She argues against a gender issue and, as Elizabeth I, she considers that as a Queen, she has to be in the middle of the fight and even though she is a woman she can be as manly as any soldier: “And, as the president of my kingdom, will/ Appear there for a man. Speak not against it:/ I will not stay behind.” (III, vii, 1956-1958) Cleopatra’s presence in the middle of the battle is “ so forceful that Mark Antony leaves his men in battle when she sails away and finds that Cleopatra’s kisses repay all that may have been won or lost in the battle he has abandoned in puisuit of her” (Courtni Crump Wright, 153) Has the presence of the Queen been only a trick to get her lover back or she was there really for the battle? After leaving the fight, Antony…show more content… Seemingly, Cleopatra “embrace not Antony/As you did love, but as you fear'd him” (III, xiii, 2314-2314) and she has accepted to lay her crown at Caesar’s feet and to betray Antony without thinking. This raises the issue of how honest was the Queen and what was false in her behavior. She accepted the protection of Caesar as Antony had not even existed, but this is the response to the Antony’s betrayal. Cleopatra acts like any woman betrayed : “faithless out of anger, pique, desire of revenge; they are faithless out of fear, out of ambition.” (Harris 166) She is a proud woman who could not forget Antony’s faithlessness. When Antony discovers the treason Cleopatra changes her attitude and with tenderness and cunning words makes him to forgive her “but, since my lord Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.” (III, xiii 2474-2475) However, all this was only a part of Cleopatra’s performance through which she succeeded to maintain her power upon the triumvir. Later, he will find out that Cleopatra indeed betrayed him, but the Queen with her sweet words will try again to pursue him, only that “he is more mad/ Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly/ Was never so emboss'd.” (IV, xiii,…show more content… (V, ii, 3763-3770) She has planned her death with the mastery of a playwrighter, becoming in the Act V “a greater actress than she was before (...) The part that she composes for herself is very complex, and one strand in it is that she was and still is in love with Antony, and so is more than bereft.” (Bloom, the inv of hyman,550 )
Her death is not a weak way to escape from Caesar, but a way through which she proves that she has the power and she can take any decision. “Octavius. Bravest at the last,/ She levell'd at our purposes, and, being royal, / Took her own way.” (V, ii, 3812-3815) and also, it is a way through which she can join Antony, because their love “is so overwhelming that it goes to ruin and suicide and beyond” (Harris, Shakespeare the man, 162) Cleopatra may “ have killed herself out of pride to avoid being dragged as a show in Caesar's triumph or out of love for Antony, or both motives may have swayed her; but she did commit self-murder and that redeems her for us, lends her that soul of greatness if not of goodness which makes us forgive the wanton blood because of the immortal longings which lifted her to tragic heights.” (Harris