Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them.
Shakspeare: Antony and Cleopatra, Act.
2.
Imitators and alterers do not often improve upon Shakspeare,
but when they do, it is but fair to give them credit for it. Dryden,
in his “All for Love,” has omitted all the philosophy, and two
thirds of the poetry of Shakspeare's play, but he has certainly
made a much more compact and consecutive drama; and by putting
the description of Cleopatra's “grand aquatic procession” into the
mouth of Antony himself, has made it a natural and dramatic
portion of the play; whereas, in Shakspeare, it has too much the
air of a quotation from an epic or descriptive poem. Neither
Shakspeare nor Dryden have done much more than versify
Plutarch's, or rather Dr. Philemon Holland's prose, and they were
wise in not hunting after useless originality: but Shakespeare has
added some exquisitely poetical touches.
At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackles
Swell with the touches of those flower soft hands,
That yarely frame their office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And left a gap in nature.
If Antony owed to the Egyptian Queen the loss of his empire
and life, he is indebted to her for a less hateful renown than would
have clung to his name had she never “pursed up his heart on the
river of Cydnus.” The murderer of Cicero is merged in the
lover of Cleopatra.
Gone it is—that tone
