Antony and Cleopatra: Act I

Nay, but this dotage of our general’s
O’erflows the measure.

Those his goodly eyes,
That o’er the files and musters of the war
Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front.

His captain’s heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gypsy’s lust.

His captain’s heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gypsy’s lust.

Or who knows
If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent
His powerful mandate to you: “Do this, or this;
Take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that.
Perform ’t, or else we damn thee.”

The nobleness of life
Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair
And such a twain can do ’t, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless.

The nobleness of life
Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair
And such a twain can do ’t, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless.

Fie, wrangling queen,
Whom everything becomes—to chide, to laugh,
To weep; whose every passion fully strives
To make itself, in thee, fair and admired!

Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything
Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where’s the
soothsayer that you praised so to th’ Queen?

Vex not his prescience. Be attentive.

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.

Then belike my children shall have no
names. Prithee, how many boys and wenches must
I have?

You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.

There’s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.

Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication,
I cannot scratch mine ear.—Prithee
tell her but a workaday 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.

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.

He was disposed to mirth, but on the sudden
A Roman thought hath struck him.

Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue.

Let him appear.
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage.

I do think there is mettle in death which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying.

I do think there is mettle in death which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying.

The business she hath broachèd in the state
Cannot endure my absence.

For not alone
The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,
Do strongly speak to us, but the letters too
Of many our contriving friends in Rome
Petition us at home.

Our slippery people,
Whose love is never linked to the deserver
Till his deserts are past, begin to throw
Pompey the Great and all his dignities
Upon his son, who—high in name and power,
Higher than both in blood and life—stands up
For the main soldier; whose quality, going on,
The sides o’ th’ world may danger.

Tempt him not so too far. I wish, forbear.
In time we hate that which we often fear.

Riotous madness,
To be entangled with those mouth-made vows
Which break themselves in swearing!

Our Italy
Shines o’er with civil swords; Sextus Pompeius
Makes his approaches to the port of Rome;
Equality of two domestic powers
Breed scrupulous faction

Good now, play one scene
Of excellent dissembling, and let it look
Like perfect honor.

From Alexandria
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel, is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or
Vouchsafed to think he had partners.

You are too indulgent.

Let’s grant it is not
Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,
To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit
And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,
To reel the streets at noon and stand the buffet
With knaves that smells of sweat.

If he filled
His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones
Call on him for ’t.

If he filled
His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones
Call on him for ’t.

Antony,
Leave thy lascivious wassails.

Thou didst drink
The stale of horses and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at.

Thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.

Thou, eunuch Mardian!

“Good friend,” quoth he,
“Say the firm Roman to great Egypt sends
This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot,
To mend the petty present, I will piece
Her opulent throne with kingdoms. All the East,
Say thou, shall call her mistress.”

O, well-divided disposition!—Note him,
Note him, good Charmian, ’tis the man!