Sit laurel victory! and smooth success
Be strew'd before your feet!
Ant.

100 Let us go. Come; Our separation so abides, and flies, That thou, residing here, go'st yet with me, And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. Away! [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. Rome. Cæsar's house. Enter OCTAVIUS CÆSAR, reading a letter, LEPIDUS, and their Train.

Cæs. You may see, Lepidus, and hence-
forth know,

It is not Cæsar's natural vice to hate
Our great competitor: from Alexandria
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel; is not more man-
like

Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolemy More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or

Vouchsafed to think he had partners: you shall find there

A man who is the abstract of all faults
That all men follow.

Lep.
I must not think there are 10
Evils enow to darken all his goodness:
His faults in him seem as the spots of heaven,
More fiery by night's blackness; hereditary,
Rather than purchased; what he cannot
change,

"Than what he chooses.

Cæs. You are too indulgent. Let us grant, it is not

Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy; 'To give a kingdom for a mirth; to sit And keep the turn of tippling with a slave; To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet

20

With knaves that smell of sweat: say this becomes him,

As his composure must be rare indeed
Whom these things cannot blemish,-yet
must Antony

No way excuse his soils, when we do bear
So great weight in his lightness. If he fill'd
His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
Full surfeits, and the dryness of his bones,
Call on him for't: but to confound such time,
That drums him from his sport, and speaks as
loud

As his own state and ours,-'tis to be chid 30
As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowl-

edge,

Pawn their experience to their present pleas

That only have fear'd Cæsar: to the ports The discontents repair, and men's reports Give him much wrong'd.

Cœs.

I should have known no less. 40 It hath been taught us from the primal state, That he which is was wish'd until he were ; And the ebb'd man, ne'er loved till ne'er worth love,

Comes dear'd by being lack'd. This common body,

Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,
To rot itself with motion.

Mess. Cæsar, I bring thee word, Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates, Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound 49

With keels of every kind: many hot inroads They make in Italy; the borders maritime Lack blood to think on 't, and flush youth revolt:

No vessel can peep forth, but 'tis as soon Taken as seen; for Pompey's name strikes

more

60

Than savages could suffer: thou didst drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at thy palate
then did deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture
sheets,
[Alps
The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: and all this-
It wounds thine honor that I speak it now-
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek 70
So much as lank'd not.

To-morrow, Cæsar, I shall be furnish'd to inform you rightly Both what by sea and land I can be able To front this present time. Cæs.

80

Till which encounter,
It is my business too. Farewell.
Lep. Farewell, my lord: what you shall
know meantime

Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,
To let me be partaker.

Cæs.

I knew it for my bond.

Doubt not, sir ;

[Exeunt

Cleo. Mine ear must pluck it thence. Alex. 'Good friend,' quoth be, Say, the firm Roman to great Egypt sends This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot, To mend the petty present, I will piece Her opulent throne with kingdoms; all the east,

Say thou, shall call her mistress.' So he nodded,

† And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed, Who neigh'd so high, that what I would have spoke

Was beastly dumb'd by him.

Cleo. What, was he sad or merry? 50 Alex. Like to the time o' the year between the extremes

Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry. Cleo. O well-divided disposition ! Note

him,

Note him, good Charmian, 'tis the man; but

note him:

He was not sad, for he would shine on those That make their looks by his; he was not merry, [lay Which seem'd to tell them his remembrance In Egypt with his joy; but between both : O heavenly mingle! Be'st thou sad or merry, The violence of either thee becomes, 60

So does it no man else. Met'st thou my posts? Alex. Ay, madam, twenty several messengers:

Why do you send so thick ?

Cleo.

Who's born that day When I forget to send to Antony, Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian. Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian, Ever love Cæsar so ?

1

I would you had her spirit in such another. The third o' the world is yours; which with a snaffle

You may pace easy, but not such a wife.

Eno. Would we had all such wives, that the men might go to wars with the women!

Ant. So much uncurbable, her garboils, Cæsar,

Made out of her impatience, which not wanted
Shrewdness of policy too, I grieving grant
Did you too much disquiet: for that you must
But say, I could not help it.
71
Cæs.

I wrote to you
When rioting in Alexandria; you
Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts
Did gibe my missive out of audience.
Ant.

Sir,

He fell upon me ere admitted: then
Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want

Were well deserved of rashness. Ant. I am not married, Cæsar: let me hear

Agrippa further speak.

Agr. To hold you in perpetual amity, To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts With an unslipping knot, take Antony Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims 130 No worse a husband than the best of men ; Whose virtue and whose general graces speak That which none else can utter. By this marriage,

All little jealousies, which now seem great, And all great fears, which now import their dangers,

Would then be nothing: truths would be tales, Where now half tales be truths: her love to both

Would, each to other and all loves to both,
Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke ;
For 'tis a studied, not a present thought, 140
By duty ruminated.
Ant.
Will Cæsar speak?

C'œs. Not till he hears how Antony is touch'd

With what is spoke already.

Ant

What power is in Agrippa, If I would say, 'Agrippa, be it so,' To make this good?

Cœs. The power of Cæsar, and His power unto Octavia. Ant.

May I never To this good purpose, that so fairly shows, Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand:

Further this act of grace and from this hour The heart of brothers govern in our loves 150 And sway our great designs!

Cæs. There is my hand. A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother Did ever love so dearly: let her live To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and

never

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 200 The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion-cloth-of-gold of tissue-
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-color'd fans, whose wind did

seem

To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,

And what they undid did.
Arg.
O, rare for Antony! 210
Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft

hands,

219

That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too