Act 1
Scene 1
Alexandria. A room in Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Demetrius and Philo.
DEM.
PHI.
- Nay, but this dotage of our general’s
- O’erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes,
- That o’er the files and musters of the war
- Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
- The office and devotion of their view
- Upon a tawny front; his captain’s heart,
- Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
- The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
- And is become the bellows and the fan
- To cool a gypsy’s lust.
-
Flourish. Enter Antony, Cleopatra, her Ladies, the Train, with eunuchs fanning her.
ANT.
CLEO.
Ladies
Eunuchs
- Look where they come!
- Take but good note, and you shall see in him
- The triple pillar of the world transform’d
- Into a strumpet’s fool. Behold and see.
- If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
- There’s beggary in the love that can be reckon’d.
- I’ll set a bourn how far to be belov’d.
- Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
Enter First Roman Messenger.
1. ROM. MESS.
- News, my good lord, from Rome.
- Grates me, the sum.
- Nay, hear them, Antony.
- Fulvia perchance is angry; or who knows
- If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent
- His pow’rful mandate to you: “Do this, or this;
- Take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that;
- Perform’t, or else we damn thee.”
- How, my love?
- Perchance? Nay, and most like.
- You must not stay here longer, your dismission
- Is come from Caesar, therefore hear it, Antony.
- Where’s Fulvia’s process?—Caesar’s, I would say—both?
- Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt’s queen,
- Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine
- Is Caesar’s homager; else so thy cheek pays shame
- When shrill-tongu’d Fulvia scolds. The messengers!
- Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
- Of the rang’d empire fall! Here is my space,
- Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike
- Feeds beast as man; the nobleness of life
- Is to do thus
-
Embracing.
ANT.

- Excellent falsehood!
- Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?
- I’ll seem the fool I am not. Antony
- Will be himself.
- But stirr’d by Cleopatra.
- Now for the love of Love, and her soft hours,
- Let’s not confound the time with conference harsh;
- There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch
- Without some pleasure now. What sport tonight?
- Hear the ambassadors.
- Fie, wrangling queen!
- Whom every thing becomes—to chide, to laugh,
- To weep; whose every passion fully strives
- To make itself (in thee) fair and admir’d!
- No messenger but thine, and all alone,
- Tonight we’ll wander through the streets and note
- The qualities of people. Come, my queen,
- Last night you did desire it.
-
To the Messenger.
ANT.
1. ROM. MESS.
- Speak not to us.
Exeunt Antony and Cleopatra with the Train, followed by the Messenger.
ANT.
CLEO.
Ladies
Eunuchs
1. ROM. MESS.
- Is Caesar with Antonius priz’d so slight?
- Sir, sometimes when he is not Antony,
- He comes too short of that great property
- Which still should go with Antony.
- I am full sorry
- That he approves the common liar, who
- Thus speaks of him at Rome; but I will hope
- Of better deeds tomorrow. Rest you happy!
Exeunt.
DEM.
PHI.
Scene 2
Alexandria. Another room in Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Enobarbus, Lamprius the Soothsayer, Rannius, Lucillius, Charmian, Iras, Mardian the Eunuch, and Alexas.
ENO.
SOOTH.
RANN.
LUCILL.
CHAR.
IRAS.
MAR.
ALEX.
- Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most any thing Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where’s the soothsayer that you prais’d so to th’ Queen? O that I knew this husband, which, you say, must change his horns with garlands!
- Soothsayer!
- Your will?
- Is this the man? Is’t you, sir, that know things?
- In nature’s infinite book of secrecy
- A little I can read.
- Show him your hand.
-
To Servants within.
ENO.
- Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough,
- Cleopatra’s health to drink.
- Good sir, give me good fortune.
- I make not, but foresee.
- Pray then, foresee me one.
- You shall be yet far fairer than you are.
- He means in flesh.
- No, you shall paint when you are old.
- Wrinkles forbid!
- Vex not his prescience, be attentive.
- Hush!
- You shall be more beloving than beloved.
- I had rather heat my liver with drinking.
- Nay, hear him.
- Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married to three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all. Let me have a child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry may do homage. Find me to marry me with Octavius Caesar, and companion me with my mistress.

- O, excellent, I love long life better than figs.
- You have seen and prov’d a fairer former fortune
- Than that which is to approach.
- Then belike my children shall have no names. Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?
- If every of your wishes had a womb,
- And fertile every wish, a million.
- Out, fool, I forgive thee for a witch.
- You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.
- Nay, come, tell Iras hers.
- We’ll know all our fortunes.
- Mine, and most of our fortunes tonight, shall be—drunk to bed.
- There’s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.
- E’en as the o’erflowing Nilus presageth famine.
- Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.
- Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee tell her but a worky-day fortune.
- Your fortunes are alike.
- But how, but how? Give me particulars.
- I have said.
- Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?
- Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?
- Not in my husband’s nose.
- 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!   Good Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee!
- Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! For, as it is a heart-breaking to see a handsome man loose-wiv’d, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded; therefore, dear Isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly!
- Amen.
- Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores but they’ld do’t!
Enter Cleopatra.
CLEO.
- Hush, here comes Antony.
- Not he, the Queen.
- Saw you my lord?
- No, lady.
- Was he not here?
- No, madam.
- He was dispos’d to mirth, but on the sudden
- A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!
- Madam?
- Seek him, and bring him hither. Where’s Alexas?
- Here, at your service. My lord approaches.
Enter Antony with First Messenger and Attendants.
ANT.
1. MESS.
ANT. 1. ATT.
ANT. 2. ATT.
- We will not look upon him. Go with us.
Exeunt Cleopatra, Enobarbus, and Train.
CLEO.
ENO.
SOOTH.
RANN.
LUCILL.
CHAR.
IRAS.
MAR.
ALEX.
- Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.
- Against my brother Lucius?
- Ay;
- But soon that war had end, and the time’s state
- Made friends of them, jointing their force ’gainst Caesar,
- Whose better issue in the war from Italy,
- Upon the first encounter, drave them.
- Well, what worst?
- The nature of bad news infects the teller.
- 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.
- Labienus
- (This is stiff news) hath with his Parthian force
- Extended Asia; from Euphrates
- His conquering banner shook, from Syria
- To Lydia and to Ionia,
- Whilst—
- Antony, thou wouldst say—
- O, my lord!
- Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue;
- Name Cleopatra as she is call’d in Rome.
- Rail thou in Fulvia’s phrase, and taunt my faults
- With such full license 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 awhile.
- At your noble pleasure.
Exit First Messenger.
1. MESS.
- From Sicyon how the news? Speak there!
- The man from Sicyon—is there such an one?
- He stays upon your will.
- Let him appear.
- These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
- Or lose myself in dotage.
-
Enter Second Messenger with a letter.
2. MESS.
- What are you?
- Fulvia thy wife is dead.
- Where died she?
- In Sicyon:
- Her length of sickness, with what else more serious
- Importeth thee to know, this bears.
Gives a letter.
2. MESS.
ANT.
- Forbear me.
-
Exit Second Messenger.
2. MESS.
- There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it.
- What our contempts doth often hurl from us,
- We wish it ours again. The present pleasure,
- By revolution low’ring, 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?
- I must with haste from hence.
 We see how mortal an unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death’s the word.
- I must be gone.
 It were pity to cast them away for nothing, though between them and a great cause, they should be esteem’d nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying.
- She is cunning past man’s thought.
- 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 almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a show’r of rain as well as Jove.
- Would I had never seen her!
- O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work, which not to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel.
- Fulvia is dead.
- Sir?
- Fulvia is dead.
- Fulvia?
- Dead.
- 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 women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut, and the case to be lamented. This grief is crown’d with consolation: your old smock brings forth a new petticoat, and indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.
- The business she hath broached in the state
- Cannot endure my absence.
- And the business you have broach’d here cannot be without you, especially that of Cleopatra’s, which wholly depends on your abode.
- No more light answers. Let our officers
- Have notice what we purpose. I shall break
- The cause of our expedience to the Queen,
- And get her leave 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 Caesar, 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’ th’ 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 places under us require,
- Our quick remove from hence.
- I shall do’t.
Exeunt.
ANT.
ENO.
ANT. 1. ATT.
ANT. 2. ATT.
Scene 3
Alexandria. Another room in Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Alexas, and Iras.
CLEO.
CHAR.
ALEX.
IRAS.
- Where is he?
- I did not see him since.
- 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 Alexas.
ALEX.
- Madam, methinks if you did love him dearly,
- You do not hold the method to enforce
- The like from him.
- What should I do, I do not?
- In each thing give him way, cross him in nothing.
- Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.
- Tempt him not so too far; I wish, forbear.
- In time we hate that which we often fear.
-
Enter Antony.
ANT.
- But here comes Antony.
- I am sick and sullen.
- I am sorry to give breathing to my purpose—
- Help me away, dear Charmian, I shall fall.
- It cannot be thus long, the sides of nature
- Will not sustain it.
- Now, my dearest queen—
- Pray you stand farther from me.
- What’s the matter?
- I know by that same eye there’s some good news.
- What, says the married woman you may go?
- Would she had never given you leave to come!
- Let her not say ’tis I that keep you here,
- I have no power upon you; hers you are.
- The gods best know—
- O, never was there queen
- So mightily betrayed! Yet at the first
- I saw the treasons planted.
- Cleopatra—
- Why should I think you can be mine, and true
- (Though you in swearing shake the throned gods),
- Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness,
- To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
- Which break themselves in swearing!
- Most sweet queen—
- Nay, pray you seek no color for your going,
- But bid farewell, and go. When you sued staying,
- Then was the time for words; no going then;
- Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
- Bliss in our brows’ bent; none our parts so poor
- But was a race of heaven. They are so still,
- Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world,
- Art turn’d the greatest liar.
- How now, lady?
- I would I had thy inches, thou shouldst know
- There were a heart in Egypt.
- Hear me, Queen:
- The strong necessity of time commands
- Our services awhile; but my full heart
- Remains in use with you. Our Italy
- Shines o’er with civil swords; Sextus Pompeius
- Makes his approaches to the port of Rome;
- Equality of two domestic powers
- Breed scrupulous faction; the hated, grown to strength,
- Are newly grown to love; the condemn’d Pompey,
- Rich in his father’s honor, creeps apace
- Into the hearts of such as have not thrived
- Upon the present state, whose numbers threaten,
- And quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge
- By any desperate change. My more particular,
- And that which most with you should safe my going,
- Is Fulvia’s death.
- Though age from folly could not give me freedom,
- It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?
- She’s dead, my queen.
- Look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read
- The garboils she awak’d: at the last, best,
- See when and where she died.
- 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 receiv’d shall be.
- Quarrel no more, but be prepar’d to know
- The purposes I bear; which are, or cease,
- As you shall give th’ advice. By the fire
- That quickens Nilus’ slime, I go from hence
- Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war
- As thou affects.
- Cut my lace, Charmian, come!
- But let it be; I am quickly ill, and well,
- So Antony loves.
- My precious queen, forbear,
- And give true evidence to his love, which stands
- An honorable trial.
- 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
- Like perfect honor.
- You’ll heat my blood; no more.
- You can do better yet; but this is meetly.
- Now, by my sword—
- 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.
- I’ll leave you, lady.
- 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.
- But that your royalty
- Holds idleness your subject, I should take you
- For idleness itself.
- ’Tis sweating labor
- 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.  Upon your sword
- Sit laurel victory, and smooth success
- Be strew’d before your feet!
- Let us go. Come;
- Our separation so abides and flies,
- That thou residing here, goes yet with me;
- And I hence fleeting, here remain with thee.
- Away!
Exeunt.
CLEO.
CHAR.
ANT.
IRAS.
Scene 4
Rome. Octavius Caesar’s house.
Enter Octavius Caesar reading a letter, Lepidus, and their Train.
CAES.
LEP.
- 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 manlike
- Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolomy
- More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or
- Vouchsaf’d to think he had partners. You shall find there
- A man who is th’ abstract of all faults
- That all men follow.
- 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.
 Let’s grant it is not
- Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolomy,
- 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 smells 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 foils, 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 Caesar’s First Messenger.
1. CAES. MESS.
- Here’s more news.
- 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 belov’d of those
- That only have fear’d Caesar; to the ports
- The discontents repair, and men’s reports
- Give him much wrong’d.
- 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 lov’d 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.
Enter Caesar’s Second Messenger.
2. CAES. MESS.
- Caesar, I bring thee word
- Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,
- Makes 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.
- Antony,
- Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
- Was 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 brows’d. On the Alps
- It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
- Which some did die to look on; and all this
- (It wounds thine honor that I speak it now)
- Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
- So much as lank’d not.
- ’Tis pity of him.
- Let his shames quickly
- Drive him to Rome. ’Tis time we twain
- Did show ourselves i’ th’ field, and to that end
- Assemble we immediate council. Pompey
- Thrives in our idleness.
- Tomorrow, 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.
- Till which encounter,
- It is my business too. Farewell.
- Farewell, my lord. What you shall know mean time
- Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,
- To let me be partaker.
- Doubt not, sir,
- I knew it for my bond.
Exeunt.
CAES.
LEP.
1. CAES. MESS.
2. CAES. MESS.
Scene 5
Alexandria. Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, and Mardian.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
MAR.
- Charmian!
- Madam?
- Ha, ha!
- Give me to drink mandragora.
- Why, madam?
- That I might sleep out this great gap of time
- My Antony is away.
- You think of him too much.
- O, ’tis treason!
- Madam, I trust not so.
- Thou, eunuch Mardian!
- What’s your Highness’ pleasure?
- 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?
- Yes, gracious madam.
- Indeed?
- 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.
- 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 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 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 Antony.
ALEX.
- Sovereign of Egypt, hail!
- How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!
- Yet coming from him, that great med’cine hath
- With his tinct gilded thee.
- How goes it with my brave Mark Antony?
- Last thing he did, dear Queen,
- He kiss’d—the last of many doubled kisses—
- This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart.
- Mine ear must pluck it thence.
- “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.
- What, was he sad, or merry?
- Like to the time o’ th’ year between the extremes
- Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.
- 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’s else. Met’st thou my posts?
- Ay, madam, twenty several messengers.
- Why do you send so thick?
- 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?
- O that brave Caesar!
- Be chok’d with such another emphasis!
- Say “ the brave Antony.”
- The valiant Caesar!

- By your most gracious pardon,
- I sing but after you.
- 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.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
MAR.
ALEX.
Act 2
Scene 1
Messina. Pompey’s house.
Enter Pompey, Menecrates, and Menas, in warlike manner.
POM.
MENE.
MENAS.
- If the great gods be just, they shall assist
- The deeds of justest men.
- Know, worthy Pompey,
- That what they do delay, they not deny.
- Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays
- The thing we sue for.
- We, ignorant of ourselves,
- Beg often our own harms, which the wise pow’rs
- Deny us for our good; so find we profit
- By losing of our prayers.
- 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 th’ 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.
- Caesar and Lepidus
- Are in the field, a mighty strength they carry.
- Where have you this? ’Tis false.
- From Silvius, sir.
- He dreams; I know they are in Rome together,
- Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love,
- Salt Cleopatra, soften thy wan’d 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 honor,
- Even till a Lethe’d dullness—
-
Enter Varrius.
VAR.
- How now, Varrius?
- This is most certain that I shall deliver:
- Mark Antony is every hour in Rome
- Expected. Since he went from Egypt, ’tis
- A space for farther travel.
- I could have given less matter
- A better ear. Menas, I did not think
- This amorous surfeiter would have donn’d his helm
- For such a petty war. His soldiership
- Is twice the other twain; but let us rear
- The higher our opinion, that our stirring
- Can from the lap of Egypt’s widow pluck
- The ne’er-lust-wearied Antony.
- I cannot hope
- Caesar and Antony shall well greet together:
- His wife that’s dead did trespasses to Caesar;
- His brother warr’d upon him, although I think
- Not mov’d by Antony.
- I know not, Menas,
- How lesser enmities may give way to greater.
- Were’t not that we stand up against them all,
- ’Twere pregnant they should square between themselves,
- For they have entertained cause enough
- To draw their swords; but how the fear of us
- May cement their divisions, and bind up
- The petty difference, we yet not know.
- Be’t as our gods will have’t! It only stands
- Our lives upon to use our strongest hands.
- Come, Menas.
Exeunt.
POM.
MENE.
MENAS.
VAR.
Scene 2
Rome. The house of Lepidus.
Enter Enobarbus and Lepidus.
ENO.
LEP.
- Good Enobarbus, ’tis a worthy deed,
- And shall become you well, to entreat your captain
- To soft and gentle speech.
- I shall entreat him
- To answer like himself. If Caesar move him,
- Let Antony look over Caesar’s head
- And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter,
- Were I the wearer of Antonio’s beard,
- I would not shave’t today.
- ’Tis not a time
- For private stomaching.
- Every time
- Serves for the matter that is then born in’t.
- But small to greater matters must give way.
- Not if the small come first.
 Here comes
- The noble Antony.
Enter Antony and Ventidius.
ANT.
VEN.
- And yonder, Caesar.
Enter Caesar, Maecenas, and Agrippa.
CAES.
MAEC.
AGR.
- If we compose well here, to Parthia.
- Hark, Ventidius.
- I do not know,
- Maecenas; ask Agrippa.
- Noble friends,
- That which combin’d us was most great, and let not
- A leaner action rend us. What’s amiss,
- May it be gently heard. When we debate
- Our trivial difference loud, we do commit
- Murder in healing wounds. Then, noble partners,
- The rather for I earnestly beseech,
- Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,
- Nor curstness grow to th’ matter.
- ’Tis spoken well.
- Were we before our armies, and to fight,
- I should do thus.
Flourish.
ANT.
- Welcome to Rome.
- Thank you.
- Sit.
- Sit, sir.
- Nay then.
- I learn you take things ill which are not so—
- Or being, concern you not.
- I must be laugh’d at
- If, or for nothing or a little, I
- Should say myself offended, and with you
- Chiefly i’ th’ world; more laugh’d at, that I should
- Once name you derogately, when to sound your name
- It not concern’d me.
- My being in Egypt, Caesar,
- What was’t to you?
- No more than my residing here at Rome
- Might be to you in Egypt; yet if you there
- Did practice on my state, your being in Egypt
- Might be my question.
- How intend you, practic’d?
- You may be pleas’d to catch at mine intent
- By what did here befall me. Your wife and brother
- Made wars upon me, and their contestation
- Was theme for you—you were the word of war.
- You do mistake your business, my brother never
- Did urge me in his act. I did inquire it,
- And have my learning from some true reports
- That drew their swords with you. Did he not rather
- Discredit my authority with yours,
- And make the wars alike against my stomach,
- Having alike your cause? Of this my letters
- Before did satisfy you. If you’ll patch a quarrel,
- As matter whole you have to make it with,
- It must not be with this.
- You praise yourself
- By laying defects of judgment to me; but
- You patch’d up your excuses.
- Not so, not so:
- I know you could not lack, I am certain on’t,
- Very necessity of this thought, that I,
- Your partner in the cause ’gainst which he fought,
- Could not with graceful eyes attend those wars
- Which fronted mine own peace. As for my wife,
- I would you had her spirit in such another;
- The third o’ th’ world is yours, which with a snaffle
- You may pace easy, but not such a wife.
- Would we had all such wives, that the men might go to wars with the women!
- So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar,
- Made out of her impatience—which not wanted
- Shrewdness of policy too—I grieving grant
- Did you too much disquiet. For that you must
- But say I could not help it.
- I wrote to you,
- When rioting in Alexandria you
- Did pocket up my letters; and with taunts
- Did gibe my missive out of audience.
- Sir,
- He fell upon me, ere admitted, then;
- Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want
- Of what I was i’ th’ morning; but next day
- I told him of myself, which was as much
- As to have ask’d him pardon. Let this fellow
- Be nothing of our strife; if we contend,
- Out of our question wipe him.
- You have broken
- The article of your oath, which you shall never
- Have tongue to charge me with.
- Soft, Caesar!
- No, Lepidus, let him speak.
- The honor is sacred which he talks on now,
- Supposing that I lack’d it. But on, Caesar,
- The article of my oath.
- To lend me arms and aid when I requir’d them,
- The which you both denied.
- Neglected, rather;
- And then when poisoned hours had bound me up
- From mine own knowledge. As nearly as I may,
- I’ll play the penitent to you; but mine honesty
- Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power
- Work without it. Truth is, that Fulvia,
- To have me out of Egypt, made wars here;
- For which myself, the ignorant motive, do
- So far ask pardon as befits mine honor
- To stoop in such a case.
- ’Tis noble spoken.
- If it might please you, to enforce no further
- The griefs between ye: to forget them quite
- Were to remember that the present need
- Speaks to atone you.
- Worthily spoken, Maecenas.
- Or, if you borrow one another’s love for the instant, you may, when you hear no more words of Pompey, return it again. You shall have time to wrangle in when you have nothing else to do.
- Thou art a soldier only, speak no more.
- That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.
- You wrong this presence, therefore speak no more.
- Go to then—your considerate stone.
- I do not much dislike the matter, but
- The manner of his speech; for’t cannot be
- We shall remain in friendship, our conditions
- So diff’ring in their acts. Yet if I knew
- What hoop should hold us staunch from edge to edge
- A’ th’ world, I would pursue it.
- Give me leave, Caesar—
- Speak, Agrippa.
- Thou hast a sister by the mother’s side,
- Admir’d Octavia. Great Mark Antony
- Is now a widower.
- Say not so, Agrippa;
- If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof
- Were well deserv’d of rashness.
- I am not married, Caesar;
- Let me hear Agrippa further speak.
- To hold you in perpetual amity,
- To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts
- With an unslipping knot, take Antony
- Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims
- No worse a husband than the best of men;
- Whose virtue and whose general graces speak
- That which none else can utter. By this marriage,
- All little jealousies, which now seem great,
- And all great fears, which now import their dangers,
- Would then be nothing. Truths would be tales,
- Where now half tales be truths. Her love to both
- Would each to other and all loves to both
- Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke,
- For ’tis a studied, not a present thought,
- By duty ruminated.
- Will Caesar speak?
- Not till he hears how Antony is touch’d
- With what is spoke already.
- What power is in Agrippa,
- If I would say, “Agrippa, be it so,”
- To make this good?
- The power of Caesar, and
- His power unto Octavia.
- May I never
- (To this good purpose, that so fairly shows)
- Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand
- Further this act of grace; and from this hour
- The heart of brothers govern in our loves,
- And sway our great designs!
- There’s my hand.
- A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother
- Did ever love so dearly. Let her live
- To join our kingdoms and our hearts, and never
- Fly off our loves again!
- Happily, amen!
- I did not think to draw my sword ’gainst Pompey,
- For he hath laid strange courtesies and great
- Of late upon me. I must thank him only,
- Lest my remembrance suffer ill report;
- At heel of that, defy him.
- Time calls upon ’s.
- Of us must Pompey presently be sought,
- Or else he seeks out us.
- Where lies he?
- About the Mount Misena.
- What is his strength by land?
- Great, and increasing; but by sea
- He is an absolute master.
- So is the fame.
- Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it,
- Yet ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we
- The business we have talk’d of.
- With most gladness,
- And do invite you to my sister’s view,
- Whither straight I’ll lead you.
- Let us, Lepidus,
- Not lack your company.
- Noble Antony,
- Not sickness should detain me.
Flourish. Exeunt omnes. Manent Enobarbus, Agrippa, Maecenas.
CAES.
ANT.
VEN.
LEP.
- Welcome from Egypt, sir.
- Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Maecenas! My honorable friend, Agrippa!
- Good Enobarbus!
- We have cause to be glad that matters are so well digested. You stay’d well by’t in Egypt.
- Ay, sir, we did sleep day out of countenance, and made the night light with drinking.
- Eight wild-boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and but twelve persons there; is this true?
- This was but as a fly by an eagle; we had much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserv’d noting.
- She’s a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her.
- When she first met Mark Antony, she purs’d up his heart upon the river of Cydnus.
- There she appear’d indeed; or my reporter devis’d well for her.
- I will tell you.
- The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
- Burnt on the water. The poop was beaten gold,
- Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
- The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
- Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
- The water which they beat to follow faster,
- As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
- It beggar’d all description: she did lie
- In her pavilion—cloth of gold, of tissue—
- O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
- The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
- Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
- With divers-color’d fans, whose wind did seem
- To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
- And what they undid did.
- O, rare for Antony!
- Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
- So many mermaids, tended her i’ th’ eyes,
- And made their bends adornings. At the helm
- A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
- Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
- That yarely frame the office. From the barge
- A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
- Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
- Her people out upon her; and Antony
- Enthron’d i’ th’ market-place, did sit alone,
- Whistling to th’ air, which, but for vacancy,
- Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
- And made a gap in nature.
- Rare Egyptian!
- Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
- Invited her to supper. She replied,
- It should be better he became her guest;
- Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,
- Whom ne’er the word of “No” woman heard speak,
- Being barber’d ten times o’er, goes to the feast;
- And for his ordinary pays his heart
- For what his eyes eat only.
- Royal wench!
- She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed;
- He ploughed her, and she cropp’d.
- I saw her once
- Hop forty paces through the public street;
- And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
- That she did make defect perfection,
- And breathless, pow’r breathe forth.
- Now Antony
- Must leave her utterly.
- Never, he will not:
- Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
- Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
- The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
- Where most she satisfies; for vildest things
- Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
- Bless her when she is riggish.
- If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
- The heart of Antony, Octavia is
- A blessed lottery to him.
- Let us go.
- Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest
- Whilst you abide here.
- Humbly, sir, I thank you.
Exeunt.
ENO.
MAEC.
AGR.
Scene 3
Rome. Octavius Caesar’s house.
Enter Antony, Caesar, Octavia between them.
ANT.
CAES.
OCT.
- The world and my great office will sometimes
- Divide me from your bosom.
- All which time
- Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers
- To them for you.
- Good night, sir. My Octavia,
- Read not my blemishes in the world’s report.
- I have not kept my square, but that to come
- Shall all be done by th’ rule. Good night, dear lady.
- Good night, sir.
- Good night.
Exit with Octavia.
CAES.
OCT.
Enter Soothsayer.
SOOTH.
- Now, sirrah; you do wish yourself in Egypt?
- Would I had never come from thence, nor you thither.
- If you can, your reason?
- I see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue;
- But yet hie you to Egypt again.
- Say to me, whose fortunes shall rise higher,
- Caesar’s or mine?
- Caesar’s.
- Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side.
- Thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee, is
- Noble, courageous, high unmatchable,
- Where Caesar’s is not; but near him, thy angel
- Becomes a fear, as being o’erpow’r’d: therefore
- Make space enough between you.
- Speak this no more.
- To none but thee; no more but when to thee.
- If thou dost play with him at any game,
- Thou art sure to lose; and of that natural luck,
- He beats thee ’gainst the odds. Thy lustre thickens
- When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit
- Is all afraid to govern thee near him;
- But he away, ’tis noble.
- Get thee gone.
- Say to Ventidius I would speak with him.
-
Exit Soothsayer.
SOOTH.
- He shall to Parthia. Be it art or hap,
- He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him,
- And in our sports my better cunning faints
- Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds;
- His cocks do win the battle still of mine,
- When it is all to nought; and his quails ever
- Beat mine, inhoop’d, at odds. I will to Egypt;
- And though I make this marriage for my peace,
- I’ th’ East my pleasure lies.
-
Enter Ventidius.
VEN.
- O, come, Ventidius,
- You must to Parthia. Your commission’s ready;
- Follow me, and receive’t.
Exeunt.
ANT.
VEN.
Scene 4
Rome. A street.
Enter Lepidus, Maecenas, and Agrippa.
LEP.
MAEC.
AGR.
- Trouble yourselves no further; pray you hasten
- Your generals after.
- Sir, Mark Antony
- Will e’en but kiss Octavia, and we’ll follow.
- Till I shall see you in your soldier’s dress,
- Which will become you both, farewell.
- We shall,
- As I conceive the journey, be at the Mount
- Before you, Lepidus.
- Your way is shorter,
- My purposes do draw me much about.
- You’ll win two days upon me.
- Sir, good success!
- Farewell.
Exeunt.
LEP.
MAEC.
AGR.
Scene 5
Alexandria. Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, and Alexas.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
ALEX.
- Give me some music; music, moody food
- Of us that trade in love.
- The music, ho!
Enter Mardian the Eunuch.
MAR.
- Let it alone, let’s to billards. Come, Charmian.
- My arm is sore, best play with Mardian.
- As well a woman with an eunuch play’d
- As with a woman. Come, you’ll play with me, sir?
- As well as I can, madam.
- And when good will is show’d, though’t come too short,
- The actor may plead pardon. I’ll none now.
- Give me mine angle, we’ll to th’ river; there,
- My music playing far off, I will betray
- Tawny-finn’d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce
- Their slimy jaws; and as I draw them up,
- I’ll think them every one an Antony,
- And say, “Ah, ha! Y’ are caught.”
- ’Twas merry when
- You wager’d on your angling; when your diver
- Did hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he
- With fervency drew up.
- That time? O times!
- I laugh’d him out of patience; and that night
- I laugh’d him into patience; and next morn,
- Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;
- Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
- I wore his sword Philippan.
-
Enter an Egyptian Messenger.
EGYPT. MESS.
- O, from Italy!
- Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears,
- That long time have been barren.
- Madam, madam—
- Antonio’s dead! If thou say so, villain,
- Thou kill’st thy mistress; but well and free,
- If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here
- My bluest veins to kiss—a hand that kings
- Have lipp’d, and trembled kissing.
- First, madam, he is well.
- Why, there’s more gold.
- But, sirrah, mark, we use
- To say the dead are well. Bring it to that,
- The gold I give thee will I melt and pour
- Down thy ill-uttering throat.
- Good madam, hear me.
- Well, go to, I will.
- But there’s no goodness in thy face, if Antony
- Be free and healthful—so tart a favor
- To trumpet such good tidings! If not well,
- Thou shouldst come like a Fury crown’d with snakes,
- Not like a formal man.
- Will’t please you hear me?
- I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak’st;
- Yet if thou say Antony lives, ’tis well,
- Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him,
- I’ll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail
- Rich pearls upon thee.
- Madam, he’s well.
- Well said.
- And friends with Caesar.
- Th’ art an honest man.
- Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.
- Make thee a fortune from me.
- But yet, madam—
- I do not like “but yet,” it does allay
- The good precedence; fie upon ’but yet’!
- “But yet” is as a jailer to bring forth
- Some monstrous malefactor. Prithee, friend,
- Pour out the pack of matter to mine ear,
- The good and bad together: he’s friends with Caesar,
- In state of health thou say’st, and thou say’st free.
- Free, madam, no; I made no such report.
- He’s bound unto Octavia.
- For what good turn?
- For the best turn i’ th’ bed.
- I am pale, Charmian.
- Madam, he’s married to Octavia.
- The most infectious pestilence upon thee!
Strikes him down.
CLEO.
EGYPT. MESS.
- Good madam, patience.
- What say you?
-
Strikes him.
CLEO.
EGYPT. MESS.
 MESS.
- Thou shalt be whipt with wire, and stew’d in brine,
- Smarting in ling’ring pickle.
- Gracious madam,
- I that do bring the news made not the match.
- Say ’tis not so, a province I will give thee,
- And make thy fortunes proud; the blow thou hadst
- Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage,
- And I will boot thee with what gift beside
- Thy modesty can beg.
- He’s married, madam.
- Rogue, thou hast liv’d too long.
Draw a knife.
CLEO.
- Nay then I’ll run.
- What mean you, madam? I have made no fault.
Exit.
EGYPT. MESS.
- Good madam, keep yourself within yourself,
- The man is innocent.
- Some innocents scape not the thunderbolt.
- Melt Egypt into Nile! And kindly creatures
- Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again,
- Though I am mad, I will not bite him. Call!
- He is afeard to come.
- I will not hurt him.
- These hands do lack nobility that they strike
- A meaner than myself, since I myself
- Have given myself the cause. Come hither, sir.
-
Enter the Egyptian Messenger again.
EGYPT. MESS.
- Though it be honest, it is never good
- To bring bad news. Give to a gracious message
- An host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell
- Themselves when they be felt.
- I have done my duty.
- Is he married?
- I cannot hate thee worser than I do,
- If thou again say yes.
- He’s married, madam.
- The gods confound thee, dost thou hold there still?
- Should I lie, madam?
- O, I would thou didst;
- So half my Egypt were submerg’d and made
- A cistern for scal’d snakes! Go get thee hence!
- Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me
- Thou wouldst appear most ugly. He is married?
- I crave your Highness’ pardon.
- He is married?
- Take no offense that I would not offend you;
- To punish me for what you make me do
- Seems much unequal. He’s married to Octavia.
- O, that his fault should make a knave of thee,
- That art not what th’ art sure of. Get thee hence;
- The merchandise which thou hast brought from Rome
- Are all too dear for me.
Exit Egyptian Messenger.
EGYPT. MESS.
- Good your Highness, patience.
- In praising Antony I have disprais’d Caesar.
- Many times, madam.
- I am paid for’t now.
- Lead me from hence;
- I faint, O Iras, Charmian! ’Tis no matter.
- Go to the fellow, good Alexas, bid him
- Report the feature of Octavia, her years,
- Her inclination; let him not leave out
- The color of her hair. Bring me word quickly.
-
Exit Alexas.
ALEX.
- Let him forever go—let him not, Charmian—
- Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,
- The other way’s a Mars.
-
To Mardian.
CLEO.
MAR.
- Bid you Alexas
- Bring me word how tall she is. Pity me, Charmian,
- But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.
Exeunt.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
MAR.
Scene 6
Near Misenum.
Flourish. Enter Pompey, Menas at one door, with Drum and Trumpet: at another, Caesar, Lepidus, Antony, Enobarbus, Maecenas, Agrippa, with Soldiers marching.
POM.
MENAS.
CAES.
LEP.
ANT.
ENO.
MAEC.
AGR.
- Your hostages I have, so have you mine;
- And we shall talk before we fight.
- Most meet
- That first we come to words, and therefore have we
- Our written purposes before us sent,
- Which if thou hast considered, let us know
- If ’twill tie up thy discontented sword,
- And carry back to Sicily much tall youth
- That else must perish here.
- To you all three,
- The senators alone of this great world,
- Chief factors for the gods: I do not know
- Wherefore my father should revengers want,
- Having a son and friends, since Julius Caesar,
- Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted,
- There saw you laboring for him. What was’t
- That mov’d pale Cassius to conspire? And what
- Made all-honor’d, honest, Roman Brutus,
- With the arm’d rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom,
- To drench the Capitol, but that they would
- Have one man but a man? And that is it
- Hath made me rig my navy, at whose burden
- The anger’d ocean foams, with which I meant
- To scourge th’ ingratitude that despiteful Rome
- Cast on my noble father.
- Take your time.
- Thou canst not fear us, Pompey, with thy sails;
- We’ll speak with thee at sea. At land, thou know’st
- How much we do o’er-count thee.
- At land indeed
- Thou dost o’er-count me of my father’s house;
- But since the cuckoo builds not for himself,
- Remain in’t as thou mayst.
- Be pleas’d to tell us
- (For this is from the present) how you take
- The offers we have sent you.
- There’s the point.
- Which do not be entreated to, but weigh
- What it is worth embrac’d.
- And what may follow,
- To try a larger fortune.
- You have made me offer
- Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must
- Rid all the sea of pirates; then, to send
- Measures of wheat to Rome. This ’greed upon,
- To part with unhack’d edges and bear back
- Our targes undinted.
- That’s our offer.
- Know then
- I came before you here a man prepar’d
- To take this offer; but Mark Antony
- Put me to some impatience. Though I lose
- The praise of it by telling, you must know,
- When Caesar and your brother were at blows,
- Your mother came to Sicily and did find
- Her welcome friendly.
- I have heard it, Pompey,
- And am well studied for a liberal thanks,
- Which I do owe you.
- Let me have your hand.
- I did not think, sir, to have met you here.
- The beds i’ th’ East are soft, and thanks to you,
- That call’d me timelier than my purpose hither;
- For I have gain’d by’t.
- Since I saw you last,
- There’s a change upon you.
- Well, I know not
- What counts harsh Fortune casts upon my face,
- But in my bosom shall she never come,
- To make my heart her vassal.
- Well met here.
- I hope so, Lepidus. Thus we are agreed.
- I crave our composition may be written
- And seal’d between us.
- That’s the next to do.
- We’ll feast each other ere we part, and let’s
- Draw lots who shall begin.
- That will I, Pompey.
- No, Antony, take the lot; but first
- Or last, your fine Egyptian cookery
- Shall have the fame. I have heard that Julius Caesar
- Grew fat with feasting there.
- You have heard much.
- I have fair meanings, sir.
- And fair words to them.
- Then so much have I heard;
- And I have heard, Apollodorus carried—
- No more of that; he did so.
- What, I pray you?
- A certain queen to Caesar in a mattress.
- I know thee now: how far’st thou, soldier?
- Well,
- And well am like to do, for I perceive
- Four feasts are toward.
- Let me shake thy hand,
- I never hated thee. I have seen thee fight,
- When I have envied thy behavior.
- Sir,
- I never lov’d you much, but I ha’ prais’d ye
- When you have well deserv’d ten times as much
- As I have said you did.
- Enjoy thy plainness,
- It nothing ill becomes thee.
- Aboard my galley I invite you all.
- Will you lead, lords?
- Show ’s the way, sir.
- Come.
Exeunt. Manent Enobarbus and Menas.
POM.
CAES.
LEP.
ANT.
MAEC.
AGR.
-
Aside.
MENAS.
- Thy father, Pompey, would ne’er have made this treaty.—You and I have known, sir.
- At sea, I think.
- We have, sir.
- You have done well by water.

- I will praise any man that will praise me, though it cannot be denied what I have done by land.
- Nor what I have done by water.
- Yes, something you can deny for your own safety: you have been a great thief by sea.

- There I deny my land service. But give me your hand, Menas; if our eyes had authority, here they might take two thieves kissing.
- All men’s faces are true, whatsome’er their hands are.
- But there is never a fair woman has a true face.
- No slander, they steal hearts.
- We came hither to fight with you.
- For my part, I am sorry it is turn’d to a drinking. Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.
- If he do, sure he cannot weep’t back again.
- Y’ have said, sir. We look’d not for Mark Antony here. Pray you, is he married to Cleopatra?
- Caesar’s sister is call’d Octavia.
- True, sir, she was the wife of Caius Marcellus.
- But she is now the wife of Marcus Antonius.
- Pray ye, sir?
- ’Tis true.
- Then is Caesar and he forever knit together.
- If I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not prophesy so.
- I think the policy of that purpose made more in the marriage than the love of the parties.
- I think so too. But you shall find the band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity. Octavia is of a holy, cold, and still conversation.
- Who would not have his wife so?
- Not he that himself is not so; which is Mark Antony. He will to his Egyptian dish again. Then shall the sighs of Octavia blow the fire up in Caesar, and (as I said before) that which is the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author of their variance. Antony will use his affection where it is; he married but his occasion here.
- And thus it may be. Come, sir, will you aboard? I have a health for you.
- I shall take it, sir; we have us’d our throats in Egypt.
- Come, let’s away.
Exeunt.
ENO.
MENAS.
Scene 7
On board Pompey’s galley, off Misenum.
Music plays.
Enter two or three Servants with a banquet.
POM. 1. SERV.
POM. 2. SERV.
- Here they’ll be, man. Some o’ their plants are ill rooted already, the least wind i’ th’ world will blow them down.
- Lepidus is high-color’d.
- They have made him drink alms-drink.
- As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out, “No more”; reconciles them to his entreaty, and himself to th’ drink.
- But it raises the greater war between him and his discretion.
- Why, this it is to have a name in great men’s fellowship. I had as live have a reed that will do me no service as a partisan I could not heave.
- To be call’d into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in’t, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks.
A sennet sounded. Enter Caesar, Antony, Pompey, Lepidus, Agrippa, Maecenas, Enobarbus, Menas, with other Captains.
CAES.
ANT.
POM.
LEP.
AGR.
MAEC.
ENO.
MENAS.
Captains
-
To Caesar.
ANT.
CAES.
- Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o’ th’ Nile
- By certain scales i’ th’ pyramid; they know,
- By th’ height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth
- Or foison follow. The higher Nilus swells,
- The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman
- Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,
- And shortly comes to harvest.
- Y’ have strange serpents there?
- Ay, Lepidus.
- Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun. So is your crocodile.
- They are so.
- Sit—and some wine! A health to Lepidus!
- I am not so well as I should be; but I’ll ne’er out.
- Not till you have slept; I fear me you’ll be in till then.
- Nay certainly, I have heard the Ptolomies’ pyramises are very goodly things; without contradiction, I have heard that.
-
Aside to Pompey.
MENAS.
POM.
- Pompey, a word.
-
Aside to Menas.
POM.
MENAS.
- Say in mine ear, what is’t.
-
Whispers in ’s ear.
MENAS.
POM.
- Forsake thy seat, I do beseech thee, captain,
- And hear me speak a word.
-
Aside to Menas.
POM.
MENAS.
- Forbear me till anon.—
- This wine for Lepidus!
- What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?
- It is shap’d, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
- What color is it of?
- Of it own color too.
- ’Tis a strange serpent.
- ’Tis so, and the tears of it are wet.
- Will this description satisfy him?
- With the health that Pompey gives him, else he is a very epicure.
Menas whispers again.
MENAS.
POM.
-
Aside to Menas.
POM.
MENAS.
- Go hang, sir, hang! Tell me of that? Away!
- Do as I bid you.—Where’s this cup I call’d for?
-
Aside to Pompey.
MENAS.
POM.
- If for the sake of merit thou wilt hear me,
- Rise from thy stool.
-
Aside to Menas.
POM.
MENAS.
- I think th’ art mad. The matter?
Rises and walks aside.
POM.

- Thou hast serv’d me with much faith; what’s else to say?—
- Be jolly, lords.
- These quicksands, Lepidus,
- Keep off them, for you sink.
- Wilt thou be lord of all the world?
- What say’st thou?
- Wilt thou be lord of the whole world? That’s twice.
- How should that be?
- But entertain it,
- And though thou think me poor, I am the man
- Will give thee all the world.
- Hast thou drunk well?
- No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup.
- Thou art, if thou dar’st be, the earthly Jove.
- What e’er the ocean pales, or sky inclips,
- Is thine, if thou wilt ha’t.
- Show me which way.
- These three world-sharers, these competitors,
- Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable,
- And when we are put off, fall to their throats:
- All there is thine.
- Ah, this thou shouldst have done,
- And not have spoke on’t! In me ’tis villainy,
- In thee’t had been good service. Thou must know,
- ’Tis not my profit that does lead mine honor;
- Mine honor, it. Repent that e’er thy tongue
- Hath so betray’d thine act. Being done unknown,
- I should have found it afterwards well done,
- But must condemn it now. Desist, and drink.
-
Aside.
MENAS.
- For this,
- I’ll never follow thy pall’d fortunes more.
- Who seeks, and will not take when once ’tis offer’d,
- Shall never find it more.
- This health to Lepidus!
- Bear him ashore. I’ll pledge it for him, Pompey.
- Here’s to thee, Menas!
- Enobarbus, welcome!
- Fill till the cup be hid.
- There’s a strong fellow, Menas.
Pointing to the Attendant who carries off Lepidus.
ENO.
Attendant
Attendant
LEP.
- Why?
- ’A bears the third part of the world, man; seest not?
- The third part then is drunk. Would it were all,
- That it might go on wheels!
- Drink thou; increase the reels.
- Come.
- This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.
- It ripens towards it. Strike the vessels ho!
- Here’s to Caesar!
- I could well forbear’t.

- Be a child o’ th’ time.
- Possess it, I’ll make answer.
- But I had rather fast from all, four days,
- Than drink so much in one.
-
To Antony.
ENO.
ANT.
- Ha, my brave emperor!
- Shall we dance now the Egyptian bacchanals
- And celebrate our drink?
- Let’s ha’t, good soldier.
- Come, let’s all take hands,
- Till that the conquering wine hath steep’d our sense
- In soft and delicate Lethe.
- All take hands.
- Make battery to our ears with the loud music;
- The while I’ll place you, then the boy shall sing.
- The holding every man shall bear as loud
- As his strong sides can volley.
-
Music plays.
-
Enobarbus places them hand in hand.
ENO.
-
The Song
ENO.
- Come, thou monarch of the vine,
- Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!
- In thy fats our cares be drown’d,
- With thy grapes our hairs be crown’d!
- Cup us till the world go round,
- Cup us till the world go round!
- What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good brother,
- Let me request you off, our graver business
- Frowns at this levity. Gentle lords, let’s part,
- You see we have burnt our cheeks. Strong Enobarb
- Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue
- Spleets what it speaks; the wild disguise hath almost
- Antick’d us all. What needs more words? Good night.
- Good Antony, your hand.
- I’ll try you on the shore.

- O Antony,
- You have my father’s house—But what, we are friends?
- Come down into the boat.
- Take heed you fall not.
-
Exeunt all but Enobarbus and Menas.
CAES.
ANT.
POM.
LEP.
AGR.
MAEC.
Captains
- Menas, I’ll not on shore.
- No, to my cabin.
- These drums, these trumpets, flutes! What!
- Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell
- To these great fellows. Sound and be hang’d, sound out!
Sound a flourish, with drums.
MENAS.
- Hoo, says ’a. There’s my cap.
- Ho, noble captain, come.
Exeunt.
ENO.
MENAS.
Act 3
Scene 1
A plain in Syria.
Enter Ventidius as it were in triumph with Silius and other Romans, Officers, and Soldiers, the dead body of Pacorus borne before him.
VEN.
SIL.
Romans
Officers
Soldiers
The dead body of Pacorus
- Now, darting Parthia, art thou struck, and now
- Pleas’d Fortune does of Marcus Crassus’ death
- Make me revenger. Bear the King’s son’s body
- Before our army. Thy Pacorus, Orodes,
- Pays this for Marcus Crassus.
- Noble Ventidius,
- Whilst yet with Parthian blood thy sword is warm,
- The fugitive Parthians follow. Spur through Media,
- Mesopotamia, and the shelters whither
- The routed fly; so thy grand captain, Antony,
- Shall set thee on triumphant chariots, and
- Put garlands on thy head.
- O Silius, Silius,
- I have done enough; a lower place, note well,
- May make too great an act. For learn this, Silius:
- Better to leave undone, than by our deed
- Acquire too high a fame when him we serve’s away.
 Sossius,
- One of my place in Syria, his lieutenant,
- For quick accumulation of renown,
- Which he achiev’d by th’ minute, lost his favor.
- Who does i’ th’ wars more than his captain can
- Becomes his captain’s captain; and ambition
- (The soldier’s virtue) rather makes choice of loss
- Than gain which darkens him.
- I could do more to do Antonius good,
- But ’twould offend him; and in his offense
- Should my performance perish.
- Thou hast, Ventidius, that
- Without the which a soldier and his sword
- Grants scarce distinction. Thou wilt write to Antony?
- I’ll humbly signify what in his name,
- That magical word of war, we have effected;
- How with his banners, and his well-paid ranks,
- The ne’er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia
- We have jaded out o’ th’ field.
- Where is he now?
- He purposeth to Athens, whither, with what haste
- The weight we must convey with ’s will permit,
- We shall appear before him. On, there, pass along!
Exeunt.
VEN.
SIL.
Romans
Officers
Soldiers
The dead body of Pacorus
Scene 2
Rome. An ante-chamber in Octavius Caesar’s house.
Enter Agrippa at one door, Enobarbus at another.
AGR.
ENO.
- What, are the brothers parted?
- They have dispatch’d with Pompey, he is gone;
- The other three are sealing. Octavia weeps
- To part from Rome; Caesar is sad, and Lepidus,
- Since Pompey’s feast, as Menas says, is troubled
- With the green-sickness.
- ’Tis a noble Lepidus.
- A very fine one. O, how he loves Caesar!
- Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony!
- Caesar? Why, he’s the Jupiter of men.
- What’s Antony? The god of Jupiter.
- Spake you of Caesar? How, the nonpareil!
- O Antony! O thou Arabian bird!
- Would you praise Caesar, say “Caesar,” go no further.
- Indeed he plied them both with excellent praises.
- But he loves Caesar best, yet he loves Antony.
- Hoo, hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards, poets, cannot
- Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number, hoo!
- His love to Antony. But as for Caesar,
- Kneel down, kneel down, and wonder.
- Both he loves.
- They are his shards, and he their beetle, so.
-
Trumpet within.
- This is to horse. Adieu, noble Agrippa.
- Good fortune, worthy soldier, and farewell.
-
Enter Caesar, Antony, Lepidus, and Octavia.
CAES.
ANT.
LEP.
OCT.
- No further, sir.
- You take from me a great part of myself;
- Use me well in’t. Sister, prove such a wife
- As my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest band
- Shall pass on thy approof. Most noble Antony,
- Let not the piece of virtue which is set
- Betwixt us, as the cement of our love
- To keep it builded, be the ram to batter
- The fortress of it; for better might we
- Have lov’d without this mean, if on both parts
- This be not cherish’d.
- Make me not offended
- In your distrust.
- I have said.
- You shall not find,
- Though you be therein curious, the least cause
- For what you seem to fear. So the gods keep you,
- And make the hearts of Romans serve your ends!
- We will here part.
- Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well,
- The elements be kind to thee, and make
- Thy spirits all of comfort! Fare thee well.
- My noble brother!
- The April’s in her eyes, it is love’s spring,
- And these the showers to bring it on. Be cheerful.
- Sir, look well to my husband’s house; and—
- What,
- Octavia?
- I’ll tell you in your ear.
- Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
- Her heart inform her tongue—the swan’s down feather,
- That stands upon the swell at the full of tide,
- And neither way inclines.
-
Aside to Agrippa.
ENO.
AGR.
- Will Caesar weep?
-
Aside to Enobarbus.
AGR.
ENO.
- He has a cloud in ’s face.
-
Aside to Agrippa.
ENO.
AGR.
- He were the worse for that were he a horse;
- So is he being a man.
-
Aside to Enobarbus.
AGR.
ENO.
- Why, Enobarbus?
- When Antony found Julius Caesar dead,
- He cried almost to roaring; and he wept
- When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.
-
Aside to Agrippa.
ENO.
AGR.
- That year indeed he was troubled with a rheum;
- What willingly he did confound he wail’d,
- Believe’t—till I weep too.
- No, sweet Octavia,
- You shall hear from me still; the time shall not
- Outgo my thinking on you.
- Come, sir, come,
- I’ll wrestle with you in my strength of love.

- Adieu, be happy.
- Let all the number of the stars give light
- To thy fair way.
- Farewell, farewell.
Kisses Octavia.
CAES.
OCT.
- Farewell.
Trumpets sound. Exeunt.
AGR.
ENO.
CAES.
ANT.
LEP.
OCT.
Scene 3
Alexandria. Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, and Alexas.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
ALEX.
- Where is the fellow?
- Half afeard to come.
- Go to, go to. Come hither, sir.
Enter the Egyptian Messenger as before.
EGYPT. MESS.
- Good Majesty!
- Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you
- But when you are well pleas’d.
- That Herod’s head
- I’ll have; but how, when Antony is gone,
- Through whom I might command it? Come thou near.
- Most gracious Majesty!
- Didst thou behold Octavia?
- Ay, dread Queen.
- Where?
- Madam, in Rome;
- I look’d her in the face, and saw her led
- Between her brother and Mark Antony.
- Is she as tall as me?
- She is not, madam.
- Didst hear her speak? Is she shrill-tongu’d or low?
- Madam, I heard her speak; she is low-voic’d.
- That’s not so good. He cannot like her long.
- Like her? O Isis! ’Tis impossible.
- I think so, Charmian: dull of tongue, and dwarfish.
- What majesty is in her gait? Remember,
- If e’er thou look’st on majesty.
- She creeps;
- Her motion and her station are as one;
- She shows a body rather than a life,
- A statue, than a breather.
- Is this certain?
- Or I have no observance.
- Three in Egypt
- Cannot make better note.
- He’s very knowing,
- I do perceive’t. There’s nothing in her yet.
- The fellow has good judgment.
- Excellent.
- Guess at her years, I prithee.
- Madam,
- She was a widow—
- Widow? Charmian, hark.
- And I do think she’s thirty.
- Bear’st thou her face in mind? Is’t long or round?
- Round, even to faultiness.
- For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so.
- Her hair, what color?
- Brown, madam; and her forehead
- As low as she would wish it.
- There’s gold for thee,
- Thou must not take my former sharpness ill.
- I will employ thee back again; I find thee
- Most fit for business. Go, make thee ready,
- Our letters are prepar’d.
Exit Egyptian Messenger.
EGYPT. MESS.
- A proper man.
- Indeed he is so; I repent me much
- That so I harried him. Why, methinks, by him,
- This creature’s no such thing.
- Nothing, madam.
- The man hath seen some majesty, and should know.
- Hath he seen majesty? Isis else defend!

- I have one thing more to ask him yet, good Charmian—
- But ’tis no matter, thou shalt bring him to me
- Where I will write. All may be well enough.
- I warrant you, madam.
Exeunt.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
ALEX.
Scene 4
Athens. A room in Antony’s house.
Enter Antony and Octavia.
ANT.
OCT.
- Nay, nay, Octavia, not only that—
- That were excusable, that, and thousands more
- Of semblable import—but he hath wag’d
- New wars ’gainst Pompey; made his will, and read it
- To public ear;
- Spoke scantly of me; when perforce he could not
- But pay me terms of honor, cold and sickly
- He vented them, most narrow measure lent me;
- When the best hint was given him, he not took’t,
- Or did it from his teeth.
- O my good lord,
- Believe not all, or if you must believe,
- Stomach not all. A more unhappy lady,
- If this division chance, ne’er stood between,
- Praying for both parts.
- The good gods will mock me presently,
- When I shall pray, “O, bless my lord and husband!”
- Undo that prayer, by crying out as loud,
- “O, bless my brother!” Husband win, win brother,
- Prays, and destroys the prayer, no midway
- ’Twixt these extremes at all.
- Gentle Octavia,
- Let your best love draw to that point which seeks
- Best to preserve it. If I lose mine honor,
- I lose myself; better I were not yours
- Than yours so branchless. But as you requested,
- Yourself shall go between ’s. The mean time, lady,
- I’ll raise the preparation of a war
- Shall stain your brother. Make your soonest haste;
- So your desires are yours.
- Thanks to my lord.
- The Jove of power make me most weak, most weak,
- Your reconciler! Wars ’twixt you twain would be
- As if the world should cleave, and that slain men
- Should solder up the rift.
- When it appears to you where this begins,
- Turn your displeasure that way, for our faults
- Can never be so equal that your love
- Can equally move with them. Provide your going,
- Choose your own company, and command what cost
- Your heart has mind to.
Exeunt.
ANT.
OCT.
Scene 5
Athens. Another room in Antony’s house.
Enter Enobarbus and Eros, meeting.
ENO.
EROS.
- How now, friend Eros?
- There’s strange news come, sir.
- What, man?
- Caesar and Lepidus have made wars upon Pompey.
- This is old, what is the success?
- Caesar, having made use of him in the wars ’gainst Pompey, presently denied him rivality, would not let him partake in the glory of the action, and not resting here, accuses him of letters he had formerly wrote to Pompey; upon his own appeal, seizes him. So the poor third is up, till death enlarge his confine.
- Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps—no more,
- And throw between them all the food thou hast,
- They’ll grind th’ one the other. Where’s Antony?
- He’s walking in the garden—thus, and spurns
- The rush that lies before him; cries, “Fool Lepidus!”
- And threats the throat of that his officer
- That murd’red Pompey.
- Our great navy’s rigg’d.
- For Italy and Caesar. More, Domitius,
- My lord desires you presently; my news
- I might have told hereafter.
- ’Twill be naught,
- But let it be. Bring me to Antony.
- Come, sir.
Exeunt.
ENO.
EROS.
Scene 6
Rome. Octavius Caesar’s house.
Enter Agrippa, Maecenas, and Caesar.
AGR.
MAEC.
CAES.
- Contemning Rome, he has done all this and more
- In Alexandria. Here’s the manner of’t:
- I’ th’ market-place, on a tribunal silver’d,
- Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold
- Were publicly enthron’d. At the feet sat
- Caesarion, whom they call my father’s son,
- And all the unlawful issue that their lust
- Since then hath made between them. Unto her
- He gave the stablishment of Egypt, made her
- Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,
- Absolute queen.
- This in the public eye?
- I’ th’ common show-place, where they exercise.
- His sons he there proclaim’d the kings of kings:
- Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia
- He gave to Alexander; to Ptolomy he assign’d
- Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. She
- In th’ abiliments of the goddess Isis
- That day appear’d; and oft before gave audience,
- As ’tis reported, so.
- Let Rome be thus
- Inform’d.
- Who, queasy with his insolence
- Already, will their good thoughts call from him.
- The people knows it, and have now receiv’d
- His accusations.
- Who does he accuse?
- Caesar, and that having in Sicily
- Sextus Pompeius spoil’d, we had not rated him
- His part o’ th’ isle. Then does he say he lent me
- Some shipping unrestor’d. Lastly, he frets
- That Lepidus of the triumpherate
- Should be depos’d; and being, that we detain
- All his revenue.
- Sir, this should be answer’d.
- ’Tis done already, and the messenger gone.
- I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel,
- That he his high authority abus’d,
- And did deserve his change. For what I have conquer’d,
- I grant him part; but then, in his Armenia
- And other of his conquer’d kingdoms, I
- Demand the like.
- He’ll never yield to that.
- Nor must not then be yielded to in this.
Enter Octavia with her Train.
OCT.
- Hail, Caesar, and my lord! Hail, most dear Caesar!
- That ever I should call thee castaway!
- You have not call’d me so, nor have you cause.
- Why have you stol’n upon us thus? You come not
- Like Caesar’s sister. The wife of Antony
- Should have an army for an usher, and
- The neighs of horse to tell of her approach,
- Long ere she did appear; the trees by th’ way
- Should have borne men, and expectation fainted,
- Longing for what it had not; nay, the dust
- Should have ascended to the roof of heaven,
- Rais’d by your populous troops. But you are come
- A market-maid to Rome, and have prevented
- The ostentation of our love, which, left unshown,
- Is often left unlov’d. We should have met you
- By sea and land, supplying every stage
- With an augmented greeting.
- Good my lord,
- To come thus was I not constrain’d, but did it
- On my free will. My lord, Mark Antony,
- Hearing that you prepar’d for war, acquainted
- My grieved ear withal; whereon I begg’d
- His pardon for return.
- Which soon he granted,
- Being an abstract ’tween his lust and him.
- Do not say so, my lord.
- I have eyes upon him,
- And his affairs come to me on the wind.
- Where is he now?
- My lord, in Athens.
- No, my most wronged sister, Cleopatra
- Hath nodded him to her. He hath given his empire
- Up to a whore, who now are levying
- The kings o’ th’ earth for war. He hath assembled
- Bocchus, the King of Libya; Archelaus
- Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, King
- Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;
- King Manchus of Arabia; King of Pont;
- Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, King
- Of Comagena; Polemon and Amyntas,
- The Kings of Mede and Lycaonia,
- With a more larger list of sceptres.
- Ay me, most wretched,
- That have my heart parted betwixt two friends
- That does afflict each other!
- Welcome hither!
- Your letters did withhold our breaking forth,
- Till we perceiv’d both how you were wrong led
- And we in negligent danger. Cheer your heart,
- Be you not troubled with the time, which drives
- O’er your content these strong necessities,
- But let determin’d things to destiny
- Hold unbewail’d their way. Welcome to Rome,
- Nothing more dear to me. You are abus’d
- Beyond the mark of thought; and the high gods,
- To do you justice, makes his ministers
- Of us and those that love you. Best of comfort,
- And ever welcome to us.
- Welcome, lady.
- Welcome, dear madam,
- Each heart in Rome does love and pity you;
- Only th’ adulterous Antony, most large
- In his abominations, turns you off,
- And gives his potent regiment to a trull
- That noises it against us.
- Is it so, sir?
- Most certain. Sister, welcome. Pray you
- Be ever known to patience. My dear’st sister!
Exeunt.
AGR.
MAEC.
CAES.
OCT.
Scene 7
Near Actium. Mark Antony’s camp.
Enter Cleopatra and Enobarbus.
CLEO.
ENO.
- I will be even with thee, doubt it not.
- But why, why, why?
- Thou hast forespoke my being in these wars,
- And say’st it is not fit.
- Well; is it, is it?
- If not denounc’d against us, why should not we
- Be there in person?
-
Aside.
ENO.
- Well, I could reply:
- If we should serve with horse and mares together,
- The horse were merely lost; the mares would bear
- A soldier and his horse.
- What is’t you say?
- Your presence needs must puzzle Antony,
- Take from his heart, take from his brain, from ’s time,
- What should not then be spar’d. He is already
- Traduc’d for levity, and ’tis said in Rome
- That Photinus an eunuch and your maids
- Manage this war.
- Sink Rome, and their tongues rot
- That speak against us! A charge we bear i’ th’ war,
- And as the president of my kingdom will
- Appear there for a man. Speak not against it,
- I will not stay behind.
Enter Antony and Canidius.
ANT.
CAN.
- Nay, I have done,
- Here comes the Emperor.
- Is it not strange, Canidius,
- That from Tarentum and Brundusium
- He could so quickly cut the Ionian Sea,
- And take in Toryne? You have heard on’t, sweet?
- Celerity is never more admir’d
- Than by the negligent.
- A good rebuke,
- Which might have well becom’d the best of men,
- To taunt at slackness. Canidius, we
- Will fight with him by sea.
- By sea, what else?
- Why will my lord do so?
- For that he dares us to’t.
- So hath my lord dar’d him to single fight.
- Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia,
- Where Caesar fought with Pompey. But these offers,
- Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off,
- And so should you.
- Your ships are not well mann’d,
- Your mariners are muleters, reapers, people
- Ingross’d by swift impress. In Caesar’s fleet
- Are those that often have ’gainst Pompey fought;
- Their ships are yare, yours heavy. No disgrace
- Shall fall you for refusing him at sea,
- Being prepar’d for land.
- By sea, by sea.
- Most worthy sir, you therein throw away
- The absolute soldiership you have by land,
- Distract your army, which doth most consist
- Of war-mark’d footmen, leave unexecuted
- Your own renowned knowledge, quite forgo
- The way which promises assurance, and
- Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard,
- From firm security.
- I’ll fight at sea.
- I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.
- Our overplus of shipping will we burn,
- And, with the rest full-mann’d, from th’ head of Actium
- Beat th’ approaching Caesar. But if we fail,
- We then can do’t at land.
-
Enter Second Roman Messenger.
2. ROM. MESS.
- Thy business?
- The news is true, my lord: he is descried;
- Caesar has taken Toryne.
- Can he be there in person? ’Tis impossible
- Strange that his power should be. Canidius,
- Our nineteen legions thou shalt hold by land,
- And our twelve thousand horse. We’ll to our ship,
- Away, my Thetis!
-
Enter Scarus.
SCAR.
- How now, worthy soldier?
- O noble Emperor, do not fight by sea,
- Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt
- This sword, and these my wounds?
- Well, well, away!
Exeunt Antony, Cleopatra, and Enobarbus.
ANT.
CLEO.
ENO.
- By Hercules, I think I am i’ th’ right.
- Soldier, thou art; but his whole action grows
- Not in the power on’t. So our leader’s led,
- And we are women’s men.
- You keep by land
- The legions and the horse whole, do you not?
- Marcus Octavius, Marcus Justeius,
- Publicola, and Caelius are for sea;
- But we keep whole by land. This speed of Caesar’s
- Carries beyond belief.
- While he was yet in Rome,
- His power went out in such distractions as
- Beguil’d all spies.
- Who’s his lieutenant, hear you?
- They say, one Taurus.
- Well I know the man.
Enter Second Roman Messenger.
2. ROM. MESS.
- The Emperor calls Canidius.
- With news the time’s with labor, and throes forth
- Each minute some.
Exeunt.
CAN.
2. ROM. MESS.
SCAR.
Scene 8
A plain near Actium.
Enter Caesar with his army and Taurus, marching.
CAES.
TAUR.
- Taurus!
- My lord?
- Strike not by land, keep whole, provoke not battle
- Till we have done at sea. Do not exceed
- The prescript of this scroll. Our fortune lies
- Upon this jump.
Exeunt.
CAES.
TAUR.
Scene 9
Another part of the plain near Actium.
Enter Antony and Enobarbus.
ANT.
ENO.
- Set we our squadrons on yond side o’ th’ hill,
- In eye of Caesar’s battle, from which place
- We may the number of the ships behold,
- And so proceed accordingly.
Exeunt.
ANT.
ENO.
Scene 10
Another part of the plain near Actium.
Canidius marcheth with his land army one way over the stage, and Taurus, the lieutenant of Caesar, the other way. After their going in, is heard the noise of a sea-fight.
CAN.
TAUR.
Alarum. Enter Enobarbus.
ENO.
- Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer.
- Th’ Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,
- With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder.
- To see’t mine eyes are blasted.
Enter Scarus.
SCAR.
- Gods and goddesses,
- All the whole synod of them!
- What’s thy passion?
- The greater cantle of the world is lost
- With very ignorance, we have kiss’d away
- Kingdoms and provinces.
- How appears the fight?
- On our side like the token’d pestilence,
- Where death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt
- (Whom leprosy o’ertake!) i’ th’ midst o’ th’ fight,
- When vantage like a pair of twins appear’d,
- Both as the same, or rather ours the elder—
- The breeze upon her, like a cow in June—
- Hoists sails and flies.
- That I beheld.
- Mine eyes did sicken at the sight and could not
- Endure a further view.
- She once being loof’d,
- The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,
- Claps on his sea-wing, and (like a doting mallard),
- Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.
- I never saw an action of such shame;
- Experience, manhood, honor, ne’er before
- Did violate so itself.
- Alack, alack!
Enter Canidius.
CAN.
- Our fortune on the sea is out of breath,
- And sinks most lamentably. Had our general
- Been what he knew himself, it had gone well.
- O, he has given example for our flight,
- Most grossly, by his own!
- Ay, are you thereabouts?
- Why then good night indeed.
- Toward Peloponnesus are they fled.
- ’Tis easy to’t, and there I will attend
- What further comes.
- To Caesar will I render
- My legions and my horse: six kings already
- Show me the way of yielding.
- I’ll yet follow
- The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason
- Sits in the wind against me.
Exeunt severally.
ENO.
CAN.
SCAR.
Scene 11
Alexandria. Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Antony with Attendants.
ANT.
ANT. 1. ATT.
ANT. 2. ATT.
- Hark, the land bids me tread no more upon’t,
- It is asham’d to bear me. Friends, come hither:
- I am so lated in the world, that I
- Have lost my way forever. I have a ship
- Laden with gold, take that, divide it; fly,
- And make your peace with Caesar.
- Fly? Not we.
- I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards
- To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone,
- I have myself resolv’d upon a course
- Which has no need of you. Be gone.
- My treasure’s in the harbor; take it. O,
- I follow’d that I blush to look upon.
- My very hairs do mutiny; for the white
- Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them
- For fear and doting. Friends, be gone, you shall
- Have letters from me to some friends that will
- Sweep your way for you. Pray you look not sad,
- Nor make replies of loathness; take the hint
- Which my despair proclaims: let that be left
- Which leaves itself. To the sea-side straightway;
- I will possess you of that ship and treasure.
- Leave me, I pray, a little; pray you now,
- Nay, do so; for indeed I have lost command,
- Therefore I pray you. I’ll see you by and by.
Sits down.
ANT.
Enter Cleopatra led by Charmian and Eros, Iras following.
CLEO.
CHAR.
EROS.
IRAS.
- Nay, gentle madam, to him, comfort him.
- Do, most dear Queen.
- Do? Why, what else?
- Let me sit down. O Juno!
- No, no, no, no, no.
- See you here, sir?
- O fie, fie, fie!
- Madam!
- Madam, O good Empress!
- Sir, sir!
- Yes, my lord, yes; he at Philippi kept
- His sword e’en like a dancer, while I struck
- The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and ’twas I
- That the mad Brutus ended. He alone
- Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had
- In the brave squares of war; yet now—No matter.
- Ah, stand by.
- The Queen, my lord, the Queen.
- Go to him, madam, speak to him,
- He’s unqualited with very shame.
- Well then, sustain me. O!
- Most noble sir, arise, the Queen approaches.
- Her head’s declin’d, and death will seize her, but
- Your comfort makes the rescue.
- I have offended reputation,
- A most unnoble swerving.
- Sir, the Queen.
- O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? See
- How I convey my shame out of thine eyes
- By looking back what I have left behind
- ’Stroy’d in dishonor.
- O my lord, my lord,
- Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought
- You would have followed.
- Egypt, thou knew’st too well
- My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’ strings,
- And thou shouldst tow me after. O’er my spirit
- Thy full supremacy thou knew’st, and that
- Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
- Command me.
- O, my pardon!
- Now I must
- To the young man send humble treaties, dodge
- And palter in the shifts of lowness, who
- With half the bulk o’ th’ world play’d as I pleas’d,
- Making and marring fortunes. You did know
- How much you were my conqueror, and that
- My sword, made weak by my affection, would
- Obey it on all cause.
- Pardon, pardon!
- Fall not a tear, I say, one of them rates
- All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss.
- Even this repays me. We sent our schoolmaster,
- Is ’a come back? Love, I am full of lead.
- Some wine, within there, and our viands! Fortune knows
- We scorn her most when most she offers blows.
Exeunt.
ANT.
ANT. 1. ATT.
ANT. 2. ATT.
CLEO.
CHAR.
EROS.
IRAS.
Scene 12
Egypt. Octavius Caesar’s camp.
Enter Caesar, Agrippa, Thidias, and Dolabella, with others.
CAES.
AGR.
THID.
DOL.
- Let him appear that’s come from Antony.
- Know you him?
- Caesar, ’tis his schoolmaster,
- An argument that he is pluck’d, when hither
- He sends so poor a pinion of his wing,
- Which had superfluous kings for messengers
- Not many moons gone by.
Enter Schoolmaster as Ambassador from Antony.
AMB.
- Approach and speak.
- Such as I am, I come from Antony.
- I was of late as petty to his ends
- As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf
- To his grand sea.
- Be’t so, declare thine office.
- Lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and
- Requires to live in Egypt, which not granted,
- He lessons his requests, and to thee sues
- To let him breathe between the heavens and earth,
- A private man in Athens: this for him.
- Next, Cleopatra does confess thy greatness,
- Submits her to thy might, and of thee craves
- The circle of the Ptolomies for her heirs,
- Now hazarded to thy grace.
- For Antony,
- I have no ears to his request. The Queen
- Of audience nor desire shall fail, so she
- From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend,
- Or take his life there. This if she perform,
- She shall not sue unheard. So to them both.
- Fortune pursue thee!
- Bring him through the bands.
-
Exit Ambassador.
AMB.
-
To Thidias.
CAES.
THID.
- To try thy eloquence, now ’tis time; dispatch.
- From Antony win Cleopatra, promise,
- And in our name, what she requires; add more,
- From thine invention, offers. Women are not
- In their best fortunes strong, but want will perjure
- The ne’er-touch’d vestal. Try thy cunning, Thidias,
- Make thine own edict for thy pains, which we
- Will answer as a law.
- Caesar, I go.
- Observe how Antony becomes his flaw,
- And what thou think’st his very action speaks
- In every power that moves.
- Caesar, I shall.
Exeunt.
CAES.
AGR.
THID.
DOL.
Scene 13
Alexandria. Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Cleopatra, Enobarbus, Charmian, and Iras.
CLEO.
ENO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
- What shall we do, Enobarbus?
- Think, and die.
- Is Antony or we in fault for this?
- Antony only, that would make his will
- Lord of his reason. What though you fled
- From that great face of war, whose several ranges
- Frighted each other? Why should he follow?
- The itch of his affection should not then
- Have nick’d his captainship, at such a point,
- When half to half the world oppos’d, he being
- The mered question. ’Twas a shame no less
- Than was his loss, to course your flying flags,
- And leave his navy gazing.
- Prithee peace.
Enter the Ambassador with Antony.
AMB.
ANT.
- Is that his answer?
- Ay, my lord.
- The Queen shall then have courtesy, so she
- Will yield us up.
- He says so.
- Let her know’t.
- To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head,
- And he will fill thy wishes to the brim
- With principalities.
- That head, my lord?
- To him again, tell him he wears the rose
- Of youth upon him; from which the world should note
- Something particular. His coin, ships, legions,
- May be a coward’s, whose ministers would prevail
- Under the service of a child as soon
- As i’ th’ command of Caesar.  I’ll write it. Follow me.
Exeunt Antony and Ambassador.
ANT.
AMB.
-
Aside.
ENO.
- Yes, like enough! High-battled Caesar will
- Unstate his happiness, and be stag’d to th’ show
- Against a sworder! I see men’s judgments are
- A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward
- Do draw the inward quality after them,
- To suffer all alike. That he should dream,
- Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will
- Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdu’d
- His judgment too.
Enter First Egyptian Servant.
1. EGYPT. SERV.
- A messenger from Caesar.
- What, no more ceremony? See, my women,
- Against the blown rose may they stop their nose
- That kneel’d unto the buds. Admit him, sir.
Exit First Egyptian Servant.
1. EGYPT. SERV.
-
Aside.
ENO.
- Mine honesty and I begin to square.
- The loyalty well held to fools does make
- Our faith mere folly; yet he that can endure
- To follow with allegiance a fall’n lord
- Does conquer him that did his master conquer,
- And earns a place i’ th’ story.
Enter Thidias.
THID.
- Caesar’s will?
- Hear it apart.
- None but friends: say boldly.
- So haply are they friends to Antony.
- He needs as many, sir, as Caesar has,
- Or needs not us. If Caesar please, our master
- Will leap to be his friend; for us, you know
- Whose he is we are, and that is Caesar’s.
- So.
- Thus then, thou most renown’d: Caesar entreats
- Not to consider in what case thou stand’st
- Further than he is Caesar.
- Go on: right royal.
- He knows that you embrace not Antony
- As you did love, but as you fear’d him.
- O!
- The scars upon your honor, therefore, he
- Does pity, as constrained blemishes,
- Not as deserved.
- He is a god and knows
- What is most right. Mine honor was not yielded,
- But conquer’d merely.
-
Aside.
ENO.
- To be sure of that,
- I will ask Antony. Sir, sir, thou art so leaky
- That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for
- Thy dearest quit thee.
Exit Enobarbus.
ENO.
- Shall I say to Caesar
- What you require of him? For he partly begs
- To be desir’d to give. It much would please him,
- That of his fortunes you should make a staff
- To lean upon; but it would warm his spirits
- To hear from me you had left Antony,
- And put yourself under his shroud,
- The universal landlord.
- What’s your name?
- My name is Thidias.
- Most kind messenger,
- Say to great Caesar this in deputation:
- I kiss his conqu’ring hand. Tell him, I am prompt
- To lay my crown at ’s feet, and there to kneel.
- Tell him, from his all-obeying breath I hear
- The doom of Egypt.
- ’Tis your noblest course.
- Wisdom and fortune combating together,
- If that the former dare but what it can,
- No chance may shake it. Give me grace to lay
- My duty on your hand.
- Your Caesar’s father oft
- (When he hath mus’d of taking kingdoms in)
- Bestow’d his lips on that unworthy place,
- As it rain’d kisses.
Enter Antony and Enobarbus.
ANT.
ENO.
- Favors? By Jove that thunders!
- What art thou, fellow?
- One that but performs
- The bidding of the fullest man, and worthiest
- To have command obey’d.
-
Aside.
ENO.
- You will be whipt.
-
Calling for Servants.
ANT.
- Approach there!—Ah, you kite!—Now gods and devils!
- Authority melts from me. Of late, when I cried “Ho!”
- Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth
- And cry, “Your will?”—Have you no ears?—I am
- Antony yet.
-
Enter First Egyptian Servant, others following.
1. EGYPT. SERV.
2. EGYPT. SERV.
- Take hence this Jack and whip him.
-
Aside.
ENO.
- ’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp
- Than with an old one dying.
- Moon and stars!
- Whip him. Were’t twenty of the greatest tributaries
- That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them
- So saucy with the hand of she here—what’s her name,
- Since she was Cleopatra?  Take him hence.
- Mark Antony—
- Tug him away. Being whipt,
- Bring him again; the Jack of Caesar’s shall
- Bear us an arrant to him.
-
Exeunt Egyptian Servants with Thidias.
1. EGYPT. SERV.
2. EGYPT. SERV.
THID.
- You were half blasted ere I knew you; ha?
- Have I my pillow left unpress’d in Rome,
- Forborne the getting of a lawful race,
- And by a gem of women, to be abus’d
- By one that looks on feeders?
- Good my lord—
- You have been a boggler ever,
- But when we in our viciousness grow hard
- (O misery on’t!), the wise gods seel our eyes,
- In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us
- Adore our errors, laugh at ’s while we strut
- To our confusion.
- O, is’t come to this?
- I found you as a morsel, cold upon
- Dead Caesar’s trencher; nay, you were a fragment
- Of Cneius Pompey’s—besides what hotter hours,
- Unregist’red in vulgar fame, you have
- Luxuriously pick’d out; for I am sure,
- Though you can guess what temperance should be,
- You know not what it is.
- Wherefore is this?
- To let a fellow that will take rewards
- And say “God quit you!” be familiar with
- My playfellow, your hand, this kingly seal
- And plighter of high hearts! O that I were
- Upon the hill of Basan, to outroar
- The horned herd! For I have savage cause,
- And to proclaim it civilly were like
- A halter’d neck which does the hangman thank
- For being yare about him.
-
Enter First Egyptian Servant with Thidias.
1. EGYPT. SERV.
THID.
- Is he whipt?
- Soundly, my lord.
- Cried he? And begg’d ’a pardon?
- He did ask favor.
- If that thy father live, let him repent
- Thou wast not made his daughter, and be thou sorry
- To follow Caesar in his triumph, since
- Thou hast been whipt for following him. Henceforth
- The white hand of a lady fever thee,
- Shake thou to look on’t. Get thee back to Caesar,
- Tell him thy entertainment. Look thou say
- He makes me angry with him; for he seems
- Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am,
- Not what he knew I was. He makes me angry,
- And at this time most easy ’tis to do’t:
- When my good stars, that were my former guides,
- Have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires
- Into th’ abysm of hell. If he mislike
- My speech and what is done, tell him he has
- Hipparchus, my enfranched bondman, whom
- He may at pleasure whip, or hang, or torture,
- As he shall like, to quit me. Urge it thou:
- Hence with thy stripes, be gone!
Exit Thidias.
THID.
- Have you done yet?
- Alack, our terrene moon
- Is now eclips’d, and it portends alone
- The fall of Antony!
- I must stay his time.
- To flatter Caesar, would you mingle eyes
- With one that ties his points?
- Not know me yet?
- Cold-hearted toward me?
- Ah, dear, if I be so,
- From my cold heart let heaven engender hail,
- And poison it in the source, and the first stone
- Drop in my neck; as it determines, so
- Dissolve my life! The next Caesarion smite,
- Till by degrees the memory of my womb,
- Together with my brave Egyptians all,
- By the discandying of this pelleted storm,
- Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile
- Have buried them for prey!
- I am satisfied.
- Caesar sets down in Alexandria, where
- I will oppose his fate. Our force by land
- Hath nobly held; our sever’d navy too
- Have knit again, and fleet, threat’ning most sea-like.
- Where hast thou been, my heart? Dost thou hear, lady?
- If from the field I shall return once more
- To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood;
- I and my sword will earn our chronicle.
- There’s hope in’t yet.
- That’s my brave lord!
- I will be treble-sinew’d, hearted, breath’d,
- And fight maliciously; for when mine hours
- Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives
- Of me for jests; but now I’ll set my teeth,
- And send to darkness all that stop me. Come,
- Let’s have one other gaudy night. Call to me
- All my sad captains, fill our bowls once more;
- Let’s mock the midnight bell.
- It is my birthday,
- I had thought t’ have held it poor; but since my lord
- Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.
- We will yet do well.
- Call all his noble captains to my lord.
- Do so, we’ll speak to them, and tonight I’ll force
- The wine peep through their scars. Come on, my queen,
- There’s sap in’t yet. The next time I do fight,
- I’ll make death love me; for I will contend
- Even with his pestilent scythe.
Exeunt all but Enobarbus.
ANT.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
1. EGYPT. SERV.
- Now he’ll outstare the lightning: to be furious
- Is to be frighted out of fear, and in that mood
- The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still
- A diminution in our captain’s brain
- Restores his heart. When valor preys on reason,
- It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek
- Some way to leave him.
Exit.
ENO.
Act 4
Scene 1
Before Alexandria. Octavius Caesar’s camp.
Enter Caesar, Agrippa, and Maecenas, with his army; Caesar reading a letter.
CAES.
AGR.
MAEC.
- He calls me boy, and chides as he had power
- To beat me out of Egypt. My messenger
- He hath whipt with rods, dares me to personal combat,
- Caesar to Antony. Let the old ruffian know
- I have many other ways to die; mean time
- Laugh at his challenge.
- Caesar must think,
- When one so great begins to rage, he’s hunted
- Even to falling. Give him no breath, but now
- Make boot of his distraction: never anger
- Made good guard for itself.
- Let our best heads
- Know that tomorrow the last of many battles
- We mean to fight. Within our files there are,
- Of those that serv’d Mark Antony but late,
- Enough to fetch him in. See it done,
- And feast the army; we have store to do’t,
- And they have earn’d the waste. Poor Antony!
Exeunt.
CAES.
AGR.
MAEC.
Scene 2
Alexandria. Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Antony, Cleopatra, Enobarbus, Charmian, Iras, Alexas, with others.
ANT.
CLEO.
ENO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
ALEX.
- He will not fight with me, Domitius?
- No.
- Why should he not?
- He thinks, being twenty times of better fortune,
- He is twenty men to one.
- Tomorrow, soldier,
- By sea and land I’ll fight; or I will live,
- Or bathe my dying honor in the blood
- Shall make it live again. Woo’t thou fight well?
- I’ll strike, and cry, “Take all!”
- Well said, come on.
- Call forth my household servants, let’s tonight
- Be bounteous at our meal.
-
Enter three or four Attendants.
ANT. 1. ATT.
ANT. 2. ATT.
- Give me thy hand,
- Thou hast been rightly honest—so hast thou—
- Thou—and thou—and thou.
-
Aside to Enobarbus.
CLEO.
ENO.
- What means this?
-
Aside to Cleopatra.
ENO.
CLEO.
- ’Tis one of those odd tricks which sorrow shoots
- Out of the mind.
- And thou art honest too.
- I wish I could be made so many men,
- And all of you clapp’d up together in
- An Antony, that I might do you service
- So good as you have done.
- The gods forbid!
- Well, my good fellows, wait on me tonight.
- Scant not my cups, and make as much of me
- As when mine empire was your fellow too,
- And suffer’d my command.
-
Aside to Enobarbus.
CLEO.
ENO.
- What does he mean?
-
Aside to Cleopatra.
ENO.
CLEO.
- To make his followers weep.
- Tend me tonight;
- May be it is the period of your duty;
- Haply you shall not see me more, or if,
- A mangled shadow. Perchance tomorrow
- You’ll serve another master. I look on you
- As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends,
- I turn you not away, but like a master
- Married to your good service, stay till death.
- Tend me tonight two hours, I ask no more,
- And the gods yield you for’t!
- What mean you, sir,
- To give them this discomfort?  For shame,
- Transform us not to women.
- Ho, ho, ho!
- Now the witch take me, if I meant it thus!
- Grace grow where those drops fall, my hearty friends!
- You take me in too dolorous a sense,
- For I spake to you for your comfort, did desire you
- To burn this night with torches. Know, my hearts,
- I hope well of tomorrow, and will lead you
- Where rather I’ll expect victorious life
- Than death and honor. Let’s to supper, come,
- And drown consideration.
Exeunt.
ANT.
CLEO.
ENO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
ALEX.
ANT. 1. ATT.
ANT. 2. ATT.
Scene 3
Alexandria. Before Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter a company of Antony’s Soldiers.
ANT. 1. SOLD.
ANT. 2. SOLD.
ANT. 3. SOLD.
ANT. 4. SOLD.
- Brother, good night; tomorrow is the day.
- It will determine one way; fare you well.
- Heard you of nothing strange about the streets?
- Nothing. What news?
- Belike ’tis but a rumor. Good night to you.
- Well, sir, good night.
They meet other Soldiers.
ANT. 1. SOLD.
ANT. 2. SOLD.
- Soldiers, have careful watch.
- And you. Good night, good night.
They place themselves in every corner of the stage.
ANT. 1. SOLD.
ANT. 2. SOLD.
ANT. 3. SOLD.
ANT. 4. SOLD.
- Here we. And if tomorrow
- Our navy thrive, I have an absolute hope
- Our landmen will stand up.

Music of the hoboys is under the stage.
- Peace, what noise?
- List, list!
- Hark!
- Music i’ th’ air.
- Under the earth.
- It signs well, does it not?
- No.
- Peace, I say.
- What should this mean?
- ’Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony lov’d,
- Now leaves him.
- Walk; let’s see if other watchmen
- Do hear what we do.
- How now, masters?
-
Speak together.
ANT. 1. SOLD.
ANT. 2. SOLD.
ANT. 3. SOLD.
ANT. 4. SOLD.
- How now?
- How now? Do you hear this?
- Ay, is’t not strange?
- Do you hear, masters? Do you hear?
- Follow the noise so far as we have quarter;
- Let’s see how it will give off.
- Content. ’Tis strange.
Exeunt.
ANT. 1. SOLD.
ANT. 2. SOLD.
ANT. 3. SOLD.
ANT. 4. SOLD.
Scene 4
Alexandria. Before Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Antony and Cleopatra, Charmian, with others.
ANT.
CLEO.
CHAR.
- Eros, mine armor, Eros!
- Sleep a little.
- No, my chuck. Eros, come, mine armor, Eros!
-
Enter Eros with armor.
EROS.
- Come, good fellow, put thine iron on.
- If Fortune be not ours today, it is
- Because we brave her. Come.
- Nay, I’ll help too.
- What’s this for?
- Ah, let be, let be! Thou art
- The armorer of my heart. False, false; this, this.
- Sooth law, I’ll help. Thus it must be.
- Well, well,
- We shall thrive now. Seest thou, my good fellow?
- Go, put on thy defenses.
- Briefly, sir.
- Is not this buckled well?
- Rarely, rarely:
- He that unbuckles this, till we do please
- To daff’t for our repose, shall hear a storm.
- Thou fumblest, Eros, and my queen’s a squire
- More tight at this than thou; dispatch. O love,
- That thou couldst see my wars today, and knew’st
- The royal occupation, thou shouldst see
- A workman in’t.
-
Enter an armed Scarus.
SCAR.
- Good morrow to thee, welcome.
- Thou look’st like him that knows a warlike charge.
- To business that we love we rise betime,
- And go to’t with delight.
- A thousand, sir,
- Early though’t be, have on their riveted trim,
- And at the port expect you.
Shout. Trumpets flourish.
Enter Captain of Antony’s Army, Captains and Soldiers.
CAPT. ANT. ARMY.
Soldiers
- The morn is fair. Good morrow, general.
- Good morrow, general.
- ’Tis well blown, lads.
- This morning, like the spirit of a youth
- That means to be of note, begins betimes.
- So, so; come give me that: this way—well said.
- Fare thee well, dame, what e’er becomes of me.
- This is a soldier’s kiss; rebukable
- And worthy shameful check it were, to stand
- On more mechanic compliment. I’ll leave thee
- Now like a man of steel. You that will fight,
- Follow me close, I’ll bring you to’t. Adieu.
Exeunt Antony, Eros, Scarus, Captains, and Soldiers.
ANT.
EROS.
SCAR.
CAPT. ANT. ARMY.
Soldiers
- Please you retire to your chamber?
- Lead me.
- He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might
- Determine this great war in single fight!
- Then, Antony—but now—Well, on.
Exeunt.
CLEO.
CHAR.
Scene 5
Alexandria. Mark Antony’s camp.
Trumpets sound. Enter Antony and Eros, Scarus meeting them.
ANT.
EROS.
SCAR.
- The gods make this a happy day to Antony!
- Would thou and those thy scars had once prevail’d
- To make me fight at land!
- Hadst thou done so,
- The kings that have revolted, and the soldier
- That has this morning left thee, would have still
- Followed thy heels.
- Who’s gone this morning?
- Who?
- One ever near thee. Call for Enobarbus,
- He shall not hear thee, or from Caesar’s camp
- Say “I am none of thine.”
- What sayest thou?
- Sir,
- He is with Caesar.
- Sir, his chests and treasure
- He has not with him.
- Is he gone?
- Most certain.
- Go, Eros, send his treasure after; do it,
- Detain no jot, I charge thee. Write to him
- (I will subscribe) gentle adieus and greetings;
- Say that I wish he never find more cause
- To change a master. O, my fortunes have
- Corrupted honest men! Dispatch. Enobarbus!
Exeunt.
ANT.
EROS.
SCAR.
Scene 6
Alexandria. Octavius Caesar’s camp.
Flourish. Enter Agrippa, Caesar, with Enobarbus and Dolabella.
AGR.
CAES.
ENO.
DOL.
- Go forth, Agrippa, and begin the fight.
- Our will is Antony be took alive;
- Make it so known.
- Caesar, I shall.
Exit.
AGR.
- The time of universal peace is near.
- Prove this a prosp’rous day, the three-nook’d world
- Shall bear the olive freely.
Enter Caesar’s Third Messenger.
3. CAES. MESS.
- Antony
- Is come into the field.
- Go charge Agrippa
- Plant those that have revolted in the vant,
- That Antony may seem to spend his fury
- Upon himself.
Exeunt all but Enobarbus.
CAES.
DOL.
3. CAES. MESS.
- Alexas did revolt, and went to Jewry on
- Affairs of Antony, there did dissuade
- Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar,
- And leave his master Antony; for this pains
- Caesar hath hang’d him. Canidius and the rest
- That fell away have entertainment, but
- No honorable trust. I have done ill,
- Of which I do accuse myself so sorely
- That I will joy no more.
Enter Caesar’s First Soldier.
CAES. 1. SOLD.
- Enobarbus, Antony
- Hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with
- His bounty overplus. The messenger
- Came on my guard, and at thy tent is now
- Unloading of his mules.
- I give it you.
- Mock not, Enobarbus,
- I tell you true. Best you saf’d the bringer
- Out of the host; I must attend mine office,
- Or would have done’t myself. Your emperor
- Continues still a Jove.
Exit.
CAES. 1. SOLD.
- I am alone the villain of the earth,
- And feel I am so most. O Antony,
- Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid
- My better service, when my turpitude
- Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.
- If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean
- Shall outstrike thought, but thought will do’t, I feel.
- I fight against thee? No, I will go seek
- Some ditch wherein to die; the foul’st best fits
- My latter part of life.
Exit.
ENO.
Scene 7
Field of battle between the camps.
Alarum. Drums and Trumpets. Enter Agrippa and others.
AGR.
- Retire, we have engag’d ourselves too far.
- Caesar himself has work, and our oppression
- Exceeds what we expected.
Exeunt.
AGR.
Alarums. Enter Antony, and Scarus wounded.
ANT.
SCAR.
- O my brave Emperor, this is fought indeed!
- Had we done so at first, we had droven them home
- With clouts about their heads.
- Thou bleed’st apace.
- I had a wound here that was like a T,
- But now ’tis made an H.
Sound retreat far off.
- They do retire.
- We’ll beat ’em into bench-holes. I have yet
- Room for six scotches more.
Enter Eros.
EROS.
- They are beaten, sir, and our advantage serves
- For a fair victory.
- Let us score their backs,
- And snatch ’em up, as we take hares, behind:
- ’Tis sport to maul a runner.
- I will reward thee
- Once for thy sprightly comfort, and tenfold
- For thy good valor. Come thee on.
- I’ll halt after.
Exeunt.
ANT.
SCAR.
EROS.
Scene 8
Under the walls of Alexandria.
Alarum. Enter Antony again, in a march, Scarus, with others.
ANT.
SCAR.
- We have beat him to his camp. Run one before,
- And let the Queen know of our gests. Tomorrow,
- Before the sun shall see ’s, we’ll spill the blood
- That has today escap’d. I thank you all,
- For doughty-handed are you, and have fought
- Not as you serv’d the cause, but as’t had been
- Each man’s like mine; you have shown all Hectors.
- Enter the city, clip your wives, your friends,
- Tell them your feats, whilst they with joyful tears
- Wash the congealment from your wounds, and kiss
- The honor’d gashes whole.
-
Enter Cleopatra attended.
CLEO.
-
To Scarus.
ANT.
SCAR.
- Give me thy hand;
- To this great fairy I’ll commend thy acts,
- Make her thanks bless thee.
-
To Cleopatra.
ANT.
CLEO.
- O thou day o’ th’ world,
- Chain mine arm’d neck, leap thou, attire and all,
- Through proof of harness to my heart, and there
- Ride on the pants triumphing!
- Lord of lords!
- O infinite virtue, com’st thou smiling from
- The world’s great snare uncaught?
- Mine nightingale,
- We have beat them to their beds. What, girl, though grey
- Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha’ we
- A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can
- Get goal for goal of youth. Behold this man,
- Commend unto his lips thy favoring hand.
- Kiss it, my warrior; he hath fought today
- As if a god, in hate of mankind, had
- Destroyed in such a shape.
- I’ll give thee, friend,
- An armor all of gold; it was a king’s.
- He has deserv’d it, were it carbuncled
- Like holy Phoebus’ car. Give me thy hand.
- Through Alexandria make a jolly march,
- Bear our hack’d targets like the men that owe them.
- Had our great palace the capacity
- To camp this host, we all would sup together,
- And drink carouses to the next day’s fate,
- Which promises royal peril. Trumpeters,
- With brazen din blast you the city’s ear,
- Make mingle with our rattling taborines,
- That heaven and earth may strike their sounds together,
- Applauding our approach.
Exeunt.
ANT.
SCAR.
CLEO.
Scene 9
Alexandria. Octavius Caesar’s camp.
Enter Caesar’s Sentry and his Company. Enobarbus follows.
CAES. SENT.
CAES. 1. WATCH.
CAES. 2. WATCH.
ENO.
- If we be not reliev’d within this hour,
- We must return to th’ court of guard. The night
- Is shiny, and they say we shall embattle
- By th’ second hour i’ th’ morn.
- This last day was
- A shrewd one to ’s.
- O, bear me witness, night—
- What man is this?
- Stand close, and list him.
- Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon,
- When men revolted shall upon record
- Bear hateful memory: poor Enobarbus did
- Before thy face repent.
- Enobarbus?
- Peace!
- Hark further.
- O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,
- The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,
- That life, a very rebel to my will,
- May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart
- Against the flint and hardness of my fault,
- Which being dried with grief will break to powder,
- And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony,
- Nobler than my revolt is infamous,
- Forgive me in thine own particular,
- But let the world rank me in register
- A master-leaver and a fugitive.
- O Antony! O Antony!
Dies.
ENO.
- Let’s speak to him.
- Let’s hear him, for the things he speaks
- May concern Caesar.
- Let’s do so. But he sleeps.
- Swoonds rather, for so bad a prayer as his
- Was never yet for sleep.
- Go we to him.
- Awake, sir, awake, speak to us.
- Hear you, sir?
- The hand of death hath raught him.
-
Drums afar off.
- Hark, the drums
- Demurely wake the sleepers. Let us bear him
- To th’ court of guard; he is of note. Our hour
- Is fully out.
- Come on then, he may recover yet.
Exeunt with the body.
CAES. SENT.
CAES. 1. WATCH.
CAES. 2. WATCH.
ENO.
Scene 10
The field of battle between the camps.
Enter Antony and Scarus with their army.
ANT.
SCAR.
- Their preparation is today by sea,
- We please them not by land.
- For both, my lord.
- I would they’ld fight i’ th’ fire or i’ th’ air;
- We’ld fight there too. But this it is: our foot
- Upon the hills adjoining to the city
- Shall stay with us—order for sea is given,
- They have put forth the haven—
- Where their appointment we may best discover,
- And look on their endeavor.
Exeunt.
ANT.
SCAR.
Scene 11
Another part of the field of battle between the camps.
Enter Caesar and his army.
CAES.
- But being charg’d, we will be still by land,
- Which as I take’t we shall, for his best force
- Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales,
- And hold our best advantage.
Exeunt.
CAES.
Scene 12
Another part of the field of battle between the camps.
Enter Antony and Scarus.
ANT.
SCAR.
- Yet they are not join’d. Where yond pine does stand
- I shall discover all; I’ll bring thee word
- Straight how ’tis like to go.
Exit.
ANT.
Alarum afar off, as at a sea-fight.
- Swallows have built
- In Cleopatra’s sails their nests. The auguries
- Say they know not, they cannot tell, look grimly,
- And dare not speak their knowledge. Antony
- Is valiant, and dejected, and by starts
- His fretted fortunes give him hope and fear
- Of what he has, and has not.
Enter Antony.
ANT.
- All is lost!
- This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.
- My fleet hath yielded to the foe, and yonder
- They cast their caps up and carouse together
- Like friends long lost. Triple-turn’d whore! ’Tis thou
- Hast sold me to this novice, and my heart
- Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly;
- For when I am reveng’d upon my charm,
- I have done all. Bid them all fly, be gone.
-
Exit Scarus.
SCAR.
- O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more,
- Fortune and Antony part here, even here
- Do we shake hands. All come to this? The hearts
- That spannell’d me at heels, to whom I gave
- Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
- On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is bark’d,
- That overtopp’d them all. Betray’d I am.
- O this false soul of Egypt! This grave charm,
- Whose eye beck’d forth my wars and call’d them home,
- Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,
- Like a right gypsy, hath at fast and loose
- Beguil’d me to the very heart of loss.
- What, Eros, Eros!
-
Enter Cleopatra.
CLEO.
- Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!
- Why is my lord enrag’d against his love?
- Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving,
- And blemish Caesar’s triumph.
- Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot
- Of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown
- For poor’st diminutives, for dolts, and let
- Patient Octavia plough thy visage up
- With her prepared nails.
-
Exit Cleopatra.
CLEO.
- ’Tis well th’ art gone,
- If it be well to live; but better ’twere
- Thou fell’st into my fury, for one death
- Might have prevented many. Eros, ho!
- The shirt of Nessus is upon me; teach me,
- Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage.
- Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o’ th’ moon,
- And with those hands, that grasp’d the heaviest club,
- Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die.
- To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall
- Under this plot. She dies for’t. Eros, ho!
Exit.
ANT.
Scene 13
Alexandria. Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, Mardian.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
MAR.
- Help me, my women! O, he’s more mad
- Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly
- Was never so emboss’d.
- To th’ monument!
- There lock yourself, and send him word you are dead.
- The soul and body rive not more in parting
- Than greatness going off.
- To th’ monument!
- Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself;
- Say that the last I spoke was “Antony,”
- And word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian,
- And bring me how he takes my death. To th’ monument!
Exeunt.
CLEO.
CHAR.
IRAS.
MAR.
Scene 14
Alexandria. Another room in Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Antony and Eros.
ANT.
EROS.
- Eros, thou yet behold’st me?
- Ay, noble lord.
- Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,
- A vapor sometime like a bear or lion,
- A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,
- A forked mountain, or blue promontory
- With trees upon’t that nod unto the world,
- And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,
- They are black vesper’s pageants.
- Ay, my lord.
- That which is now a horse, even with a thought
- The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
- As water is in water.
- It does, my lord.
- My good knave Eros, now thy captain is
- Even such a body. Here I am Antony,
- Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.
- I made these wars for Egypt, and the Queen,
- Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine—
- Which whilst it was mine had annex’d unto’t
- A million more (now lost)—she, Eros, has
- Pack’d cards with Caesar’s, and false-play’d my glory
- Unto an enemy’s triumph.
- Nay, weep not, gentle Eros, there is left us
- Ourselves to end ourselves.
-
Enter Mardian.
MAR.
- O, thy vild lady!
- She has robb’d me of my sword.
- No, Antony,
- My mistress lov’d thee, and her fortunes mingled
- With thine entirely.
- Hence, saucy eunuch, peace!
- She hath betray’d me, and shall die the death.
- Death of one person can be paid but once,
- And that she has discharg’d. What thou wouldst do
- Is done unto thy hand; the last she spake
- Was “Antony, most noble Antony!”
- Then in the midst a tearing groan did break
- The name of Antony; it was divided
- Between her heart and lips. She rend’red life,
- Thy name so buried in her.
- Dead then?
- Dead.
- Unarm, Eros, the long day’s task is done,
- And we must sleep.
-
To Mardian.
ANT.
MAR.
- That thou depart’st hence safe
- Does pay thy labor richly; go.
-
Exit Mardian.
MAR.
- Off, pluck off,
- The sevenfold shield of Ajax cannot keep
- The battery from my heart. O, cleave, my sides!
- Heart, once be stronger than thy continent,
- Crack thy frail case! Apace, Eros, apace.
- No more a soldier. Bruised pieces, go,
- You have been nobly borne.—From me awhile.
-
Exit Eros.
EROS.
- I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and
- Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now
- All length is torture; since the torch is out,
- Lie down and stray no farther. Now all labor
- Mars what it does; yea, very force entangles
- Itself with strength. Seal then, and all is done.
- Eros!—I come, my queen!—Eros!—Stay for me!
- Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand,
- And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.
- Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,
- And all the haunt be ours. Come, Eros, Eros!
Enter Eros.
EROS.
- What would my lord?
- Since Cleopatra died
- I have liv’d in such dishonor that the gods
- Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword
- Quarter’d the world, and o’er green Neptune’s back
- With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack
- The courage of a woman—less noble mind
- Than she which by her death our Caesar tells,
- “I am conqueror of myself.” Thou art sworn, Eros,
- That when the exigent should come, which now
- Is come indeed, when I should see behind me
- Th’ inevitable prosecution of
- Disgrace and horror, that on my command
- Thou then wouldst kill me. Do’t, the time is come.
- Thou strik’st not me, ’tis Caesar thou defeat’st.
- Put color in thy cheek.
- The gods withhold me!
- Shall I do that which all the Parthian darts,
- Though enemy, lost aim and could not?
- Eros,
- Wouldst thou be window’d in great Rome, and see
- Thy master thus with pleach’d arms, bending down
- His corrigible neck, his face subdu’d
- To penetrative shame, whilst the wheel’d seat
- Of fortunate Caesar, drawn before him, branded
- His baseness that ensued?
- I would not see’t.
- Come then; for with a wound I must be cur’d.
- Draw that thy honest sword, which thou hast worn
- Most useful for thy country.
- O, sir, pardon me!
- When I did make thee free, swor’st thou not then
- To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once,
- Or thy precedent services are all
- But accidents unpurpos’d. Draw, and come.
- Turn from me then that noble countenance,
- Wherein the worship of the whole world lies.
- Lo thee!
Turning from him.
ANT.
- My sword is drawn.
- Then let it do at once
- The thing why thou hast drawn it.

- ’Tis said, man, and farewell.
- Farewell, great chief. Shall I strike now?
- Now, Eros.
- Why, there then.
-
Kills himself.
EROS.
- Thus I do escape the sorrow
- Of Antony’s death.
- Thrice-nobler than myself!
- Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what
- I should, and thou couldst not. My queen and Eros
- Have by their brave instruction got upon me
- A nobleness in record; but I will be
- A bridegroom in my death, and run into’t
- As to a lover’s bed. Come then; and, Eros,
- Thy master dies thy scholar: to do thus
-
Falling on his sword.
ANT.
- I learnt of thee. How, not dead? Not dead?
- The guard, ho! O, dispatch me!
Enter Decretas and Antony’s First Guardsman.
DEC.
ANT. 1. GUARD.
ANT. 2. GUARD.
ANT. 3. GUARD.
- What’s the noise?
- I have done my work ill, friends. O, make an end
- Of what I have begun.
- The star is fall’n.
- And time is at his period.
- Alas, and woe!
- Let him that loves me strike me dead.
- Not I.
- Nor I.
- Nor any one.
Exeunt Antony’s Third Guardsman.
ANT. 3. GUARD.
- Thy death and fortunes bid thy followers fly.
- This sword but shown to Caesar, with this tidings,
- Shall enter me with him.
Enter Diomedes.
DIO.
- Where’s Antony?
- There, Diomed, there.
- Lives he?
- Wilt thou not answer, man?
Exit Decretas.
DEC.
- Art thou there, Diomed? Draw thy sword, and give me
- Sufficing strokes for death.
- Most absolute lord,
- My mistress Cleopatra sent me to thee.
- When did she send thee?
- Now, my lord.
- Where is she?
- Lock’d in her monument. She had a prophesying fear
- Of what hath come to pass; for when she saw
- (Which never shall be found) you did suspect
- She had dispos’d with Caesar, and that your rage
- Would not be purg’d, she sent you word she was dead;
- But fearing since how it might work, hath sent
- Me to proclaim the truth, and I am come,
- I dread, too late.
- Too late, good Diomed. Call my guard, I prithee.
- What ho! The Emperor’s guard! The guard, what ho!
- Come, your lord calls!
Enter four or five of the Guard of Antony.
ANT. 3. GUARD.
- Bear me, good friends, where Cleopatra bides,
- ’Tis the last service that I shall command you.
- Woe, woe are we, sir, you may not live to wear
- All your true followers out.
- Most heavy day!
- Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate
- To grace it with your sorrows. Bid that welcome
- Which comes to punish us, and we punish it
- Seeming to bear it lightly.
- I have led you oft, carry me now, good friends,
- And have my thanks for all.
Exeunt bearing Antony.
ANT.
ANT. 1. GUARD.
ANT. 2. GUARD.
ANT. 3. GUARD.
Scene 15
Alexandria. Another room in a monument in Cleopatra’s palace.
Enter Cleopatra and her maids aloft, with Charmian and Iras.
CLEO.
Maids
CHAR.
IRAS.
- O Charmian, I will never go from hence.
- Be comforted, dear madam.
- No, I will not.
- All strange and terrible events are welcome,
- But comforts we despise; our size of sorrow,
- Proportion’d to our cause, must be as great
- As that which makes it.
-
Enter Diomed below.
DIO.
- How now? Is he dead?
- His death’s upon him, but not dead.
- Look out o’ th’ other side your monument,
- His guard have brought him thither.
Enter below Antony, and the Guard bearing him.
ANT.
ANT. 1. GUARD.
ANT. 2. GUARD.
ANT. 3. GUARD.
- O sun,
- Burn the great sphere thou mov’st in! Darkling stand
- The varying shore o’ th’ world! O Antony,
- Antony, Antony! Help, Charmian, help, Iras, help;
- Help, friends below, let’s draw him hither.
- Peace!
- Not Caesar’s valor hath o’erthrown Antony,
- But Antony’s hath triumph’d on itself.
- So it should be, that none but Antony
- Should conquer Antony, but woe ’tis so!
- I am dying, Egypt, dying; only
- I here importune death awhile, until
- Of many thousand kisses the poor last
- I lay upon thy lips.
- I dare not, dear—
- Dear my lord, pardon—I dare not,
- Lest I be taken. Not th’ imperious show
- Of the full-fortun’d Caesar ever shall
- Be brooch’d with me, if knife, drugs, serpents have
- Edge, sting, or operation.  But come, come, Antony—
- Help me, my women—we must draw thee up.
- Assist, good friends.
- O, quick, or I am gone.
- Here’s sport indeed! How heavy weighs my lord!
- Our strength is all gone into heaviness,
- That makes the weight. Had I great Juno’s power,
- The strong-wing’d Mercury should fetch thee up,
- And set thee by Jove’s side. Yet come a little—
- Wishers were ever fools—O, come, come, come,
-
They heave Antony aloft to Cleopatra.
ANT. 1. GUARD.
ANT. 2. GUARD.
ANT. 3. GUARD.
ANT.
CLEO.
 Die when thou hast liv’d,
- Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power,
- Thus would I wear them out.
- A heavy sight!
- I am dying, Egypt, dying.
- Give me some wine, and let me speak a little.
- No, let me speak, and let me rail so high,
- That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel,
- Provok’d by my offense.
- One word, sweet queen:
- Of Caesar seek your honor, with your safety. O!
- They do not go together.
- Gentle, hear me:
- None about Caesar trust but Proculeius.
- My resolution and my hands I’ll trust,
- None about Caesar.
- The miserable change now at my end
- Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts
- In feeding them with those my former fortunes
- Wherein I liv’d, the greatest prince o’ th’ world,
- The noblest; and do now not basely die,
- Not cowardly put off my helmet to
- My countryman—a Roman by a Roman
- Valiantly vanquish’d. Now my spirit is going,
- I can no more.
- Noblest of men, woo’t die?
- Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide
- In this dull world, which in thy absence is
- No better than a sty? O, see, my women:
-
Antony dies.
ANT.
- The crown o’ th’ earth doth melt. My lord!
- O, wither’d is the garland of the war,
- The soldier’s pole is fall’n! Young boys and girls
- Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
- And there is nothing left remarkable
- Beneath the visiting moon.
Faints.
CLEO.
- O, quietness, lady!
- She’s dead too, our sovereign.
- Lady!
- Madam!
- O madam, madam, madam!
- Royal Egypt!
- Empress!
- Peace, peace, Iras!
- No more but e’en a woman, and commanded
- By such poor passion as the maid that milks
- And does the meanest chores. It were for me
- To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods,
- To tell them that this world did equal theirs
- Till they had stol’n our jewel. All’s but naught:
- Patience is sottish, and impatience does
- Become a dog that’s mad. Then is it sin
- To rush into the secret house of death
- Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?
- What, what, good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian?
- My noble girls! Ah, women, women! Look
- Our lamp is spent, it’s out. Good sirs, take heart,
- We’ll bury him; and then, what’s brave, what’s noble,
- Let’s do’t after the high Roman fashion,
- And make death proud to take us. Come, away,
- This case of that huge spirit now is cold.
- Ah, women, women! Come, we have no friend
- But resolution and the briefest end.
Exeunt, those above bearing off Antony’s body.
CLEO.
Maids
CHAR.
IRAS.
DIO.
ANT.
ANT. 1. GUARD.
ANT. 2. GUARD.
ANT. 3. GUARD.
Act 5
Scene 1
Alexandria. Octavius Caesar’s camp.
Enter Caesar with his council of war: Agrippa, Dolabella, Maecenas, Gallus, Proculeius.
CAES.
AGR.
DOL.
MAEC.
GALL.
PRO.
- Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield;
- Being so frustrate, tell him, he mocks
- The pauses that he makes.
- Caesar, I shall.
Exit.
DOL.
Enter Decretas with the sword of Antony.
DEC.
- Wherefore is that? And what art thou that dar’st
- Appear thus to us?
- I am call’d Decretas;
- Mark Antony I serv’d, who best was worthy
- Best to be serv’d. Whilst he stood up and spoke,
- He was my master, and I wore my life
- To spend upon his haters. If thou please
- To take me to thee, as I was to him
- I’ll be to Caesar; if thou pleasest not,
- I yield thee up my life.
- What is’t thou say’st?
- I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.
- The breaking of so great a thing should make
- A greater crack. The round world
- Should have shook lions into civil streets,
- And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony
- Is not a single doom, in the name lay
- A moi’ty of the world.
- He is dead, Caesar,
- Not by a public minister of justice,
- Nor by a hired knife, but that self hand
- Which writ his honor in the acts it did
- Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,
- Splitted the heart. This is his sword,
- I robb’d his wound of it; behold it stain’d
- With his most noble blood.
- Look you sad, friends?
- The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings
- To wash the eyes of kings.
- And strange it is
- That nature must compel us to lament
- Our most persisted deeds.
- His taints and honors
- Wag’d equal with him.
- A rarer spirit never
- Did steer humanity; but you gods will give us
- Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touch’d.
- When such a spacious mirror’s set before him,
- He needs must see himself.
- O Antony,
- I have followed thee to this; but we do launch
- Diseases in our bodies. I must perforce
- Have shown to thee such a declining day,
- Or look on thine; we could not stall together
- In the whole world. But yet let me lament,
- With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,
- That thou, my brother, my competitor
- In top of all design, my mate in empire,
- Friend and companion in the front of war,
- The arm of mine own body, and the heart
- Where mine his thoughts did kindle—that our stars,
- Unreconciliable, should divide
- Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends—
-
Enter Second Egyptian Servant.
2. EGYPT. SERV.
- But I will tell you at some meeter season,
- The business of this man looks out of him;
- We’ll hear him what he says.—Whence are you?
- A poor Egyptian yet; the Queen my mistress,
- Confin’d in all she has, her monument,
- Of thy intents desires instruction,
- That she preparedly may frame herself
- To th’ way she’s forc’d to.
- Bid her have good heart.
- She soon shall know of us, by some of ours,
- How honorable and how kindly we
- Determine for her; for Caesar cannot live
- To be ungentle.
- So the gods preserve thee!
Exit.
2. EGYPT. SERV.
- Come hither, Proculeius.  Give her what comforts
- The quality of her passion shall require,
- Lest in her greatness, by some mortal stroke
- She do defeat us; for her life in Rome
- Would be eternal in our triumph.
- Caesar, I shall.
Exit Proculeius.
PRO.
- Gallus, go you along.
-
Exit Gallus.
GALL.
- Where’s Dolabella,
- To second Proculeius?
- Dolabella!
- Let him alone; for I remember now
- How he’s employ’d; he shall in time be ready.
- Go with me to my tent, where you shall see
- How hardly I was drawn into this war,
- How calm and gentle I proceeded still
- In all my writings. Go with me, and see
- What I can show in this.
Exeunt.
CAES.
AGR.
DEC.
MAEC.
Scene 2