Shakespeare · Tragedies

Antony and Cleopatra

c. 1606–07

Roman tragedy — from Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius via North

A sequel of sorts to Julius Caesar. One of the three masters of the Roman world has gone to seed in Alexandria with the queen of Egypt; recalled to Rome, he patches up the alliance by marrying Octavius Caesar's sister, then throws it away again. The sea battle of Actium is lost when the Egyptian fleet turns and flees, the land army deserts, and the lovers kill themselves separately and clumsily — he by a bungled fall on his sword, she by the bite of an asp smuggled in a basket of figs. Its forty-odd short scenes range across the whole Mediterranean.

How to spot them

▸Alexandria and Rome; a triumvir who has forgotten his duty and a queen of Egypt
▸The sea battle of Actium, lost when a fleet turns and runs
▸A death by asp, brought in a basket of figs
▸More scenes than any other Shakespeare play — around forty — flicking between continents
▸A description of a barge on the river Cydnus, spoken by a soldier who has just deserted

Scenes, characters & lines

'The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water'

Enobarbus describing the first meeting on the Cydnus

'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety'

From the same speech

'Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall!'

The opening scene: duty rejected

A queen dies by the bite of an asp brought to her in a basket of figs

'Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?'

'I am dying, Egypt, dying'

Hauled up into the monument to die in her arms

'Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me'

The queen's last speech, dressed for death as a queen

A general's most loyal officer deserts him, is sent his treasure after him, and dies of shame

Enobarbus, the play's chorus and conscience

A messenger is dragged about the stage by the hair for bringing news of a marriage

The comic scene of the queen's jealousy over Octavia

Key ideas

The play sets Roman measure against Egyptian excess and declines to choose, which is why it has been called Shakespeare's most generous tragedy
Almost everything in Enobarbus's barge speech is lifted from North's Plutarch and turned from prose into verse

Quick-fire facts

•The source is Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius in Sir Thomas North's translation; the third triumvir, Lepidus, is shuffled aside in the play as in history
•The Folio prints it without act or scene divisions; modern editions find around forty scenes, more than any other play in the canon
•It was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1608 but survives only in the First Folio of 1623, with no record of a performance in Shakespeare's lifetime
•A boy actor originally played the queen, a fact the play jokes about: 'some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness'
•John Dryden's All for Love (1677), subtitled 'The World Well Lost', rewrote the story in blank verse and displaced Shakespeare's play on stage for a century
•Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra, with a libretto by Franco Zeffirelli, opened the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in September 1966
•Peter Hall's 1987 National Theatre production starred Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins; Peggy Ashcroft and Michael Redgrave had played the roles at Stratford in 1953
•Her attendants Charmian and Iras die with her; Charmian's last word to the guard is 'It is well done'

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources

Folger Shakespeare Library — Antony and Cleopatra
John Wilders (ed.) — Antony and Cleopatra (The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)