with selections from Plutarch and Shakespeare chosen by Richard Alcock

As an example of how Shakespeare would handle sources, here is source material from Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives ...

She came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay all along under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as a Venus in a picture, and beautiful young boys, like painted Cupids, stood on each side to fan her. Her maids were dressed like sea nymphs and graces, some steering at the rudder, some working the ropes. The perfumes diffused themselves from the vessel to the shore, which was covered with multitudes, part following the galley up the river on either bank, part running out of the city to see the sight.

... transposed as follows, in Antony and Cleopatra:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burned 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-pictureing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpling boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did. . . .
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i’ th’ eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her.

North was already taking lovely liberties with the original Plutarch, judging by what I’m seeing, but for mine own part it was Greeke to me.

Plutarch, Life of Antony 26.1–3. Greek text from the Perseus Digital Library, Bernadotte Perrin edition (1920).

below, Þe Tragedie of ANÞONIE, and CLEOPATRA.

Richard Alcock’s selections from World Literature Made Simple

On: Why this came to be •
On: Room for Shakespeare publishing in the present day •
On: The Life of Shakespeare, part one: edge of town •
On: The Life of Shakespeare, part two: a star is born •
On: The Life of Shakespeare, part three: the mysteries •
On: The Life of Shakespeare, part four: haram, horum •
On: Shakespeare's Sources •
Back: to Home Page