Dolabella,
It shall content me best: be gentle to her.
To Caesar I will speak what you shall please,
If you'll employ me to him.
Say, I would die.
Most noble empress, you have heard of me?
I cannot tell.
Assuredly you know me.
No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.
You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams;
Is't not your trick?
I understand not, madam.
I dream'd there was an Emperor Antony:
O, such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man!
If it might please ye,--
His face was as the heavens; and therein stuck
A sun and moon, which kept their course,
and lighted
The little O, the earth.
Most sovereign creature,--
His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear'd arm
Crested the world: his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like; they show'd his back above
The element they lived in: in his livery
Walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropp'd from his pocket.
Cleopatra!
Think you there was, or might be, such a man
As this I dream'd of?
Gentle madam, no.
You lie, up to the hearing of the gods.
But, if there be, or ever were, one such,
It's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff
To vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine
And Antony, were nature's piece 'gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite.
Hear me, good madam.
Your loss is as yourself, great; and you bear it
As answering to the weight: would I might never
O'ertake pursued success, but I do feel,
By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites
My very heart at root.
I thank you, sir,
Know you what Caesar means to do with me?
I am loath to tell you what I would you knew.
Nay, pray you, sir,--
Though he be honourable,--
He'll lead me, then, in triumph?
Madam, he will; I know't.
Which is the Queen of Egypt?
It is the emperor, madam.
Arise, you shall not kneel:
I pray you, rise; rise, Egypt.
Sir, the gods
Will have it thus; my master and my lord
I must obey.
Take to you no hard thoughts:
The record of what injuries you did us,
Though written in our flesh