Cleo. Hold, Dolabella.
First tell me, were you chosen by my lord?
Or sought you this employment?
Dola. He picked me out; and, as his bosom friend.
He charged me with his words.
Cleo. The message then
I know was tender, and each accent smooth,
To mollify that rugged word, Depart.
Dola. Oh, you mistake: He chose the harshest words:
With fiery eyes, and with contracted brows,
He coined
his face in the severest stamp;
And fury shook his fabric, like an earthquake;
He heaved for vent, and
burst like bellowing Ætna,
In sounds scarce human—“Hence away for ever,
Let her begone, the blot of my
renown,
And bane of all my hopes!”
[All the time of this speech, Cleopatra seems more and more concerned, till she sinks quite down.
“Let her be driven, as far as men can think,From man’s commerce! she’ll poison to the centre.”
Cleo. Oh, I can bear no more!
Dola. Help, help!—O wretch! O cursed, cursed wretch!
What have I done!
Char. Help, chafe her temples, Iras.
Iras. Bend, bend her forward quickly.
Char. Heaven be praised,
She comes again.
Cleo. Oh, let him not approach me.
Why have you brought me back to this loathed being,
The abode of
falsehood, violated vows,
And injured love? For pity, let me go;
For, if there be a place of long repose,
I’m
sure I want it. My disdainful lord
Can never break that quiet; nor awake
The sleeping soul, with hollwing in
my tomb
Such words as fright her hence.—Unkind, unkind!
Dola. Believe me, ’tis against myself I speak;
[Kneeling
That sure desires belief; I injured him:My friend ne’er spoke those words. Oh, had you seen
How often he came back, and every time
With something more obliging and more kind,
To add to what he said; what dear farewells;
How almost vanquished by his love he parted,
And leaned to what unwillingly he left!
I, traitor as I was, for love of you
(But what can you not do, who made me false?)
I forged that lie; for whose forgiveness kneels
This self-accused, self-punished criminal.
Cleo. With how much ease believe we what we wish!
Rise, Dolabella; if you have been guilty,
I have contributed,
and too much love
Has made me guilty too.
The advance of kindness. which I made, was feigned,
To call
back fleeting love by jealousy;
But ’twould not last. Oh, rather let me lose,
Than so ignobly trifle with his
heart.
Dola. I find your breast fenced round from human reach.
Transparent as a rock of solid crystal;
Seen
through, but never pierced. My friend, my friend,
What endless treasure hast thou thrown away;
And scattered,
like an infant, in the ocean,
Vain sums of wealth, which none can gather thence!
Cleo. Could you not beg
An hour’s admittance to his private ear?
Like one, who wanders through long
barren wilds
And yet foreknows no hospitable inn
Is near to succour hunger, eats his fill,
Before his painful
march;
So would I feed a while my famished eyes
Before we part; for I have far to go,
If death be far, and
never must return.
Ventidius with Octavia, behind.
Vent. From hence you may discover—oh, sweet, sweet!
Would you indeed? The pretty hand in earnest?
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