Anthony and Cleopatra | Act 1.4

  Rome. OCTAVIUS
CAESAR’s house.

[Enter OCTAVIUS CAESAR, reading
a letter, LEPIDUS, and their Train]

OCTAVIUS CAESAR
You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,
It is not Caesar’s natural vice to hate
Our great competitor: from Alexandria
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel; is not more man-like
Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or
Vouchsafed to think he had partners: you shall find there
A man who is the abstract of all faults
That all men follow.

LEPIDUS     I must not think there are
   Evils enow to darken all his goodness:
His faults in him seem as the spots of heaven,
   More fiery by night’s blackness; hereditary,
   Rather than purchased; what he cannot change,
    Than what he chooses.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR
   You are too indulgent. Let us 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 smell of sweat: say this
    becomes him,–
   As his composure must be rare indeed
   Whom these things cannot blemish,–yet must Antony
   No way excuse his soils, when we do bear
   So great weight in his lightness. If he fill’d
   His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
   Full surfeits, and the dryness of his bones,
   Call on him for’t: but to confound such time,
   That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud
   As his own state and ours,–’tis to be chid
   As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge,
   Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,
   And so rebel to judgment.

[Enter a Messenger]

LEPIDUS    Here’s more news.

Messenger
   Thy biddings have been done; and every hour,
   Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report
   How ’tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea;
   And it appears he is beloved of those
   That only have fear’d Caesar: to the ports
   The discontents repair, and men’s reports
   Give him much wrong’d.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR    I should have known no less.
   It hath been taught us from the primal state,
   That he which is was wish’d until he were;
   And the ebb’d man, ne’er loved till ne’er worth love,
   Comes dear’d by being lack’d. This common body,
   Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
   Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,
   To rot itself with motion.

Messenger    Caesar, I bring thee word,
   Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,
   Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound
   With keels of every kind: many hot inroads
   They make in Italy; the borders maritime
   Lack blood to think on’t, and flush youth revolt:
   No vessel can peep forth, but ’tis as soon
   Taken as seen; for Pompey’s name strikes more
   Than could his war resisted.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR    Antony,
   Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
   Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st
   Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
  Did famine follow; whom thou fought’st against,
   Though daintily brought up, with patience more
   Than savages could suffer: 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;
   Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
   The barks of trees thou browsed’st; on the Alps
   It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
   Which some did die to look on: and all this–
   It wounds thine honour that I speak it now–
   Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
    So much as lank’d not.

LEPIDUS    ‘Tis pity of him.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR    Let his shames quickly
   Drive him to Rome: ’tis time we twain
   Did show ourselves i’ the field; and to that end
   Assemble we immediate council: Pompey
   Thrives in our idleness.

LEPIDUS    To-morrow, Caesar,
   I shall be furnish’d to inform you rightly
   Both what by sea and land I can be able
   To front this present time.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR    Till which encounter,
   It is my business too. Farewell.

LEPIDUS
   Farewell, my lord: what you shall know meantime
   Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,
   To let me be partaker.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR    Doubt not, sir;
   I knew it for my bond.

 

[Exeunt] Act 1.3 | Act 1.5


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Updated: February 18, 2024 — 9:46 pm