ACT I
SCENE II. Alexandria. Another Room in Cleopatra’s palace.
Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where’s the soothsayer that you praised so to th’ queen? O, that I knew this husband which you say must charge his horns with garlands!
Soothsayer!
Your will?
Is this the man? Is’t you, sir, that know things?
Show him your hand.
Good, sir, give me good fortune.
I make not, but foresee.
Pray, then, foresee me one.
You shall be yet far fairer than you are.
He means in flesh.
No, you shall paint when you are old.
Wrinkles forbid!
Vex not his prescience. Be attentive.
Hush!
You shall be more beloving than beloved.
I had rather heat my liver with drinking.
Nay, hear him.
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.
You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.
O, excellent! I love long life better than figs.
Then belike my children shall have no names. Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?
Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.
You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.
Nay, come, tell Iras hers.
We’ll know all our fortunes.
Mine, and most of our fortunes tonight, shall be drunk to bed.
There’s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.
E’en as the o’erflowing Nilus presageth famine.
Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.
Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee, tell her but workaday fortune.
Your fortunes are alike.
But how, but how? give me particulars.
I have said.
Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?
Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?
Not in my husband’s nose.
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 worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his grave, fiftyfold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee!
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!
Amen.
Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores but they’d do’t!
Hush, Here comes Antony.
Not he, the queen.
Saw you my lord?
No, lady.
Was he not here?
No, madam.
Madam?
Seek him and bring him hither. Where’s Alexas?
Here, at your service. My lord approaches.
We will not look upon him. Go with us.
Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.
Against my brother Lucius.
Well, what worst?
The nature of bad news infects the teller.
“Antony”, thou wouldst say—
O, my lord!
At your noble pleasure.
From Sicyon, ho, the news? Speak there!
The man from Sicyon—
Is there such a one?
He stays upon your will.
Let him appear.
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage.
What are you?
Fulvia thy wife is dead.
Where died she?
Forbear me.
There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it. What our contempts 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!
What’s your pleasure, sir?
I must with haste from hence.
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.
I must be gone.
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.
She is cunning past man’s thought.
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.
Would I had never seen her!
O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work, which not to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel.
Fulvia is dead.
Sir?
Fulvia is dead.
Fulvia?
Dead.
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 with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new petticoat: and indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.
And the business you have broached here cannot be without you, especially that of Cleopatra’s, which wholly depends on your abode.
I shall do’t.