Where did the inspirations come from for Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra?
The story of Antony and Cleopatra was well known to people in the medieval and early modern period. A number of medieval writers wrote about them, including Boccaccio in Famous Women, and Christine de Pisan wrote about them in her Book of the City of Ladies. Medieval and early modern writers who wrote about them would have got their information from classical authors who were well known in medieval times, like Plutarch, who wrote about Cleopatra and Antony in some detail. Shakespeare would probably either have read Plutarch in the original Latin or in translation, or he would have read later authors who wrote about them.
