Beta
152295

Egypt as Seen by Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Theater

Abstract

This paper attempts to study William Shakespeare's (1564-1616) view of Egypt as introduced in Antony and Cleopatra (1607?) (1608?). Shakespeare applied the name of Egypt to the land which was ruled by Cleopatra and as an alternate given name for the Queen herself. Shakespeare introduced Antony as "enchanted" by the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra saw her love for Antony as "false" and the Romans saw Egypt as the "waste" land. Antony is seen as "… the abstract of all faults/That all men follow" while Cleopatra was seen as "Royal wench" and "a whore". This paper will try to find out the reasons that led Shakespeare to prejudice against Egypt –the Queen as severely as the land. Was it the situation of the Romans of that time to hate Egypt and the Egyptians? Did this attitude have anything to do with the imperialistic attitude of defaming and miniaturizing the enemy (the future colonized) in order to justify for colonizing his land? The paper concludes that William Shakespeare was one of the earliest racists who prejudiced against the other ethnic groups. His attitude against Cleopatra could be incorporated with his anti-feminist attitude in general.
 

DOI

10.21608/jltmin.2004.152295

Authors

First Name

Eisawy

Last Name

Eisawy

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Department of Foreign Languages, College of Education, Mansoura University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

2

Article Issue

3

Related Issue

21739

Issue Date

2004-08-01

Receive Date

2021-02-26

Publish Date

2004-08-01

Page Start

112

Page End

126

Print ISSN

2735-4520

Online ISSN

2735-4539

Link

https://jltmin.journals.ekb.eg/article_152295.html

Detail API

https://jltmin.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=152295

Order

4

Type

مقالات بحوث مبتکرة

Type Code

1,567

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Journal of Languages and Translation

Publication Link

https://jltmin.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Egypt as Seen by Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra

Details

Type

Article

Created At

23 Jan 2023