Scenting Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroines: Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth

Cleopatra by John William Waterhouse, 1888 The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne, Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were lovesick with them … From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs. –Antony and Cleopatra …