all: let me have a child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry may do homage: find me to marry me with Octavius Cæsar, and companion me with my mistress.

Sooth. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve. Char. O excellent! I love long life better than figs. Sooth. You have seen and proved a fairer former fortune Than that which is to approach,

Char. Then, belike, my children shall have no names:* Pr'ythee, how many boys and wenches must I have ? Sooth. If every of your wishes had a womb,

And fertile every wish, a million.

Char. Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.

Alex. You think, none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.

Char. Nay, come, tell Iras hers.

Alex. We'll know all our fortunes.

Eno. Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall be-drunk to bed.

Iras. There's a palm presages chastity, if nothing else. Char. Even as the o'erflowing Nilus presageth famine. Iras. Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.

Char. Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear.-Pr'ythee, tell her but a worky-day fortune.

Sooth. Your fortunes are alike.

Iras. But how, but how? give me particulars.

Sooth. I have said.

Iras. Am I not an inch of fortune better than she? Char. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?

Iras. Not in my husband's nose.

Char. Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas,come, his fortune, his fortune.-O, let him marry a woman that cannot go, sweet Isis, I beseech thee! And let her die too, and give him a worse! and let worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his grve, fifty-fold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee!

Iras. Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the

[S] Herod paid homage to the Romans, to procure the grant of the kingdom of Judea. STEEVENS.

[4] A fairer fortune, I believe, means a more reputable one. Her answer then implies, that belike all her children will be bastards, who have no right to the name of their father's family. STEEVENS.

people! for, as it is a heart-breaking to see a handsome man loose-wived, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded; Therefore, dear Isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly!

Char. Amen.

Alex. Lo, now! If it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores, but they'd do't.

Eno. Hush! here comes Antony.

Char. Not he, the queen.

Enter CLEOPATRA.

Cleo. Saw you my lord?

Eno. No, lady.

Cleo. Was he not here?

Char. No, madam.

Cleo. He was dispos'd to mirth; but on a sudden A Roman thought hath struck him.-Enobarbus,— Eno. Madam.

Cleo. Seek him, and bring him hither. Where's Alexas? Alex. Here, madam, at your service. My lord approaches.

Enter ANTONY, with a messenger and Attendants. Cleo. We will not look upon him: Go with us.

[Exeunt CLEO. ENOB. ALEX. IRAS, CHAR.
Soothsayer, and Attendants

Mes. Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.
Ant. Against my brother Lucius ?

Mes. Ay:

But soon that war had end, and the time's state

Made friends of them, jointing their force 'gainst Cæsar; Whose better issue in the war, from Italy

Upon the first encounter drave them.

Ant. Well,

What worst?

Mes. The nature of bad news infects the teller.
Ant. When it concerns the fool, or coward.-On:

Things, that are past, are done, with me.-'Tis thus ;
Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,

I hear him as he flatter'd.

Mes. Labienus

(This is stiff news,) hath, with his Parthian force, Extended Asia from Euphrates;

His conquering banner shook, from Syria

[5] To extend, is a term used for to seize.

JOHNSON.

To Lydia, and to Ionia; whilst

Ant. Antony, thou wouldst say,—

Mes. O, my lord!

Ant. Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue; Name Cleopatra as she's call'd in Rome:

Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase; and taunt my faults
With such full licence, as both truth and malice

Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds,
When our quick winds lie still; and our ills told us,
Is as our earing. Fare thee well a while.

7

Mes. At your noble pleasure.

Ant. From Sicyon how the news? Speak there.

[Exit

1 Att. The man from Sicyon.-Is there such an one? 2 Att. He stays upon your will.

Ant. Let him appear.

These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,

Enter another Messenger.

Or lose myself in dotage. What are you?

2 Mes. Fulvia thy wife is dead.

Ant. Where died she?

2 Mes. In Sicyon :

Her length of sickness, with what else more serious
Importeth thee to know, this bears.

Ant. Forbear me.

[Gives a letter. [Exit Messenger

There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it:
What our contempts do often hurl from us,
We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, does become

The opposite of itself: she's good, being gone;
The hand could pluck her back, that shov'd her on."
I must from this enchanting queen break off;
Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch.-How now! Enobarbus !
Enter ENOBArbus.

Eno. What's your pleasure, sir?

[6] The sense is, that man, not agitated by censure, like soil not ventilated by quick winds, produces more evil than good. JOHNS. The ridges left in lands turned up by the plow, that they may sweeten during their fallow state, are still called wind-rows, as are also the rows of new-mown grass laid in heaps to dry. Quick winds, I suppose to be the same as teeming fallows, always fruitful in weeds.

STEEVENS.

[7] Earing here and in other places signifies plowing. So, in Genesis xlv: "Yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be caring nor harvest." BLACKSTONE.

[8] The pleasure of to-day, by revolution of events aud change of circumstances, often loses all its value to us, and becomes to-morrow a pain. STEEVENS.

[9] The verb could has a peculiar signification in this place; it does not denste power but inclination. The sense is, the hand that drove her off would now willing. ly pluck her back again.' HEATH.

Ant. I must with haste from hence.

Eno. Why, then, we kill all our women: We see how mortal an unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death's the word.

Ant. I must be gone.

Eno. Under a compelling occasion, let women die : It were pity to cast them away for nothing; though, between them and a great cause, they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment:9 I do think, there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying.

Ant. She is cunning past man's thought.

Eno. Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love: We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacks can report: this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.

Ant. 'Would I had never seen her!

Eno. O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work; which not to have been blessed withal, would have discredited your travel.

Ant. Fulvia is dead.

Eno. Sir?

Ant. Fulvia is dead

Eno. Fulvia?

Ant. Dead.

Eno. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shows to man the tailors of the earth ;' comforting therein, that when old robes are worn out, there are members to make new. If there were no more wo

men but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut, and the case to be lamented: this grief is crowned with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new petticoat :and, indeed, the tears live in an onion, that should water this sorrow.

Ant. The business she hath broached in the state,

Cannot endure my absence.

[9] For less reason; upon meaner motives. JOHNSON.

The meaning is this: As the gods have been pleased to take away your wite Fulvia, so they have provided you with a new one in Cleopatra; in like manner as the tailors of the earth, when your old garments are worn out, accommodate you witn

new ones.'

ANON.

Eno. And the business you have broached here, cannot be without you; especially that of Cleopatra's, which wholly depends on your abode.

Ant. No more light answers. Have notice what we purpose.

Let our officers
I shall break

The cause of our expedience to the queen,
And get her love to part. For not alone
The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,
Do strongly speak to us; but the letters too
Of many our contriving friends in Rome
Petition us at home: Sextus Pompeius
Hath given the dare to Cæsar, and commands
The empire of the sea: our slippery people
(Whose love is never link'd to the deserver,
Till his deserts are past,) begin to throw
Pompey the great, and all his dignities,
Upon his son; who, high in name and power,
Higher than both in blood and life, stands up
For the main soldier; whose quality, going on,
The sides o'the world may danger: Much is breeding,
Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life,
And not a serpent's poison. Say, our pleasure,
To such whose place is under us, requires
Our quick remove from hence.

Eno. I shall do't.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS.

Cleo. Where is he?

Char. I did not see him since.

Cleo. See where he is, who's with him, what he does

-I did not send you ;-If you find him sad,

Say, I am dancing; if in mirth, report
That I am sudden sick: Quick, and return.

[Exit ALEX.

MALONE.

JOHNSON.

Expedience, for expedition. WARBURTON. I suspect the author wrote, And get her leave to part. [2] Things that touch me more sensibly, more pressing motives. JOHNSON. [S] Wish us at home; call for us to reside at home. [4] Alludes to an old idle notion that the hair of a horse dropt into corrupted water, will turn to an animal. POPE.Dr. Lister, in the Philosophical Transactions showed, that what were vulgarly called animated horse-hairs, are real insects. It was also affirmed that they moved like serpents, and were poisonous to swallow. TOLLET.

[6] You must go as if you came without my order or knowledge. JOHNSON.