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Rome. A Room in CÆSAR’S House. | |
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Enter OCTAVIUS CÆSAR, LEPIDUS, and Attendants. | |
| Cæs. You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know, | |
| It is not Cæsar’s natural vice to hate | |
| Our great competitor. From Alexandria | 5 |
| This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes | |
| The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike | |
| Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy | |
| More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or | |
| Vouchsaf’d to think he had partners: you shall find there | 10 |
| A man who is the abstract of all faults | |
| That all men follow. | |
| Lep. I must not think there are | |
| Evils enow to darken all his goodness; | |
| His faults in him seem as the spots of heaven, | 15 |
| More fiery by night’s blackness; hereditary | |
| Rather than purchas’d; what he cannot change | |
| Than what he chooses. | |
| Cæs. You are too indulgent. Let us grant it is not | |
| Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy, | 20 |
| To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit | |
| And keep the turn of tippling with a slave, | |
| To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet | |
| With knaves that smell of sweat; say this becomes him,— | |
| As his composure must be rare indeed | 25 |
| Whom these things cannot blemish,—yet must Antony | |
| No way excuse his soils, when we do bear | |
| So great weight in his lightness. If he fill’d | |
| His vacancy with his voluptuousness, | |
| Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones | 30 |
| Call on him for ’t; but to confound such time | |
| That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud | |
| As his own state and ours, ’tis to be chid | |
| As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge, | |
| Pawn their experience to their present pleasure, | 35 |
| And so rebel to judgment. | |
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Enter a Messenger. | |
| Lep. Here’s more news. | |
| Mess. Thy biddings have been done, and every hour, | |
| Most noble Cæsar, shalt thou have report | 40 |
| How ’tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea, | |
| And it appears he is belov’d of those | |
| That only have fear’d Cæsar; to the ports | |
| The discontents repair, and men’s reports | |
| Give him much wrong’d. | 45 |
| Cæs. I should have known no less. | |
| It hath been taught us from the primal state, | |
| That he which is was wish’d until he were; | |
| And the ebb’d man, ne’er lov’d till ne’er worth love, | |
| Comes dear’d by being lack’d. This common body, | 50 |
| Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, | |
| Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, | |
| To rot itself with motion. | |
| Mess. Cæsar, I bring thee word, | |
| Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates, | 55 |
| Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound | |
| With keels of every kind: many hot inroads | |
| They make in Italy; the borders maritime | |
| Lack blood to think on ’t, and flush youth revolt; | |
| No vessel can peep forth, but ’tis as soon | 60 |
| Taken as seen; for Pompey’s name strikes more | |
| Than could his war resisted. | |
| Cæs. Antony, | |
| Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once | |
| Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st | 65 |
| Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel | |
| Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against, | |
| Though daintily brought up, with patience more | |
| Than savages could suffer; thou didst drink | |
| The stale of horses and the gilded puddle | 70 |
| Which beasts would cough at; thy palate then did deign | |
| The roughest berry on the rudest hedge; | |
| Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, | |
| The barks of trees thou browsed’st; on the Alps | |
| It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh, | 75 |
| Which some did die to look on; and all this— | |
| It wounds thy honour that I speak it now— | |
| Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek | |
| So much as lank’d not. | |
| Lep. ’Tis pity of him. | 80 |
| Cæs. Let his shames quickly | |
| Drive him to Rome. ’Tis time we twain | |
| Did show ourselves i’ the field; and to that end | |
| Assemble me immediate council; Pompey | |
| Thrives in our idleness. | 85 |
| Lep. To-morrow, Cæsar, | |
| I shall be furnish’d to inform you rightly | |
| Both what by sea and land I can be able | |
| To front this present time. | |
| Cæs. Till which encounter, | 90 |
| It is my business too. Farewell. | |
| Lep. Farewell, my lord. What you shall know meantime | |
| Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir, | |
| To let me be partaker. | |
| Cæs. Doubt not, sir; | 95 |
| I knew it for my bond. [Exeunt. | |
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