Antony and Cleopatra is one of William Shakespeare’s late tragedies, first performed around 1607-1608 CE. The play was written during the Jacobean Era (1603-1625), when King James I of England was on the throne and literary works began to explore darker themes such as crime, violence, and corruption. Shakespeare wrote many of his tragic plays during this period, including Othello (1604), King Lear (1606), Macbeth (1606), and Coriolanus (1608). Scholars have divided Shakespeare’s plays into several major genres: comedy, tragedy, history, and romance.

Antony and Cleopatra is typically considered a tragedy, despite the fact that it is based on Roman history. The classical definition of a tragedy is a story in which a noble or high-status character faces a crisis due to an error or “tragic flaw” in character (referred to using the Greek term hamartia). Shakespeare’s tragedies tend to follow this definition, although some critics have suggested that Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists do not fall entirely due to their own flaws but also because of the corruption and manipulation of evil forces in the world around them.