Page 2531 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

Enter Cleopatra.

Ah, thou spell! Avaunt! [30]

CLEOPATRA
Why is my lord enrag’d against his love?

ANTONY
Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving,
And blemish Cæsar’s triumph. Let him take thee,
And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians,

Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot [35]
Of all thy sex. Most monster-like be shown
For poor’st diminutives, for dolts, and let

Patient Octavia plough thy visage up
With her prepared nails.
(Exit Cleopatra.)
’Tis well th’ art gone,
If it be well to live. But better ’twere [40]

Thou fell’st into my fury, for one death
Might have prevented many. Eros, ho!
The shirt of Nessus is upon me, teach me,

Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage.
Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o’ the moon, [45]
And with those hands that grasp’d the heaviest club,
Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die,
To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall

Under this plot: she dies for’t. Eros, ho!
(Exit.)

Scene XIII IT

(Alexandria. Cleopatra’s palace.)

Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, Mardian.

CLEOPATRA