Antony and Cleopatra

By William Shakespeare

Book Overview

The Signet Classics edition of the tragedy that features one of Shakespeare's greatest female characters. A magnificent drama of passion and war, this riveting play presents the complicated relationship between the seductive, cunning Egyptian queen Cleopatra and the Roman leader Mark Antony, a man torn between an empire and love. This revised Signet Classics edition includes unique features such as- . An overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater .A special introduction to the play by the editor, Sylvan Barnet . A selection from Plutarch's Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans , the source from which Shakespeare derived Antony and Cleopatra . Dramatic criticism from Samuel Johnson, A. C. Bradley, John F. Danby, and others . A comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors, and productions . Text, notes, and commentaries printed in the clearest, most readable text . And more...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451527135
• ISBN13: 9780451527134
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Signet Book
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.2" x 6.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Discerningly-edited Edition

This is a review of a specific edition of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" - namely the New Cambridge edition of 1990, edited by David Bevington.The book is a good size, and the print is easy to read. There are about 70 pages of front matter in this edition, and, on each page of the play, copious notes. Following the play's text, there is a discussion of general editorial choices and approaches, supplementing the specifics...

Sex, Politics, Suicide. What More Could You Want?

Anthony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's difficult plays, and so I suspect the ratings on the play are low because it's a more mature play than Romeo and Juliet. Here we have two middle age lovers who part of the time are foolish with lust/love and the rest of the time are tough minded heads of state. The "tragedy" is that they can't be both and survive. This is not a play for the young folks, I'm afraid. But if you...

When love and fate mean death or power

Shakespeare in this play shows how love is not human but surrealistic. Love does not answer reasonable questions. It is a fundamentally unreasonable attitude that brings the lovers to absurd behaviours negating all logical, political and historical values. Love has no limits even if history will prove stronger and the lovers will be destroyed. Shakespeare beefs up this theme with a language that is so rich that we are fascinated...

Fantastic Editing!

We all know the play. Everyone's read it, at least parts in school. But not everyone gets to read an edition so well edited, so finely crafted by such an editorial craftsman as Adam Frost. Were it not for the Frostian touch, Shakespeare in this play might just seem like another hack Elizabethan dramatist. But here, the words sing and soar. Frost has the ability to dramatize page numbers and italic type. Of whom else...

One of the greatest works of English literature

This is one of the greatest works of English literature and does not deserve to be reviewed by people such as the American listed above. Intelligent people do not read Shakespeare to gain information about the time and place of the plot. We do so primarily because we are interested in the human condition.