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The commentators will have the word best to relate to the "good end" made by Fulvia. But it is no more than an epithet of endearment which Antony applies to Cleopatra;-read at your leisure the troubles she awakened; and at the last, my best one, see when and where she died.

f

I am quickly ill, and well,
So Antony loves.]

This has been misconceived: "So Antony loves" is "As Antony loves," and the sense therefore,-My health is as fickle as the love of Antony.

And give true evidence to his love, &c.] Mr. Collier's annotator, in his eagerness to confound all traces of our early language, would poorly read, " true credence," which, like many of his suggestions, is very specious and quite wrong. The meaning of Antony is this," Forbear these taunts, and demonstrate to the world your confidence in my love by submitting it freely to the

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I pr'ythee, turn aside and weep for her ;
Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears
Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene
Of excellent dissembling; and let it look
Like perfect honour.

ANT.
You'll heat my blood: no more!
CLEO. You can do better yet; but this is
meetly.

ANT. Now, by my sword,-
CLEO.

And target!-Still he mends;

But this is not the best : -look, pr'ythee,
Charmian,

How this Herculean Roman does become
The carriage of his chief."

ANT. I'll leave you, lady.
CLEO.

Courteous lord, one word.
Sir, you and I must part,-but that's not it:
Sir, you and I have lov'd, but there's not it;
That you know well: something it is I would,-
O, my oblivion is a very Antony,
And I am all forgotten!

ANT.
But that your royalty
Holds idleness your subject, I should take you
For idleness itself.

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The carriage of his chief.]

The old and every modern edition read, "The carriage of his chafe." But can any one who considers the epithet "Herculean," which Cleopatra applies to Antony, and reads the following extract from Shakespeare's authority, hesitate for an instant to pronounce chafe a silly blunder of the transcriber or compositor for "chief," meaning Hercules, the head or principal of the house of the Antonii? "Now it had bene a speech of old time, that the family of the Antonij were descended from one Anton the son of Hercules, whereof the family took the name. This opinion did Antonius seeke to confirme in all his doings: not only resembling him in the likenesse of his body, as we have said before, but also in the wearing of his garments."-Life of Antonius. NORTH'S Plutarch.

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SCENE IV.-Rome. An Apartment in
Cæsar's House.

Enter OCTAVIUS CESAR, reading a letter, LEPIDUS, and Attendants.

CES. You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth 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 vouchsaf'd* 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
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 purchas'd; what he cannot change,
Than what he chooses.

CES. You are too indulgent. Let us grant, 'tis 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
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,-'t is to be chid

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*

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 eard and
wound

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 't is as soon
Taken as seen; for Pompey's name strikes more
Than could his war resisted.

Antony,

CES.
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
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,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: (3) and all this

(*) Old text, fear'd. Corrected by Warburton. (†) Old text, lacking. Corrected by Theobald. (1) Old text, Vassailes.

"Fall on him," &c. of Mr. Collier's annotator is a modern dilution.

d they ear-] They plough.

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CES. Let his shames quickly

Drive him to Rome: 't is time we twain

Did show ourselves i' the field; and to that end
Assemble we* immediate council. Pompey
Thrives in our idleness.

ІЕР.
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.
CES.

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.

CES. I knew it for

Doubt not, sir;

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MAR. Not in deed, madam; for I can do nothing

But what indeed is honest to be done:
Yet I have fierce affections, and think
What Venus did with Mars.

O, Charmian,

CLEO. Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he?

Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?
O, happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
Do bravely, horse! for wott'st thou whom thou
mov'st?

The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm
And burgonet of men.-He's speaking now,
Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile?
For so he calls me :-now I feed myself
With most delicious poison.-Think on me,
That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black,
And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted

Cæsar,

When thou wast here above the ground, I was
A morsel for a monarch: and great Pompey
Would stand, and make his eyes grow in my

brow;

There would he anchor his aspéct, and die With looking on his life.

Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and

Enter ALEXAS.

MARDIAN.

CLEO. Charmian,—

CHAR. Madam.

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a

CLEO. Indeed!

(*) First folio, me.

orient-] Pellucid, lustrous. See note (a), p. 395. b- an arm-gaunt steed,-] The epithet "arm-gaunt" has been fruitful of controversy. Hanmer reads arm-girt; Mason suggests, not unhappily, termagant; and Mr. Boaden, arrogant. If the original lection be genuine, which we doubt, " gaunt" must be understood to mean fierce, eager; a sense it, perhaps, bears in the following passage from Ben Jonson's "Catiline," Act III. Sc. 3,

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Yet, coming from him, that great med'cine hath
With his tinct gilded thee.-

How goes it with my brave Mark Antony?
ALEX. Last thing he did, dear queen,
He kiss'd,—the last of many doubled kisses,—
This orient pearl:-his speech sticks in my
heart.

CLEO. Mine ear must pluck it thence.
ALEX.
Good friend, quoth he,
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.

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