Ourselves alone.
(III. xiii. 20.)
Of course it is absurd and mad; and the madness and absurdity are brought out, in the play, not in the Life, by the comments of Enobarbus, Octavius and Mecaenas. Indeed at this juncture Antony’s valour, or rather his desperation, does not cease to prey on his reason. His insult to Caesar in the scourging of his messenger is less an excess of audacity than the gnash of the teeth in the last agony: as Enobarbus remarks:
’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp
Than with an old one dying.
(III. xiii. 94.)
Octavius may treat these transports of a great spirit in the throes as mere bluster and brutality, and find in them a warrant for his ruthless phrase, “the old ruffian.” There is a touch of the ruffian in Antony’s wild outbursts. Even the mettlesome vein in which he commands another gaudy night on Cleopatra’s birthday is open to Enobarbus’ disparagement: that a diminution of his captain’s brain restores his heart. Truly the last shreds of prudence are whirled away in his storm of recklessness and anguish and love. At the defiant anniversary feast his soul is so wrung with gratitude to his true servants and grief at the near farewell, that he must give his feelings words though they will discourage rather than hearten the company. Cleopatra does not understand it, for her own nature has not the depth of Antony’s, and deep can only call to deep. “What means this?” she asks.
Eno. ’Tis one of those odd tricks which sorrow shoots
Out of the mind.
(IV. ii. 14.)