Act 5, Scene 1

CAESAR'S Camp before Alexandria.

[Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, MAECENAS, GALLUS, PROCULEIUS, and Others.]
Octavius Caesar
3005 Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield;
3006 Being so frustrate, tell him he mocks
3007 The pauses that he makes.
Dolabella
3008 Caesar, I shall.
[Exit.]
[Enter DERCETAS with the sword of ANTONY.]
Octavius Caesar
3009 Wherefore is that? And what art thou that dar'st
3010 Appear thus to us?
Dercetas
3011 I am call'd Dercetas;
3012 Mark Antony I serv'd, who best was worthy
3013 Best to be serv'd: whilst he stood up and spoke,
3014 He was my master, and I wore my life
3015 To spend upon his haters. If thou please
3016 To take me to thee, as I was to him
3017 I'll be to Caesar; if thou pleasest not,
3018 I yield thee up my life.
Octavius Caesar
3019 What is't thou say'st?
Dercetas
3020 I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.
Octavius Caesar
3021 The breaking of so great a thing should make
3022 A greater crack: the round world
3023 Should have shook lions into civil streets,
3024 And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony
3025 Is not a single doom; in the name lay
3026 A moiety of the world.
Dercetas
3027 He is dead, Caesar;
3028 Not by a public minister of justice,
3029 Nor by a hired knife; but that self hand
3030 Which writ his honour in the acts it did
3031 Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,
3032 Splitted the heart.—This is his sword;
3033 I robb'd his wound of it; behold it stain'd
3034 With his most noble blood.
Octavius Caesar
3035 Look you sad, friends?
3036 The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings
3037 To wash the eyes of kings.
Agrippa
3038 And strange it is
3039 That nature must compel us to lament
3040 Our most persisted deeds.
Maecenas
3041 His taints and honours
3042 Weigh'd equal with him.
Agrippa
3043 A rarer spirit never
3044 Did steer humanity. But you, gods, will give us
3045 Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touch'd.
Maecenas
3046 When such a spacious mirror's set before him,
3047 He needs must see himself.
Octavius Caesar
3048 O Antony!
3049 I have follow'd thee to this!—But we do lance
3050 Diseases in our bodies: I must perforce
3051 Have shown to thee such a declining day
3052 Or look on thine; we could not stall together
3053 In the whole world: but yet let me lament,
3054 With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,
3055 That thou, my brother, my competitor
3056 In top of all design, my mate in empire,
3057 Friend and companion in the front of war,
3058 The arm of mine own body, and the heart
3059 Where mine his thoughts did kindle,—that our stars,
3060 Unreconciliable, should divide
3061 Our equalness to this.—Hear me, good friends,—
3062 But I will tell you at some meeter season.
[Enter a Messenger.]
Octavius Caesar
3063 The business of this man looks out of him;
3064 We'll hear him what he says.—Whence are you?
Messenger
3065 A poor Egyptian yet. The queen, my mistress,
3066 Confin'd in all she has, her monument,
3067 Of thy intents desires instruction,
3068 That she preparedly may frame herself
3069 To the way she's forc'd to.
Octavius Caesar
3070 Bid her have good heart:
3071 She soon shall know of us, by some of ours,
3072 How honourable and how kindly we
3073 Determine for her; for Caesar cannot learn
3074 To be ungentle.
Messenger
3075 So the gods preserve thee!
[Exit.]
Octavius Caesar
3076 Come hither, Proculeius. Go and say
3077 We purpose her no shame: give her what comforts
3078 The quality of her passion shall require
3079 Lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke
3080 She do defeat us; for her life in Rome
3081 Would be eternal in our triumph: go,
3082 And with your speediest bring us what she says,
3083 And how you find her.
Proculeius
3084 Caesar, I shall.
[Exit.]
Octavius Caesar
3085 Gallus, go you along.—
[Exit GALLUS.]
Octavius Caesar
3086 Where's Dolabella, to second Proculeius?
All
3087 Dolabella!
Octavius Caesar
3088 Let him alone, for I remember now
3089 How he's employ'd; he shall in time be ready.
3090 Go with me to my tent; where you shall see
3091 How hardly I was drawn into this war;
3092 How calm and gentle I proceeded still
3093 In all my writings: go with me, and see
3094 What I can show in this.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 3021rhetorical device
“The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack”
Octavius Caesar says the death of so enormous a man should have torn the world like a thunderclap. 'Crack' means a catastrophic sound or fracture. The image claims Antony was so great a force that his end should have shaken lions out of the streets and driven citizens into their dens — nature inverted by the fall of a titan.
classical Plutarch's Lives (North's Translation)
TLN 3025archaic vocab
“in the name lay A moiety of the world”
A 'moiety' is a half or a large share. Octavius Caesar says that Antony's name alone contained half the world — referring literally to the Second Triumvirate, in which Antony governed the Eastern Mediterranean as one of the three men dividing Roman power. The death of Antony is therefore not just one man's death but the collapse of that whole partition of the globe.
historical The Second Triumvirate
TLN 3028historical topical
“Not by a public minister of justice, Nor by a hired knife”
A 'public minister of justice' was an official executioner. Dercetas distinguishes Antony's death from execution or assassination: neither the state nor an enemy's dagger killed him, but his own hand — the 'self hand / Which writ his honour in the acts it did.' The sword that wrote his life of honor was also the one that ended it. This is the Roman 'high fashion' of honorable suicide rather than submission to a conqueror.
historical The antique Roman: honourable suicide
TLN 3041archaic vocab
“His taints and honours Weigh'd equal with him”
'Taints' are moral stains or faults (from French 'teint,' to tinge or infect). Maecenas is saying that Antony's vices and his virtues were so enormous that both sides of the scale balanced at his death — a man whose failures were as vast as his greatness. The phrase uses the image of a balance or set of scales, common in moral reckoning.
TLN 3049archaic vocab
“we do lance Diseases in our bodies”
To 'lance' a disease means to cut it open with a lance (a surgeon's blade), as in lancing a boil or abscess — painful but necessary to let out the infection. Octavius Caesar apologizes for having had to wound Antony: the war was a surgical necessity, not cruelty. He then adds that he and Antony could not 'stall together in the whole world' — meaning they could not share even the entire world, as two animals too fierce to pen in the same stall.
TLN 3055archaic vocab
“my competitor In top of all design, my mate in empire”
'Competitor' here means a partner or sharer, not an opponent — from Latin 'competere,' to strive together toward the same thing. Caesar calls Antony his co-ruler and equal in the greatest undertakings ('top of all design'). This usage is now obsolete: to an Elizabethan, a 'competitor' could be either a rival or a partner sharing the same pursuit, and the context makes clear Caesar means the latter.
historical The Second Triumvirate
TLN 3059cultural context
“our stars, Unreconciliable, should divide Our equalness to this”
Caesar says that their opposing 'stars' — the destiny or fortune written in the heavens for each man at birth — were incompatible and divided two otherwise equal men into enemies. Elizabethans took astrology seriously as a system: a person's 'star' or natal configuration governed their fate and temperament. Two men with incompatible stars could not coexist regardless of their personal bonds.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 3079historical topical
“Lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke She do defeat us; for her life in Rome Would be eternal in our triumph”
Octavius Caesar tells Proculeius to keep Cleopatra alive and calm because if she kills herself she 'defeats' his greatest prize: displaying her alive in his victory procession through Rome. A Roman 'triumph' was a lavish parade of a general's spoils and captives after a major victory; a captured foreign ruler walking in chains was its supreme exhibit. Cleopatra alive, paraded through Rome, would be the final proof of his conquest of the East.
historical The Roman Triumph