My desolation . . . better life Words, as significant as they are pathetic. —Ed.
Fortunes knaue Johnson: That is, the servant of fortune.
To do that thing . . . and Cæsars Warburton: The action of suicide is here said to shackle accidents; to bolt up change; to be the beggar's nurse and Cæsar's. So far the description is intelligible. But when it is said that it sleeps and never palates more the dung, we find neither sense nor propriety: which is occasioned by the loss of a whole line between the third and fourth, and the corrupt reading of the last word in the fourth. We should read the passage thus: ‘And it is great To do the thing that ends all other deeds; Which shackles accidents, and bolts up change; [Lulls wearied nature to a sound repose;] Which sleeps, and never palates more the dugg: The beggar's nurse and Cæsar's.’ That this line in hooks was the substance of that lost, is evident from its making sense of all the rest: which are to this effect. ‘It is great to do that which frees us from all the accidents of humanity, lulls our over-wearied nature to repose (which now sleeps and has no more appetite for worldly enjoyments), and is equally the nurse of Cæsar and the beggar.’—Seward (Note on The False One, IV, ii, p. 139): When we speak in contempt of anything, we generally resolve it into its first principles: Thus, man is dust and ashes, and the food we eat, the dung, by which first our vegetable, and from thence our animal, food is nourished. Thus Cleopatra finding she can no longer riot in the pleasures of life, with the usual workings of a disappointed pride, pretends a disgust to them, and speaks in praise of suicide [as in the present lines]. From the observations above, nothing can be clearer than this passage: ‘both the beggar and Cæsar are fed and nursed by the dung of the earth.’ Of this sense there is a demonstration in [I, i, 48].—Heath (p. 466): That is, which sleeps, and hath no further relish for the trash and dung of this earth, which dung is equally necessary to the support of Cæsar, as of the meanest beggar. In what sense Warburton could understand death to be equally the nurse of Cæsar and the beggar, or indeed to be the nurse of either, is inconceivable.—Capell (i, 49): The sentiment in line 8 is not unlike one in I, i, 48, and the expressions which that is couch'd in, shew plainly what ‘dung’ means in this line, viz.—the earth, and it's dungy productions; and to mark her contempt of them, and of Cæsar too at the same time, she calls them—the nourses or nourishers both of him and the beggar.—Johnson: The difficulty of the passage, if any difficulty there be, arises only from this, that the act of suicide, and the state which is the effect of suicide, are confounded. Voluntary death, says she, is an act which bolts up change; it produces a state, ‘Which sleeps, and never palates more the dung, The beggar's nurse and Cæsar's.’ Which has no longer need of the gross and terrene sustenance, in the use of which Cæsar and the beggar are on a level. The speech is abrupt, but perturbation in such a state is surely natural.—Boswell: ‘The beggar's nurse and Cæsar's’ means, I apprehend, ‘death’ (as Warburton has observed), and not, as Johnson supposed, the gross substance on which Cæsar and the beggar were fed.—[Knight agrees with Boswell that the ‘beggar's nurse is, unquestionably, death.’]—Collier (ed. ii): This [dug] is an admirable, though merely literal emendation in the MS. What Cleopatra says is, that self-destruction prevents all change, and no longer requires, or ‘palates’ the dug, which affords nutriment to all mankind, whether high or low.—Dyce (ed. ii): To me the word ‘nurse’ is almost alone sufficient evidence that ‘dung’ is a transcriber's or printer's mistake for dug,— which was the more liable to be corrupted, as it was formerly often spelt dugge (so the folio has, in Rom. & Jul. I, iii, ‘on the nipple of my Dugge’). The sense I conceive to be, ‘and never more palates that dug which affords nourishment as well to the beggar as to Cæsar.’—Anon. (Blackwood, Oct. 1853, p. 469): The sense probably is, —‘It is great to do the thing (suicide) which causes us to sleep, and never more to taste the produce of the earth, which nourishes alike Cæsar and the beggar. The MS correction [Warburton's] certainly does not mend matters. This reading affords no extrication of the construction, ‘which sleeps,’ which we have ventured to explain as ‘which lays us asleep, and causes us never more to palate or taste,’ etc.—R. G. White (ed. i): As I am unable to discern what is the dug which is ‘the beggar's nurse and Cæsar's,’ and as the word in the text is expressive of the speaker's bitter disgust of life, I make no change.—Staunton: ‘Dung’ for dug is an obvious misprint, though not wanting defenders.—Hudson: ‘Nurse’ appears to be used here for nourishment. Cleopatra is speaking contemptuously of this life, as if anything that depends upon such coarse, vulgar feeding were not worth keeping. But Cleopatra has never palated the dug since she was a baby; and the sense of the passage clearly requires some contemptuous word for the common supports of human life, as such,— the food she has to palate every day.—Deighton: That is, which produces a state in which one sleeps a lasting sleep and has no need to taste the dug by which poor and rich, great and small, are nourished, i. e. no need of the sustenance of life. . . . There seems a considerable difference between speaking of the earth as fertilized by manure into furnishing food, and a human being feeding on dung.—Irving Edition: It seems more natural to suppose that the word ‘dung’ is simply a periphrasis for the fruits of the fertilizing earth, used, certainly in a spirit of bitter mockery and supreme contempt.—Thiselton (p. 25): A reminiscence of Anthony's words in I, i, 48. Nowhere are such reminiscences used with more effect than in the close of this tragedy where they suggest the integrity of Cleopatra's attachment to Anthony. Shakespeare meant us to leave Cleopatra, notwithstanding her failings, with feelings of sympathy and admiration, and that our last thoughts should be of ‘the glory of her womanhood.’—[There is a strength in the very coarseness of the word ‘dung’ which, to me, strongly commends it. Only a poet, strong in his own strength, and conscious of his own supremacy, and ‘nearness to the eternal verities,’ would have dared to use it. This elemental vigour is, to me, wholly lacking in Warburton's substitution. Surely it does not need either natural death or suicide to cause us to cease from palating the dug. The palating of it ceases with weaning. It is while we palate it, before we are weaned, that an aversion to it can be created. When we cease to have any love for it, death can then produce no aversion. In order, therefore, to change love for the dug into indifference to it, should not suicide be restricted to babes at the breast?—Ed.]
but I do not greatly . . . for trusting Hudson: Cleopatra is exceedingly shrewd and artful in this: To throw Proculeius off his guard, she gives him to understand that she is pretty much indifferent whether he be true or not. That is just the thing to make Cæsar feel sure of having her at his command, and so he will be less secret as to his purpose, or what he means to do with her; which is what she most of all desires to learn.
that will pray in ayde for kindnesse Hanmer: ‘Praying in aid’ is a term used for a petition made in a court of justice for the calling in of help from another that hath an interest in the cause in question.—Capell (i, 49): This means,—who is even ready to pray those to accept of his kindness and grace, who ask it sub missively.—Hudson: The meaning is, when you sue to him for mercy, as to a superior, he will sue for your kindness as an ally, and as having an interest in common with him.
I send him The Greatnesse he has got Capell (i, 49): Homage of great people to persons greater than them, was (and still is), in many countries, accompany'd with presents: Cleopatra, in her reply, acknowledges herself Cæsar's vassal, and that she ow'd him homage as such; but that, having nothing in way of present to send him, she sent him his own greatness; intimating—that he was master of hers, and of the fortunes of all the world, and could not be disturb'd in them.— Johnson: I allow him to be my conqueror; I own his superiority with complete submission.—M. Mason: Johnson has mistaken the meaning of this passage, nor will the words bear the construction he gives them. It appears to me, that by the greatness he has got, she means her crown which he has won; and I suppose that when she pronounces these words, she delivers to Proculeius either her own crown, or some other ensign or royalty.—[I prefer Johnson's interpretation, which is, substantially, that of Capell.—Ed.] 42. Malone: In the old copy there is no stage-direction. That which is now inserted [see Text. Notes] is formed on the old translation of Plutarch: ‘Proculeius came to the gates that were very thicke & strong, and surely barred, but yet there were some cranewes through the which her voyce might be heard, and so they without vnderstood, that Cleopatra demaunded the kingdome of Egypt for her sonnes: and that Proculeius aunswered her, that she should be of good cheare, and not be affrayed to referre all vnto Cæsar. After he had viewed the place very well, he came and reported her answere vnto Cæsar. Who immediatly sent Gallus to speake once againe with her, and bad him purposely hold her with talke, whilest Proculeius did set vp a ladder against that high window, by the which Antonius was trised vp, and came downe into the monument with two of his men hard by the gate, where Cleopatra stood to heare what Gallus sayd vnto her. One of her women which was shut in her monumēts with her, saw Proculeius by chance as he came downe, and shreeked out, O poore Cleopatra, thou art taken. Then when she saw Proculeius behind her as she came from the gate, she thought to haue stabbed her selfe in with a short dagger she wore of purpose by her side. But Proculeius came sodainly vpon her, and taking her by both the hands, sayd vnto her. Cleopatra, first thou shalt do thy selfe great wrong, and secondly vnto Cæsar: to depriue him of the occasion and oportunitie, openly to shew his bountie and mercie, and to giue his enemies cause to accuse the most curteous and noble Prince that euer was, and to appeache him, as though he were a cruell and mercilesse man, that were not to be trusted. So euen as he spake the word, he tooke her dagger from her, and shooke her clothes for feare of any poyson hidden about her.’—[See Appendix, Plutarch. I have not recorded in the Text. Notes all the stage-directions given by the early editors in their vain reachings after those which would satisfy all requirements; nor have I recorded all the minor variations of the modern editors. For my own part, I see no need of any stage-direction at all. It is, at least for me, quite sufficient to see that the Romans rush in and seize the Queen. In these thrilling moments, how they got in, I neither know nor care. Nor does any one in the audience ever know how they entered, and would not know, unless the stage-manager came forward and read aloud Plutarch, or Malone's directions.—Ed.]
Pro. You see how easily . . . Cæsar come The Ff, followed by Rowe and Pope, give this speech to Charmian. Theobald, however, attributed this distribution to the two latter editors, and remarks: This blunder was for want of knowing, or observing, the historical fact. When Cæsar sent Proculeius to the queen, he sent Gallus after him with new instructions; and while one amused Cleopatra with propositions from Cæsar, through the crannies of the monument, the other scaled it by a ladder, entered it at a window backward, and made Cleopatra, and those with her, prisoners. I have reformed the passage, therefore (as, I am persuaded, the author designed it), from the authority of Plutarch.—Johnson: This line, in the first edition, is given to Proculeius; and to him it certainly belongs, though perhaps misplaced. I would put it at the end of his foregoing speech: ‘Where he for grace is kneel'd to. Aside to Gallus. You see how easily she may be surpriz'd’; Then, while Cleopatra makes a formal answer, Gallus, upon the hint given, seizes her, and Proculeius, interrupting the civility of his answer: ‘—your plight is pitied Of him that caus'd it,’ cries out: ‘Guard her till Cæsar come.’—Malone: It is clear, from the passage quoted from Plutarch in the preceding note, that this [‘Pro.’] was an error of the compositor's at the press, and that it belongs to Gallus; who, after Proculeius hath, according to his suggestion, ascended the monument, goes out to inform Cæsar that Cleopatra is taken. That Cæsar was informed immediately of Cleopatra's being taken, appears from Dolabella's first speech to Proculeius on his entry: ‘Proculeius, What thou hast done, thy master Cæsar knows,’ etc. [See lines 77, 78.] This information, it is to be presumed, Cæsar obtained from Gallus. The stage-directions being very imperfect in this scene in the old copy, no exit is here marked; but as Gallus afterwards enters along with Cæsar, it was undoubtedly the author's intention that he should here go out.—Walker (Crit. ii, 177) has an Article on ‘Instances in which Speeches are assigned in the Folio to Wrong Characters,’ in the course of which he remarks (p. 185) that, ‘Errors in the assignment of speeches, —including cases in which two speeches have been confused into one, or the like,— are remarkably frequent in the Folio. I have just cited sixty or more instances [sixtysix, by my counting.—Ed.] in which this has taken place, even according to the universally received text. This being the case, there is no reason why we should be scrupulous in asserting the same of other passages, where the context clearly indicates it. [The present line is among the sixty-six.]—Thiselton (p. 26): If it were desired to follow Plutarch, the simplest way would be, perhaps, to regard this line as the commencement of a new scene the interval being taken up with the movements of Proculeius, but the fact that Gallus, whose presence talking with Cleopatra is essential to Plutarch's account, does not enter till later shows that Shakespeare did not intend to follow his authority slavishly. It therefore seems preferable to suppose that the ladder was fixed by the soldiers during Proculeius’ previous conversation with Cleopatra, and that he, instead of going to Cæsar as he pretended, climbed up the ladder with the soldiers and almost immediately appeared behind Cleopatra and her companions who were still standing at the gate. This view will account for the two speeches in succession being attributed to Proculeius by the Folio.
Releeu'd, but not betraid Peck (p. 254): Instead of ‘betray'd,’ I think, we should read bereav'd. This reading, I am sure, agrees better with Cleopatra's next words, . . . where betray'd of death is a forced expression, but bereav'd is very natural. Besides in her present condition she finds herself already bereav'd of her crown, and, therefore, thinks it harder to be bereav'd of death, or the liberty to kill herself.—[Seven years after the publication of the foregoing note by Peck, Warburton proposed the same emendation, except that he transferred the change to ‘Releeu'd’; his text reads ‘Bereav'd, but not betray'd.’ His note thereon is of small consequence.]
What of death too Capell (i, 49): These words import—What, am I rob'd of death too, as well as of my kingdom? and have no relation to those that Proculeius had just spoke, which perhaps were not heard by her.
Worth many Babes and Beggers Johnson: Why, death, wilt thou not rather seize a queen, than employ thy force upon babes and beggars?
talke Warburton: This nonsense should be reformed thus: ‘If idle time,’ etc., i. e. if repose be necessary to cherish life, I will not sleep.—Johnson: I do not see that the nonsense is made sense by the change. If idle talke will once be necessary, Ile not sleepe neither Heath (p. 466): I conceive the poet's meaning is, I will not sleep neither, and, to prevent it, I will keep myself awake with any idle talk that happens to come uppermost.— Johnson: ‘I will not eat, and if it will be necessary now for once to waste a moment in idle talk of my purpose, I will not sleep neither.’ In common conversation we often use will be, with as little relation to futurity. As, ‘Now I am going, it will be fit for me to dine first.’—Capell (i, 50): ‘Necessary’ in this line, means—necessary to life; and ‘idle talk,’—conversation and talk among friends: and this being so, ‘sleep,’—which is the reading of all former copies,—must be a mistake, and that for—‘speak:’ [thus in Capell's text]. After declaring first against ‘meat,’ and then against ‘drink,’ she crowns the whole by threat'ning him with,—the greatest possible female achievement,—a renouncing of speech. But this is being too pleasant: especially, at this time; and with a speech, that, in all the parts of it, is as worthy the magnificent Cleopatra as any one that the Poet has given her.—Steevens: Once may mean sometimes. The meaning of Cleopatra seems to be this: If idle talking be sometimes necessary to the prolongation of life, why I will not sleep for fear of talking idly in my sleep. The sense, designed, however, may be—If it be necessary, for once, to talk of performing impossibilities, why, I'll not sleep neither. I have little confidence, however, in these attempts, to produce a meaning from the words under consideration.—Malone: The explications above given appear to me so unsatisfactory, that I have no doubt that a line has been lost after the word necessary, in which Cleopatra threatened to observe an obstinate silence. The line probably began with the word I'll, and the compositor's eye glancing on the same words in the line beneath, all that intervened was lost. The omitted line might have been of this import: ‘If idle talk will once be necessary, I'll not so much as syllable a word; I'll not sleep neither,’ etc. The words, ‘I'll not sleep neither,’ contain a new and distinct menace.—Ritson: I agree that a line is lost, which I shall attempt to supply: ‘If idle talk will once be necessary [I will not speak; If sleep be necessary], I'll not sleep neither.’ The repetition of the word necessary may have occasioned the omission.—Collier (ed. ii) says, in effect, that, according to the MS, Cleopatra adds ‘that she will hasten her death by perpetual watchfulness, if ‘idle talk’ will contribute to it, or be accessary to it.—Staunton: We adopt Hanmer's accessary. The sense is plainly,—‘I'll neither eat nor drink, and, if idle talk will, for the nonce, be assistant, I'll not sleep.’—[The obscurity in these lines is removed, I think, by the paraphrases of Heath and of Johnson.—Ed.]
starke-nak'd Walker (Vers. 192) has gathered many examples from the old poets where naked is thus contracted. We find in Middleton, ‘To cover others, and go nak'd thyself.’—Spanish Gipsy, p. 135, ed. Dyce. Again, Sidney: ‘His who till death lookt in a watrie glasse, Or hers whom nakd the Troian boy did see.’ —Astrophel and Stella, Sonn. lxxxii.—Dyce (ed. ii) quotes, ‘Accomplish'd Thoas, in whose breast, (being nak'd) his lance he threw,’ etc.—Chapman's Iliad, xvi, 296; ‘Strip'd nak'd her bosome, show'd her breasts,’ etc.—Ibid. xxii, 69.
pyramides Dyce (Note in The False One, II, i): The passages of our early writers in which ‘pyramides’ (the regular plural of pyramis) occurs are very numerous. In the line in this speech [in The False One]: ‘No pyramids set off his memories,’ though both the folios have pyramides, there can be no doubt that the poet intended the word to consist of only three syllables.—[See II, vii, 39.]
It shall content me best Here the Cowden-Clarkes have the following stage-direction and note: ‘Brings Cleopatra down into the lower room of the Monument, and delivers her to Dollabella.’ This stage-direction has been added by the editors, as affording an idea of the situation in the present scene. There would be no means of accounting for what subsequently takes place, were we not to imagine Cleopatra as being still withinside her monument.
If you'l imploy me to him Bradley (N. E. D. s. v. Employ, 3. † b.): To send (a person) with a commission to, towards (a person), to, into (a place). ‘We shall haue neede T'imploy you towards this Romane.’—Cymb. II, iii, 68. [The present passage quoted. See, also, if needful, Franz, § 379, b.] 97, etc. His face was as the Heau'ns, etc.] In all the similes throughout this ‘dream,’ Whiter discerns allusions to pageants and processions. ‘Let it be remembered,’ he says (p. 190), ‘that an imitation of the sphere of the Heavens, with the attributes and ornaments belonging to it, the sweetness of its music, and the noise of its thunder, the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, colossal figures,— armorial bearings,—a magnificent procession of monarchs and their attendants,— floating islands,—and a prodigal distribution of wealth and honors, are the known and familiar materials which formed the motley compound of the Masque, the Pageant, or the Procession.’ See IV, xiv, 11.
The little . . . Creature Theobald: What a blessed limping verse these two hemistichs give us! Had none of the Editors an ear to find the hitch in its pace? 'Tis true, there is but a syllable wanting, and that, I believe verily, was but of a single letter; which the first Editors not understanding, learnedly threw it out as a redundance. I restore, The little O o'th' Earth, i. e. the little orb or circle. And, 'tis plain, our Poet in other passages chuses to express himself thus, ‘Ros. O, that your face were not so full of O'es.’—Love's Labour's Lost, V, ii, 46, i. e. of round dimples, pitts with the smallpox. ‘Can we cram, Within this wooden O, the very casques,’ etc.—Prol. to Henry V. 12. ‘Fair Helena, who more engilds the night Than all you fiery O's and Eyes of light.’—Mid. N. D., III, ii, 195, i. e. the circles, orbs of the stars.—Collier: [Notwithstanding Theobald's amendment, the text of the folio] may, after all, be the true reading.
his rear'd arme Crested the world Percy: Alluding to some of the old crests in heraldry, where a raised arm on a wreath was mounted on the helmet.
the tuned Spheres See III, xiii, 175. Also, if need be, ‘There's not the smallest orbe which thou beholdst But in his motion like an angell sings,’—Mer. of Ven. V, i, 69, and the notes that follow, in this edition. and that to Friends Staunton (Athenæum, 26 Apr. 1873): Surely,— ‘and sweet to friends’; ‘that’ has no business in this place, and only serves to mar the glory of the speech.—[Elze (p. 293) proposed, independently, the same emendation, and also ‘and soft to Friends.’ But, assuredly, though a little awkward, ‘that’ is perfectly correct. Its antecedent is ‘voice.’ ‘That’ (or such) was his voice when addressing his friends.—Ed.]
quaile See ‘Fall not a tear,’ III, xi, 78.
ratling Thunder Compare: ‘Thy eye Ioues lightning beares, thy voyce his dreadfull thunder. Which not to anger bent, is musique and sweet fire.’—Love's Lab. Lost, IV, ii, 130.—Ed. 105-107. For his Bounty, There was no winter in't. An Anthony it was, That grew the more by reaping] Theobald: There was certainly a contrast both in the thought and terms, designed here, which is lost in an accidental corruption. How could an Antony grow the more by reaping? I'll venture, by a very easy change, to restore an exquisite fine allusion; which carries its reason with it too, why there was no winter in his bounty: ‘For his bounty, There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas, That grew the more by reaping.’ I ought to take notice, that the ingenious Dr Thirlby likewise started this very emendation, and had marked it in the margin of his book. The reason of the depravation might easily arise from the great similitude of the two words in the old spelling, Antonie and Automne. [The name is spelt Anthony in this play in the Folio without an exception, I think; which injures the literal ‘similitude’ not a little.—Ed.] Our author has employed this thought again in [his 53rd Sonnet]: ‘Speak of the spring and foison of the year; The one doth shadow of your beauty show, The other as your bounty doth appear; And you in every blessed shape we know.’ 'Tis plain that ‘foison’ means Autumn here, which pours out its profusion of fruits bountifully; in opposition to Spring, which only shews the youthful beauty, and promise of that future bounty.— Corson (The Nation, 28 Aug., 1873): If ‘An Anthony it was’ is not right, ‘an autumn 'twas’ is certainly wrong. It is too tame for the intensely impassioned speech in which it occurs, or, rather, into which it has been introduced by the editors. Again, if ‘autumn’ could, by metonymy, be wrenched to mean the crops of autumn, it could hardly be said that an autumn grows the more by reaping. But this reading of Theobald has been silently adopted by all subsequent editors, without any consideration of its tameness or of the resultant incongruity. In ‘An Anthony it was,’ ‘it’ stands, of course, for ‘Bounty.’ His Bounty was an Anthony, ‘that grew the more by reaping.’ Now, could the ‘less Greek’ which, Ben Jonson tells us, Shakespeare possessed, have enabled him to see in ‘Anthony’ the word ἂνθος̣ His Bounty had no winter in it; it was a mead of perennial luxuriance, affording a flowering pasturage (Α᾿νθόνομος), and ‘that grew the more by reaping.’—James Spedding (N. & Qu., 1874, V, i, 303): I cannot understand Prof. Corson's objection to ‘autumn.’ In the cursive black-letter hand of the time Autumn might easily be written so as to be hardly distinguishable from Antonie, and surely it makes better sense and better poetry. So far from calling it ‘tame,’ I should instance it as one of the noblest, boldest, and liveliest images in poetry. Keats said that poetry ‘ought to surprise, by a fine excess.’ This is exactly a case of such ‘fine excess.’ ‘An autumn that grew the more by reaping’—that, the more you took of its harvests, the more there remained to take—is surely as great an image of ‘bounty’ as the mind in its most impassioned state ever created; quite as much so, and yet evidently from the same mint, as Juliet's—‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have; for both are infinite.’ As for the difficulty of understanding by autumn the crops of autumn, how is it more difficult than to understand by ‘winter’ the absence of crops? And what are we to come to? Instead of allowing Tennyson to say—‘To strip a hundred hollows bare of spring,’ we shall have to ask him to print ‘sprigs’ for ‘spring.’ As for the amount of Shakespeare's Greek, of which he has left us no means of judging, the difficulty is to understand how he could have had Greek enough to know that ἂνθος meant a flower, without knowing also that Anthony could not mean a pasture of flowers; and not only could not really mean it, but could not, by any process of association, legitimate or illegitimate, suggest the image to an Englishman.—[Theobald asks, ‘how an Antony could grow the more by reaping?’ Would it not be equally pertinent to ask how an autumn could grow the more by reaping? Reaping in the autumn is done when the grain is ripe, and grain thus reaped never grows again. The farmer is not yet born who, in the temperate zone, reaps the ripe grain in the autumn and finds it growing more vigorously for the process. To be sure, a farmer who could keep on reaping stubble fields and find at each reaping a heavier harvest would be, as Spedding observes, ‘as great an image of “bounty” as the mind in its most impassioned state ever created,’ and, possibly, can be paralleled only in the Arabian Nights. Not thus essentially at fault are, I think, Shakespeare's similes, which may be sometimes flagrantly open to criticism, but never to downright folly— thus, in all humility, it seems to me. When Spedding becomes eloquent over the beauty of ‘autumn,’ he seems to forget that he is exalting not Shakespeare, but Theobald. There is about Corson's suggestion so much refinement, elegance, and charm that it is hard to reject it. But, unfortunately, there is nothing in common between Anthony and Anthos but the first syllable, and there is no Greek word which will furnish any more. Moreover, we do not reap flowers, even to make them grow. Until an emendation is suggested, therefore, happier, as I think, than autumn, I shall endeavour, for my own feeble self, to extract from ‘Anthony’ what meaning I may of inexhaustible perfection in face, in form, in voice, in bounty, which for Cleopatra so far lay in that single name that once, in order to express the height and depth and boundlessness of her self-absorption she exclaimed, ‘Oh, my oblivion is a very Anthony!’—Ed.] 108. Dolphin-like, they shew'd his backe, etc.] Whiter (p. 189): The back of the dolphin is deeply associated in the mind of Shakespeare with the splendid scenery of the pageant or the procession. Would the reader believe that [the pres ent passage] is to be referred to this source? There is nothing, however, more certain and indubitable.
As plates Steevens: ‘Plates’ mean, I believe, silver money. So, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, 1633: ‘What's the price of this slave? two hundred crowns! . . . And if he has, he is worth three hundred plates.’—[II, p. 272, ed. Dyce.] Again: ‘Rat'st thou this Moor but at two hundred plates?’—[Ibid. p. 273.]— Whalley: Steevens justly interprets ‘plates’ to mean silver money. It is a term in heraldry. The balls or roundels in an escutcheon of arms, according to their different colours, have different names. If gules, or red, they are called torteauxes; if or, or yellow, bezants; if argent, or white, plates, which are buttons of silver without any impression, but only prepared for the stamp.
nor euer were Thiselton (p. 27): ‘Nor’ has been unwarrantably changed to or, owing to its being overlooked that this line is in direct contrast with the preceding, and that ‘nor’ implies an ellipsis of neither or not. Cleopatra would ask, ‘But assuming for the moment you are right, how came I to dream of such a one?’ And this question she answers by saying that though Fancy could outstrip Nature, yet the mere picture of Anthony as he actually was in Nature exceeded anything Fancy could create. The description Cleopatra has just given was the work of fancy but in so far as it did not tally with Anthony as he was, it was because it fell short of, not because it exaggerated, his greatness.
To vie Staunton: This was a term at cards, and meant, particularly, to increase the stakes, and, generally, to challenge any one to a contention, bet, wager, etc.—[Undoubtedly, it was, and, perhaps, originally, a term at cards, although its meaning is obscure. It is used in Florio's Second Frutes (pp. 69, 71) in a way which is difficult to explain. But I doubt that, in the present passage, it has any reference to cards. It is used, I think, as it is defined in the Century Dictionary (s. v. vie, II. trans. 2.): ‘To put or bring into competition; try to outdo in; contend with respect to.’ Whereupon the present passage is quoted as an example.—Ed.] yet t'imagine . . . shadowes quite Whiter (p. 194): Is it possible to employ terms more pointed and significant than those which might be selected from the concluding sentence to describe the nature and properties of such romantic exhibitions? For what are the devices of the Pageant, but the creatures of a dream, —the strange forms of an illusive fancy, and the empty shadows of a sportive imagination?—Staunton: We are not sure of having mastered the sense of this, or indeed that the text exhibits precisely what Shakespeare wrote, but the meaning apparently is,—‘Nature lacks material to compete with fancy in unwonted shapes, yet the conception of an Antony was a masterpiece of Nature over fancy, abasing phantoms quite.’—Hudson: Shakespeare sometimes uses fancy and imagination as equivalent terms, and here he uses both for the dreaming-power. Nature lacks material to keep up with fancy in the creation of strange forms; yet to fancy such an actual being as Antony, a man of Nature's making, were to make Nature an overmatch for fancy, dwarfing its shadowy creatures into insignificance. The passage is exceedingly strong and subtle, and comes appropriately from this matchless roll of unwomanly womanhood.
were Natures peece, 'gainst Fancie, Condemning shadowes quite Warburton: The word prize, which I have restored, is very pretty, as figuring a contention between nature and imagination about the larger extent of their powers; and nature gaining the prize by producing Antony.—Johnson: The word ‘piece,’ is a term appropriated to works of art. Here Nature and Fancy produce each their piece, and the piece done by Nature had the preference. Antony was in reality past the size of dreaming; he was more by Nature than Fancy could present in sleep.
would I . . . But I do Thiselton (p. 27): ‘But,’ Dollabella means, ‘If success in a cherished object carries with it the being infected by the grief of my victim, as I am now by your grief, I would rather forego it.’—[Is not the ‘But,’ in this passage, that which follows strong asseverations, as in Othello's exclamation: ‘Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee’? Thus here Dollabella says, in effect, ‘Would I might never gain success, if I do not sympathise with you!’—Ed.]
a greefe that suites Collier (ed. i): Surely, as Mr Barron Field observes, [suites] is much more likely to have been a misprint for smites [than shoots] which only varies in a single letter. The expression is then more natural, and it avoids the clash of shoots and ‘root.’—[Collier repeats this note in his ed. ii, and adds that ‘suites’ is corrected to smites in the MS.]—Walker (Crit. iii, 311): ‘A grief that shoots,’—that is neither old nor modern English. Note, too, ‘shoots at root.’ Folio, suites; hence one of the commentators (I know not who), recollecting the puns on suitor and shooter in the old dramatists, concluded it was a mistake of the printer's ear for shoots. (Apropos of which, by the way, in a letter of John Alleyn, the player, a man ignorant of spelling, ap. Collier's Alleyn Papers, shaute is written for suite, courtship, offer of marriage.) Shakespeare wrote smites. Smite occurs in the very next column; so that the word seems to have been running in his head.—Dyce: Smites,—thus Tyrwhitt in his copy of F2 in the British Museum.—Anon. (Blackwood, Oct. 1853): ‘Suites’ is perhaps judiciously altered into smites.—[Inasmuch as there is proof, adequately conclusive (see a long discussion in Love's Lab. Lost, IV, i, 122), that suite and suitor were, in Shakespeare's day, pronounced, on occasion, shoot and shooter; and, inasmuch as ‘suites,’ thus pronounced in the present passage makes good sense, I do not think we are justified in substituting, for one of Shakespeare's own words, any other word, however great may be the improvement. Is it not common enough, at the present day, to speak of physical pain as ‘shooting’? Cannot poetic license apply the same verb to mental pain?—Ed.]
I cannot proiect mine owne cause Warburton: ‘Project’ signifies to invent a cause, not to plead it; which is the sense here required. It is plain that we should read, proctor. The technical term, to plead by an advocate.—Johnson: Hanmer reads: ‘I cannot parget my own cause—.’ Meaning, I cannot whitewash, varnish, or gloss my cause. I believe the present reading to be right. To project a cause is to represent a cause; to project it well, is to plan or contrive a scheme of defence.—Heath (p. 466): To project is properly a term of perspective, signifying to represent an object truly, according to the rules of that art. Hence it is applied metaphorically to denote a representation of any kind whatever. So that the sense is, I am not capable of stating my own cause in so favourable a light, as to free myself from all blame.—Steevens: ‘Project’ may certainly be right. Sir John Harrington, in his Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596, says—‘I am not only groundedly studied in the reformation of Ajax, which I have chosen for the project of this discourse.’—[p. 95, ed. Singer.]—Malone: In Much Ado, we find these lines: ‘She cannot love, Nor take no shape nor project of affection, She is so self-endear'd.’—[III, i, 59.] I cannot project, etc. means, therefore, I cannot shape or form my cause, etc.—[Heath's interpretation, which is also, in fact, Johnson's, seems to be the best. —Ed.]
You shall aduise me in all for Cleopatra Malone: You shall yourself be my counsellor, and suggest whatever you wish to be done for your relief. So, afterwards: ‘For we intend so to dispose you, as Yourself shall give us counsel.’ [lines 219, 220.] 167. This is the breefe, etc.] von Friesen (iii, 256): Cleopatra's determination to shut herself up in her Monument, and have her death announced to Anthony is a step concerning which it is difficult to decide whether it was prompted by a sudden prudence in retiring before the bitter reproaches of Antony, or an artistic stroke of fresh coquetterie. But when there followed upon it an unexpected issue and Antony had committed suicide, I am convinced that Cleopatra was smitten with a love for the dying and for the dead hero, deeper and, possibly, more overwhelming than ever she had felt for him when alive. Hereupon, she reveals in her opposition to Octavius all the versatility of her shrewdness and dissimulation. Plutarch, justly enough, does not record that she contemplated enmeshing Octavius in her charms. This repulsive legend, started by the historians after Plutarch's time, Shakespeare could not, therefore, have intended, even in the remotest degree, to have recalled. On the contrary her deportment toward the Emperor from the moment of his sending Thyreus to her displays the keenest shrewdness. In this respect, her interview with him is a model. . . . From the very instant that she learned the Emperor's decision to carry her as a prisoner to Rome to grace his triumph, her resolve to take her own life was fixed and immovable. For what other purpose, forsooth, was the presentation to Octavius of the brief of her treasures and the summons to Seleucus to testify to her conscientious statement?
'tis exactly valewed, Not petty things admitted Theobald: Sagacious editors! Cleopatra gives in a list of her wealth, says, 'tis exactly valued; but that petty things are not admitted in this list: and then she appeals to her treasurer, that she has reserved nothing to herself. And when he betrays her, she is reduced to the shift of exclaiming against the ingratitude of servants, and of making apologies for having secreted certain trifles. Who does not see, that we ought to read: ‘Not petty things omitted?’ For this declaration lays open her falsehood; and makes her angry, when her treasurer detects her in a direct lie.—Johnson: Notwithstanding the wrath of Theobald, I have restored the old reading. She is angry afterwards, that she is accused of having reserved more than petty things.—[In the corresponding passage in Plutarch, Cleopatra says, ‘though it may be I have reserved some jewels and trifles meet for women,’ etc.—Ed.]—Abbott (§ 377): The participle is often used to express a condition, where, for perspicuity we should now mostly insert if. Thus here the meaning is, ‘exactly, if petty things be excepted.’—[See III, xii, 17.]
I had rather seele my lippes Johnson: Sew up my mouth.—Steevens: It means close up my lips as effectually as the eyes of a hawk are closed. To seel hawks was the technical term.—Collier (ed. i): The commentators have understood an allusion to seeling the eyes of a hawk; but the common expression of sealing the lips requires no such explanation.—Singer: But the poet is very fond of such allusions [to hawking], and there is surely no reason for printing seal, and thus substituting a word not authorised by the old copy which always prints the latter word seal or seale.—Dyce (ed. ii): In III, xiii, 137, we have ‘the wise gods seele our eyes,’ etc. But here the spelling of the Folio goes for little; in Lear, IV, vi, 168, the Folio has ‘the power to seale th' accusers lips’; and in 2 Hen. VI: I, ii, 89, ‘Seale vp your Lips.’—Staunton: To seal one's lips was a familiar expression ages before Shakespeare lived. 184. Oh Slaue, of no more trust, etc.] Stahr (p. 270): This little comedy, pre-arranged and agreed upon, between her and her faithful treasurer is a masterstroke of the bold lady, which completely attains the purpose for which it was designed.—[It is hardly too much to say, I think, that the historian of Cleopatra has made us all his debtors by this keen-sighted interpretation of the Queen's outrageous treatment of Seleucus. It is a relief to be freed from the necessity of finding excuses for what we now see to be simulated rage.—Ed.]
What goest thou backe, . . . thee Deighton: What (said as she advances to strike him), do you retreat before me? you'll be ready enough, I warrant, to desert me; ‘Go back’ being used in the literal and the figurative sense. In the latter sense Schmidt takes the phrase here as equivalent to ‘be worsted.’—[Very few readers, I think, will detect any ‘figurative sense’ here, or any equivalent to being ‘worsted.’—Ed.]
O rarely base Steevens: That is, base to an uncommon degree.
To one so meeke Theobald: Surely Cleopatra must be bantering Cæsar, to call herself ‘meek,’ when he had the moment before seen her fly at her Treasurer, and wishing to tear out his eyes. I correct, weak, that is, so shrunk in fortune and power. Besides, she might allude to her bodily decay. See Plutarch.—[The foregoing note with its emendation is not repeated in any of the Variorums, and was, therefore, unknown to Walker, when (Crit. ii, 300) among a number of instances where m and w are confounded, he also suggested weak, in the present line.]— Capell (i, 50): That ‘meek’ is corrupt, is assented to readily; but not the word 'tis amended by [by Theobald], weak is ambiguous, and therefore improper; and mean, a word as near it in characters, bids fairer to be the true one, from its opposition to ‘lordliness’ in the same sentence.—Malone: ‘Meek,’ I suppose, means here tame.—[I suppose that ‘meek’ here means meek,—the very quality that Cleopatra would claim for herself, especially when she least deserved it.—Ed.]
Parcell the summe of my disgraces Johnson: To parcel her disgraces, might be expressed in vulgar language, to bundle up her calamities.—Malone: The meaning, I think, either is, ‘that this fellow should add one more parcel or item to the sum of my disgraces, namely, his own malice’; or ‘that this fellow should lot up the sum of my disgraces, and add his own malice to the account.’—[Dyce adopts, in his Glossary, this note of Malone.]
Enuy That is, malice; see Shakespeare, passim.
moderne That is, common, every day; see Shakespeare, passïm.
vnfolded With one For other instances where ‘with’ is equivalent to by, see Abbott, § 193; or Franz, § 383.
The Gods Collier (ed. ii): Another instance of old misprinting, ‘The’ for Ye, owing to the mistake of the abbreviation ye: we derive the change from the MS.—Dyce (ed. ii): But compare, ‘O me, the gods,’ Coriolanus, II, iii; O the gods!’ Tro. & Cress., IV, ii; Coriolanus, IV, i; Cymb., I, i; ‘O the blest gods!’ Lear, II, iv; and ‘O the good gods!’ in this present scene, line 266. 204, 205. Cynders of my spirits Through th'Ashes of my chance, etc.] Theobald: She considers herself, in her downfall, as a fabric destroyed by fire; and then would intimate that the same fire has reduced her spirits too to cinders; i. e. consumed the strength and dignity of her soul and mind. Warburton thinks, the poet wrote, ‘Through the ashes of my cheeks.’—[This emendation Warburton did not suggest in his subsequent edition. It is, therefore, open to hope, that he withdrew it.]—Murray (N. E. D. s. v. Chance, 3.): That which befalls a person; (one's) hap, fortune, luck, lot.—[We have already had in ‘the wounded chance of Anthony’ (III, x, 49), a use of ‘chance’ exactly parallel to the present. ‘Chance’ there meant fortune, lot, and here it means the same. ‘Though the ashes of her fortune, the embers of her spirit are still glowing.’ In this same line, where Cleopatra says ‘Wer't thou a man,’ she implies the knowledge that Seleucus was a eunuch. —Ed.]
spirits See I, ii, 143, with its protest against Walker's monosyllabic pronunciation of ‘spirit.’ 209-211. when we fall, We answer others merits, in our name Are therefore to be pittied] Warburton: The lines should be pointed thus:—‘And when we fall We answer. Others' merits, in our names Are therefore to be pitied.’ That is, ‘when any misfortune hath subjected us to the power of our enemies, we are sure to be punished for those faults. As this is the case, it is but reasonable that we should have the merit of our ministers' good actions, as well as bear the blame of their bad.’ But she softens the word merit into pity. The reason of her making the reflexion was this: Her former conduct was liable to much censure from Octavius, which she would hereby artfully insinuate was owing to her evil ministers. And as her present conduct, in concealing her treasures, appeared to be her own act, she being detected by her minister, she begs, that as she now answers for her former minister's miscarriages, so her present minister's merit in this discovery, might likewise be placed to her account: Which she thinks but reasonable.—Heath (p. 467): That is, We, who are in possession of the supreme power, are ill thought of for faults committed by others, without our direction or knowledge; and, when we are stripped of this power, are obliged to answer in our own names for what those others ought in justice to answer for themselves. Therefore we are to be pitied. I conceive that this reflection of Cleopatra is intended to insinuate, that the deficiency in the inventory ought to be imputed to Seleucus her accuser, and not to herself; and that he therefore was properly answerable for it. I would beg leave to add, that I am inclined to believe that Shakespear gave us the third line thus, And answer others merits in our names; which renders the construction more explicit and perspicuous.—[Collier's MS marked the same change from ‘Are’ to And. ‘Very unnecessarily,’ says Dyce (ed. ii): ‘In the last clause of a sentence Shakespeare (like other old writers) sometimes omits “and.”’]—Capell (i, 51): The reflections contain'd in this speech are perfectly just, and their wording as clear as their intention; which is—to exculpate the speaker, not in what has recently happen'd, but her political behaviour in general: Nothing then is hard to conceive, but the consequence drawn from these premises,—‘in our name Are therefore to be pity'd’; and the single difficulty there, lyes in—‘name’: But how often is name put for— title? and here with great energy: as importing—that greatness and dignities, high and swelling titles, were mere vanities and a name only; rather worthy of pity than envy, by reason of it's servants' abuses, and the ruin it often suffers through them.— Johnson: ‘We suſſer at our highest state of elevation in the thoughts of mankind for that which others do; and when we fall, those that contented themselves only to think ill before, call us to answer in our own names for the merits of others. We are therefore to be pitied.’ Merits is in this place taken in an ill sense, for actions meriting censure.—M. Mason: The plain meaning is this: ‘The greatest of us are aspersed for things which others do; and when, by the decline of our power, we become in a condition to be questioned, we are called to answer in our own names for the actions of other people.’ Merit is here used, as the word desert frequently is, to express a certain degree of merit or demerit. A man may merit punishment as well as reward.—Malone: As demerits was often used, in Shakspeare's time, as synonymous to merit, so merit might have been used in the sense which we now affix to demerit; or the meaning may be only, we are called to account, and to answer in our own names for acts, with which others, rather than we, deserve to be charged. —[From Capell's crabbed English (Dr Johnson, using Prospero's language in reference to Caliban, said that if Capell had only come to him, he would ‘have endowed his purposes with words’) I can extract more light than from any of the other interpretations, and, in addition, his version conforms closely to the Folio. The real difficulty lies, as he says, in the word ‘name,’ which here, I think, means eminence, greatness (as in other instances which Schmidt's Lexicon will supply). The passage, then, may be paraphrased: ‘When we, the great ones of earth, fail, it is not through our own fault, but through that of others, our subordinates; for the very eminence of our position, therefore, we are to be pitied.’—Ed.]
Make not your thoughts your prisons Johnson: I once wished to read—‘Make not your thoughts your poison—’: Do not destroy yourself by musing on your misfortune. Yet I would change nothing, as the old reading presents a very proper sense. ‘Be not a prisoner in imagination, when in reality you are free.— [Johnson suggested poison, wherein he was anticipated by Hanmer ed. i. Dyce suggested prison, wherein he was anticipated by Hanmer, ed. ii.—Ed.]
and it is prouided Theobald: Freinshemius has observed, upon a passage in Quintus Curtius, that your best writers very often leave some things to be understood from the consequence and implication of words, which the words themselves do not express. Our author observes this conduct here. Cleopatra must be supposed to mean, she has spoke for the asp, and it is provided, tho' she says not a word of it in direct terms.—Capell (i, 51): The Poet's art in this place is worth noting: ‘it’ relates covertly to the asp which she afterwards dies by; but her further directions about it, are convey'd in a whisper,—‘But hark thee, Charmian’; which had they been openly given, a main grace of the incident that presently follows had been taken away from it, that is—it's novelty. 250, etc. Now Iras, etc.] Mrs Jameson (ii, 152): But though Cleopatra talks of dying ‘after the high Roman fashion,’ she fears what she most desires, and cannot perform with simplicity what costs her such an effort. That extreme physical cowardice, which was so strong a trait in her historical character, which led to the defeat of Actium, which made her delay the execution of a fatal resolve till she had ‘tried conclusions infinite of easy ways to die,’ Shakespeare has rendered with the finest possible effect, and in a manner which heightens instead of diminishing our respect and interest. Timid by nature, she is courageous by the mere force of will, and she lashes herself up with high-sounding words into a kind of false daring. Her lively imagination suggests every incentive which can spur her on to the deed she has resolved, yet trembles to contemplate. She pictures to herself all the degradations which must attend her captivity; and let it be observed, that those which she anticipates are precisely such as a vain, luxurious, and haughty woman would especially dread, and which only true virtue and magnanimity could despise. Cleopatra could have endured the loss of freedom; but to be led in triumph through the streets of Rome is insufferable. She could stoop to Cæsar with dissembling courtesy, and meet duplicity with superior art; but ‘to be chastised’ by the scornful or upbraiding glance of the injured Octavia—‘rather a ditch in Egypt!’
drinke their vapour Murray (N. E. D. s. v. Drink, I. Transitive senses. 5.): To draw in or inhale. [The current phrase, in Shakespeare's time, for ‘to smoke tobacco’ was to drink tobacco.]
sawcie Lictors Will catch at vs Murray (N. E. D. s. v. Catch, 23. To catch at): To snatch at; to make a quick or eager attempt to lay hold of. [The present line is quoted. Dr Murray's adjective, ‘eager,’ is well chosen. It is the ‘eagerness’ which is naturally so abhorrent and degrading to the Queen. Lear (IV, vi, 166) attributes to the ‘beadle’ that which, I think, Cleopatra attributes, in imagination, to the saucy lictors.—Ed.]
scald Johnson: A word of contempt, implying poverty, disease, and filth.
Ballads For this superfluous s, see ‘abstracts,’ I, iv, 11; Abbott, § 338. The quicke Comedians Johnson: The gay inventive players.—M. Mason: ‘Quick’ here means, ready, rather than gay.—Malone: The lively, inventive, quick- witted comedians.
Our Alexandrian Reuels See note on ‘reuell,’ I, iv, 7, and also II, vii, 111.
Some squeaking Cleopatra Boy my greatnesse Hanmer: The parts of women were acted on the stage by boys.—Schmidt, in the Notes to his version of Tieck's Translation, denies (p. 176) that ‘boy’ is here a verb, because the next clause, ‘i'th'posture,’ etc., does not harmonise with it; such a posture can hardly be deemed characteristic of a boy. He, therefore, holds ‘Cleopatra-boy’ as a compound; and the meaning is that she will see some Cleopatra-boy acting her own greatness in the posture, etc. In his subsequent Lexicon he adhered to this interpreta tion and defined the phrase: ‘I shall see some boy, performing the part of Cleopatra, as my highness.’ Sprenger suggested bow instead of ‘boy.’ Leo in a Review of Sprenger's Emendations (Sh. Jhrbuch, xxvii, 1892, p. 223) suggests that punctuation alone is needed to reveal the sense, thus: ‘Some squeaking Cleopatra boy—my greatness I'the posture,’ etc. He adds, however, a possible emendation of ‘boy,’ which it will do his fine reputation no harm to suppress, especially since he himself set no value on it, and professed his adherence to the Folio.—Ed. squeaking Deighton appositely quotes Hamlet's greeting to the young boy actor: ‘Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.’—II, ii, 407. Boy W. Poel (New Sh. Soc. Trans., 8 Nov. 1889): Stephen Gosson thus condemns the realistic acting of the boys who assumed women's parts: ‘Which way, I beseech you, shall they be excused that put on, not the apparel only, but the gait, the gestures, the voice, the passions of a woman?’
posture That is, behaviour, deportment.—Ed.
Nay that's certaine Capell (i, 53): Though this speech is still left in possession of the place it has always occupy'd, yet it's title is very suspicious: it seems to have nothing to do here; and more than so,—to have been an accidental corruption, crept in by the compositor's heedlessness, who was beginning to print again in this place a speech that he had printed before [line 258, supra]; and besides,—the spirit of the maid's declaration concerning her eyes, is weaken'd by the intervention of any thing between that and her exclamation: if the speech must needs stand, for reasons that are not discoverable by the editor, it should at least be made metre of, by reading—Nay, this is certain; meaning—this which I tell you.— [Capell adopted this change in his Version for Garrick.]
mine Nailes See ‘your proofe,’—II, ii, 141; ‘Mine Nightingale,’—IV, viii, 24; ‘Vnarme Eros,’—IV, xiv, 45; all examples of errors in hearing. Also, if need be, Walker (Crit. i, 318).
their most absurd intents Theobald: Why should Cleopatra call Cæsar's designs ‘absurd’? She could not think his intent of carrying her in triumph, such, with regard to his own glory; and her finding an expedient to disappoint him, could not bring it under that predicament. I much rather think the poet wrote: ‘Their most assur'd intents,’ i. e. the purposes which they make themselves most sure of accomplishing.—Johnson: I have preserved the old reading. The design certainly appeared absurd enough to Cleopatra, both as she thought it unreasonable in itself, and as she knew it would fail.—Upton (p. 295): That is, harsh, grating. Latin, absurdus, ex ab et surdus, à quo aures et animum avertas. Cicero, Pro Roscio. Sect. 7: ‘Fraudavit Roscius. Est hoc quidem auribus animisque [hominum] absurdum.’ Absurdum est, i. e. sounds harsh, grating, unpleasant.—Hudson: ‘Absurd’ seems to me an absurd reading.—Rolfe: Surely if Cæsar's intents are assur'd from his point of view, they are ‘absurd’ from Cleopatra's, for she is going to fool them. In the same vein, after she has done this, she calls Cæsar an ‘ass unpolicied.’— Murray (N. E. D. s. v.): Adopted from French absurde, an adaptation of Latin absurd-us, inharmonious, tasteless, foolish; formed on ab off, here intensive+surdus deaf, inaudible, insufferable to the ear. 2. Out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical. In modern sense, especially, plainly opposed to reason and hence ridiculous, silly.—[I think Shakespeare has a right to the privilege of using ‘absurd’ in its derivative sense.—Ed.] 274, 275, etc. Go fetch My best Attyres, etc.] Mrs Jameson (ii, 154): She then calls for her diadem, her robes of state, and attires herself as if ‘again for Cydnus, to meet Mark Antony.’ Coquette to the last, she must make Death proud to take her, and die ‘phœnix like,’ as she had lived, with all the pomp of preparation—luxurious in her despair. The death of Lucretia, of Portia, of Arria, and others who died ‘after the high Roman fashion,’ is sublime according to the Pagan ideas of virtue, and yet none of them so powerfully affect the imagination as the catastrophe of Cleopatra. The idea of this frail, timid, wayward woman, dying with heroism from the mere force of passion and will, takes us by surprise. The attic elegance of her mind, her poetical imagination, the pride of beauty and royalty predominating to the last, and the sumptuous and picturesque accompaniments with which she surrounds herself in death, carry to its extreme height that effect of contrast which prevails through her life and character. No arts, no invention could add to the real circumstances of Cleopatra's closing scene. Shakespeare has shown profound judgment and feeling in adhering closely to the classical authorities; and to say that the language and sentiments worthily fill up the outline, is the most magnificent praise that can be given.
Sirra Iras See IV, xv, 105.—Dyce (ed. ii): Nearly all the modern editors wrongly put a comma between these words.
a rurall Fellow A. C. Bradley (p. 395): The Porter [in Macbeth] does not make me smile: the moment is too terrific. He is grotesque; no doubt the contrast he affords is humorous as well as ghastly; I dare say the groundlings roared with laughter at his coarsest remarks. But they are not comic enough to allow one to forget for a moment what has preceded and what must follow. And I am far from complaining of this. I believe that it is what Shakespeare intended, and that he despised the groundlings if they laughed. Of course he could have written without the least difficulty speeches five times as humorous; but he knew better. The Grave-diggers make us laugh: the old Countryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra makes us smile at least. But the Grave-digger scene does not come at a moment of extreme tension; and it is long. Our distress for Ophelia is not so absorbing that we refuse to be interested in the man who digs her grave, or even continue throughout the long conversation to remember always with pain that the grave is hers. It is fitting, therefore, that he should be made decidedly humorous. The passage in Antony and Cleopatra is much nearer to the passage in Macbeth, and seems to have been forgotten by those who say that there is nothing in Shakespeare resembling that passage.* The old Countryman comes at a moment of tragic exaltation, and the dialogue is appropriately brief. But the moment, though tragic, is emphatically one of exaltation. We have not been feeling horror, nor are we feeling a dreadful suspense. We are going to see Cleopatra die, but she is to die gloriously and to triumph over Octavius. And therefore our amusement at the old Countryman and the contrast he affords to these high passions, is untroubled, and it was right to make him really comic. But the Porter's case is quite different. We cannot forget how the knocking that makes him grumble sounded to Macbeth, or that within a few minutes of his opening the gate Duncan will be discovered in his blood; nor can we help feeling that in pretending to be porter of hell-gate he is terribly near the truth. To give him language so humorous that it would ask us almost to lose the sense of these things would have been a fatal mistake,—the kind of mistake that means want of dramatic imagination. And that was not the sort of error into which Shakespeare fell. 1
What poore an Instrument Abbott (§ 85): ‘What’ is here used for how.—Ibid (§ 422): We can say ‘how poor an instrument,’ regarding ‘how’ as an adverb, and ‘how poor’ as an adverbialized expression, but not, ‘What poor an instrument,’ because ‘what’ has almost lost with us its adverbial force.—[In this section Abbott gives many examples of the transposition of the Article.]
the fleeting Moone Warburton: Alluding to the Egyptian devotion paid to the moon under the name of Isis.—[See III, xiii, 183.]—Steevens: I really believe that the poet was not at all acquainted with the devotion that the Egyptians paid to this planet under the name of Isis. ‘Fleeting’ is inconstant.— [Juliet's words are a sufficing commentary: ‘O, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb.’—II, ii, 109.—Ed.]
Enter . . . Clowne Vischer (vi, p. 175): The Clown enters with the asp, which Cleopatra had ordered. In him, Shakespeare introduces a dunderhead, who, unwitting of the great act to which he had been summoned, cracks jokes about the bite of the worm of Nilus, and, like the Musicians in Romeo and Juliet, the Porter in Macbeth, and the Grave-diggers in Hamlet, supplies the contrast between the exalted image of death and low ordinary life. It is not too distracting. Genuine tragic emotion is often stimulated thereby, so fearfully does life love to mingle the serious and the comic.—Delius (Sh. Jahrbuch, V, p. 268): This ‘rural Fellow’ is the Clown of the drama, and consequently uses Clown's language, which is prose embellished with perverted words.
the pretty worme of Nylus Johnson: Worm is the Teutonick word for serpent; we have the blind-worm and slow-worm still in our language, and the Norwegians call an enormous monster, seen sometimes in the Northern ocean, the seaworm.—Percy: In the Northern counties, the word worm is still given to the ser pent species in general. I have seen a Northumberland ballad, entituled, The laidly Worm of Spindleston Heughes, i. e. The loathsome or foul serpent of Spindleston Craggs.—[Aspis is an Adder worst and most wicked in venime & in biting, & hath that name Aspis, of Aspergendo, springing: for he casteth out slaieng venime, and spitteth and springeth out venime by bitings . . . And it followeth there [in Isidore]: Of adders that be called Aspis bee diuers manner kind, and haue diuerse effects and dooings, to noy and to grieue, that is to wit, Dipsas that is called Scytula in Latine. For when he biteth, he slayeth with thirst. Ipalis is a manner adder, that slayeth with sleepe. These manner adders Cleopatra layde by her, and passed out of the lyfe by death, as it were a sleepe.—Batman vppon Bartholome, 1582, Liber XVIII. Of Aspide. cap. 10, p. 345.—Ed.] 308, 309. but he that wil beleeue all that they say, shall neuer be saued by halfe that they do] Warburton: Shakspeare's clowns are always jokers, and deal in sly satire. It is plain this must be read the contrary way, and all and half change places.—[Any comment on the foregoing is impertinent. Warburton's dogmatism overawed Theobald in his first edition, but his common sense asserted itself in his second.—Ed.]
most falliable Walker (Crit. iii, 312): Does this ‘falliable’ belong to the Clown or to the old printer?—[I think to the old printer. What is comic in Shakespeare's Clowns generally lies in the perversion of words and phrases.—Ed.]
will do his kinde Johnson: The serpent will act according to his nature.
in their women ‘Their’ is here used ethically. Delius takes it as a possessive, meaning the women that belong to the gods.
Yare, yare That is, make haste, hurry.
which the Gods giue . . . after wrath Rev. John Hunter: The notion of good fortune in this world justifying the gods in reversing it in the next world, was founded on the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Luke, xvi, 25.—Wordsworth: A genuine heathen sentiment: see Herod. III, 40.—[Dr Wordsworth also refers to his own Book, Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible, where (p. 114, et seq.) the attempt is made to show that Shakespeare is wont to make religious sentiments conform to the religion of the speaker, whether Heathen or Christian.]
Husband This sanctifies her love for Anthony; in this one sacred word we hear Shakespeare's last appeal to us for her pardon,—like ‘the heavenly voice’ breathing forth, in Gretchen's dungeon, ‘sie ist gerettet!’—Ed.
Fire, and Ayre; my other Elements Malone: So in Henry the Fifth, ‘he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him.’—[III, vii, 22. This is in the Dauphin's description of his horse, and Madden (p. 261) shows that this reference to the elements, in this connection, has, in old writers on farriery, more significance than is at once apparent. Cleopatra here uses ‘elements’ as referring to the materials of which man is composed. See note on III, ii, 47.—Ed.]
I giue to baser life Theobald (Nichols, Illust. ii, 511): I have imagined we should read, ‘to baser earth,’ i. e. as we say in the Service for the dead, ‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes’; or as in Wills, ‘I give my body to the earth,’ etc.—[This conjecture was not repeated in Theobald's edition.]—Deighton: I leave to be eaten by worms.
Dost fall? Capell (i, 53): The Poet's great attention to nature in the death of these three persons, is extremely remarkable. It does not appear in any preceding edition, which way Iras comes by her death; the direction [given in Text. Note, 339] was intended to shew it: Iras, either in setting down the basket, or in leaning over it to take her farewell, gets a bite from an asp; and being it's first bite, when it's poison was most vigorous, she dies almost instantly: The exulting and triumphing manner that Cleopatra goes off in, shews the flow of her spirits, and her death is partly lengthen'd by that; partly, as we may conjecture, by her taking the weaken'd asp first to apply to her breast; when the fresh one is apply'd to her arm, she vanishes as her woman had done: The poison of both being weaken'd, Charmian's death is protracted of course: and if we further suppose her to have taken by accident the aspick that her partner had dy'd by, this will account for her words— ‘I partly feel thee’; and her exclamation in dying, which seems to indicate something of pain.—Steevens: Iras must be supposed to have applied an asp to her arm while her mistress was settling her dress, or I know not why she should fall so soon. —[This note of Steevens is quoted in substance or verbally, without dissent, by Dyce, Staunton, The Cowden-Clarkes, Hudson, Rolfe, Deighton.]—Halliwell quotes the following remarks by ‘Anon.’ (which appear in The Gentleman's Maga., 1790, lx, p. 127): ‘I apprehend a mistake in the stage-direction,—that it should be, Applying the asp to Iras, in order to see the effect of the poison, and the pain she had to encounter in death. The asp might be applied to Iras, either with or without her consent. This opinion is strengthened by Cleopatra saying, “This calls me base,” as it could not be base in Cleopatra, that Iras did it without her consent; but the baseness must be in her own want of resolution, and in the murder of Iras. When Cleopatra says, “Come thou mortal wretch,” I should suppose that Cleopatra then applied the first asp to her own breast.’—The Cowden-Clarkes: Throughout this scene, Iras has shown eagerness for death; witness her words,—‘Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, and we are for the dark’; and ‘I'll never see it; I am sure my nails are stronger than mine eyes.’—Delius: Steevens's assumption finds no support whatever in the text. Shakespeare wished to make it clear that Iras died of the grief which taking leave of her mistress caused her.—[Thus, also, the Cambridge Editors, who remark (Note viii.): ‘The context implies that the cause of [Iras's] death was grief at the leave-taking,’ which is also the opinion of the present Editor. We have already had an instance in this play where a broken heart has caused death, and, moreover, where the victim was a strong, vigorous man.—Ed.]
Hee'l make demand of her Johnson: He will enquire of her concerning me, and kiss her for giving him intelligence. and spend that kisse A. S. G. Canning (Sh. Studied in Eight Plays, p. 161): There is really nothing truly pathetic in these tragic events, if calmly considered. Cleopatra's jealous dread of Iras dying first, lest Antony should take a fancy to her, is almost ludicrous, according to modern ideas.—[Ah, for one hour of Dyce,—with his exclamation marks.—Ed.]
this knot intrinsicate Warburton: The expression is fine; it signifies a hidden, secret (intrinsecus) knot, as that which ties soul and body together.— Edwards (p. 184): How, secret as that which ties soul and body together? Why, it is that very knot she speaks of. But, what a lingua franca is here! a secret intrinsecus knot! How long has intrinsecus been an adjective? and, if it be not, how will he construe the sentence? Had our critic read Shakspeare with any attention, he might have known, that he uses intrinsecate for intricate, entangled, or tied in hard knots; ‘Like rats, oft bite the holy cords in twain, Too intrinsecate to unloose.’ Had it signified hidden, secret, it could no more have been bitten in twain, than untied, before it was found out.—Murray (N. E. D.): Apparently formed on Italian intrinsecato, familiar, confused in sense with intricato, intricate. Equivalent to intricate, involved, entangled. [Four references follow: 1560, Whitehorne, Arte Warre; 1599, Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, V, ii; Marston, Scourge of Villanie; and the present passage in Ant. & Cleop.]
Asse, vnpolicied Steevens: That is, an ass without more policy than to leave the means of death within my reach, and thereby deprive his triumph of its noblest decoration.—[Steevens did not improve the text, I think, when, in the Variorum of 1778, he expunged the comma after ‘Asse.’ A pause after the word, enforced by this comma, seems, to me at least, to impart an emphasis, with concentrated bitterness, to ‘unpolicied.’—Ed.]
Peace, peace Mrs Jameson (ii, 155): The magical play of fancy and the overpowering fascination of the character are kept up to the last: and when Cleopatra, on applying the asp, silences the lamentations of her women—‘Peace! peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse to sleep?’ These few words—the contrast between the tender beauty of the image and the horror of the situation—produce an affect more intensely mournful than all the ranting in the world. The generous devotion of her women adds to the moral charm which alone was wanting: and when Octavius hurries in too late to save his victim, and exclaims when gazing on her—‘She looks like sleep—As she would catch another Antony In her strong toil of grace,’ the image of her beauty and her irresistible arts, triumphant even in death, is at once brought before us, and one masterly and comprehensive stroke consummates this most wonderful, most dazzling delineation.
at my breast Bucknill (p. 221): It is curious that Shakespeare makes Cleopatra apply the aspic both to the breast and to the arm, since we find a discussion in old Primrose's Popular Errors, on this point. Primrose does not appear to have read Shakespeare, or with his love of reference he would certainly have shewn it. In his chapter on the mountebank's antidote, he says:—‘And now the story of Cleopatra comes to my minde. Petrus Victorius blames the painters, that paint Cleopatra applying the aspe to her paps, seeing it is manifest out of Plutarch, in the Life of Antonius, and out of Plinie likewise, that she applyed it to her arme. Zonaras relates that there appeared no signe of death upon her save two blew spots on her arme. Cæsar also in her statute which he carryed in triumph, applyed the aspe to her arme: For in the armes there are great veines and arteries, which doe quickly and in a straight way convey the venome to the heart, whereas in the paps the vessels are slender, which, by sundry circumvolutions onely, do lead to the heart.’
That suckes the Nurse asleepe Steevens: Before the publication of this piece, The Tragedy of Cleopatra, by Daniel, 1594, had made its appearance; but Dryden is more indebted to it than Shakspeare. Daniel has the following address to the asp: ‘Better than death death's office thou dischargest, That with one gentle touch can free our breath; And in a pleasing sleep our soul enlargest, Making ourselves not privy to our death. Therefore come thou, of wonders wonder chief, That open canst with such an easy key The door of life; come gentle, cunning thief, That from ourselves so steal'st ourselves away.’ [See Dryden's All for Love in Appendix.] asleepe Theobald proves by quotations from Lucius Florus, Solinus, Propertius, Lucan, and Ovid, that Shakespeare was justified in thus attributing a somnolent effect to the venom of the asp. The proof is not now needed. Batman vppon Bartholome is authority sufficient for the popular belief in Shakespeare's day. Probably, no one, however, among the early editors was as competent as Theobald to furnish, off-hand, such an array of learning.—Ed.
I will take thee too Theobald: 'Tis certain, Cleopatra is here design'd to apply one aspick to her arm, as she had before clap'd one to her breast. Dion Cassius, in the 51st Book of his Roman History is express as to small punctures of the asp being discover'd only on her arm. And Plutarch [verifies it.] Strabo, Vel leius Paterculus, Eutropius, and Lucius Florus leave this matter as much at large. Leonardo Augustini, among his antique gems, exhibits one of Cleopatra upon an agot, with an aspick biting her right breast. And Strada, the Mantuan Antiquary, who gives us a medal of this princess, says, that she died by serpents applied to her breasts. And Domitius Calderinus, upon the 59th Epigram of the ivth Book of Martial, says precisely, that she procured her own death by applying Asps to her breast and arm.
Dyes Sir Thomas Browne (Vulgar Errors, Book V, Chap. xii, p. 291, ed. 1672): The picture concerning the death of Cleopatra with two Asps or venemous Serpents unto her arms, or breasts, or both, requires consideration: for therein (beside that this variety is not excusable) the thing it self is questionable; nor is it indisputably certain what manner of death she died. Plutarch in the life of Antony plainly delivereth, that no man knew the manner of her death; for some affirmed she perished by poison, which she always carried in a little hollow comb, and wore it in her hair. Beside, there were never any Asps discovered in the place of her death, although two of her Maids perished also with her; only it was said, two small and almost insensible pricks were found upon her arm; which was all the ground that Cæsar had to presume the manner of her death. Galen who was contemporary unto Plutarch, delivereth two wayes of her death: that she killed her self by the bite of an Asp, or bit an hole in her arm, and poured poison therein. Strabo that lived before them both hath also two opinions; that she died by the bite of an Asp, or else a poisonous ointment. We might question the length of the Asps, which are sometimes described exceeding short; whereas the Chersæa or land-Asp which most conceive she used, is above four cubits long. Their number is not unquestionable; for whereas there are generally two described, Augustus (as Plutarch relateth) did carry in his triumph the Image of Cleopatra but with one Asp unto her arm. As for the two pricks, or little spots in her arm, they infer not their plurality: for like the Viper, the Asp hath two teeth; whereby it left this impression, or double puncture behind it. And lastly, We might question the place; for some apply them unto her breast, which notwithstanding will not consist with the History; and Petrus Victorius hath well observed the same. But herein the mistake was easie; it being the custom in capital malefactors to apply them unto the breast, as the Author De Theriaca ad Pisonem, an eye witness hereof in Alexandria, where Cleopatra died, determineth: I beheld, saith he, in Alexandria, how suddenly these Serpents bereave a man of life; for when any one is condemned to this kind of death, if they intend to use him favourably, that is, to dispatch him suddenly, they fasten an Asp unto his breast; and bidding him walk about, he presently perisheth thereby.
In this wilde World Capell (i, 53; reading vile): Speaking them after a pause; with eyes fix'd upon her dead mistress, and a look of the tenderest affection. Vile was spelt—vilde, when this play was in penning, which occasion'd the present corruption; for so ‘wilde’ will be thought by most readers, who bestow a little reflec tion upon the difference between the two words in point of propriety.—Steevens: I suppose she means by this wild world, this world which by the death of Antony is become a desert to her. A wild is a desert. Our author, however, might have written wild (i. e. vile according to ancient spelling), for worthless.—Collier (ed. ii): There is not the slightest pretext for altering ‘wild’ to the commonplace vile, as has been done under the supposition that vile having been of old often misprinted vilde (a form to which the Rev. Mr Dyce strangely adheres), it was in this place mistaken for ‘wild.’ Charmian might well call the world ‘wild,’ desert, and savage, after the deaths of Antony, Cleopatra, and others whom she loved. This passage is another proof how the corruption of vild, where vile was intended, makes confusion in the heads of editors, as well as in the texts of dramatists; if vile had not sometimes been misprinted vild, nobody would have thought of amending ‘wild world’ to ‘vile world.’ If any change were made, we should prefer here wide to vile; but in truth it is an offence against all just rules of criticism to attempt an emendation where none is required.—R. G. White (ed. i): There is not sufficient justification for the change [to vile]. At that time the world seemed wild enough to poor Charmian.—Dyce (ed. i): Capell saw (what is plain enough) that vilde had been by mistake transformed into ‘wilde.’ (The folio, with its usual inconsistency of spelling, has in some places ‘vild’ and ‘vilde,’—in others ‘vile.’）—Ibid. (ed. ii): On the above remark [of Collier] I have to remark:—First, That I no longer ‘adhere’ to the old spelling vild. . . . Secondly, That the passages in early books where vild (i. e. vile) is misprinted wild are so very numerous, that there can be no doubt of the same error having been committed in the passage now under consideration. We meet with the following examples in the plays of Beaumont & Fletcher:—‘I will not lose a word To this wild [read vild = vile] woman,’ etc.—The Maid's Tragedy, III, i; ‘That now dares say I am a stranger, not the same, more wild [read vild = vile],’ etc.—The Faithful Shepherdess, IV, iv; ‘To do these wild [so the first 4to, the later 4tos vild, folio 1679 vile] unmanly things.’—The Scornful Lady, III, i; ‘Or am I of so wild [read vild = vile] and low a blood,’ etc.—The Little French Lawyer, III, v. Thirdly, That ‘vile world,’ which Collier terms a ‘commonplace phrase,’ occurs in a passage of 2 Henry VI: V, ii, a passage which (as it is not found in The First Part of the Contention, etc.) we may confidently ascribe to Shakespeare:—‘O, let the vile world end, And the promisèd flames of the last day, Knit earth and heaven together!’ Fourthly, That ‘wide,’ [Collier's suggestion,] has no propriety here, not being (what is obviously required) a vituperative epithet.—[‘Wild’ seems, I think, too weak in Charmian's mouth, in comparison with vile.—Ed.]
Downie Windowes Malone: So, in Venus and Adonis: ‘Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth.’
your Crownes away Johnson: This is well amended [awry] by the editors.—James Nichols (ii, 3): Thus arrayed [in her robe and crown] Cleopatra applies the aspick,—its poison acts quickly and painlessly; life soon succumbs to its influence, and as she dies, her head naturally falls backward on the couch, and the crown, compressed between the back of the head and the couch, necessarily springs ‘away’ from the forehead. This Charmian perceives, and says, ‘your crown's away; I'll mend it,’ which she does by drawing it gently down again.—Dyce, in his first edition, quoted Steevens's note on line 374. In his second edition he added an extract from North's Plutarch wherein Charmian is described as trimming the diadem which Cleopatra wore upon her head; he then concluded as follows: ‘The addition I have now made to my original note on this passage has been called forth by the thrice-foolish attempt to defend the blunder of the Folio, ‘away,’ [in the foregoing note by James Nichols].’—[Surely, no one, after reading Nichols's note, will approve of Dyce's intemperate words. For myself, I think the note, in its praiseworthy attempt to vindicate the Folio, is eminently just, and am ready to share any condemnation which may properly fall on its writer. In itself, the phrase ‘your crown's away’ is more smooth and liquid than the crooked, harsh ‘your crown's awry.’ The sole objection to ‘away’ that I can perceive (and it is trivial) is the rhyme with ‘play,’ in the next line; but the words can be so spoken that the rhyme will be unnoticeable. Dyce's baptismal name was well bestowed; he considered Shakespeare as his exclusive realm, and in this realm, ‘Like Alexander he would reign, And he would reign alone,’—woe to any one who ventured a foothold there! Collier always believed that Dyce's bitter and inappeasible hostility dated from the discovery that he was preparing an edition of Shakespeare. A. E. Brae, an unusually keen critic, was another of Dyce's aversions. Brae was, by profession, a dentist; therefore, presumably, Dyce felt less compunction in attacking him, certainly tooth, and possibly nail. Ingleby, too, received one of Dyce's bitterest strokes. Lettsom appears to have been the only exception in Dyce's horizon, and to him Dyce paid homage throughout his second edition. The emendation ‘awry,’ be it observed, is Rowe's, not Pope's, to whom it is almost universally attributed. Steevens quotes the corresponding passage in Daniels' Tragedie of Cleopatra, 1594:—‘And sencelesse, in her sinking downe she wryes The Diademe vvhich on her head she vvore: Which Charmion (poore weake feeble maid) espies, And hastes to right it as it vvas before. For Eras now was dead.’—line 1651, ed. Grosart.—Ed.] 374. and then play——] Steevens: That is, play her part in this tragic scene by destroying herself; or she may mean, that having performed her last office for her mistress, she will accept the permission given her (in lines 278, 279) to ‘play till doomsday.’—[I know of no explanation of these words other than Steevens's, which seems to have been universally adopted; but the fact that the sentence is broken off renders possible a different conclusion. I cannot believe that the disregard of this long dash after ‘play,’ in the Folio, is judicious. It is of rare occurrence, at least in this play, and should be, therefore, all the more observed. In proof of its rarity, see line 378, where it should be, but is not. After line 368, above, it has been by all editors punctiliously retained; I think that so it should have been here.—Ed.]
Is this well done? Singer: This refers to a deception. Charmian, whispered by Cleopatra, went out to manage the introduction of the Clown with the asps.— R. G. White gives a similar explanation, which might be accepted were it not that the question is exactly copied from North's Plutarch, where the Guard could not have known of Charmian's agency in the matter. Charmian's reply, moreover, shows that it refers to the dead queen.—Ed.]
thy thoughts Touch their effects in this That is, thy forebodings are realised here.
purposes For the concluding s see I, iv, 11. Dyce conjectured purpose, not knowing that he had been virtually anticipated by Walker, and that Walker had been anticipated by Pope. and being Royall Hunter (ii, 290): This passage is left without any annotation, and yet there is meaning in it which many readers might not discover. Dollabella had alluded to the augurs. This introduces the idea of the flight of birds; this the idea of hawking; and Cleopatra, brave in her death, is represented under the image of a hawk levelling at the purposes of her conqueror, and rendering them dead or ineffectual. The idea of hawking introduced the idea of other field-sports, and to the hawk Shakespeare transfers the attribute of a hart-royal, which had the privilege of roaming at large unmolested, and taking its own way to its lair. Thus Cleopatra being ‘royal’ had ‘taken her own way’ in self-destruction. In The Gentleman's Recreation, p. 6, the liberty of the hart-royal is thus described:—‘If the King or Queen shall happen to hunt or chase a hart, and he escape with life, he shall ever after be called a hart-royal; but if he fly so far from the forest or chase that it is unlikely he will ever return of his own accord to the place aforesaid, and that proclamation be made in all towns and villages thereabout, that none shall kill or offend him, but that he may safely return, if he list, he is then called a hart royal proclaimed.’—Madden (p. 19): The male red deer is now ordinarily called a stag, the female a hind, and the young a calf. . . . But if you would speak in the strict language of woodcraft, you would call him in the first year ‘a Hind calfe, or a calfe, the second yeere you shall call him a Broket; . . . the sixt yeere you shall call him a Hart. . . . But if the king or queene doe hunt or chace him, and he escape away aliue, then after such a hunting or chacing he is called Hart Royall.’—Manwood, The Forest Lawes, 1598. Thenceforth, after proclamation, he was free to return to the forest from whence he came, and no man might meddle with a hart royal proclaimed. Hunter suggests [as above] that when Cæsar said of Cleopatra that she ‘being royal, Took her own way,’ the licence accorded to the hart royal to go his own way was present to his mind; and certainly instances may be found in Shakespeare of similar conceits. The stag, or hart, at six years of age should have acquired ‘his rights,’—that is to say, the brow, bay, and trey antlers—and two points on top of each horn. The modern use of the term ‘royal’ to denote a stag with all his rights and three on top, is altogether inaccurate, and without warranty of any writer of authority on woodcraft.
'twould appeare By externall swelling Bucknill (p. 221) quotes from Ward's Diary:—‘When one was poisoned at Coventrie, hee was taken upp out of his grave; but as the apothecarie said the earth would keep him from swelling, so that no judgement could be made thereby; but being opened, they found the poison in his stomach.'—Moyes (p. 58): [This speech of Cæsar] evidently embodies a popular belief, though what has given rise to it is not clear.
something blowne Johnson: The flesh is somewhat puffed or swoln.
vpon the Caues of Nyle Hunter (ii, 291): Mr Barry has suggested to me that for ‘caves’ we should read canes, the reeds of Nile. This reading may be supported by the following passage in the writings of Bishop Taylor:—‘The canes of Egypt, when they newly arise from their bed of mud and slime of Nilus, start into equal and continual length, and are interrupted with hard knots,’ etc.—Collier (ed. i): It is very obvious that the aspick might leave its slime upon the ‘caves’ of Nile as well as upon the canes of Nile.—Hudson: Alexandria was supplied with water brought from the Nile in underground canals; which may be the caves meant.
She hath pursu'de Conclusions infinite Steevens: To ‘pursue conclusions,’ is to try experiments. So, in Hamlet: ‘like the famous ape, To try conclusions,’ etc. [III, iv, 194.] Again, in Cymbeline: ‘I did amplify my judgment in Other conclusions.’ [I, v, 17.]
Of easie wayes to dye Steevens: Such was the death brought on by the aspick's venom. Thus Lucan, lib. ix, 815: ‘At tibi, Leve miser, fixus præcordia pressit Niliacâ serpente cruor; nulloque dolore Testatus morsus, subitâ caligine mortem Accipis, et Stygias somno descendis ad umbras.’—[Singer takes, without acknowledgement, this quotation from Steevens, as is evident from his copying an error in the numbering of the lines, and Steevens took it, without acknowledgement, from Theobald, who, as we have seen, gives a wealth of classical references to this subject.—Ed.]
shall clip Steevens: That is, enfold. See II, vii, 80; and IV, viii, 10.
1 * Even if this were true, the retort is obvious that neither is there anything resembling the murder-scene in Macbeth.
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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