Page 2563 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

He brings you figs.

CLEOPATRA
Let him come in.
(Exit Guardsman.)
What poor an instrument [235]
May do a noble deed! he brings me liberty:

My resolution’s plac’d, and I have nothing
Of woman in me: now from head to foot
I am marble-constant: now the fleeting moon

No planet is of mine.

Re-enter Guardsman, with Clown bringing in a basket.

GUARDSMAN
This is the man. [240]

CLEOPATRA
Avoid, and leave him.
(Exit Guardsman.)
Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there,

That kills and pains not?

CLOWN
Truly I have him: but I would not be the party that should desire you to touch
him, for his biting is [245] immortal: those that do die of it, do seldom or
never recover.

CLEOPATRA
Remember’st thou any that have died on’t?

CLOWN
Very many, men and women too. I heard of one of them no longer than

yesterday, a very honest woman, [250] but something given to lie, as a
woman should not do, but in the way of honesty, how she died of the biting
of it, what pain she felt: truly, she makes a very good report o’ the worm: but

he that will believe all that they say, shall never be saved by half that they