Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
Act 2 - Scene 2
Rome. The house of LEPIDUS.
Domitius Enobarus : I shall entreat him
[p]To answer like himself: if Caesar move
him,
[p]Let Antony look over Caesar's head
[p]And speak as loud as
Mars. By Jupiter,
[p]Were I the wearer of Antonius' beard,
[p]I would
not shave't to-day.
Domitius Enobarus : Every time
[p]Serves for the matter that is then born in't.
Domitius Enobarus : Not if the small come first.
Domitius Enobarus : And yonder, Caesar.
Domitius Enobarus : Would we had all such wives, that the men might go
[p]to wars with the
women!
Mecaenas : If it might please you, to enforce no further
[p]The griefs between
ye: to forget them quite
[p]Were to remember that the present
need
[p]Speaks to atone you.
Domitius Enobarus : Or, if you borrow one another's love for the
[p]instant, you may, when
you hear no more words of
[p]Pompey, return it again: you shall have
time to
[p]wrangle in when you have nothing else to do.
Domitius Enobarus : That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.
Domitius Enobarus : Go to, then; your considerate stone.
Agrippa : Give me leave, Caesar,--
Agrippa : Thou hast a sister by the mother's side,
[p]Admired Octavia: great
Mark Antony
[p]Is now a widower.
Agrippa : To hold you in perpetual amity,
[p]To make you brothers, and to knit
your hearts
[p]With an unslipping knot, take Antony
[p]Octavia to his
wife; whose beauty claims
[p]No worse a husband than the best of
men;
[p]Whose virtue and whose general graces speak
[p]That which none
else can utter. By this marriage,
[p]All little jealousies, which now
seem great,
[p]And all great fears, which now import their
dangers,
[p]Would then be nothing: truths would be tales,
[p]Where now
half tales be truths: her love to both
[p]Would, each to other and all
loves to both,
[p]Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke;
[p]For
'tis a studied, not a present thought,
[p]By duty ruminated.
Mecaenas : Welcome from Egypt, sir.
Domitius Enobarus : Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Mecaenas! My
[p]honourable friend,
Agrippa!
Agrippa : Good Enobarbus!
Mecaenas : We have cause to be glad that matters are so well
[p]digested. You
stayed well by 't in Egypt.
Domitius Enobarus : Ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance, and
[p]made the night
light with drinking.
Mecaenas : Eight wild-boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and
[p]but twelve
persons there; is this true?
Domitius Enobarus : This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had much more
[p]monstrous
matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.
Mecaenas : She's a most triumphant lady, if report be square to
[p]her.
Domitius Enobarus : When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up
[p]his heart, upon the
river of Cydnus.
Agrippa : There she appeared indeed; or my reporter devised
[p]well for her.
Domitius Enobarus : I will tell you.
[p]The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd
throne,
[p]Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
[p]Purple
the sails, and so perfumed that
[p]The winds were love-sick with them;
the oars were silver,
[p]Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and
made
[p]The water which they beat to follow faster,
[p]As amorous of
their strokes. For her own person,
[p]It beggar'd all description: she
did lie
[p]In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of
tissue--
[p]O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
[p]The fancy
outwork nature: on each side her
[p]Stood pretty dimpled boys, like
smiling Cupids,
[p]With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did
seem
[p]To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
[p]And what
they undid did.
Agrippa : O, rare for Antony!
Domitius Enobarus : Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
[p]So many mermaids, tended her i'
the eyes,
[p]And made their bends adornings: at the helm
[p]A seeming
mermaid steers: the silken tackle
[p]Swell with the touches of those
flower-soft hands,
[p]That yarely frame the office. From the
barge
[p]A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
[p]Of the adjacent
wharfs. The city cast
[p]Her people out upon her; and
Antony,
[p]Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
[p]Whistling
to the air; which, but for vacancy,
[p]Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra
too,
[p]And made a gap in nature.
Agrippa : Rare Egyptian!
Domitius Enobarus : Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
[p]Invited her to supper: she
replied,
[p]It should be better he became her guest;
[p]Which she
entreated: our courteous Antony,
[p]Whom ne'er the word of 'No' woman
heard speak,
[p]Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the
feast,
[p]And for his ordinary pays his heart
[p]For what his eyes eat
only.
Agrippa : Royal wench!
[p]She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed:
[p]He
plough'd her, and she cropp'd.
Domitius Enobarus : I saw her once
[p]Hop forty paces through the public street;
[p]And
having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
[p]That she did make
defect perfection,
[p]And, breathless, power breathe forth.
Mecaenas : Now Antony must leave her utterly.
Domitius Enobarus : Never; he will not:
[p]Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
[p]Her
infinite variety: other women cloy
[p]The appetites they feed: but she
makes hungry
[p]Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
[p]Become
themselves in her: that the holy priests
[p]Bless her when she is
riggish.
Mecaenas : If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
[p]The heart of Antony, Octavia
is
[p]A blessed lottery to him.
Agrippa : Let us go.
[p]Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest
[p]Whilst you
abide here.
Domitius Enobarus : Humbly, sir, I thank you.
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Next: Act 2 - Scene 3
