A Contextual Guide to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra: History, Myth, Gender

Employing commentary on the play’s main themes, coupled with an editorial apparatus that connects selected primary texts (from Ovid to Montaigne) with Shakespeare’s great tragedy, Jyotsna G. Singh and Daniel Vitkus guide the reader through a series of fascinating readings that serve to reconstruct the intellectual and artistic world of Antony and Cleopatra through varied perspectives. This includes chapters on History and Prophecy; Myth; Geography; Gender, Desire, and Eroticism; Theatricality, Festivity, and Spectacle; and Emblematic Perspectives; followed by a Coda describing and analysing some ’Afterlives’ of the play on the modern stage. Through their exposure to these thematic frameworks, readers will come to understand more clearly the interpretive possibilities offered by Antony and Cleopatra as a complex and masterful work of art.