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Antony and Cleopatra is a historical tragedy by William Shakespeare, originally printed in the First Folio of 1623.
The plot, based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony, follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Parthian War to Cleopatra's suicide. The major antagonist is Octavius Caesar, one of Antony's fellow triumvirs and the future first emperor of Rome. The tragedy is a Roman play characterized by swift, panoramic shifts in geographical locations and in registers, alternating between sensual, imaginative Alexandria and the more pragmatic, austere Rome. Many consider the role of Cleopatra in this play one of the most complex female roles in Shakespeare's work. She is frequently vain and histrionic, provoking readers almost to scorn; at the same time, Shakespeare's efforts invest both her and Antony with tragic grandeur. These contradictory features have led to famously divided critical responses. However, it is impossible to dispute the poetry and language of what is one of Shakespeare's most lyrical tragedies.
The principal source for the story is Plutarch's "Life of Mark Antony" from Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared Together, in the translation made by Sir Thomas North in 1579. A large number of phrases within Shakespeare's play are taken directly from North's prose, including Enobarbus's famous description of Cleopatra's barge, beginning "The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne/Burned on the water." However Shakespeare also adds scenes, including many of the ones portraying Cleopatra's domestic life, and the role of Enobarbas is greatly developed. Historical facts are also sometimes changed, in Plutarch Antony's final defeat was many weeks after the battle of Actium and Octavia lived with Antony for several years, and bore him children.