The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare

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Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra
Extravagantly fluid in language and structure alike, Antony and Cleopatra marks a major stylistic departure from its immediate predecessors King Lear and Macbeth, although external evidence suggests that it cannot have been written much later. Echoes of its phraseology have been detected in Samuel Daniel revision of his play on the same subject, Cleopatra, published in 1607, and in Barnabe Barnes's play The Devil's Charter, acted by the King's Men in February 1607, so in all probability Antony and Cleopatra enjoyed its first performances late in 1606. It was entered in the Stationers' Register on 20 May 1608.

Text

Despite this entry, the play was not printed until the publication of the First Folio in 1623, which provides the only authoritative text. It seems to have been printed from a good transcript of Shakespeare's own foul papers, though not a Promptbook: although the spelling suggests...

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