1    Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most any thing Alexas,
2    almost most absolute Alexas, where's the soothsayer
3    that you praised so to the queen? O, that I knew
4    this husband, which, you say, must charge his horns
5    with garlands!

6    Soothsayer!

7    Your will?

8    Is this the man? Is't you, sir, that know things?

9    In nature's infinite book of secrecy
10   A little I can read.

11   Show him your hand.

12   Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough
13   Cleopatra's health to drink.

14   Good sir, give me good fortune.

15   I make not, but foresee.

16   Pray, then, foresee me one.

17   You shall be yet far fairer than you are.

18   He means in flesh.

19   No, you shall paint when you are old.

20   Wrinkles forbid!

21   Vex not his prescience; be attentive.

22   Hush!

23   You shall be more beloving than beloved.

24   I had rather heat my liver with drinking.

25   Nay, hear him.

26   Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married
27   to three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all:
28   let me have a child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry
29   may do homage: find me to marry me with Octavius
30   Caesar, and companion me with my mistress.

31   You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.

32   O excellent! I love long life better than figs.

33   You have seen and proved a fairer former fortune
34   Than that which is to approach.

35   Then belike my children shall have no names:
36   prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?

37   If every of your wishes had a womb.
38   And fertile every wish, a million.

39   Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.

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

41   Nay, come, tell Iras hers.

42   We'll know all our fortunes.

43   Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall
44   be--drunk to bed.

45   There's a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.

46   E'en as the o'erflowing Nilus presageth famine.

47   Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.

48   Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful
49   prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee,
50   tell her but a worky-day fortune.

51   Your fortunes are alike.

52   But how, but how? give me particulars.

53   I have said.

54   Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?

55   Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than
56   I, where would you choose it?

57   Not in my husband's nose.

58   Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas,--come,
59   his fortune, his fortune! O, let him marry a woman
60   that cannot go, sweet Isis, I beseech thee! and let
61   her die too, and give him a worse! and let worst
62   follow worse, till the worst of all follow him
63   laughing to his grave, fifty-fold a cuckold! Good
64   Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a
65   matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee!

66   Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people!
67   for, as it is a heartbreaking to see a handsome man
68   loose-wived, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a
69   foul knave uncuckolded: therefore, dear Isis, keep
70   decorum, and fortune him accordingly!

71   Amen.

72   Lo, now, if it lay in their hands to make me a
73   cuckold, they would make themselves whores, but
74   they'ld do't!

75   Hush! here comes Antony.

76   Not he; the queen.

77   Saw you my lord?

78   No, lady.

79   Was he not here?

80   No, madam.

81   He was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden
82   A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!

83   Madam?

84   Seek him, and bring him hither.
85   Where's Alexas?

86   Here, at your service. My lord approaches.

87   We will not look upon him: go with us.

88   Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.

89   Against my brother Lucius?

90   Ay:
91   But soon that war had end, and the time's state
92   Made friends of them, joining their force 'gainst Caesar;
93   Whose better issue in the war, from Italy,
94   Upon the first encounter, drave them.

95   Well, what worst?

96   The nature of bad news infects the teller.

97   When it concerns the fool or coward. On:
98   Things that are past are done with me. 'Tis thus:
99   Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,
100  I hear him as he flatter'd.

101  Labienus--
102  This is stiff news--hath, with his Parthian force,
103  Extended Asia from Euphrates;
104  His conquering banner shook from Syria
105  To Lydia and to Ionia; Whilst--

106  Antony, thou wouldst say,--

107  O, my lord!

108  Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue:
109  Name Cleopatra as she is call'd in Rome;
110  Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase; and taunt my faults
111  With such full licence as both truth and malice
112  Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds,
113  When our quick minds lie still; and our ills told us
114  Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.

115  At your noble pleasure.

116  From Sicyon, ho, the news! Speak there!

117  The man from Sicyon,--is there such an one?

118  He stays upon your will.

119  Let him appear.
120  These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
121  Or lose myself in dotage.
Enter another Messenger
122  What are you?

123  Fulvia thy wife is dead.

124  Where died she?

125  In Sicyon:
126  Her length of sickness, with what else more serious
127  Importeth thee to know, this bears.

128  Forbear me.
Exit Second Messenger
129  There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it:
130  What our contempt doth often hurl from us,
131  We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,
132  By revolution lowering, does become
133  The opposite of itself: she's good, being gone;
134  The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on.
135  I must from this enchanting queen break off:
136  Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
137  My idleness doth hatch. How now! Enobarbus!

138  What's your pleasure, sir?

139  I must with haste from hence.

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

143  I must be gone.

144  Under a compelling occasion, let women die; it were
145  pity to cast them away for nothing; though, between
146  them and a great cause, they should be esteemed
147  nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of
148  this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty
149  times upon far poorer moment: I do think there is
150  mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon
151  her, she hath such a celerity in dying.

152  She is cunning past man's thought.

153  Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but
154  the finest part of pure love: we cannot call her
155  winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater
156  storms and tempests than almanacs can report: this
157  cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a
158  shower of rain as well as Jove.

159  Would I had never seen her.

160  O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece
161  of work; which not to have been blest withal would
162  have discredited your travel.

163  Fulvia is dead.

164  Sir?

165  Fulvia is dead.

166  Fulvia!

167  Dead.

168  Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When
169  it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man
170  from him, it shows to man the tailors of the earth;
171  comforting therein, that when old robes are worn
172  out, there are members to make new. If there were
173  no more women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut,
174  and the case to be lamented: this grief is crowned
175  with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new
176  petticoat: and indeed the tears live in an onion
177  that should water this sorrow.

178  The business she hath broached in the state
179  Cannot endure my absence.

180  And the business you have broached here cannot be
181  without you; especially that of Cleopatra's, which
182  wholly depends on your abode.

183  No more light answers. Let our officers
184  Have notice what we purpose. I shall break
185  The cause of our expedience to the queen,
186  And get her leave to part. For not alone
187  The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,
188  Do strongly speak to us; but the letters too
189  Of many our contriving friends in Rome
190  Petition us at home: Sextus Pompeius
191  Hath given the dare to Caesar, and commands
192  The empire of the sea: our slippery people,
193  Whose love is never link'd to the deserver
194  Till his deserts are past, begin to throw
195  Pompey the Great and all his dignities
196  Upon his son; who, high in name and power,
197  Higher than both in blood and life, stands up
198  For the main soldier: whose quality, going on,
199  The sides o' the world may danger: much is breeding,
200  Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life,
201  And not a serpent's poison. Say, our pleasure,
202  To such whose place is under us, requires
203  Our quick remove from hence.

204  I shall do't.