In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare rewrites epic history as a study in erotic politics. At its centre he puts a star couple, the fascinating black Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, and the super-sized Roman general she's seduced. Are they magnificent? Or doomed by tawdry, self-absorbed folly? And what of the cold-blooded imperialist, Octavius, who's bent on controlling the future history of the world by destroying them both? In a script that soars into the poetic stratosphere-but also spends time scrabbling in the gutter-Shakespeare keeps his audience guessing. So what have actors, directors, designers, musicians, and adapters made of the challenges Shakespeare sets them in Antony and Cleopatra? Rutter's book writes a performance history of the play from 1606 to the present. She sees what the play has meant each time it has brought its thoughts on power, race, masculinity, regime change, exoticism, love, dotage and delinquency into alignment with a new present. Looking first at Shakespeare's script, Rutter identifies the play's characteristic writing and performance strategies to argue that just as 'oxymoron'-the linking of opposites-is its definitive linguistic habit, so 'wrong-footing' is the action it replays in scene after scene. After locating Antony and Cleopatra on the Jacobean stage, she offers in-depth analyses of fifteen international productions by (among others) the Royal Shakespeare Company, Citizens Theatre Glasgow, Northern Broadsides, Berliner Ensemble and Toneelgroep Amsterdam. Her analysis is everywhere informed by close readings of theatre records-promptbooks, reviews, stage managers' reports.

She ends by seeing Shakespeare's black Cleopatra restored to the contemporary stage. Written with a sharp theatrical intelligence in a lively and accessible style, this book will interest students, academics, actors, directors and general readers alike.