Go to: Antony and Cleopatra Table of Contents where you can also compare this scene to Shakespeare’s original.
Rome, Italy. Lepidus’ house.
(Domitius Enobarbus and Lepidus enter)
Lepidus: My good man, Enobarbus, it is good and will do you good, if you ask your captian kindly.
Domitius Enobarbus: I will ask to him to answer as himself. If Caesar tries to get in his way, I hope that Antony will look over Caesar’s head and speak as loud as the god, Mars. By Jupiter, I would give anything to be Antony today.
Lepidus: It’s not the time to think about your own wishes.
Domitius Enobarbus: It’s always time when something makes me think of them.
Lepidus: But your own small issues have to give way to the larger issues.
Domitius Enobarbus: Not if the small issues come first.
Lepidus: You’re talking out of anger. But, please, don’t stir anything up today. Here comes the noble Antony.
(Mark Antony and Ventidius enter from one side of the stage)
Domitius Enobarbus: And Caesar’s coming too.
(Octavius Caesar, Mecaenas, and Agrippa enter from the other side of the stage)
Mark Antony: Listen, Ventidius, if we gather a large enough army here, we’ll go on to Parthia.
Octavius Caesar: I don’t know, Mecaenas. Ask Agrippa.
Lepidus: My noble friends, an important issue has brought us together. Let’s not let smaller matters tear us apart. Let’s forgive each other for the wrongs we’ve done. If we try to get back at each other, we’ll only be killing each other.
Mark Antony: I agree.
(a trumpet sounds)
Octavius Caesar: Welcome back to Rome.
Mark Antony: Thank you.
Octavius Caesar: Please, have a seat.
Mark Antony: You first.
Octavius Caesar: Never mind then.
Mark Antony: I hear that you are offendend by things that never happened. Or if they did happen, they had nothing to do with you.
Octavius Caesar: I would deserve to be laughed at if I took offense at nothing. But I have not been offended and most certainly not by you. I would deserve to be laughed at even more if I ever said something against you. But as it is, it never even occurred to me to say anything about you.
Mark Antony: How did my being in Egypt make you feel, Caesar?
Octavius Caesar: It didn’t matter to me any more than my being here in Rome mattered to you. But if you did any planning while you were in Egypt, that might concern me.
Mark Antony: What do you mean, “planning”?
Octavius Caesar: I think you can guess what I mean by what happened to me here. Your wife and brother attacked me for you.
Mark Antony: You are mistaken. My brother never told me about what he was going to do. When I learned of it, it made me sick since you and I are on the same side. You accepted my letters about this before. There must be something else bothering you.
Octavius Caesar: You’re making yourself sound like you did nothing wrong by saying I don’t know what happened. You’re just covering up by saying that he wasn’t fighting for you.
Mark Antony: That’s not true. I know you have good judgment, but think about how I, your ally, couldn’t even watch your battle with my brother. As for my wife, I wish you had one just like her. You might easily control a third of the world, but you couldn’t have controlled her.
Domitius Enobarbus: It would be nice if all our wives were like her. Then the men could go to war with the women instead of leaving them behind!
Mark Antony: I’m sorry that she caused you any trouble, but you have to admit that I didn’t know anything about it.
Octavius Caesar: I wrote you a letter when you were partying in Alexandria and you just put my letters in your pocket and made fun of my messenger.
Mark Antony: Sir, your messenger came in to me before I called for him to be let in. I had just feasted and drank with three kings the night before and wasn’t quite myself that morning. But the next day, I apologized to your messenger. Now, let’s not let him be the cause of a fight between us. If we disagree about what happened with him, let’s forget about him altogether.
Octavius Caesar: You have broken the promise you made to me and if you say that I’ve broken my promise to you, I will cut out your tongue.
Lepidus: Be gentle, Caesar!
Mark Antony: No, Lepidus, let him speak. He has insulted my honor by saying that I broke my promise. Go on, Caesar. Tell me what promise I broke.
Octavius Caesar: Your promise to help me in battle when I needed you. You refused to come and you didn’t send me any help either.
Mark Antony: I did not refuse. I didn’t know. I was drunk. So as much as I can, I will say I’m sorry. But the truth is that Fulvia attacked you just to get me to leave Egypt. Since I was the cause of her attack, then, I do ask for forgiveness, even though I was not aware of it at the time.
Lepidus: That is nobly said, Antony.
Mecaenas: Please, don’t say anything more about the wrongs between the two of you. The issue we’re dealing with now should make you forget what was in the past.
Lepidus: Well said, Mecaenas.
Domitius Enobarbus: Or, if you pretend to be friends now, you can go back to being enemies after Pompey is taken care of. You’ll have plenty of time to fight with each other when you don’t have anything else to do.
Mark Antony: Domitius, you are only a soldier. Be quiet.
Domitius Enobarbus: I forgot that the truth should be quiet.
Mark Antony: It is not appropriate for you to be speaking in this gathering of such important people. So don’t say anything else.
Domitius Enobarbus: Go ahead, then. I will be as quiet as a rock.
Octavius Caesar: I agree with Domitius, even if I don’t like how he said it. We can’t stay allies like this. But if I knew what would hold us together, I would do it.
Agrippa: May I speak, Caesar?
Octavius Caesar: Go ahead, Agrippa.
Agrippa: You have a sister, the beautiful Octavia. The great Mark Antony is a widower now.
Octavius Caesar: Don’t even say it, Agrippa. If Cleopatra heard you, you would deserve everything you got.
Mark Antony: I’m not married to Cleopatra, Caesar. Let’s hear what Agrippa has to say.
Agrippa: To make it so that you will always be allies and brothers, Antony should marry Octavia. She’s so beautiful that she deserves nothing less than the best of men. Her virtues and gracefulness can’t be matched by any other woman. With this marriage, all your little arguments, even though they seem important now, would be done away with. Her love for both of you and both of your love for her would tie you all together. And please understand that I didn’t just think of this. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.
Mark Antony: What do you think, Caesar?
Octavius Caesar: I won’t say anything until I hear what you think about it.
Mark Antony: If I told Agrippa, “Agrippa, make it happen,” would he have the power to do it?
Octavius Caesar: He would have the power of Caesar, and Caesar’s influence over Octavia.
Mark Antony: Then I could never stand in the way of such a good plan! Let’s shake on it and from now on, let us love each other like brothers!
Octavius Caesar: (shaking Antony’s hand) Here is my hand. I give you my sister, the sister I love dearly, in order to join our kingdoms and our hearts together. May we never fight again!
Lepidus: Amen! Let it be so!
Mark Antony: I didn’t think I would join you in battle against Pompey because he has been very generous toward me lately. I need to thank him so that people don’t think I’m ungrateful when I attack him.
Lepidus: Then it is time. We need to start looking for Pompey or else he’ll come looking for us first.
Mark Antony: Do you know where he is?
Octavius Caesar: He is near Mount Misenum.
Mark Antony: How large of a land army does he have?
Octavius Caesar: It’s big and getting bigger. And he completely controls the sea.
Mark Antony: So I’ve heard. I wish the three of us had talked together sooner! We need to be quick now. But before we go to battle, let us take care of this marriage.
Octavius Caesar: Gladly. Come, let me introduce you to my sister.
Mark Antony: Come with us, Lepidus.
Lepidus: I wouldn’t miss it even if I were sick and on my death-bed, noble Antony.
(Octavius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Lepidus exit)
Mecaenas: Welcome back from Egypt, sir.
Domitius Enobarbus: Mecaenas, the man who is worth half the heart of Caesar! And my honorable friend, Agrippa!
Agrippa: Good Enobarbus!
Mecaenas: We should be glad things went so well. You look good from your time in Egypt.
Domitius Enobarbus: Oh yes, we slept all day and drank all night.
Mecaenas: And I hear twelve of you ate eight whole wild boars for breakfast. Is that true?
Domitius Enobarbus: That was just a little thing. We ate much more than that on other occasions.
Mecaenas: I hear Cleopatra made Antony fall completely in love with her.
Domitius Enobarbus: She stole his heart the first time they met on the Cydnus River.
Agrippa: I heard she came there, or else my messenger was making up good stories about her.
Domitius Enobarbus: I’ll tell you the story. Her ship was made out of gold with purple sails and there was so much perfume in the air that it made even the wind fall in love with her. The ship’s oars were made out of silver and the oarsmen rowed in time to the music of a flute. Cleopatra herself was beyond description. She was lying in her pavilion, the sides of which were gold cloth, as thin as tissue-paper, and on either side of her stood two young boys, smiling like Cupid, and cooling her with multi-colored fans.
Agrippa: Oh, what a rare sight Antony must have seen!
Domitius Enobarbus: And her servant girls were like the beautiful Nereides mermaids. From the bank of the river, we could smell her perfume. All the people were gathered there to see her pass by and Antony, seeing that everyone had left the city, went out to see her too.
Agrippa: What a beautiful Egyptian she must be to get Antony’s attention!
Domitius Enobarbus: When she pulled up on shore, Antony sent a message to her and invited her to come have dinner with him. She sent a message back, saying that he should come have dinner with her. Our noble Antony, who had never had a woman say no to him before, liked her ten times as much because of it and went to her feast. He fell in love with her there.
Agrippa: What a royal woman she is. She made the great Julius Caesar have sex with her, you know.
Domitius Enobarbus: I saw her once hop forty steps through the public street. Out of breath and panting, she said that any defect in herself was pure perfection.
Mecaenas: And now Antony has left her completely.
Domitius Enobarbus: He never will. She can’t get worse with age and her spontaneousness makes it so that she’ll never be boring. You can have too much of some women, but she just makes you want to have more. Bad qualities become attractive in her and the holy priests bless her when she is at her worst.
Mecaenas: If beauty, wisdom, and goodness can cure Antony of his obsession with Cleopatra, then Octavia is the one to do it.
Agrippa: Let’s go. Good Enobarbus, please be my guest while you’re here in Rome.
Domitius Enobarbus: I humbly thank you, sir.
(they exit)
Go to: Next scene (Act 2, Scene 3) or Antony and Cleopatra Table of Contents where you can also compare this scene to Shakespeare’s original.
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