The barge she sat in (Antony and Cleopatra)

Themes: Adoration, Antony and Cleopatra, Classical, Dramatic, Shakespeare
Length: 1 Minute
Gender: Male

Enobarbus describes Cleopatra’s magnificent arrival by barge, highlighting her allure and the opulence of her presence.

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.