Introduction and Notes by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex

Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeares greatest tragedies: a spectacular, widely-ranging drama of love and war, passion and politics. Antony is divided between the responsibilities of imperial power and the intensities of his sexual relationship with Cleopatra. She, variously generous and ruthless, loving and jealous, petulant and majestic, emerges as Shakespeares most complex depiction of a woman: Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety.