I'll seem the fool I am not; Antony ANT. But stirr'd by Cleopatra. Now, for the love of Love, and her soft hours,6 Let's not confound the time" with conference harsh: There's not a minute of our lives should stretch Without some pleasure now: What sport to-night? CLEO. Hear the ambassadors. ANT. Fye, wrangling queen! Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh, Ant. But stirr'd by Cleopatra.] But, in this passage, seems to have the old Saxon signification of without, unless, except. Antony, says the queen, will recollect his thoughts. Unless kept, he replies, in commotion by Cleopatra. JOHNSON. What could Cleopatra mean by saying Antony will recollect his thoughts? What thoughts were they, for the recollection of which she was to applaud him? It was not for her purpose that he should think, or rouse himself from the lethargy in which she wished to keep him. By Antony will be himself, she means to say, "that Antony will act like the joint sovereign of the world, and follow his own inclinations, without regard to the mandates of Cæsar, or the anger of Fulvia." To which he replies, If but stirr'd by Cleopatra; that is, if moved to it in the slightest degree by her. M. MASON. 6 Now, for the love of Love, and her soft hours,] For the love of Love, means, for the sake of the queen of love. So, in The Comedy of Errors: "Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink." Mr. Rowe substituted his for her, and this unjustifiable alteration was adopted by all the subsequent editors. MALONE. "Let's not confound the time] i. e. let us not consume the time. So, in Coriolanus: "How could'st thou in a mile confound an hour, Whom every thing becomes,] Quicquid enim dicit, seu facit, omne decet." Marullus, Lib. II. STEEVENS. To weep; whose every passion fully strives1 note 3 • Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh, 1 MALONE. whose every passion fully strives-] The folio readswho. It was corrected by Mr. Rowe; but "whose every passion" was not, I suspect, the phraseology of Shakspeare's time. The text however is undoubtedly corrupt. MALONE. Whose every, is an undoubted phrase of our author. So, in The Tempest: "A space, whose every cubit "Seems to cry out," &c. See Vol. IV. p. 74. Again, in Cymbeline, Act I. sc. vii: 66 this hand, whose touch, "Whose every touch" &c. The same expression occurs again in another play, but I have lost reference to it. STEEVENS. my No messenger; but thine and all alone, &c.] Cleopatra has said, "Call in the messengers;" and afterwards, "Hear the ambassadors." Talk not to me, says Antony, of messengers; I am now wholly thine, and you and I unattended will to-night wander through the streets. The subsequent words which he utters as he goes out, " Speak not to us," confirm this interpretation. MALONE. 66 To-night, we'll wander through the streets, &c.] So, in Sir Thomas North's translation of The Life of Antonius:-Sometime also when he would goe up and downe the citie disguised like a slave in the night, and would peere into poore mens' windowes and their shops, and scold and brawl with them within the house; Cleopatra would be also in a chamber maides array, and amble up and down the streets with him," &c. STEEVENS. The qualities of people. Come, my queen; Last night you did desire it :-Speak not to us. [Exeunt ANT. and CLEOP. with their Train. DEM. Is Cæsar with Antonius priz'd so slight? PHI. Sir, sometimes, when he is not Antony, He comes too short of that great property Which still should go with Antony. DEM. I'm full sorry, That he approves the common liar, who Thus speaks of him at Rome: But I will hope Of better deeds to-morrow. Rest you happy! [Exeunt. SCENE II. The same. Another Room. Enter CHARMIAN, IRAS, ALEXAS, and a Soothsayer.5 CHAR. Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most any thing Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where's the That he approves the common liar,] Fame. That he proves the common liar, fame, in his case to be a true reporter. So, in Hamlet: "He may approve our eyes, and speak to it." MALONE. STEEVENS. • Enter Charmian, Iras, Alexas, and a Soothsayer.] The old copy reads: "Enter Enobarbus, Lamprius, a Soothsayer, Rannius, Lucilius, Charmian, Iras, Mardian the Eunuch, and Alexas." Plutarch mentions his grandfather Lamprias, as his author for some of the stories he relates of the profuseness and luxury of Antony's entertainments at Alexandria. Shakspeare appears to have been very anxious in this play to introduce every inci soothsayer that you praised so to the queen? O, that I knew this husband, which, you say, must change his horns with garlands!" 6 dent and every personage he met with in his historian. In the multitude of his characters, however, Lamprias is entirely overlooked, together with the others whose names we find in this stage-direction. It is not impossible, indeed, that Lamprius, Rannius, Lucilius, &c. might have been speakers in this scene as it was first written down by Shakspeare, who afterwards thought proper to omit their speeches, though at the same time he forgot to erase their names as originally announced at their collective entrance. STEEVENS. 6 change his horns with garlands!] This is corrupt; the true reading evidently is:-must charge his horns with garlands, i. e. make him a rich and honourable cuckold, having his horns hung about with garlands. WARBURTON. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads, not improbably, change for horns his garlands. I am in doubt whether to change is not merely to dress, or to dress with changes of garlands. JOHNSON. man: So, Taylor, the water-poet, describing the habit of a coach"—with a cloak of some pyed colour, with two or three change of laces about." Change of clothes, in the time of Shakspeare, signified variety of them. Coriolanus says that he has received "change of honours" from the Patricians. Act II. sc. i. That to change with, "applied to two things, one of which is to be put in the place of the other," is the language of Shakspeare, Mr. Malone might have learned from the following passage in Cymbeline, Act I. sc. vi. i. e. the Queen's speech to Pisanio: -to shift his being, "Is to exchange one misery with another." 66 Again, in the 4th Book of Milton's Paradise Lost, v. 892: I once thought that these two words might have been often confounded, by their being both abbreviated, and written chāge. But an n, as the Bishop of Dromore observes to me, was sometimes omitted both in MS. and print, and the omission thus marked, but an r never. This therefore might account for a compositor inadvertently printing charge instead of change, but ALEX. Soothsayer. SOOTH. Your will? not change instead of charge; which word was never abbreviated. I also doubted the phraseology-change with, and do not at present recollect any example of it in Shakspeare's plays or in his time; whilst in The Taming of the Shrew, we have the modern phraseology-change for: "To change true rules for odd inventions." But a careful revision of these plays has taught me to place no confidence in such observations; for from some book or other of the age, I have no doubt almost every combination of words that may be found in our author, however uncouth it may ap pear to our ears, or however different from modern phraseology, will at some time or other be justified. In the present edition, many which were considered as undoubtedly corrupt, have been incontrovertibly supported. Still, however, I think that the reading originally introduced by Mr. Theobald, and adopted by Dr. Warburton, is the true one, because it affords a clear sense; whilst, on the other hand, the reading of the old copy affords none: for supposing change with to mean exchange for, what idea is conveyed by this passage? and what other sense can these words bear? The substantive change being formerly used to signify variety, (as change of clothes, of honours, &c.) proves nothing: change of clothes or linen necessarily imports more than one; but the thing sought for is the meaning of the verb to change, and no proof is produced to show that it signified to dress; or that it had any other meaning than to exchange. Charmian is talking of her future husband, who certainly could not change his horns, at present, for garlands, or any thing else, having not yet obtained them; nor could she mean, that when he did get them, he should change or part with them, for garlands: but he might charge his horns, when he should marry Charmian, with garlands: for having once got them, she intended, we may suppose, that he should wear them contentedly for life. Horns charged with garlands is an expression of a similar import with one which is found in Characterismi, or Lenton's Leasures, 8vo. 1631. In the description of a contented cuckold, he is said to "hold his velvet horns as high as the best of them." Let it also be remembered that garlands are usually wreathed round the head; a circumstance which adds great support to the emendation now made. So, Sidney: "A garland made, on temples for to wear." |