Page 2416 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

CÆSAR

You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,
It is not Cæsar’s natural vice to hate
Our great competitor. From Alexandria

This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike [5]
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

A man who is the abstract of all faults
That all men follow.

LEPIDUS
I must not think there are [10]
Evils enow to darken all his goodness:

His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,
More fiery by night’s blackness; hereditary,
Rather than purchas’d; what he cannot change,
Than what he chooses. [15]

CÆSAR
You are too indulgent. Let’s grant it is not

Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,
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 [20]
With knaves that smell of sweat: say this becomes him, −
As his composure must be rare indeed
Whom these things cannot blemish, − yet must Antony
No way excuse his foils, when we do bear

So great weight in his lightness. If he fill’d [25]
His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
Full surfeits, and the dryness of his bones

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: [30]
As we rate boys, who being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,