Enter CLEOPATRA. Ah, thou spell! Avaunt. CLEO. Why is my lord enrag'd against his love? ANT. Vanish; or I shall give thee thy deserving, And blemish Cæsar's triumph. Let him take thee, And hoist thee up to the shouting Plebeians: Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot Of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown For poor'st diminutives, for doits; and let 4 That the Ægyptians were great adepts in this art before Shakspeare's time, may be seen in Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, p. 336, where these practices are fully explained. REED. 3 -to the very HEART of loss.] To the utmost loss possible. JOHNSON. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: "Here is the heart of my purpose." STEEVENS. For POOR'ST DIMINUTIVES, FOR DOITS;] [Old copy-for dolts.] As the allusion here is to monsters carried about in shows, it is plain, that the words, " for poorest diminutives," must mean for the least piece of money. We must therefore read the next word: 46 for doits, i. e. farthings, which shows what he means by "poorest diminutives." WARBURTON. There was surely no occasion for the poet to show what he meant by purest diminutives. The expression is clear enough, and certainly acquires no additional force from the explanation. I rather believe we should read: "For poor'st diminutives, to dolts This aggravates the contempt of her supposed situation; to be shown, as monsters are, not only for the smallest piece of money, but to the most stupid and vulgar spectators. ; TYRWHITT. I have adopted this truly sensible emendation. STEEVENS. I have received the emendation made by Dr. Warburton, because the letter i, in consequence of the dot over it, is sometimes confounded with 7 at the press. It appears to me much more probable that dolts should have been printed for doits, than that for should have been substituted for to. Whichsoever of these emendations be admitted, there is still a Patient Octavia plough thy visage up With her prepared nails. [Exit CLEO.] 'Tis well thou'rt gone, If it be well to live: But better 'twere 6 difficulty. Though monsters are shown to the stupid and the vulgar for poor'st diminutives, yet Cleopatra, according to Antony's supposition, would certainly be exhibited to the Roman populace for nothing. Nor can it be said that he means that she would be exhibited gratis, as monsters are shown for small pieces of money; because his words are 66 monster-like," be [thou] shown for poor'st diminutives," &c. I have sometimes therefore thought that Shakspeare might have written : "Fore poor diminutives, fore dolts." The following passage in Troilus and Cressida adds some support to my conjecture: "How this poor world is pester'd with such water-flies; diminutives of nature! MALONE. 5 With her PREPARED nails.] i. e. with nails which she suffered to grow for this purpose. WARBURTON. Let me lodge Lichas, &c.] Sir T. Hanmer reads thus: 66 thy rage This reading, harsh as it is, Dr. Warburton has received, after having rejected many better. The meaning is, 'Let me do something in my rage, becoming the successor of Hercules.' JOHNSON. "Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o' the moon." This image our poet seems to have taken from Seneca's Hercules, who says Lichas being launched into the air, sprinkled the clouds with his blood. Sophocles, on the same occasion, talks at a much soberer rate. WARBURTON. Shakspeare was more probably indebted to Golding's version of Ovid's Metamorphosis, b. ix. edit. 1575 : "Behold, as Lychas trembling in a hollow rock did lurk, bee? And with those hands, that grasp'd the heaviest club, Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die; To the young Roman boy' she hath sold me, and I fall Under this plot : she dies for't.-Eros, ho! [Exit. SCENE XI. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace. Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN. CLEO. Help me, my women! O, he is more mad Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly Was never so emboss'd 9. CHAR. To the monument; There lock yourself, and send him word you are dead. "Hee quaak't and shaak't and looked pale, and fearfully gan make "Excuse. But as with humbled hands hee kneeling too him spake, "The furious Hercule caught him up, and swindging him about "His head a halfe a doozen tymes or more, he floong him out "Into th' Euboyan sea, with force surmounting any sling; "He hardened intoo peble stone as in the ayre he hing," &c. STEEVENS. 7- the Roman boy-] Old copy-the young Roman boy-. See p. 355, n. 9, where a similar interpolation has been already ejected, for similar reasons. STEEVENS. 8 Than Telamon for his shield;] i. e. than Ajax Telamon for the armour of Achilles, the most valuable part of which was the shield. The boar of Thessaly was the boar killed by Meleager. STEEVENS. 9 Was never so EMBOSS'D.] A hunting term: when a deer is hard run, and foams at the mouth, he is said to be imbost. HANMER. See vol. v. p. 361. MALONE. The soul and body rive not more in parting, CLEO. To the monument :Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself; Say, that the last I spoke was, Antony, And word it, pr'ythee, piteously: Hence, Mardian; and bring me how he takes my death.— To the monument. [Exeunt. SCENE XII. The Same. Another Room. Enter ANTONY and EROS. ANT. Eros, thou yet behold'st me? 1 The soul and body rive not more in parting, Than greatness going off.] So, in King Henry VIII. : 66 "As soul and body's severing." MALONE. 2 Sometime, we see a cloud that's dragonish; &c.] So, Aristophanes, Nubes, v. 345: Ἤδη ποτ' ἀναβλέψας εἶδες νεφέλην Κενταύρω ὁμοίαν ; SIR W. RAWLINSON. Perhaps Shakspeare received the thought from P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, b. ii. ch. iii. : ". our eiesight testifieth the same, whiles in one place there appeareth the resemblance of a waine or chariot, in another of a beare, the figure of a bull in this part," &c. or from Chapman's Monsieur D'Olive, 1606: "Like to a mass of clouds that now seem like I find the same thought in Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois, 1607 : like empty clouds, 66 "In which our faulty apprehensions forge A vapour, sometime, like a bear, or lion, A forked mountain, or blue promontory signs; They are black vesper's pageants *. EROS. Ay, my lord. ANT. That, which is now a horse, even with a thought, The rack dislimns5; and makes it indistinct, As water is in water. EROS. It does, my lord. ANT. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body: here I am Antony; Perhaps, however, Shakspeare had the following passage in A Treatise of Spectres, &c. quarto, 1605, particularly in his thoughts: "The cloudes sometimes will seem to be monsters, lions, bulls, and wolves; painted and figured: albeit in truth the same be nothing but a moyst humour mounted in the ayre, and drawne up from the earth, not having any figure or colour, but such as the ayre is able to give unto it." MALONE. 3 blue promontory With TREES UPON'T,] Thus, says Commodore Byron, (speaking of the deceptions of a fog-bank,) the master of a ship, not long since, made oath, that he had seen an island between the west end of Ireland and Newfoundland, and even distinguished the trees that grew upon it. Yet it is certain that no such island exists," &c. Byron's Voyage, 4to. p. 10. STEEVens. 4 They are black vesper's pageants.] 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. T. WARTON. 5 The rack dislimns ;] i. e. The fleeting away of the clouds destroys the picture. STEEVENS. 6 My good KNAVE, Eros,] Knave is servant. So, in A Mery Geste of Robyn Hoode, bl. 1. no date : "I shall thee lende lyttle John my man, Again, in the old metrical romance of Syr Degore, bl. 1. no date : STEEVENs. VOL. XII. 2 B |
