figs proverb

Sooth. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve. Char. O excellent! I love long life better than figs. Sooth. You've seen and proved a fairer former fortune Than that which is to approach.

Char. Then belike my children shall have no names.5. Pr'ythee, how many boys and wenches must I have? wishes had a womb,

Sooth. If every of your

And fertile every wish, a million.

Char. Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.6

Alex. You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.

Char. Nay, come, tell Iras hers.

Alex. We'll know all our fortunes.

Eno. Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall bedrunk to bed.

Iras. There's a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.
Char. E'en as the o'erflowing Nilus presageth famine.
Iras. Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.

Char. Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. — Pr'ythee, tell her but a worky-day fortune.

Sooth. Your fortunes are alike.

Iras. But how, but how? give me particulars.

Sooth. I have said.

Iras. Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?

Char. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?

Iras. Not in my husband's nose.

5 Charmian has never been married; and, as her past fortune has been better than her future is to be, her children will not know who their father is, and so will be nameless. So in The Two Gentlemen, iii. 1: "That's as much as to say, bastard virtues; that, indeed, know not their fathers, and therefore have no names.'

"

6 Alluding to an old proverbial saying, “You'll never be burnt for a witch"; spoken to a silly person, who cannot be suspected of conjuring.

Char. Our worser thoughts Heavens mend! - Alexas, come, his fortune, his fortune!—O, let him marry a woman that cannot go, sweet Isis, I beseech thee! and let her die too, and give him a worse! and let worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his grave, fifty-fold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee!

Iras. Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! for, as it is a heart-breaking to see a handsome man. loose-wived, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded: therefore, dear Isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly!

Char. Amen.

Alex. Lo, now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores but they'd do't!

Eno. Hush here comes Antony.
Char.

Not he; the Queen.

Cleo. He was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden

A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus,

Eno. Madam?

Cleo. Seek him, and bring him hither. - Where's Alexas?

Alex. Here, at your service. My lord approaches.
Cleo. We will not look upon him: go with us. [Exeunt.

Enter ANTONY with a Messenger and Attendants.

Mess. Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.
Ant. Against my brother Lucius ?

Mess. Ay:

But soon that war had end, and the time's state

Made friends of them, jointing their force 'gainst Cæsar ;
Whose better issue in the war, from Italy,

Upon the first encounter, drave them.

Well, what worst?

Ant.
Mess. The nature of bad news infects the teller.
Ant. When it concerns the fool or coward. On:
Things that are past are done with me. 'Tis thus:
Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,
I hear him as he flatter'd.

This is stiff news - hath, with his Parthian force,
Extended Asia from Euphrates;

His conquering banner shook from Syria

To Lydia and to Ionia; whilst

Ant. Antony, thou wouldst say,

Mess. O, my lord!

Ant. Speak to me home,8 mince not the general tongue : Name Cleopatra as she's call'd in Rome;

Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase; and taunt my faults
With such full license as both truth and malice

Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds.
When our quick minds lie still; and our ills told us
Is as our earing.9 Fare thee well awhile.

7 Extended, here, is seized, taken possession of. See vol. v. page 53, note 3. 8 Speak me out fully, thoroughly, or to the quick. So home is often used. See vol. xi. page 34, note 32.- "Mince not the general tongue" is "Do not palliate, dilute, or disguise the common talk about me." To mince a thing is, properly, to cut it up fine, so as to be easily swallowed. See vol. xii. page 208, note I.

9 The proper meaning of quick is living or alive. Here it seems to mean pregnant, prolific, in which sense it forms an apt and natural epithet for soil. And the mind is here compared to a fat and generous soil, which, if suffered to lie still, if not stirred with the plough, shoots forth weeds; and the telling us plainly our faults is as the earing, that is, the ploughing, to

[Exit.

Mess. At your noble pleasure.

Ant. From Sicyon, ho, the news! Speak there!

I Att. The man from Sicyon; is there such an one? 2 Att. He stays upon your will.

Ant.

Let him appear.

These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,

Or lose myself in dotage.

Her length of sickness, with what else more serious
Importeth thee to know, this bears.

Ant.

[Gives a letter.

Forbear me. [Exit 2 Mess.

-There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it :
What our contempts do often hurl from us,

We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, does become

The opposite of itself: 10 she's good, being gone;
The hand could 11 pluck her back that shoved her on.
I must from this enchanting Queen break off:
Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch.- Ho, Enobarbus !

Re-enter ENOBARBUS.

Eno. What's your pleasure, sir?

make the soil productive of better things. This use of to ear was common in the Poet's time. See vol. x. page 197, note 23.

10 The pleasure of to-day, by change of circumstances, often loses all its value to us, and becomes to-morrow a pain. The image is of a wheel, which revolving, what is at the top to-day is at the bottom to-morrow.

11 Antony is referring to his own hand: “My hand would now pluck her back." The Poet has many instances of could and would used indifferently.

Ant. I must with haste from hence.

Eno. Why, then we kill all our women: we see how mortal an unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death's the word.

Ant. I must be gone.

Eno. Under a compelling occasion, let women die: it were pity to cast them away for nothing; though, between them and a great cause, they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment : I do think there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying.

Ant. She is cunning past man's thought.

12

Eno. Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report: this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.13 Ant. Would I had never seen her !

Eno. O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work; which not to have been bless'd withal would have discredited your travel.

Ant. Fulvia is dead.

Eno. Sir?

Ant. Fulvia is dead.

Eno. Fulvia !

Ant. Dead.

Eno. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shows to man the tailors of the Earth; 14 comforting

12" Far poorer moment" is much less cause.

18 This cannot be a matter of study and art with her, or any thing got up for effect; if it be, she's a match for old Jupiter himself.

14 Shows them to him in the sense, probably, of sending him to them, or