Act 2, Scene 7

On board POMPEY'S Galley, lying near Misenum.

[Music. Enter two or three SERVANTS with a banquet.]
First Servant
1285 Here they'll be, man. Some o' their plants are ill-rooted
1286 already; the least wind i' the world will blow them down.
Second Servant
1287 Lepidus is high-coloured.
First Servant
1288 They have made him drink alms-drink.
Second Servant
1289 As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out 'no
1290 more'; reconciles them to his entreaty and himself to the drink.
First Servant
1291 But it raises the greater war between him and his discretion.
Second Servant
1292 Why, this it is to have a name in great men's fellowship: I had
1293 as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a partizan I
1294 could not heave.
First Servant
1295 To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't,
1296 are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the
1297 cheeks.
[A sennet sounded. Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, POMPEY, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS, ENOBARBUS, MENAS, with other Captains.]
[To CAESAR.]
Mark Antony
1298 Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o' the Nile
1299 By certain scales i' the pyramid; they know
1300 By the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth
1301 Or foison follow: the higher Nilus swells
1302 The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman
1303 Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,
1304 And shortly comes to harvest.
Lepidus
1305 You've strange serpents there.
Mark Antony
1306 Ay, Lepidus.
Lepidus
1307 Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of
1308 your sun: so is your crocodile.
Mark Antony
1309 They are so.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1310 Sit —and some wine!—A health to Lepidus!
Lepidus
1311 I am not so well as I should be, but I'll ne'er out.
Enobarbus
1312 Not till you have slept; I fear me you'll be in till then.
Lepidus
1313 Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies' pyramises are very
1314 goodly things; without contradiction I have heard that.
[Aside to POMPEY.]
Menas
1315 Pompey, a word.
[Aside to MENAS.]
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1316 Say in mine ear: what is't?
[Aside to POMPEY.]
Menas
1317 Forsake thy seat, I do beseech thee, captain,
1318 And hear me speak a word.
[Aside to MENAS.]
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1319 Forbear me till ano.n—
1320 This wine for Lepidus!
Lepidus
1321 What manner o' thing is your crocodile?
Mark Antony
1322 It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath
1323 breadth: it is just so high as it is, and moves with it own
1324 organs: it lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements
1325 once out of it, it transmigrates.
Lepidus
1326 What colour is it of?
Mark Antony
1327 Of its own colour too.
Lepidus
1328 'Tis a strange serpent.
Mark Antony
1329 'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.
Octavius Caesar
1330 Will this description satisfy him?
Mark Antony
1331 With the health that Pompey gives him, else he is a very epicure.
[Aside to MENAS.]
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1332 Go, hang, sir, hang! Tell me of that! away!
1333 Do as I bid you.—Where's this cup I call'd for?
[Aside to POMPEY.]
Menas
1334 If for the sake of merit thou wilt hear me,
1335 Rise from thy stool.
[Aside to MENAS.]
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1336 I think thou'rt mad.
[Rises and walks aside.]
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1337 The matter?
Menas
1338 I have ever held my cap off to thy fortunes.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1339 Thou hast serv'd me with much faith.
1340 What's else to say?—
1341 Be jolly, lords.
Mark Antony
1342 These quicksands, Lepidus,
1343 Keep off them, for you sink.
Menas
1344 Wilt thou be lord of all the world?
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1345 What say'st thou?
Menas
1346 Wilt thou be lord of the whole world?
1347 That's twice.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1348 How should that be?
Menas
1349 But entertain it,
1350 And though you think me poor, I am the man
1351 Will give thee all the world.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1352 Hast thou drunk well?
Menas
1353 No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup.
1354 Thou art, if thou dar'st be, the earthly Jove:
1355 Whate'er the ocean pales or sky inclips
1356 Is thine, if thou wilt have't.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1357 Show me which way.
Menas
1358 These three world-sharers, these competitors,
1359 Are in thy vessel: let me cut the cable;
1360 And when we are put off, fall to their throats:
1361 All then is thine.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1362 Ah, this thou shouldst have done,
1363 And not have spoke on't! In me 'tis villainy:
1364 In thee't had been good service. Thou must know
1365 'Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour:
1366 Mine honour it. Repent that e'er thy tongue
1367 Hath so betray'd thine act: being done unknown,
1368 I should have found it afterwards well done;
1369 But must condemn it now. Desist, and drink.
[Aside.]
Menas
1370 For this,
1371 I'll never follow thy pall'd fortunes more.
1372 Who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offer'd,
1373 Shall never find it more.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1374 This health to Lepidus!
Mark Antony
1375 Bear him ashore. I'll pledge it for him, Pompey.
Enobarbus
1376 Here's to thee, Menas!
Menas
1377 Enobarbus, welcome!
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1378 Fill till the cup be hid.
Enobarbus
1379 There's a strong fellow, Menas.
[Pointing to the servant who carries off LEPIDUS.]
Menas
1380 Why?
Enobarbus
1381 'A bears the third part of the world, man; see'st not?
Menas
1382 The third part, then, is drunk; would it were all,
1383 That it might go on wheels!
Enobarbus
1384 Drink thou; increase the reels.
Menas
1385 Come.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1386 This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.
Mark Antony
1387 It ripens towards it.—Strike the vessels, ho!—
1388 Here is to Caesar!
Octavius Caesar
1389 I could well forbear't.
1390 It's monstrous labour when I wash my brain
1391 And it grows fouler.
Mark Antony
1392 Be a child o' the time.
Octavius Caesar
1393 Possess it, I'll make answer:
1394 But I had rather fast from all four days
1395 Than drink so much in one.
[To ANTONY.]
Enobarbus
1396 Ha, my brave emperor!
1397 Shall we dance now the Egyptian Bacchanals
1398 And celebrate our drink?
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1399 Let's ha't, good soldier.
Mark Antony
1400 Come, let's all take hands,
1401 Till that the conquering wine hath steep'd our sense
1402 In soft and delicate Lethe.
Enobarbus
1403 All take hands.—
1404 Make battery to our ears with the loud music:—
1405 The while I'll place you: then the boy shall sing;
1406 The holding every man shall bear as loud
1407 As his strong sides can volley.
[Music plays. ENOBARBUS places them hand in hand.]
Song
1408 Come, thou monarch of the vine,
1409 Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!
1410 In thy fats our cares be drown'd,
1411 With thy grapes our hairs be crown'd:
1412 Cup us, till the world go round,
1413 Cup us, till the world go round!
Octavius Caesar
1414 What would you more?—Pompey, good night. Good brother,
1415 Let me request you off: our graver business
1416 Frowns at this levity.—Gentle lords, let's part;
1417 You see we have burnt our cheeks: strong Enobarb
1418 Is weaker than the wine; and mine own tongue
1419 Splits what it speaks: the wild disguise hath almost
1420 Antick'd us all. What needs more words. Good night.—
1421 Good Antony, your hand.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1422 I'll try you on the shore.
Mark Antony
1423 And shall, sir: give's your hand.
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius)
1424 O Antony,
1425 You have my father's house,—but, what? we are friends.
1426 Come, down into the boat.
Enobarbus
1427 Take heed you fall not.
[Exeunt POMPEY, CAESAR, ANTONY, and Attendants.]
Enobarbus
1428 Menas, I'll not on shore.
Menas
1429 No, to my cabin.—
1430 These drums!—these trumpets, flutes! what!—
1431 Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell
1432 To these great fellows: sound and be hang'd, sound out!
[A flourish of trumpets, with drums.]
Enobarbus
1433 Hoo! says 'a.—There's my cap.
Menas
1434 Hoo!—noble captain, come.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1285wordplay
“Some o' their plants are ill-rooted”
The First Servant is joking that the three rulers (Antony, Caesar, and Lepidus) are badly planted — that is, unstable on their feet from drink. 'Ill-rooted' carries the double sense of a plant that will blow over and a drunken man who cannot stand firm.
TLN 1288archaic vocab
“made him drink alms-drink”
'Alms-drink' means the leftover dregs of wine given to servants or the poor — charity wine of the lowest quality. The servant is saying that whenever Antony and Caesar fall into a quarrel ('pinch one another by the disposition') and Lepidus rushes in to make peace, they reward his trouble by making him drain the cup, as if he were a beggar accepting scraps.
TLN 1298historical topical
“they take the flow o' the Nile / By certain scales i' the pyramid”
Antony explains to Octavius Caesar how Egyptian farmers predict the harvest: they measure the annual Nile flood by graduated marks carved on the stone of a pyramid or nilometer pillar. The higher the flood, the richer the deposit of silt and the more abundant the following harvest ('foison'); a low flood meant famine ('dearth').
historical The Ptolemies and Egypt
TLN 1307historical topical
“Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun”
Lepidus, already drunk, repeats a popular ancient belief: that snakes and other creatures could be generated spontaneously from the Nile mud by the action of the sun's heat. This was called 'spontaneous generation' and was widely credited in antiquity, most famously for the story that Egypt's prodigious reptiles — crocodiles, asps, and other serpents — rose straight from the slime left after the flood receded.
historical The Ptolemies and Egypt
TLN 1313wordplay
“I have heard the Ptolemies' pyramises are very goodly things”
Lepidus's slurring 'pyramises' instead of 'pyramids' shows how drunk he is — he cannot even pronounce the word correctly. The Ptolemies were the dynasty of Macedonian-Greek rulers of Egypt (of which Cleopatra was the last) who maintained and were associated with the great pyramids as symbols of royal power. That Lepidus has 'heard' they are 'goodly' reveals that he knows nothing about Egypt beyond hearsay.
historical The Ptolemies and Egypt
TLN 1322rhetorical device
“It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth”
Antony's answer to Lepidus's question 'What manner o' thing is your crocodile?' is an elaborate non-answer: the crocodile is shaped like itself, is as wide as it is wide, lives on what feeds it, and when it dies its soul 'transmigrates.' Every statement is a tautology — perfectly true and perfectly useless. Antony is openly mocking the helplessly drunk Lepidus by answering his solemn question with circular nonsense.
TLN 1354classical allusion
“Thou art, if thou dar'st be, the earthly Jove: Whate'er the ocean pales or sky inclips / Is thine”
Menas tells Pompey that he could be 'the earthly Jove' — Jupiter, the supreme ruler of the gods — because he has all three rulers of the world on his ship. 'Whate'er the ocean pales or sky inclips' means everything fenced in by the sea and vaulted by the sky, that is, the entire world. If Menas cuts the cable and kills the three, the whole world becomes Pompey's.
TLN 1358historical topical
“These three world-sharers, these competitors”
Menas names the three men at the feast — Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Lepidus — as the 'world-sharers,' the joint rulers of the Roman world after Julius Caesar's assassination. 'Competitors' here does not mean rivals fighting each other; it means partners, co-claimants sharing the same office. Together they formed the Second Triumvirate, an officially constituted three-man commission to govern the state.
historical The Second Triumvirate
TLN 1362historical topical
“this thou shouldst have done, / And not have spoke on't! In me 'tis villainy: / In thee't had been good service”
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius) refuses to sanction Menas's plan to murder his guests — but he also admits he wishes it had been done without his knowledge. 'In me 'tis villainy: / In thee't had been good service' means: had Menas done it without telling him, Pompey could have kept clean hands and inherited the benefit; by asking, Menas has forced Pompey to either condemn the act or brand himself dishonoured. Pompey chooses honor over profit.
TLN 1381historical topical
“'A bears the third part of the world, man”
Enobarbus points to the servant carrying out the unconscious Lepidus and jokes that he is physically bearing 'the third part of the world' — meaning one of the three rulers of the Roman world. The joke works because Lepidus's portion of world-power has been reduced, in this scene, to a dead weight draped over a servant's shoulder.
historical The Second Triumvirate
TLN 1386historical topical
“This is not yet an Alexandrian feast”
Pompey (Sextus Pompeius) tells Antony that the party on the galley is not yet as extravagant as the legendary feasts of Alexandria — Cleopatra's court was famous throughout the ancient world for banquets of extraordinary luxury and excess. Antony replies that it is 'ripening towards it,' confirming that his time in Egypt has made him a connoisseur of that world.
historical The Ptolemies and Egypt
TLN 1397classical allusion
“the Egyptian Bacchanals / And celebrate our drink”
Enobarbus calls for an 'Egyptian Bacchanal' — a wild, drunken celebration in the manner of the Egyptian worship of Bacchus, the god of wine. In the play Antony was associated with the god Bacchus (Dionysus) in Egypt, just as Cleopatra was with Isis. The Bacchanal was a ritual of ecstatic wine-worship, famously disorderly — here it merges the Egyptian feast tradition with Roman religious abandon.
TLN 1401classical allusion
“conquering wine hath steep'd our sense / In soft and delicate Lethe”
Antony calls the wine a 'soft and delicate Lethe' — naming it after Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in the classical underworld. Souls of the dead drank from Lethe to forget their earthly lives before rebirth. Here Antony means the wine will soak ('steep') their minds in a kind of pleasurable oblivion, washing away care and political tension for the night.
classical Lethe, river of forgetfulness
TLN 1419archaic vocab
“the wild disguise hath almost / Antick'd us all”
Octavius Caesar says the wild behavior of the feast — the drinking, dancing, and singing — has almost 'antiked' them all, meaning it has made them perform like theatrical clowns or grotesque jesters ('anticks'). An 'antick' was a grimacing clown or fool; the word gives us 'antics' in the modern sense. Caesar is embarrassed and wants to leave: the evening has reduced even him to undignified foolery.
TLN 1431classical allusion
“Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell / To these great fellows”
Menas invokes Neptune — the Roman god of the sea — to bear witness to the noisy farewell the galley gives the departing leaders. The call is fitting: the entire scene takes place on a warship in Pompey's naval domain, and Neptune was the presiding deity of the maritime power that made Pompey a threat to Rome.