CHAR. 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 Cæsar, and companion me with my mistress.

SOOTH. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.

CHAR. O excellent! I love long life better than figs.

SOOTH. You have seen and prov'd a fairer former fortune

Than that which is to approach.

CHAR. Then, belike my children shall have no names: Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?

SOOTH. If every of your wishes had a womb,

a

And fertile every wish, a million.

CHAR. Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.

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. Even 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. Prithee, tell her but a worky-day fortune.

SOOTH. Your fortunes are alike.

IRAS. But how, but how? give me particulars.

SOOTH. I have said.

a Fertile. The original has foretel. The emendation, which is very ingenious, was made by Warburton.

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 heavens mend! Alexas,-come, his fortune, his fortune!-0, 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!

CHAR. Amen.

ALEX. Lo, now! if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores but they 'd do 't.

CLEO. He was dispos'd to mirth; but on the sudden
A Roman thought hath struck him.—Enobarbus,—
ENO. Madam.

CLEO. Seek him, and bring him hither. Where's Alexas?
ALEX. Here, at your service.-My lord approaches.

Enter ANTONY, with a Messenger and Attendants.

CLEO. We will not look upon him: Go with us.

[Exeunt CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, ALEXAS, IRAS, CHARMIAN, Soothsayer, and Attendants.

MESS. Fulvia thy wife first came into the field2.

ANT. Against my brother Lucius?

MESS. Ay:

ANT.

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.

Well, what worst?

MESS. The nature of bad news infects the teller.

a Steevens here introduces madam, "as a proper cure for the present defect in metre."

ANT. When it concerns the fool, or coward.-On:

Things that are past are done with me.-T is thus:
Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,
I hear him as he flatter'd.

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,
Is as our earing". Fare thee well a while.
MESS. At your noble pleasure.

ANT. From Sicyon how the news?

Speak there.

1 ATT. The man from Sicyon.-Is there such an one?
2 ATT. He stays upon your will.
ANT.

Let him appear.—
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,

Enter another Messenger.

Or lose myself in dotage.-What are you?

2 MESS. Fulvia thy wife is dead.

ANT.

2 MESS. In Sicyon:

Where died she?

Her length of sickness, with what else more serious
Importeth thee to know, this bears.

[Exit.

[Gives a letter.

a Extended-seized upon. In North's 'Plutarch' we find that Labienus had "overrun Asia from Euphrates." Nearly all Shakspere's contemporaries make the second syllable of Euphrates short. Drayton, for example,

"That gliding go in state, like swelling Euphrates."

Malone proposes to read minds instead of winds; and the commentators have taken different sides in this matter. Before we adopt a new reading we must be satisfied that the old one is corrupt. When, then, do we "bring forth weeds?" In a heavy and moist season, when there are no "quick winds" to mellow the earth, to dry up the exuberant moisture, to fit it for the plough. The poet knew the old proverb of the worth of a bushel of March dust; but "the winds of March," rough and unpleasant as they are, he knew also produced this good. The quick winds then are the voices which bring us true reports to put an end to our inaction. When these winds lie still we bring forth weeds. But the metaphor is carried farther: the winds have rendered the soil fit for the plough; but the knowledge of our own faults-ills-is as the ploughing itself—the "earing."

ENO. Why, then, we kill all our women: We see how mortal an unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death 's the word.

ANT. I must be gone.

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 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.

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.

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 a Warburton says, "The allusion is to the sun's diurnal course; which, rising in the east, and by revolution lowering, or setting, in the west, becomes the opposite of itself. But, taking revolution simply as a change of circumstances, the passage may mean (and this is the interpretation of Steevens) that the pleasure of to-day becomes subsequently a pain-the opposite of itself.

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 love 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.

CLEO. 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.

CHAR. Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly,
You do not hold the method to enforce

CHAR. In each thing give him way, cross him in nothing.
CLEO. Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.

[Exit ALEXAS.

• Some of the commentators would read "leave to part." To get her love, here, is to prevail upon her love that we may part.