Antony and Cleopatra

one of Shakespeare's tragedies. It was written and produced on the stage in 1607. It was printed first in the Folio of 1623. The source of the plot is North's Plutarch. In the first three acts Shakespeare followed the historical narrative more closely than in any of his other plays. See Shakespeare

In the fourth and fifth acts Shakespeare's method changes, and he expands his material with magnificent freedom. The whole theme is in his hands instinct with a dramatic grandeur which lifts into sublimity even Cleopatra's moral worthlessness and Antony's criminal infatuation. . . . Into the smallest as into the greatest personages Shakespeare breathed all his vitalising fire. The "happy valiancy" of the style, too--to use Coleridge's admirable phrase--sets the tragedy very near the zenith of Shakespeare's achievement, and while differentiating it from Macbeth, Othello, and Lear, renders it a very formidable rival.--Sidney Lee.