AGRIPPA         Give me leave, Caesar.

CAESAR          Speak, Agrippa.

AGRIPPA         Thou hast a sister by the mother’s side,

Admired Octavia. Great Mark Antony

Is now a widower.

CAESAR          Say not so, Agrippa.

If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof

Were well deserved of rashness.

ANTONY         I am not married, Caesar. Let me hear

Agrippa further speak.         (2.2.117-125)

It’s not exactly a free-for-all, now, but the interventions by Enobarbus, Lepidus, and Maecenas have broken the tension, the intensity of the one-to-one face-off between Caesar and Antony and there are possible ways forward emerging. Agrippa’s there on Caesar’s ‘side’, hence his asking permission from him to speak; it’s not clear whether this is his own spur-of-the-moment suggestion or Caesar’s idea all along, being produced apparently spontaneously by one of his associates—probably the former? There’s initially a contrast between Agrippa’s rigid courtesy—seeking Caesar’s leave to speak in the first place: Caesar’s fully in control of his people—and Antony’s lack of control over Enobarbus, who carries on doing his own thing. And Agrippa speaks in nicely formal verse, in contrast to Enobarbus’s lax prose. He sets it all out clearly—thou has a sister by the mother’s side, a half-sister, and Antony is now a widower. (It can get a laugh early on, as it’s obvious what Agrippa’s suggesting, although he takes a while to get to the point.) Octavia is admired and Mark Antony is great: the epithets have a classicising effect, as well as keeping the formal tone, especially given what he’s about to suggest; the match is already being presented as desirable through these balanced, yet impersonal adjectives. (That it’s entirely political and pragmatic is also there in that impersonality: no one’s going to make the argument that they’re an ideal match in any other terms.) Caesar’s response slightly misfires, as he takes the opportunity to have a go at Antony—oooo, you’d better not let Cleopatra hear you say that Antony’s a widower and therefore on the marriage market now, you’d get a right telling off and you’d deserve it—because, first, Caesar has been condemning Antony’s immorality in his affair with Cleopatra and now he is equating it with marriage. But also, second, it’s as if Caesar hasn’t quite caught on to Antony’s seriousness yet, his ruthlessness and pragmatism as a politician. He is still underestimating Antony as the past-it, has-been, drunken Alexandrian lover. And so Antony still has the upper hand: I am not married, Caesar. I can see where this might be going even if you haven’t copped on yet. Let me hear Agrippa further speak.