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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!

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But soon that war had end, and the time's state
Made friends of them, jointing their force 'gainst
Cæsar;

Whose better issue in the war, from Italy,
Upon the first encounter, drave them.
ANT.
Well, what worst?
MESS. The nature of bad news infects the teller.
ANT. 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.

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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;
Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase; and taunt my faults
With such full licence 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,

d

[Exit.

Is as our earing! Fare thee well a while.
MESS. At your noble pleasure.
ANT. From Sicyon ho, the news! Speak

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.

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ANT.

[Gives a letter. Forbear me.[Exit Messenger.

There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it:
What our contempt doth often hurl from us,
We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, 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 !

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
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 Cæsar, 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' the 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 place is under us, requires
Our quick remove from hence.

ENO. I shall do 't.

с

[Exeunt.

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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 ALEX. CHAR. Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly,

You do not hold the method to enforce
The like from him.
CLEO.
What should I do, I do not?
CHAR. In each thing give him way, cross him
in nothing.

CLEO. Thou teachest like a fool,-the way to lose him.

CHAR. Tempt him not so too far: I wish,

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Cleopatra,

ANT.
CLEO. 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!

ANT.
Most sweet queen,—
CLEO. Nay, pray you, seek no colour for your

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 ;-
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!

ANT.
CLEO. I would I had thy inches; thou shouldst
know

There were a heart in Egypt.

ANT.
Hear me, queen :
The strong necessity of time commands
Our services a while; 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

Breeds scrupulous faction: the hated, grown to
strength,

Are newly-grown to love: the condemn'd Pompey,
Rich in his father's honour, creeps apace
Into the hearts of such as have not thriv'd
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.

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How this Herculean Roman does become
The carriage of his chief."

ANT. I'll leave you, lady.
CLEO.

Courteous lord, one word.
Sir, you and I must part,-but that's not it:

CLEO. Though age from folly could not give | Sir, you and I have lov'd, but there's not it;

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f

I am quickly ill, and well,
So Antony loves.]

This has been misconceived: "So Antony loves" is "As Antony
loves," and the sense therefore,-My health is as fickle as the love
of 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

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h

"Proceed no straiter 'gainst our uncle Gloster,
Than from true evidence, of good esteem,

He be approv'd," &c.-Henry VI. Pt. II. Act III. Sc. 2.
How this Herculean Roman does become
The carriage of his chief.]

The old and every modern edition read, "The carriage of his
chafe." But can any one who considers the epithet "Herculean,"
which Cleopatra applies to Antony, and reads the following extract
from Shakespeare's authority, hesitate for an instant to pronounce
chafe a silly blunder of the transcriber or compositor for "chief,"
meaning Hercules, the head or principal of the house of the An-
tonii? "Now it had bene a speech of old time, that the family of
the Antonij were descended from one Anton the son of Hercules,
whereof the family took the name. This opinion aid Antonius
seeke to confirme in all his doings: not only resembling him in the
likenesse of his body, as we have said before, but also in the wearing
of his garments."-Life of Antonius. NORTH's Plutarch.

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