Synopsis via Goodreads:
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Parthian War to Cleopatra's suicide. The major antagonist is Octavius Caesar, one of Antony's fellow triumviri and the future first emperor of Rome. The tragedy is a Roman play characterized by swift, panoramic shifts in geographical locations and in registers, alternating between sensual, imaginative Alexandria and the more pragmatic, austere Rome.
Okay, so I decided that every fourth book that I read for this challenge will be a piece of "classic" literature because that stuff is important and I won't read it otherwise. I was super pumped to read Antony and Cleopatra because it was a piece of history that I had already known about, but one which I have never heard in story form. Egyptian queen? Hot Roman leader? Epic love story for the ages? YES, PLEASE. Boy was I let down. This story hardly has anything romantic in it at all! Cleopatra may be an Egyptian queen, but she's also a drama queen and completely annoyed me through the entire thing. Antony was just a total idiot and deserved what happened to him for being so. On top of the totally lame characters was the fact that the love plot was totally secondary to the stupid military thing. If you've read my review of Monsters of Men then you know how much I hate war stories. I have one word for this story: DISAPPOINTMENT.
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