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is;-"Alarum. Enter Brutus, Messala, yong Cato, Strato, Volumnius, and Lucillius."

741. Titinius mourning it.--An unusual construction of the verb to mourn in this sense. We speak commonly enough of mourning the death of a person, or any other thing that may have happened; we might even perhaps speak of mourning the person who is dead or the thing that is lost; but we only mourn over the dead body. So with lament. We lament the death or the loss, the man or the thing; but not the body out of which the spirit is gone.

744. In our own proper entrails.-That is, into, as we should now say. Vid. 122.

745. Look, whe'r he have not.-That is, "whether he have not." Vid. 16. The word is here again printed "where" in the original edition.

746. The last of all the Romans.-This is the reading of all the Folios; and it is left untouched by Mr. Collier's MS. corrector. "Thou last" is the conjectural emendation of Rowe..

746. I owe moe tears.-Moe (or mo) is the word as it stands in both the First and the Second Folio. Vid. 158.

746. To Thassos send his body.-Thassos is misprinted Tharsus in all the Folios, and the error escaped both Rowe and Pope. Nor does Mr. Collier state that it is corrected by his MS. annotator. Thassos was first substituted by Theobald, who reasons thus :— "Tharsus was a town of Cilicia in Asia Minor; and is it probable that Brutus could think of sending Cassius's body thither out of Thrace, where they were now encamped? Thassos, on the contrary, was a little isle lying close upon Thrace, and at but a small dis

tance from Philippi, to which the body might very commodiously be transported. Vid. Plutarch, Appian, Dion Cassius, etc." It is sufficient to say that Thassos is the place mentioned by Plutarch (in his life of Brutus) as that to which the body was sent to be interred, and that the name, as Steevens has noted, is correctly given in North's translation, which Shakespeare had before him.

746. His funerals.-As we still say nuptials, so they formerly often said funerals. So funérailles in French and funera in Latin. On the other hand, Shakespeare's word is always nuptial. Nuptials occurs only in one passage of the very corrupt text of Pericles:-"We'll celebrate their nuptials" (v. 3), and in one other passage of Othello as it stands in the Quarto,-"It is the celebration of his nuptials" (ii. 2)-where, however, all the other old copies have nuptial, as elsewhere.

746. Labeo and Flavius, etc.—In the First Folio, “Labio and Flavio;" in the others, "Labio and Flavius."-For "set our battles on" see 669.

746. 'Tis three o'clock.-In the original edition, "three a clocke." Vid. 65.

All that we have in the Folios for the heading of the next scene, called Scene IV. in the modern editions, is, "Alarum. Enter Brutus, Messala, Cato, Lucilius, and Flavius." And the only stage directions that we have throughout the Scene are "Enter Soldiers, and fight," immediately before the speech of Brutus (747), and the "Exeunt" at the end.

748. What bastard doth not ?-Vid. 177.

752. There is so much that thou wilt kill me straight. The evident meaning of these words has

strangely escaped the acuteness of Warburton, whose interpretation (1747) is :-" So much resistance still on foot, that thou wilt choose to rid me out of the way, that thou mayst go, without the embarras of prisoners, to the assistance of thy friends who still want it." The true explanation is very well given by Heath in replying to this (in his Revisal of Shakespeare's Text, 1765) :—“There is so much money for thee, on condition that thou wilt kill me straight."

753. We must not.-A noble prisoner!-The original edition places the entry of Antony immediately after this speech.

755. I'll tell the news.-This is the conjectural emendation of Theobald. All the Folios, and also both Rowe and Pope, have thee for the. Mr. Collier adopts the emendation.

758. And see whe'r Brutus be alive or dead.-Vid. 16 and 745. It is "where" again in the original text.

758. How everything is chanced.-Vid. 69 and 374. The heading of Scene V., with the locality, is, as usual, modern.

761. Sit thee down.-In this common form, apparently, the neuter verb to sit has taken the place of the active to seat. Or perhaps we ought rather to say that both in Sit thee and in Hark thee, which we have in the next line and again in 765, thee has usurped the function of thou. We have a similar irregularity in Fare (that is, go) thee well.—The marginal " Whispering" at this speech is modern; and so is the "Whispers him" at 765.

771. That it runs over.- So that, as in 15.

774. Here in Philippi fields.-A common enough form of expression; as Chelsea Fields, Kensington

Gardens. There is no need of an apostrophe to Philippi.

776. Hold thou my sword hilts.—Vid. 726.

778. There is no tarrying here.-So in Macbeth, v. 5, "There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here." The expression is from North's Plutarch :-" Volumnius denied his request, and so did many others. And, amongst the rest, one of them said, there was no tarrying for them there, but that they must needs fly."

779. Farewell to you;-etc.-Mr. Collier appends the stage direction, " Shaking hands severally."

779. Farewell to thee too, Strato.—In all the Folios this stands ;—" Farewell to thee, to Strato." The correction is one of the many made by Theobald which have been universally acquiesced in. Mr. Collier does not tell us whether it has escaped his MS. annotator.

781. Hence; I will follow. This is the reading of all the old copies. Pope added thee, in order to make a complete line of the two hemistichs.-The "Exeunt Clitus," etc., is modern.

781. Thou art a fellow of a good respect. Vid. 48. 781. Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it. -Smatch is only another form of smack, meaning taste. Smack is the word which Shakespeare commonly uses, both. as noun and verb.

In the early editions, the stage direction after the last speech of Brutus (783) is, simply, “Dies ;" and in the Entry that follows Antony is placed before Octavius, and "their Army" is "the Army."

788. I will entertain them.-Receive them into my service.

788. Wilt thou bestow thy time with me?—Here is another sense of bestow, in addition to that in 139,

which is now lost. Bestow thy time with me means give up thy time to me.

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789. If Messala will prefer me to you." To prefer," Reed observes, seems to have been the established phrase for recommending a servant." And he quotes from The Merchant of Venice, ii. 2, what Bassanio says to Launcelot,

"Shylock, thy master, spoke with me this day,

And hath preferred thee."

But to prefer was more than merely to recommend. It was rather to transfer, or hand over; as might be inferred even from what Octavius here rejoins, "Do so, good Messala." That it had come usually to imply also something of promotion may be seen from what Bassanio goes on to say:

"if it be preferment

To leave a rich Jew's service, to become
The follower of so poor a gentleman.”

791. How did my master, Strato?-So the First Folio. The Second, by a misprint, omits master. The Third and Fourth have ". my lord."

793. Octavius, then take him, etc.-That is, accept or receive him from me. It is not, I request you to allow him to enter your service; but I give him to you. Vid. 789.

794. He only in a generous honest thought of common good, etc.-We are indebted for this reading to Mr. Collier's MS. annotator. It is surely a great improvement upon the old text

"He only in a general honest thought,

And common good to all, made one of them."

To act "in a general honest thought" is perhaps in

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