Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to “Explorations of Powerplay”, an exhibition sponsored by Paramount and Bandai, that represents the complex interplay between people and power in various works. Our first and main part of the exhibition is William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The tragedy explores how relationships between people can affect their relationships with power. Antony and Cleopatra is a perfect piece to explore powerplay, as it represents sexual powerplay, military powerplay and political powerplay. The sexual powerplay is between Antony and Cleopatra.
In conclusion, Lady Macbeth asserts her dominance and takes over situations through her superior personality. To start, the characters drives are on different levels as well and help prove the point why they are opposites. Both characters maintain a desire and drive for power but Lady Macbeth's actually drives her counter parts proving her to be the superior of the two. Her drive for power happens to be so ridiculous that it controls Macbeth's actions. She basically questions his man hood at one point and and claims she would slay a baby for him.
He undermines Brutus, conveyed through his lamenting tone “thou art the ruins of the noblest man” to further challanege the perspective that caesars thirst for power was a threat to the roman republic. Shakespeare furthers these conflicting perspectives in Act 3 scene 2 to demonstrate the power of political rhetoric. In the funerary speeches, Brutus’ patriotic tone in “not that I loved Caesar less but that I loved rome more” representes him as a protector of the roman republican values that Caesar threatened. This is sharply
How does Shakespeare’s portrayal of King Richard III highlight the greed of absolute power and the role of language in manipulation? The portrayal of King Richard by William Shakespeare accentuates the greed of absolute power and the role of language in manipulation. Mindful of his purpose, audience and contemporary context, Shakespeare employs a number of textural features/techniques and incorporates them within the text. This piece certainly displays Shakespeare’s intentions to win the favour of Queen Elizabeth, as well as his ambition to draw the attention of his audience to the concept of karma. The image Shakespeare has created for King Richard through his play, explores the greed of supreme power, specifically that of the Yorks.
Agrippina the Younger was the third wife of Claudius and the mother of Nero. Ancient writers have perceived her as a manipulative woman, controlling her husband and doing anything to place her son Nero upon the Imperial throne. Agrippina has gone down as one of the most powerful and most ruthless women in history. However modern historians have reviewed the images of Agrippina, free from the sexual bias of the Ancient writers. The histrorian James Romm portrayed Agrippina as a woman who was simply trying to escape the restrictions imposed on her by society.
In every human being there is good and there is evil. It is hard to be good, but with so many factors that influence the human mind, it is even harder to stay good. One of the many influential factors of a person’s nature is the need for power. Power has the ability to turn even the noblest of soldiers into traitors. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the noble soldier Macbeth strays to evil when given the opportunity to be king.
The most interesting part of these myths has been the dynamic relationship and power sharing. It would also be unbiased to say, that in Greco-Roman myths, mortal and immortal women symbolize female subordination and unassertiveness to male power, and female rage as a fight against the existing power and the social order in the society. Philosophers and scholars, who are invariably the authors, show the predominant power of gods over the mortals by using already widespread myths to create fear in the minds of the people. Greco-Roman literature often defines power structures. Be it between general Men and Women, Husband and Wife or Kings and Gods.
She understands the quickest way for her husband Macbeth to become king is to murder King Duncan. Not able to do this alone she calls upon evil spirits to clear her concious and give her the strength of a man. The evil spirits were only enough for her to put on a persona for Macbeth and influence him to commit the muder. After the aweful scenerio takes place Lady Macbeth crumbles under the pressure of guilt and becomes mentally insane. She is effected so much that she is driven to her own suicide.
Yet do I fear thy nature, / It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way.” (I.V.15-18).These lines tell how much she wants power so bad that she makes Macbeth feel unmanly by telling what she could do. Lady Macbeth shows devotion to making Macbeth King by planning ways that he can become king.
The Pursuit of Power Providing a Crowning Corruption Ambition for power is a classic driving force that creates depravity in a character and can sometimes even lead to his/her ultimate downfall. This lust for power can lead even the purist of characters to turn into a degenerate. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the desire to obtain and protect one’s power and the change it brings to a person’s character is a pivotal theme, which is especially epitomized by Macbeth. Through Macbeth, Shakespeare argues that power transforms the individual who assumes or desires it into a corrupt and manipulative being. The beginnings of Macbeth’s fall into corruption occur when Macbeth starts to consider the prophecy of the witches and envisions his rise to