Excerpt from Shakespeare's Plutarch: Containing the Main Sources of Antony Cleopatra and of CoriolanusNowhere else in Shakespeare is there an instance of verbal borrowing at the height of dramatic intensity which is comparable to these. Even the speech of Portia to Brutus in Julius Caesar offers no parallel, for there we can see plainly the deliberate poetic handling which North's words suffered, fine though they are, before they were allowed a place in the drama. In the passages I have cited there is little evidence of any attempt at improvement, indeed, it may be held in regard to several of them that the palm belongs rather to North's prose than to Shakespeare's poetry. That this should be so is a fact worthy of all wonder and attention, for the like can be said of no other of Shakespeare's rivals or assistants.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.