Lay me stark-nak’d, and let the water-flies
Blow me into abhorring! rather make
My country’s high pyramides my gibbet,
And hang me up in chains!
PROCULEIUS.
You do extend
These thoughts of horror further than you shall
Find cause in Caesar.
[Enter DOLABELLA.]
DOLABELLA.
Proculeius,
What thou hast done thy master Caesar knows,
And he hath sent for thee: as for the queen,
I’ll take her to my guard.
PROCULEIUS.
So, Dolabella,
It shall content me best: be gentle to her.—
[To CLEOPATRA.] To Caesar I will speak what you shall please,
If you’ll employ me to him.
CLEOPATRA.
Say I would die.
[Exeunt PROCULEIUS and Soldiers.]
DOLABELLA.
Most noble empress, you have heard of me?
CLEOPATRA.
I cannot tell.
DOLABELLA.
Assuredly you know me.
CLEOPATRA.
No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.
You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams;
Is’t not your trick?
DOLABELLA.
I understand not, madam.
CLEOPATRA.
I dream’d there was an Emperor Antony:—
O, such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man!
DOLABELLA.
If it might please you,—
CLEOPATRA.
His face was as the heavens; and therein stuck
A sun and moon, which kept their course, and lighted
The little O, the earth.
DOLABELLA.
Most sovereign creature,—
CLEOPATRA.
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 liv’d in: in his livery
Walk’d crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropp’d from his pocket.
DOLABELLA.
Cleopatra,—
CLEOPATRA.
Think you there was or might be such a man
As this I dream’d of?
DOLABELLA.
Gentle madam, no.
CLEOPATRA.
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
An Antony were nature’s piece ‘gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite.
DOLABELLA.
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 pursu’d success, but I do feel,
By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites
My very heart at root.
CLEOPATRA.
I thank you, sir.
Know you what Caesar means to do with me?
DOLABELLA.
I am loath to tell you what I would you knew.
CLEOPATRA.
Nay, pray you, sir,—
DOLABELLA.
Though he be honourable,—
CLEOPATRA.
He’ll lead me, then, in triumph?
DOLABELLA.
Madam, he will;
I know it.
[Flourish within.]
[Within.] Make way there,—Caesar!
[Enter CAESAR, GALLUS, PROCULEIUS, MAECENAS, SELEUCUS, and
Attendants.]
CAESAR.
Which is the queen of Egypt?
DOLABELLA.
It is the emperor, madam.
[CLEOPATRA kneels.]
CAESAR.
Arise, you shall not kneel:—
I pray you, rise; rise, Egypt.
CLEOPATRA.
Sir, the gods
Will have it thus; my master and my lord
I must obey.
CAESAR.
Take to you no hard thoughts;
The record of what injuries you did us,
Though written in our flesh, we shall remember
As things but done by chance.
CLEOPATRA.
Sole sir o’ the world,
I cannot project mine own cause so well
To make it clear: but do confess I have
Been laden with like frailties which before
Have often sham’d our sex.
CAESAR.
Cleopatra, know
We will extenuate rather than enforce:
If you apply yourself to our intents,—
Which towards you are most gentle,—you shall find
A benefit in this change; but if you seek
To lay on me a cruelty, by taking
Antony’s course, you shall bereave yourself
Of my good purposes, and put your children
To that destruction which I’ll guard them from,
If thereon you rely. I’ll take my leave.
CLEOPATRA.
And may, through all the world: ‘tis yours, and we,
Your scutcheons and your signs of conquest, shall
Hang in what place you please. Here, my good lord.
CAESAR.