ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

"The Annotated Shakespeare" series enables today's readers to understand and enjoy the plays of the world's greatest dramatist. Comprehensive on-page annotations assist with vocabulary, pronunciation, prosody, and alternative readings of phrases and lines in these handsome and affordable paperback editions. In no other play has Shakespeare created two such equally titanic personages as Rome's great soldier and statesman Mark Antony and the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. The story of their irresistible attraction, their jealous quarrels and betrayals, and the effects on friends and subjects of their ruinous choices is a tale leading irretrievably to despair and defeat. Their suicides, however, strike us as a kind of triumph. Shakespeare stood at the height of his powers when he penned this great tragedy, one of the last he produced. Burton Raffel is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities Emeritus and professor of English emeritus, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The most recent of his many publications is "Selected Poems by Nicolas Boileau", published by Yale University Press. Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, is the author of many books, including his new volume "Fallen Angels".