Cleo. What Sea of rudeness Breaks in upon us? or what Subjects Breath Dare raise a storm, when we command a calm?  Are Duty and Obedience fled to Heaven?  And in their room ambition and pride Sent into Egypt?  That Face speaks thee, Photinus, A thing thy Mother brought into the World; My Brother’s and my Slave:  but thy behaviour, Oppos’d to that, an insolent intruder Upon that Soveraignty thou shouldst bow to.  If in the Gulph of base ingratitude, All loyalty to Ptolomy the King Be swallowed up, remember who I am, Whose Daughter and whose Sister; or suppose That is forgot too; let the name of Caesar Which Nations quake at, stop the desperate madness From running headlong on to thy Confusion.  Throw from thee quickly those rebellious Arms, And let me read submission in thine Eyes; Thy wrongs to us we will not only pardon, But be a ready advocate to plead for thee To Caesar, and my Brother.

Pho. Plead my Pardon?  To you I bow, but scorn as much to stoop thus To Ptolomy or Caesar, Nay, the gods, As to put off the figure of a man, And change my Essence with a sensual Beast; All my designs, my counsels, and dark ends Were aim’d to purchase you.

  Cleo. How durst thou, being
  The scorn of baseness, nourish such a thought?

Pho. They that have power are royal; and those base That live at the devotion of another.  What birth gave Ptolomy, or fortune Caesar, By Engines fashion’d in this Protean Anvil I have made mine; and only stoop at you, Whom I would still preserve free to command me; For Caesar’s frowns, they are below my thoughts, And but in these fair Eyes I still have read The story of a supream Monarchy, To which all hearts with mine gladly pay tribute, Photinus’s Name had long since been as great As Ptolomies e’r was, or Caesars is, This made me as a weaker tye to unloose The knot of Loyalty, that chain’d my freedom, And slight the fear that Caesars threats might cause, That I and they might see no Sun appear But Cleopatra in the Egyptian Sphear.

Cleo. O Giant-like Ambition! marryed to Cymmerian darkness! inconsiderate Fool, (Though flatter’d with self-love) could’st thou believe, Were all Crowns on the Earth made into one, And that (by Kings) set on thy head; all Scepters, Within thy grasp, and laid down at my feet, I would vouchsafe a kiss to a no-man?  A guelded Eunuch?

Pho. Fairest, that makes for me, And shews it is no sensual appetite, But true love to the greatness of thy Spirit, That when that you are mine shall yield me pleasures, Hymen, though blessing a new married Pair Shall blush to think on, and our certain issue, The glorious splendor of dread Majesty, Whose beams shall dazel Rome, and aw the world, My wants in that kind others shall supply, And I give way to it.

  Cleo. Baser than thy Birth;
  Can there be gods, and hear this, and no thunder
  Ram thee into the Earth?