How Antony and Cleopatra drew on The Aeneid
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Virgil’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Aeneid
Virgil · 19 BCE
Ancient RomeThe influenced
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare · c. 1606
ShakespeareRelevance
7/10
On Antony and Cleopatra’s page
- Antony invokes it by name — "Dido and her Aeneas" — so Shakespeare hands you the source himself
- Antony and Cleopatra is the Aeneid answered back: Aeneas leaves the queen for Rome, Antony chooses the queen over it, and Cleopatra's dying vision rewrites the lovers' afterlife reunion
- The Rome-versus-foreign-queen tragedy was Virgil's frame first; reading him reveals exactly what Shakespeare is inverting
On The Aeneid’s page
- The template Shakespeare bent into its opposite — Antony and Cleopatra is the Aeneid's Dido and Aeneas with the moral reversed
- Where Virgil's Aeneas abandons the foreign queen to build Rome, Antony throws Rome away for the queen; the play names the source outright ("Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops")
- Janet Adelman put it flatly: almost all the major themes of the play are already here, in the duty-vs-desire clash Virgil set down