My lord desires you presently; my news
I might have told hereafter.
Eno. ’Twill be nought:
But let it be. Bring me to Antony.
(III. v. 20.)
Here we seem to have a faint reminiscence of Plutarch’s statement. Eros takes for granted as the obvious course, that the great navy ready to start will make an immediate descent on the enemy’s stronghold. Enobarbus, who understands Antony, knows that nothing will come of it, and that their destination is Egypt. In point of fact we learn in the next scene that Antony has arrived in Alexandria and there kept his state with Cleopatra.
But if Shakespeare glides over this episode, he dwells with all the greater detail on the array of imbecilities with which Antony follows it up. First, despite the advice of Enobarbus, he lets Cleopatra be present in the war. Then to please her caprice, and gratify his own fantastic chivalry, he sets aside the well-based objections of Enobarbus, of Canidius, of the common soldiers; and accepts Octavius’ challenge to fight at sea, though his ships are heavy, his mariners inexpert, and he himself and his veterans are more used to the dry land. Even so the inspiration of his soldiership and generalship is giving him a slight superiority, when the panic of Cleopatra withdraws her contingent of sixty ships:
Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt,—
Whom leprosy o’ertake!—i’ the midst o’ the fight,
When vantage like a pair of twins appear’d,