Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  Cleopatra may laugh with delight as she remembers, but the picture of Antony drunk by midafternoon (the ninth hour of a twelve-hour day would be about 3 p.m.) and snoring red-faced while wearing women's clothes was undoubtedly the sort of thing Octavian propaganda was scattering all over Rome to the scandal of all good citizens.

  It was the fashion of warriors in medieval legend to give names to their swords. The best-known example is that of King Arthur's Excalibur. Mark Antony's sword, Philippan, is named for the Battle of Philippi- Antony's greatest victory.

  … a Fury crowned with snakes

  Clearly, Cleopatra has not heard the news about Octavia and a frightened Messenger comes in to deliver it.

  The Messenger begins by assuring Cleopatra that Antony is well, but he hesitates and the Queen senses that something is wrong. Yet he does not seem sufficiently distraught to be bringing news of death at that. She says to him, concerning his news:

  // not well,

  Thou shouldst come like a

  Fury crowned with snakes,

  —Act II, scene v, lines 39-40

  The Greeks included in their myths three terrible goddesses, the Erinyes ("angry ones"), whose task it was to pursue and madden those who were guilty of particularly terrible crimes, such as the slaying of close kinsmen. They were depicted and described as so ferocious in appearance that the mere sight was maddening. They carried snakes in their hands, or else their hair was made up of living, writhing snakes. (Perhaps they symbolized the raging of conscience.)

  To avoid offending them, the Greeks sometimes spoke of them by the euphemistic term "Eumenides" ("the kindly ones"). Aeschylus wrote a powerful play by that name, dealing with part of the Agamemnon myth. Agamemnon (see page I-89) is killed by his wife Clytemnestra on his return from Troy. To avenge his father, Agamemnon's son, Orestes, kills his mother and is pursued by the Erinyes in consequence.

  The Romans called these fell goddesses "Furiae," from their word for raging madness, and the word is "Furies" in English.

  … the feature of Octavia …

  The Messenger finally blurts out the news of Antony's marriage to Octavia. Cleopatra falls into a towering rage and beats the Messenger, shouting horrible imprecations upon him:

  Hence,

  Horrible villain! Or I'll spurn thine eyes

  Like balls before me: I'll unhair thy head,

  Thou shalt be whipped with wire and stewed in brine,

  Smarting in ling'ring pickle.

  —Act II, scene v, lines 62-66

  The whole scene, properly done, shows Cleopatra in a spitting, fantastic fury, and one can only feel that such rage would make Cleopatra the more attractive to Antony ("vilest things become themselves in her"). Compared with that, the gentle and modest Octavia must have seemed utterly pallid and insipid to Antony, in bed as well as out.

  (I cannot resist repeating the story of the two respectable English matrons who were viewing a showing of Antony and Cleopatra a century ago, in the reign of Queen Victoria. When this scene passed its shattering course upon the stage, one of the matrons turned to the other and whispered in a most shocked manner: "How different from the home life of our own dear Queen!")

  But Cleopatra's rage does not entirely wipe out her shrewdness. She questions the trembling Messenger yet again to make sure there is no possibility of mistake and says to him bitterly when the news is confirmed again and yet again:

  Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me

  Thou wouldst appear most ugly.

  —Act II, scene v, lines 96-97

  Narcissus is, of course, the lovely youth, irresistible to women, who fell in love with his own reflection (see page I-10).

  With that settled, and the Messenger retiring, Cleopatra ponders her next step. She orders a courtier to go after the Messenger and question him further:

  Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him

  Report the feature of Octavia; her years,

  Her inclination, let him not leave out

  The color of her hair.

  —Act II, scene v, lines 111-14

  Thou dost o'ercount me…

  The scene shifts to Misenum, where the triumvirs meet with Sextus. There is an exchange of hostages, threats, harsh language from either side.

  Mark Antony tells Sextus that on land the triumvirs "o'ercount" (outnumber) him. Sextus responds sardonically:

  At land indeed

  Thou dost o'ercount me of my father's house:

  —Act II, scene vi, lines 26-27

  Here the word "o'ercount" is used in an alternate sense, meaning "cheat." The reference is to a house Antony had bought of Pompey the Great once and had then never paid for, since the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar intervened. Civil wars always end in enrichment for the victors at the expense of the losers.

  … wheat to Rome

  Octavius Caesar, however, coldly keeps his temper, and his steady urging of the real point causes Sextus Pompeius to bring up a suggested compromise. Sextus says:

  You have made me offer

  Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must

  Rid all the sea of pirates; then, to send

  Measures of wheat to Rome;

  —Act II, scene vi, lines 34-37

  In actual fact, the offer was rather more generous than that. Sextus Pompeius already had Sicily, but to it was added not only Sardinia, but Corsica also, and these three large islands half encircle Italy. In addition, since all these were taken from Octavius Caesar's share of the realm, Sextus was to have Greece as well, so that Antony had to pocket a share of the loss.

  In return for becoming the fourth man of the group, Sextus would have to take his hand from Rome's throat.

  … Apollodorus carried

  Sextus Pompeius accepts the compromise and all the parties fall to shaking hands and expressing affection, though Antony, as always, finds he must be the target of a continual lewd curiosity on the part of the others concerning Cleopatra.

  Sextus brings up the famous story of how Cleopatra first met Julius Caesar. He says:

  And I have heard Apollodorus carried-

  —Act II, scene vi, line 68

  It had been Apollodorus, a Sicilian Greek, who had delivered the rolled-up carpet containing Cleopatra (possibly nude) to Julius Caesar. Clearly, to bring up tales of Cleopatra's earlier amours could scarcely be calculated to please Antony, and Enobarbus manages to quiet Sextus and head him off.

  Thy father, Pompey. ..

  Not everyone is satisfied. When the chief characters leave, Menas, one of Sextus' captains, remains behind with Enobarbus. Menas mutters to himself:

  Thy father, Pompey, would ne'er have made this treaty.

  —Act II, scene vi, lines 82-83

  The implication is that Sextus' father, Pompey the Great, would have had too much military and political sense to give up the trump card (starving Rome) for so little, but would have driven a much harder bargain. In this respect, Menas was being more sentimental than accurate, for Pompey the Great had been a poor politician and would undoubtedly have agreed to such a treaty or a worse one.

  Later, Menas is frank enough to put the matter even more strongly to Enobarbus:

  For my part, I am sorry it is turned to a drinking.

  Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.

  —Act II, scene vi, lines 104-5

  The accuracy of Menas' judgment would make itself evident soon enough.

  … holy, cold and still. ..

  But then Menas too starts probing for information about Cleopatra and is thunderstruck when Enobarbus tells him Antony is married to Octavia. Surely, this can only be a marriage of convenience.

  Enobarbus agrees:

  I think so, too. But you shall find the band that seems to tie

  their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity:

  Octavia is of a holy, cold and still conversation.

  —Act II, scene vi, lines 120-23

  Clearly, Enobarbus doesn't think thi
s is the sort of thing that will hold a man like Antony. He says, confidently:

  He will to his Egyptian dish again.

  —Act II, scene vi, line 126

  … the flow o'th'Nile

  The quadrumvirs are on Sextus' galley off Misenum, having a grand time, and are hilarious over their wine. Antony is in his element; he can carry his liquor better than any of them and, as an expert on Egypt, a strange and exotic land, he can regale the others with wonders. He says:

  Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o'th'Nile

  By certain scales i'th'pyramid. They know

  By th'height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth

  Or foison [plenty] follow. The higher Nilus swells,

  The more it promises…

  —Act II, scene vii, lines 17-21

  Antony is correct here. The Egyptian priesthood kept a careful watch on the changes in the level of the Nile and through long records had learned to forecast from early variations what the final flood level would be and from that what the likelihood of a particularly poor harvest might be. Such studies had also made the Egyptians aware of the 365-day cycle of the seasons very early in their history and had given them an accurate solar calendar, while other civilizations of the time had struggled with the much more complicated lunar calendars.

  The pyramids were not, however, used as scales for the level of the Nile. Throughout history, people have wondered at the uses of the pyramids and have been reluctant to accept the fact that those monstrous piles were merely elaborate tombs. They have been accused of every other purpose but that, and some moderns have considered them the repository of the wisdom of the ages, a means of forecasting the future, and an early method of launching spaceships. But they are tombs, just the same, and nothing more.

  Your serpent of Egypt.. .

  Lepidus is gloriously drunk; drunk enough to wish to shine as an Egyptian authority himself. He says with enormous gravity:

  Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud

  by the opera tion of your sun; so is your crocodile.

  —Act II, scene vii, lines 26-28

  This represents the ancient belief in "spontaneous generation," the thought that unwanted or noxious species of plants or animals arise of themselves from dead or decaying matter. (How else explain the prevalence of these species despite human efforts to wipe them out.)

  Antony humors the drunken Lepidus by agreeing with him, but it is quite certain that the Egyptians knew that serpents and crocodiles developed from eggs laid by the adult female. The eggs were quite large enough to see.

  The situation was less certain with creatures that laid eggs small enough to overlook. It was not until half a century after Shakespeare's death that it was shown that maggots did not arise from dead meat, but from tiny eggs laid on that dead meat by flies. And it wasn't till the mid-nineteenth century that it was shown that microscopic creatures did not arise from dead matter but only from other living microscopic creatures.

  Lepidus goes on to deliver a piece of egregious patronization. He says:

  … I have heard the Ptolemies' pyramises

  are very goodly things; without contradiction

  I have heard that.

  —Act II, scene vii, lines 35-37

  Of course, they were not the Ptolemies' pyramises (or pyramids, as we would say) except in the sense that they were to be found in the land ruled by them. They were built by native Egyptian Pharaohs who ruled more than two thousand years before the first Ptolemy mounted the Egyptian throne. They were as ancient to the Ptolemies as the Ptolemies are to us.

  And "goodly things"? Yes indeed. Considering the technology of the tune, the pyramids are the most colossal labors of man the planet has seen, with the possible exception of the Great Wall of China. They impress us now even in their rains as mere piles of huge granite blocks. When they were new, they had white limestone facings that gleamed smoothly and brightly in the sun and were surrounded by enormous temple complexes.

  The Greeks, who notoriously admired no culture but their own, humbly included these non-Greek structures among their Seven Wonders of the World; and of all the Seven Wonders only the pyramids still remain.

  Antony cannot resist poking fun at the besotted Lepidus, describing the crocodile in grave but non-informative phrases, ending in the portentous:

  … and the tears of it are wet.

  —Act II, scene vii, line 51

  Any mention of crocodiles would irresistibly bring tears to mind, for the most famous (but thoroughly untrue) legend concerning the crocodile is that it sheds tears over its prey while swallowing it. Hence the expression "crocodile tears" for hypocritical sorrow.

  … lord of all the world

  Menas, meanwhile, has been whispering to Sextus Pompeius and pulling at his sleeve. Sextus, who is enjoying the nonsense at the table, is unwilling to leave and follows Menas only with reluctance.

  Once to one side, Menas whispers:

  Wilt thou be lord of all the world?

  —Act II, scene vii, line 63

  The half-drunken Sextus stares in surprise and Menas is forced to explain:

  These three world-sharers, these competitors,

  Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable;

  And when we are put off, fall to their throats.

  All there is thine.

  —Act II, scene vii, lines 72-75

  Sextus, sobered by the suggestion, is tempted, but then says, sorrowfully:

  Ah, this thou shouldst have done,

  And not have spoke on't.

  In me 'tis villainy,

  In thee't had been good service.

  —Act II, scene vii, lines 75-77

  This story is told by Plutarch and yet I wonder if it can be true. It is conceivable that the thought would have occurred to Menas and that

  Sextus might have shrunk from the perfidiousness of the deed. But is it conceivable that the triumvirs would have placed themselves in Sextus' grasp without taking precautions against just such an act? If Lepidus were too stupid to foresee the possibility and Antony too careless, I would not believe it of Octavius. He would not step into the lion's jaw without some sort of rod so placed as to hold that jaw firmly open.

  However, the story is a good one, true or false, and I would hate to lose it, particularly since it displays so neatly the exact moment when Sextus Pompeius reached and passed the peak of his power.

  … my brave emperor

  Octavius Caesar is the only one who is reluctant to drink. He cannot carry his liquor well and he does not enjoy losing his iron control of himself. The rough Enobarbus says to him with some irony:

  Ha, my brave emperor!

  Shall we dance now the

  Egyptian bacchanals

  And celebrate our drink?

  —Act II, scene vii, lines 105-7

  The word "emperor" is from the Latin imperator, meaning "commander." It was a title given a successful general by his troops. It was one of the titles granted Julius Caesar by the Senate. He was not merely one of many imperators; he was the imperator of the Roman armies as a whole- the generalissimo.

  Octavius Caesar eventually received the title too, and since control of the army was, at bottom, the secret of the control of the Roman state, his position as "Roman Imperator" was crucial. Through distortion we know the title as "Roman Emperor," and the state became the "Roman Empire."

  Enobarbus uses the term "emperor" in its less exalted but more accurate aspect as "commander." Both Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony are referred to now and then throughout the play as "emperor."

  … darting Parthia…

  While Sextus Pompeius is being alcoholically neutralized in the West, Parthia is being defeated outright in the East. Leaving Antony in Italy, Ventidius sailed to Asia Minor, where in 39 b.c. he drove the Roman renegade Labienus into the eastern mountains and there defeated and killed him.

  The Parthian army, under Pacorus, the son of King Orodes, still occupied Syria and Judea, however. In 38 b.c.
Ventidius took his army to Syria and defeated the Parthians in three separate battles (and it was only after this was done that Herod could take his throne in Jerusalem).

  In the last of the three victories over Parthia, Pacorus himself was slain. That last battle was fought (according to the story) on the fifteenth anniversary of the fateful day on which Crassus had lost his army at the Battle of Carrhae.

  The third act opens, then, a year after the gay celebration at Misenum, with Ventidius returning in triumph from these wars. The dead body of the Parthian prince is being carried along with the army and Ventidius says:

  Now, darting Parthia, art thou struck; and now

  Pleased fortune does of Marcus Crassus' death

  Make me revenger. Bear the King's son's body

  Before our army. Thy Pacorus, Orodes,

  Pays this for Marcus Crassus.

  —Act III, scene i, lines 1-5

  Parthia is called "darting" because of its reliance on archers in its battles. The Parthian arrows were their most effective weapon.

  … Media, Mesopotamia…