AGRIPPA To hold you in perpetual amity,
To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts
With an unslipping knot, take Antony
Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims
No worse a husband than the best of men;
Whose virtue and whose general graces speak
That which none else can utter. (2.2.126-132)
Agrippa is smooth, very smooth; he’s also very well-versed in anthropological theories of the gift, whereby the primary bond created by a marriage between Octavia and Antony will not be that between husband and wife but rather that between the brothers-in-law, Antony and Caesar. (Octavia is the gift.) The marriage will make them brothers, and—ideally, this is the big idea—hold them in perpetual amity, make them friends for ever. It is their hearts (rather than those of Antony and Octavia, apparently) which will be knit with an unslipping knot, tightly tied with a knot that can never be untied. (Agrippa is over-egging it a little here, perhaps.) That’s the headline, brothers together forever, which would be achieved should Antony take Octavia to his wife, Agrippa’s formal phrasing here a useful echo of the prayerbook marriage service. That they’d be well-suited in personal terms is apparently not the issue, but it does matter that they’re both exceptional people; Agrippa is emphasising that this would be an equal, honourable, mutually-advantageous marriage (early moderns worried about unequal marriages). Octavia is beautiful, and her beauty claims, or rather deserves (in Agrippa’s flattering terms) no worse a husband than the best of men (has Agrippa not heard what Caesar has been saying about Antony?!) It’s Octavia’s virtue and general graces which speak that which none else can utter, which are completely exceptional and unexceptionable, such that no other woman could be talked of in the same terms, but, slyly, it also sounds as if he’s praising Antony in these terms, virtuous and full of grace, which again sits uneasily with Antony’s reputation in Rome. Smooth, Agrippa, very smooth, and potentially also just a bit sarcastic.