Chapter 6 - Sources
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Antony and Cleopatra and Plutarch
At some time during 1606–7, when he was writing his tragedy Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare must have been sitting at a table with a copy of Thomas North's translation of the classical Greek historian Plutarch as The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579), open at page 981, the life of Marcus Antonius. We can see that a section of North's prose, about two-thirds of the way down the right-hand leaf, caught his eye. North is describing how Mark Antony fell in love with Cleopatra:
Therefore when she was sent unto by divers letters, both from Antonius himself, and also from his friends, she made so light of it, and mocked Antonius so much, that she disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the river of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, hautboys, citherns, viols, and such other instruments as they played upon in the barge. And now for the person of her self: she was laid under a pavilion of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus, commonly drawn in picture: and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretty fair boys apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in their hands, with the which they fanned wind upon her. […]
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- The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare , pp. 113 - 133Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007