You do not hold the method to enforce
The like from him.

CLEOPATRA.

What should I do, I do not?

CHARMIAN.

In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.

CLEOPATRA.

Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.

CHARMIAN.

Tempt him not too far.

But Cleopatra is a mistress of her art, and knows better: and what a
picture of her triumphant petulance, her imperious and imperial
coquetry, is given in her own words!

That time--O times!
I laugh'd him out of patience; and that night
I laughed him into patience: and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;
Then put my tires and mantles on, whilst
I wore his sword, Philippan.

When Antony enters full of some serious purpose which he is about to
impart, the woman's perverseness, and the tyrannical waywardness with
which she taunts him and plays upon his temper, are admirably depicted.

I know, by that same eye, there's some good news.
What says the married woman?[69] You may go;
Would she had never given you leave to come!
Let her not say, 'tis I that keep you here;
I have no power upon you; hers you are.

ANTONY.

The gods best know--

CLEOPATRA.

O, never was there queen
So mightily betray'd! Yet at the first,
I saw the treasons planted.

ANTONY.

Cleopatra!

CLEOPATRA.

Why should I think you can be mine, and true,
Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,
Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness
To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
Which break themselves in swearing!

ANTONY.

Most sweet queen!

CLEOPATRA.

Nay, pray you, seek no color for your going,
But bid farewell, and go.

She recovers her dignity for a moment at the news of Fulvia's death, as
if roused by a blow:--

Though age from folly could not give me freedom,
It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?

And then follows the artful mockery with which she tempts and provokes
him, in order to discover whether he regrets his wife.

O most false love!
Where be the sacred vials thou