Antony and Cleopatra is a tragic play by Shakespeare, which tells the ill-fated love story between Antony and Cleopatra and the antagonistic role played by Julius Caesar, future Emperor of Rome. "I will tell you. 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."