Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

And I have heard, Apollodorus carried -
Eno. No more of that he did so.

Pom.

What, I pray you?

Eno. A certain Queen to Cæsar in a mattress.8

Pom. I know thee now: how farest thou, soldier?
Eno.

And well am like to do; for I perceive

Four feasts are toward.

Pom.

Let me shake thy hand;

I never hated thee: I've seen thee fight,
When I have envied thy behaviour.

[blocks in formation]

I never loved you much; but I ha' praised ye,

When you

have well deserved ten times as much

As I have said you did.

Pom.

Enjoy thy plainness,

It nothing ill becomes thee.

Aboard my galley I invite you all :

Will you lead, lords?

Well;

Cæs.

Ant.

Lep.
Pom.

Show us the way, sir.

Come.

[Exeunt all but MENAS and ENOBARBUS.

8 The incident here alluded to is related in Plutarch's Life of Julius Cæsar. After telling how, upon Cæsar's coming to Alexandria, Pothinus the eunuch drove Cleopatra from the Court, and how Cæsar sent secretly for her to come to him, he goes on thus: "Then, having no other meane to come into the court without being knowne, she laid herself downe upon a mattrasse or flockbed, which Apollodorus tied and bound up together like a bundle with a great leather thong, and so tooke her upon his backe, and brought her thus hampered in this fardle unto Cæsar in the castle gate. This was the first occasion, it is reported, that made Cæsar to love her." The incident is dramatized with much spirit, in Fletcher's False One.

Men. [Aside.] Thy father, Pompey, would ne'er have

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Eno. I will praise any man that will praise me; though it

cannot be denied what I have done by land.

Men. Nor what I have done by water.

Eno. Yes, something you can deny for your own safety; you have been a great thief by sea.

Men. And you by land.

Eno. There I deny my land service. But give me your hand, Menas: if our eyes had authority, here they might take two thieves kissing.

Men. All men's faces are true, whatsoe'er their hands are. Eno. But there is never a fair woman has a true face.

Men. No slander; they steal hearts.

Eno. We came hither to fight with you.

Men. For my part, I am sorry it is turn'd to a drinking. Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.

Eno. If he do, sure, he cannot weep't back again.

Men. You've said,9 sir. We look'd not for Mark Antony here pray you, is he married to Cleopatra?

Eno. Cæsar's sister is call'd Octavia,

Men. True, sir; she was the wife of Caius Marcellus.

Eno. But she is now the wife of Marcus Antonius.

Men. Pray ye, sir?

Eno. 'Tis true.

9 This was a common phrase of assent; and equivalent to our "just so." See Twelfth Night, page 83, note 3.

Men. Then is Cæsar and he for ever knit together.

Eno. If I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not prophesy so.

Men. I think the policy of that purpose made more in the marriage than the love of the parties.10

Eno. I think so too. But you shall find, the band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity. Octavia is of a holy, cold, and still conversation.

Men. Who would not have his wife so?

Eno. Not he that himself is not so; which is Mark Antony. He will to his Egyptian dish again: then shall the sighs of Octavia blow the fire up in Cæsar; and, as I said before, that which is the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author of their variance. Antony will

use his affection where it is: he married but his occasion 11 here.

Men. And thus it may be. Come, sir, will you aboard? I have a health for you.

Eno. I shall take it, sir: we have used our throats in Egypt.

Men. Come, let's away.

[Exeunt.

10 Meaning, simply, that the marriage was one of policy, not of love, or

that political ends had the chief hand in making it up.

11 Occasion in the sense of convenience, interest, or advantage.

SCENE VII. On board POMPEY'S Galley, lying near

Misenum.

Music. Enter two or three Servants, with a banquet.

I Serv. Here they'll be, man. Some o' their plants 1 are ill-rooted already; the least wind i' the world will blow them down.

2 Serv. Lepidus is high-colour'd.

I Serv. They have made him drink alms-drink.2

2 Serv. As they pinch one another by the disposition,3 he cries out No more; reconciles them to his entreaty, and himself to the drink.

I Serv. But it raises the greater war between him and his discretion.

2 Serv. Why, this it is to have a name in great men's fellowship: I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a partisan 4 I could not heave.

I Serv. To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks.5

1 Plants, besides its common meaning, is here used for the soles of the feet, one of its Latin senses. So in Chapman's version of the sixteenth Iliad: "Even to the low plants of his feet his forme was altered."

2 "A phrase," says Warburton, "among good fellows, to signify that liquor of another's share which his companions drink to ease him. But it satirically alludes to Cæsar and Antony's admitting him into the triumvirate, in order to take off from themselves the load of envy."

3 Meaning much the same as the phrase now current, of " touching one in a sore place."

4 A partisan was a weapon between a pike and a halberd, not being so long it was made use of in mounting a breach, &c.

5 A sight as unseemly as the holes where the eyes should be, without the kindling presence of the eye to fill them.

Sennet sounded.

Enter CESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, POMPEY, AGRIPPA, MECENAS, ENOBARBUS, MENAS, with other Captains.

Ant. [To CESAR.] Thus do they, sir: They take the flow o' the Nile

By certain scales i' the pyramid; they know,

By th' height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth

Or foison 6 follow: the higher Nilus swells,
The more it promises: as it ebbs, the seedsman
Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,

And shortly comes to harvest.

Lep. You've strange serpents there.

Ant. Ay, Lepidus.

Lep. Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by

the operation of your Sun; so is your crocodile.

Ant. They are so.

Pom. Sit, and some wine!

A health to Lepidus !

Lep. I am not so well as I should be, but I'll ne'er out. Eno. Not till you have slept; I fear me you'll be in till then.

Lep. Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies' pyramises are very goodly things; without contradiction, I have heard that.

Men. [Aside to POм.]
Pom. [Aside to MEN.]

Men. [Aside to POм.]

thee, captain,

And hear me speak a word.

Pompey, a word.

Say in mine ear: what is't? Forsake thy seat, I do beseech

6 Foison is plenty, abundance. See The Tempest, page 122, note 22. 7 Lepidus's tongue is getting thick with wine, and pyramises is his boozy pronunciation of pyramids.

« VorigeDoorgaan »