This seeming breach of grammar would be repaired by due punctuation: "With the hand of-She here. (It is she here whom I mean,) "What's her name?" &c. 192. "You have been a boggler ever." Perhaps, "Indeed we know you've been a boggler ever." Since my lord 199. "Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." This should be "Is Antony again, I'm Cleopatra." To be furious, Is, to be frighted out of fear.". Fear, pressed to extremity, turns to fury. 201. " ACT IV. SCENE I. Never anger "Made good guard," &c. This is uncouth phraseology, and might readily have been corrected: Anger never "Made good guard," &c. 211. Come, sir, despatch." "Please you, retire to your chamber ?" This is defective. We might add : "Please Cleo," you, retire you to your chamber ?" "He goes forth gallantly. That he and Cæsar might "Determine this great war in single fight! "Then, Antony," &c. The reader must have observed, that frequently, throughout these works, after a scene has apparently been finished with tag, other words are introduced unnecessarily; as here. Renouncing the rhyme, which the additional words seem to imply a disapprobation of, the first line might be reduced to measure: "He goes forth gallantly. Cæsar," &c. SCENE VI, Might he and 216. "I am alone the villain of the earth, "And feel I am so most. All other villains lose their character, compared with me; and I not only surpass all others in villany, but in the overwhelming consciousness of it. The first part of the sentiment occurs in Cymbeline, where Posthumus imprecates: Every villain be call'd If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean Will do't.". If the active operation of melancholy do not break it, &c. Hamlet talks of Wings as swift "As meditation, or the thoughts of love." And Brutus, in Julius Cæsar, says of Antony: "If he love Cæsar, all that he can do "Is to himself: take thought, and die for Cæsar." "Thought, in this sense, extreme anxiety, is used by Lord Verulam : "Hawis, an alderman of London, was put in trouble, and died with thought and anguish before his business came to an end." Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the SCENE VIII. 220. "Ride on the pants triumphing." Milton thus accentuates triumph: "Who now triumphs, and, in the excess of joy," &c. Paradise Lost. Thus I hurl My dazzling spells into the spongy air." In Cymbeline, too, we find "the spongy south." SCENE X. 231. "And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians." Plébeians, I think, is always in these works accentuated thus on the first syllable. 232. Her prepared nails.". "Her prepared nails," I believe, is nothing 'more than "her nails addressed to the purpose. Dr. Warburton's notion of Octavia's letting her nails grow for the occasion, seems ludicrous. It would seem a more plausible conjecture, if the doctor had supposed, that, by prepared, we should understand-cut or sharpened for the purpose; for which he might quote from Horace : Sectis in juvenes unguibus acrium. Ode 6th. 'Tis well thou'rt gone, "If it be well to live: but better 'twere Othello utters a similar reflection, when fago says, he is only wounded, and not killed: "I am not sorry neither: I'd have thee live; "For in my mind 'tis happiness to die." SCENE XII. Condemn myself, to lack The courage of a woman.' Then let it do at once "The thing why thou hast drawn it." "Why" stands very unwarrantably, instead of "for which." I will be "A bridegroom in my death." So would King Lear: "I will die "Like a smug bridegroom." 245. " How! not yet dead? not dead?" Thus in Othello: Not dead! not yet quite dead?” SCENE XIII. 250. "I am dying, Egypt, dying; only." The natural exclamation, O, at the beginning of this line, seems wanting. 252. "Here's sport indeed!" Cleopatra, I imagine, speaks in frantic irony, "here is a cause for mirth !" instead of "here is an afflicting scene." |