MAECENAS    She’s a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her.

ENOBARBUS  When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart upon the river of Cydnus.

AGRIPPA         There she appeared indeed, or my reporter devised well for her.

ENOBARBUS  I will tell you.

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne

Burned on the water.           (2.2.184-191)

Yes, Maecenas and Agrippa are interested in the food, the feasting and the revels, but most of all they’re agog to hear about Cleopatra—seguing logically, once again, from the discussion of excess at table into other kinds of appetite. She needs no naming; she’s the one and only, a most triumphant lady, utterly magnificent, all that and then some—if report be square to her, if all the rumours are true. Maecenas and Agrippa have evidently heard the rumours; for them Cleopatra is a creature of fantasy, and they are after all the details. Enobarbus teases them: well, when she (still not naming her) first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart upon the river of Cydnus. She caught him, got him in one, captured his heart and put it in her pocket that very first occasion, upon the river of Cydnus. There she appeared indeed, or my reporter devised well for her: oh yes, Cydnus, I’ve heard about this! Agrippa is very excited at the prospect of hearing even more about this episode of which he’s apparently already heard enough to whet his appetite; he’d thought that his source might have invented, devised at least some of the story, but now he’s going to get corroborating details.

I will tell you, says Enobarbus, you just wait; listen to me, horse’s mouth. And with those four straightforward monosyllables (a temptation, perhaps, to emphasise the I, his authority as an eye-witness, this is what you’ve been waiting for, boys, and then some) he launches into the play’s most famous passage, back into compelling verse from prosy prose. (As is well known, Shakespeare follows his source in Plutarch very closely here, but the closeness of the two versions only emphasizes how extraordinary the transformation is, how hypnotic and seductive, immersive and enthralling.) The barge she sat in (still not naming her)—and Londoners would be familiar with rich and stately barges on the Thames, not least those of the royal family, and of course the late Queen Elizabeth—like a burnished throne, gilded, catching the light (and the water catching the light too as the oars dip and splash) burned on the water, dazzle and sparkle and glow. The alliteration gives emphasis and draws the ear on even as the text draws the eye, and yet in the image of burning on the water there’s an impossible union of fire and water, a properly elemental passion, something too bright and fierce to look at, from which one cannot ever look away. This is just the start.