CLEOPATRA I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.
ANTONY Our overplus of shipping will we burn,
And with the rest full-manned, from th’head of Actium
Beat th’approaching Caesar. But if we fail,
We then can do’t at land. (3.7.49-53)
And now Cleopatra weighs in, Antony’s folie de grandeur becoming a kind of folie à deux. I have sixty sails, she boasts, sixty ships, Caesar has none better. I have the best ships! Antony’s next statement seems utterly deluded: our overplus of shipping will we burn—he plans to burn his surplus ships, unable to be crewed properly, which will enable the rest to be full-manned—and presumably prevent the empty ships from falling into Caesar’s hands. But even with that strategy in mind, burning ships seems profligate and mad (the barge she sat in will burn on the water quite literally, it appears). Burning boats and burning bridges. Antony’s intention, however, is that the fully-crewed ships will be able to beat the approaching Caesar by setting out, as a fleet, from the head of Actium, its headland. He makes it sound so simple, adding but if we fail, we then can do’t by land. No problem: if we lose to Caesar at sea, we’ll simply engage with him again on land. You and whose army? Enobarbus might as well reply. Cleopatra and Antony seem magnificently unconcerned with such a possibility, with even their likely defeat by sea easily able to be overcome.