How Shakespeare turned Plutarch into poetry
The barge speech from Antony and Cleopatra
On December 5th, I am hosting a discussion with Shakespeare professor Stephen Greenblatt and psychoanalyst Adam Philips about their new book Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud.
Antony & Cleopatra contains perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous instance of a poetic speech that is closely based on an original source. When Enobarbus describes Cleopatra, it is based on a passage in Plutarch’s Life of Antony, translated by Thomas North. (In italics are the parts that correspond to North/Plutarch.)
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 you will notice immediately is that Shakespeare hasn’t taken very much. There’s a general correspondence in the structure, as you would expect, but the language itself is sparsely borrowed.
For comparison, here’s the relevant section from North,
…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 herself: 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.
There are two major qualities here: lists and commonplace descriptions. It lacks all poetry. There is very little metaphor. Looking at the differences between the two is a good way to alert us to the extent of Shakespeare’s talents. With his additions, Shakespeare turned the speech into something quite different.
Plutarch/North tells us that Cleopatra “disdained to set forward otherwise”—Shakespeare knows that the imagery and metaphor of the speech will make that quite obvious. Enobarbus wants to have the status of being able to tell these men about Cleopatra: he disdains to set forth his speech with such petty explanations. Having told us of Cleopatra’s pride, a list is sufficient for Plutarch: “ 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.”
This is a heap of facts, little more.
Shakespeare, though, is not a moralising biographer, but a dramatic poet. He goes beyond the merely splendid details. This time I will bold his additions.
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.
Watch the progression of sounds, from “b” to “p” to “s”: barge, burnished, burned, beaten, purple, perfume, love-sick, silver, stroke, beat, strokes. (See the double alliteration in the line: “The water which they beat to follow faster”, which neatly echoes the rhythm of paired oars beating the water.)
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