Imatges de pàgina
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Cleo. No, let me speak; and let me rail so high, That the false housewife Fortune break her wheel, Provoked by my offence.

Ant.

One word, sweet queen.

Of Cæsar seek your honor with your safety.-O!
Cleo. They do not go together.

Ant.

Gentle, hear me.

None about Cæsar trust, but Proculeius.

Cleo. My resolution, and my hands, I'll trust;
None about Cæsar.

Ant. The miserable change now at my end,
Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts,
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world,
The noblest; and do now not basely die,
Nor cowardly; put off my helmet to

My countryman, a Roman, by a Roman
Valiantly vanquished. Now, my spirit is going;
I can no more.

Cleo.

Noblest of men, woo't die?

Hast thou no care of me? shall I abide

In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a sty?-O, see, my women,
The crown o' the earth doth melt.-My lord!-
O, withered is the garland of the war,

[Dies.

The soldier's pole is fallen; young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,

And there is nothing left remarkable

Beneath the visiting moon.

Char.

Iras. She is dead, too, our sovereign.

Char.

Iras.

[She faints.

O, quietness, lady!

Lady,

Madam,

Royal Egypt!

Char. O madam, madam, madam!

Iras.

Empress!

Char. Peace, peace, Iras.

1 That is, their standard or rallying point is thrown down.

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Cleo. No more, but e'en a woman;1 and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks, And does the meanest chares.2-It were for me To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; To tell them that this world did equal theirs, Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught; Patience is sottish; and impatience does Become a dog that's mad. Then is it sin, To rush into the secret house of death,

Ere death dare come to us?-How do you, women?
What, what? good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian?
My noble girls!-Ah women, women! look,

Our lamp is spent, it's out.-Good sirs, take heart.
[To the Guard below.
We'll bury him; and then, what's brave, what's noble,
Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us.

Come away;

This case of that huge spirit now is cold.

Ah women, women! come; we have no friend
But resolution and the briefest end.

[Exeunt; those above bearing off ANTONY'S
body.

ACT V.

SCENE I. Cæsar's Camp before Alexandria.

Enter CESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, MECENAS, GALLUS, PROCULEIUS, and others.

Cæs. Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield;

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1 Iras has just said, "Royal Egypt, empress! Cleopatra completes the sentence (without taking notice of the intervening words of Charmian), empress "No more; but e'en a woman," now on a level with the meanest of my sex. The old copy reads "but in a woman." Dr. Johnson made the correction.

2 i. e. task-work. The word is in vulgar use pronounced as if it were chore.

Being so frustrate,' tell him, he mocks us by
The pauses that he makes.

Dol.

Cæsar, I shall.

[Exit DOLABElla.

Enter DERCETAS, with the sword of ANTONY.

Cæs. Wherefore is that? and what art thou that

dar'st

Appear thus to us?

Der.

I am called Dercetas;

Mark Antony I served, who best was worthy
Best to be served; whilst he stood up and spoke,
He was my master; and I wore my life,
To spend upon his haters. If thou please
To take me to thee, as I was to him
I'll be to Cæsar; if thou pleasest not,
I yield thee up my life.

Cæs.

What is't thou say'st? Der. I say, O Cæsar, Antony is dead.

Cæs. The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack. The round world should have shook Lions into civil streets,2

And citizens to their dens.-The death of Antony
Is not a single doom; in the name lay

A moiety of the world.

1 Frustrate, for frustrated, was the language of Shakspeare's time. The two last words in this line, us by, are not in the old copy, in which something seems omitted, and these words were supplied by Malone.

2 The passage is thus arranged in the old copy:

"The breaking of so great a thing should make

A greater crack: the round world

Should have shook lions into civil streets,

And citizens to their dens."

The second line is evidently defective. What is lost may be supplied by conjecture, thus:

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Johnson thought that there was a line lost; and Steevens proposed to read:

"A greater crack than this: The ruined world," &c.
Malone thought that the passage might have stood originally thus:-
The round world should have shook;
T'hrown hungry lions into civil streets," &c.

Der.

He is dead, Cæsar;

Not by a public minister of justice,

Nor by a hired knife; but that self hand,

Which writ his honor in the acts it did,

Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,
Splitted the heart.-This is his sword;

I robbed his wound of it; behold it stained

With his most noble blood.

Cæs.

The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings
To wash the eyes of kings.1

Agr.

Look you sad, friends?

And strange it is,

His taints and honors

A rarer spirit never

That nature must compel us to lament
Our most persisted deeds.

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Did steer humanity: but you, gods, will give us
Some faults to make us men.

Cæsar is touched.

Mec. When such a spacious mirror's set before him,

He needs must see himself.

Cæs.

O Antony!

I have followed thee to this;-but we do lance3
Diseases in our bodies. I must perforce
Have shown to thee such a declining day,
Or look on thine: we could not stall together
In the whole world. But yet let me lament,
With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,
That thou, my brother, my competitor
In top of all design, my mate in empire,
Friend and companion in the front of war,
The arm of mine own body, and the heart

4

Where mine his thoughts did kindle-that our stars, Unreconcilable, should divide

1 "May the gods rebuke me if this be not tidings to make kings weep." But again in its exceptive sense.

2 Waged here must mean to be opposed, as equal stakes in a wager; unless we suppose that weighed is meant. The second folio reads way. 3 Launch, the word in the old copy, is only the obsolete spelling of

Lance.

4 His for its.

Our equalness to this.'-Hear me, good friends,-
But I will tell you at some meeter season;

Enter a Messenger.

The business of this man looks out of him;
We'll hear him what he says.-Whence are you?
Mess. A poor Egyptian yet. The queen, my mis-

tress,

Confined in all she has, her monument,
Of thy intents desires instruction;
That she preparedly may frame herself
To the way she's forced to.

Cæs.
She soon shall know of us, by some of ours,
How honorable3 and how kindly we

Bid her have good heart;

Determine for her; for Cæsar cannot live
To be ungentle.

Mess.

So the gods preserve thee! [Exit.

Cæs. Come hither, Proculeius. Go, and say, We purpose her no shame; give her what comforts The quality of her passion shall require ;

Lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke

She do defeat us; for her life in Rome

Would be eternal in our triumph.

Go,

And, with your speediest, bring us what she says,

And how you find of her.

Pro.

Cæsar, I shall. [Exit PROCULEIus. Cæs. Gallus, go you along.-Where's Dolabella, To second Proculeius?

Agr. Mec.

Dolabella!

[Exit GALLUS.

Cæs. Let him alone, for I remember now How he's employed; he shall in time be ready. Go with me to my tent; where you shall see.

1 That is, should have made us, in our equality of fortune, disagree, to a pitch like this, that one of us must die.

2 i. e. "yet a subject of the queen of Egypt."

3 It has been before observed that the termination ble was anciently often used for bly.

4 "If I send her in triumph to Rome, her memory and my glory will be

eternal."

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