ACT II
SCENE II Rome. The house of LEPIDUS.


 [Enter DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS and LEPIDUS]

LEPIDUS Good Enobarbus, 'tis a worthy deed,
 And shall become you well, to entreat your captain
 To soft and gentle speech.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS I shall entreat him
 To answer like himself: if Caesar move him,
 Let Antony look over Caesar's head
 And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter,
 Were I the wearer of Antonius' beard,
 I would not shave't to-day.

LEPIDUS 'Tis not a time
 For private stomaching.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Every time
 Serves for the matter that is then born in't.

LEPIDUS But small to greater matters must give way.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Not if the small come first.

LEPIDUS Your speech is passion:
 But, pray you, stir no embers up. Here comes
 The noble Antony.

 [Enter MARK ANTONY and VENTIDIUS]

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS                   And yonder, Caesar.

 [Enter OCTAVIUS CAESAR, MECAENAS, and AGRIPPA]

MARK ANTONY If we compose well here, to Parthia:
 Hark, Ventidius.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR                   I do not know,
 Mecaenas; ask Agrippa.

LEPIDUS Noble friends,
 That which combined us was most great, and let not
 A leaner action rend us. What's amiss,
 May it be gently heard: when we debate
 Our trivial difference loud, we do commit
 Murder in healing wounds: then, noble partners,
 The rather, for I earnestly beseech,
 Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,
 Nor curstness grow to the matter.

MARK ANTONY 'Tis spoken well.
 Were we before our armies, and to fight.
 I should do thus.

 [Flourish]

OCTAVIUS CAESAR Welcome to Rome.

MARK ANTONY                   Thank you.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR Sit.

MARK ANTONY Sit, sir.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR Nay, then.

MARK ANTONY I learn, you take things ill which are not so,
 Or being, concern you not.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR I must be laugh'd at,
 If, or for nothing or a little, I
 Should say myself offended, and with you
 Chiefly i' the world; more laugh'd at, that I should
 Once name you derogately, when to sound your name
 It not concern'd me.

MARK ANTONY My being in Egypt, Caesar,
 What was't to you?

OCTAVIUS CAESAR No more than my residing here at Rome
 Might be to you in Egypt: yet, if you there
 Did practise on my state, your being in Egypt
 Might be my question.

MARK ANTONY How intend you, practised?

OCTAVIUS CAESAR You may be pleased to catch at mine intent
 By what did here befal me. Your wife and brother
 Made wars upon me; and their contestation
 Was theme for you, you were the word of war.

MARK ANTONY You do mistake your business; my brother never
 Did urge me in his act: I did inquire it;
 And have my learning from some true reports,
 That drew their swords with you. Did he not rather
 Discredit my authority with yours;
 And make the wars alike against my stomach,
 Having alike your cause? Of this my letters
 Before did satisfy you. If you'll patch a quarrel,
 As matter whole you have not to make it with,
 It must not be with this.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR You praise yourself
 By laying defects of judgment to me; but
 You patch'd up your excuses.

MARK ANTONY Not so, not so;
 I know you could not lack, I am certain on't,
 Very necessity of this thought, that I,
 Your partner in the cause 'gainst which he fought,
 Could not with graceful eyes attend those wars
 Which fronted mine own peace. As for my wife,
 I would you had her spirit in such another:
 The third o' the world is yours; which with a snaffle
 You may pace easy, but not such a wife.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Would we had all such wives, that the men might go
 to wars with the women!

MARK ANTONY So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar
 Made out of her impatience, which not wanted
 Shrewdness of policy too, I grieving grant
 Did you too much disquiet: for that you must
 But say, I could not help it.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR I wrote to you
 When rioting in Alexandria; you
 Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts
 Did gibe my missive out of audience.

MARK ANTONY Sir,
 He fell upon me ere admitted: then
 Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want
 Of what I was i' the morning: but next day
 I told him of myself; which was as much
 As to have ask'd him pardon. Let this fellow
 Be nothing of our strife; if we contend,
 Out of our question wipe him.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR You have broken
 The article of your oath; which you shall never
 Have tongue to charge me with.

LEPIDUS Soft, Caesar!

MARK ANTONY No,
 Lepidus, let him speak:
 The honour is sacred which he talks on now,
 Supposing that I lack'd it. But, on, Caesar;
 The article of my oath.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR To lend me arms and aid when I required them;
 The which you both denied.

MARK ANTONY Neglected, rather;
 And then when poison'd hours had bound me up
 From mine own knowledge. As nearly as I may,
 I'll play the penitent to you: but mine honesty
 Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power
 Work without it. Truth is, that Fulvia,
 To have me out of Egypt, made wars here;
 For which myself, the ignorant motive, do
 So far ask pardon as befits mine honour
 To stoop in such a case.

LEPIDUS 'Tis noble spoken.

MECAENAS If it might please you, to enforce no further
 The griefs between ye: to forget them quite
 Were to remember that the present need
 Speaks to atone you.

LEPIDUS Worthily spoken, Mecaenas.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Or, if you borrow one another's love for the
 instant, you may, when you hear no more words of
 Pompey, return it again: you shall have time to
 wrangle in when you have nothing else to do.

MARK ANTONY Thou art a soldier only: speak no more.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.

MARK ANTONY You wrong this presence; therefore speak no more.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Go to, then; your considerate stone.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR I do not much dislike the matter, but
 The manner of his speech; for't cannot be
 We shall remain in friendship, our conditions
 So differing in their acts. Yet if I knew
 What hoop should hold us stanch, from edge to edge
 O' the world I would pursue it.

AGRIPPA Give me leave, Caesar,--

OCTAVIUS CAESAR Speak, Agrippa.

AGRIPPA Thou hast a sister by the mother's side,
 Admired Octavia: great Mark Antony
 Is now a widower.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR                   Say not so, Agrippa:
 If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof
 Were well deserved of rashness.

MARK ANTONY I am not married, Caesar: let me hear
 Agrippa further speak.

AGRIPPA To hold you in perpetual amity,
 To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts
 With an unslipping knot, take Antony
 Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims
 No worse a husband than the best of men;
 Whose virtue and whose general graces speak
 That which none else can utter. By this marriage,
 All little jealousies, which now seem great,
 And all great fears, which now import their dangers,
 Would then be nothing: truths would be tales,
 Where now half tales be truths: her love to both
 Would, each to other and all loves to both,
 Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke;
 For 'tis a studied, not a present thought,
 By duty ruminated.

MARK ANTONY                   Will Caesar speak?

OCTAVIUS CAESAR Not till he hears how Antony is touch'd
 With what is spoke already.

MARK ANTONY What power is in Agrippa,
 If I would say, 'Agrippa, be it so,'
 To make this good?

OCTAVIUS CAESAR                   The power of Caesar, and
 His power unto Octavia.

MARK ANTONY May I never
 To this good purpose, that so fairly shows,
 Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand:
 Further this act of grace: and from this hour
 The heart of brothers govern in our loves
 And sway our great designs!

OCTAVIUS CAESAR There is my hand.
 A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother
 Did ever love so dearly: let her live
 To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never
 Fly off our loves again!

LEPIDUS Happily, amen!

MARK ANTONY I did not think to draw my sword 'gainst Pompey;
 For he hath laid strange courtesies and great
 Of late upon me: I must thank him only,
 Lest my remembrance suffer ill report;
 At heel of that, defy him.

LEPIDUS Time calls upon's:
 Of us must Pompey presently be sought,
 Or else he seeks out us.

MARK ANTONY Where lies he?

OCTAVIUS CAESAR About the mount Misenum.

MARK ANTONY What is his strength by land?

OCTAVIUS CAESAR Great and increasing: but by sea
 He is an absolute master.

MARK ANTONY So is the fame.
 Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it:
 Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we
 The business we have talk'd of.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR With most gladness:
 And do invite you to my sister's view,
 Whither straight I'll lead you.

MARK ANTONY Let us, Lepidus,
 Not lack your company.

LEPIDUS Noble Antony,
 Not sickness should detain me.

 [Flourish. Exeunt OCTAVIUS CAESAR, MARK ANTONY,
 and LEPIDUS]

MECAENAS Welcome from Egypt, sir.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Mecaenas! My
 honourable friend, Agrippa!

AGRIPPA Good Enobarbus!

MECAENAS We have cause to be glad that matters are so well
 digested. You stayed well by 't in Egypt.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance, and
 made the night light with drinking.

MECAENAS Eight wild-boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and
 but twelve persons there; is this true?

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had much more
 monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.

MECAENAS She's a most triumphant lady, if report be square to
 her.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up
 his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.

AGRIPPA There she appeared indeed; or my reporter devised
 well for her.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS I will tell you.
 The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
 Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
 Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
 The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
 Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
 The water which they beat to follow faster,
 As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
 It beggar'd all description: she did lie
 In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
 O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
 The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
 Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
 With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
 To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
 And what they undid did.

AGRIPPA O, rare for Antony!

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
 So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
 And made their bends adornings: at the helm
 A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
 Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
 That yarely frame the office. From the barge
 A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
 Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
 Her people out upon her; and Antony,
 Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
 Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
 Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
 And made a gap in nature.

AGRIPPA Rare Egyptian!

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
 Invited her to supper: she replied,
 It should be better he became her guest;
 Which she entreated: our courteous Antony,
 Whom ne'er the word of 'No' woman heard speak,
 Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast,
 And for his ordinary pays his heart
 For what his eyes eat only.

AGRIPPA Royal wench!
 She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed:
 He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS I saw her once
 Hop forty paces through the public street;
 And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
 That she did make defect perfection,
 And, breathless, power breathe forth.

MECAENAS Now Antony must leave her utterly.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Never; he will not:
 Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
 Her infinite variety: other women cloy
 The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
 Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
 Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
 Bless her when she is riggish.

MECAENAS If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
 The heart of Antony, Octavia is
 A blessed lottery to him.

AGRIPPA Let us go.
 Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest
 Whilst you abide here.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS Humbly, sir, I thank you.

 [Exeunt]




 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA


ACT II