The Tragedy Of Antony And Cleopatra

1 Enter Enobarbus, a Soothsayer, Charmian, Iras, Mardian and Alexas.
2 CHARMIAN.
3 Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost most absolute
4 Alexas, where’s the soothsayer that you praised so to th’ queen? O,
5 that I knew this husband which you say must charge his horns with
6 garlands!
7 ALEXAS.
8 Soothsayer!
9 SOOTHSAYER.
10 Your will?
11 CHARMIAN.
12 Is this the man? Is’t you, sir, that know things?
13 SOOTHSAYER.
14 In nature’s infinite book of secrecy
15 A little I can read.
16 ALEXAS.
17 Show him your hand.
18 ENOBARBUS.
19 Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough
20 Cleopatra’s health to drink.
21 CHARMIAN.
22 Good, sir, give me good fortune.
23 SOOTHSAYER.
24 I make not, but foresee.
25 CHARMIAN.
26 Pray, then, foresee me one.
27 SOOTHSAYER.
28 You shall be yet far fairer than you are.
29 CHARMIAN.
30 He means in flesh.
31 IRAS.
32 No, you shall paint when you are old.
33 CHARMIAN.
34 Wrinkles forbid!
35 ALEXAS.
36 Vex not his prescience. Be attentive.
37 CHARMIAN.
38 Hush!
39 SOOTHSAYER.
40 You shall be more beloving than beloved.
41 CHARMIAN.
42 I had rather heat my liver with drinking.
43 ALEXAS.
44 Nay, hear him.
45 CHARMIAN.
46 Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married to three kings in a
47 forenoon and widow them all. Let me have a child at fifty, to whom
48 Herod of Jewry may do homage. Find me to marry me with Octavius Caesar,
49 and companion me with my mistress.
50 SOOTHSAYER.
51 You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.
52 CHARMIAN.
53 O, excellent! I love long life better than figs.
54 SOOTHSAYER.
55 You have seen and proved a fairer former fortune
56 Than that which is to approach.
57 CHARMIAN.
58 Then belike my children shall have no names. Prithee, how many boys and
59 wenches must I have?
60 SOOTHSAYER.
61 If every of your wishes had a womb,
62 And fertile every wish, a million.
63 CHARMIAN.
64 Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.
65 ALEXAS.
66 You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.
67 CHARMIAN.
68 Nay, come, tell Iras hers.
69 ALEXAS.
70 We’ll know all our fortunes.
71 ENOBARBUS.
72 Mine, and most of our fortunes tonight, shall be drunk to bed.
73 IRAS.
74 There’s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.
75 CHARMIAN.
76 E’en as the o’erflowing Nilus presageth famine.
77 IRAS.
78 Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.
79 CHARMIAN.
80 Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot
81 scratch mine ear. Prithee, tell her but workaday fortune.
82 SOOTHSAYER.
83 Your fortunes are alike.
84 IRAS.
85 But how, but how? give me particulars.
86 SOOTHSAYER.
87 I have said.
88 IRAS.
89 Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?
90 CHARMIAN.
91 Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you
92 choose it?
93 IRAS.
94 Not in my husband’s nose.
95 CHARMIAN.
96 Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas—come, his fortune! his
97 fortune! O, let him marry a woman that cannot go, sweet Isis, I beseech
98 thee, and let her die too, and give him a worse, and let worse follow
99 worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his grave,
100 fiftyfold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny
101 me a matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee!
102 IRAS.
103 Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! For, as it is a
104 heartbreaking to see a handsome man loose-wived, so it is a deadly
105 sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded. Therefore, dear Isis, keep
106 decorum and fortune him accordingly!
107 CHARMIAN.
108 Amen.
109 ALEXAS.
110 Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make
111 themselves whores but they’d do’t!
112 Enter Cleopatra.
113 ENOBARBUS.
114 Hush, Here comes Antony.
115 CHARMIAN.
116 Not he, the queen.
117 CLEOPATRA.
118 Saw you my lord?
119 ENOBARBUS.
120 No, lady.
121 CLEOPATRA.
122 Was he not here?
123 CHARMIAN.
124 No, madam.
125 CLEOPATRA.
126 He was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden
127 A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!
128 ENOBARBUS.
129 Madam?
130 CLEOPATRA.
131 Seek him and bring him hither. Where’s Alexas?
132 ALEXAS.
133 Here, at your service. My lord approaches.
134 Enter Antony with a Messenger.
135 CLEOPATRA.
136 We will not look upon him. Go with us.
137 [_Exeunt Cleopatra, Enobarbus, Charmian, Iras, Alexas and
138 Soothsayer._]
139 MESSENGER.
140 Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.
141 ANTONY.
142 Against my brother Lucius.
143 MESSENGER.
144 Ay.
145 But soon that war had end, and the time’s state
146 Made friends of them, jointing their force ’gainst Caesar,
147 Whose better issue in the war from Italy
148 Upon the first encounter drave them.
149 ANTONY.
150 Well, what worst?
151 MESSENGER.
152 The nature of bad news infects the teller.
153 ANTONY.
154 When it concerns the fool or coward. On.
155 Things that are past are done with me. ’Tis thus:
156 Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,
157 I hear him as he flattered.
158 MESSENGER.
159 Labienus—
160 This is stiff news—hath with his Parthian force
161 Extended Asia from Euphrates
162 His conquering banner shook from Syria
163 To Lydia and to Ionia,
164 Whilst—
165 ANTONY.
166 “Antony”, thou wouldst say—
167 MESSENGER.
168 O, my lord!
169 ANTONY.
170 Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue.
171 Name Cleopatra as she is called in Rome;
172 Rail thou in Fulvia’s phrase, and taunt my faults
173 With such full licence as both truth and malice
174 Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds
175 When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us
176 Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.
177 MESSENGER.
178 At your noble pleasure.
179 [_Exit Messenger._]
180 Enter another Messenger.
181 ANTONY.
182 From Sicyon, ho, the news? Speak there!
183 SECOND MESSENGER.
184 The man from Sicyon—
185 ANTONY.
186 Is there such a one?
187 SECOND MESSENGER.
188 He stays upon your will.
189 ANTONY.
190 Let him appear.
191 [_Exit second Messenger._]
192 These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
193 Or lose myself in dotage.
194 Enter another Messenger with a letter.
195 What are you?
196 THIRD MESSENGER.
197 Fulvia thy wife is dead.
198 ANTONY.
199 Where died she?
200 THIRD MESSENGER.
201 In Sicyon:
202 Her length of sickness, with what else more serious
203 Importeth thee to know, this bears.
204 [_Gives a letter._]
205 ANTONY.
206 Forbear me.
207 [_Exit third Messenger._]
208 There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it.
209 What our contempts doth often hurl from us,
210 We wish it ours again. The present pleasure,
211 By revolution lowering, does become
212 The opposite of itself. She’s good, being gone.
213 The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on.
214 I must from this enchanting queen break off.
215 Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
216 My idleness doth hatch. How now, Enobarbus!
217 Enter Enobarbus.
218 ENOBARBUS.
219 What’s your pleasure, sir?
220 ANTONY.
221 I must with haste from hence.
222 ENOBARBUS.
223 Why then we kill all our women. We see how mortal an unkindness is to
224 them. If they suffer our departure, death’s the word.
225 ANTONY.
226 I must be gone.
227 ENOBARBUS.
228 Under a compelling occasion, let women die. It were pity to cast them
229 away for nothing, though, between them and a great cause they should be
230 esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies
231 instantly. I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment. I
232 do think there is mettle in death which commits some loving act upon
233 her, she hath such a celerity in dying.
234 ANTONY.
235 She is cunning past man’s thought.
236 ENOBARBUS.
237 Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of
238 pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they
239 are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot
240 be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as
241 Jove.
242 ANTONY.
243 Would I had never seen her!
244 ENOBARBUS.
245 O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work, which not
246 to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel.
247 ANTONY.
248 Fulvia is dead.
249 ENOBARBUS.
250 Sir?
251 ANTONY.
252 Fulvia is dead.
253 ENOBARBUS.
254 Fulvia?
255 ANTONY.
256 Dead.
257 ENOBARBUS.
258 Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleaseth their
259 deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shows to man the tailors
260 of the earth; comforting therein that when old robes are worn out,
261 there are members to make new. If there were no more women but Fulvia,
262 then had you indeed a cut, and the case to be lamented. This grief is
263 crowned with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new petticoat:
264 and indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.
265 ANTONY.
266 The business she hath broached in the state
267 Cannot endure my absence.
268 ENOBARBUS.
269 And the business you have broached here cannot be without you,
270 especially that of Cleopatra’s, which wholly depends on your abode.
271 ANTONY.
272 No more light answers. Let our officers
273 Have notice what we purpose. I shall break
274 The cause of our expedience to the Queen,
275 And get her leave to part. For not alone
276 The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,
277 Do strongly speak to us, but the letters too
278 Of many our contriving friends in Rome
279 Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius
280 Hath given the dare to Caesar, and commands
281 The empire of the sea. Our slippery people,
282 Whose love is never linked to the deserver
283 Till his deserts are past, begin to throw
284 Pompey the Great and all his dignities
285 Upon his son, who, high in name and power,
286 Higher than both in blood and life, stands up
287 For the main soldier; whose quality, going on,
288 The sides o’ th’ world may danger. Much is breeding
289 Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life
290 And not a serpent’s poison. Say our pleasure
291 To such whose place is under us, requires
292 Our quick remove from hence.
293 ENOBARBUS.
294 I shall do’t.
295 [_Exeunt._]