CLEOPATRA’S CHARACTERIZATION

In the present text, I am going to discuss how the narrator has characterized Cleopatra, one of the protagonists of Shakespeare’s tragedy, “Antony and Cleopatra”, II-2. Shakespeare used the following categories in order to characterize the character of Cleopatra.

PHISICAL APPAREANCE

Shakespeare presents Cleopatra through the picture, told by Enobarbus, his first meeting with Antony, using mainly the visual sense. The listener expects her to be physically described, but that does not happen. Shakespeare does not give physical characteristics to Cleopatra, remaining vague. In this way, the intelligent reader or smart listener creates a personal image of Cleopatra in his mind.

It simply say she is a “triumphant lady”, whose figure shadows the one of Venus (“o’erpicturing that Venus where we see the fancy outwork of Nature”). Cleopatra is compared with the Venus of the “Venere di Botticelli” that represents the European beauty ideal. Cleopatra’s beauty is such as to exceed the one of the goddess. The queen becomes the new ideal of beauty without being physically described.

The beauty of Cleopatra is further accentuated by the difference in the language of the three men to the change of the topics. When they deal about their "heroic deeds", they use a lower register of language compared to when they talk about Cleopatra.

Not only: the woman is raised so much as to assume the characteristics of the goddess. Indeed, she is high remaining an earthly creature through the exclamations of Agrippa (“rare”,”rare”,”royal”) and becomes a goddess thanks to Enobarbus that gives her immortality (“Age cannot wither her”) and the ability to transform the vile into beauty (“she did make defect perfection”).

Who listens receives a far image of the woman, because it is like something of unreachable. Due to this distance, the listener does not focus on the physical character of Cleopatra, but only sees the beauty aura she gives off.

BEHAVIOUR

The height of Cleopatra makes her to be something of unreachable: her ineffability creates desire in all people, and this is her main feature.

Cleopatra is characterized as a seductress of everything and everyone. Beyond to Anthony, whose "pursed up his heart", Cleopatra also attracts the entire people (“the city cast her people out upon her") and, if things had legs, even the city itself ("which, but for vacancy, had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too").

The figure of Cleopatra is compared to that of nature, being the engine of everything and everyone, the one at which step the maids bow, the one who can control the actions of Antonio and was able to seduce Caesar.

IMAGE IN MY MIND

The image of Cleopatra I create in my mind reading this text, is the one of a woman, extremely beautiful, that knows how to use her beauty to seduce people around her to get what she want.