AO5: critics I forgot lol

Cleo

• attained a sort of apotheosis as female deities

• a military leader with rank and power

• queen and jester (BM ‘24)

• a creative and destructive force

Ant

• his fall is the result of his own flaws: his surrender to passion and failure to uphold his Roman values

• his inner struggle to find balance between two sets of bonds and two sets of values

• Romans have an uncontrollable desire for what the do not or cannot have

• Antony is not only attracted to but governed by women

• to love her is what he was made for

Gender

• Egypt promotes a liberation from constricting gender roles and prudery

• Shakespeare allows Cleopatra to exhibit masculine, even Roman, qualities

• Shakespeare was the noblest feminist of them all

• Shakespeare’s play alters focus to emphasise the death of the woman rather than the warrior

• Egypt becomes a feminised space

• Rome is synonymous with masculinity

• opposition between the East and West is characterised in terms of gender

Rome vs Egypt

• stressed the coldness of Rome and the opulence of Egypt

death

• Cleopatra is hardly the woman to die of a broken heart

• she turns death into play, the play that will take her into eternity

• Antony’s death is tragicomic, both heroic and pathetic highlighting his internal conflict between his Roman identity and his love for Cleopatra

• others view it as a moment of self-awareness where he recognises that his identity (bound by his past glories) no longer holds any power in the changing political landscape