This is a more demonstrably epic structure than we have encountered before in Shakespeare, and the epic scope is matched by an “epic” content, since among the literary and mythic forebears of Antony and Cleopatra themselves we should also count Aeneas and Dido, the key figures in what was, for Shakespeare's England, the most celebrated epic of them all, Virgil's Aeneid.
This is his most epic play
