Enter Diomedes

DIOMEDES                 Where’s Antony?

DERCETUS     There, Diomed, there.

DIOMEDES Lives he? Wilt thou not answer, man?

[Exit Dercetus]

ANTONY         Art thou there, Diomed? Draw thy sword, and give me

Sufficing strokes for death.

DIOMEDES Most absolute lord,

My mistress Cleopatra sent me to thee.

ANTONY When did she send thee?

DIOMEDES Now, my lord.    (4.15.111-116)

Surely running, urgent: where’s Antony? asks Diomedes. Dercetus states the (bleeding) obvious: there, Diomed, there. Diomed looks, aghast, not least at Dercetus’s laconic cynicism: well, lives he? Is that all you can say? Wilt thou not answer, man? Dercetus has no time, and also no respect for any servant of Cleopatra, or Antony. He’s out of there, to see what he can get out of the rising man, Octavius Caesar. But Antony recognises Diomedes, by his voice: art thou there, Diomed? Is it really you? Help me: draw thy sword, and give me sufficing strokes for death. Please, can you end this for me? Can you do enough to end my suffering? Diomedes is respectful, deferential: most absolute lord, he says—and then the real body blow for Antony. My mistress Cleopatra sent me to thee. So simple, so unambiguous, but Antony is naturally confused. But when did she send thee? He assumes a delay, because Cleopatra’s dead… But no. Now, my lord, says Diomedes, I’ve just come from her this moment—and he must know what’s happened, and that he is just the latest in the play’s long series of messengers whose timing is terribly off, and whose news is horribly unwelcome.