Cleopatra

Cleopatra

William Shakespeare, the playwright wrote 37 plays. They are categorized as comedies, tragedies and histories. A comedy is a play (story) that has a happy ending and a tragedy is a play (story) that has a sad ending. Sometimes it is not easy to decide the category; some histories are tragedies like the plays Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra.

Cleopatra the empress of Egypt is considered one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. She was not only beautiful, she was intelligent too. The former rulers of Rome, Caesar and Mark Antony were in love with her.

The people in Rome were curious about Cleopatra. They wanted to know why their beloved rulers fell in love with this foreign woman.

Enorbabus, who had seen Cleopatra sailing in her barge on the Nile, described her. The poetry of Enorbabus makes Cleopatra even more beautiful in the mind of people.

Cleopatra in her barge

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Burn’d on the water, the poop was beaten gold

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love – sick with them, the oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

It beggared all description, she did lie

In her pavilion – cloth – of gold – of tissue –

O’er picturing that Venus, where we see

The fancy out work nature, on each side her

Stood pretty – dimpled boys, like smiling cupids,

With divers – colored fans, whose wind did seem

To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,

And what they undid did.