Complete Plays, The (159 page)

Cleopatra

Though age from folly could not give me freedom,
It does from childishness: can Fulvia die?

Mark Antony

She’s dead, my queen:
Look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read
The garboils she awaked; at the last, best:
See when and where she died.

Cleopatra

O most false love!
Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill
With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,
In Fulvia’s death, how mine received shall be.

Mark Antony

Quarrel no more, but be prepared to know
The purposes I bear; which are, or cease,
As you shall give the advice. By the fire
That quickens Nilus’ slime, I go from hence
Thy soldier, servant; making peace or war
As thou affect’st.

Cleopatra

 
Cut my lace, Charmian, come;
But let it be: I am quickly ill, and well,
So Antony loves.

Mark Antony

 
My precious queen, forbear;
And give true evidence to his love, which stands
An honourable trial.

Cleopatra

So Fulvia told me.
I prithee, 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
Life perfect honour.

Mark Antony

You’ll heat my blood: no more.

Cleopatra

You can do better yet; but this is meetly.

Mark Antony

Now, by my sword,—

Cleopatra

And target. Still he mends;
But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian,
How this Herculean Roman does become
The carriage of his chafe.

Mark Antony

I’ll leave you, lady.

Cleopatra

Courteous lord, one word.
Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it:
Sir, you and I have loved, 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.

Mark Antony

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

Cleopatra

’Tis sweating labour
To bear such idleness so near the heart
As Cleopatra this. But, sir, forgive me;
Since my becomings kill me, when they do not
Eye well to you: your honour calls you hence;
Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly.
And all the gods go with you! upon your sword
Sit laurel victory! and smooth success
Be strew’d before your feet!

Mark Antony

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

S
CENE
IV. R
OME
. O
CTAVIUS
C
AESAR
’
S
HOUSE
.

Enter Octavius Caesar, reading a letter, Lepidus, and their Train

Octavius Caesar

You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,
It is not Caesar’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.

Lepidus

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 purchased; what he cannot change,
Than what he chooses.

Octavius Caesar

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
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
As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,
And so rebel to judgment.

Enter a Messenger

Lepidus

Here’s more news.

Messenger

Thy biddings have been done; and every hour,
Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report
How ’tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea;
And it appears he is beloved of those
That only have fear’d Caesar: to the ports
The discontents repair, and men’s reports
Give him much wrong’d.

Octavius Caesar

I should have known no less.
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.

Messenger

Caesar, I bring thee word,
Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,
Make the sea serve them, which they ear 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 ’tis as soon
Taken as seen; for Pompey’s name strikes more
Than could his war resisted.

Octavius Caesar

Antony,
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: and all this —
It wounds thine honour that I speak it now —
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank’d not.

Lepidus

’Tis pity of him.

Octavius Caesar

Let his shames quickly
Drive him to Rome: ’tis time we twain
Did show ourselves i’ the field; and to that end
Assemble we immediate council: Pompey
Thrives in our idleness.

Lepidus

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

Octavius Caesar

Till which encounter,
It is my business too. Farewell.

Lepidus

Farewell, my lord: what you shall know meantime
Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,
To let me be partaker.

Octavius Caesar

Doubt not, sir;
I knew it for my bond.

Exeunt

S
CENE
V. A
LEXANDRIA
. C
LEOPATRA
’
S
PALACE
.

Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, and Mardian

Cleopatra

Charmian!

Charmian

Madam?

Cleopatra

Ha, ha!
Give me to drink mandragora.

Charmian

Why, madam?

Cleopatra

That I might sleep out this great gap of time
My Antony is away.

Charmian

 
You think of him too much.

Cleopatra

O, ’tis treason!

Charmian

 
Madam, I trust, not so.

Cleopatra

Thou, eunuch Mardian!

Mardian

What’s your highness’ pleasure?

Cleopatra

Not now to hear thee sing; I take no pleasure
In aught an eunuch has: ’tis well for thee,
That, being unseminar’d, thy freer thoughts
May not fly forth of Egypt. Hast thou affections?

Mardian

Yes, gracious madam.

Cleopatra

Indeed!

Mardian

Not in deed, madam; for I can do nothing
But what indeed is honest to be done:
Yet have I fierce affections, and think
What Venus did with Mars.

Cleopatra

O Charmian,
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 wot’st thou whom thou movest?
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 Caesar,
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 aspect and die
With looking on his life.

Enter Alexas, from Octavius Caesar

Alexas

Sovereign of Egypt, hail!

Cleopatra

How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!
Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath
With his tinct gilded thee.
How goes it with my brave Mark Antony?

Alexas

Last thing he did, dear queen,
He kiss’d,— the last of many doubled kisses,—
This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart.

Cleopatra

Mine ear must pluck it thence.

Alexas

‘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.

Cleopatra

What, was he sad or merry?

Alexas

Like to the time o’ the year between the extremes
Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.

Cleopatra

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,
Which seem’d to tell them his remembrance lay
In Egypt with his joy; but between both:
O heavenly mingle! Be’st thou sad or merry,
The violence of either thee becomes,
So does it no man else. Met’st thou my posts?

Alexas

Ay, madam, twenty several messengers:
Why do you send so thick?

Cleopatra

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 Caesar so?

Charmian

O that brave Caesar!

Cleopatra

Be choked with such another emphasis!
Say, the brave Antony.

Charmian

The valiant Caesar!

Cleopatra

By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth,
If thou with Caesar paragon again
My man of men.

Charmian

 
By your most gracious pardon,
I sing but after you.

Cleopatra

My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;
Get me ink and paper:
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I’ll unpeople Egypt.

Exeunt

A
CT
II

S
CENE
I. M
ESSINA
. P
OMPEY
’
S
HOUSE
.

Enter Pompey, Menecrates, and Menas, in warlike manner

Pompey

If the great gods be just, they shall assist
The deeds of justest men.

Menecrates

Know, worthy Pompey,
That what they do delay, they not deny.

Pompey

Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays
The thing we sue for.

Menecrates

We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so find we profit
By losing of our prayers.

Pompey

I shall do well:
The people love me, and the sea is mine;
My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope
Says it will come to the full. Mark Antony
In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make
No wars without doors: Caesar gets money where
He loses hearts: Lepidus flatters both,
Of both is flatter’d; but he neither loves,
Nor either cares for him.

Menas

Caesar and Lepidus
Are in the field: a mighty strength they carry.

Pompey

Where have you this? ’tis false.

Menas

From Silvius, sir.

Pompey

He dreams: I know they are in Rome together,
Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love,
Salt Cleopatra, soften thy waned lip!
Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both!
Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts,
Keep his brain fuming; Epicurean cooks
Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite;
That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour
Even till a Lethe’d dulness!