ALEX. You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes. CHAR. Nay, come, tell Iras hers. ALEX. We'll know all our fortunes. ENO. Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall be drunk to bed. IRAS. There's a palm presages chastity, if nothing else. CHAR. E'en as the o'erflowing Nilus presageth famine. IRAS. Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay. CHAR. Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear.-Pr'ythee, tell her but a worky-day fortune. SOOTH. Your fortunes are alike. IRAS. But how, but how? give me particulars. SOOTH. I have said. IRAS. Am I not an inch of fortune better than she? CHAR. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it? IRAS. Not in my husband's nose. CHAR. Our worser thoughts heaven mend!— Alexas,-come, his fortune, his fortune!"-O, let him marry a woman that cannot go, sweet Isis, I beseech thee! and let her die too, and give him a worse! and let worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his grave, fifty-fold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee! IRAS. Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! for, as it is a heart-breaking to see a handsome man loose-wived, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded: therefore, dear Isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly! But soon that war had end, and the time's state Whose better issue in the war, from Italy, Things that are past are done, with me.—'Tis thus, Antony, thou wouldst say, O, my lord! ANT. Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue; Name Cleopatra as she's call'd in Rome; When our quick winds lie still; and our ills told us, d [Exit. Is as our earing! Fare thee well a while. there! * 1 ATT. The man from Sicyon,-is there such an one? (*) Old text, how. to, "When our quick minds," &c. perhaps without necessity. "Quick winds" may mean, quickening winds; and Johnson's explanation of the passage,-"that man, not agitated by censure, like soil not ventilated by quick winds, produces more evil than good," is possibly the true one. dearing!] Ploughing. ANT. [Gives a letter. Forbear me.[Exit Messenger. There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it: The opposite of itself: she 's good, being gone; Re-enter ENOBARBUS. ENO. What's your pleasure, sir? ANT. I must with haste from hence. (*) Old text, contempts. ENO. Why, then, we kill all our women. see how mortal an unkindness is to them; suffer our departure, death's the word. ANT. I must be gone. * We if they ENO. Under a compelling occasion, let women die: it were pity to cast them away for nothing; though, between them and a great cause, they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times far upon moment: I do think there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying. poorer ANT. She is cunning past man's thought. ENO. Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove. ANT. Would I had never seen her! ENO. O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work; which not to have been blessed withal, would have discredited your travel. ANT. Fulvia is dead. ENO. Sir! ANT. Fulvia is dead. ENO. Fulvia! ANT. Dead. (*) Old text inserts, an. ENO. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shows to man the tailors of the earth; comforting therein, that when old robes are worn out, there are members to make new. If there were no more women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut, and the case to be lamented: this grief is crowned with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new petticoat :and, indeed, the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow. ANT. The business she hath broached in the state Cannot endure my absence. ENO. And the business you have broached here cannot be without you; especially that of Cleopatra's, which wholly depends on your abode. ANT. No more light answers. Let our officers Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life, ENO. I shall do 't. с [Exeunt. I did not send you:—if you find him sad, [Exit ALEX. CHAR. Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly, You do not hold the method to enforce CLEO. Thou teachest like a fool,-the way to lose him. CHAR. Tempt him not so too far: I wish, Cleopatra, ANT. 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, ANT. going, But bid farewell, and go: when you su'd staying, c To such whose place is under us, requires, &c.] The lection of the second folio. In the first, we have, "To such whose places under us require," &c. d I wish, forbear;] I commend forbearance. Then was the time for words: no going then ;- Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor, How now, lady! ANT. There were a heart in Egypt. ANT. Breeds scrupulous faction: the hated, grown to Are newly-grown to love: the condemn'd Pompey, Is Fulvia's death. How this Herculean Roman does become ANT. I'll leave you, lady. Courteous lord, one word. CLEO. Though age from folly could not give | Sir, you and I have lov'd, but there's not it; f I am quickly ill, and well, This has been misconceived: "So Antony loves" is "As Antony g And give true evidence to his love, &c.] Mr. Collier's annotator, in his eagerness to confound all traces of our early language, would poorly read, true credence," which, like many of his suggestions, is very specious and quite wrong. The meaning of Antony is this,-" Forbear these taunts, and demonstrate to the world your confidence in my love by submitting it freely to the h "Proceed no straiter 'gainst our uncle Gloster, He be approv'd," &c.-Henry VI. Pt. II. Act III. Sc. 2. The old and every modern edition read, "The carriage of his |