojan war which included several aspects of the Mycenaean culture that were no longer evident in his time since he described the palace-states that no longer existed and other aspects of the Mycenaean era that seemed fictional to his listeners (Rosenburg, 1984; Osborne, 1996). Greek mythology influenced the religion, culture and life style of the Greeks; however, Greek mythology was clearly influenced and changed by the history of ancient Greece (Osborne, 1996; Camps