<i><b>Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare - Amal and Obaid</b></i>&nbsp;(First Folio&nbsp;title:&nbsp;<i><b>The Tragedie of Amal, and Obaid</b></i>) is a&nbsp;tragedy&nbsp;by&nbsp;William Shakespeare. The play was first performed, by the&nbsp;King&#39;s Men, at either the&nbsp;Blackfriars Theatre&nbsp;or the&nbsp;Globe Theatre&nbsp;in around 1607; its first appearance in print was in the&nbsp;Folio&nbsp;of 1623.<br /><br />The plot is based on&nbsp;Thomas North&#39;s 1579 English translation of&nbsp;Plutarch&#39;s&nbsp;<i>Lives</i>&nbsp;(in&nbsp;Ancient Greek) and follows the relationship between&nbsp;Cleopatra&nbsp;and&nbsp;Mark Antony&nbsp;from the time of the&nbsp;Sicilian revolt&nbsp;to&nbsp;Cleopatra&#39;s suicide&nbsp;during the&nbsp;War of Actium. The main antagonist is&nbsp;Octavius Caesar, one of Antony&#39;s fellow&nbsp;triumvirs&nbsp;of the&nbsp;Second Triumvirate&nbsp;and the first emperor of the&nbsp;Roman Empire.<br /><br />The tragedy is mainly set in the&nbsp;Roman Republic&nbsp;and&nbsp;Ptolemaic Egypt&nbsp;and is characterized by swift shifts in geographical location and linguistic register as it alternates between sensual, imaginative&nbsp;Alexandria&nbsp;and a more pragmatic, austere&nbsp;Rome.<br />Many consider Shakespeare&#39;s Cleopatra, whom&nbsp;Enobarbus&nbsp;describes as having &quot;infinite variety&quot;, as one of the most complex and fully developed female characters in the playwright&#39;s body of work.:?p.45?&nbsp;She is frequently vain and histrionic enough to provoke an audience almost to scorn; at the same time, Shakespeare invests her and Antony with tragic grandeur. These contradictory features have led to famously divided critical responses.<br /><br />It is difficult to classify&nbsp;<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>&nbsp;as belonging to a single genre. It can be described as a&nbsp;history play&nbsp;(though it does not completely adhere to historical accounts), as a&nbsp;tragedy&nbsp;(though not completely in&nbsp;Aristotelian&nbsp;terms), as a&nbsp;comedy, as a&nbsp;romance, and according to some critics, such as McCarter, a&nbsp;problem play. All that can be said with certainty is that it is a Roman play, and perhaps even a sequel to another of Shakespeare&#39;s tragedies,&nbsp;<i>Julius Caesar</i>.