Harry Reid, via AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta
In the third act of Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare tosses off an incidental scene to illustrate both how far Antony has fallen after his defeat at the battle of Actium and how not to negotiate. Having lost not only the battle but most of his allies apart from Cleopatra, Antony has no one close to him to send to negotiate with Caesar but the man whom Plutarch calls “the schoolmaster to the children.” In Shakespeare he doesn’t even have a name, though Plutarch says he was called Euphronius. Obviously cowed on his own as well as on Antony’s behalf, this “Ambassador” begins his message from Antony to Caesar:
Lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and
Requires to live in Egypt, which not granted,
He lessons his requests, and to thee sues
To let him breathe between the heavens and earth,
A private man in Athens. . . .
I think the Second Folio’s reading of “lessens” for the First’s “lessons” is more persuasive, even though a Shakespearean schoolmaster might well have imagined Antony as “lessoning” or disciplining his own requests. On the stage, of course, the difference would not be audible anyway, and the idea of a man in a weak position intimidated into giving the weakness away and so making it still weaker is unforgettable. No wonder Caesar answers with typical brutality, “I have no ears to his request.”
I couldn’t help
