Shakespeare lifted his most dazzling Cleopatra lines from a translation of a translation
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, first staged around 1607, draws on Thomas North's 1579 English version of Plutarch, which itself came via a French translation. Some of the play's most celebrated phrases, including the description of Cleopatra on her golden barge, follow North's prose closely, reworked into verse.
The play follows the Roman general Mark Antony, one of three men sharing power in Rome, as his passion for Egypt's queen pulls him away from duty. It lurches between sensual, imaginative Alexandria and austere, practical Rome, switching locations and styles of speech at speed. Antony is called home, patches up his quarrel with Octavius Caesar and marries Octavius's sister Octavia to seal the alliance, but his lieutenant Enobarbus knows no one can replace Cleopatra.
It is Enobarbus who gives her the most famous tribute, praising a woman whom age cannot wither and whose infinite variety never grows stale. Shakespeare also makes her vain, jealous and theatrical. When she hears of Antony's marriage she punishes the messenger, and she calms down only once her courtiers assure her that Octavia is short, round-faced and has bad hair. Many consider her one of the most complex and fully drawn women Shakespeare ever wrote, and critics have long split over whether to scorn or admire her.
The downfall is political and personal at once. Octavius dares Antony to fight at sea, and Antony accepts against the advice to fight on land. At Actium, Cleopatra flees with her sixty ships and Antony follows, abandoning his forces. Even Enobarbus deserts him, then dies of shame after Antony generously sends his abandoned belongings after him. A false report of Cleopatra's death finally destroys Antony, and she chooses the bite of an asp over being paraded through Rome as a captive.
Nobody quite agrees what kind of play it is. It has been called a history, a tragedy, a comedy, a romance and a problem play, and the safest label is simply a Roman play, perhaps a sequel to Julius Caesar. It first reached print in the First Folio of 1623.
Source: Antony and Cleopatra
