Among the struggling and contentious throng of worldlings and egoists who to succeed must tread their nobler instincts underfoot, and even so do not always succeed, are there any honest and sterling characters at all? There are a few, in the background, barely sketched, half hid from sight. But we can perceive their presence, and even distinguish their gait and bearing, though the artist’s purpose forbade their portrayal in detail.
First of these is Scarus, the simple and valiant fightingman, who resents the infatuation of Antony and the ruinous influence of Cleopatra as deeply as Enobarbus, but whose unsophisticated soldier-nature keeps him to his colours with a troth that the less naïf Enobarbus could admire but could not observe. It is from his mouth that the most opprobrious epithets are hurled on the absconding pair, the “ribaudred nag of Egypt, whom leprosy o’ertake,” and “the doting mallard,” “the noble ruin of her magic” who has kissed away kingdoms and provinces. But as soon as he hears they have fled toward Peloponnesus, he cries:
’Tis easy to’t; and there will I attend
What further comes.
(III. x. 32.)
He attends to good purpose, and is the hero of the last skirmish; when Antony’s prowess rouses him to applause, from which he is too honest to exclude reproach:
O my brave emperor, this is fought indeed!
Had we done so at first, we had droven them home
With clouts about their heads.
(IV. vii. 4.)