Solemn musick.8 Enter, as in an apparition, Sicilius Leonatus, father to Posthumus, an old man, attired like a warrior; leading in his hand an ancient matron, his wife, and mother to Posthumus, with musick before them. Then, after other musick, follow the two young Leonati, brothers to Posthumus, with wounds as they died in the wars. They circle Posthumus round, as he lies sleeping.. Sici. No more, thou thunder-master, show Thy spite on mortal flies: With Mars fall out, with Juno chide, That thy adulteries Rates, and revenges. Hath my poor boy done aught but well, I died, whilst in the womb he stay'd 8 Solemn musick. &c.] Here follow a vision, a masque, and a prophesy, which interrupt the fable without the least necessity, and unmeasurably lengthen this Act. I think it plainly foisted in afterwards for mere show, and apparently not of Shakspeare. Pope. Every reader must be of the same opinion. The subsequent narratives of Posthumus, which render this masque, &c. unnecessary, (or perhaps the scenical directions supplied by the poet himself) seem to have excited some manager of a theatre to disgrace the play by the present metrical interpolation. Shakspeare, who has conducted his fifth Act with such matchless skill, could never have designed the vision to be twice described by Posthumus, had this contemptible nonsense been previously delivered on the stage. The following passage from Dr. Farmer's Essay will show that it was no unusual thing for the players to indulge themselves in making additions equally unjustifiable:-"We have a sufficient instance of the liberties taken by the actors, in an old pamphlet by Nash, called Lenten Stuffe, with the Prayse of the Red Herring, 4to. 1599, where he assures us, that in a play of his called The Isle of Dogs, foure Acts, without his consent, or the least guess of his drift or scope, were supplied by the players.” Steevens. 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. 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 In eye of Imogen, that best Could deem his dignity? Moth. With marriage wherefore was he mock'd, To be exil'd, and thrown From Leonati' seat and cast Sici. Why did you suffer Iachimo, To taint his nobler heart and brain And to become the geck2 and scorn 9 That from me was Posthúmus ript,] Perhaps we should read: That from my womb Posthumus ript, 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? "If thou wert there, thou should'st be Posthumus, 1 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. 2 And to become the geck-] And permit Posthumus to become the geck, &c. Malone. 2 Bro. For this, from stiller seats we came, 1 Bro. Like hardiment Posthumus hath Sici. Thy chrystal window ope; look out; Upon a valiant race, thy harsh And potent injuries: 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, Against thy deity. 2 Bro. Help, Jupiter; or we appeal, And from thy justice fly. JUPITER descends in Thunder and Lightning, sitting up-on an Eagle: he throws a Thunder-bolt. The Ghosts, fall on their Knees. A geck is a fool. Steevens. 3 Tenantius'-] See p. 8, n. 7. Steevens. 4 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. Jup. No more, you petty spirits of region low, No care of yours it is; you know, 'tis ours. His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent. And happier much by his affliction made. [Ascends Sici. He came in thunder; his celestial breath Was sulphurous to smell: the holy eagle Stoop'd, as to foot us: his ascension is 5 The more delay'd, delighted.] That is, the more delightful for being delayed.-It is scarcely necessary to observe, in this play and in Hamlet, 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. 6 Steevens. my palace crystalline.] Milton has transplanted this idea into his verses In Obitum Præsulis Eliensis: "Ventum est Olympi et regiam chrystallinam." Steevens 7 He came in thunder; his celestial breath 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: More sweet than our bless'd fields: his royal bird All. Thanks, Jupiter! Sici. The marble pavement closes,2 he is enter'd His radiant roof:-Away! and, to be blest, Let us with care perform his great behest. [Ghosts vanish. Post. [waking] Sleep, thou hast been a grandsire, and begot A father to me: and thou hast created "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: "(To bring them furious to the field) sat thundring out aloud." Fol. edit. p. 143. Steevens. to foot us:] i. e. to grasp us in his pounces. So, Herbert: "And till they, foot and clutch their prey," Steevens. 9 Prunes the immortal wing,] A bird is said to prune himself when he clears his feathers from superfluities. So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song I: "Some sitting on the beach, to prune their painted breasts." See Vol. IV, p. 87, n. 6; and Vol. VII, p. 153, n. 2. Steevens. A cley is the same with a claw in old language. Farmer. Again, in Ben Jonson's Underwoods: 66 from the seize "Of vulture death and those relentless cleys." Barrett, in his Alvearie, 1580, speaks "of a disease in cattell betwixt the clees of their feete." And in The Book of Hawking, &c. bl. 1. no date, under the article Pounces, it is said, "The cleis within the fote ye shall call aright her pounces." To claw their beaks, is an accustomed action with hawks and eagles. Steevens. 2 The marble pavement closes,] So, in T. Heywood's Troia Britannica, Cant. xii, st. 77, 1609: "A general shout is given, "And strikes against the marble floors of heaven." H. White. |