SCENE H. The fame. Enter the Queen, POSTHUMUS, and IMOGEN. QUEEN. No, be affur'd, you shall not find me, daughter, After the flander of moft ftep-mothers, Evil-ey'd unto you: you are my prifoner, but That lock up your reftraint. For you, Pofthumus, I will be known your advocate: marry, yet POST. I will from hence to-day, QUEEN. Please your highness, You know the peril: I'll fetch a turn about the garden, pitying The pangs of barr'd affections; though the king Hath charg'd you fhould not fpeak together. IMO. [Exit Queen. Ο Diffembling courtefy! How fine this tyrant 9 Imogen,] Holinfhed's Chronicle furnished Shakspeare with this name, which in the old black letter is fcarcely diftinguish. able from Innogen, the wife of Brute, king of Britain. There too be found the name of Cloten, who, when the line of Brute was at an end, was one of the five kings that governed Britain, Cloten, or Cloton, was king of Cornwall. MALONE. 2 I fomething fear my father's wrath; but nothing, POST. My queen! my miftrefs! O, lady, weep no more; left I give caufe To be fufpected of more tenderness Than doth become a man! I will remain The loyal'ft husband that did e'er plight troth. My refidence in Rome, at one Philario's ; Who to my father was a friend, to me Known but by letter: thither write, my queen, And with mine eyes I'll drink the words you fend, Though ink be made of gall." QUEEN. Re-enter Queen. Be brief, I pray you: If the king come, I fhall incur I know not To walk this way: I never do him wrong, 2 [Afide. [Exit. { Always referv'd my holy duty,)] I say I do not fear my father, fo far as I may say it without breach of duty. JOHNSON. 3 Though ink be made of gall.] Shakspeare, even in this poor conceit, bas confounded the vegetable galls used in ink, with the animal gall, supposed to be bitter. JOHNSON. The poet might mean either the vegetable or the animal galls with equal propriety, as the vegetable gall is bitter; and I have feen an ancient receipt for making ink, beginning, "Take of the black juice of the gall of oxen two ounces," &c. STEVENS, POST. Should we be taking leave As long a term as yet we have to live, The loathness to depart would grow: Adieu! Were you but riding forth to air yourself, Such parting were too petty. Look here, love; This diamond was my mother's: take it, heart; But keep it till you woo another wife, When Imogen is dead. POST. How! how! another? You gentle gods, give me but this I have, 5 4 And fear up my embracements from a next With bonds of death!] Shakspeare may poetically call the cere-cloths in which the dead are wrapp'd, the bonds of death. If so, we should read cere inflead of fear: 66 Why thy canoniz'd bones hearfed in death, "Have burft their cerements?" To fear up, is properly to close up by burning; but in this paffage the poet may have dropp'd that idea, and used the word fimply for to close up. STEEVENS. May not fear up, here mean folder up, and the reference be to a lead coffin? Perhaps cerements in Hamlet's addrefs to the Ghoft, was used for fearments in the fame fenfe. HENLEY. I believe nothing more than close up was intended. In the spel. ling of the last age, however, no diftinction was made between cere-cloth and fear-cloth. Cole in his Latin didionary, 1679, explains the word cerot by fear-cloth. Shakspeare therefore certainly might have had that practice in his thoughts. MAlone. 5 While fenfe can keep it on!] This expreffion, I fuppofe, means, while fenfe can maintain its operations; while fenfe continues to have its ufual power. That to keep on fignifies to continue in a flate of action, is evident from the following paffage in Othello: keeps due on "To the Propontick" &c. The general fenfe of Pofthumus's declaration, is equivalent to the Roman phrase,- dum Spiritus hos regit artus. STEEVENS. As I my poor felf did exchange for you, 6 CYм. Thou bafeft thing, avoid! hence, from my fight! The poet [if it refers to the ring] ought to have written-can keep thee on, as Mr. Pope and the three fubfequent editors read. But Shakspeare has many fimilar inaccuracies. So, in Julius Cæfar : "Cafca, you are the firft that rears your hand.' inftead of his hand. Again, in The Rape of Lucrece: "Time's office is to calm contending kings, "To unmask falfehood, and bring truth to light,→ To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,-.' inftead of his hours. Again, in the third act of the play be fore'us: Euriphile, "Thou waft their nurse; they took thee for their mother, "And every day do honour to her grave." MALONE. As none of our author's productions were revifed by himself as they paffed from the theatre through the prefs; and as Julius Cæfar and Cymbeline are among the plays which originally appeared in the blundering firft folio; it is hardly fair to charge thofe irregularities on the poet, of which his publishers alone might have been guilty. I must therefore take leave to fet down the prefent, and many fimilar offences against the established rules of language, under the article of Hemingifms and Condelifms; and, as fuch, in my opinion, they ought, without ceremony, to be corrected. The inftance brought from The Rape of Lucrece might only have been a compofitorial inaccuracy, like thofe which occafionally have happened in the courfe of our prefent republication. STELVENS, a manacle-] A manacle properly means what we now call a hand-cuff. STELYENS. 3 If, after this command, thou fraught the court POST. The gods protect you! O disloyal thing, That should'ft repair my youth; thou heapest IMO: I beseech you, fir, Harm not yourself with your vexation; I ? There cannot be a pinch in death More fharp than this is. ] So, in King Henry VIII: 66 it is a fufferance, panging "As foul and body's parting." MALONE. • That should't repair my youth;]. c. renovate my youth; make me young again. So, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609: as for him, he brought his disease hither: here he doth but repair it.". Again, in All's well that ends well: 9 it much repairs me, "To talk of your good father." thou heapest MALONE. A year's age on me!] The obvious fenfe of this paffage, on which feveral experiments have been made, is in fome degree countenanced by what follows in another scene: And every day that comes, comes to decay "A day's work in him." Dr. Warburton would read "A yare (i. e. a speedy) age;" Sir T. Hanmer would reftore the metre by a fupplemental epithet: A year's age &c. thou heapest many and Dr. Johnson would give us: Years, ages, on me! I prefer the additional word introduced by Sir Thomas Hanmer, to all the other attempts at emendation. Many a year's age," is an idea of fome weight; but if Cymbeline meant to fay that his daughter's condu& made him precifely one year older, his conceit is unworthy both of himself and Shakspeare.—I would read with Sir Thomas Hanmer. STERYENS |