Chapter Antipholus to Antony and Cleopatra of A by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Antony and Cleopatra, a tragedy by Shakespeare (1608): the illicit l ove of Antony (the Roman triumvir) and Cleopatra (queen of Egypt). Antony, being in Egypt, falls in love wit h Cleopatra, and wholly neglects his duties as one of the rulers of the vast Roman empire. During the tim e, his wife Fulvia dies, the Roman people become turbulent, and Sextus Pompey makes himself master of the seas . Octavius Cæsar sends to Egypt to beg Antony to return to Rome without delay. The first interview betw een the triumvirs was very stormy, but Agrippa suggests that Antony should marry Octavia (Cæsar’s si ster), lately left a widow, and urges that the alliance would knit together the two triumvirs in mutual i nterests. Antony assents to the proposal, and marries Octavia. About the same time Sextus Pompey was bought over by the promise of Sicily and Sardinia, and soon after this Lepidus (the third triumvir) was deposed by Cæsar. Antony, returning to Egypt, falls again into the entanglement of the queen, and Cæsar proclaims war against him. Antony, enforced by sixty Egyptian ships, prepares to defend himself, but in the midst of the fight the sixty Egyptian ships with Cleopatra flee, and Antony follows, so that the battle of Actium was a complete fiasco. Other losses follow, and Antony kills himself by falling on his own sword. Cæsar hopes to make Cleopatra a captive, and deprives her of every weapon of offence, but the self-willed queen sends a slave to procure some asps in a basket of figs. She applies two of them, and dies. Cæsar arrives in time to see her in royal robes, and orders that Antony and Cleopatra be buried in the same tomb.

For the accent—

I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and
Weep for thy pardon.
   —Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra, act iv. sc. 14.

Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman.
   —Shakespeare: Cymbeline, act ii. sc. 4.

Dryden has a tragedy entitled All for Love, on the same subject.