THE

BEAUTIES OF SHAKSPEARE.

Part the Third.

TRAGEDIES.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

LE

ACT I.

I LOVE THE NOBLENESS OF LIFE.

ET Rome.in Tyber melt! and the wide arch Of the rang'd empire fall! Here is my space; Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life, 1s, to do thus; when such a mutual pair,

[Embracing
And such a twain can do't, in which, I pind
On pain of punishment, the world to weet *,
We stand up peerless.

Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?--
I'll seem the fool I am not; Antony

Will be himself.

Ant.

But stirr'd by Cleopatra.

Now, for the love of Love, and her soft hours.

ANTONY'S VICES AND VIRTUES.

I must not think, there are

Evils enough to darken all his goodness:
His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,
More fiery by night's blackness; hereditary,
Rather than purchas'd; what he cannot change,
Than what he chooses.

Cæs. 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 sweats say, this becomes
him,

* Know.

+ Procured by his own fault.

(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.

Antony,

Leave thy lascivious wassals §. 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 T
Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did
deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;ang
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps
It is reported, thou did'st 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.

CLEOPATRA'S SOLICITUDE ON THE ABSENCE OF
ANTONY.

O Charmian,

1

Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he? Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?

O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!

* Levity.

Il Urine.

+ Visit him.

2 Feastings; in the old copy it is vaissailes, i. e. vassals,

+ Consume.

Stagnant, slimy water.