BookRags.com Literature Guides Literature
Guides
Criticism & Essays Criticism &
Essays
Questions & Answers Questions &
Answers
Lesson Plans Lesson
Plans
My Bibliography Periodic Table U.S. Presidents Shakespeare Sonnet Shake-Up
Research Anything:        
History | Encyclopedias | Films | News | Create a Bibliography | More... Login | Register | Help

Not What You Meant?  There are 3 definitions for Menecrates.

Antony and Cleopatra

Print-Friendly  Order the PDF version  Order the RTF version
William Shakespeare
About 16 pages (4,902 words)
Antony and Cleopatra Summary

Bookmark and Share Questions on this topic? Just ask!

Antony and Cleopatra

by William Shakespeare

Scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote Antony and Cleopatra in late 1606 or early 1607, shortly after writing King Lear and Macbeth (also covered in WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times). Shakespeare, then in his early forties, had been a working playwright for about a decade and a half. The most ambitious of the three plays that the playwright based on Roman history (the other two being Coriolanus and Julius Caesar), Antony and Cleopatra spans a wider range of time and space than any of Shakespeare’s works, compressing 12 years into action that shifts rapidly among Egypt, Italy, Greece, and other sites in the Mediterranean world. Though set in these far-flung places, the play invokes a foundation myth of the British themselves. According to this myth, Rome’s founder, Aeneas, had a descendant, Brut or Brit (hence the name Britain), who led survivors of the Trojan War from Rome north to found London, or New Troy. By Shakespeare’s day this myth had become entrenched. Thus, many of the English saw themselves as successors to Troy and as descendants of the Roman empire.

Events in History at the Time the Play Takes Place

Collapse of the Roman Republic.

This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This article contains 4,902 words (approx. 16 pages at 300 words per page).

Read the rest of this Article with our Antony and Cleopatra Access Pass.

Ask any question on Antony and Cleopatra and get it answered FAST!
Answer questions in BookRags Q&A and earn points toward
discounted or even FREE Study Guides and other BookRags products!
Learn more about BookRags Q&A
Copyrights
Antony and Cleopatra from World Literature and Its Times. ©2008 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.



Join BookRagslearn moreJoin BookRags


About BookRags | Customer Service | Report an Error | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy