Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra is a Roman tragedy about the love affair between Mark Antony, one of the three rulers of the Roman world, and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, which ends in defeat and both their suicides.

Main characters

• Mark Antony, a triumvir of Rome
• Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
• Octavius Caesar, a triumvir
• Lepidus, a triumvir
• Enobarbus, Antony's friend
• Charmian and Iras, Cleopatra's attendants
• Octavia, Octavius's sister
• Pompey

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

Antony is living in pleasure in Alexandria with Cleopatra while Rome mocks him. News of his wife's death and of Pompey's rebellion calls him home. To seal an alliance with Octavius, he marries Octavius's sister Octavia, but Enobarbus predicts he will return to Egypt. In one of Shakespeare's most celebrated speeches, Enobarbus describes Cleopatra's first appearance to Antony on her golden barge.

Antony does go back to Cleopatra, and war breaks out with Octavius. Against advice he fights at sea at Actium; Cleopatra's ships flee and he follows. Enobarbus deserts him and dies of shame. After a final defeat, Antony believes Cleopatra has betrayed him; she sends word that she is dead, and he falls on his sword. Dying, he is lifted into her monument. Rather than be paraded in Octavius's triumph in Rome, Cleopatra dresses in her royal robes and lets an asp bite her.

Themes

• Love against duty and politics
• Rome against Egypt
• Honour and reputation
• Theatricality and self-creation

Famous lines

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water.

Enobarbus, Act 2 Scene 2

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

Enobarbus, Act 2 Scene 2

My salad days, When I was green in judgment.

Cleopatra, Act 1 Scene 5

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

Cleopatra, Act 5 Scene 2

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

Plutarch's Life of Antony in Thomas North's translation; Enobarbus's barge speech closely follows North's prose.

On stage and screen

The play has more than forty scenes that leap across the Mediterranean, which suited the bare Elizabethan stage. Cleopatra, one of Shakespeare's most complex women, was written for a boy actor, and she imagines with disgust seeing 'some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness'.

See where Antony and Cleopatra sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.