text: I recently re-read ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA prior to attending The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's performance of the ambitious play under the summer stars here in Boulder. Drawn from Sir Thomas North's 1579 English version of Plutarch's Lives, William Shakespeare (1552-1616) produced this romantic tragedy late in his career, around 1607, and published it in the First Folio in 1623. It tells the story of a doomed romance between two charismatic lovers, Roman military leader, Marc Antony, and the captivating Queen of Egypt (and former mistress of Julius Caesar), Cleopatra. When his wife, Fulvia unexpectedly dies, Antony is summoned from Egypt to Rome to mend a political rift with Octavius by marrying his recently widowed sister, Octavia. Of course, this news enrages passionate Cleopatra. She vents her anger on the messenger, but is quick to realize that Octavia is no real rival to her when it comes to beauty. However, Antony soon follows his heart back to Cleopatra's arms, abandoning his new wife in Athens. This leads to war, when Octavius declares war on Egypt. After Octavius eventually defeats Antony at Alexandria, Cleopatra sends a false report of her suicide, which prompts Antony to wound himself mortally. Antony dies in his lover's arms, and rather than submit to Roman rule under the new Caesar (Octavius), the heart-broken Cleopatra asks to have a poisonous snake delivered to her in a basket of figs. In the end, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA is as much about new sparks re-igniting the flames of love as new political forces supplanting old political regimes. It is a play that reminds me that it is perhaps better to re-read and understand Shakespeare than to devour one bestseller after the next.
     
  G. Merritt 
  