Page images
PDF
EPUB

Alexas, 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"!

Alex. Soothsayer!

Sooth. Your will?

Char. Is this the man?-Is't you, sir, that know things?

Sooth. In nature's infinite book of secrecy,

A little I can read.

Alex.

Show him your hand.

Enter ENOBARBUS.

Eno. Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough, Cleopatra's health to drink.

Char. Good sir, give me good fortune.

Sooth. I make not, but foresee.

Char. Pray, then, foresee me one.

Sooth. You shall be yet far fairer than you are.

Char. He means, in flesh.

Iras. No, you shall paint when you are old.

Char. Wrinkles forbid!

Alex. Vex not his prescience; be attentive.
Char. Hush!

Sooth. You shall be more beloving, than belov'd.
Char. I had rather heat my liver with drinking.

Alex. Nay, hear him.

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.

5

must CHARGE his horns with garlands !] The folio, 1623, reads, “ change his horns," &c., and the other editions in the same form repeat what Southern considered a misprint, having altered change to “charge" in his copy of the folio, 1685. We agree with Southern, and in more than one place in the first folio, we have had "charge" misprinted change, and change "charge." Warburton also introduced "charge," and Malone followed his example.

Sooth. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve. Char. O excellent! I love long life better than figs. Sooth. You have seen, and proved a fairer former fortune,

Than that which is to approach.

Char. Then, belike, my children shall have no names. Pr'ythee, how many boys and wenches must I have?

Sooth. If every of your wishes had a womb,

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.-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 heavens mend! Alexas, -come, his fortune', his fortune.-O! let him marry a

⚫ And FERTILE every wish,] The old copies read "foretell every wish:" the happy, but easy, correction was made by Warburton.

ALEXAS,―come, his fortune,] The printer of the folio, 1623, mistaking

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.

Eno. Hush! here comes Antony.

Char.

Not he, the queen.

[blocks in formation]

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.

"Alexas" for a prefix, printed what followed as if spoken by him. The blunder was preserved in the later folios.

8 SAW you my lord?] "Save you my lord" in the folio, 1623; but corrected by the editor of the second folio.

Mess. Fulvia, thy wife, first came into the field.
Ant. Against my brother Lucius?

Mess. Ay:

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.

Mess.

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

Ant. Antony, thou would'st say,

Mess. O, my lord!

Ant. 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 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,

1 EXTENDED Asia from Euphrates ;] To extend was anciently to seize; and it is still used in this sense in law proceedings.

2 When our quick WINDS lie still ;] So printed in all the old copies, and Warburton altered "winds" to minds with more plausibility than necessity. Perhaps "winds" ought to be spelt wints, which in Kent and Sussex is an agricultural term, (in other parts of the country called a bout) meaning, "two furrows ploughed by the horses going to one end of the field and back again." See Cooper's "Glossary of Provincialisms in use in the County of Sussex," 8vo. 1836; also Holloway's "General Provincial Dictionary," 8vo. 1838. "Our quick winds," therefore, is to be understood as our productive soil. “ Earing" in the next line is ploughing; a sense in which we have had it used in "Richard II." Vol. iv. p. 169, and in which it occurs again later in this drama. See p. 21.

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.

Mess. At your noble pleasure.

[Exit.

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.

Let him appear.—

Ant.
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.

Ant.

[Giving a Letter.
Forbear me.-
[Exit Messenger.

There's a great spirit gone. Thus did I desire it:
What our contempts do 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;

3

Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch.-How now! Enobarbus!

Enter ENOBArbus.

Eno. What's your pleasure, sir?

Ant. I must with haste from hence.

[ocr errors]

We see

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

3 I must from this ENCHANTING queen-] It is a great error in the second folio to omit " enchanting ;" and it was not corrected in the folios 1664 or 1685, which were printed from each other. The line was therefore left imperfect until the time of Rowe,

« PreviousContinue »