Page 2433 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

CÆSAR

I do not much dislike the matter, but
The manner of his speech; for’t cannot be
We shall remain in friendship, our conditions

So differing in their acts. Yet, if I knew
What hoop should hold us staunch from edge to edge [115]
O’ the world, I would pursue it.

AGRIPPA
Give me leave, Cæsar.

CÆSAR
Speak, Agrippa.

AGRIPPA
Thou hast a sister by the mother’s side,

Admir’d Octavia? Great Mark Antony
Is now a widower.

CÆSAR
Say not so, Agrippa: [120]
If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof

Were well deserv’d of rashness.

ANTONY

I am not married, Cæsar: let me hear
Agrippa further speak.

AGRIPPA
To hold you in perpetual amity, [125]
To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts
With an unslipping knot, take Antony

Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims
No worse a husband than the best of men;
Whose virtue, and whose general graces, speak [130]

That which none else can utter. By this marriage,
All little jealousies which now seem great,