Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The play was first performed around 1607, by the King's Men at either the Blackfriars Theatre or the Globe Theatre. Its first appearance in print was in the First Folio published in 1623, under the title The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra.
Cleopatra: "Sooth, la, I'll help: Thus it must be." Antony and Cleopatra 4.4/11 (Edwin Austin Abbey, 1909)
Cleopatra by John William Waterhouse (1888)
In this Baroque vision, Battle of Actium by Laureys a Castro (1672), Cleopatra flees, lower left, in a barge with a figurehead of Fortuna.
Cleopatra and the Peasant, Eugène Delacroix (1838)
Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on historical figures, but because their sources were foreign and ancient, they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy, insofar as they feature a high-status central character, but they end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Almost three centuries after Shakespeare's death, the scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play," for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of their subject matter, setting, or ending. Scholars continue to disagree on how to categorize some Shakespearean plays.
Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse, Joshua Reynolds (1784). Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) was an esteemed performer of Shakespearean tragedy.
Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911) King Lear, Cordelia's Farewell
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California
Hamlet and his Father's Ghost, William Blake (1806)