Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra,a tragedy by Shakespeare probably written 1606 – 7 , not printed until the first folio of 1623 . Its chief source is the Life of Antony by Plutarch , as translated by Sir T. North , which Shakespeare followed extremely closely in places, as in Enobarbus's famous speech beginning: ‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, | Burn'd on the water’ (ii. ii. 195–6). Minor sources include the plays by the countess of Pembroke and S. Daniel .
The play presents Mark Antony, the great soldier and noble prince, at Alexandria, enthralled by the beauty of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Recalled by the death of his wife Fulvia and political developments, he tears himself from Cleopatra and returns to Rome, where the estrangement between him and Octavius Caesar is terminated by his marriage to Octavia, Caesar's sister, an event which provokes the intense jealousy of Cleopatra....
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