Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide - Nick Groom, Piero 2013

Shakespeare’s Sources

Indeed, though very good at handling plot, Shakespeare was not particularly good at inventing it, whether in the early Merry Wives of Windsor (lightly based on Ovid), or later in The Tempest, although perhaps his two most personal plays - Love’s Labour’s Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream - were original plots. He generally took stories from sources familiar in his time - Holinshed’s Chronicles, North’s translation of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans, Chapman’s translation of Homer, Holland’s Pliny, Florio’s Montaigne and Golding’s Ovid.

SOMETIMES HE MADE FEW CHANGES. CLEOPATRA’S BARGE IS DESCRIBED IN NORTH’S PLUTARCH AS FOLLOWS… THE POOP WHEREOF WAS OF GOLD, OF PURPLE THE SAILS, AND THE OARS WERE SILVER, WHICH KEPT STROKE IN ROWING AFTER THE SOUND OF THE MUSIC OF FLUTES, HAUTBOYS, CITHERNS, VIOLS …

I SHALL RENDER THIS … AND IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965) KEEPS UP THE TRADITION IN THE WASTE LAND, II.77-8 (1922), CLEOPATRA, II.II.191-7. THE CHAIR SHE SAT IN, LIKE A BURNISHED THRONE, GLOWED ON THE MARBLE…