In his play Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare presents duty and desire on a metaphorical spectrum through the individual stories of several characters, including Antony, Cleopatra, and Pompey. When presenting duty and desire in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare does so in such a way that duty is an expression of honor and desire an expression of selfishness. In order to present this spectrum, Shakespeare uses Cleopatra to show desire, Pompey to show duty, and Antony to show the conflict when duty and desire are exercised simultaneously. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Cleopatra is representative of desire in the form of her constant selfish quest for power and affirmation. Shakespeare reveals this to the audience when Cleopatra asks Antony to “tell her how much” he loves her, “if it really is love.” Her asking Antony to prove his love shows the audience Cleopatra's tendency to act on her desires, and in this example, for the purpose of affirmation. Another way in which Shakespeare shows Cleopatra's desire is her interactions with one of her servants in which she asks them to "see where he is, who is with him, what he is doing", and whether he, Antony, is particularly pleased to report that it is “sudden.” sick,” or if it’s particularly sad to announce that she’s “dancing.” By ordering someone to psychologically manipulate Antony and report his exact status, Shakespeare shows the audience Cleopatra's desire for power and affirmation because she wants to assert that no matter what, Antony can feel this way or doing it is a direct consequence of something she herself initiated. Shakespeare also makes a point of showing the audience how little Cleopatra values ​​duty and shows this through Cleopatra's reaction to Antony's marriage to Octavia. Cleopatra begins a dialogue by saying: "melt Egypt in the Nile" and signals to the inhabitants of Egypt, her disciples, to "turn everything into serpents". This presentation of Cleopatra solidifies her depiction of desire as she curses and condemns her own people and land (symbolic of her duty) simply because of the supposed failure of her own personal relationship – the unfulfillment of her desires. Antithetical to Cleopatra, Shakespeare presents Pompey. as a character completely centralized around duty and therefore honor. Early in the play, Shakespeare reveals Pompey's beliefs to the audience when Pompey proclaims that "if the great gods be just, they will assist the deeds of the most just men." Pompey's beliefs are important information for the audience because they describe Pompey's duty: to follow and honor his beliefs at all times. Building on the revelation of Pompey's beliefs, Shakespeare continues to elaborate the ideal of duty through the character of Pompey when Menas approaches him during their celebratory dinner with the triumvirates. Menas asks Pompey to "let him cut the cable", thus giving him the opportunity to kill the "three dividers of the world", so that once they cease to exist, "all there will be to you.” Shakespeare uses Menas in this scene as a temptation to try to persuade Pompey of his moral convictions, thereby testing his honor and, furthermore, his value of duty. Shakespeare allows Pompey to reveal his temptation to the audience when he responds "this you should have done and not spoken of", and if Menas had done it, he would have "thought it well done afterwards". The theoretical pleasure that Pompey suggests by analyzing how he would have reacted to Menas if he had.