Cas. He calls me boy; and chides, as he had To beat me out of Egypt: my messenger, Cæsar to Antony: Let the old ruffian know, Mec. He is twenty mien to one. Let our best heads Ant. Why should he not? No. To-morrow, soldier, By sea and land I'll fight: or I will live, Be bounteous at our meal.-Give me thy hand, 1 Feast days, in the colleges of either university, are called gaudy days, as they were formerly in the Inns of Court. From gaudium, (says Blount,) because, to say truth, they are days of joy, as bringing good cheer to the hungry students.' 2 This may have been caught from Harington's Ari. osto, b. xii. : 'Death goeth about the field, rejoicing mickle Ant. And thou art honest too. Serv. Cleo. What does he mean? Tend me to-night; May be, it is the period of your duty: Eno. Ant. Ho, ho, ho !!! Now the witch take me, if I meant it thus! friends, You take me in too dolorous a sense: I spake to you for your comfort: did desire you 1 Sold. Brother, good night: to-morrow is the day. 6 i. e. take advantage of. 7 Let the survivor take all; no composition; victory or death. So in King Lear :- unbonneted he runs, And bids what will, take all.' 8 Or if you see me more, you will see me a mangled shadow, only the external form of what I was.' The Death is armed with a weapon in Statius, Theb. i. 633-thought is, as usual, taken from North's translation of 'Mors fila sororum 3 Plutarch says of Antony, He used a manner of phrase in his speeche called Asiatic, which carried the best grace at that time, and was much like to him in his manners and life; for it was full of ostentation, foolish braverie, and vaine ambition.'-North's Translation. 4 i. e. the estridge falcon. 5 Upton would read : 'He hath many other ways to die: mean time I laugh at his challenge.' This is certainly the sense of Plutarch, and given so in modern translations; but Shakspeare was misled by the ambiguity of the old one :- Antonius sent again to challenge Cæsar to fight him: Cæsar answered, that he had many other ways to die than so." And full of purpose. 4 Sold. 1 Sold. 'Tis a brave army, Music of Hautboys under the Stage. More tight at this, than thou: Despatch.-O love, Enter an Officer, armed. A workman in't.-Good morrow to thee; welcome: [Shout. Trumpets. Flourish. Enter other Officers, and Soldiers. 2 Off. The morn is fair.-Good morrow, general. All. Good morrow, general. Ant. 'Tis well blown, lads. 2 Sold. Hark! 1 Sold. Music i'the air. 3 Sold. Under the earth. 4 Sold. Does't not? S Sold. No. 1 Sold. Peace, I say. What should this mean? 2 Sold. "Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony lov'd, 2 This is from the old translation of Plutarch:Within a little of midnight, when all the citie was quiet, full of feare, and sorrowe, thinking what would be the issue and end of this warre, it is saide that sodainely they heard a marvellous sweete harmonie of sundry sortes of instruments of musicke, with the cry of a multitude of people as they had beene dauncinge, and had song as they use in Bacchus feastes, with movinges and turnings after the manner of the satyres: and it seemed that this daunce went through the city unto the gate that opened to the enemies, and that all the troupe that made this noise they heard went out of the Char. Please you, retire to your chamber? Lead me, He goes forth gallantly. That he and Cæsar might Sold. The gods make this a happy day to Antony! Sold. Sold. (I will subscribe) gentle adieus, and greetings: [Exeunt. SCENE VI. Cæsar's Camp before Alexandria. Cas. Go forth, Agrippa, and begin the fight; Cas. Antony Go, charge Agrippa, Enter a Soldier of Cæsar's. Sold. Mock not, Enobarbus. I tell you true: Best you saf'd the bringer Out of the host; I must attend mine office, Or would have done't myself. Your emperor Continues still a Jove. [Exit Soldier. Eno. I am alone the villain of the earth, And feel I am so most. O, Antony, Thou mine of bounty, how would'st thou have paid My better service, when my turpitude Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart: Ant. They do retire. Before the sun shall see us, we'll spill the blood Enter CLEOPATRA, attended. To this great fairy I'll commend thy acts, Make her thanks bless thee.-O, thou day o' the world, Chain mine arm'd neck; leap thou, attire and all, Through proof of harness to my heart, and there Ride on the pants triumphing. Cleo. Lord of lords! O, infinite virtue! com'st thou smiling from The world's great snare uncaught? Ant. My nightingale, We have beat them to their beds. What, girl? though gray Do something mingle with our younger brown; yet have we A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can An armour all of gold: it was a king's. Ant. He has deserv'd it: were it carbuncled Like holy Phoebus' car.-Give me thy hand; To camp this host, we all would sup together Scar. We'll beat 'em into bench-holes ; I have That heaven and earth may strike their sounds toyet Room for six scotches more. Enter EROS. Eros. They are beaten, sir; and our advantage in Cecil's Secret Correspondence, published by Lord serves For a fair victory. I The meaning is that the world shall then enjoy the blessings of peace undisturbed. sages illustrate this passage:- Hailes, 1766: And beside, until a man be sure that this embryo is likely to receive life, I will leave it like an abort in a bench-hole. 5 Antony, after his success, intends to bring his offiThe following pas-cers to sup with Cleopatra, and orders notice to be given her of their coming. 6 Fairy, in former times, did not signify only a diminutive imaginary being, but an enchanter; in which sense it is used here. 'Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. King John. There is not now a rebel's sword unsheath'd, But peace puts forth her olive every where.' King Henry VI. Part II. Act iv. Sc. 4. 2 This generosity (says Enobarbus) swells my heart, so that it will quickly break, I thought break it not, Bloon is used for puffed or swelled in the last scene:on her breast There is a vent of blood, and something blown.' And in Lear: 'No blown ambition doth our arms excite.' Thought here also signifies grief. See Act iii. Sc. 2. 3 Our oppression' means the force by which we are oppressed or overpowered. 7 i. e. armour of proof. Harnois, Fr.; arnese, Ital. 8 i. e. the war. So in the 116th Psalm: The snares of death compassed me round about.' Thus also Statius: circum undique lethi Vallavere plaga. 9 At all plays of barriers the boundary is called a goal; to win a goal is to be superior in a contest of activity. 10 With spirit and exultation, such as becomes the brave warriors that own them. 11 Tabourines were small drums.' SCENE IX. Cæsar's Camp. Sentinels on their | We'd fight there too. But this it is; Our foot Post. Enter ENOBARBUS. 1 Sold. If we be not reliev'd within this hour, We must return to the court of guard: The night Is shiny: and, they say, we shall embattle By the second hour i' the morn. 2 Sold. A shrewd one to us. This last day was O, bear me witness, night 3 Sold. What man is this? Stand close, and list him. 1 Sold. 3 Sold. Hark further. Enobarbus! Peace; Eno. O, sovereign mistress of true melancholy,' May hang no longer on me: Throw my heart O, Antony! O, Antony! 2 Sold. To him. Let's speak [Dies. 1 Sold. Let's hear him, for the things he speaks May concern Cæsar. 3 Sold. 1 Sold. Swoons rather; for so bad a prayer as his But he sleeps. Was never yet for sleep. 2 Sold. Let's do so. Go we to him. 3 Sold. Awake, awake, sir; speak to us. Hark, the drums Demurely wake the sleepers. 3 Sold. Come on, then ; He may recover yet. Let us bear him note: our hour Hast sold me to this novice; and my heart [Exeunt with the Body. 1 The court of guard is the guard-room, the place where the guard musters. The phrase is used again in Othello. 2 Discharge, as a sponge when squeezed discharges the moisture it had imbibed. 3 'It is painful to find the gloomy dignity of this noble scene destroyed by the intrusion of a conceit so far fetched and unaffecting.'-Johnson. Steevens has justly observed, that Shakspeare, in most of his conceits, is kept in countenance by his contemporaries. We have something similar in Daniel's 118th Sonnet, ed. 1594 : Still must I whet my young desires abated, Upon the flint of such a heart rebelling.' 4 Raught is the ancient preterite of the verb to reach. 5 Demurely for solemnly. 6 Some words appear to have been accidentally omitted in the old copy, which Malone has supplied by the phrase, Let's seek a spot.' Rowe supplied the omission by the words, 'Further on.' 7 Where we may but discover their numbers, and see their motions.' 8 But, in its exceptive sense, for be out, i. e. without. Steevens has adduced a passage from the MS. Romance of Guillaume de Palerne, in the Library of King's Coll. Cambridge, in which the orthography almost explains the word: 'I sayle now in the see as schip boute mast, Boute anker, or ore, or any semlych sayle.' 9 The old copy reads, auguries. Augurs, the plural of augur, was anciently spelled augures, which we Whose bosom was my crownet,13 my chief end, should read here, and not augurers, improperly sub- 10 Cleopatra first belonged to Julius Cæsar, then to Antony, and now, as Antony supposes, to Augustus. happy emendation of Sir Thomas Hanmer. In A Mid11 The old editions read, pannell'd. Spaniel'd is the summer Night's Dream, Helena says to Demetrius :I am your spaniel,-only give me leave, Unworthy as I am, to follow you.' 12 This grave charm' probably means this deadly or destructive peace of witchcraft. In this sense the epithet grave is often used by Chapman in his translation of Homer. Thus in the nineteenth book : "but not far hence the fatal minutes are It seems to be employed in the sense of the Latin word Of thy grave ruin.' gravis. 13 That which I looked to as the reward or crown of In All's Well that Ends Well we have:- Still the fine's my endeavours.' The allusion is to finis coronal opus. the crown.' pricking at the belt or girdle, still practised by juggling 14 The allusion is to the game of fast and loose, or cheats at fairs, and which was practised by the gipsies in Shakspeare's time, as appears in an Epigram of Thomas Freeman's, in his collection, called Run and a great Cast,' 1614, which is printed in the Variorum tion of the game. See also Scot's Discoverie of WitchShakspeare, together with Sir John Hawkins's descripcraft, 1584, p. 336. Enter CLEOPATRA. Ah, thou spell! Avaunt. Cleo. Why is my lord enrag'd against his love? Eros. It does, my lord. Ant. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is With her prepared nails. [Exit CLEO.] Tis well Which, whilst it was mine, had annex'd unto't thour't gone, If it be well to live: But better 'twere Thou fell'st into my fury, for one death Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o' the moon; club, A million more, now lost,-she, Eros, has Nay, weep not, gentle Eros; there is left us She has robb'd me of my sword. Ant. Mar. Ant. Dead, then? Dead. Ant. Unarm, Eros; the long day's task is done, And we must sleep:-That thou depart'st hence safe, The soul and body rive not more in parting," Ant. Eros, thou yet behold'st me? A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain or blue promontory They are black vesper's pageants." Ay, my lord. 1 i. e. for the smallest pieces of money. reads, for dolts ;' and, at Mr. Tyrwhitt's suggestion, Steevens reads, "to dolts.' 2 Shakspeare was probably indebted to Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, b. ix. for the story of Lichas. 3 i. e. than Ajax Telamon for the armour of Achilles, In which our faulty apprehensions forge Bussy D'Ambois, 7 The beauty both of the expression and the allusion is lost, unless we recollect the frequency and the nature of these shows in Shakspeare's age. The following apposite passage from a sermon, by Bishop Hall, is cited by Mr. Boswell:-'I feare some of you are like the pageants of your great solemnities, wherein there is a show of a solid body, whether of a lion, or elephant, or unicorne; but if they be curiously look'd into, there is nothing but cloth, and sticks, and ayre." 8 i. e. the fleeting away of the clouds destroys the picture.' 9 Knave was familiarly used for servant. Thus in A Mery Geste of Robyn Hoode: 'I shall thee lende lyttle John my man, But it had already begun to have no favourable signifi- 10 To pack the cards' was to put them together in an unfair manner. It is often used metaphorically, for contriving together to deceive another. The poet meant to say, that Cleopatra, by collusion, played the great game they were engaged in falsely, so as to sacrifice Antony's fame to that of his enemy. There is an equivoque between trump and triumph. The game of trump (triomphe, Fr.) was then popular; it was a rude prototype of whist. 11 The battery from my heart' means the battery proceeding from my heart, which is strong enough to break through the sevenfold shield of Ajax; I wish it were strong enough to cleave my sides and destroy me.' 12 i. e. the thing that contains thee. 13 Steevens thinks that the poet wrote life, and not length. But length may signify extension or protraction of life. 14 A passage in King Henry V. explains this :- |