A New-Historicist Reading Of Contemporary Arabic Poetic Play; "Case Study in Shawqis's the Death of Cleopatra

New Historicists believe that a literary work should be evaluated in its historical context. It means that a work of art is written under the impacts of social conditions, formed in a particular context, impressed by various discourses, and it impacts on them mutually. On this ground, power as a set of relations (and discourses) is available at all times and has an intimate relationship with the dominant discourse and other narratives. So through written workes belong to a given era, critics will be able to find out power relations in that era and this helps them to achieve its meaning. Ahmad Shawqi in his verse play, under influences of social conditioning, embodied power relations. And his picture of power meets Foucault's terms regarding power. Foucault, as a new historicist, pursues power everywhere. As he says "Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power", he crystallizes a binary operation between power and resistance. Furthermore, by evaluating this work, I show power relations among characters e.g. Cleopatra and Romans, Cleopatra and Caesar, Egypt and Rome. In the following, I illustrate the ways characters resist in the chain of power relations. Attendance of Eastern women in power positions is another matter which will be shown respectively.