About the Book:

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 Antony and Cleopatra and 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.

Also includes an essay by the celebrated American literary critic Harold Bloom.

What people say:

"The volumes in this series will enrich any library that stocks editions of individual Shakespearean plays. [Included are] introductory essays and on-page annotations that aid the reader in vocabulary, usage of Elizabethan English, pronunciation, alternative readings of phrases and lines, and prosody, i.e. metric structure or accents.... Especially helpful are definitions of common words that have changed meanings over the past four hundred years...." — American Association of School Librarians

"Here's quite a bargain: you get the fully edited and annotated play along with a scholarly intro by series editor Burton Raffel and an essay by Harold Bloom ... Great play, great deal." — Library Journal

About the Author:

Burton Raffel is a translator, a poet and a teacher. He has taught English, Classics, and Comparative Literature at universities in the United States, Israel, and Canada.

Harold Bloom is an American literary critic and academic. His many achievements include simultaneously holding teaching positions at two universities as Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale and Berg Professor of English at New York University. He is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many other awards, honorary degrees and prizes.