Enter Enobarbus

ENOBARBUS  What’s your pleasure, sir?

ANTONY         I must with haste from hence.

ENOBARBUS  Why then we kill all our women. We see how mortal an unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death’s the word.

ANTONY         I must be gone.

ENOBARBUS  Under a compelling occasion let women die. It were pity to cast them away for nothing—though between them and a great cause they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra catching but the least noise of this dies instantly. I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying. (1.2.115-124)

How important is the suggestion that Enobarbus is always just within earshot, waiting to do Antony’s bidding? Not very, probably; it’s dramatically necessary here, though. His response to Antony’s summons, although idiomatically courteous, is also telling: what is your pleasure? Pleasure is what he’s used to Antony commanding, what’s going to be the fun tonight, what’s next, get me another drink. Not now. Antony is starkly monosyllabic and iambic: I must with haste from hence. Must. Compelled by what? (Duty.) Enobarbus responds in languid prose: nah, mate, you can’t go now. It’d kill Cleopatra. (Implicitly.) Enobarbus puts it in the plural, though, suggesting that if Antony goes, he’ll have to go, and the rest of the Romans-in-Egypt crew too, and that’ll kill their women, they’ll be completely distraught. I mean, women, right, they lose it, act like it’s the end of the world over the smallest thing, like if you don’t turn up or you’re late or something totally minor—women, what are they like, I know?!—and so if we actually left? It would totally kill them for real. If they had to suffer our departure, death’s the word. (I actually like Enobarbus as a character a lot. But he takes a while to reveal his hidden depths and complexities.) Antony is still monosyllabically resolute: I must be gone. (Must, again.)

But Enobarbus is enjoying his little boysy mildly misogynist riff, which is about to become somewhat bawdy. Under a compelling occasion let women die; it’d better be worth it—but also, die here acquires its customary sexual sense (so, a suggestion too, perhaps, of male entitlement and expectation). It were pity to cast them away for nothing (nothing, no-thing, women’s genitalia, also the sense here)—because between them and a great cause, they should be esteemed nothing. Sometimes that’s all they’re good for, in the grand scheme of things. (A bit of cynical misogyny, in the midst of a speech which does otherwise at least acknowledge women’s sexual pleasure.) Cleopatra catching but the least note of this dies instantly. (Note—detail, rumour, inkling here, but picking up on nothing, pronounced close to noting at the time.) If she hears of this, she’ll be dying all over the place, drama queen, making threats and desperate pleas, saying that she’ll die for you, die without you. After all, I have seen her die twenty times upon some poorer moment, for something much less serious, that’s just what she’s like, any excuse, the smallest thing, and she’s on the floor. As it were. Again and again, dying and dying (the double entendre comes to the fore again). I do think that there’s a mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying. And here Enobarbus imagines death not simply as Cleopatra’s lover, a strange macabre fantasy, but an inventive and spirited lover (full of mettle) given to committing such loving (sex) acts upon her that she dies again and again, readily, quickly, oh, oh, oh…