In "Antony and Cleopatra," the subject of many Renaissance tragedies, Shakespeare chose for a theme an ignoble infatuation that leads counter to duty and on to destruction. The difficulties of the historical material led to a remarkable reversion in dramatic structure to the methods of the early chronicle plays, innumerable and loosely connected scenes, constant shifting of place, prolonged time, and an absence of tragic unity. The problem of a confused and intricate action, voluntarily imposed in "Lear," is here forced upon the dramatist who will combine the wars of the triumvirs, the conflict of East and West, and the story of an enchantress and her victim. The tragic course of the conflict between infatuation and ambition is incumbered by historical details and stage spectacles, but in style and characterization few plays more greatly reveal Shakespeare's genius. In no play is the idealization of character more magnificent; no other dramatist has made Antony in the lures of a strumpet still representative of what is illustrious and magnanimous in mankind, no other has made a woman with the manners and heart of a strumpet the rightful empress of the imagination. The interest in the play is less centred than in the other tragedies. It is divided between the spectacle of historical events and the conflict of motives; it lies as much in the persons as vitalizations of history as in their fate as human beings. But this is the triumph of historical tragedy as Shakespeare conceived it. Its scenic presentation makes alive the events and persons, and through a grandiose panorama interprets the passions that ravished both empires and the souls of their possessors.