almost most absolute Alexas, where’s the soothsayer that you praised so to the queen? O, that I knew this husband, which, you say, must charge his horns with garlands!
Alexas
Soothsayer!
Soothsayer
Your will?
Charmian
Is this the man? Is’t you, sir, that know things?
Soothsayer
In nature’s infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.
Alexas
Show him your hand.
Enter
Enobarbas.
Enobarbas
Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough
Cleopatra’s health to drink.
Charmian
Good sir, give me good fortune.
Soothsayer
I make not, but foresee.
Charmian
Pray, then, foresee me one.
Soothsayer
You shall be yet far fairer than you are.
Charmian
He means in flesh.
Iras
No, you shall paint when you are old.
Charmian
Wrinkles forbid!
Alexas
Vex not his prescience; be attentive.
Charmian
Hush!
Soothsayer
You shall be more beloving than beloved.
Charmian
I had rather heat my liver with drinking.
Alexas
Nay, hear him.
Charmian
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 Caesar, and companion me with my mistress.
Soothsayer
You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.
Charmian
O excellent! I love long life better than figs.
Soothsayer
You have seen and proved a fairer former fortune
Than that which is to approach.
Charmian
Then belike my children shall have no names: prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?
Soothsayer
If every of your wishes had a womb,
And fertile every wish, a million.
Charmian
Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.
Alexas
You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.
Charmian
Nay, come, tell Iras hers.
Alexas
We’ll know all our fortunes.
Enobarbas
Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall be—drunk to bed.
Iras
There’s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.
Charmian
E’en as the o’erflowing Nilus presageth famine.
Iras
Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.
Charmian
Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee, tell her but a worky-day fortune.
Soothsayer
Your fortunes are alike.
Iras
But how, but how? give me particulars.
Soothsayer
I have said.
Iras
Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?
Charmian
Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?
Iras
Not in my husband’s nose.
Charmian
Our worser thoughts heavens 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 worst 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 heartbreaking 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!
Charmian
Amen.
Alexas
Lo, now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores, but they’ld do’t!
Enobarbas
Hush! here comes Antony.
Charmian
Not he; the queen.
Enter
Cleopatra.
Cleopatra
Saw you my lord?
Enobarbas
No, lady.
Cleopatra
Was he not here?
Charmian
No, madam.
Cleopatra
He was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden
A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!
Enobarbas
Madam?
Cleopatra
Seek him, and bring him hither. Where’s Alexas?
Alexas
Here, at your service. My lord approaches.
Cleopatra
We will not look upon him: go with us.
Exeunt.
Enter
Antony with a
Messenger and
Attendants.
Messenger
Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.
Antony
Against my brother Lucius?
Messenger
Ay:
But soon that war had end, and the time’s state
Made friends of them, joining their force ’gainst Caesar;
Whose better issue in the war, from Italy,
Upon the first encounter, drave them.
Antony
Well, what worst?
Messenger
The nature of bad news infects the teller.
Antony
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.
Messenger
Labienus—
This is stiff news—hath, with his Parthian force,
Extended Asia from Euphrates;
His conquering banner shook from Syria
To Lydia and to Ionia;
Whilst—
Antony
Antony, thou wouldst say—
Messenger
O, my lord!
Antony
Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue:
Name Cleopatra as she is call’d in Rome;
Rail thou in Fulvia’s phrase; and taunt my faults
With such full license as both truth and malice
Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds,
When our quick minds lie still; and our ills told us
Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.
Messenger
At your noble pleasure.
Exit.
Antony
From Sicyon, ho, the news! Speak there!
First Attendant
The man from Sicyon—is there such an one?
Second Attendant
He stays upon your will.
Antony
Let him appear.
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage.
Enter another
Messenger.
What are you?
Second Messenger
Fulvia thy wife is dead.
Antony
Where died she?
Second Messenger
In Sicyon:
Her length of sickness, with what else more serious
Importeth thee to know, this bears. Gives a letter.
Antony
Forbear me. Exit Second 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 shoved 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
Enobarbas.
Enobarbas
What’s your pleasure, sir?
Antony
I must with haste from hence.
Enobarbas
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.
Antony
I must be gone.
Enobarbas
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
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