Proculeius and Cleopatra (lower to upper class)Proculeius is a friend of Octavian Caesar sent by the latter to ensure that Cleopatra does not commit suicide so that he can parade her in the streets of Rome. Considering how aware Proculeius is of her fragile state of mind, it seems unusual for him to address her with you, especially since the default pronoun here should be you. However, this is how he greets her in Act 5, Scene 2: “Caesar sends his greetings to the queen of Egypt; and asks you to study the just demands you want him to grant you. » There are several possible reasons for his choice of address. On the one hand, it could aim to make Cleopatra realize that she has lost and that Octavian Caesar is now in power. Another possibility could be that he is trying to create intimacy between them, in an attempt to make her trust him so that he can take her to Caesar. A final possibility is that he tries to be respectful and address her as if she were a God. What complicates the analysis even more is the fact that once Cleopatra discovers who he is, after initially speaking to you, she moves on to you. This change occurs as she says Antoine told her she could trust him. Her change of pronoun may therefore indicate that she now considers him as an equal or as an inferior. Alternatively, she could create distance between them because she is unsure of Caesar's intentions towards her. Cleopatra's pronoun change is then transferred to Proculeius who also begins to address her with you. This may be deliberate to reflect one's own change. Now that he feels he has gained her trust, he begins to address her as an equal or does not need to show empathy but simply to reassure her, above all...... middle of paper......e Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979) pp.69-88Suzuki, Mihoko, “Gender, class and social order in late Elizabethan drama” , Theater Journal, Vol. 44, No. 1, (March 1992), pp. 31-45 Thorton Burnett, Mark, Masters and Servants of English Renaissance Theater and Culture. Authority and Obedience., (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1997)Toole, WB, "The Nurse's 'Great Unreality': 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, “Feminine alliance and the construction of homoeroticism in As You Like It and Twelfht Night” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins ​​and Queens. Women's Alliances in Early Modern England, ed. by Frye, S. and Robertson, K., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) pp..114-129