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decayes Warburton: This nonsense should read thus: delay's. Menecrates had said, ‘The Gods do not deny that which they delay.’ The other turns his words to a different meaning, and replies, ‘Delay is the very thing we beg of them,’ i. e. the delay of our enemies in making preparations against us; which he explains afterwards, by saying Mark Antony was tied up by lust in Egypt; Cæsar by avarice at Rome; and Lepidus employed in keeping well with both. [This emendation of Warburton would have been relegated to the Text. Notes, had it not beguiled as sensible an editor as Capell.] Heath: (p. 453): This emendation of Mr Warburton's is certainly nonsense, whatever becomes of the common text which he is pleased to call so. Who ever prayed for success in any enterprize, and at the same time prayed that that success might be delayed as long as he should pray for it? Besides the reply of Menecrates plainly implies that delay was not the thing sued for; but something else which was for the present denied; which could not be delay, since Pompey was already in possession of that, but must be the attainment of the empire. The ancient reading is undoubtedly the true one. The sense is, While we are wearying the Gods with prayers, the very thing we are praying for, that is the empire, is falling into decay and ruin by the ill conduct of my competitors, by the luxurious indolence of Antony, the avaricious extortions of Cæsar, and by the insincerity and private views of all the three triumvirs. Johnson: The meaning is, ‘While we are praying, the thing for which we pray is losing its value.’
William Shakespeare. Horace Howard Furness. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra. Philadelphia and London. J. B. Lippincott Company. 1907.
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