ANTONY         Speak to me home. Mince not the general tongue—

Name Cleopatra as she is called in Rome.

Rail thou in Fulvia’s phrase, and taunt my faults

With such full licence as both truth and malice

Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds

When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us

Is as our earing. Fare thee well a while.

FIRST MESSENGER   At your noble pleasure.

Exit Messenger                       (1.2.89-96)

Speak to me home, man (soldier to soldier, even), cut to the chase, and don’t worry about the niceties. Just spit it out and be direct. Mince not the general tongue; you don’t need to dress up what you’re saying, spare my blushes. You might as well name Cleopatra as she is called in Rome—oh yes, I know perfectly well what people are saying about her, and me, the whore and the dupe. You could rail in Fulvia’s phrase, say everything about me that my wife does, repeat her very words, every accusation and complaint with such full licence as both truth and malice have power to utter. After all, she has cause to rail: I’ve betrayed her so publically, so absolutely, and Rome too. She speaks truth, that’s her licence, and it’s all justified, but she’s also motivated by malice. (It’s Cleopatra who’s often thought of as the variable one, inconstant and inconsistent: what comes through even in this speech for Antony, and for the rest of the scene, is how variable he is too, how responsive, and how sensitive. He knows that Fulvia’s entirely justified in excoriating him, even as he knows that she is full of malice too.) O, then we bring forth weeds when our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us is as our earing. Antony’s mind is quick, that’s part of his trouble, and he’s been lying still, fallow, in the glorious fertile mud of Egypt—and he’s brought forth weeds (or gone to seed, rather). But hearing his faults catalogued, the actual consequences of his neglect of duty, he’s been stirred up again, like soil being ploughed. Or, it might be said, he knows that he must reap what he has sown, and probably soon. Antony needs to think this through, and so—with courtesy and also the promise of a further conversation—he dismisses the Messenger: Fare thee well a while. At your noble pleasure, and the Messenger’s parting words could be ironic, but Antony has been noble here, at least a bit, not lordly, but dignified and direct. He cannot be a complete ruin and has-been; he retains his greatness as a leader of men. The Messenger recognizes that, and responds to it.