Hildegard Neil as Cleopatra in Heston's 1972 film version of the play

The Tilbury Speech

"Queen Elizabeth exhorting her People, to stand firm in defence [sic.] of their Queen and Country," by W. Belch or Edward Langley, London: 1820s. Border image for a handwriting broadsheet for children to practice penmanship. Click on the image to learn more. Image courtesy of www.georgeglazer.com, George Glazer Gallery, New York City.

I have been persuaded by some that are careful of my safety, to take heed how I commit myself to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I tell you that I would not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects. Wherefore I am come among you at this time but for my recreation and pleasure, being resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all, to lay down for my God and for my kingdom and my people mine honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too!

Sink Rome, and their tongues rot
That speak against us! A charge we bear i' the war,
And, as the president of my kingdom, will
Appear there for a man. Speak not against it:
I will not stay behind.

Clothing and Monarchical Power

Caesar. Contemning Rome, he [Antony] has done all this, and more,
In Alexandria: here's the manner of 't:
I' the market-place, on a tribunal silver'd,
Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold
Were publicly enthroned: at the feet sat
Caesarion, whom they call my father's son,
And all the unlawful issue that their lust
Since then hath made between them. Unto her
He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her
Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,
Absolute queen.

Mecaenas. This in the public eye?

Caesar. I' the common show-place, where they exercise.
His sons he there proclaim'd the kings of kings:
Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia.
He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assign'd
Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia: she
In the habiliments of the goddess Isis
That day appear'd; and oft before gave audience,
As 'tis reported, so.

Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra in the 1934 film Cleopatra, dir. Cecil B. DeMille. In this still, Cleopatra is dressed as Isis.

Isis, an Egyptian goddess. Often depicted wearing a headdress shaped either like a throne or with the sun disk encircled by cow's horns.

Elizabeth constructs the enormous size of her political power in a number of ways, one of the most visual involving clothing. The costumes she wears in her portraits become ever larger throughout her reign, with hoop skirts, neck ruffs, puffed sleeves, and headwear growing increasingly more enormous while the costumes continue to accentuate her narrow waist and tiny hands... [Her] representational body stands for an eroticized political identity made all the more desirable because it hides the gendered, human body of the monarch, dwarfed beneath the royal robes.

While Elizabeth most likely stands before Parliament in her full robes of state [to deliver her speech], she figures herself in her undergarments, enticingly vulnerable yet unabashed and in control. She styles herself as clothed only in a garment worn close to the body and that, though it helped fashion the largeness of her outer layers, was not itself voluminous, enacting a kind of sartorial miniaturization that nonetheless asserts the queen’s authority: she can rule with her natural body, small and gendered female by the petticoats, and does not need her enormous robes of state.

Amazons

Inigo Jones' costume for Penthesilea Queen of the Amazons from "The Masque of Queens," 1609.

Then tooke the Amazon this noble knight,
  Left to her will by his owne wilfull blame,
  And caused him to be disarmed quight,
  Of all the ornaments of knightly name,
  With which whylome he gotten had great fame:
  In stead whereof she made him to be dight
  In womans weedes, that is to manhood shame,
  And put before his lap a napron white,
In stead of Curiets and bases fit for fight.

So being clad, she brought him from the field,
  In which he had bene trayned many a day,
  Into a long large chamber, which was sield
  With moniments of many knights decay,
  By her subdewed in victorious fray:
  Amongst the which she causd his warlike armes
  Be hang'd on high, that mote his shame bewray;
  And broke his sword, for feare of further harmes,
With which he wont to stirre vp battailous alarmes.

Cleopatra. O my lord, my lord,
Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought
You would have follow'd.

Antony. Egypt, thou knew'st too well
My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings,
And thou shouldst tow me after: o'er my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knew'st, and that
Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me.

Cleopatra. O, my pardon!

Antony. Now I must
To the young man send humble treaties, dodge
And palter in the shifts of lowness; who
With half the bulk o' the world play'd as I pleased,
Making and marring fortunes. You did know
How much you were my conqueror; and that
My sword, made weak by my affection, would
Obey it on all cause.

Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra and Henry Wilcoxon as Antony in the 1934 film Cleopatra, directed by Cecil B. DeMille.

Whatsoever repugneth to the will of god expressed in his most sacred word, repugneth to justice: but that women have authoritie over men repugneth to the will of God expressed in his word: and therefore mine author commandeth me to conclude without fear, that all such authoritie repugneth to justice…And if any man doubt hereof, let him mark well the words of the apostle, saying: I permit not a woman to teach, nether yet to usurp authority above man… say, we will suffer women to bear authority, who then can depose them? yet shall this one word of the eternal God spoken by the mouth of a weak man, thrust them every one in to hell. Jesabel may for a time sleep quietly in the bed of her fornication and whoredom, she may teach and deceive for a season, but nether shall she preserve her self, nether yet her adulterous children from great affliction, and from the sword of God’s vengeance, which shall shortly apprehend such works of iniquity. 

Nay, but this dotage of our general's
O'erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes,
That o'er the files and musters of the war
Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front: his captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy's lust.
Look, where they come:
Take but good note, and you shall see in him.
The triple pillar of the world transform'd
Into a strumpet's fool: behold and see.

Speaking of excess: Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra and Richard Burton as Antony in the famous 1963 film Cleopatra, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Rouben Mamoulian, Darryl F. Zanuck.

...'tis to be chid
As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,
And so rebel to judgment...
...thou [Antony] didst drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: and all this--
It wounds thine honour that I speak it now--
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not.

Coins with the busts of Mark Antony & Cleopatra. 34 BC. Denarius. Alexandria mint.

...Forbear me.
There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it:
What our contempt doth often hurl from us,
We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, does become
The opposite of itself: she's good, being gone;
The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on.
I must from this enchanting queen break off.

O well-divided disposition! Note him,
Note him good Charmian, 'tis the man; but note him:
He was not sad, for he would shine on those
That make their looks by his; he was not merry,
Which seem'd to tell them his remembrance lay
In Egypt with his joy; but between both:
O heavenly mingle! Be'st thou sad or merry,
The violence of either thee becomes,
So does it no man else.

Fie, wrangling queen!
Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh,
To weep; whose every passion fully strives
To make itself, in thee, fair and admired

I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are dispos'd to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when thou are inclin'd to sleep.

Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life
Is to do thus [embraces Cleopatra] ; when such a mutual pair
And such a twain can do't, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless.

Salmace e Ermafrodito (1856) by Giovanni Carnovali

The Myth In Classical and Neoclassical Art

Beaumont's poem

Diana being hunting on a day,
She saw the boy upon a green bank lay him,
And there the virgin huntress meant to slay him;
Because no nymphs would now pursue the chase,
For all were struck blind with the wanton's face…
She turn'd and shot, but did of purpose miss him,
She turn'd again, but could not choose but kiss him.
Then the boy ran: for some say had he staid,
Diana had no longer been a maid.
Phœbus so doted on this roseate face,
That he bath oft stol'n closely from his place,
When he did lie by fair Leucothoë's side,
To dally with him in the vales of Ide.

Narcissus (c. 1597–1599) by Caravaggio

For this was the bright river where the boy [Narcissus]
Did die himself, that he could not enjoy
Himself in pleasure, nor could taste the blisses
Of his own melting and delicious kisses.
Here did she [Salmacis] see him [Hermaphroditus], and by Venus' law
She did desire to have him as she saw.

That she had won his love, but that the light
Of her translucent eye did shine too bright;
For long he looked upon the lovely maid,
And at the last Hermaphroditus said:
"How should I love thee, when I do espy
A far more beauteous nymph hid in thy eye?
When thou dost love let not that nymph be nigh thee,
Nor, when thou woo'st, let that same nymph be by thee;
Or quite obscure her from thy lover's face,
Or hide her beauty in a darker place."
By this the nymph perceived he did espy
None but himself reflected in her eye.

Remember how the gods punish'd that boy,
That scorn'd to let a beauteous nymph enjoy
Her long-wished pleasure; for the peevish elf,
Loved of all others, needs would love himself:
So may'st, thou love perhaps: thou may'st be blest
By granting to a luckless nymph's request.

Narcissus in Modern and Postmodern Art

Echo and Narcissus (1903) by John William Waterhouse

Salmachis on becoming more masculine:
Were thou a maid and I a man, I'll show thee
With what a manly boldness I could woo thee.

Salmachis on Hermaphroditus becoming more feminine:
Why were so bashful, boy? Thou hast no part
Shows thee to be of such a female heart!

[The brook's] pleasant coolness when the boy did feel,
He thrust his foot down lower to the heel.
O'ercome with whose sweet noise he did begin
To strip his soft clothes from his tender skin…

When beauteous Salmacis a while had gazed
Upon his naked corpse, she stood amazed,
And both her sparkling eyes burnt in her face,
Like the bright sun reflected in a glass…

Then rose the water-nymph from where she lay,
As having won the glory of the day,
And her light garments cast from off her skin,
"He's mine," she cried, and so leapt sprightly in.

Yet still the boy, regardless what she said,
Struggled apace to overswim the maid;
Which when the nymph perceived she 'gan to say,
"Struggle thou may'st, but never get away;
So grant, just gods, that never day may see
The separation 'twixt this boy and me!"
  The gods did hear her prayer, and feel her woe,
And in one body they began to grow.
She felt his youthful blood in every vein,
And he felt her's warm his cold breast again;
And ever since was woman's love so blest,
That it will draw blood from the strongest breast,
Nor man nor maid now could they be esteem'd,
Neither and either might they well be deem'd
When the young boy, Hermaphroditus, said,
With the set voice of neither man nor maid:
"Swift Mercury, thou author of my life,
And thou my mother, Vulcan's lovely wife;
Let your poor offspring's latest breath be blest
In but obtaining this his last request:
Grant that whoe'er, heated by Phœbus' beams,
Shall come to cool him in these silver streams,
May never more a manly shape retain,
But half a virgin may return again."

[Comedy] and ecology are systems designed to accommodate necessity and to encourage acceptance of it, while tragedy is concerned with avoiding or transcending the necessary in order to accomplish the impossible... [The] tragic heroes preserved in literature are the products of metaphysical presuppositions which most people can no longer honestly share… The philosophical props and settings for genuine tragic experience have disappeared. Moderns can only pretend to tragic heroism, and that pretence is painfully hollow and melodramatic in the absence of the beliefs that tragedy depends on.