INTRODUCTION

TO THE

TRAGEDY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

THE TRAGEDY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA makes the eleventh in the division of Tragedies as published in the folio of 1623. In that edition there is no marking of the acts and scenes, save that at the beginning we have "Actus Primus, Scœna Secunda:" in other respects the stage-directions are for the most part remarkably full and accurate. And the text is in the main very well printed, most of the errors being slight and such as almost to suggest their own correction. Such of them as there is or can well be much question about will be found duly attended to in our notes; so that they need not be discussed nor specified here.

As to the time when this tragedy was written, the most that we have to ground a probable conclusion upon, aside from the qualities of the work itself, is an entry at the Stationers' by Edward Blount, May 20th, 1608, of "a book" called "Antony and Cleopatra." Whether Shakespeare's drama were the "book" referred to in this entry, is something questionable, as the subject of Antony and Cleopatra was at that time often written upon, both dramatically and otherwise. The entry was of course made with the design of publication; so that, if it refer to the play in hand, either such design must have miscarried, or else the edition must have been utterly lost, there being no earlier copy known in modern times than the folio of 1623. As stated in our Introduction to Coriolanus, Blount was one of the publishers of the first folio; and Antony and Cleopatra is among the plays set down as "not formerly entered to other men," in the entry made by him and Jaggard at the Stationers', November 8th, 1623. Perhaps we ought to mention here, as some evidence that Blount's entry of May, 1608, did refer to Shakespeare's play, that "the book of Pericles, Prince of Tyre" was also entered at the same time and by the same man.

Granting this point, the natural inference would be that the