Critical Analysis of Antony and Cleopatra. Act V, Scene 2-...

Cleopatra is one of the Shakespeare’s strongest and awe inspiring female characters. She is complex and decidedly inconstant, yet she is never less than her self: passionate, grand and over the top. By killing her self Cleopatra remains her truest, reserving all her greatness and mocking over Caesar’ triumph. Cleopatra is beyond neat categories and tidy synopses. Throughout the course of the play she dons many roles of hussy, enchantress, queen, tyrant, strew and mother. Her character has been as shifting as the clouds that Antony describes in Act IV, scene xv. Despite Romans’ victory she does not allow her multifaceted identity to be stripped to one of its simplest, basest components. Thus she refuses to parade through the filthy†¦show more content†¦Even in death she remains once again of her female power. Understandably the victorious Caesar is forced to admire her when he sees her dead body:†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦she looks like sleep/As she would catch another Antony/ in her strong toil of grace† (v.ii.345-7). The death of Cleopatra, which closes the play, is greeted by the reader with sympathy and admiration, even with exultation at the thought that she has foiled Ceasar. While Antony’s death rouses a strong feeling of pity, at the death of Cleopatra this feeling seems to be entire lacking. †Triumph†, â€Å"exultation†, â€Å"wonder†, are the words most commonly used to describe the feelings evoked by the last scene. Her death is so glorious as to be triumph, the final mood in Antony and Cleopatra is triumphant. The play ends with serenity, not with pain, but with grandeur. [Ernest Schanzer, The problems of Shakespeare] The end of Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra suggests that Caesar might have won the political victory but not moral one. Octavius will become Augustus, the great ruler of the Roman Empire. But Cleopatra’s assessment is partially true. Octavius is known in history as the agent of Rome’s transformation into Empire, but the poet’s natural subject is Cleopatra. Because she captures the imaginations of writers like Shakespeare, her name has ultimately even more famous than that of her