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The Tragedy of

of 1623, where it is printed between Othello and Cymbeline.

Nothing whatsoever is known of the stage history of Antony and Cleopatra in Shakespeare's own day. It must have been extraordinarily difficult to find a youth, even among the excellent young actors of the period, who could 'boy' the 'greatness' of Cleopatra. After the Restoration, Dryden's reworking of the story in All for Love took its place and held popular favor at least until 1788, when Mrs. Siddons appeared as Cleopatra, and was still being acted as late as 1818. The great actor, Garrick, revived Shakespeare's own tragedy in 1758–1759, but without success. In 1813 Young and Mrs. Faucit gave an acting version of the play at Covent Garden, and in 1833 Macready also revived it, with remarkable scenery, but little popular favor. Phelps included Antony and Cleopatra in a series of Shakespeare revivals at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, Clerkenwell, London, in 1849. Thanks, apparently, to Miss Glyn's Cleopatra and to the conscientious acting characteristic of all these revivals, the play was this time well received, and ran for some time. Miss Glyn repeated her success in later years. Although Miss Rose Eytinge, in 1878, Kyrle Bellew, in 1889, and Mme. Modjeska, in 1898–1899, seem to have had fairly successful seasons in America, and Sir F. R. Benson and Ben Greet in later times also presented the play, there was no other really important revival of Antony and Cleopatra until Sir Herbert Tree in 1906–1907 rather sumptuously put it on in London. Contemporary criticism, however, gives the impression that it was the splendor of the setting as much as the play itself which drew praise from the audiences. A very satisfactory presentation was that of the New Theatre in New York in 1910, when both cast and scenery were of great excellence. And yet