CLEO. There is gold for thee. Thou must not take my former sharpness ill :— I will employ thee back again; I find thee Most fit for business: Go, make thee ready; Our letters are prepar'd. [Exit Messenger. CHAR. A proper man. CLEO. Indeed, he is so: I repent me much, That so I harry'd him'. Why, methinks, by him, This creature's no such thing. Mr. Steevens arranges this and the preceding lines, which in the old copy are printed as prose, in the following manner: "Mess. Round even to faultiness. "Cleo. 66 For the most part too, "They are foolish that are so.-Her hair, what colour? BOSWELL. "As low as she would wish it." Low foreheads were, in Shakspeare's age, thought a blemish. So, in The Tempest : 66 with foreheads villainous low." You and She are not likely to have been confounded; otherwise we might suppose that our author wrote "As low as you would wish it." MALONE. The phrase employed by the Messenger is still a cant one. I once overheard a chambermaid say of her rival,-" that her legs were as thick as she could wish them." STEEVENS. I SO I HARRY'D him.] To harry, is to use roughly, harass, subdue. So, in the Chester Whitsun-Playes, MS. Harl. 2013, the Cookes' Company are appointed to exhibit the 17th pageant of 66 "the harrowinge of helle." The same word occurs also in The Revenger's Tragedy, 1607: Holinshed, p. 735, speaking of the body of Richard III. says, it was "harried on horseback, dead." 66 The same expression had been used by Harding, in his Chronicle. Again, by Nash, in his Lenten Stuff, 1599: as if he were harrying and chasing his enemies." STEEVENS. To harry, is, literally, to hunt. Hence the word harrier. King James threatened the Puritans that " he would harry them out of the land." HENLEY. Minsheu, in his Dictionary, 1617, explains the word thus: "To turmoile or vexe." Cole, in his English Dictionary, 1676, inter CHAR. Nothing 2, madam. CLEO. The man hath seen some majesty, and should know. CHAR. Hath he seen majesty? Isis else defend, And serving you so long! CLEO. I have one thing more to ask him yet, good Charmian: But 'tis no matter; thou shalt bring him to me SCENE IV. Exeunt. Athens. A Room in ANTONY'S House. Enter ANTONY and OCTAVIA. ANT. Nay, nay, Octavia, not only that,― That were excusable, that, and thousands more Of semblable import,—but he hath wag'd New wars 'gainst Pompey; made his will, and read it To publick ear: Spoke scantly of me: when perforce he could not But pay me terms of honour, cold and sickly He vented them; most narrow measure lent me: When the best hint was given him, he not took't3, Or did it from his teeth 4. prets haried by the word pulled, and in the sense of pulled and lugged about, I believe the word was used by Shakspeare. See the marginal direction in p. 249. In a kindred sense it is used in the old translation of Plutarch: "Pyrrhus seeing his people thus troubled, and harried to and fro," &c. See also Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1590: Tartassare. To rib-baste, to bang, to tugge, to hale, to harrie." MALONE. 2 O, nothing,] The exclamation-0, was, for the sake of measure, supplied by Sir Thomas Hanmer. STEEVENS. 3 When the best hint was given him, he NOT TOOK'T,] The Ост. O my good lord, Believe not all; or, if you must believe, Stomach not all. A more unhappy lady, If this division chance, ne'er stood between, Praying for both parts: the good gods will mock me presently, When I shall pray 6, O, bless my lord and husband! Undo that prayer, by crying out as loud, O, bless my brother! Husband win, win brother, Prays, and destroys the prayer; no midway "Twixt these extremes at all. ANT. Gentle Octavia, Let your best love draw to that point, which seeks Best to preserve it: If I lose mine honour, first folio reads, not look'd. Dr. Thirlby advised the emendation, which I have inserted in the text. THEOBALD. 4 Or did it FROM HIS TEETH.] Whether this means, as we now say, in spite of his teeth, or that he spoke through his teeth, so as to be purposely indistinct, I am unable to determine. A similar passage, however, occurs in a very scarce book entitled A Courtlie Controversie of Cupid's Cautels: conteyning Five Tragicall Histories, &c. Translated out of French, &c. by H. W. [Henry Wotton] 4to. 1578: "The whyche the factor considering, incontinently made his reckning that it behoued him to speake clearely, and not betweene his teeth, if he would practise surely," &c. Again, in Chapman's version of the fifteenth Iliad : "She laught, but meerly from her lips: -" Again, in Fuller's Historie of the Holy Warre, b. iv. ch. 17: "This bad breath, though it came but from the teeth of some, yet proceeded from the corrupt lungs of others." Again, in P. Holland's translation of the eleventh book of Pliny's Natural History: "the noise which they make cometh but from their teeth and mouth outward." STEEVENS. 5 AND the-] I have supplied this conjunction, for the sake of metre. STEEVENS. Mr. Steevens divides this line, and reads thus : 66 'Praying for both parts: "And the good gods will mock me presently." BoSWELL. 6 When I shall pray, &c.] The situation and sentiments of Octavia resemble those of Lady Blanch in King John, Act III. STEEVENS. Sc. I. I lose myself: better I were not yours, Than yours so branchless. But, as you requested, Yourself shall go between us: The mean time, lady, I'll raise the preparation of a war Shall stain your brother; Make your soonest haste; So your desires are yours. 7 Than YOURS So branchless.] Old copy-your. Corrected in the second folio. This is one of the many mistakes that have arisen from the transcriber's ear deceiving him, your so and yours so, being scarcely distinguishable in pronunciation. Malone. The mean time, lady, I'll raise the preparation of a war Shall STAIN your brother;] Thus the printed copies. But, sure, Antony, whose business here is to mollify Octavia, does it with a very ill grace and 'tis a very odd way of satisfying her, to tell her the war, he raises, shall stain, i. e. cast an odium upon her brother. I have no doubt, but we must read, with the addition only of a single letter 66 Shall strain your brother; —' i. e. shall lay him under constraints; shall put him to such shifts, that he shall neither be able to make a progress against, or to prejudice me. Plutarch says, that Octavius, understanding the sudden and wonderful preparations of Antony, was astonished at it; for he himself was in many wants, and the people were sorely oppressed with grievous exactions. THEOBALD. I do not see but stain may be allowed to remain unaltered, meaning no more than shame or disgrace. JOHNSON. So, in some anonymous stanzas among the poems of Surrey and Wyatt : 66 - here at hand approacheth one "Whose face will stain you all." Again, in Shore's Wife, by Churchyard, 1593: "So Shore's wife's face made foule Browneta blush, "As pearle staynes pitch, or gold surmounts a rush.” Again, in Churchyard's Charitie, 1595 : 66 Whose beautie staines the faire Helen of Greece." I believe a line betwixt these two has been lost, the purport of which probably was, " unless I am compelled in my own defence, I will do no act that shall stain," &c. After Antony has told Octavia that she shall be a mediatrix between him and his adversary, it is surely strange to add that he will do an act that shall disgrace her brother. MALONE. Ост. Thanks to my lord. The Jove of power make me most weak, most weak, Your reconciler! Wars 'twixt you twain would be1 As if the world should cleave, and that slain men Should solder up the rift. ANT. When it appears to you where this begins, Turn your displeasure that way; for our faults Can never be so equal, that your love Can equally move with them. Provide your going; Choose your own company, and command what cost Your heart has mind to. [Exeunt. SCENE V. The Same. Another Room in the Same. Enter ENOBARBUS and EROS, meeting. ENO. How now, friend Eros? EROS. There's strange news come, sir. ENO. What, man? EROS. Cæsar and Lepidus have made wars upon Pompey. ENO. This is old; What is the success? Perhaps we should read: 66 Shall stay your brother; " Shall check and make him pause in his hostile designs. BOSWELL. 9 YOUR reconciler!] The old copy has you. This manifest error of the press, which appears to have arisen from the same cause as that noticed above, was corrected in the second folio. MALONE. 1-Wars 'twixt you twain would be, &c.] The sense is, that war between Cæsar and Antony would engage the world between them, and that the slaughter would be great in so extensive a commotion. JOHNSON. |