Enobarbus Walker (Vers. 186): This name in this play is frequently used as if it were a trisyllable, in whatever way the anomaly is to be explained. [See IV, v, 23; IV, vi, 26; IV, ix, 12, 14.]
Thinke, and dye In North's Plutarch mention is made of a convivial club, presumably founded by Anthony after the battle of Actium, the members whereof agreed that they would die together. (See Appendix.) Supposing that an allusion is here made to this club, Hanmer changed ‘Thinke’ to Drink, an emendation which has had but two admirers: Warburton and Capell. Both adopted it in their text, and the latter pronounced it ‘most true and ingenious.’ Johnson did ‘not advance it into the page, not being convinced that it is necessary. “Think and die”; that is, Reflect on your folly, and leave the world, is a natural answer.’—Tyrwhitt (p. 9): I grant it would be, according to [Johnson's] explanation, a very proper answer from a moralist or a divine; but Enobarbus, I doubt, was neither the one nor the other. He is drawn as a plain, blunt soldier; not likely, however, to offend so grossly in point of delicacy as Hanmer's alteration would make him. I believe the true reading is: ‘Wink, and die.’ When the ship is going to be cast away, in The Sea Voyage of Beaumont and Fletcher (I, i), and Aminta is lamenting, Tibalt says to her: ‘— Go, take your gilt prayer-book, and to your business; Wink, and die:’ insinuating plainly, that she was afraid to meet death with her eyes open. And the same insinuation, I think, Enobarbus might very naturally convey in his return to Cleopatra's desponding question.—Steevens: The old reading may be supported by the following passage in Julius Cæsar: ‘all that he can do Is to himself, take thought, and die for Cæsar.’ [II, i, 187.] Tollet observes, that the expression of taking thought, in our old English writers, is equivalent to the being anxious or solicitous, or laying a thing much to heart. Tyrwhitt, however, might have given additional support to his reading from a passage in 2 Hen. IV: I, iii, 33: ‘led his powers to death And winking leap'd into destruction.’—Tyrwhitt: After all that has been written upon this passage, I believe the old reading is right; but then we must understand think and die to mean the same as die of thought, or melancholy. In this sense is thought used below, IV, vi, 43, and by Holinshed, Chronicles of Ireland, p. 97: ‘his father liued in the tower—where for thought of the young man his follie he died.’ There is a passage almost exactly similar in The Beggar's Bush of Beaumont and Fletcher: ‘Can I not think away myself and die?’ [V, i.]—Henley: ‘Think and die.’ Consider what mode of ending your life is most preferable, and immediately adopt it.—Knight: Here is a noble answer from the rough soldier to the voluptuous queen. . . . We may here very safely trust to the original.—Craik (p. 145): To think or to take thought, seems to have been formerly used in the sense of to give way to sorrow and despondency.—[Possibly, our most familiar quotation is, ‘Take no thought for the morrow.’—Matthew, vi, 34.]—Staunton: Despair and die.—Hudson: This is equivalent to grieve ourselves to death.
What though Walker (Crit. ii, 156) Read metri gratia, ‘What an though’; unless ‘what although’ be allowable, which I doubt.—Staunton (Athenæum, 26 April, 1873): Something is missing from the line. Perhaps—‘What though you, timorous, fled.’
whose seuerall ranges Staunton: The commentators, perhaps, have a perception of what this means, since they pass it silently; to us it is inexplicable, and we cannot choose but look on ‘ranges’ as a misprint for the rages of grim-visag'd war.—Schmidt (Lex.): ‘Ranges,’ that is, ranks. [Compare, ‘the wide Arch Of the raing'd Empire,’ I, i, 46.]
Haue nickt Steevens: That is, set the mark of folly on it. So, in The Com. of Errors, ‘and the while His man with scissors nicks him like a fool.’ [V, i, 175.—This passage of itself does not, I think, prove that the hair of fools was intentionally cut in nicks; Deighton remarks, ‘it is only because Pinch's hair was cut in this disfiguring way that he is made to look like a fool.’ At this same passage in Com. of Errors, Malone gives a quotation which he deems conclusive; it is from The Choice of Change . . . by S. R. Gent, 1598, as follows: ‘Three things used by monks, which provoke other men to laugh at their follies. 1. They are shaven and notched on the head, like fooles.’ It is probable that here ‘fooles’ refers, not to the domestic or ‘allowed fools,’ but to idiots. Douce (ii, 323), in his exhaustive essay On the Clowns and Fools of Shakespeare, says that, ‘The head was frequently shaved in imitation or perhaps ridicule of a monk's crown. This practice is very ancient, and can be traced to the twelfth century. In one instance, the hair exhibits a sort of triple or Papal crown.’ The reference, in the present line, is a coarse one, but then Enobarbus was of coarse fibre. From what we know of the neglected personal habits of Fools, the inference is not strained that they were liable to cutaneous ailments, and of such ailments the only one that could ‘nick’ anything was the ‘itch,’ and the only thing it could nick was the hair. Possibly, this nicking was so common among Fools as to make the term almost synonymous with folly. In the Pathology of those days all irritating cutaneous diseases were called the ‘itch,’ but this term is not now applied to affections of the scalp. In answer to my question on the subject, I received from my friend, Dr L. A. Duhring, an acknowledged authority on Cutaneous Diseases, the following reply:—‘The affection referred to, in the passage you quote from Antony and Cleopatra, is not the itch, or scabies, but, without question, the common “ringworm of the scalp,” a frequent and well-defined affection, which causes the destruction of the hair, giving to the area invaded a nicked or cropped appearance, and in my works I describe the hair (as do many other writers) as seeming to have been “nibbled off.” It is due to a fungus, and the sensation of itching accompanies it.’—Ed.]
he being The meered question Johnson: ‘The mered question’ is a term I do not understand. I know not what to offer, except ‘The mooted question.’ That is, the disputed point, the subject of debate. Mere is indeed a boundary; and the meered question, if it can mean anything, may, with some violence of language, mean, the disputed boundary.—Steevens: So, in Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil, b. iii. 1582: ‘Wheare too ioynctlye mearing a cantel of Italye neereth.’ Barrett, in his Alvearie, 1580, interprets a meere-stone by Terminalis lapis. ‘Question’ is certainly the true reading. So, in Hamlet, I, i: ‘—the king That was and is the question of these wars.’—M. Mason: Possibly Shakspeare might have coined the word meered, and derived it from the adjective mere or meer. In that case, the meered question might mean, the only cause of the dispute—the only subject of the quarrel. —Knight: Mere is a boundary; and to mere is to mark, to limit.—Collier (ed. ii): It is altered to mooted in the MS; but as ‘mered’ may be taken in the sense of sole, or mere question, we make no change.—R. G. White (ed. i): It is quite possibly a misprint for mooted.—Ibid. (ed. ii): An amazing participial adjective, formed from mere.—[Surely, in this note we hear the voice of White's ‘washerwoman’ whose advice he said he took (see his Preface, p. xii) in the selection of his comments. He himself was too experienced an editor to be ‘amazed’ at Shakespeare's freedom in forming participles.—Ed.]—Staunton: Possibly, the entire, or sole question; but the word reads suspiciously.—Abbott (§ 294): The word ‘meered’ is marked as corrupt by the Globe; but perhaps it is the verb from the adjective meere or mere, which in Elizabethan English means entire. Hence, ‘he being the entire question,’ i. e. Antony, being the sole cause of the battle, ought not to have fled.—Elton (p. 141): The tillage-lands and cow-pastures were protected by banks and fences called meers; and the name in time came to mean a ‘marking off’ for any special purpose. Enobarbus applied it to Antony:—‘The meered question.’—[If ‘meered’ means marked off, as Elton would have it, it seems to yield a meaning, if intelligible, at variance with the drift of Enobarbus's speech. So far from Anthony's being marked off or excluded from the question, he was the very soul of it. I prefer the interpretation of Mason and Abbott.—Ed.]
So she will yeeld vs vp For an exposition of the process whereby so assumes the function of a conditional conjunction, see Franz, § 413.
the Boy Cæsar The battle of Actium was fought almost on Cæsar's birthday. He was born on the 23rd of September, b. c. 63, and the battle took place on the 31st of September, b.c. 31; eight days after he had entered his thirty-second year. Anthony was just twenty years older,—in his fifty-second year.—Ed.
particular Walker (Crit. iii, 304): That is, personal, individual. Ford, Love's Sacrifice, I, i: ‘If singular beauty, unimitable virtues, honour, youth, and absolute goodness be a fortune, all those are at once offered to your particular choice. . . . The great and gracious Lady Fiormonda loves you, infinitely loves you.’ [p. 16, ed. Dyce.]
whose Ministers Capell (i, 41, see Text. Notes): That is, ministrations, services administer'd; but what the ‘ministers of coins, ships, and legions,’ may be, those gentlemen should (methinks) have inform'd us, who have let the word stand in their several editions.—[The volume containing this play, although bearing the number 8, was only the second that Capell sent to press. It bears the mark of his 'prentice hand. After more experience, he would not have emended the text, and we should not have had the foregoing note. It would have occurred to him that ‘ministers’ here means the agents who execute the purposes of coins, ships, and legions.—Ed.]
gay Comparisons a-part, And answer me declin'd Heath (p. 460): That is, those pleasing comparisons which Cæsar would naturally make between his own circumstances and those of Antony, resulting from the advantage he had so lately obtained. ‘And answer me declin'd’ as I am, in power and reputation.—Capell (i, 41): By ‘comparisons,’ are meant—those advantages which put the world upon making comparisons between Cæsar and himself: these advantages, he dares Cæsar to lay aside or decline, and then to answer him, ‘sword against sword.’—Johnson: I require of Cæsar not to depend on that superiority which the ‘comparison’ of our different fortunes may exhibit to him, but to answer me man to man, in this ‘decline’ of my age or power.—[Warburton has a note to the same effect, but its display of his knowledge of Italian, as fanciful as it is vainglorious, excluded it, I suppose, from the pages of the early Variorums. Malone remarks, ‘I have sometimes thought that Shakespeare wrote,—“gay caparisons.”’ It is truly surprising that Malone should not have been aware that caparisons is the text of both Pope and Hanmer.] —Singer (reading caparisons): To ‘gay caparisons’ the next speech gives as an equivalent, ‘unstate his happiness,’—let him take off his imperial trappings. ‘Declin'd’ must mean inclined, sloped, as swords are sloped one against another at the commencement of a combat. The word is technical and we have elsewhere:— Troil. & Cress. IV, v, 189, ‘hung thy advanc'd sword i'the air, Not letting it decline on the declined.’—R. G. White (ed. i): Cæsar had made no comparisons of any kind, as may be seen by reference to the single speech which he addresses to Euphronius in the previous Scene. Antony, however, has more than once, and just before, alluded to the youth and gayety of Octavius, and he now summons him to lay aside everything but armor and a sword, and meet him face to face in single combat. [In the next clause] it seems to me that there has been an accidental transposition, and that we should read ‘sword against sword declin'd.’—[Deighton, Rolfe (who ‘suspects that caparisons’ is the true reading), Wordsworth, Herford all give good paraphrases, but none is, I think, better or more concise than Collier (ed. ii), as thus: ‘That is, his gay, youthful, and triumphant condition, as compared with me, in my declined or fallen state.’ Deighton justly says, ‘there is probably a special allusion to Antony's declining years as compared with Cæsar's youth.’ That Anthony refers, not to Cæsar's outward trappings, his caparisons, but to immaterial conditions, receives confirmation, I think, from the words of Enobarbus when he derides the thought that ‘the full Cæsar will answer Anthony's emptiness.’ That ‘declin'd’ has nothing whatsoever to do with swords, is clear, I think, from its use in the very same sense, as I believe, in Cæsar's lament over Anthony's death, where he says, ‘I must perforce Haue shewne to thee such a declining day, Or looke on thine,’ V, i, 47.—Ed.]
Stag'd to'th'shew Henley: That is, exhibited, like conflicting gladiators, to the public gaze. 36, etc. I see mens Iudgements, etc.] Thiselton (p. 20): This speech is excellently punctuated in the Folio. Modern editors not seeing that ‘that’ in line 39 introduces the ground of Enobarbus' inference (see Abbott, § 284), and in their abhorrence of anything like a long sentence, place a full stop after ‘alike,’ and a note of exclamation after ‘emptinesse,’ and so weaken the tension of the style. It may be safely asserted that no one can derive an adequate conception of the energy of Shakespeare's style from the study of a modern text.—[To follow here the punctuation of Shakespeare's printers is, I think, to rob the speech of its vigour, and convert into a philosophic, didactic observation what was intended to be indignant astonishment. Rowe's dramatic instinct revealed to him the derision, nay, almost the contempt, which lay in the words, ‘That he should dreame,’ etc. We hear the same indignant, derisive tones in Cleopatra's ‘To say as I said then!’ (I, v, 88); or in ‘The way to lose him!’ (I, iii, 14); or ‘so tart a fauour To trumpet such good tidings!’ (II, v, 48.)—Ed.]
A parcell of their Fortunes Steevens: That is, as we should say at present, are of a piece with them.
To suffer Staunton: The verb is apparently used here in an active sense, meaning to punish or afflict.
Knowing all measures Collier (Notes, etc. p. 497, ed. ii) records miseries as the correction of his MS and explains that thereby ‘Enobarbus refers to the woeful plight and prospects of Antony at the time he dared Cæsar to “lay his gay comparisons apart,” and meet him “sword against sword.”’—Anon. (Blackwood, Oct. p. 467, 1853): That is, it is surprising that Antony, who has experienced every measure of fortune, has drunk of her fullest as well as of her emptiest cup, should dream that the full Cæsar will answer his emptiness. Here the words full and emptiness prove to a demonstration that ‘measure’ is the right word; yet Collier's MS alters it to miseries! full Thidias, line 107, calls Cæsar ‘the fullest man,’ i. e. the most perfect.
blowne Rose . . . their nose Walker (Crit. iii, 305): Shakespeare would not have tolerated this cacophony; besides, the old grammar requires noses.—Lettsom (Footnote to preceding): Walker is, I think, mistaken [Unquestionably.—Ed.] in this latter observation, though I agree with the preceding part of the note.—Staunton (Athenæum, 26 Apr. 1873): Walker has noticed the insufferable cacophony of ‘rose’ and ‘nose,’ which assuredly Shakespeare would never have endured. But his proposal to read noses is not a convincing remedy. My belief is that the line originally stood ‘— may stop their sense.’ That is, their sense of smelling; which, not being understood, was changed into ‘nose.’—[Hereupon Staunton gives several quotations where sense is applied to seeing, to hearing, to smelling; the most apposite is, ‘You smell this business with a sense as cold,’ etc.—Wint. Tale, II, i. But it is to be doubted that any number of quotations would justify a change of the text. The cacophony may be possibly softened, if, in reading the line, the emphasis be strongly laid on ‘blown’:—’Against the blown rose may they stop their nose.’ Was it not for this purpose that Shakespeare threw the ictus on ‘blown’?—Ed.]
Admit him sir An instance of the use of ‘sir’ in addressing persons of humble rank.—Ed.
beginne to square Peck (p. 224) is reluctant to accept for ‘square’ the definition quarrel, and, after quoting passages from Mid. N. Dream, Wint. Tale, and Tit. And. wherein the word occurs in that sense, and in each instance proposing jar, or squall as a substitute, quotes the present passage, and observes, ‘Yet, upon the whole, perhaps Shakespeare never wrote “square” to express a quarrel. For I am sometimes inclined to think he wrote, in most of these places, sparre.’ Be it remembered that Peck wrote in 1740.—Ed. 49. The Loyalty well held to Fooles, etc.] Theobald: After Enobarbus has said, that his honesty and he begin to quarrel, (i. e. that his reason shews him to be mistaken in his firm adherence to Antony) he immediately falls into this generous reflection: ‘Tho’ loyalty, stubbornly preserved to a master in his declin'd fortunes, seems folly in the eyes of fools; (i. e. men, who have not honour enough to think more wisely), yet he, who can be so obstinately loyal, will make as great a figure on record, as the conqueror.’ I therefore read: ‘Tho’ loyalty, well held, to fools does make Our faith mere folly,’ etc.—Johnson: I have preserved the old reading: Enobarbus is deliberating upon desertion, and finding it is more prudent to forsake a fool and more reputable to be faithful to him, makes no positive conclusion.—Capell (i, 41): The change of ‘The’ into—Tho', robs this speech of it's greatest beauty; by destroying, or less'ning at least, that air of unsettledness that is much more visible in it when the propositions are not connected: a good speaker would shew this, sooner than words; by making a pause after ‘folly,’ and pronouncing ‘yet’ with an ictus, with the force of—and yet.
a place Staunton: That is, a seat of dignity. 59. Enob. He needs as many, etc.] Malone: I suspect that this speech belongs to Cleopatra, not to Enobarbus. Printers usually keep the names of the persons, who appear in each scene, ready composed; in consequence of which, speeches are often attributed to those to whom they do not belong. Is it probable that Enobarbus should presume to interfere here? The whole dialogue naturally proceeds between Cleopatra and Thyreus, till Enobarbus thinks it necessary to attend to his own interest, and says what he speaks when he goes out. The plural number (us), which suits Cleopatra, who throughout the play assumes that royal style, strengthens my conjecture. The words, ‘our master,’ it may be said, are inconsistent with this supposition; but I apprehend, Cleopatra might have thus described Antony, with sufficient propriety. They are afterwards explained: ‘Whose he is, we are.’ Antony was the master of her fate.—Steevens: Enobarbus, who is the buffoon of the play, has already presumed to interfere between the jarring Triumvirs, and might therefore have been equally flippant on the occasion before us. For this reason, as well as others, I conceive the speech in question to have been rightly appropriated in the old copy. What a diminution of Shakspeare's praise would it be, if four lines that exactly suit the mouth of Enobarbus, could come with equal propriety from the lips of Cleopatra!
Or needs not vs Heath (p. 461): The poet's meaning is this: In his present fortune Antony needs as many friends as Cæsar hath, or else he needs not even us, whose small number and want of power render us incapable, without other assistance, of being of any service to him. If Cæsar so pleases, our master will leap to be his friend; for, as you know very well, though we are indeed our master's friends, yet both he and we are at present pretty much at Cæsar's discretion. Or needs not vs. If Cæsar please, Warburton: All sense is lost in this false pointing, which should be reformed thus: ‘Or needs not us if Cæsar please.’ That is, while he is at enmity with Cæsar he needs a power equal to Cæsar's; but if he pleases to receive Antony into his friendship he will then want no other support. This is sensible and polite.—[For all its sense and politeness, no editor or commentator has paid any attention to it.]
For vs you know Capell (i, 41. See Text. Notes.): Upon reading this speech in former editions, the annotator was struck with seeing, in the last line but one, a consequence drawn from premises that can never fairly be made to yield it: he observ'd too, that the causal particle ‘For’ was printed with a great letter; and— concluding from both these circumstances, that no consequence was intended,— thought rashly that ‘For’ was a mistake, and to be amended by—Or: But, looking into the folio's again, while this note was in penning, he found a word in the first of them (overslipt in collation) that makes amendment unnecessary, and even injurious; for by reading, as that does,—‘For us,’ (i. e. As for us,) this member of the speech has another aspect, and is so clear as to need no explaining.—[Which, being interpreted, means that he withdraws the emendation in his text: Or, as.]
Further then he is Cæsars ‘Cæsars’ is as clearly a misprint here as it is in ‘shee, Eros, has Packt Cards with Cæsars.’—IV, xiv, 24. It is correctly printed ‘Cæsar’ in F2 which has been followed by every editor except three, and of these Collier (ed. i) is silent, and Rann is an echo of Malone, whose note is as follows: ‘It has just been said, that whatever Antony is, all his followers are; “that is, Cæsar's.” Thyreus now informs Cleopatra that Cæsar entreats her not to consider herself in a state of subjection, further than as she is connected with Antony, who is Cæsar's: intimating to her (according to the instructions he had received from Cæsar, to detach Cleopatra from Antony), that she might make separate and advantageous terms for herself.’ Rann's note is as follows: ‘Than as thou art connected with Antony who is now at Cæsar's discretion.’ Warburton, adopting ‘Cæsar’ of F2, thus paraphrases: ‘That is, Cæsar intreats, that at the same time you consider your desperate fortunes, you would consider he is Cæsar: That is, generous and forgiving, able and willing to restore them.’ Capell (i, 41) follows thus: ‘Nor will Thyreus’ address to Cleopatra be conceiv'd very readily; for, being a tender matter, it is worded with great caution, and from thence it's obscurity: the purport of it is,—that Cæsar would have her think, that she is in the hands of a conqueror; but think at the same time, that that conqueror is Cæsar, one unable to use his power to her prejudice.’
Go on, right Royall Daniel (p. 82) suggests, with probability, that ‘right Royall’ belongs to Thidias. If, however, it is spoken by Cleopatra, as it now stands, the purpose of such flattery so early in the interview is somewhat obscure, and the absolute use of an adjective, ‘Royall’ does not help to make the phrase any clearer. In the last scene of the play, Cæsar, looking on Cleopatra's fair corpse, says, ‘She levell'd at our purposes, and, being royall, Took her own way.’ This latter clause has been interpreted as a reference to ‘Harts Royal,’ which, by the Forest Laws, were suffered to roam where they pleased, protected from all molestation. To the majority of Shakespeare's audience, every term in Venery was as familiar, I suppose, as the names of vegetables. Can it be that here, in ‘right Royal’ there is an allusion, readily caught by the audience, to ‘harts royall,’ the undisputed lords of the forest?—Ed.
that you embrace not Capell (i, 42): It does not seem to be Thyreus' business, to insinuate—that Antony is still lov'd by Cleopatra: therefore ‘embrace,’ in this line, should be—embrac'd; and the words ‘fear'd’ and ‘did love,’ in the next line absolutely require it.
Oh What does this mean? What emotion does it express? It is the keynote to our interpretation of Cleopatra's bearing during this interview. And how is that bearing to be interpreted? If we believe that she is here playing false to Anthony, this ‘Oh’ must be a shudder. If she is true to Anthony,—and nothing in this play can make me believe otherwise,—and is merely, with consummate skill, drawing on the Ambassador in order to probe to the bottom Cæsar's plans so that she can protect Anthony and herself, then this ‘Oh’ is shocked surprise, inadvertently escaping from her at the bare suggestion that she feared Anthony more than she loved him,—Anthony! for whom her love was without a bourn! With whatever tone it was uttered, the Ambassador was quick to interpret it not otherwise than as a confirmation of his insinuation.—Ed.
Not as deserued. He is a God Walker (Crit. iii, 305) suggests that the ‘deservéd’ of the Folio be retained and that He's be read for ‘He is.’— [Attempts to force broken lines into regular rhythm deserve, I think, but little heed; for actors they are valueless. In the present case, which is the better emphasis: ‘He's a God,’ implying astonishment, and that the knowledge of Cæsar's divinity has just dawned on the speaker; or ‘He is a God,’ implying that Cæsar's divinity is well-known, and that in this reluctant assent lies a fresh and convincing proof of it? —Ed.]
for Thy deerest quit thee Staunton, by referring to his note on ‘For you sink’ (II, vii, 69), intimates that the present ‘for’ is the same as the ‘for’ in that passage and that both should be printed 'fore. I doubt it in both cases,—in the present case, emphatically. By the manner in which Cleopatra was at that very minute receiving Thidias, Enobarbus imagined that he saw proof that she had already ‘quit’ Anthony.—Ed.]
spirits Possibly, Walker's rule as to the monosyllabic pronunciation of ‘spirit’ does not here apply; and yet the verse seems to require it. See I, ii, 143. —Ed.
And put your selfe vnder his shrowd Abbott (§ 505): Lines with four accents are, unless there is a pause in the middle of the line, very rare. The following, however, seem to have no more than four accents.—[Among the examples then given by Abbott is found the present line (it has been printed as a separate line in every edition since 1778), and it has seemed, apparently, in Abbott's eyes so unmistakeably of four accents and pauseless withal, that he has queried if it be not corrupt. But is it pauseless? Is Thidias so little of a diplomatist that he fails to ſeel his way? His keen eyes are reading every emotion that flits over Cleopatra's face. He has won her ear. He has represented Cæsar as almost cringing before her. He has ventured perilously near to the assertion that she bears no love to Anthony, and he has met no scornful denial; and now approaches the supreme moment, the sole object of his mission, when, with her own consent, he is to get her into Cæsar's power. ‘And put yourself,’ he slowly says, and pauses, watching, and would have said ‘beyond temptation,’ or ‘far from Anthony's power,’ or anything else to that effect, had he read a trace of cold suspicion in the eyes before him. But what he read so far emboldened him that he then, and not till then, dared complete the sentence,— ‘under his shrowd.’ I venture to hope that a dramatic necessity is here shown for a pause long enough to remove the line from Abbott's list of anomalies and to purge it from corruption.—Ed.] shrowd Derived from Anglo-Saxon scrūd, a garment, clothing. Secondly, a winding sheet, etc. In the present line it means protection.—Century Dictionary. [The only instance given by Schmidt (Lex.) of this noun thus used. Compare Milton, Comus, 147, where Comus bids his troop, ‘Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees.’—Ed.]
Say to great Cæsar this in disputation, I kisse his conqu'ring hand Theobald: The poet certainly wrote: ‘Say to great Cæsar this: in deputation I kiss his conqu'ring hand:’ i. e. by proxy; I depute you to pay him that duty in my name. —[Warburton reprinted this note in his edition, word for word, without acknowledge ment; as his, it was repeated in subsequent editions, and to him, as the author, it is always ascribed. The Cam. Ed., while according the first appearance of deputation in print to Theobald, attributes its suggestion to Warburton by printing his name in parenthesis after Theobald's. I suppose that for this the editors of that edition find their authority in what Theobald says in his note, which reads thus: ‘The Poet certainly wrote (as Mr Warburton likewise saw, we must restore),’ etc. I cannot but believe that Theobald here means merely that he had submitted the emendation to Warburton and that the latter had approved of it. Never would Theobald have hesitated to announce the real authorship, had it not been his. It is true, I have searched through the voluminous correspondence of the two men and have found no mention of this passage; but all the correspondence has not been preserved.—Ed.]—Steevens: I am not certain that this change is necessary. ‘I kiss his hand in disputation’— may mean, I own he has the better in the controversy. I confess my inability to dispute or contend with him. To dispute may have no immediate reference to words or language by which controversies are agitated. So, in Macbeth: ‘Dispute it like a man;’ and Macduff, to whom this short speech is addressed, is disputing or contending with himself only. Again, in Twelfth Night: ‘For though my soul disputes well with my sense.’ If Warburton's change be adopted, we should read—‘by deputation.’—M. Mason: I have no doubt but deputation is the right reading. Steevens having proved, with much labour and ingenuity, that it is but by a forced and unnatural construction that any sense can be extorted from the words as they stand. —Malone: I think Warburton's conjecture extremely probable. The objection founded on the particle in being used, is, in my apprehension, of little weight. Though by deputation is the phraseology of the present day, the other might have been common in the time of Shakspeare. I have found no example of in deputation being used in the sense required here.—Collier (ed. i): As a clear meaning is afforded by ‘disputation,’ in the sense of controversy, or contest, we adhere to the text of all the old editions. At the same time the plausibility of Warburton's change is not to be disputed.—Ibid. (ed. ii): Warburton's suggestion is fully confirmed by the MS which adds that we must also read that for ‘this’ of the old copies.—Staunton: We are of opinion that, as in II, vii, 8, disposition was misprinted ‘disputation,’ the reciprocal error has been perpetrated here, and that the poet wrote ‘in disposition,’ that is, in inclination, willingly. [Staunton has misquoted his own note at II, vii, 8, where the text is ‘disposition,’ which he conjectured should be disputation.]— R. G. White (ed. i): For obvious reasons I have no hesitation in adopting Warburton's reading.—Schmidt (Lex.): ‘Disputation’ is perhaps equivalent to ‘say to Cæsar this, as the plea which I put in.’—[It is not easy to see what valid objection there can be to ‘disputation.’ To be sure, it is a large word for a fair woman's mouth, but it was not too large for poor Lucretia's. Possibly, Cleopatra wished to minimise as much as possible the uncomfortable fact that she had been actually at war with Cæsar, so she called her warfare a ‘disputation,’ which it certainly was, and a good deal more; but this she keeps in the background. Moreover, ‘in deputation’ is undeniably awkward; and besides, can a kiss be sent by proxy without giving it to the bearer? I ask in ignorance. These objections are, it seems to me, sufficient to awaken suspicion of any emendation, and to counsel loyalty to the Folio.—Ed.]
from his all-obeying breath Johnson: ‘Doom’ is declared rather by an all-commanding, than an ‘all-obeying breath.’ I suppose we ought to read—‘allobeyed breath.’—Craik (Note on ‘a labouring day,’ Jul. Cæs. I, i, 4): An expression used by Cowper (in his verses composed in the name of Alexander Selkirk), ‘the sound of the church-going bell’ has been passionately reprobated by Wordsworth. ‘The epithet church-going applied to a bell,’ observes the critic (in an Appendix upon the subject of Poetic Diction), ‘and that by so chaste a writer as Cowper, is an instance of the strange abuses which poets have introduced into their language, till they and their readers take them as matters of course, if they do not single them out expressly as matters of admiration.’ A church-going bell is merely a bell for churchgoing; and the expression is constructed on the same principle with a thousand others that are and always have been in familiar use;—such as a marauding or a sight-seeing expedition, a banking or a house-building speculation, a fox-hunting country, a lending library, a fishing village, etc. What would Wordsworth have said to such a daring and extreme employment of the same form as we have in Shakespeare, where he makes Cleopatra say, speaking of the victorious Cæsar,—‘From his all-obeying breath I hear The doom of Egypt?’ But these audacities of language are of the very sould of poetry.
Wisedome and Fortune . . . may shake it That is, if, when wisdom and chance are opposed, the former ventures to exercise all its power, no mischance can thwart it.
Giue me grace Johnson: Grant me the favour.
Your Cæsars Father Julius Cæsar was the grand-uncle of Octavius. See note on the relationship, III, vi, 7.
taking kingdomes in Compare, ‘Take in that Kingdome, and Infranchise that,’—I, i, 35, or ‘He could so quickly cut the Ionian Sea And take in Troine.’— III, vii, 28.
Fauours? Can any sufficing reason be given why the astonished interrogation of the Folio should be deserted, as it is, by all editors since Capell?—Ed.
the fullest man Enobarbus also has already (line 40) spoken of ‘the full Cæsar,’ i. e. the complete, in every way endowed.
ah you Kite ‘What beast was 't that made’ Steevens substitute ay for this threatening ‘ah’?—Ed.
a musse ‘Fáre alla gráppa più, to play at musse, to shuffle and scramble for.’—Florio; New World of Words.—‘Groée: f. A great quantitie, or number of stirring, or stirred things; whence; À la groée. The boyish scrambling for nuts, etc.; cast on the ground; a Musse.’—Cotgrave.
this Iack Schmidt (Lex.) supplies many examples of the use of ‘Jack’ as ‘a term of contempt for saucy and paltry, or silly fellows.’ and whip him Knight (Supp. Notice, p. 358): This is partly jealousy; partly the last assertion of small power by one accustomed to unlimited command.
Whip him Abbott (§ 499) finds that this line belongs to a class of ‘apparent Alexandrines, which are sometimes regular verses of five accents preceded or followed by a foot, more or less isolated, containing one accent.’ ‘Whip him’ is the isolated foot here, as, I suppose, ‘what's her name’ is the isolated one in line 121. It is the same old story; Anthony, even in the whiff and wind of foaming rage, will pay no attention to his rhythm. . . . I now find that Abbott (§ 497) has a different scansion for the ‘apparent Alexandrine’ of line 121. It is to be effected by ‘the omission of unemphatic syllables,’ thus:—‘So sáucy | with the hánd | of shé | here —whát's | her náme?’—Ed.
hand of she heere ‘She’ instead of her is used in supreme contempt. Collier's dash before it is, I think, well devised. Hanmer's ‘her here’ is to me intolerable.—Ed.
Since she was Cleopatra Abbott (§ 132): Perhaps the meaning is ‘Whip him for being saucy with this woman, since (though she is not now worthy of the name) she once was (emphatical) Cleopatra.’ Else ‘What is her new name since she ceased to be Cleopatra?’ If ‘since,’ in the sense of ago, could be used absolutely for once, a third interpretation would be possible: ‘What's her name? Once she was Cleopatra.’
the Iacke Pope changed ‘the’ to this, and has been followed by a majority of editors. We have already had ‘this Jack’ where Thidias is regarded as simply an offensive menial without any qualification other than the contemptuous ‘this.’ But here he is ‘the Jack of Cæsar,’ and it is because he is Cæsar's Jack that he is to be made a servile messenger. There is enough contempt in the fact that he came as Cæsar's ambassador and returns as an errand-bearer. It seems to me that ‘the’ should be retained. The ictus falls on ‘Jack.’—Ed.
By one that lookes on Feeders? Johnson, by an obliquity that will sometimes befall the keenest, supposed that this refers to Thidias, and that Anthony was abused by a man who looked on while others were feeding; consequently he paraphrased the words by: ‘one that waits at the table while others are eating,’ which is true enough if the words are taken literally, but the ‘one that looks on’ (that is, looks on with favour) is Cleopatra, and ‘feeders’ are servants. When Corin offers to establish Rosalind and Celia in their cottage he says, ‘I will your very faithfull Feeder be.’—As You Like It, II, iv, 105.—Ed.
boggeler Murray (N. E. D.): The verb to boggle is apparently formed on boggle, a variant of Bogle, a spectre (such as horses are reputed to see). In later times there has been a tendency to associate the word with bungle, which appears in sense 4, and in the derivatives. 1. intr. To start with fright, to shy as a startled horse, to take alarm, etc. 2. To raise scruples, hesitate, demur, stickle (at, etc.). 3. ‘To play fast or loose,’—Johnson; to palter, quibble, equivocate. 4. To fumble, bungle, make a clumsy attempt. [Hence] Boggler is one who boggles, or hesitates; a stickler [whereof the present line is quoted as an example].
when . . . errors That is, when we become hardened in our vicious courses the wise gods so blind us that we lose the power of judging clearly concerning our own moral defilement, and end with adoring our very errors. I am haunted with the memory of a sentiment similar to this in the Old Testament, and mention it in the trust that some one may be more fortunate than I in recalling it. We must remember that filth, filthy, etc. are much stronger terms now than in the time of Shakespeare.—Ed.
seele our eyes Harting (p. 69): Turbervile, in his Book of Falconrie, 1575, gives the following directions ‘how to seele a hawke’:—‘Take a needle threeded with untwisted thread, and (casting your Hawke) take her by the beake, and put the needle through her eye-lidde, not right against the sight of the eye, but somewhat nearer to the beake, because she may see backwards. And you must take good heede that you hurt not the webbe, which is under the eye-lidde, or on the inside thereof. Then put your needle also through that other eye-lidde, drawing the endes of the thread together, tye them over the beake, not with a straight knotte, but cut off the threedes endes neare to the knotte, and twist them together in such sorte, that the eye-liddes may be raysed so upwards, that the Hawke may not see at all, and when the threed shall ware loose or untyed, then the Hawke may see somewhat backwardes, which is the cause that the threed is put nearer to the beake.’ our eyes Surely a debt of gratitude is due to Warburton for his punctuation here, when we find a critic as keen as Walker (Crit. iii, 305) ‘imagining,’ that Knight was ‘right’ in substantially following the Folio. In the circumstances, Walker naturally found a difficulty in forcing ‘drop’ to assume the sense of make drop. Whereas, under Warburton's corrected punctuation, the subject of ‘drop’ is ‘the wise Gods,’ just as it is of ‘make’ and ‘laugh.’—Ed.
a Morsell, cold vpon . . . a Fragment Whiter (p. 136): The rapid imagination of the unwary Poet, even when it is employed on sentiments the most tender and pathetic, is sometimes imperceptibly entangled in a chain of imagery, which is derived from the meanest subjects and the lowest occupations. [Hereupon follow several illustrations of the way in which an image, drawn from the culinary art, influences the train of thought; as here the word ‘morsel’ leads to ‘fragment.’] ‘In old English,’ continues Whiter, ‘“fragments” and broken meat were synonymous. In the vulgar translation of the Bible we have, “and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets.”—Mark viii, 8. In other places we find fragments used for these broken relicts.’
Luxuriously In Roman Catholic Moral Theology there is no other definition of luxury than ‘inordinatus appetitus rei venereæ.’
Though Staunton: ‘Though’ carries here the sense of if, or even if.
this Kingly Seale Collier (ed. ii): The MS converts ‘this’ into that; the use of ‘this’ would almost imply that Antony had seized Cleopatra's hand.
the hill of Basan, to out-roare The horned Heard Cruden's Concordance gives the following references, where mention is made of the high hill of Bashan and of its bulls:—Psalms, xxii, 12; lxviii, 15; Ezekiel, xxxix, 18; Amos, iv, 1. By way of excuse for these quotations from the Old Testament in the mouth of Anthony, Singer suggests that ‘probably Antony caught them from his friend Herod, or picked them up when he was at Jerusalem with Cleopatra, as he once was.’
yare That is, adroit, quick. See Shakespeare, passim.
The white hand Can it be that it is an unsavory commentary on the personal cleanliness of the ladies of his time that Shakespeare lays so much stress, as something distinctive, on the ‘white hands’ of his heroines? Rosaline has a ‘white hand;’ so has Rosalind, also Olivia; the Duke of Orleans in Henry the Fifth swears by his ‘lady's white hand.’ Hermione's hand was white, so also Helen of Troy's, hers was ‘marvelous white’; the hand of Lucrece was a ‘perfect white,’ and here in the present line, by implication, Cleopatra has a ‘white hand.’ The respective references may be found in Bartlett's Concordance.—Ed. Feauer Used causatively.
Orbes This is not used for orbit, as has been stated, but refers to the nine concentric crystalline spheres, in which, according to the Ptolomaic system, the seven planets (of which the sun is one), the fixed stars, and the Primum Mobile moved about the earth. What the Primum Mobile is, is a little vague, beyond the belief that it moved and controlled the rest. Anthony's ‘good stars’ were probably in the eighth Orb of fixed stars; they were hardly likely to be in any of the planetary Orbs. It is to this Ptolomaic theory that Cleopatra refers when she says ‘Oh Sunne Burne the great Sphere thou mou'st in,’—IV, xv, 16, and again ‘His voyce was propertied As all the tuned Spheres,’—V, ii, 102, in the next line Shakespeare used ‘Orbe’ for the whole world, as he does in Twelfth Night (and probably elsewhere) where Feste says to Viola: ‘Foolery sir, does walke about the Orbe like the Sun,’—III, i, 39. Anthony says ‘shot their Fires,’ to which there is a similar expression in Mid. N. Dream, where Oberon says, ‘And certaine starres shot madly from their Spheares.’ —II, i, 158.—Ed.
to quit me Johnson: To repay me this insult; to requite me.
our Terrene Moone Capell (i, 42): This will be understood by most readers, of the moon in the heavens; which, they will think, might be call'd— ‘terrene,’ as being the earth's attendant, or satellite: But the speaker means it of Cleopatra, who was call'd—the new Isis, and wore often the attires of that goddess; [III, vi, 18] and she, in the Egyptian theology, was the same as the moon. It is to this circumstance, in part, that Cleopatra herself alludes, in these words of hers, ‘Now the fleeting moon No planet is of mine.’—[V, ii, 291.—It is Warburton who says that Cleopatra in the last Act refers to Isis when she speaks of the ‘fleeting moon,’—a thoroughly Warburtonian suggestion; and evidently the source whence Capell received the idea, which would never else have occurred to his sensible mind. As it is, he yielded, as he says, only ‘in part.’—Ed.]
With one that tyes his points Malone: That is, with a menial attendant. ‘Points’ were laces with metal tags, with which the old trunkhose were fastened.—Davies (ii, 354): When Mr Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, some time before the beginning of the civil wars, waited upon Charles I. at Hampton Court, the king said to him, ‘So, Ned Hyde, they say you tie my points!’
as it determines M. Mason: That is, as the hailstone dissolves.
Dissolue my life Collier: But for the verse, we might, perhaps, more properly and intelligibly read, ‘as it dissolves, so determine (or end) my life.’ ‘Determine’ and ‘dissolve’ may, however, be taken as convertible terms. next In deciding the question of Cleopatra's sincerity or insincerity in this scene, has full weight been given to the pathetic tenderness of this word?—Ed. the next Cæsarian Steevens: Cæsarion was Cleopatra's son by Julius Cæsar.—Irving Edition: Cleopatra appears to apply the name to Antony's offspring as an indirect compliment; as if she had said, this second Cæsar's son.—[Or, rather, is it not a wilful and artful oblivion that she had ever had any children of whom Anthony was not the father?—Ed.]
memory of my wombe Capell (i, 42): That is, the memorials of my womb, the things by which it will be remember'd, and means—her children.
discandering Thirlby (Letter to Theobald, 1729,—Nichols, Illust. ii, 228): Possibly, Shakespeare wrote ‘discandying.’ Sed nihil statuo. If you please, and it be worth while, consider a little of it; for I have objections against it, and let me know your opinion of it; and whether Shakespeare ever uses the word discatter. —Theobald: From the corruption [of the Folios] both Dr Thirlby and I saw, we must retrieve the word with which I have reform'd the text. . . . The congealing of the water into hail he metaphorically calls candying; and it is an image he is fond of. So in the next Act of this very play:—‘The hearts, . . . do discandy, melt their sweets,’ etc.—Knight: But how is ‘discandy’ used in the next Act? ‘The hearts . . . to whom I gave Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets, On blossoming Cæsar.’ The expletive melt their sweets gives us the peculiar and most forcible meaning in which the word is here used. But the pelleted storm, which makes Cleopatra's brave Egyptians lie graveless, is utterly opposed to the melting into sweetness of the word discandying. See note in The Mer. of Ven. I, iii, upon the passage: ‘other ventures he hath squandered abroad.’ To squander is to scatter; and so Dryden uses the word:—‘They drive, they squander the huge Belgian fleet.’ To dis-scander, we believe then, is to dis-squander. . . . We, therefore, without hesitation, restore the original ‘discandering,’ in the sense of dis-squandering.—[Dyce gives the reading of the Folios, and then, without quoting Knight's note, adds: ‘which Mr Knight “without hesitation restores.”’ After ‘restores,’ Dyce indulges in a good heartsome exclamation mark, which saves thought and does not spare feelings, —Knight, gentlest of men, whose epitaph Douglas Jerrold said should be ‘Good Night,’ must, sooner or later, have known of this contemptuous treatment of his wellconsidered opinion; he outlived Dyce.—Ed.] this pelleted storme Staunton (Athenæum, 26 April, 1873): I have a suspicion that ‘pelleted’ is wrong, and that Shakespeare wrote,—‘polluted storm.’ The hail was to be poisoned, and kill in melting, not in falling. This, however, may be thought by many to be gilding refined gold. ‘Pelleted’ affords a good sense, and in any other writer would be received without question.
Haue buried them for prey Deighton: That is, till they have found a grave in the stomachs of the flies and gnats of the Nile. Compare Macbeth, III, iv, 72, ‘If charnel-houses and our graves must send Those that we bury back, our monuments (i. e. tombs) Shall be the maws of kites.’
I will oppose his Fate A revelation of the conviction forced on Anthony both by the Soothsayer (II, iii), and by his own experience, that it was Cæsar's ‘fate’ to be Anthony's superior.—Ed.
and Fleete Capell (i, 42): This implies, a moving with nimbleness, a skimming lightly on water; as in this line of Lodge's,—‘As many frie [i. e. small pike] as fleete on Ocean's face.’—Euphues' Golden Legacy, E, 2b,) and is therefore fitter than—float, a word the moderns have chang'd it to, which carries with it an idea of inaction and stillness.—Bradley (N. E. D. s. v. Fleet): 1. To float. † c. Of a vessel: To be or get afloat; to sail. threatning most Sea-like Thiselton (p. 21): The Navy is here regarded as partaking of the nature of the Sea, so at home does it appear to be in that element.
Where hast thou bin my heart? Dost thou heare Lady? To Anthony's first question, which is that of a lover, jealous of every minute passed by his mistress while out of sight, Cleopatra returns no answer. Whereupon follows the second question, which would not have been asked had she not evidently been lost in thought. During her interview with Thidias she had been true to Anthony and had encouraged Cæsar's ambassador only that she might discover the full extent of his master's plans. But now this outburst of Anthony's Berserker wrath could not but have its effect on her, and give her food for reflection. When the play opens, the question with her was how she should keep Anthony by her side; now the question looms up whether or not she should keep by the side of Anthony. Cæsar's offer was perilously attractive. Small wonder that she was so abstracted that Anthony had to say, ‘Dost thou hear, Lady?’ She emerges from this reverie, true to her love, and from this hour her fate and Anthony's were to be the same.—Ed.
in Blood That is, in full vigour, in perfect condition, a phrase derived from the chase. See, if need be, the note (in this edition) on ‘The Deare was (as you know) sanguis in blood,’—Love's Lab. Lost, IV, ii, 4.—Ed.
There's hope in't yet For the sake of the metre, Hanmer, with a following that is certainly respectable, changed this into the demure and deliberate ‘There is hope in it yet.’ Happily, no editor since Knight's day has thus transgressed.—Ed.
trebble-sinewed, hearted, breath'd Malone points out that ‘trebble’ qualifies both ‘hearted’ and ‘breath'd.’
Were nice and lucky Warburton: ‘Nice,’ for delicate, courtly, flowing in peace.—Johnson: ‘Nice’ rather seems to be, just fit for my purpose, agreeable to my wish. So we vulgarly say of any thing that is done better than was expected, it is nice.—Steevens: ‘Nice’ is trifling. So, in Rom. and Jul. V, ii: ‘The letter was not nice, but full of charge.’—Malone: Again, in Richard III.: ‘My lord, this argues conscience in your grace, But the respects thereof are nice and trivial.’— Douce (ii, 94) asserts that it is here used ‘in a sense bordering on that of amorous or wanton.’—[Unquestionably, ‘nice’ is used in all these senses and in several others, —the context must decide. It is used here, I think, in any sense other than in Douce's.—Ed.]
gawdy night Bradley (N. E. D.) defines a ‘Gaudy-day’ as a ‘day of rejoicing, a festival or gala day; especially the day on which a college gaudy is held’; and refers to ‘Gaudy,’ a substantive, which is ‘an adaptation from the Latin gaudium, joy.’ Hence ‘gaudy-night.’—Wright (s. v. Gaudy, substantive, 2.) gives an instance of ‘gaudy-night’ in use at Oxford as late as 1861.
It is my Birth-day See Plutarch, Appendix.
I had . . . Cleopatra Walker (Crit. iii, 306): Arrange,—‘I'had thought t' have held it poor; | But, since my lord is Antony again, | I will be Cleopatra.’—Corson (p. 308): There's an unconscious and pathetic if not ludicrous irony in this speech: ‘since my lord is Antony again,’ really means, he has returned to his weak and sensual self; ‘I will be Cleopatra,’ that is, she will be again the fascinating serpent of old Nile.—[Does it not rather refer to the towering passion into which Anthony had lashed himself, and during which he had assailed Cleopatra with a torrent of vile abuse?—Ed.]
We will yet do well For an analysis of the conditions under which ‘will,’ instead of shall, is used to express simple futurity, see Franz, § 462.
his pestilent Sythe Schmidt (Lex.): ‘Pestilent sythe’ is here equivalent to the scythe of pestilence, the deaths occasioned by pestilence.—[That is, I will rival the scythe that mows down victims in a pestilence.—Ed.] Exeunt Vischer (p. 125): And thus Antony commits the extraordinary blunder of allowing himself to be won over. But how? It is hardly conceivable that he should have done so, after Cleopatra's baseness in yielding herself to Cæsar and in giving his messenger her hand to be kissed. The question arises whether or not an intermediate scene be lost. The conclusion, that this is the case, is almost inevitable. And why does Cleopatra here display so little charm? Did the Poet intend that she should here appear insipid?—[Never insipid, but dazed, and thinking very fast. She is at the parting of the ways.—Ed.]
Now hee'l . . . moode Walker (Crit. iii, 306): Arrange, ‘Now he'll outstare | The lightning. To be furious, is to be | Affrighted out of fear; and, in that mood,’ etc.
Estridge Douce (i, 435, note on ‘estridges,’ 1 Hen. IV: IV, i, 97): Although it is admitted that the ostrich was occasionally denominated estridge by our old writers, it is by no means certain that this bird is here meant. Throughout the many observations on these difficult lines, it has been quite overlooked that estridge signifies a goshawk. In this sense the word is used in [the present passage in Ant. & Cleop.]. It would be absurd to talk of a dove pecking an ostrich; the allusion is to the practice of flying falcons at pigeons. Falconers are often called ostregers and ostringers in the old books of falconry, and elsewhere. Estridge for ostrich or ostridge is a corrupt spelling that crept into our language at the commencement of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and it appears that after that period the two words were very often confounded together, and used one for the other.—Madden (p. 155, footnote): Douce was the first to point out that Shakespeare wrote of the estridge or goshawk, not of the ostrich [in the present passage]. The same idea was present to the mind of Clifford when he thus taunted Richard, Duke of York: ‘So cowards fight when they can fly no further; So doves do peck the falcon's piercing talons.’—3 Hen. VI: I, iv, 40. A dove pecking an ostrich is not a lively image, and I doubt that the idea would have occurred to a commentator, had he been aware that a kind of hawk in common use was known as an estridge.—[On the other hand, Bradley (N. E. D.) says that Estrich or estridge, is a variant of ostrich, and gives to it no other meaning than the latter word; the present passage is given as a reference. No such meaning as goshawk is mentioned by him. Every reference that he gives clearly refers to the ostrich, except the present, and two others, of which one is dated 1450, and the second, dated 1649, is doubtful. The derivation which Murray (N. E. D.) gives of Ostreger, Ostringer, has no reference to Estridges, but the word comes, conclusively, from Asturia, in Spain. The image of a dove in its fright pecking at an African ostrich is to me so infinitely absurd that I would welcome any bird or beast that can prove a more rational substitute. The case of the ostrich is by no means improved when the quality is noted for which it is chiefly distinguished in the days of Shakespeare. Some of the examples in the N. E. D. of the use of estridge refer to its plumes, but the majority to a comfortable and enviable digestion, which successfully copes with nails and horse-shoes. It is hardly too much to say that in any allusion by Shakespeare to an ostrich, an audience of his day would be at once reminded of the bird's voracity, and, consequently, should a dove peck at an ostrich, the allusion would be at once interpreted as referring to a defence, not of eggs or young, but of nails or horse-shoes. After all, the question is of small moment. It is enough that Enobarbus, after his profoundly true saying that ‘to be furious Is to be frighted out of fear,’—one of those ‘jewels, five words long,’ which sparkle for ever, —draws his illustration from the image of a dove, the type of timidity, which attacks, under the influence of fear, that from which it would otherwise fly in terror,—this, I prefer to believe, is a hawk, the dove's most terrible foe.—Ed.]
in reason R. G. White (ed. i): I am not quite sure that the Folio should not here be followed;—‘in’ having the sense of upon. when valour . . . fights with Halliwell (Select. Notes, p. 29): This passage is thus given in Cotgrave's English Treasury, 1655:—‘When valour preys on reason, it does eat | The sword it shovld fight with.’
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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