Shall all be done by the rule.
(II. iii. 4.)
Yet she has barely left him, when, at the warning of the soothsayer, and the thought of Octavius’ success in games of chance and sport, he resolves to outrage the still uncompleted marriage and return to his Egyptian bondage:
I will to Egypt:
For though I make this marriage for my peace,
I’ the East my pleasure lies.
(II. iii. 38.)
But when this is his fixed determination, why make the marriage at all? Does he fail to see that it will bring not peace but a sword? Yet he is so hood-winked by immediate opportunism that he bears his share in making Pompey harmless to the mighty brother-in-law he is just about to offend. And knowing his own heart as he does, he can nevertheless assume an air of resentment at the veiled menace in Octavius’ parting admonition: “Make me not offended in your mistrust” (iii. ii. 33).
He has truly with all diligence digged a pit for himself. Already he is the wreck of the shrewd contriver whose machinations Cassius so justly feared. And this collapse of faculty, this access of presumption and hebetude belong to Shakespeare’s conception of the case. In Plutarch the renewed agreement of the Triumvirs is expedient and even necessary; the marriage scheme is adopted in good faith and for a period serves its purpose; the granting of terms to Pompey is an unimportant act of grace.
Nevertheless some powers of contrivance Shakespeare’s Antony still retains. He despatches the capable Ventidius on the Parthian campaign, and he has the credit and éclat, when