What is the importance of Charmian and Eunobarbas

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What is the importance of Charmian and Eunobarbas?

Throughout Act 1 the inferior characters of the play have appeared in the play and acted at first only as background extras to the main characters. The maids of Cleopatra and servants of Antony follow the main characters around and act as the conversationalists to help the reader learn what the Antony and Cleopatra are thinking.

The minor characters act to an extent as a respite from the bickering and feuding of the main characters with the use of a lot of comical language. Shakespeare also is able to contrast the main characters language which is quite serious and beset with double meanings and deeper connotations, with the inferior characters simple and straightforward language.

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The inferior characters however play more key roles in the play than first appears. The servants are known to talk in prose; it is here used to distinguish the insubordination of the servants such as Charmian and Eunobarbas. In Act 1 Scene 2 the maid servant Charmian:

Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married
to three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all:
let me have a child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry
may do homage: find me to marry me with Octavius
Caesar, and companion me with my mistress.

In contrast to the comedic role of ...

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