say, Addition of his envy!! Say, good Cæsar, ledg'd, yours, Put we i' the roll of conquest: still be it For we intend so to dispose you, as Not so: Adieu. The gods forbid · Cleo. Nay, 'tis most certain, Iras: Saucy lictors Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see O, the good gods! Iras. I'll never see it; for, I am sure, my nails Cleo. Why, that's the way Show me, my women, like a queen ;-Go fetch [Exeunt CESAR, and his Train. To play till doomsday.-Bring our crown and all: Cleo. He words me, girls, he words me, that I Be noble to myself: but hark thee, Charmian. Cleo. Hie thee again : Madam, I will. Re-enter DOLABELLA. Dol. Where is the queen? Char. Cleo. Behold, sir. [Exit CHARMIAN. Dol. Madam, as thereto sworn by your command, 1 That this fellow should add one more parcel or item to the sum of my disgraces, namely, his own malice.' 2 i. e. common, ordinary. 3 With is here used with the power of by. 4 i. e. fortune. 'Begone, or I shall exert that royal spirit which I had in my prosperity, in spite of the imbecility of my present weak condition.' Chaucer has a similar image in his Canterbury Tales, v. 3180:- 'Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken.' 5 i. e. we answer for that which others have merited by their transgressions. 6Be not a prisoner in imagination, when in reality you are free.' 7 i. e. the lively or quick-witted comedians. S It has been already observed that the parts of females were played by boys on our ancient stage. Nash, in his Pierce Pennilesse, makes it a subject of exultation that our players are not as the players beyond sea, that have whores and common courtesans to play women's parts. To obviate the impropriety of men representing women, T. Goff, in his Tragedy of the Raging Turk, 1631, has no female character. 9 Absurd here means unmeet, unfitting, unreasonable. IC Sirrah was not anciently ar appellation either Wherefore's this noise? Guard. [Exit IRAS. A Noise within. Enter one of the Guard. Here is a rural fellow, Re-enter Guard, with a Clown, bringing a Basket. Clown. Truly I have him; but I would not be the party that should desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal; those, that do die of it, do seldom or never recover. reproachful or injurious; being applied, with a sort of I am now (says Cleopatra) whole as the marble, 13 Worm is used by our old writers to signify a serpent The word is pure Saxon, and is still used in the north in the same sense. We have it still in the blind-worn and slow-worm. Shakspeare uses it several times.The notion of a serpent that caused death without pain was an ancient fable, and is here adopted with propriety The worm of Nile was the asp of the ancients, which Dr. Shaw says is wholly unknown to us. Char. Cleo. Remember'st thou any that have died on't? | Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, Clown. Very many, men and women too. I That sucks the nurse asleep? neard of one of them no longer than yesterday: a O, break! O, break! very honest woman, but something given to lie; as Cleo. As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle,a woman should not do, but in the way of honesty:O, Antony !-Nay, I will take thee too;how she died of the biting of it, what pain she felt. -Truly, she makes a very good report o' the worm: But he that will believe all that they say, shall never he saved by half that they do.' But this is most fallible, the worm's an odd worm. Cleo. Get thee hence ; farewell. Clown. I wish you all joy of the worm. Cleo. Farewell. [Clown sets down the Basket. Clown. You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind.2 Cleo. Ay, ay; farewell. Clown. Look you, the worm is not to be trusted, but in the keeping of wise people; for, indeed, there is no goodness in the worm. Cleo. Take thou no care; it shall be heeded. Clown. Very good: give it nothing, I pray you, for it is not worth the feeding. Cleo. Will it eat me? Re-enter IRAs, with a Robe, Crown, &c. 4 To praise my noble act; I hear him mock I give to baser life."--So,-have you done? [Applying another Asp to her Arm. Enter the Guard, rushing in. 1 Guard. Cæsar hath sent Speak softly, wake her not. O, come; apace, despatch; I partly feel thee. 2 Guard. There's Dolabella sent from Cæsar:- 1 Guard. What work is here?--Charmian, is this well done? Bravest at the last. Who was last with them? O, Cæsar, This Charmian lived but now; she stood, and spake I found her trimming up the diadem Char. Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain; that I may On her dead mistress; tremblingly she stood, say, The gods themselves do weep! Cleo. This proves me base: [To the Asp, which she applies to her Breast. O, eastern star ! Peace, peace! 1 Warburton observes that Shakspeare's clowns are always jokers, and deal in sly satire: but he would have all and half change places. I think with Steevens that the confusion was designed to heighten the humour of the clown's speech. 2 i. e. act according to his nature. 3 From hence probably Addison in Cato :"This longing after immortality.' 4 i. e. be nimble, be ready. See Act iii. Sc. 5. 5 Thus in King Henry V.:-' He is pure air and fire ; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him ' 6 Iras must be supposed to have applied an asp to her THIS play keeps curiosity always busy, and the pas sions always interested. The continual hurry of the action, the variety of incidents, and the quick succession of one personage to another, call the mind forward without intermission from the first act to the last. But the power of delighting is derived principally from the frequent changes of the scene; for, except the feminine arts, some of which are too low, which distinguish Cleopatra, no character is very strongly discriminated. Up ton, who did not easily miss what he desired to find, has discovered that the language of Antony is, with great skill and learning, made pompous and superb, accɔrd ing to his real practice. But I think his diction not dis tinguishable from that of others: The most tumid speech in the play is that which Cæsar makes to Octavia. The events, of which the principal are described ac cording to history, are produced without any art of cor nection or care of disposition. JOHNSON CYMBELIN E. PRELIMINARY REMARK S. THE HE general scheme of the plot of Cymbeline is by whom she is unjustly persecuted; her adventures formed on the ninth novel of the second day in the in disguise, her apparent death, and her recovery, Decamerone of Boccaccio. It appears from the pre- form altogether a picture equally tender and affecting. face of the old translation of the Decamerone, printed The two princes, Guiderius and Arviragus, both in folio in 1620, that many of the novels had before re-educated in the wilds, form a noble contrast to Miranda ceived an English dress, and had been printed sepa- and Perdita. In these two young men, to whom the rately. A deformed and interpolated imitation of the chase has given vigour and hardihood, but who are un novel in question was printed at Antwerp, by John acquainted with their high destination, and have always Dusborowghe, as early as 1518, under the following been kept far from human society, we are enchanted by title: This matter treateth of a merchauntes wife that a naïve heroism which leads them to anticipate and to afterwarde wente lyke a man and becam a greate lord, dream of deeds of valour, till an occasion is offered and was called Frederyke of Jennen afterwarde.' It which they are irresistibly impelled to embrace. When exhibits the material features of its original, though Imogen comes in disguise to their cave; when Gui the names of the characters are changed, their senti- derius and Arviragus form an impassioned friendship, ments debased, and their conduct rendered still more with all the innocence of childhood, for the tender boy, improbable than in the scenes of Cymbeline. A book (in whom they neither suspect a female nor their own was published in London in 1603, called Westward sister;) when on returning from the chase they find her for Smelts, or the Waterman's Fare of mad merry dead, sing her to the ground, and cover the grave with western Wenches, whose Tongues albeit like Bell- flowers :-these scenes might give a new life for poetry clappers they never leave ringing, yet their Tales are to the most deadened imagination.' sweet, and will much content you: Written by Kitt of Kingstone.' It was again printed in 1620. To the second tale in this work Shakspeare seems to have been indebted for the circumstances in his plot of Imogen's wandering about after Pisanio has left her in the forest; her being almost famished; and being taken at a subsequent period into the service of the Roman general as a page. But time may yet bring to light some other modification of the story, which will prove more exactly conformable to the plot of the play. Malone supposes Cymbeline to have been written in the year 1609. The king, from whom the play takes its title, began his reign, according to Holinshed, in the nineteenth year of the reign of Augustus Cæsar; and the play commences in or about the twenty-fourth year of Cymbeline's reign, which was the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus, and the sixteenth of the Christian era: notwithstanding which, Shakspeare has peopled Rome with modern Italians; Philario, Iachimo, &c. Cymbeline is said to have reigned thirty-five years, leaving at his death two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus. Tenantius (who is mentioned in the first scene) was the father of Cymbeline, and nephew of Cassibelan, being the younger son of his elder brother Lud, king of the southern part of Britain, he agreed to pay an annual tribute to Rome. After his death, Tenantius, Lud's younger son, was established on the throne, of which he and his elder brother Androgeus, who fled to Rome, had been unjustly deprived by their uncle. According to some authorities, Tenantius quietly paid the tribute stipulated by Cassibelan; according to others, he refused to pay it, and warred with the Romans. Shakspeare supposes the latter to be the truth. Holinshed, who furnished our poet with these facts, furnished him also with the name of Sicilius, who was admitted king of Britain, A. M. 2659. Schlegel pronounces Cymbeline to be one of Shakspeare's most wonderful compositions,' in which the poet'has contrived to blend together into one harmonious whole, the social manners of the latest times with heroic deeds, and even with appearances of the gods. In the character of Imogen not a feature of female excellence is forgotten; her chaste tenderness, her softness, and her virgin pride, her boundless resignation, and her magnanimity towards her mistaken husband, 'The wise and virtuous Belarius, who after living long as a hermit, again becomes a hero, is a venerable figure; the dexterous dissimulation and quick presence of mind of the Italian lachimo is quite suitable to the bold treachery he plays; Cymbeline, the father of Imogen, and even her husband Posthunus, during the first half of the piece, are somewhat sacrificed, but this could not be otherwise; the false and wicked queen is merely an instrument of the plot; she and her stupid son Cloten, whose rude arrogance is portrayed with much humour, are got rid of by merited punishment before the conclusion.' Steevens objects to the character of Cloten in a note on the fourth act of the play, observing that he is re presented at once as brave and dastardly, civil and brutish, sagacious and foolish, without that subtilty of distinction, and those shades of gradation between sense and folly, virtue and vice, which constitute the excel lence of such mixed characters as Polonius in Hamlet, and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet.' It should, how. ever, be observed, that Imogen has justly defined him that irregulous devil Cloten ;' and Miss Seward, in one of her Letters, assures us that singular as the character of Cloten may appear, it is the exact prototype of a being she once knew. The unmeaning frown of the countenance; the shuffling gait; the burst of voice; the bus. tling irsignificance; the fever and ague fits of valour; the froward tetchiness; the unprincipled malice; and what is most curious, those occasional gleams of good sense, amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain; and which, in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity in character, but in the some time Captain C-n I saw the portrait of Cloten was not out of nature.' In the development of the plot of this play the poet has displayed such consummate skill, and such minute attention to the satisfaction of the most anxious and scrupulous spectator, as to afford a complete refutation of Johnson's assertion, that Shakspeare usually hurries over the conclusion of his pieces. There is little conclusive viaence to ascertain the date of the composit this play; but Malone place it in the year 16 Dr. Drake, after Chalmers, ha ascribed it to the year 1605 CYMBELINE, King of Britain. PERSONS REPRESENTED. PISANIO, Servant to Posthumus. Two Gentlemen. CLOTEN, Son to the Queen by a former Husband. | CORNELIUS, a Physician. GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, Sons to Cymbeline, disguised under PHILARIO, Friend to Posthumus, } Italians. IACHIMO, Friend to Philario, A French Gentleman, Friend to Philario. ACT I. SCENE I. Britain. The Garden behind Cymbeline's Palace. Enter Two Gentlemen. 1 Gentleman. You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods But what's the matter? 1 Gent. His daughter, and the heir of his kingdom, whom He purpos'd to his wife's soie son, (a widow 2 Gent. None but the king? 1 Gent. He that hath lost her, too: so is the 2 Gent. And why so? Queen, Wife to Cymbeline. IMOGEN, Daughter to Cymbeline by a former 44 ven Lords, Ladies, Roman Senators, Tribunes, Appa- And had, besides this gentleman in question, Then old and fond of issue,) took such sorrow, What kind of man he is. I honour him 2 Gent. His only child. 1 Gent. He that hath miss'd the princess, is a He had two sons (if this be worth your hearing, thing Too bad for bad report: and he that hath her, 2 Gent. You speak him far.2 1 Gent. I do extend him, sir, within himself; Crush him together, rather than unfold His measure duly.3 2 Gent. Was call'd Sicilius, who did join his honour4 5 But had his titles by Tenantius, whom Mark it,) the eldest of them at three years old, : ledge Which way they went. 2 Gent. How long is this ago? 1 Gent. Some twenty years. 2 Gent. That a king's children should be so con vey'd! So slackly guarded! And the search so slow, 1 'Our bloods [i.e. our dispositions or temperaments] are not more regulated by the heavens, by every skyey influence, than our courtiers are by the disposition of 4 I do not (says Steevens) understand what can be the king when he frowns, every man frowns.' Blood is used in old phraseology for disposition or tempera-Perhaps Shakspeare wrote:ment. So in King Lear : Were it my fitness To let these hands obey my blood. no man is the lord of any thing, meant by joining his honour against, &c. with, &c. did join his banner.' In the last scene of the play Cymbeline proposes that 'a 6 'This encomium (says Johnson) is highly artful. To be at once in any great degree loved and praised is truly rare.' 7 Feate is well-fashioned, proper, trim, handsome well compact. Concinnus. Thus in Horman's Vulga ria, 1519:--' He would see himself in a glasse, that al. thinge were feet. Feature was also used for fashion. or proportion. The verb to feat was probably formed by Shakspeare himself. 8 'To his mistress,' means as to his mistresH Be brief, I pray you: To walk this way: I never do him wrong, [Aside. Cym. No; I rather added O, thou vile one! Sir, It is your fault that I have lov'd Posthumus You bred him as my playfellow; and he is A [Exit. man, worth any woman: overbuys me Should we be taking leave Almost the sum he pays. As long a term as yet we have to live, Cym. What!--art thou mad? The loathness to depart would grow: Adieu! Imo. Almost, sir: Heaven restore me!-'Would Imo. Nay, stay a little : I were Post. Were you but riding forth to air yourself, Post. How! how! another? 1 'I say I do not fear my father, so far as I may say it without breach of duty.' 2 He gives me a valuable consideration in new kindness, (purchasing, as it were, the wrong I have done him), in order to renew our amity, and make us friends again.' 3 Shakspeare poetically calls the cere-cloths, in which the dead are wrapped, the bonds of death. There was no distinction in ancient orthography between seare, to dry, to wither; and seare, to dress or cover with wax. Cere-cloth is most frequently spelled seare-cloth. In Hamlet we have : 'Why, thy canonized bones hearsed in death Have burst their cerements.' A neat-herd's daughter! aud my Leonatus Some such emendation seems necessary. And in Antony and Cleopatra :— 'The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches, Do strongly speak to us.' where the greater malady is fix'd, 4 1. e. while I have sensation to retain it. There can be no doubt that it refers to the ring, and it is equally A passage in King Lear will illustrate Imogen's mean. ebvious that thee would have been more proper. Whe-ing:ther this error is to be laid to the poet's charge or to that of careless printing, it would not be easy to decide. Malone, however, has shown that there are many pasages in these plays of equally loose construction. i. e. renovate my youth, make me young again The lesser is scarce felt.' puttock is a mean degenerate species of hawk too worthless to deserve training. |