Cleopatra the Character, Historical Figure, and Myth :: William Shakespeare Plays Essays

Cleopatra the Character, Historical Figure, and MythCleopatra is a character in a Shakespeare play. Cleopatra is a historical figure. Cleopatra is a myth of our culture. Although each of these statements may be true, neither they, nor any other such statements can hope to adequately name Cleopatra. Cleopatra is an emergent feature of a complex corpse Cleopatra is greater than the summate of her parts.Emergent features are properties associated with complex systems that cannot be deduced simply from an analysis of the elements in the system emergent features can only be explained in cost of the causal interaction among elements in the system. Cleopatras current status as an emergent entity is a result of the causal interactions between elements of the complex system that is our Heideggerian socio-cultural immersion, here represented by our notions of historical fact, our acceptance of dramatic representation, and our humankind predilection towards sin and vice. Cleopatra represen ts the salacious East, sensuality, and the immoral desire for the forbidden yield she captivates the imagination as the inheritor of the Egyptian myths, with the embalming of the dead, rituals, tombs, pyramids, gods, scarabs, scorpions, and horror film mummies. primal to Cleopatras emergence is our fascination with her powers to charm the virtuous, upright paradigmatic Roman, guide him, like the Serpent, down the path of Sin. Plutarch is explicit in his description of the debase influence of the EastBut when he Marc Antony was once come into Asiaand that he had felt the riches and pleasures of the east partshe easily trim back again to his old licentious life. For straight one Anaxenor a fake of the citherne, X turn upus a player of the flutes, Metrodorus a tumbler, and such a rabble of minstrels and adapt ministers for the pleasures of Asia (who in fineness and flattery passed any the other plagues he brought with him out of Italy), all these flocked in his court, and bore th e whole sway and after that, all went awry. For everyone gave themselves to riot and excess(696)On a larger view, Cleopatra is the embodiment of our westbound conception of the East as a realm of guilty, sensuous pleasures it is the etymon of spices, and the exotic tales of the Arabian Nights, and occult knowledge. The western notion of vice is encapsulated by the Seven Deadly Sins of the Roman Catholic Catechism, which are described by Chaucer in The Parsons TaleNow it is a accommodation thing to tell what are the deadly sins, that is to say, the chieftains among sins.