With ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ S.F. Shakes explores history’s ultimate power couple 56%
By Lily Janiak0%
7/16/2026, 1:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Quote-first Misdirection, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 51.9% saturation with 107 hits. Analysis detected 719 faulty-reasoning hits from 206 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 53.2% and a BS Rank of 56% (7,435 of 16,550 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 55.10% of the article peer group.
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She’s the queen of Egypt.
He’s a Roman general.
They’re equals in lust for both sex and power, and they’re both cunning strategists regularly undone by throes of passion.
What could go wrong?
Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” begins with history’s ultimate power couple fawning over each other, with such PDA even their entourage cringes.
By the end of the tragedy, geopolitics has so upset their bed that each is pledging suicide over the presumed loss of the other.
In between, morsels abound.
Here’s how Cleopatra plans to win back a distracted boyfriend: “If you find him sad, say I am dancing; if in mirth, report that I am sudden sick.”
Or he she is pining for him, in words a jilted lover of any era might relate to: “Where think’st thou he is now?
Stands he, or sits he?
Or does he walk?
Or is he on his horse?
O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!”
For San Francisco Shakespeare Festival — which mounts free theater in Bay Area parks every summer — Elizabeth Carter plays Cleopatra, while Jeremy Ohta Lee is Antony.
Katja Rivera directs the history-rocking tragic love story.
Analysis
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