BOY [sings] Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne!
In thy vats our cares be drowned,
With thy grapes our hairs be crowned!
Cup us till the world go round,
Cup us till the world go round!
CAESAR What would you more? Pompey, good night. (2.7.106-112)
On the page it looks innocuous, even cutesy, this hymn to Bacchus, who sounds like a fat white rat. But he’s certainly the presiding deity at this feast, monarch of the vine, god of wine and feasting and drunkenness; he is plumpy with good living (and is distinctly chubby in most visual representations), and his eyes are pink through drinking, and also because he’s so drunk that he’s squinting, his eyes half-closed. This god is being addressed as a familiar, definitely the worse for wear (like his devotees) at this stage in the evening. In performance there might not be a boy; the song could be sung all together, or there could be another singer. An early modern audience would assume that there would be boys—pages or servants—at a gathering like this, and the boys in the company did often sing, but it’s probably difficult to introduce a boy into a modern-dress production at this point and introducing a female singer, if there are no other women present, can change the dynamic considerably. It doesn’t matter if it’s not a boy, really: what matters is that this is a drinking song, and some editions direct that the refrain at least is sung by the whole company. Bacchus is being praised as the god of wine, so that in thy vats our cares be drowned, all worries forgotten in drink, and the revelers imagine their heads being crowned with grapes, wreathed with bacchanalian bounty, the sign of Dionysian energy and complete abandon to the will of the god. Vineleaves in their hair. Cup us till the world go round, cup us till the world go round, they sing: fill our cups over and over again until the world whirls around us—and they’re probably dancing in a circle too.
This can continue for some time—until Caesar’s finally had enough. What more can you want? Do you want to keep going on and on like this? I’m off, he says, somehow extracting himself. Pompey, thank you for having me, thank you for a lovely party, no, really, but—good night.