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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
The famous vision of Cleopatra’s barge, which stuck so vividly in Enobarbus’s mind, centres on the image of the Queen that beggars all description—a paragon of majesty and loveliness, a figure so magic in beauty that it out-Venuses Venus:
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature.
(ii, ii, 205–6)Now it looks as if in the following picture Shakespeare's fancy had indeed outworked nature with delicately sophisticated craftsmanship:
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.
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