Hath my poor boy done aught but well, I died, whilst in the womb he stay'd Whose father then (as men report, Thou should'st have been, and shielded him MOTH. Lucina lent not me her aid, SICI. Great nature, like his ancestry, That he deserv'd the praise o'the world, 1 BRO. When once he was mature for man, That could stand up his parallel; Or fruitful object be Could deem his dignity? One would think that, Shakspeare's style being too refined for his audiences, the managers had employed some playwright of the old school to regale them with a touch of " King Cambyses' vein." The margin would be too honourable a place for so impertinent an interpolation. RITSON, That from me was Posthumus ript,] Perhaps we should read: Came crying 'mongst his foes. JOHNSON. This circumstance is met with in The Devil's Charter, 1607. The play of Cymbeline did not appear in print till 1623: "What would'st thou run again into my womb? MOTH. With marriage wherefore was he mock'd, To be exil❜d, and thrown SICI. Why did you suffer Iachimo, To taint his nobler heart and brain 6 And to become the geck and scorn O' the other's villainy? 2 BRO. For this, from stiller seats we came, Our fealty, and Tenantius" right, 1 BRO. Like hardiment Posthúmus hath Why hast thou thus adjourn'd The graces for his merits due; SICI. Thy crystal window ope; look out; No longer exercise, Upon a valiant race, thy harsh And potent injuries: With marriage wherefore was he mock'd,] The same phrase occurs in Measure for Measure: "I hope you will not mock me with a husband.” STEEVENS. "And to become the geck-] And permit Posthumus to become the geck, &c. MALONE. A geck is a fool. See Vol. V. p. 415, n. 7. STEEVENS. 7 -Tenantius'-] See p. 407, n. 7. STEEVENS. MOTH. Since, Jupiter, our son is good, Take off his miseries. SICI. Peep through thy marble mansion; help! To the shining synod of the rest, 2 BRO. Help, Jupiter; or we appeal, JUPITER descends in Thunder and Lightning, sitting upon an Eagle: he throws a Thunder-bolt. The Ghosts fall on their Knees. JUP. No more, you petty spirits of region low, No care of yours it is; you know, 'tis ours. 8 His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent. Jupiter descends-] It appears from Acolastus, a comedy by T.Palsgrave, chaplain to King Henry VIII. bl. 1. 1540, that the descent of deities was common to our stage in its earliest state: "Of whyche the lyke thyng is used to be shewed now a days in stage-plaies, when some God or some Saynt is made to appere forth of a cloude, and succoureth the parties which seemed to be towardes some great danger, through the Soudan's crueltie." The author, for fear this description should not be supposed to extend itself to our theatres, adds in a marginal note, "the lyke maner used nowe at our days in stage playes." STEEVENS. The more delay'd, delighted.] That is, the more delightful Our Jovial star reign'd at his birth, and in And happier much by his affliction made. [Ascends. SICI. He came in thunder; his celestial breath Was sulphurous to smell: the holy eagle for being delayed. It is scarcely necessary to observe, in the eighteenth volume, that Shakspeare uses indiscriminately the active and passive participles. M. MASON. Delighted is here either used for delighted in, or for delighting. So, in Othello: "If virtue no delighted beauty lack" MALONE. Though it be hardly worth while to waste a conjecture on the wretched stuff before us, perhaps the author of it, instead of delighted wrote dilated, i. e. expanded, rendered more copious. This participle occurs in King Henry V. and the verb in Othello. 1 STEEVENS 1my palace crystalline.] Milton has transplanted this idea into his verses In Obitum Præsulis Eliensis : "Ventum est Olympi & regiam chrystallinam." "He came in thunder; his celestial breath STEEVENS. Was sulphurous to smell:] A passage like this one may suppose to have been ridiculed by Ben Jonson, when in Every Man in his Humour he puts the following strain of poetry into the mouth of Justice Clement: 66 testify, "How Saturn sitting in an ebon cloud, "Disrob'd his podex white as ivory, "And through the welkin thunder'd all aloud.' If, however, the dates of Jonson's play and Chapman's translation of the eleventh Book of Homer's Iliad, are at all reconcileable, one might be tempted to regard the passage last quoted as a ridicule on the following: 3 Stoop'd, as to foot us: his ascension is More sweet than our bless'd fields: his royal bird 3 ALL. Thanks, Jupiter! SICI. The marble pavement closes, he is enter'd bert: "(To bring them furious to the field) sat thundring out STEEVENS. to foot us:] i. e. to grasp us in his pounces. So, Her- "And till they foot and clutch their prey." STEEVENS. "Some sitting on the beach, to prune their painted breasts." See Vol. VII. p. 115, n. 7; and Vol. XI. p. 189, n. 2. cloys his beak,] claws his beak. Perhaps we should read: TYRWHITT. STEEVENS. A cley is the same with a claw in old language. FARmer. "Without wetyng of his clees." : Again, in Ben Jonson's Underwoods: "Of vulture death and those relentless cleys." Barrett, in his Alvearie, 1580, speaks "of a disease in cattell STEEVENS. The marble pavement closes,] So, in T. Heywood's Troia "A general shout is given, "And strikes against the marble floors of heaven." HOLT WHITE. |