ANTONY How now, lady!
CLEOPATRA I would I had thy inches. Thou shouldst know
There were a heart in Egypt.
ANTONY Hear me, Queen:
The strong necessity of time commands
Our services a while, but my full heart
Remains in use with you. (1.3.39-44)
How now, lady! Wonderfully open to interpretation: it can be aggrieved, reproachful, tender. What’s going on? What’s up, love? But what’s striking here, I think, is how the scale can shrink; Cleopatra is always, partly, playing to the gallery, to her women, to any audience at all, as well as Antony, but (at least momentarily, as she runs out of breath, as he finally gets to explain) she listens, and her pain and insecurity, his concern, can become a little more obvious. It’s intimate, and is often played as such. I would I had thy inches! A mistake to play it with a lascivious wiggle, a nod and a wink, although it’s always a possibility; what it also recalls is Beatrice’s anguish in Much Ado, ‘O that I were a man!’ The cry of female disempowerment, of exclusion from the sphere of decision-making and action. All the eloquence in the world, all the charm and sexiness, can’t compensate for being the one who is always left, who is never quite able to get up and go, to be the one who leaves. (The epic hero, in the classical tradition, is the one who leaves women behind him on the way to fulfilling his imperial destiny. Aeneas and Odysseus are the great examples; Cleopatra resists, Antony can’t ever quite manage it.) So, I would I had thy inches! That I could fight you, take you on, make you stay; then thou shouldst know there were a heart in Egypt. Heart here is mostly courage, but it is also, inevitably, love; then you’d see how far I’m prepared to go to keep you, how I’ll fight for you. (And also: the absolute bloody cheek of you! I wish I had your brass neck.) Keeping him guessing; Cleopatra is never either/or, she’s always both/and.
Antony finally gets it right, at the moment when she can’t quite keep going. Hear me, Queen. Formal and measured, attempting to set out the realities of the political situation; this is about that, it’s not about them, you and me. The strong necessity of time commands our services a while. I have to go, in my imperial, plural role, to do my job as soldier, general, Roman leader. No choice. Duty. (That’s why he’s addressing her as Queen, leader to leader.) But my full heart remains in use with you. My, not our; this is me, personally, not the Roman, but Antony, your lover. My heart is yours, all of it, full of love, and you will keep it and hold it for me while I’m gone.