William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition

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5.3 Enter Macbeth, the Doctor of Physic, and attendants

MACBETH

Bring me no more reports. Let them fly all.

Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane

I cannot taint with fear. What’s the boy Malcolm?

Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know

All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:

‘Fear not, Macbeth. No man that’s born of woman

Shall e’er have power upon thee.’ Then fly, false thanes,

And mingle with the English epicures.

The mind I sway by and the heart I bear

Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.

Enter Servant

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!

Where gott’st thou that goose look?

SERVANT There is ten thousand-

MACBETH Geese, villain?

SERVANT

Soldiers, sir. 15

MACBETH

Go prick thy face and over-red thy fear,

Thou lily-livered boy. What soldiers, patch?

Death of thy soul, those linen cheeks of thine

Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?

SERVANT The English force, so please you.

MACBETH

Take thy face hence.

Exit Servant

Seyton!-I am sick at heart

When I behold-Seyton, I say!—This push

Will cheer me ever or disseat me now.

I have lived long enough. My way of life

Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,

And that which should accompany old age,

As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have, but in their stead

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath

Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.

Seyton!

Enter Seyton

SEYTON What’s your gracious pleasure?

MACBETH

What news more?

SEYTON

All is confirmed, my lord, which was reported.

MACBETH

I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked.

Give me my armour.

SEYTON ’Tis not needed yet.

MACBETH I’ll put it on.

Send out more horses. Skirr the country round.

Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour.

How does your patient, doctor?

DOCTOR

Not so sick, my lord,

As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies

That keep her from her rest.

MACBETH

Cure her of that.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the fraught bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR

Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

MACBETH

Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.

(To an attendant) Come, put mine armour on. Give me

my staff.

Seyton, send out. Doctor, the thanes fly from me.

(To an attendant) Come, sir, dispatch.—If thou couldst,

doctor, cast

The water of my land, find her disease,

And purge it to a sound and pristine health,

I would applaud thee to the very echo,

That should applaud again. (To an attendant) Pull’t off,

I say.

(To the Doctor) What rhubarb, cyme, or what

purgative drug

Would scour these English hence? Hear’st thou of

them?

DOCTOR

Ay, my good lord. Your royal preparation

Makes us hear something.

MACBETH (To an attendant) Bring it after me.

I will not be afraid of death and bane

Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.

DOCTOR (aside)

Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,

Profit again should hardly draw me here.

Exeunt

5.4 Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff, Siward’s Son, Menteith, Caithness, Angus, and soldiers, marching, with a drummer and colours

MALCOLM

Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand

That chambers will be safe.

MENTEITH

We doubt it nothing.

SIWARD

What wood is this before us?

MENTEITH

The wood of Birnam.

MALCOLM

Let every soldier hew him down a bough

And bear’t before him. Thereby shall we shadow

The numbers of our host, and make discovery

Err in report of us.

A SOLDIER

It shall be done.

SIWARD

We learn no other but the confident tyrant

Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure

Our setting down before’t.

MALCOLM

’Tis his main hope,

For where there is advantage to be gone,

Both more and less have given him the revolt,

And none serve with him but constrained things,

Whose hearts are absent too.

MACDUFF

Let our just censures

Attend the true event, and put we on

Industrious soldiership.

SIWARD

The time approaches

That will with due decision make us know

What we shall say we have, and what we owe.

Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,

But certain issue strokes must arbitrate;

Towards which, advance the war. Exeunt, marching

5.5 Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and soldiers, with a drummer and colours

MACBETH

Hang out our banners on the outward walls.

The cry is still ‘They come.’ Our castle’s strength

Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie

Till famine and the ague eat them up.

Were they not forced with those that should be ours

We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,

And beat them backward home.

A cry within of women

What is that noise?

SEYTON

It is the cry of women, my good lord.

[Exit]

MACBETH

I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

The time has been my senses would have cooled

To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in’t. I have supped full with horrors.

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,

Cannot once start me.

⌈Enter Seyton⌉

Wherefore was that cry?

SEYTON

The Queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH

She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Enter a Messenger

Thou com’st to use

Thy tongue: thy story quickly.

MESSENGER

Gracious my lord,

I should report that which I say I saw,

But know not how to do’t.

MACBETH

Well, say, sir.

MESSENGER

As I did stand my watch upon the hill

I looked toward Birnam, and anon methought

The wood began to move.

MACBETH

Liar and slave!

MESSENGER

Let me endure your wrath if’t be not so.

Within this three mile may you see it coming.

I say, a moving grove.

MACBETH

If thou speak’st false

Upon the next tree shall thou hang alive

Till famine cling thee. If thy speech be sooth,

I care not if thou dost for me as much.

I pall in resolution, and begin

To doubt th‘equivocation of the fiend,

That lies like truth. ’Fear not till Birnam Wood

Do come to Dunsinane‘—and now a wood

Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out.

If this which he avouches does appear

There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.

I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,

And wish th‘estate o’th’ world were now undone.

Ring the alarum bell.

Alarums Blow wind, come wrack,

At least we’ll die with harness on our back. Exeunt

5.6 Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff, and their army with boughs, with a drummer and colours

MALCOLM

Now near enough. Your leafy screens throw down,

And show like those you are.

They throw down the boughs

You, worthy uncle,

Shall with my cousin, your right noble son,

Lead our first battle. Worthy Macduff and we

Shall take upon’s what else remains to do

According to our order.

SIWARD

Fare you well.

Do we but find the tyrant’s power tonight,

Let us be beaten if we cannot fight.

MACDUFF

Make all our trumpets speak, give them all breath,

Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

Exeunt. Alarums continued

5.7 Enter Macbeth

MACBETH

They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly,

But bear-like I must fight the course. What’s he

That was not born of woman? Such a one

Am I to fear, or none.

Enter Young Siward

YOUNG SIWARD What is thy name?

MACBETH Thou’lt be afraid to hear it.

YOUNG SIWARD

No, though thou call’st thyself a hotter name

Than any is in hell.

MACBETH

My name’s Macbeth.

YOUNG SIWARD

The devil himself could not pronounce a title

More hateful to mine ear.

MACBETH

No, nor more fearful.

YOUNG SIWARD

Thou liest, abhorred tyrant. With my sword

I’ll prove the lie thou speak’st.

They fight, and Young Siward is slain

MACBETH

Thou wast born of woman,

But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,

Brandished by man that’s of a woman born.

Exit ⌈with the body ⌉

5.8 Alarums. Enter Macduff

MACDUFF

That way the noise is. Tyrant, show thy face!

If thou beest slain and with no stroke of mine,

My wife and children’s ghosts will haunt me still.

I cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms

Are hired to bear their staves. Either thou, Macbeth, 5

Or else my sword with an unbattered edge

I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;

By this great clatter one of greatest note

Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune,

And more I beg not.

Exit. Alarums

5.9 Enter Malcolm and Siward

SIWARD

This way, my lord. The castle’s gently rendered.

The tyrant’s people on both sides do fight.

The noble thanes do bravely in the war.

The day almost itself professes yours,

And little is to do.

MALCOLM

We have met with foes

That strike beside us.

SIWARD

Enter, sir, the castle.

Exeunt. Alarum

5.10 Enter Macbeth

MACBETH

Why should I play the Roman fool, and die

On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes

Do better upon them.

Enter Macduff

MACDUFF

Turn, hell-hound, turn.

MACBETH

Of all men else I have avoided thee.

But get thee back. My soul is too much charged

With blood of thine already.

MACDUFF

I have no words;

My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain

Than terms can give thee out.

They fight; alarum

MACBETH

Thou losest labour.

As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air

With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.

Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield

To one of woman born.

MACDUFF

Despair thy charm,

And let the angel whom thou still hast served

Tell thee Macduff was from his mother’s womb 15

Untimely ripped.

MACBETH

Accursèd be that tongue that tells me so,

For it hath cowed my better part of man;

And be these juggling fiends no more believed,

That palter with us in a double sense,

That keep the word of promise to our ear

And break it to our hope. I’ll not fight with thee.

MACDUFF

Then yield thee, coward,

And live to be the show and gaze o‘th’ time.

We’ll have thee as our rarer monsters are,

Painted upon a pole, and underwrit

‘Here may you see the tyrant.’

MACBETH

I will not yield

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,

And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.

Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,

And thou opposed being of no woman born,

Yet I will try the last. Before my body

I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,

And damned be him that first cries ‘Hold, enough!’

Exeunt fighting. Alarums

They enter fighting, and Macbeth is slain.

Exit

Macduff with Macbeth’s body

5.11 Retreat and flourish. Enter with a drummer and colours Malcolm, Siward, Ross, thanes, and soldiers

MALCOLM

I would the friends we miss were safe arrived.

SIWARD

Some must go off; and yet by these I see

So great a day as this is cheaply bought.

MALCOLM

Macduff is missing, and your noble son.

ROSS (to Siward)

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt.

He only lived but till he was a man,

The which no sooner had his prowess confirmed

In the unshrinking station where he fought,

But like a man he died.

SIWARD

Then he is dead?

ROSS

Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow

Must not be measured by his worth, for then

It hath no end.

SIWARD

Had he his hurts before?

ROSS

Ay, on the front.

SIWARD

Why then, God’s soldier be he.

Had I as many sons as I have hairs

I would not wish them to a fairer death;

And so his knell is knolled.

MALCOLM

He’s worth more sorrow,

And that I’ll spend for him.

SIWARD

He’s worth no more.

They say he parted well and paid his score,

And so God be with him. Here comes newer comfort.

Enter Macduff with Macbeth’s head

MACDUFF (to Malcolm)

Hail, King, for so thou art. Behold where stands

Th’usurper’s cursed head. The time is free.

I see thee compassed with thy kingdom’s pearl,

That speak my salutation in their minds,

Whose voices I desire aloud with mine:

Hail, King of Scotland!

ALL BUT MALCOLM

Hail, King of Scotland!

Flourish

MALCOLM

We shall not spend a large expense of time

Before we reckon with your several loves

And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen,

Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland

In such an honour named. What’s more to do

Which would be planted newly with the time,

As calling home our exiled friends abroad,

That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,

Producing forth the cruel ministers

Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen-

Who, as ‘tis thought, by self and violent hands

Took off her life—this and what needful else

That calls upon us, by the grace of grace

We will perform in measure, time, and place.

So thanks to all at once, and to each one,

Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone.

Flourish. Exeunt Omnes

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

FIRST printed in the 1623 Folio, Antony and Cleopatra had been entered on the Stationers’ Register on 20 May 1608. Echoes of it in Barnabe Barnes’s tragedy The Devil’s Charter, acted by Shakespeare’s company in February 1607, suggest that Shakespeare wrote his play no later than 1606, and stylistic evidence supports that date.

The Life of Marcus Antonius in Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579) was one of the sources for Julius Caesar; it also provided Shakespeare with most of his material for Antony and Cleopatra, in which he draws upon its language to a remarkable extent even in some of the play’s most poetic passages. For example, Enobarbus’ famous description of Cleopatra in her barge (2.2.197-225) incorporates phrase after phrase of North’s prose. And the play’s action stays close to North’s account, though with significant adjustments, particularly compressions of the time-scheme. It opens in 40 BC, two years after the end of Julius Caesar, and portrays events that took place over a period of ten years. Mark Antony has become an older man, though Octavius is still ‘scarce-bearded’. Plutarch, who was a connoisseur of human behaviour, also afforded many hints for the characterization; but some characters, particularly Antony’s comrade Domitius Enobarbus and Cleopatra’s women, Charmian and Iras, are largely created by Shakespeare.

In the earlier play, Mark Antony had formed a triumvirate with Octavius Caesar and Lepidus. In Antony and Cleopatra the triumvirate is in a state of disintegration, partly because Mark Antony—married at the play’s opening to Fulvia, who is rebelling against Octavius Caesar—is infatuated with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt (and the former mistress of Julius Caesar). The play’s action swings between Rome and Alexandria as Antony is torn between the claims of Rome—strengthened for a while by his marriage, after Fulvia’s death, to Octavius Caesar’s sister Octavia—and the temptations of Egypt. Gradually opposition between Antony and Octavius increases, until they engage in a sea-fight near Actium (in Greece), in which Antony follows Cleopatra’s navy in ignominious retreat. The closing stages of the double tragedy portray Antony’s shame, humiliation, and suicide after Cleopatra falsely causes him to believe that she has killed herself; faced with the threat that Caesar will take her captive to Rome, Cleopatra too commits suicide. According to Plutarch, she was thirty-eight years old; as for Antony, ‘some say that he lived three-and-fifty years, and others say, six-and-fifty’.

In Antony and Cleopatra the classical restraint of Julius Caesar gives way to a fine excess of language, of dramatic action, and of individual behaviour. The style is hyperbolical, overflowing the measure of the iambic pentameter. The action is amazingly fluid, shifting with an ease and rapidity that caused bewilderment to ages unfamiliar with the conventions of Shakespeare’s theatre. And the characterization is correspondingly extravagant, delighting in the quirks of individual behaviour, above all in the paradoxes and inconsistencies of the Egyptian queen who contains within herself the capacity for every extreme of human behaviour, from vanity, meanness, and frivolity to the sublime self-transcendence with which she faces and embraces death.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra

1.1 Enter Demetrius and Philo

PHILO

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 gipsy’s lust.

Flourish. Enter Antony, Cleopatra, her ladies, the train, with eunuchs fanning her

Look where they come.

Take but good note, and you shall see in him

The triple pillar of the world transformed

Into a strumpet’s fool. Behold and see.

CLEOPATRA (to Antony)

If it be love indeed, tell me how much.

ANTONY

There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.

CLEOPATRA

I’ll set a bourn how far to be beloved.

ANTONY

Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.

Enter a Messenger

MESSENGER News, my good lord, from Rome.

ANTONY Grates me: the sum.

CLEOPATRA Nay, hear them, Antony.

Fulvia perchance is angry; 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.’

ANTONY How, my love?

CLEOPATRA Perchance? Nay, and most like.

You must not stay here longer. Your dismission

Is come from Caesar, therefore hear it, Antony.

Where’s Fulvia’s process—Caesar’s, I would say—

both?

Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt’s queen,

Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine

Is Caesar’s homager; else so thy cheek pays shame

When shrill-tongued Fulvia scolds. The messengers!

ANTONY

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the ranged empire fall. Here is my space.

Kingdoms are clay. Our dungy earth alike

Feeds beast as man. 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.

CLEOPATRA ⌈aside⌉ Excellent falsehood!

Why did he marry Fulvia and not love her?

I’ll seem the fool I am not. (To Antony) Antony

Will be himself.

ANTONY

But stirred by Cleopatra.

Now, for the love of Love and her soft hours

Let’s not confound the time with conference harsh.

There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch

Without some pleasure now. What sport tonight?

CLEOPATRA

Hear the ambassadors.

ANTONY

Fie, wrangling queen,

Whom everything becomes—to chide, to laugh,

To weep; how every passion fully strives

To make itself, in thee, fair and admired!

No messenger but thine; and all alone

Tonight we’ll wander through the streets and note

The qualities of people. Come, my queen.

Last night you did desire it. (To the Messenger) Speak

not to us.

Exeunt Antony and Cleopatra with the train, ⌈and by another door the Messenger⌉

DEMETRIUS

Is Caesar with Antonius prized so slight?

PHILO

Sir, sometimes when he is not Antony

He comes too short of that great property

Which still should go with Antony.

DEMETRIUS

I am full sorry

That he approves the common liar who

Thus speaks of him at Rome; but I will hope

Of better deeds tomorrow. Rest you happy.

Exeunt

1.2 Enter Enobarbus, a Soothsayer, Charmian, Iras, Mardian the eunuch, Alexas, ⌈and attendants⌉

CHARMIAN 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!

ALEXAS

Soothsayer!

SOOTHSAYER Your will?

CHARMIAN

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

SOOTHSAYER

In nature’s infinite book of secrecy

A little I can read.

ALEXAS (to Charmian) Show him your hand.

ENOBARBUS (calling) Bring in the banquet quickly,

Wine enough Cleopatra’s health to drink.

⌈Enter servants with food and wine, and exeunt⌉

CHARMIAN (to Soothsayer) Good sir, give me good fortune.

SOOTHSAYER I make not, but foresee.

CHARMIAN

Pray then, foresee me one.

SOOTHSAYER

You shall be yet

Far fairer than you are.

CHARMIAN He means in flesh.

IRAS

No, you shall paint when you are old.

CHARMIAN

Wrinkles forbid!

ALEXAS

Vex not his prescience. Be attentive.

CHARMIAN

Hush!

SOOTHSAYER

You shall be more beloving than beloved.

CHARMIAN I had rather heat my liver with drinking.

ALEXAS Nay, hear him.

CHARMIAN 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.

SOOTHSAYER

You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.

CHARMIAN O, excellent! I love long life better than figs.

SOOTHSAYER

You have seen and proved a fairer former fortune

Than that which is to approach.

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

SOOTHSAYER

If every of your wishes had a womb,

And fertile every wish, a million.

CHARMIAN Out, fool—I forgive thee for a witch.

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

CHARMIAN (to the Soothsayer) Nay, come, tell Iras hers.

ALEXAS We’ll know all our fortunes.

ENOBARBUS Mine, and most of our fortunes, tonight shall be drunk to bed.

IRAS (showing her hand to the Soothsayer) There’s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.

CHARMIAN E’s the o’erflowing Nilus presageth famine.

IRAS Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.

CHARMIAN Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. (To the Soothsayer) Prithee, tell her but a workaday fortune.

SOOTHSAYER Your fortunes are alike.

IRAS But how, but how? Give me particulars.

SOOTHSAYER I have said.

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

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

IRAS Not in my husband’s nose.

CHARMIAN 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.

IRAS Amen, dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people. For as it is a heart-breaking 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.

CHARMIAN Amen.

ALEXAS Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores but they’d do’t.

Enter Cleopatra

ENOBARBUS Hush, here comes Antony.

CHARMIAN Not he, the Queen.

CLEOPATRA Saw you my lord?

ENOBARBUS

No, lady.

CLEOPATRA Was he not here?

CHARMIAN No, madam.

CLEOPATRA

He was disposed to mirth, but on the sudden

A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!

ENOBARBUS Madam?

CLEOPATRA

Seek him, and bring him hither. Where’s Alexas?

ALEXAS

Here at your service. My lord approaches.

Enter Antony with a Messenger

CLEOPATRA

We will not look upon him. Go with us.

Exeunt all but Antony and the Messenger

MESSENGER

Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.

ANTONY Against my brother Lucius?

MESSENGER

Ay, but soon that war had end, and the time’s state

Made friends of them, jointing their force ’gainst

Caesar,

Whose better issue in the war from Italy

Upon the first encounter drave them.

ANTONY

Well, what worst?

MESSENGER

The nature of bad news infects the teller.

ANTONY

When it concerns the fool or coward. On.

Things that are past are done. With me ’tis thus:

Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,

I hear him as he flattered.

MESSENGER Labienus—

This is stiff news—hath with his Parthian force

Extended Asia; from Euphrates

His conquering banner shook, from Syria

To Lydia and to Ionia,

Whilst—

ANTONYAntony, thou wouldst say—

MESSENGER O, my lord!

ANTONY

Speak to me home. Mince not the general tongue.

Name Cleopatra as she is called in Rome.

Rail thou in Fulvia’s phrase, and taunt my faults

With such full licence as both truth and malice

Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds

When our quick winds lie still, and our ills told us

Is as our earing. Fare thee well a while.

MESSENGER At your noble pleasure.

Exit Messenger

Enter another Messenger

ANTONY

From Sicyon, ho, the news? Speak there.

⌈SECOND MESSENGER⌉

The man from Sicyon—

⌈ANTONY⌉ Is there such a one?

⌈SECOND MESSENGER⌉

He stays upon your will.

ANTONY Let him appear.

Exit Second Messenger

These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,

Or lose myself in dotage.

Enter another Messenger with a letter

What are you?

⌈THIRD MESSENGER⌉

Fulvia thy wife is dead.

ANTONY Where died she?

THIRD MESSENGER In Sicyon.

Her length of sickness, with what else more serious

Importeth thee to know, this bears.

He gives Antony the letter

ANTONY Forbear me.

⌈Exit Third Messenger⌉

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 low’ring, 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!

⌈Enter Enobarbus⌉

ENOBARBUS

What’s your pleasure, sir?

ANTONY

I must with haste from hence.

ENOBARBUS 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.

ANTONY I must be gone.

ENOBARBUS 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.

ANTONY She is cunning past man’s thought.

ENOBARBUS 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.

ANTONY Would I had never seen her!

ENOBARBUS O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work, which not to have been blessed withal would have discredited your travel.

ANTONY Fulvia is dead.

ENOBARBUS Sir.

ANTONY Fulvia is dead.

ENOBARBUS Fulvia?

ANTONY Dead.

ENOBARBUS 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.

ANTONY

The business she hath broached in the state

Cannot endure my absence.

ENOBARBUS And the business you have broached here cannot be without you, especially that of Cleopatra’s, which wholly depends on your abode.

ANTONY

No more light answers. Let our officers

Have notice what we purpose. I shall break

The cause of our expedience to the Queen,

And get her leave to part; 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