How Antony and Cleopatra drew on Plutarch's Lives
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Plutarch’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Plutarch's Lives
Plutarch · c. 110
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare · c. 1606
ShakespeareRelevance
9/10
On Antony and Cleopatra’s page
- Antony and Cleopatra is built directly on Plutarch's Life of Antony, read through Sir Thomas North's 1579 English
- The shimmering 'barge she sat in' set-piece — silver oars, purple sails, the wind made lovesick — is North's prose lightly lineated into Shakespeare's verse
- Read the Life and you watch the raw material become poetry almost phrase by phrase
On Plutarch's Lives’s page
- Plutarch's Life of Antony is the spine of Antony and Cleopatra — Shakespeare's principal source, by scholarly consensus
- Enobarbus's famous 'barge she sat in' speech is lifted almost word-for-word from Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation — the purple sails, the silver oars, the lovesick wind are all already there in the prose
- Shakespeare's gift was knowing when not to improve on Plutarch, and simply set him to verse