The innocent mansion of my love, my heart: PIS. Hence, vile instrument! Thou shalt not damn my hand. IMO. Why, I must die; And if I do not by thy hand, thou art No servant of thy master's: Against self-slaughter * There is a prohibition so divine, That cravens my weak hand3. Come, here's my heart; Something's afore't:-Soft, soft; we'll no de fence; Obedient as the scabbard.-What is here? The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus, Corrupters of my faith! you shall no more Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor + Against self-slaughter, &c.] So, again, in Hamlet : the Everlasting-fix'd 66 "His canon 'gainst self-slaughter." STEEVENS. 5 That CRAVENs my weak hand.] i. e. makes me a coward. POPE. That makes me afraid to put an end to my own life. See vol. v. p. 423, n. 4. MALONE. 6 Something's AFORE'T:] The old copy reads-Something's afoot. JOHNSON. The correction was made by Mr. Rowe. MALOne. 7 The SCRIPTURES -] So, Ben Jonson, in The Sad Shepherd: "The lover's scriptures, Heliodore's, or Tatius'." Shakspeare, however, means in this place, an opposition between scripture, in its common signification, and heresy. STEEVENS, 8 And thou, Posthúmus, thou that did'st set up Will then be pang'd by me.-Pr'ythee, despatch: The lamb entreats the butcher: Where's thy knife? Thou art too slow to do thy master's bidding, PIS. O gracious lady, Since I receiv'd command to do this business, IMO. Do't, and to bed then. 3 8 THOU that-] The second thou, which is not in the old copies, has been added for the sake of recovering metre. STEEVENS. 9-princely FELLOWS,] One of the same fellowship or rank with myself. MALOne. I disedg'd,] So, in Hamlet: "It would cost you a groaning, to take off mine edge." STEEVENS. 2 That now thou TIR'ST on,] A hawk is said to tire upon that which she pecks; from tirer, French. JOHNSON. 3 I'll WAKE mine eye-balls BLIND first.] [In the old copies, the word-blind is wanting.] The modern editions for wake read break, and supply the deficient syllable by-Ah wherefore. I read-I'll wake mine eye-balls out first, or, blind first. JOHNSON. Sir Thomas Hanmer had made the same emendation. MALONE. Dr. Johnson's conjecture (which I have inserted in the text,) may receive support from the following passage in The Bugbears, a MS. comedy more ancient than the play before us : 66 I doubte "Least for lacke of my slepe I shall watche my eyes oute." Again, in The Revenger's Tragedy, 1608: A piteous tragedy! able to wake "An old man's eyes blood-shot." IMO. Wherefore then Didst undertake it? Why hast thou abus'd 3 PIS. But to win time; To lose so bad employment: in the which I have consider'd of a course; Good lady, Hear me with patience. IMO. Talk thy tongue weary; speak : I have heard, I am a strumpet; and mine ear, Therein false struck, can take no greater wound, Nor tent, to bottom that. But speak. PIS. I thought you would not back again. IMO. Bringing me here to kill me. PIS. But if I were as wise as honest, Then, madam, Most like: Not so, neither : Again, in The Roaring Girl, 1611: "I'll ride to Oxford, and watch out mine eyes, but I'll hear the brazen head speak." STEEVENS. Again, as Mr. Steevens has observed in a note on The Rape of Lucrece: "Here she exclaims against repose and rest; "And bids her eyes hereafter still be blind." Malone. 3 To be unbent,] To have thy bow unbent, alluding to an hunter. 4 JOHNSON. when THOU HAST TA'EN THY STAND, The ELECTED DEER before thee?] So, in one of our author's poems, Passionate Pilgrim, 1599: "When as thine eye hath chose the dame, "And stall'd the deer that thou should'st strike.” MALONE Some villain, ay, and singular in his art, Pis. No, on my life. I'll give but notice you are dead, and send him Some bloody sign of it; for 'tis commanded I should do so: You shall be miss'd at court, And that will well confirm it. IMO. Why, good fellow, What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live? Or in my life what comfort, when I am Dead to my husband? If you'll back to the court,IMO. No court, no father; nor no more ado With that harsh, noble, simple, nothing": That Cloten, whose love-suit hath been to me As fearful as a siege. PIS. If not at court, Where then "? 6 Then not in Britain must you bide. IMO. Hath Britain all the sun that shines'? Day, night, 5 With that harsh, noble, &c.] Some epithet of two syllables has here been omitted by the compositor; for which, having but one copy, it is now vain to seek. MALONE. Perhaps the poet wrote: With that harsh, noble, simple, nothing, Cloten; "That Cloten," &c. STEEVENS. 6 Where then?] Hanmer has added these two words to Pisanio's speech. MALONE. 7 WHERE then? Hath Britain all the sun that shines ?] The rest of Imogen's speech induces me to think that we ought to read "What then?" instead of " Where then?" The reason of the change is evident. M. MASON. Perhaps Imogen silently answers her own question: "any where. Hath Britain," &c. Shakspeare seems here to have had in his thoughts a passage in Lyly's Euphues, 1580, which he has imitated in King Richard II. : Nature hath given to man a country no more than she hatlı Are they not but in Britain? I' the world's volume In a great pool, a swan's nest; Pr'ythee, think PIs. house, or lands, or living. Plato would never account him banished, that had the sunne, ayre, water, and earth, that he had before; where he felt the winter's blast, and the summer's blaze ; where the same sunne and the same moone shined; whereby he noted, that every place was a country to a wise man, and all parts a palace to a quiet mind. But thou art driven out of Naples : that is nothing. All the Athenians dwell not in Colliton, nor every Corinthian in Greece, nor all the Lacedemonians in Pitania. How can any part of the world be distant far from the other, when as the mathematicians set downe that the earth is but a point compared to the heavens?" MAlone. 8 There's livers out of Britain.] So, in Coriolanus: 66 'There is a world elsewhere." Now, if you could wear a MIND STEEVENS. Dark as your fortune is ;] To wear a dark mind is to carry a mind impenetrable to the search of others. Darkness, applied to the mind, is secrecy; applied to the fortune, is obscurity. The next lines are obscure. "You must, (says Pisanio,) disguise that greatness, which, to appear hereafter in its proper form, cannot yet appear without great danger to itself." JOHNSON. I full of view:] With opportunities of examining your af→ fairs with your own eyes. JOHNSON. Full of view may mean-affording an ample prospect, a complete opportunity of discerning circumstances which it is your interest to know. Thus, in Pericles, "Full of face" appears to signify'amply beautiful;' and Duncan assures Banquo that he will labour to make him "full of growing," i. e. of ample growth.' STEEVENS |