Antony and Cleopatra (1606 – 1623)
Antony and Cleopatra is a historical tragedy by William Shakespeare, originally printed in the First Folio of 1623.
Men’s judgments are
A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them,
To suffer all alike.
To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head,
And he will fill thy wishes to the brim
With principalities.
Give me to drink mandragora.
She shall be buried by her Antony:
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous.
He calls me boy; and chides, as he had power
To beat me out of Egypt; my messenger
He hath whipp'd with rods; dares me to personal combat,
Caesar to Antony: let the old ruffian know
I have many other ways to die; meantime
Laugh at his challenge.
Let the world rank me in register
A master-leaver and a fugitive:
O Antony! O Antony!
Mine honesty and I begin to square.
If I knew
What hoop should hold us staunch, from edge to edge
O' the world I would pursue it.
Nay, but this dotage of our general's
O'erflows the measure.
For his bounty,
There was no winter in ’t; an autumn ’t was,
That grew the more by reaping.
It's monstrous labour, when I wash my brain,
And it grows fouler.
She looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
In her strong toil of grace.
This grief is crowned with consolation.
I'll make death love me; for I will contend
Even with his pestilent scythe.
In nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.
The seven-fold shield of Ajax cannot keep
The battery from my heart. O, cleave, my sides!
O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,
The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,
That life, a very rebel to my will,
May hang no longer on me.
Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!
The time of universal peace is near.
Alack, our terrene moon
Is now eclipsed; and it portends alone
The fall of Antony!