ANTONY         Well, my good fellows, wait on me tonight.

Scant not my cups, and make as much of me

As when mine empire was your fellow too,

And suffered my command.

CLEOPATRA  [aside to Enobarbus] What does he mean?

ENOBARBUS  [aside to Cleopatra] To make his followers weep.

ANTONY                                 Tend me tonight.

Maybe it is the period of your duty.

Haply you shall not see me more; or if,

A mangled shadow. Perchance tomorrow

You’ll serve another master. I look on you

As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends,

I turn you not away, but, like a master

Married to your good service, stay till death.

Tend me tonight two hours. I ask no more;

And the gods yield you for’t!                        (4.2.20-33)

 

The tone is complex and progressively more sombre: Antony’s apparently calling for a party, but at the same time invoking farewells, endings, death. Well, my good fellows, wait on me tonight: fellows can be (and is here, partly) the usual slightly pejorative form of address which might be used to inferiors such as servants, but here it also means friends, comrades. His servants are his good fellows, loyal and true in every respect (or so he imagines and hopes) and so he asks them to wait on him, both to serve him and simply to be with him, spend this time with him. Scant not my cups—make sure my glass is always full!—and make as much of me as when mine empire was your fellow too, and suffered my command. Let’s pretend, for just one more night, that I’m still who I was, that I’m still powerful and in control, served by an empire as you serve me now—that I’m still, in effect, an emperor? Indulge me, and look after me, one last time?

 

Again, Cleopatra can’t quite read it, this emotional complexity, its mixture, but also she is—finally—beginning to suspect that it’s all over, that this last gaudy night is an ending, not a beginning, that things are about to change for ever and it’s out of her control. What does he mean? What’s going on? Enobarbus spares her, a little: to make his followers weep. It’s partly an implicit stage direction—the servants are emotional, surely Charmian and Iras too (and Enobarbus himself? how detached can he remain, given the decision he’s already made to leave?)—but also Enobarbus not really engaging with what’s happening? at the same time Enobarbus is, ironically, drawing attention to Antony’s skill in emotional manipulation, second nature to him even if, as here (perhaps?) it’s not intentional?

 

Back to Antony and his weeping servants. Tend me tonight: look after me? because maybe it is the period of your duty; it’s the last occasion on which you’ll do so, the end of your service to me. Haply you shall not see me more: it might even, perhaps, be the last time you see me; if you do see me again, I may be just a mangled shadow, a ghost, a corpse, mutilated and disfigured. A shadow of my former self. Or perchance tomorrow you’ll serve another master; you’ll leave me too, take service with someone else, with Caesar. And so I look on you as one that takes his leave. This is goodbye. Mine honest friends—more intimate even than fellows, and both praising and hoping for their honesty, their loyalty—I turn you not away; I’m not going to sack you in the expectation of my defeat or death, as some employers would. Rather, like a master married to your good service, stay till death. This bond of service between us is like a marriage: it will be ended only by death. (In part, is he speaking to Cleopatra, worried that she will leave him now?) Tend me tonight two hours. It’s a tiny, precise amount of time, as long as they’ve got, and as long as he can keep up this final pretence of revels, business as usual. I ask no more; that’s all I ask of you, please (Antony, the great, begging his servants not to leave him, to keep him company, look after him). If you do that, if you stay and serve me for just these few more hours, then the gods yield you for’t! Heaven will reward and bless you—because I won’t be in a position to do anything more for you in that way.