I read recently (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6099961.ece) that scientists feel they may have finally identified the long lost tombs of Antony and Cleopatra.

Antony and Cleopatra is one of my favorites among Shakespeare's plays. Partly this is because I acted in the play in college. I played Pompey, so I got to bellow a couple of great speeches in Act II, then sit backstage playing poker for the rest of the three-plus hour show. A perfect theatrical experience.

A&C is a mystery play: not quite tragedy, not quite history, not quite romance. And it is dominated by Shakespeare's remarkable portrait of the all too human giants, bumbling in love and war across the world stage until undone by the brilliant bloodless Octavian, yet still as large as legend.

And I have never forgotten Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra, the greatest character setup I can think of (which I'm sure he knew it had to be):

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold of tissue—
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.

What actress (or actor, in Shakespeare's day) wouldn't want an intro like that?