Part of: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare) Antony and Cleopatra

The Romantics couldn’t get enough of the grand passion of Antony and Cleopatra. Charles Swinburne’s poem “Cleopatra” is one example of the sensual appeal poets and others found in the character.

The beginning’s of Antony’s story are found in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Cleopatra is a famously complex character–a seductress, a betrayer, but somehow still a person of great bravery and resolve. She has always been a role that Shakespearean actors have longed to play. This article from the Smithsonian takes a closer look at her as a historical figure and at her…

Shakespeare’s character, Cleopatra, famously worries about how she will be represented on stage, fearing that she will see “Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness/ I' the posture of a whore.” It’s a useful reminder that, in Shakespeare’s time, acting was an exclusively male profession, and…

After Holinshed’s history of England and Boccaccio’s Decameron, one of Shakespeare’s most influential sources was Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, more generally known as Plutarch’s Lives. Shakespeare drew extensively–though never without variation–…

You can find the sections of Plutarch’s Lives most directly related to Antony and Cleopatra in this collection of extracts from the work designed for use by readers of Shakespeare.