The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
Page 322
CLEOPATRA Indeed?
MARDIAN
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.
CLEOPATRA
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
ALEXAS Sovereign of Egypt, hail!
CLEOPATRA
How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!
Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath
With his tinct gilded thee. How goes it
With my brave Mark Antony?
ALEXAS
Last thing he did, dear Queen, He kissed—the last of many doubled kisses—
This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart.
CLEOPATRA
Mine ear must pluck it thence.
ALEXAS
‘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-jaunced steed,
Who neighed so high that what I would have spoke
Was beastly dumbed by him.
CLEOPATRA
What, was he sad or merry?
ALEXAS
Like to the time o’th’ year between the extremes
Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.
CLEOPATRA
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 seemed 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 else. Met’st thou my posts?
ALEXAS
Ay, madam, twenty several messengers.
Why do you send so thick?
CLEOPATRA
Who’s born that day
When I forget to send to Antony
Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian! I
Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian,
Ever love Caesar so?
CHARMIAN
O, that brave Caesar!
CLEOPATRA
Be choked with such another emphasis!
Say ‘the brave Antony’.
CHARMIAN
The valiant Caesar.
CLEOPATRA
By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth
If thou with Caesar paragon again
My man of men.
CHARMIAN
By your most gracious pardon, I sing but after you.
CLEOPATRA
My salad days, When I was green in judgement, 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
2.1 Enter Pompey, Menecrates, and Menas, in warlike manner
POMPEY
If the great gods be just, they shall assist
The deeds of justest men.
⌈MENECRATES⌉ Know, worthy Pompey,
That what they do delay they not deny.
POMPEY
Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays
The thing we sue for.
⌈MENECRATES⌉
We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so find we profit
By losing of our prayers.
POMPEY
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 flattered; but he neither loves,
Nor either cares for him.
⌈MENAS⌉
Caesar and Lepidus
Are in the field; a mighty strength they carry.
POMPEY
Where have you this? ’Tis false.
⌈MENAS⌉
From Silvius, sir.
POMPEY
He dreams. I know they are in Rome together,
Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love,
Salt Cleopatra, soften thy waned 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 honour
Even till a Lethe’d dullness—
Enter Varrius
How now, Varrius?
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.
POMPEY
I could have given less matter
A better ear. Menas, I did not think
This amorous surfeiter would have donned 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.
MENAS
I cannot hope
Caesar and Antony shall well greet together.
His wife that’s dead did trespasses to Caesar,
His brother warred upon him, although, I think,
Not moved by Antony.
POMPEY
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
2.2 Enter Enobarbus and Lepidus
LEPIDUS
Good Enobarbus, ’tis a worthy deed,
And shall become you well, to entreat your captain
To soft and gentle speech.
ENOBARBUS
I shall entreat him To answer like himself. If Caesar move him,
Let Antony look over Caesa
r’s head
And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter,
Were I the wearer of Antonio’s beard
I would not shave’t today.
LEPIDUS
’Tis not a time
For private stomaching.
ENOBARBUS
Every time
Serves for the matter that is then born in’t.
LEPIDUS
But small to greater matters must give way.
ENOBARBUS
Not if the small come first.
LEPIDUS Your speech is passion.
But pray you, stir no embers up. Here comes
The noble Antony.
Enter at one door Antony and Ventidius
ENOBARBUS
And yonder Caesar.
Enter at another door Caesar, Maecenas, and Agrippa
ANTONY (to Ventidius)
If we compose well here, to Parthia.
Hark, Ventidius.
CAESAR
I do not know,
Maecenas; ask Agrippa.
LEPIDUS (to Caesar and Antony) Noble friends,
That which combined 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.
ANTONY
’Tis spoken well.
Were we before our armies, and to fight,
I should do thus.
⌈Antony and Caesar embrace.⌉ Flourish
CAESAR Welcome to Rome.
ANTONY Thank you.
CAESAR Sit.
ANTONY Sit, sir.
CAESAR Nay then.
They sit
ANTONY
I learn you take things ill which are not so,
Or being, concern you not.
CAESAR
I must be laughed at
If or for nothing or a little I
Should say myself offended, and with you
Chiefly i’th’ world; more laughed at that I should
Once name you derogately, when to sound your name
It not concerned me.
ANTONY
My being in Egypt, Caesar, what was’t to you?
CAESAR
No more than my residing here at Rome
Might be to you in Egypt. Yet if you there
Did practise on my state, your being in Egypt
Might be my question.
ANTONY
How intend you ‘practised’?
CAESAR
You may be pleased 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.
ANTONY
You do mistake the business. My brother never
Did urge me in his act. I did enquire 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.
CAESAR
You praise yourself
By laying defects of judgement to me, but
You patched up your excuses.
ANTONY
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.
ENOBARBUS Would we had all such wives, that the men might go to wars with the women.
ANTONY
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.
CAESAR
I wrote to you
When, rioting in Alexandria, you
Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts
Did gibe my missive out of audience.
ANTONY
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 asked him pardon. Let this fellow
Be nothing of our strife. If we contend,
Out of our question wipe him.
CAESAR
You have broken
The article of your oath, which you shall never
Have tongue to charge me with.
LEPIDUS Soft, Caesar.
ANTONY No, Lepidus, let him speak.
The honour is sacred which he talks on now,
Supposing that I lacked it. But on, Caesar:
The article of my oath—
CAESAR
To lend me arms and aid when I required them,
The which you both denied.
ANTONY
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 honour
To stoop in such a case.
LEPIDUS
’Tis noble spoken.
MAECENAS
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.
LEPIDUS
Worthily spoken, Maecenas.
ENOBARBUS 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.
ANTONY
Thou art a soldier only. Speak no more.
ENOBARBUS That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.
ANTONY
You wrong this presence, therefore speak no more. ENOBARBUS Go to, then; your considerate stone.
CAESAR
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
O’th’ world I would pursue it.
AGRIPPA Give me leave, Caesar.
CAESAR Speak, Agrippa.
AGRIPPA
Thou hast a sister by the mother’s side,
Admired Octavia. Great Mark Antony
Is now a widower.
CAESAR
Say not so, Agrippa.
If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof
Were well deserved of rashness.
ANTONY
I am not married, Caesar. Let me hear
Agrippa further speak.
AGRIPPA
To hold you in p
erpetual 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.
ANTONY
Will Caesar speak?
CAESAR
Not till he hears how Antony is touched
With what is spoke already.
ANTONY What power is in Agrippa,
If I would say ‘Agrippa, be it so’,
To make this good?
CAESAR
The power of Caesar,
And his power unto Octavia.
ANTONY
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.
CAESAR
There’s my hand.
Antony and Caesar clasp hands
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.
LEPIDUS
Happily, amen.
ANTONY
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.
LEPIDUS Time calls upon’s.
Of us must Pompey presently be sought,
Or else he seeks out us.
ANTONY
Where lies he?
CAESAR
About the Mount Misena.
ANTONY
What is his strength By land?
CAESAR
Great and increasing, but by sea
He is an absolute master.
ANTONY 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 talked of.
CAESAR
With most gladness, And do invite you to my sister’s view,
Whither straight I’ll lead you.
ANTONY
Let us, Lepidus,