ANTONY                                 Moon and stars!

Whip him! Were’t twenty of the greatest tributaries

That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them

So saucy with the hand of she here—what’s her name

Since she was Cleopatra? Whip him, fellows,

Till like a boy you see him cringe his face,

And whine aloud for mercy. Take him hence.

THIDIAS         Mark Antony—

ANTONY                                 Tug him away. Being whipped,

Bring him again. This jack of Caesar’s shall

Bear us an errand to him.

Exeunt [servants] with Thidias          (3.13.94-103)

Moon and stars! By Antony’s standards, a mild oath, but still expressing his exasperation at both the situation and, especially, the servants, who are probably hanging back in horror at being asked to beat up, in effect, the emissary of the man who’s just comprehensively defeated their own boss. Whip him! Do it! Were’t twenty of the greatest tributaries that do acknowledge Caesar, even if it were a whole bunch of the petty kings that have flocked to give their allegiance to Caesar (throwing shade at Thidias: you’re really not all that, boy, you’re just the bloody messenger)—if I were to find them, much more important and of much higher status, taking such liberties, so saucy with the hand of she here—ah, and now he’s turning to Cleopatra—this woman, what’s her name since she was Cleopatra? Because I don’t recognise her now, behaving like this, as my Cleopatra. She seems to be someone else. (There’s vulnerability and humiliation there, perhaps, as well as jealous anger, and perhaps also a recollection of Troilus’s anguished, self-pitying ‘this is and is not Cressid’, in the pivotal, cruel scene of the earlier play, as he watches his beloved being intimate with another man.) Whip him, fellows, take him away and thrash him, till like a boy you see him cringe his face, and whine aloud for mercy. Humiliate him and abuse him, until he whimpers and sobs like a child. Like a boy, a naughty schoolboy, not a man. (Antony’s been properly humiliated, and now he’s got someone to take it out on.) Take him hence; get him out of here and get on with it. Mark Antony—Thidias tries to plead and to placate, but Antony doesn’t even let him finish the line. Tug him away. Go on, drag him. And then, being whipped, bring him again. I want him back here, and this jack of Caesar’s, this saucy lackey, this jumped-up pretty boy shall bear us an errand to him. He can take my message back to Caesar.