Other women cloy
The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies."
Act by act Shakespeare makes the portrait more complex and more perfect.
In the second act she calls for music like the dark lady of the Sonnets:
"Music--moody food of us that trade in love,"
and then she'll have no music, but will play billiards, and not
billiards either, but will fish and think every fish caught an Antony.
And again she flies to memory:
"That time--O times!--
I laughed him out of patience; and that night
I laughed him into patience; and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword Philippan."
The charm of it all, the deathless charm and the astounding veracity!
The messenger enters, and she promises him for good news "gold and her
bluest veins to kiss." When she hears that Antony is well she pours more
gold on him, but when he pauses in his recital she has a mind to strike
him. When he tells that Caesar and Antony are friends, it is a fortune
she'll give; but when she learns that Antony is betrothed to Octavia she
turns to her women with "I am pale, Charmian," and when she hears that
Antony is married she flies into a fury, strikes the messenger down and
hales him up and down the room by his hair.
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