Cleo. I dare not, dear (Dear my lord, pardon), I dare not, Lest I be taken 2: not the imperious show Be brooch'd3 with me; if knife, drugs, serpents, have Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes, Ant. O, quick, or I am gone. Cleo. Here's sport, indeed 5!-How heavy weighs my lord! Our strength is all gone into heaviness, That makes the weight: Had I great Juno's power, All. A heavy sight! 2 Cleopatra means that she dare not come down out of the monument to Antony. Ritson proposed to read : (Dear my lord, pardon) I dare not come down,' 3 Brooch'd here must mean ornamented, adorned. Any ornamental jewel was called a brooch - Honour's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.'-Ben Jonson's Poetaster. And love to Richard Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.' King Richard II. Act ii, Sc. 5. 4 Sedate determination; silent coolness of resolution.' 5 Cleopatra by these words seems to constrast the melancholy task in which they are now engaged with their former sports. 6 i. e. revive by my kiss. To quicken, according to Baret, is to make livelie and lustie; to make strong and sound, to refresh.' Ant. I am dying, Egypt, dying: Give me some wine, and let me speak a little. Cleo. No, let me speak; and let me rail so high, That the false housewife Fortune break her wheel7, Provok'd by my offence. One word, sweet queen: Ant. Of Cæsar seek your honour with your safety.-O! Cleo. They do not go together. Ant. Gentle, hear me : None about Cæsar trust, but Proculeius. Cleo. My resolution, and my hands, I'll trust; None about Cæsar. Ant. The miserable change now at my end, Lament nor sorrow at: but please your thoughts, In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein I liv'd, the greatest prince o'the world, The noblest and do now not basely die, Nor cowardly; put off my helmet to My countryman, a Roman, by a Roman Valiantly vanquish'd. Now, my spirit is going; I can no more. Cleo. Noblest of men, woo't die? Hast thou no care of me? shall I abide [Dies. In this dull world, which in thy absence is The soldier's pole is fallen; young boys and girls, 7 'Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel,' &c. As You Like It. 8 That is, their standard or rallying point is thrown down. Marlowe concludes his Faustus with a similar image: Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apolloes laurel bough.' And there is nothing left remarkable Char. [She faints. O, quietness, lady! Lady, Madam,- Royal Egypt! Iras. She is dead too, our sovereign. Char. Iras. Char. O madam, madam, madam! Iras. Empress ! Char. Peace, peace, Iras. Cleo. No more, but e'en a woman 10; and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks, Ere death dare come to us?-How do you, women? There's nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys; renown and grace is dead; Macbeth. 10 Iras has just said Royal Egypt, Empress!' Cleopatra completes the sentence (without taking notice of the intervening words of Charmian), Empress 'no more; but e'en a woman,' now on a level with the meanest of my sex. The old copy reads 'but in a woman.' Dr. Johnson made the correction. 11 i. e. task-work. She, like a good wife, is teaching her servants sundry chares.'-Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613. 'And at my crummed messe of milke, each night from maid or dame To do their chares as they supposed,' &c. Warner's Albion's England. Thus in Act ii. Sc. 5, Cleopatra says: 'When thou hast done this chare I'll give thee leave My noble girls!--Ah, women, women! look, [To the Guard below. We'll bury him: and then, what's brave, what's noble, Let's do it after the high Roman fashion, And make death proud to take us. Come, away: This case of that huge spirit now is cold. Ah women, women! come; we have no friend [Exeunt; those above bearing off ANTONY'S ACT V. SCENE I. Cæsar's Camp before Alexandria. Enter CESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, MECENAS, GALLUS, PROCULEIUS, and Others. Cæs. Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield; Being so frustrate 1, tell him, he mocks us by The pauses that he makes. Dol. Cæsar, I shall. [Exit DOLABELLA. Enter DERCETAS, with the Sword of ANTONY. Cæs. Wherefore is that? and what art thou, that dar'st Appear thus to us?? 1 Frustrate for frustrated was the language of Shakspeare's time; as we find contaminate for contaminated, consummate for consummated, &c. Thus in The Tempest: and the sea mocks Our frustrate search by land.' The two last words in this line, us by, are not in the old copy, in which something seems omitted, and these words, which suit the context well, were supplied by Malone, who has justified his selection of them by instances of similar phraseology in other passages of these plays. 2 i. e. with a drawn and bloody sword in thy hand. Der. I am call'd Dercetas; Mark Antony I serv'd, who best was worthy Cæs. What is't thou say'st? Der. I say, O Cæsar, Antony is dead. Cæs. The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack: The round world should have shook Lions into civil streets3, And citizens to their dens :-The death of Antony Is not a single doom; in the name lay A moiety of the world. Der. He is dead, Cæsar; Not by a publick minister of justice, Which writ his honour in the acts it did, 3 The passage is thus arranged in the old copy :- Should have shook lions into civil streets, And citizens to their dens.' The second line is evidently defective, some word or words being omitted at the end, as in a former instance. What is lost may be supplied by conjecture thus: 6 The round world convulsive.' Johnson thought that there was a line lost and Steevens proposed to read: 'A greater crack than this: The ruin'd world,' &c. I know not with whom the present arrangement of the text originated, but I do not think it judicious. Malone thought that the passage might have stood originally thus: The round world should have shook; VOL. VIII. Y Y |