ACT I - Scene II Antony and Cleopatra

In nature’s infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.

Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough
Cleopatra’s health to drink.

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

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

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

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

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 flatter’d.

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—

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

Let him appear.
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage.

In Sicyon:
Her length of sickness, with what else more serious
Importeth thee to know, this bears. Gives a letter.

Forbear me. Exit Second Messenger.
There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it:
What our contempt doth often hurl from us,
We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, 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!

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

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
Petition us at home: Sextus Pompeius
Hath given the dare to Caesar, and commands
The empire of the sea: our slippery people,
Whose love is never link’d to the deserver
Till his deserts are past, begin to throw
Pompey the Great and all his dignities
Upon his son; who, high in name and power,
Higher than both in blood and life, stands up
For the main soldier: whose quality, going on,
The sides o’ the world may danger: much is breeding,
Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life,
And not a serpent’s poison. Say, our pleasure,
To such whose place is under us, requires
Our quick remove from hence.