DOLABELLA: Most noble Empress, you have...

DOLABELLA: Most noble Empress, you have heard of me?

CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT: I cannot tell.

DOLABELLA: Assuredly you know me.

CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT: 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, QUEEN OF EGYPT: I dreamt there was an Emperor Antony.

O, such another sleep, that I might see

But such another man!

DOLABELLA: If it might please ye—

CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT: His face was as the heav’ns, and therein stuck

A sun and moon, which kept their course, and lighted

The little O, th’ earth.

DOLABELLA: Most sovereign creature—

CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT: 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 it was

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, QUEEN OF EGYPT: Think you there was or might be such a man

As this I dreamt of?

DOLABELLA: Gentle madam, no.

CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT: You lie up to the hearing of the gods!

But if there be, nor ever were one such,

It’s past the size of dreaming. Nature wants stuff

To vie strange forms with fancy; yet t’ 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, QUEEN OF EGYPT: 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, QUEEN OF EGYPT: Nay, pray you, sir.

DOLABELLA: Though he be honorable—

CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT: He’ll lead me then in triumph?

DOLABELLA: Madam, he will, I know’t.

Antony and Cleopatra on Amazon