By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne’: so begins perhaps the most famous speech from William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The words are uttered by Domitius Enobarbus, a follower of Mark Antony, in Act 2 Scene 2, as he describes the appearance of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, when Mark Antony first saw her and fell in love with her as she rode her barge down the river Cydnus.