ANTONY         I found you as a morsel cold upon

Dead Caesar’s trencher; nay, you were a fragment

Of Gnaeus Pompey’s, besides what hotter hours

Unregistered in vulgar fame you have

Luxuriously picked out. For I am sure,

Though you can guess what temperance should be,

You know not what it is.

CLEOPATRA              Wherefore is this?     (3.13.116-122)

I found you as a morsel cold upon dead Caesar’s trencher. You’re only Julius Caesar’s leftovers, he had you first, Antony spits out; you’re just the bit he left to get cold on the side of his plate (there’s a grotesque image of Caesar, not stabbed in the forum after all but slumped dead in his chair at the dinner table, leftovers rotting before him, flies and stench). You might have been fresh then—no, nay, you were a fragment of Gnaeus Pompey’s—he had you too, spat you out, a leftover again. (The conceit of food scraps, disgusting, excessive, visceral, is one that Shakespeare used in Troilus and Cressida when Troilus describes Cressida’s betrayal: ‘The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, | The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy relics | Of her o’er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed’, 5.2.153-5.) Antony’s disgusted with himself at the moment, too, that he’s gorged himself too, on Cleopatra, as if he’s just seen the mould or the maggot in the thing that he’s greedily half-eaten. And even in excess of just those two lovers: well, everyone knows what you’re like, that’s not even starting on what hotter hours unregistered in vulgar fame you have luxuriously picked out. And besides those two famous ones, here must be so many other men, so many other casual hook-ups, dalliances, flings you’ve had that even common gossip and your reputation haven’t registered. You’re insatiable: for I am sure, though you can guess what temperance should be, you know not what it is. Any possibility of curbing your appetites, of living and loving moderately—that’s just theoretical to you. You might have a guess at defining it, but living it—no chance. Your greedy lust knows no bounds.

Wherefore is this? and well might Cleopatra ask, what on earth has brought this on? Objective correlative much? all he did was kiss my hand; I was just being polite. What’s going on, why are you being like this?