This paper highlights the problem of ‘validity in interpretation’ and the visual and verbal transmigration of symbols and myths. It considers historical narratives like that of Plutarch’s Life of Antony, and its interpretations. It highlights the hermetic inspiration in Shakespeare’s tragedy, and the influence of Elizabethan occultism (Frances Yates) and Neo-Platonism. It also considers a modern Egyptian translation of Cleopatra’s death, Maşrahʾ Kīlūbatra (Ahmad Shauqi, 1929).