Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, and Alexas

CLEOPATRA   Where is the fellow?

ALEXAS                                   Half afeard to come.

CLEOPATRA   Go to, go to.

Enter the Messenger as before

Come hither, sir.

ALEXAS           Good majesty,

Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you

But when you are well pleased.

CLEOPATRA               That Herod’s head

I’ll have; but how, when Antony is gone,

Through whom I might command it? [To Messenger] Come thou near.

MESSENGER  Most gracious majesty!

CLEOPATRA   Didst thou behold Octavia?

MESSENGER  Ay, dread Queen.

CLEOPATRA   Where?

MESSENGER              Madam, in Rome.

I looked her in the face, and saw her led

Between her brother and Mark Antony.    (3.3.1-10)

 

Back to Egypt, finally, and the time scale is odd—Cleopatra’s still interrogating the same messenger about Antony and Octavia, even though events in Rome have moved on considerably. (But in performance, the comedy of the scene will probably obscure that.) The fellow is the unfortunate messenger so terrorized by Cleopatra in the earlier scene, and she wants to know more, even though he’s half afeard to come (Alexas’s observation seems an understatement). Go to, go to says Cleopatra, get on with you, let’s have him. And so the messenger enters, probably looking apprehensive, and perhaps requiring encouragement from Iras and Charmian, and an ostentatiously winning and reassuring smile from Cleopatra, the crocodile. Come hither, sir. Look, nothing to be afraid of! You’re kidding yourself, Alexas points out, Herod of Jewry, that powerful king, even he doesn’t dare look upon you, let alone look you in the eye, unless you’re in a good mood. (The Herods are probably getting mixed up here, if Alexas means the byword for furious tyrants in mystery plays, but it doesn’t make any difference really.) That Herod’s head I’ll have, retorts Cleopatra, with emphatic and biting alliteration, which is hardly reassuring in the circumstances, although she concedes that might be tricky: how, when Antony is gone, through whom I might command it? Hmmm. No one to do my bidding in the matter of tyrants’ heads. The messenger might legitimately recoil at this, and so needs further encouragement: come thou near. Just a bit closer! Most gracious Majesty! he manages to squeak out, or there might be a slight note of confidence-boosting defiance: yes, here I am, fronting up, answering the questions. Didst thou behold Octavia? Simple enough; what’s going to be the quality of the information here? Is this hearsay, or an eye-witness account? (Compare Enobarbus’s eye-witness account of seeing Cleopatra on her barge at Cydnus: this will, can only be, pedestrian in comparison.) Ay, dread Queen. A little tremor there, is seeing Octavia bad or good? Is this a trick question? Where? Give me the circumstances, I want to know you’re not just making it up. Madam, in Rome. Blood out of a stone, this, but it’s coming out, bit by bit, and he’s being determinedly formal and circumspect. So he carries on with more detail. I looked her in the face, got right up close and got a good look, and saw her led between her brother and Mark Antony. Iras and Charmian might hold their breath there—don’t mention Antony! Hedge around that particular set of circumstances, the reason for that particular physical proximity, that Octavia was in between Caesar and her now-husband Antony. How will Cleopatra respond?