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77. A BURNISH’D THRONE: Eliot*: “Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II, ii, l. 190.”
See Shakespeare*, Antony and Cleopatra 2.2.190, 195-201. Antony’s friend Enobarbus describes Cleopatra:
“she purs’d up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.
...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.”
IMOGEN’S CHAMBERS: See also Shakespeare*, Cymbeline 2.4.66 84-94, 102-105, where Iachimo allusively describes what he saw of Imogen’s chambers to her husband Posthumous:
“...First, her bedchamber,
Where, I confess, I slept not, but profess
Had that was well worth watching--it was hanged
With tapestry of silk and silver; the story
Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman,
And Cydnus swelled above the banks, or for
The press of boats or pride: a piece of work
So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive
In workmanship and value; which I wondered
Could be so rarely and exactly wrought,
Since the true life on't was–
....The chimney
Is south the chamber, and the chimney-piece
Chaste Dian bathing: never saw I figures
So likely to report themselves.”
Dian is the wood goddess Diana, whom the hunter Actaeon saw naked while she was bathing in the forest. See Ovid*, Metamorphoses 3:206-312. For other allusions to Actaeon and Diana, see lines 10 and 197.
80. A GOLDEN CUPIDON: Enobarbus (see note 77, above) continues, at Antony and Cleopatra* 2.2.202-208:
“...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-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.”
Venus was the mother of Cupid and Aeneas, further alluded to in the lines to follow (see note 92, and see Virgil*, Aeneid 1.657-694). Compare the undoing and doing by the “Cupids” with the Pia being made and unmade at line 293. See also Cymbelline 2.4.111-115 (see note 77, above):
“.... The roof o' the chamber
With golden cherubins is fretted: her andirons–
I had forgot them--were two winking Cupids
Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely
Depending on their brands.“
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*see note 0.1
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