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Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1Indeed, the true Egyptians were a "lower class" to the ruling Greeks, as the natives of India once were to the ruling British. Cleopatra would undoubtedly have been terribly offended to have been considered an "Egyptian." Furthermore, the word "gypsy" by Shakespeare's time had come to be applied to a wandering group of men and women of unknown origin. Popular rumor had them coming from Egypt, hence "gypsy," but it is much more likely they came from India (see page I-149). To call Cleopatra a "gypsy," then, is to call up visions of swarthy women in markedly non-Western costume, both to Shakespeare's audience and our own. The triple pillar of the world. .. Antony, Cleopatra, and their train of maids and eunuchs are entering now, and Philo says of Mark Antony, more bitterly still: Take but good note, and you shall see in him The triple pillar of the world transformed Into a strumpet's fool. —Act I, scene i, lines 11-13 Antony is one of the three members of the Second Triumvirate. All three together support and rule the Roman realm, hence "triple pillar." Rome is referred to here as "the world." In a way, it was to the ancients, for it included the entire Mediterranean basin and virtually all the lands that the Greeks and Romans considered "civilized." Thus, in the Bible, the Gospel of St ...» |
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