The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of Antony and Cleopatra, David Bevington has included in his introductory section a thorough consideration of recent critical and stage interpretations, demonstrating how the theatrical design and imagination of this play make it one of Shakespeare's most remarkable tragedies. The edition is attentive throughout to the play as theatre: a detailed, illustrated account of the stage history is followed, in the commentary, by discussion of staging options offered by the text. The commentary is especially full and helpful, untangling many obscure words and phrases, illuminating sexual puns, and alerting the reader to Shakespeare's shaping of his source material in Plutarch's Lives.

List of illustrations; Preface; List of abbreviations and conventions; Introduction: Date and sources; The contrarieties of critical response; The ironic gap between word and deed; Transcending limits; Genre and structure; Style; Stagecraft; Antony and Cleopatra in performance; Recent critical and stage interpretations; Note on the text; List of characters; THE PLAY; Supplementary note; Textual analysis; Reading list.