After Julius Caesar's assassination, Mark Antony becomes one of three rulers of Rome but abandons duty for love, following Cleopatra to Egypt and to destruction. Shakespeare wrote this around 1607, and it is his most geographically expansive tragedy, moving between Rome and Alexandria, between empire and eros. The poetry is lush, the characterization ambiguous: is this love story or folly, tragedy or grotesquerie? Cleopatra's death scene is one of Shakespeare's greatest achievements. 'Husband, I come' might be the most romantic line he ever wrote.