MENECRATES                        Caesar and Lepidus

Are in the field; a mighty strength they carry.

POMPEY         Where have you this? ’Tis false.

MENECRATES                        From Silvius, sir.

POMPEY         He dreams. I know they are in Rome together,

Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love,

Salt Cleopatra, soften thy waned lip.

Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both

Tie up the libertine, in a field of feasts

Keep his brain fuming; Epicurean cooks

Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite,

That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour

Even till a Lethe’d dullness—

Enter Varrius                                      (2.1.16-27SD)

Menecrates interrupts Pompey’s somewhat complacent assessment of the situation with news (this pirate is well informed, and more pragmatic, it seems, than Pompey): Caesar and Lepidus are in the field, they’re ready for battle, taking the fight to you, ready to attack even, and they carry a mighty strength. They’ve got huge numbers of troops, a formidable force. Pompey can’t believe it: where are you getting your intell? I haven’t heard this (implicitly)—’tis false. Don’t believe you. From Silvius, sir—and just a touch of insolence or at least asperity in the sir? Unlike you, sir, I’m wary, constantly checking and rechecking, taking nothing for granted—and I’ve got my spies, my agents, hard at work. Pompey still won’t believe it—who is this Silvius, anyway? (Roman, by the sound of him, a nice authenticating detail.) He dreams. I know they are in Rome together, Lepidus and Octavius Caesar, and, what’s more, I know they’re stuck there, looking for—that is, lacking and awaiting Antony. (The audience knows this isn’t the case, they already know that Menecrates’ report is accurate.)

But all the same—Pompey at least implicitly admits that they’d better hope that Antony stays in Egypt, prolonging the stalemate in which he’s so firmly trusting. And so (lingeringly, his own fantasy breaking through) he calls on Cleopatra, salt Cleopatra, as he calls her, lusty, lascivious, sexy (and salt is crude, a word to be applied to dogs in heat) to soften thy waned lip. She’s getting on a bit, her looks are waning, fading, but she can still turn it on. Lick your lips, almost, he’s saying, you sexy bitch, and work your black magic on him again (witchcraft in her lips), as well as spellbinding him with your beauty, so that Antony is held captive by his own desire, lust with both tie up the libertine, Antony, enthralled by pleasure. In a field of feasts—a battlefield of banquets, and also of other pleasures, I think, that conflation of sexual and other appetites again—keep his brain fuming. Make him drunk with lust, sated with pleasure as well as wine. Epicurean cooks sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite, keep feeding him with pleasures of which he can never tire, like chefs so inventive and so refined, so wholly devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, that they keep him wanting more and more, always hungry, avid for more exotic tastes—so that he forgets himself and his honour entirely, his senses (and his reason) dulled as if in Lethe, the waters of forgetfulness… Pompey imagines Antony carried away and drowned in a Nile flood of wine, food and, above all (even though he never quite makes it clear) endless sex. (Wish-fulfilment fantasy much, Pompey?) But then there’s an interruption—yet another messenger?