ANTONY & CLEOPATRA. Sidney Lee

FIRST GUARD.

       Where’s the queen?

       CHARMIAN.

       Speak softly, wake her not.

       FIRST GUARD.

       Caesar hath sent,—

       CHARMIAN.

       Too slow a messenger.

       [Applies an asp.]

       O, come apace, despatch: I partly feel thee.

       FIRST GUARD.

       Approach, ho! all’s not well: Caesar’s beguil’d.

       SECOND GUARD.

       There’s Dolabella sent from Caesar; call him.

       FIRST GUARD.

       What work is here!—Charmian, is this well done?

       CHARMIAN.

       It is well done, and fitting for a princess

       Descended of so many royal kings.

       Ah, soldier!

       [CHARMIAN dies.]

       [Re-enter DOLABELLA.]

       DOLABELLA.

       How goes it here?

       SECOND GUARD.

       All dead.

       DOLABELLA.

       Caesar, thy thoughts

       Touch their effects in this: thyself art coming

       To see perform’d the dreaded act which thou

       So sought’st to hinder.

       [Within.] A way there, a way for Caesar!

       [Re-enter CAESAR and his Train.]

       DOLABELLA.

       O sir, you are too sure an augurer;

       That you did fear is done.

       CAESAR.

       Bravest at the last,

       She levell’d at our purposes, and being royal,

       Took her own way.—The manner of their deaths?

       I do not see them bleed.

       DOLABELLA.

       Who was last with them?

       FIRST GUARD.

       A simple countryman that brought her figs.

       This was his basket.

       CAESAR.

       Poison’d then.

       FIRST GUARD.

       O Caesar,

       This Charmian liv’d but now; she stood and spake:

       I found her trimming up the diadem

       On her dead mistress; tremblingly she stood,

       And on the sudden dropp’d.

       CAESAR.

       O noble weakness!—

       If they had swallow’d poison ‘twould appear

       By external swelling: but she looks like sleep,—

       As she would catch another Antony

       In her strong toil of grace.

       DOLABELLA.

       Here on her breast

       There is a vent of blood, and something blown:

       The like is on her arm.

       FIRST GUARD.

       This is an aspic’s trail: and these fig-leaves

       Have slime upon them, such as the aspic leaves

       Upon the caves of Nile.

       CAESAR.

       Most probable

       That so she died; for her physician tells me

       She hath pursu’d conclusions infinite

       Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed,

       And bear her women from the monument:—

       She shall be buried by her Antony:

       No grave upon the earth shall clip in it

       A pair so famous. High events as these

       Strike those that make them; and their story is

       No less in pity than his glory which

       Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall

       In solemn show attend this funeral;

       And then to Rome.—Come, Dolabella, see

       High order in this great solemnity.

       [Exeunt.]

       THE END