Enter Octavius Caesar reading a letter, Lepidus, and their train

CAESAR          You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know

It is not Caesar’s natural vice to hate

Our great competitor. From Alexandria

This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes

The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike

Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy

More womanly than he; hardly gave audience,

Or vouchsafed to think he partners had. You shall find there

A man who is the abstract of all faults

That all men follow.  (1.4.1-10)

Rome! And Caesar! A first encounter with Antony’s co-triumvir and rival, and Lepidus too, the other man making up the triumvirate ruling the Roman empire. Octavius Caesar has news, and the natural inference is that this is news of Antony. So this is an introduction not just to Caesar as a character, but to his opinion of Antony. And it’s damning. You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know it is not Caesar’s natural vice to hate our great competitor. He’s being bitingly sarcastic, as well as as ironically magnanimous, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger. I’m not usually nasty about anyone, especially not Antony, competitor here meaning not rival (although that’s what it sounds like, naturally) but associate, our brother in arms—after all, he’s one of us! But, well, I hate to say it (more-in-sorrow etc) this is the news from Alexandria. He fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps of night in revel. (I love that he leads with fishes, as if Antony’s taken up something really depraved, like angling.) (But it’s a low status, literally wet activity, to do with leisure, idling around on a river bank, waiting, waiting, not acting.) And he drinks, yes, of course (like a fish) and wastes the lamps of night in revel. Antony’s partying, burning the candle at both ends, or rather up all night, roistering. Caesar characterises it in terms of wastefulness, too, perhaps literal as well as metaphorical; Antony’s wasting time, his own strength, and precious resources; he’s squandering lamp oil, too, bad household management. He is not more manlike than Cleopatra (he’s become effeminate, emasculated, utterly dominated by her) and she, the Queen of Ptolemy (and this can be spat out in disgust: historically Ptolemy was Cleopatra’s first husband, and another Ptolemy, the one meant here, was also her second; both were dead by the time of the play’s action and, even more distasteful to a Roman audience, both were her brothers)—she is not more womanly than he. They’re both as weak and degenerate as each other. Antony hardly gives audience, he doesn’t bother listening to messengers and ambassadors—he’s simply not doing his job, and he’s not returning my calls—you wouldn’t think that he was meant to be, like us, his partners, working to rule the empire. It’s like he’s completely checked out. You’ll find there, in this letter, an account of the man who is the abstract of all faults that all men follow. He’s just the epitome of vice; he’s succumbed to all the weaknesses that men possess. (Or is that all men followacknowledging Antony’s enduring popularity with his soldiers? That, despite all these manifest faults, so censoriously condemned by Caesar, Antony is still charismatic and loved by his men?)