Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

Lack blood to think on't,' and flush youth2 revolt:
No vessel can peep forth, but 'tis as soon
Taken as seen; for Pompey's name strikes more,
Than could his war resisted.

CES.

3

Antony,

Leave thy lascivious wassels. When thou once
Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel

Did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer: Thou didst drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did
deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps
It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: And all this

1 Lack blood to think on't,] Turn pale at the thought of it. JOHNSON. *—and flush youth-] Flush youth is youth ripened to manhood; youth whose blood is at the flow. So, in Timon of

Athens:

3

"Now the time is flush,-" STEEVENS.

―thy lascivious wassels.] Wassel is here put for intemperance in general. For a more particular account of the word, see Macbeth, Vol. X. p. 88, n. 4. The old copy, however, reads-vaissailes. STEEVENS.

Vassals is, without question, the true reading. HENLEY.

Thou didst drink

The stale of horses,] All these circumstances of Antony's distress, are taken literally from Plutarch. STEEVens.

5 gilded puddle-] There is frequently observable on the surface of stagnant pools that have remained long undisturbed, a reddish gold-coloured slime: to this appearance the poet here refers. HENLEY.

[blocks in formation]

(It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now,)
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not.

LEP.

It is pity of him.

CES. Let his shames quickly

Drive him to Rome: 'Tis time we twain
Did show ourselves i' the field; and, to that end,
Assemble we immediate council: Pompey

Drive him to Rome: 'Tis time we twain &c.] The defect of the metre induces me to believe that some word has been inadvertently omitted. Perhaps our author wrote:

Drive him to Rome disgrac'd: 'Tis time we twain &c. So, in Act III. sc. xi:

[blocks in formation]

"From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend."

MALONE.

I had rather perfect this defective line, by the insertion of an adverb which is frequently used by our author, and only enforces what he apparently designed to say, than by the introduction of an epithet which he might not have chosen. I would therefore read:

'Tis time indeed we train

Did show ourselves &c. STEEVENS.

7 Assemble we immediate council:] [Old copy-assemble me.] Shakspeare frequently uses this kind of phraseology, but I do not recollect any instance where he has introduced it in solemn dialogue, where one equal is speaking to another. Perhaps therefore the correction made by the editor of the second folio is right: Assemble we &c. So, afterwards:

[ocr errors]

Haste we for it:

"Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, despatch we," &c. Since this note was written, I have observed the same phraseology used by our poet in grave dialogue. See Troilus and Cressida, Act III. sc. iii:

66

A strange fellow here

"Writes me, that man, however dearly parted," &c.

MALONE.

I adhere to the reading of the second folio. Thus, in King Henry IV. P. II. King Henry V. says:

"Now call we our high court of parliament."

STEEVENS.

Thrives in our idleness.

LEP.

To-morrow, Cæsar,
I shall be furnish'd to inform you rightly
Both what by sea and land I can be able,
To 'front this present time.

CES.

Till which encounter,

It is my business too. Farewell.

LEP. Farewell, my lord: What

mean time

you shall know

Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,
To let me be partaker.

[blocks in formation]

I knew it for my bond.] That is, to be my bounden

duty. M. MASON.

9 — mandragora.] A plant of which the infusion was supposed to procure sleep. Shakspeare mentions it in Othello: "Not poppy, nor mandragora,

"Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,

"Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep-."

JOHNSON.

CHAR.

Why, madam?

of

CLEO. That I might sleep out this great gap

[blocks in formation]

CLEO. Not now to hear thee sing; I take no

pleasure

In aught an eunuch has: 'Tis well for thee,
That, being unseminar'd, thy freer thoughts
May not fly forth of Egypt. Hast thou affections?
MAR. Yes, gracious madam.

CLEO. Indeed?

MAR. Not in deed, madam; for I can do nothing But what in deed is honest to be done:

So, in Webster's Dutchess of Malfy, 1623: "Come violent death,

"Serve for mandragora, and make me sleep."

STEEVENS.

Gerard, in his Herbal, says of the mandragoras: "Dioscorides doth particularly set downe many faculties hereof, of which notwithstanding there be none proper unto it, save those that depend upon the drowsie and sleeping power thereof."

In Adlington's Apuleius (of which the epistle is dated 1566) reprinted 1639, 4to. bl. 1. p. 187, Lib. X: "I gave him no poyson, but a doling drink of mandragoras, which is of such force, that it will cause any man to sleepe, as though he were dead." PERcy.

See also Pliny's Natural History, by Holland, 1601, and Plutarch's Morals, 1602, p. 19. RITSON..

10, treason!] Old copy, coldly and unmetrically

O, 'tis treason! STEEVENS.

Yet have I fierce affections, and think,
What Venus did with Mars.

CLEO.

O Charmian,

Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he? Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?

O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony! Do bravely, horse! for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st?

The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm

And burgonet of men.2-He's speaking now,
Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile?
For so he calls me; Now I feed myself
With most delicious poison : 3-Think on me,
That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black,
And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Cæsar,
When thou wast here above the ground, I was
A morsel for a monarch: and great Pompey
Would stand, and make his eyes grow in my brow;

And burgonet of men.] A burgonet is a kind of helmet. So, in King Henry VI:

"This day I'll wear aloft my burgonet."

Again, in The Birth of Merlin, 1662:

"This, by the gods and my good sword, I'll set
"In bloody lines upon thy burgonet." STEEVENS.

delicious poison:] Hence, perhaps, Pope's Eloisa: "Still drink delicious poison from thine eye."

STEEVENS.

-Broad-fronted Cæsar,] Mr. Seward is of opinion, that the poet wrote-bald-fronted Cæsar. The compound epithet-broad-fronted, occurs, however, in the tenth Book of Chapman's version of the Iliad:

66

a heifer most select,

"That never yet was tam'd with yoke, broad-fronted, one year old." STEEVENS.

-Broad-fronted, in allusion to Cæsar's baldness.

HENLEY.

« ПредишнаНапред »