The extract presents Cleopatra as regal and dignified in death, though still as narcissistic and egotistical even in death.

Cleopatra sees the afterlife as a glorious, higher world of love and fulfilment. Cleopatras suicide is profoundly ritualistic, as she demands Give me my robe. Put on my crown. The trappings of royalty, here, are manifestations of Cleopatras Immortal longings. The idea conveyed here is that Cleopatra, a bonnne vivante, passionate lover and liver, is not farewelling life she is embracing its next phase, and wishes to enter it with all her regal identity. In this joyous afterlife, she is sure she will be reunited with her beloved Antony, declaring Husband, I come! This afterlife promises not merely a resumption of their unwedded love, but an enshrinement of it in marriage: the afterlife, then, holds the glorious potential of happiness and this eternal sanctified love. Death, for her, promises transcendence to a higher order of being, where the queen is the higher elements of fire and air. This future of bliss and perennial love is only attainable through suicide. After Charmians death, Cleopatra wonders Have I the aspic in my lips? The implication of this comment is that Cleopatra is already in the midst of this sweetly poisonous exit, that her path towards death is inexorable. Furthermore, she sees the ritual as simultaneously painful and intensely pleasurable like a masochistic lovers pinch,/which hurts, and is desired. The seemingly unexplained death of Iris furthermore presents Cleopatras suicide as the right course, because If thou and nature can so gently part, then transcendence to a higher order than nature is easy and simple. The world is not worth a lengthy or involved leav e-taking, but should be exited as an act of accession to the next realm. The world is wild, and life is a knot intrinsicate. Both symbols imply a need for escape. In the former, life is a maelstrom from which one must accede to peace, and in the latter, a tight tangle which must be untied by the sharp teeth of the asps with the connotations of release, freedom and liberation that associated with untying bonds. Cleopatra remains self-obsessed to the last. She is intensely possessive of Antony, and does not trust him to refrain from mak[ing] demand of Charmian in the afterlife. She is delighted to move from one world of hedonistic profligacy (Now no more/The juice of Egypts grape shall moist this lip) to the next, ready to delight in that kiss from Antony which is my heaven to have. Interestingly, Cleopatra actually directly equates this tender reclamation of intimacy to the blissful afterlife, because it is literally my heaven to have. The possessive connotations of mine...to have should also be noted. The tranquil ascendance to a state of blissful death is not truly an act of noble weakness as Caesar is soon to observe, but perhaps simply one of more sensual indulgence at the sensation as sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle. Her motivations, then, are less than noble: indeed she is vindictive and boastful in her outmanoeuvring of Caesar: that I might hear thee call great Caesar ass/Unpolicied! The cosmic frames of reference throughout the extract maintain the epic scope of the play, while also presenting this scene as the culmination of these global, universal concerns. As well as fire and air, Cleopatra is associated with the thick cloud that mourns her passing with rain, the gods themselves, heaven, life, the eastern star, the wild world and golden Phoebus. All these indicators present Cleopatra as an expansive, all-encompassing figure of universal identity. Her live and passing affect the most fundamental aspects of the cosmos, while associating her (as the near-goddess with utter control over Egypt) with the terrible power of the gods themselves and golden Phoebus. The passing of Cleopatra, then sees the death of a lass unparalleled who will never again be equalled: And golden Phoebus never be beheld/ Of eyes again so royal! Cleopatra, then, is a cosmically expansive figure whose death affects the entire universe yet on a human level, her death is in part a sensual gratification sustaining her selfish characterisation.