Source: "The Social Dimensions of Tragedy: Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra," in Shakespeare's Tragic Perspective, The University of Georgia Press, 1976, pp. 201-65.

[In this brief excerpt, Champion contends that the worlds of Rome and Egypt are "equally tainted» Cleopatra, he re marks, cares more about herself and her pleasure than about her subjects' needs; similarly, the supposedly disciplined Roman leaders are shown engaging in a drunken orgy on a barge]

In Antony and Cleopatra, whether actually his last tragedy or not, Shakespeare achieves his most powerful delineation of these secular values between which man struggles to make the choices for a successful life. Gone is a clear distinction between virtue and vice, between material and spiritual choice. The drama operates within the world of man, within the conflict created out of the struggle for power and influence between a Roman emperor and an Egyptian...