Antony and Cleopatra (Vol. 81) | Susan Muaddi Darraj (essay date spring 2001)
Susan Muaddi Darraj (essay date spring 2001)
SOURCE: Darraj, Susan Muaddi. “‘The Sword Phillipan’: Female Power, Maternity, and Genderbending in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.” Schuylkill: A Creative and Critical Review from Temple University 4, no. 1 (spring 2001): 23-32.
[In the following essay, Darraj concentrates on Shakespeare's efforts to fashion Cleopatra into a believable, sympathetic character.]
The 19th century essayist and literary critic William Hazlitt wrote of Cleopatra, “She is voluptuous, ostentatious, conscious, boastful of her charms, haughty, tyrannical, [and] fickle,” which are “great and unpardonable faults” (Hazlitt 2-3). Much of the criticism of Antony and Cleopatra has recycled this judgement, depicting Cleopatra as a villainess uses her eroticism and sexuality to motivate Antony to seek power. Cleopatra is memorable for her propensity for violence as well. While...
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