Shakespearean Character Analysis

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Proculeius and Cleopatra (lower to higher class)

Proculeius is a friend of Octavius Caesar sent by the latter to ensure Cleopatra does not kill herself so he can parade her in the streets of Rome. Considering the fact that Proculeius is aware of her fragile state of mind, it seems unusual that he would address her with thee/thou especially as the default pronoun here should be you. However this is how he greets her in Act 5 Scene 2:

‘Caesar sends greeting to the Queen of Egypt;

And bids thee study on what fair demands

Thou mean'st to have him grant thee.’

There are different possible reasons for his choice of address. On one hand he might be aiming to make Cleopatra aware that she has lost and that Octavius Caesar is now in power. Another possibility could be that he is trying to create intimacy between them, as he aims to get her to trust him so he can take her to Caesar. One last possibility is that he is trying to be respectful to her and address her as if she were a God.

What complicates the analysis even further is the fact that once Cleopatra finds out who he is, after initially addressing him with thee/thou, she switches to you. This switch occurs whilst she is saying that Antony told her that she could trust him. Her switch of pronoun, therefore, may indicate that she now regards him as an equal or as an inferior. Alternatively she could be creating distance between them as she is unsure of Caesar’s intentions for her.

The switch in pronoun by Cleopatra is then transferred to Proculeius who also starts addressing her with you. This may be deliberate to mirror her own switch. Now that he feels he has won her trust, he begins to address her as an equal or does not need to show empathy but simply reassurance, espec...

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...e Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979) pp.69-88

Suzuki, Mihoko, ‘Gender, Class and the Social Order in Late Elizabethan Drama’, Theatre Journal, Vol. 44, No. 1, (March 1992), pp.31-45

Thorton Burnett, Mark, Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture. Authority and Obedience., (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1997)

Toole, W.B., ‘The Nurse’s “Vast Irrelevance”: Thematic Foreshadowing in “Romeo and Juliet”’, South Atlantic Bulletin Vol. 45, No. 1, (1980), pp.21-30 accessed via JSTOR on 09/12/2007.

Tvordi, Jessica, ‘Female Alliance and the Construction of Homoeroticism in As You Like It and Twelfht Night’ in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens. Women’s Allicances in Early Modern England, ed. by Frye, S. and Robertson, K., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) pp.114-129

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