ABSTRACT
T HESE three plays stand apart, for they all owe their themes to a single source, namely The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes, translated into English by Sir Thomas North. This was a work which Shakespeare followed closely for his plots, and further, dipped into for his diction in a way unparalleled by any other source. In all three plays single words, phrases, whole passages will be rendered into blank verse out of North's direct and coloured prose. The most notable and often quoted example of Shakespeare's respect and employment of North's language occurs in the famous description by Enobarbus of Cleopatra's barge:
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 tissueO'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.
