CLEO. 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 't is I that keep you here,

I have no power upon you; hers you are. ANT. The gods best know,—

CLEO.

ANT.

O, never was there queen

So mightily betray'd! Yet, at the first,

I saw the treasons planted.

Cleopatra,

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!

Most sweet queen,—

ANT.
CLEO. Nay, pray you, seek no colour 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!

ANT.
CLEO. I would I had thy inches;
There were a heart in Egypt.

thou shouldst know

Hear me, queen:

ANT.
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 a my going,
Is Fulvia's death.

CLEO. Though age from folly could not give me freedom,
It does from childishness:-Can Fulvia die?

ANT. 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.

CLEO.

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.
ANT. Quarrel no more, but be prepar'd to know
The purposes I bear; which are, or cease,
As you shall give the advice: By the fire
That quickens Nilus' slime, I go from hence,
Thy soldier, servant; making peace or war
As thou affect'st.

Garboils-disorders, commotions; probably derived from the same source as turmoil.

This passage is usually pointed with a colon after "well;" and, so pointed, it is interpreted by Capell, "such is Antony's love, fluctuating and subject to sudden turns, like my health." We follow the punctuation of the original, which is more consonant with the rapid and capricious demeanour of Cleopatra-I am quickly ill, and I am well again, so that Antony loves.

Egypt the queen of Egypt.

ANT.

You'll heat my blood: no more.

CLEO. You can do better yet; but this is meetly.

ANT. Now, by my sword,—

CLEO.

ANT.

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. CLEO. Courteous lord, one word.

ANT.

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.

CLEO.

ANT.

"T is sweating labour 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: Your honour calls you hence;
Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,

And all the gods go with 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, go'st yet with me,
And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee.
Away!

SCENE IV.-Rome. An Apartment in Cæsar's House.

Enter OCTAVIUs Cæsar, LepIDUS, and Attendants.

CES. You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,
It is not Cæsar's natural vice to hate

One 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 Ptolemy

More womanly than he hardly gave audience,

[Exeunt.

a Laurel. The use of the substantive adjectively was a peculiarity of the poetry of Shakspere's time, which has been revived with advantage in our own day.

All the modern editions omit of, reading "the queen Ptolemy."

Or vouchsaf'd to think he had partners: You shall find there
A man who is the abstract of all faults

LEP.

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.

CES. You are too indulgent: Let's grant it is not
Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy;
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 smell 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 soils, 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,—'t is to be chid

As we rate boys; who, being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,
And so rebel to judgment.

MESS. Thy biddings have been done; and every hour,

Most noble Cæsar, shalt thou have report

How 't is abroad. Pompey is strong at sea;

And it appears he is belov'd of those

That only have fear'd Cæsar: to the ports
The discontents repair, and men's reports
Give him much wrong'd.

CES.

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 fear'd by being lack'd. This common body,

a Soils-defilements, taints. The original has foils, which Malone amended.

Fear'd in the original; the general reading is dear'd. But it must be remembered that Cæsar is speaking; and that, in the notions of one who aims at supreme authority, to be feared and to be loved are pretty synonymous,

Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,

Goes to, and back, lackeying a the varying tide,

To rot itself with motion.

MESS.

CES.

Cæsar, I bring thee word,

Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,

Make 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 't is as soon

Taken as seen; for Pompey's name strikes more
Than could his war resisted.

Antony,

Leave thy lascivious vassals. When thou once
Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow3; 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 browsed'st; on the Alps

It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: And all this
(It wounds thine honour that I speak it now)
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not.

LEP. "T is pity of him.

CES.

Let his shames quickly

Drive him to Rome: "T is time we twain

Did show ourselves i' the field; and, to that end,

Assemble me immediate council: Pompey

LATING S

a Lackeying-the original has lacking (not lashing, as the commentators state); but the reading is evidently corrupt, and we may properly adopt Theobald's emendation of lackeying.

Vassals. The spelling of the original is vassails. The modern reading is wassals. Now, in three other passages of the original, where the old English word wassal is used, it is spelt wassels. Wassal is employed by Shakspere in the strict meaning of drunken revelry; and that could "leave thy lascivious vassals" expresses scarcely be called "lascivious." On the contrary, Cæsar's contempt for Cleopatra and her minions, who were strictly the vassals of Antony, the queen being one of his tributaries.

Assemble me. So the original. The modern reading is assemble we; and it is justified by the assertion that one equal is speaking to another. The commentators forget the contempt which Cæsar had for Lepidus: they forget, too, the crouching humility of Lepidus himself:"What you shall know meantime

Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,

To let me be partaker."

TRAGEDIES.-VOL. II.