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OCTAVIUS CAESAR
Say not so, Agrippa:
If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof
Were well deserved of rashness.
MARK ANTONY
I am not married, Caesar: let me hear
Agrippa further speak.
AGRIPPA
To hold you in perpetual amity,
To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts
With an unslipping knot, take Antony
Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims
No worse a husband than the best of men;
Whose virtue and whose general graces speak
That which none else can utter. By this marriage,
All little jealousies, which now seem great,
And all great fears, which now import their dangers,
Would then be nothing: truths would be tales,
Where now half tales be truths: her love to both
Would, each to other and all loves to both,
Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke;
For 'tis a studied, not a present thought,
By duty ruminated.
MARK ANTONY
Will Caesar speak?
OCTAVIUS CAESAR
Not till he hears how Antony is touch'd
With what is spoke already.
MARK ANTONY
What power is in Agrippa,
If I would say, 'Agrippa, be it so,'
To make this good?
OCTAVIUS CAESAR
The power of Caesar, and
His power unto Octavia.
MARK ANTONY
May I never
To this good purpose, that so fairly shows,
Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand:
Further this act of grace: and from this hour
The heart of brothers govern in our loves
And sway our great designs!
OCTAVIUS CAESAR
There is my hand.
A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother
Did ever love so dearly: let her live
To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never
Fly off our loves again!
LEPIDUS
Happily, amen!
MARK ANTONY
I did not think to draw my sword 'gainst Pompey;
For he hath laid strange courtesies and great
Of late upon me: I must thank him only,
Lest my remembrance suffer ill report;
At heel of that, defy him.
LEPIDUS
Time calls upon's:
Of us must Pompey presently be sought,
Or else he seeks out us.
MARK ANTONY
Where lies he?
OCTAVIUS CAESAR
About the mount Misenum.
MARK ANTONY
What is his strength by land?
OCTAVIUS CAESAR
Great and increasing: but by sea
He is an absolute master.
MARK ANTONY
So is the fame.
Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it:
Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we
The business we have talk'd of.
OCTAVIUS CAESAR
With most gladness:
And do invite you to my sister's view,
Whither straight I'll lead you.
MARK ANTONY
Let us, Lepidus,
Not lack your company.
LEPIDUS
Noble Antony,
Not sickness should detain me.
Flourish. Exeunt OCTAVIUS CAESAR, MARK ANTONY, and LEPIDUS
MECAENAS
Welcome from Egypt, sir.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Mecaenas! My
honourable friend, Agrippa!
AGRIPPA
Good Enobarbus!
MECAENAS
We have cause to be glad that matters are so well
digested. You stayed well by't in Egypt.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance, and
made the night light with drinking.
MECAENAS
Eight wild-boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and
but twelve persons there; is this true?
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had much more
monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.
MECAENAS
She's a most triumphant lady, if report be square to
her.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up
his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.
AGRIPPA
There she appeared indeed; or my reporter devised
well for her.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
AGRIPPA
O, rare for Antony!
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.
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