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Agrippa Collier: Agrippa does not appear to have been on the stage.
Ambassador Capell (i, 40): Finding a name [Euphronius] in Plutarch for [this Ambassador] that is more determinate, it seem'd not amiss to give it him here. [See Plutarch, Appendix.]
To his grand Sea Tyrwhitt: To whose grand sea? I know not. Perhaps we should read: ‘To this grand sea.’ We may suppose that the sea was within view of Cæsar's camp, and at no great distance.—Capell (i, 40): Meaning—the sea that he (the dew-drop) arose from. [Steevens, also, gives this meaning, and adds, ‘“his” is used for its.’]—Steevens: ‘His grand sea’ may mean his ‘full tide of prosperity.’ So, in 3 Hen. VI: IV, viii, 54: ‘You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow; Now stops thy spring; my sea shall suck them dry, And swell so much the higher by their ebb.’ Again, in The Two Noble Kinsmen, I, iii, 6:— ‘though I know His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they Must yield their tribute there.’ Tollet offers a further explanation of the change proposed by Tyrwhitt: ‘Alexandria, towards which Cæsar was marching, is situated on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, which is sometimes called mare magnum. Sir John Maundeville [Cap. xlvii.] calls that part of the Mediterranean which washes the coast of Palestine, ‘the grete see.’—Ritson: If ‘his’ be not used for its, Shakespeare has made a person of ‘morn-drop.’—R. G. White (ed. i): ‘His,’ in my judgement is a manifest typographical error. Hanmer corrected it. But of late years ‘his’ has been retained on the supposition that it alludes to the sea as the origin of the dew-drop! [In his ed. ii, White retains ‘his,’ without comment.]—Walker, both in his Crit. i, 314 and in his Crit. iii, 303, approves of the instead of ‘his’; at the latter place, he quotes, in support of his approval, the same passage that Steevens quoted from The Two Noble Kinsmen; and in a footnote Lettsom, Walker's editor, strenuously upholds the. ‘It is astonishing,’ he says, ‘that, though this obvious blunder was corrected by Hanmer, more than a century ago, it has maintained itself in all the editions, except Johnson's, that I have consulted. Steevens, even, has defended his by quoting the very passage which Walker here compares on account of the similarity in the sense. But in The Two Noble Kinsmen we have a metaphor; in Ant. & Cleop., a simile. Had the case been reversed, the writer of the passage in the former play would necessarily have said, “He no more needs me than the ocean needs a few drops”; while Shakespeare would have said, just as necessarily, “I am a dew-drop to his grand sea.”’—[There can be no doubt that the sentence is intelligible. Hanmer's emendation is, I think, logically just. It is extremely probable that the error is Shakespeare's. But it is one which demands some little mental analysis to detect and correct, in which, if we indulge, while sitting at the play, Euphronius will have delivered his message and departed before we have settled the propriety of his opening speech. And there are minds of a cast so ignoble as to prefer, where the sense is perfectly obvious, an incorrect word of Shakespeare to a correct one of Hanmer.—Ed.]
Requires Deighton: This verb is seldom used in Shakespeare in the peremptory sense the word would now have in such a context; compare Hen. VIII: II, iv, 144, ‘Most gracious sir, In humblest manner I require your highness, That it shall please you to declare,’ etc., said by Wolsey to the king. which not granted See Abbott (§ 377) for other instances of the use of the participle ‘to express a condition, where, for perspicuity we should now mostly insert “if.”’ See ‘not petty things admitted,’ V, ii, 169.
He Lessons Thiselton (p. 20): ‘Lessons’ is undoubtedly Shakespeare's word here in the sense of schools or disciplines. The initial capital indicates an emphasis which the feeble lessens would hardly carry, but which the metaphorical ‘Lessons’ carries easily. The fact that the ambassador is on this occasion a schoolmaster should have been sufficient to have warded off the sacrilegious hand of the emendator.
The Circle of the Ptolomies Johnson: The diadem; the ensign of royalty.
hazarded Schmidt (Lex.): That is, staked and lost to thee, as at gaming.
nor Desire See Abbott (§ 396) for other examples of the ‘ellipsis of Neither before Nor.’
adde more From thine inuention, offers Walker (Crit. i, 253): Read: ‘and more, From thine invention, offer.’—R. G. White (ed. i): The inversion in this sentence is so distracting and so needless, that it seems to me quite probable, at least, that there has been accidental transposition, and that Shakespeare may have written:—‘promise What she requires; and in our name add more Offers from thine invention.’—[See Text. Notes, for the text of Keightley and Hudson. White (ed. ii) retained the text of the Folio, with the remark that it is ‘a fine example of Shakespeare's utter recklessness in the use of language.’]—Deighton: The position of ‘offers’ seems to be intentionally emphatic.
Thidias Theobald, here and throughout, changed this name to Thyreus, on no other authority than because the name of the ambassador is so given in North's Plutarch; and he has been herein followed by every editor.—Ed.
Make thine owne Edict . . . answer as a Law Deighton: That is, fix your own reward, if you succeed, and I will consider its payment as binding upon me as a law.
how Anthony becomes his flaw Johnson: That is, how Antony conforms himself to this breach of his fortune.—Staunton: This is not very clear.— Deighton: In ‘flaw’ there is, perhaps, an allusion to another meaning of the word, common in Shakespeare, viz. sudden bursts of wind.
his very action speakes In euery power that mooues Steevens: So, in Troil. & Cress. IV, v, 57: ‘her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body.’
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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