Cleopatra’s characterisation

The characterisation of Cleopatra starts in scene II, at line 189. The first Cleopatra’s connotation is given us by Maecenas: he refers to Cleopatra as a “triumphant lady”, although he never saw her, but it means that her celebrity comes first.

At the first meeting, continues Enobarbus, she enchants Antony’s heart. Shakespeare uses the expression “pursed up his heart”, that conveys the idea of the power of the Cleopatra’s beauty that “pursed up” Antony’s heart without difficulty.

After that, Shakespeare connotes the power and the magnificence of Cleopatra, exalting her ship, her “pretty dimpled boys” and her “gentlewomen”. The first one is described like a barge that “burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold; purple the snail, and so perfumed that […].” Her gentlewomen, instead, were described like mythological marine figures like mermaids and Nereides, delicate, with “flower-soft hands”. So, the qualities of the space around Cleopatra are amplified in her. Additionally, Cleopatra was so beautiful that the air, if it could, “had gone to gaze on Cleopatra” with people. This means that nature loves Cleopatra, people love Cleopatra, everything love her.

She is pleasure for Antony’s eyes, but also Caesar, before Antony, felt in love with her: “she made great Caesar lay his sword to bed”. So, Caesar, in front of Cleopatra, left his sword, the biggest symbol of the military power of a general; but it wasn’t a common general, he was “great” Caesar, and this contributes to create the high characterisation of Cleopatra. She “did make defect perfection”, “age cannot wither her” and “she makes hungry where most she satisfies”. She is simply characterised like the most valiant woman that human eyes can see.