The Tragedy Of Antony And Cleopatra

1 Enter Octavius [Caesar], Lepidus and their train.
2 CAESAR.
3 You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,
4 It is not Caesar’s natural vice to hate
5 Our great competitor. From Alexandria
6 This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
7 The lamps of night in revel: is not more manlike
8 Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
9 More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or
10 Vouchsafed to think he had partners. You shall find there
11 A man who is the abstract of all faults
12 That all men follow.
13 LEPIDUS.
14 I must not think there are
15 Evils enough to darken all his goodness.
16 His faults in him seem as the spots of heaven,
17 More fiery by night’s blackness; hereditary
18 Rather than purchased; what he cannot change
19 Than what he chooses.
20 CAESAR.
21 You are too indulgent. Let’s grant it is not
22 Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,
23 To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit
24 And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,
25 To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet
26 With knaves that smell of sweat. Say this becomes him—
27 As his composure must be rare indeed
28 Whom these things cannot blemish—yet must Antony
29 No way excuse his foils when we do bear
30 So great weight in his lightness. If he filled
31 His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
32 Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones
33 Call on him for’t. But to confound such time
34 That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud
35 As his own state and ours, ’tis to be chid
36 As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge,
37 Pawn their experience to their present pleasure
38 And so rebel to judgment.
39 Enter a Messenger.
40 LEPIDUS.
41 Here’s more news.
42 MESSENGER.
43 Thy biddings have been done, and every hour,
44 Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report
45 How ’tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea,
46 And it appears he is beloved of those
47 That only have feared Caesar. To the ports
48 The discontents repair, and men’s reports
49 Give him much wronged.
50 CAESAR.
51 I should have known no less.
52 It hath been taught us from the primal state
53 That he which is was wished until he were,
54 And the ebbed man, ne’er loved till ne’er worth love,
55 Comes deared by being lacked. This common body,
56 Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
57 Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,
58 To rot itself with motion.
59 Enter a second Messenger.
60 SECOND MESSENGER.
61 Caesar, I bring thee word
62 Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,
63 Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound
64 With keels of every kind. Many hot inroads
65 They make in Italy—the borders maritime
66 Lack blood to think on’t—and flush youth revolt.
67 No vessel can peep forth but ’tis as soon
68 Taken as seen; for Pompey’s name strikes more
69 Than could his war resisted.
70 CAESAR.
71 Antony,
72 Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
73 Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st
74 Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
75 Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against,
76 Though daintily brought up, with patience more
77 Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink
78 The stale of horses and the gilded puddle
79 Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign
80 The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.
81 Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,
82 The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps
83 It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
84 Which some did die to look on. And all this—
85 It wounds thine honour that I speak it now—
86 Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek
87 So much as lanked not.
88 LEPIDUS.
89 ’Tis pity of him.
90 CAESAR.
91 Let his shames quickly
92 Drive him to Rome. ’Tis time we twain
93 Did show ourselves i’ th’ field, and to that end
94 Assemble we immediate council. Pompey
95 Thrives in our idleness.
96 LEPIDUS.
97 Tomorrow, Caesar,
98 I shall be furnished to inform you rightly
99 Both what by sea and land I can be able
100 To front this present time.
101 CAESAR.
102 Till which encounter
103 It is my business too. Farewell.
104 LEPIDUS.
105 Farewell, my lord. What you shall know meantime
106 Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,
107 To let me be partaker.
108 CAESAR.
109 Doubt not, sir.
110 I knew it for my bond.
111 [_Exeunt._]