Of all of Shakespeare’s plays, Antony and Cleopatra is the one that probably divides opinions the most. Few people can be sure of whether the two protagonists behave in a defensible way, given that they appear willing to privilege their personal desires over the needs of the people of their nations and empires. In the previous tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the intensely sexual desire of the very young protagonists seems to be a mitigating circumstance in the tragedy (i.e. bodies of innocent/semi-innocent people piled across the stage) but Antony and Cleopatra are older people, each having married before more than once and, clearly, despite propaganda to the contrary, not as physically alluring as they once were – their relationship is reminiscent of the extraordinarily strong attraction between the current Prince of Wales (Prince Charles) and his new wife, the Duchess of Cornwall (Camilla Parker Bowles).

As the Pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra is ruler of an extremely powerful nation, not just in respect to its historical and cultural legacy but because Egyptian corn and grain fed the Roman state – who controlled Egypt controlled the Empire to a considerable extent. Marc Antony was previously seen in Shakespearian terms as the ultimate victor of the Tragedy of Julius Caesar – Octavius may become the first emperor but Antony is the real hero of the (disastrous) conservative counter-revolution. In this play, written probably around 1606, Antony has left the other members of the triumvirate and travelled to Egypt to secure it for their personal interests. Once there, he fell in love with Cleopatra, whom he describes in extravagant terms (‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’) which nevertheless indicate that she is a mature woman rather than the young woman to whom romantic literature is conventionally aimed. For Cleopatra, the situation is more complex: Antony represents a possibly safe harbour for her people who might otherwise be eaten up by wolfish invaders and, as a woman alone on the throne, being able to call upon such a man would be a definite advantage. A further dimension to the thematic structure of the play is provided by the contrast between Egypt and Rome: Cleopatra embodies on a personal nature the people of Egypt in a way which Shakespeare’s audience would have identified as pre-modern; Antony, on the other hand, was a powerful influencer of Rome’s destiny but not the embodiment of it and this, by contrast, would seem to the Shakespearian audience as modern. Yet both pre-modern and modern protagonists enter into tragedy because of the personal relationship between them. Death is inevitable, of course.

The narrative structure of Antony and Cleopatra is very complex – the action dashes back and forth across the Mediterranean with battles and the actions of the ‘Great Men’ previously thought to determine historical progress intertwined with the personal lives of the major characters (this play is one of reasons why it has become to suggest that, were Shakespeare alive today, he would be writing television series such as The Wire or maybe the new Battlestar Galactica). If there is a lesson to be learnt from Antony and Cleopatra, it is (as recurs in the Late Comedies), that compromise is not just necessary for the survival of the human species but is in fact the only ethical response to life and society.