CLEOPATRA: Sooner shining light Shall...

CLEOPATRA: Sooner shining light

Shall leave the day, and darkness leave the night:

Sooner moist currents of tempestuous seas

Shall wave in heaven, and the nightly troops

Of stars shall shine within the foaming waves,

Then I thee, Antony, Leave in deep distress.

I am with thee, be it thy worthy soul

Lodge in thy breast, or from that lodging parte

Crossing the joyless lake to take her place

In place prepared for men Demy-gods.

Live, if thee please, if life be loathsome die:

Dead and alive, Antony, thou shalt see

Thy princess follow thee, follow, and lament,

Thy wrack, no less her own then was thy weal.

CHARMION: What helps his wrack this ever-lasting love?

CLEOPATRA: Help, or help not, such must, such ought I prove.

CHARMION: Ill done to lose your self, and to no end.

CLEOPATRA: How ill think you to follow such a friend?

CHARMION: But this your love nought mitigates his pain.

CLEOPATRA: Without this love I should be inhumane.

CHARMION: Inhumane he, who his own death pursues.

CLEOPATRA: Not inhumane who miseries eschews.

CHARMION: Live for your sons.

CLEOPATRA: Nay for their father die.

CHARMION: Hardhearted mother!

CLEOPATRA: Wife kindhearted I.

CHARMION: Then will you them deprive of royal right?

CLEOPATRA: Do I deprive them? no, it's destinies might.

CHARMION: Do you not them deprive of heritage,

That give them up to adversaries hands,

A man forsaken fearing to forsake,

Whom such huge numbers hold environed?

T’abandon one ‘gainst whom the frowning world

Banded with Caesar makes conspiring war.

CLEOPATRA: The less ought I to leave him left of all.

A friend in most distress should most assist.

If that when Antony great and glorious

His legions led to drink Euphrates streams,

So many kings in train redoubting him;

In triumph raised as high as highest heaven;

Lord-like disposing as him pleased best,

The wealth of Greece, the wealth of Asia:

In that faire fortune had I him exchanged

For Caesar, then, men would have counted me

Faithless, unconstant, light: but now the storm,

And blustering tempest driving on his face,

Ready to drown, Alas! what would they say?

What would himself in Pluto’s mansion say?

If I, whom always more than life he loved,

If I, Who am his heart, who was his hope,

leave him, forsake him (and perhaps in vain)

Weakly to please who him hath overthrown?

Not light, unconstant, faithless should I be,

But vile, forsworne, of treachrous cruelty.

CHARMION: Cruelty to shun you self-cruel are:

CLEOPATRA: Self-cruel him from cruelty to spare.

CHARMION: Our first affection to ourself is due.

CLEOPATRA: He is my self.

CHARMION: Next it extends unto

Our children, friends, and to our country soil.

And you for some respect of wifely love,

(Albee scarce wifely) lose your native land,

Your children, friends, and (which is more) your life,

With so strong charms doth love bewitch our wits:

So fast in us this fire once kindled flames.

Yet if his harm by yours redress might have.

CLEOPATRA: With mine it may be closed in darksome grave.

CHARMION: And that, as Alcest to her self unkind,

You might exempt him from the laws of death.

But he is sure to die: and now his sword

Already moisted is in his warm blood,

Helpless for any succour you can bring

Against deaths sting, which he must shortly feel.

Then let your love be like the love of old

Which Carian Queene did nourish in her heart

Of her Mausolus: build for him a tomb

Whose stateliness a wonder new may make.

Let him, let him have sumptuous funerals:

Let grave thereon the horror of his fights:

Let earth be buried with unburied heaps.

Frame their Pharsaly, and discolored streams

Of deep Enipeus: frame the grassy plain,

Which lodged his camp at siege of Mutina.

Make all his combats, and courageous acts:

And yearly plays to his praise institute:

Honor his memory: with doubled care

Breed and bring up the children of you both

In Caesar’s grace: who as a noble Prince

Will leave them Lords of this most glorious realm.

CLEOPATRA: What shame were that? ah Gods! what infamy?

With Antony in his good haps to share,

And overlive him dead: deeming enough

To shed some tears upon a widow tomb?

The after-livers justly might report

That I him only for his Empire loved,

And high estate: and that in hard estate

I for another did him lewdly leave?

Like to those birds wafted with wand’ring wings

From foreign lands in spring-time here arrive:

And live with us so long as Somers heat,

And their food lasts, then seek another soil.

And as we see with ceaseless fluttering

Flocking of seely flies a brownish cloud

To vintag’d wine yet working in the tun:

Not parting thence while they sweet liquor taste:

After, as smoke, all vanish in the air,

And of the swarm not one so much appear.

ERAS: By this sharp death what profit can you win?

CLEOPATRA: I neither gain nor profit seek therein.

ERAS: What praise shall you of after-ages get?

CLEOPATRA: Nor praise, nor Glory in my cares are set.

Eras. What other end ought you respect, then this?

CLEOPATRA: My only end my only duty is.

Eras. Your duty must upon some good be founded?

CLEOPATRA: On virtue it, the only good, is grounded.

ERAS: What is that virtue?

CLEOPATRA: That which us beseems.

ERAS: Outrage our selves? who that beseeming deems?

CLEOPATRA: Finish I will my sorrows dying thus.

ERAS: ‘Minish you will your glories doing thus.

CLEOPATRA: Good friends I pray you seek not to revoke

My fix’d intent of following Antony.

I will die. I will die: must not his life,

His life and death by mine be followed?

Meanwhile, dear sisters, live: and while you live,

Do often honor to our loved tombs.

Straw them with flowers: and sometimes happily

The tender thought of Antony your Lord

And me poor soul to tears shall you invite,

And our true loves your doleful voice commend.

CHARMION: And think you Madame, we from you will part?

Think you alone to feel deaths ugly dart?

Think you to leave us? and that the same sun

Shall see at once you dead, and us alive?

We’ll die with you: and Clotho pitiless

Shall us with you in hellish boat embark.

CLEOPATRA: Ah live, I pray you: this disastered woe

Which racks my heart, alone to me belongs:

My lot longs not to you: servants to be

No shame, no harm to you, as is to me.

Live sisters, live, and seeing his suspect

Hath causeless me in sea of sorrows drown’d,

And that I cannot live, if so I would,

Nor yet would leave this life, if so I could,

Without his love: procure me, Diomede,

That ‘gainst poor me he be no more incensed.

Wrest out of his conceit that harmful doubt,

That since his wrack he hath of me conceived

Though wrong conceived witness you reverent gods,

Barking Anubis, Apis bellowing.

Tell him, my soul burning, impatient,

Forlorn with love of him, for certain seal

Of her true loyalty my corpse hath left,

T’increase of dead the number numberless.

Go then, and if as yet he me bewail,

If yet for me his heart one sigh fourth breathe

Blest shall I be: and far with more content

Depart this world, where so I me torment.

Mean season us let this sad tomb enclose,

Attending here till death conclude our woes.

Mary Sidney, The Tragedy of Antonie, http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/antonie.html.

Full text of the play: http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/antonie.html