Part 27

TIM. To the _tub-fast_ and the _diet_.

What this _diet_ was may be seen at large in Dr. Bullein's _Bulwarke of defence_, fo. 57 b. and in his _Booke of compoundes_, fo. 42, 43.

In a former note a conclusion was too hastily drawn, concerning the origin of _Cornelius's tub_. It was stated that it took its name from the hero of Randolph's pleasant comedy of _Cornelianum dolium_; but the term is much older, being mentioned in Lodge's _Wit's miserie_, 1599, 4to, sig. F iiij b. Its origin therefore remains in a state of uncertainty; for what Davenant has left us in his _Platonick lover_ can only be regarded as a piece of pleasantry.

SCIOLT. As for _Diogenes_ that fasted much, and took his habitation in a tub, to make the world believe he lov'd a strict and severe life, he took the diet, sir, and in that very tub swet for the French disease.

FRED. And some unlearned apothecary since, mistaking 's name, called it _Cornelius tub_.

Act iii.

There is yet another passage which may be worth inserting, as it throws a gleam of light on this obscure term. It is from _The law of drinking_, 1617, 12mo, p. 55. "Like ivie they cling close about _Cornelius' bulke_; till sleepe surprize them, oblivion divide them, and _brave Cornelius_ guide them to his _tub_."

SCENE 3. Page 624.

TIM. The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears.

Some difficulty has arisen in the course of the notes on this passage to account for the manner in which the sea could despoil the moon of its moisture and change it into saline tears. It has been judiciously remarked by one of the commentators, that we are not to attend on these occasions merely to philosophical truth, but to consider what might have been the received or vulgar notions of the time: yet no example of such notions applicable to the present occasion has been produced. The following may perhaps serve to supply this defect, and to establish at the same time the genuineness of the text: "The moone gathereth deawe in the aire, for she printeth the vertue of hir moysture in the aire, and chaungeth the ayre in a manner that is unseene, and breedeth and gendereth deawe in the utter part thereof."--Bartholomæus _De propriet. rerum_, lib. viii, c. 29.

ACT V.

SCENE 5. Page 658.

ALCIB. Here lies a _wretched_ corse, &c.

There is a _fourth_ epitaph on Timon, which is scarcely worth mentioning, but as it perhaps completes the list, and might even, as well as that in Kendal and Painter, have suggested the slight alteration made by Shakspeare. It is in Pettie's translation of Guazzo's _Civile conversation_, 1586, 4to, fo. 5, as follows:

"Here doe I lie, ne am the same I heretofore was wont to bee; Thou reader never aske my name, A _wretched_ end God send to thee."

THE FOOL.

The fool in this play is a very obscure and insignificant character. Dr. Johnson's conjecture that he belongs to one of Alcibiades's mistresses is extremely probable. Many ancient prints conduce to show that women of this description were attended by buffoons; and there is good reason for supposing, partly from the same kind of evidence, that in most brothels such characters were maintained to amuse the guests by their broad jokes and seasonable antics. In _Measure for measure_ we have such a person, who is also a tapster; and in _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I. Scene 1, we hear of a _strumpet's fool_.

The dress, in the present instance, should be a party-coloured garment, with a hood and asses' ears, and a cock's comb. He might also carry a bauble.

CORIOLANUS.

ACT I.

SCENE 1. Page 12.

MEN. Even to the court, the heart,--to the seat o' the brain.

Mr. Malone has most ingeniously shown that the _heart_ here signifies the _seat of the brain_, that is, of the understanding; and this is conformable to the old philosophy. Thus our English Pliny, Bartholomew Glanville, informs us, from Aristotle, that the substance of the brain being cold, it is placed before the well of heat, which is, the heart; and that small veins proceed from the heart, of which is made a marvellous caul wherein the brain is wrapped. _De propr. rerum_, lib. v. c. 3. On this ground, the heart has been very appositely made the seat of reason; and accordingly in another place, Glanville tells us that in the heart is "all business and knowing."

If the above able commentator be right in his chronology of this play, and there appears to be no reason for doubting that he is so, the present lines must have been imitated by a contemporary writer of great ability and poetical talents, though undeservedly obscure. This is W. Parkes, who calls himself a student of Barnard's inn. In his work entitled _The curtaine-drawer of the world_, 1612, 4to, he has two passages which bear so strong a resemblance, that a mere coincidence of thought is entirely out of the question. This is the first, in p. 6: "If any vice arise from the _court_, as from the _head_, it immediately discends to the cittie, _as the heart_, from thence drawes downe to the country, as the heele: and so like an endlesse issue or theame, runs through the whole land." The other is in p. 13: "For whereas that member was ordained for a light and window, and as a true interpreter to expresse and expound the consultations, and councels, and purposes of that hidden dumbe and secret privy-councellour that _sits within the throne and breast_ and bosome of every living man, it many times doth belye, and forge, and flatter, and speaks then most faire when the deepest deceit and treachery is intended: not the foot, nor the finger, nor the whole hand: no not the whole body, nor all the members thereof, either severally, by themselves, or joyntly together (this one onely excepted) that doth so stretch, and draw, and finger, and fold and unfold this curtaine or canopy to the daily use and deceit of itselfe and others, as it alone doth."

It is rather extraordinary that none of Shakspeare's commentators should have noticed the skilful manner in which he has diversified and expanded the well known apologue of _the belly and the members_, the origin of which it may be neither unentertaining nor unprofitable to investigate, as well as the manner in which it has been used, and by whom.

The composition has been generally ascribed to Menenius Agrippa; but as it occurs in a very ancient collection of Æsopian fables, there may be as much reason for supposing it the invention of Æsop as there is for making him the parent of many others. The first person who has introduced Menenius as reciting this fable is Dionysius of Halicarnassus, book 6. Then follow Livy, lib. 2; Plutarch, in the life of Coriolanus; Florus, lib. 1. cap. 23; each of whom gives it in his own manner. During the middle ages there appeared a collection of Latin fables in hexameter verse, that has agitated the opinions of the learned to little purpose in their endeavours to ascertain the real name of the compiler or versifier. He has been called Romulus, Accius and Salo. Nor is the time when he lived at all known. These fables are sometimes called _anonymous_, and have been published in various forms. An excellent edition by Nilant appeared in 1709, 12mo. Many of them were translated into French verse in the eleventh century by a French lady who calls herself _Marie de France_, in which form they have been happily preserved with many others extremely curious composed by the same ingenious person, on whose life and writings a most valuable memoir has been communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, by the author's truly learned and amiable friend the Abbé Gervase de la Rue, professor of history in the university of Caen. William Herman of Gouda, in Holland, reduced them into Latin prose about the year 1500, omitting some, and adding others. The works of Romulus and Herman of Gouda, have been published in a great variety of forms and languages, and constitute the set of Æsopian fables which commences with that of the cock and the precious stone; in all which the apologue of the belly and the members is to be found, and sometimes with considerable variation. What Camden has given is from John of Salisbury, who wrote in the reign of Henry the Second, and professes to have received it from Pope Hadrian IV. See his _Polycraticon, sive de nugis curialium_, 1. vi. c. 24. Camden has omitted the latter part; and the learned reader will do well to consult the original, where he will find some verses by Q. Serenus Sammonicus, a physician in the reign of Caracalla, that allude to the fable. John of Salisbury has himself composed two hundred Latin lines _De membris conspirantibus_, which are in the _first edition_ of his _Polycraticon_ printed at Brussels, without date, about 1470. These were reprinted by Andreas Rivinus at Leipsic, 1655, 8vo; and likewise at the end of the fourth volume of Fabricius's _Bibliotheca mediæ et infinæ ætatis_, Hamburg, 1735, 8vo. They are, most probably, the lines which are called in Sinner's catalogue of the MSS. at Berne, "Carmen _Ovidii_ de altercatione ventris et artuum," vol. iii. p. 116. Nor was this fable unknown in the Eastern world. Syntipas, a Persian fabulist, has placed it in his work, published, for the first time, from a MS. at Moscow, by Matthæus. Lips. 1781, 8vo. Lafontaine has related it in his own inimitable manner; and lastly, the editor of Baskerville and Dodsley's _Æsop_ has given it in a style not inferior perhaps to that of any of his predecessors.

SCENE 4. Page 35.

MAR. All the contagion of the _south_ light on you.

See the note on Caliban's similar wish, "A _south_-west blow on you," p. 5.

ACT II.

SCENE 1. Page 77.

BRU. The _napless_ vesture of humility.

"The players read the _Naples_," says Mr. Steevens; but the players are right, and the fault was with the printer in giving the word with a capital letter. The termination _less_ in old books is very frequently spelled with a single _s_; so that Mr. Rowe's change scarcely deserves the name of _a correction_.

ACT IV.

SCENE 1. Page 159.

COR. I shall be lov'd when I am lack'd.

Thus Cæsar in _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I. Scene 4, "And the ebb'd man comes dear'd by being lack'd." We have still preserved this proverbial saying in another form. Mother Cole says, "When people are miss'd, then they are mourn'd." It is, in fact, Horace's "extinctus amabitur idem."

JULIUS CÆSAR.

ACT I.

SCENE 2. Page 254.

CAS. Now is it Rome indeed, and _room_ enough.

This jingle of words is deserving of notice on no other account than as it shows the pronunciation of _Rome_ in Shakspeare's time.

SCENE 3. Page 266.

CAS. Why old men fools, and children calculate.

In this manner has the former punctuation of the line, which had a comma after _men_, been disturbed at the suggestion of Sir W. Blackstone, and thereby rendered extremely uncouth if not unintelligible. He observes that there is no prodigy in old men's calculating from their past experience; but the poet means old dotards in a second state of childhood. With the supposed power of divination in _fools_, few are unacquainted. He that happens to be so may consult the popular history of Nixon, the Cheshire prophet.

ACT II.

SCENE 2. Page 299.

CAL. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

This might have been suggested by what Suetonius has related of the blazing star which appeared for seven days together, during the celebration of games instituted by Augustus in honour of Julius. The common people believed that this comet indicated his reception among the gods; and not only his statues were accordingly ornamented with its figure, but medals were struck on which it was represented. One of these, struck by Augustus, is here exhibited.

Pliny relates that a comet appeared before the death of Claudius, lib. ii. c. 25; and Geffrey of Monmouth speaks of one that preceded the death of Aurelius Ambrosius; but the comets would have appeared though the men had not died, and the men would not have lived longer had the comets never been seen.

SCENE 2. Page 300.

SER. Plucking the entrails of an offering forth They could not find a heart within the beast.

CÆS. The gods do this in shame of cowardice: Cæsar should be a beast without a heart, If he should stay at home to day, for fear.

Dr. Johnson remarks on this occasion, that "the ancients did not place courage in the heart." He had forgotten his classics strangely.

"Nunc animis opus, Ænea, nunc _pectore firmo_."

_Æn._ vi. 261.

"... Juvenes, _fortissima_ frustra _Pectora_----."

_Æn._ ii. 263.

"... Teucrûm minantur _inertia corda_."

_Æn._ ix. 55.

"... excute, dicens, _Corde_ metum----"

Ovid. _Metam._ lib. iii. 689.

"_Corda pavent_ comitum, mihi mens interrita mansit."

Ovid. _Metam._ lib. xv. 514.

"_Cor pavet_ admonitu temeratæ sanguine noctis."

Ovid. _Epist._ xiv. 16.

"Nescio quæ _pavidum_ frigora _pectus_ habent."

Ovid. _Epist._ xix. 192.

ACT III.

SCENE 1. Page 329.

ANT. ... for mine eyes, Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine, Began to water.

We have a similar expression in _The tempest_, Act V. Scene 1, where Prospero says,

"Holy Gonzalo, honourable man, Mine eyes even sociable to the shew of thine, Fall fellowly drops."

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

ACT I.

SCENE 1. Page 410.

ANT. Let Rome in Tiber melt! and the _wide arch_ Of the _rang'd_ empire fall! Here is my space.

As _range_ signifies _compass_, _extent_, so the verb seems to be used, rather licentiously, in the present instance, in the sense of _spread_, _extended_. It may be doubted, at least, whether there be any allusion to a triumphal arch, as Dr. Warburton supposed, or even of a fabric standing on pillars, according to Dr. Johnson. The _wide arch_ may refer to the vast concave of the Roman world, its wide domains covered by _the arch of heaven_, which has been beautifully styled by some oriental writer "the star-built arch of heaven." See _The tales of Inatulla_ by Dow, vol. i. p. 78.

SCENE 3. Page 440.

CLEO. O my oblivion is a very Antony And I am _all_ forgotten.

She compares her memory to Antony, and says she is treacherously abandoned and neglected by _both_. Mr. Steevens's explanation of the first line is satisfactory; but one cannot well agree with him or Mason, that "I am all forgotten" can possibly mean, "I forget myself, or every thing."

ACT II.

SCENE 4. Page 490.

ANT. ... and his quails Ever beat mine, _inhoop'd_ at odds.

It may be doubted whether quail-fighting was practised in Shakspeare's time, though Dr. Farmer appears to have thought so; but when our poet speaks of their being _inhoop'd_, he might suppose that Cæsar's or Antony's quails, which he found in Plutarch, were trained to battle like game cocks in a _ring_ or _circle_. Hanmer plausibly reads _incoop'd_, but no change is necessary.

Quail combats were well known among the ancients, and especially at Athens. Julius Pollux relates that a circle was made in which the birds were placed, and he whose quail was driven out of this circle lost the stake, which was sometimes money, and occasionally the quails themselves. Another practice was to produce one of these birds, which being first smitten or filliped with the middle finger, a feather was then plucked from its head: if the quail bore this operation without flinching, his master gained the stake, but lost it if he ran away. The Chinese have been always extremely fond of quail-fighting, as appears from most of the accounts of that people, and particularly in Mr. Bell's excellent relation of his travels to China, where the reader will find much curious matter on the subject. See vol. i. p. 424, edit.. in 8vo. We are told by Mr. Marsden that the Sumatrans likewise use these birds in the manner of game cocks. The annexed copy from an elegant Chinese miniature painting represents some ladies engaged at this amusement, where the quails are actually _inhoop'd_.

SCENE 5. Page 493.

CHAR. ... 'Twas merry, when You wager'd on your angling; when your diver Did hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he With fervency drew up.

This incident, which, as Mr. Steevens has already remarked, was borrowed from Plutarch, probably suggested a story related by Nashe, "of a scholler in Cambridge, that standing angling on the towne bridge there, as the country people on the market day passed by, secretly bayted his hooke wyth a red herring wyth a bell about the necke, and so conveying it into the water that no man perceived it, all on the sodayn, when he had a competent throng gathered about hym, up he twicht it agayne, and layd it openly before them, whereat the gaping rurall fooles, driven into no lesse admiration than the common people about London some few yeares since were at the bubbling of Moore-ditch, sware by their christendomes that as many dayes and yeeres as they had lived, they never saw such a myracle of a red herring taken in the fresh water before."--_Lenten stuffe, or praise of the red herring_, 1599, 4to, p. 60. But Cleopatra's trick was of a different nature. Antony had fished unsuccessfully in her presence, and she had laughed at him. The next time therefore he directed the boatman to dive under the water and attach a fish to his hook. The queen perceived the stratagem, but affecting not to notice it, congratulated him on his success. Another time, however, she determined to laugh at him once more, and gave orders to her own people to get the start of his divers, and put some dried _salt-fish_ on his hook.

SCENE 5. Page 499.

CLEO. Some innocents 'scape not the thunder bolt.

This alludes to a superstitious notion among the ancients, that they who were stricken with lightning were honoured by Jupiter, and therefore to be accounted holy. Their bodies were supposed not to putrify; and after having been shown for a certain time to the people, were not burned in the usual manner, but buried on the spot where the lightning fell, and a monument erected over them. Some, however, held a contrary opinion. See the various notes on the line in Persius,

"Triste jaces lucis, evitandumque bidental," _Sat._ ii.

The ground also that had been smitten by a thunderbolt was accounted sacred, and afterwards inclosed: nor did any one presume to walk on it. This we learn from Festus, "fulguritum, id quod est fulmine ictum; qui locus statim fieri putabatur religiosus, quod eum Deus sibi dicasse videretur." These places were therefore consecrated to the gods, and could not in future become the property of any one.

SCENE 7. Page 512.

2. SER. I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service, as a _partizan_ I could not heave.

Dr. Johnson says the partizan is a pike, and so say many of our dictionaries; but it was in reality a weapon between a pike and a halbert. Not being so long as the former, it was made use of in trenches, in mounting a breach, and in attacking or defending a lodgment; on all which occasions the pike would have been unmanageable. Its upper extremity resembled that of a halbert, but was longer and broader. In more modern times it wanted the cutting axe which belongs to the halbert, though in that used by the old Switzers and Germans it seems to have had it. The etymology of the word has been much controverted, but appears to lie between the Latin _pertica_ and the German _bart_, an axe, whence _bardike_, a little axe. Shakspeare himself has distinguished it from the pike, "Let us make him with our _pikes and partizans_ a grave."--_Cymbeline_, Act IV. Scene 2.

SCENE 7. Page 518.

ENO. Drink thou; increase the _reels_.

Here is some corruption, and unless it was originally _revels_, the sense is irretrievable. In all events Mr. Steevens has erred in saying that "_reel_ was not, in our author's time, employed to signify a dance." The following passage in a book with which the learned editor was well acquainted, and which had escaped his excellent memory, proves the contrary:--"Agnis Tompson was after brought againe before the king's majestie and confessed that upon the night of Allhollon even last, she was accompanied with a great many witches to the number of two hundreth; and that all they together went by sea each one in a riddle or cive, and went in the same very substantially with flaggons of wine making merrie and drinking by the waye in the same riddles or cives, to the kerke of North Barrick in Lowthian, and that after they had landed, tooke hands on the land, and daunced this _reill or short daunce_, singing all with one voice,

'Commer goe ye before, commer goe ye, Gif ye will not goe before, commer let me.'

At which time she confessed, that Geilles Duncane did goe before them playing this _reill or daunce_ upon a small trump, call a Jewes trump, untill they entered into the kerk of North Barrick."--_Newes from Scotland declaring the damnable life and death of doctor Fian, a notable sorcerer, who was burned at Edenbrough in January last_, 1591, sign. B iij.

ACT III.

SCENE 6. Page 543.

CÆS. ... The wife of Antony Should have an army for an _usher_.

An _usher_ is a person who introduces others ceremoniously, though originally a door-keeper, from the French _huissier_, and that from _huis_, _ostium_. This is no otherwise worth the mention, than to mark the corrupt orthography of the word, which ought to be written _husher_. Thus Spencer,

"A gentle _husher_, vanitie by name, Made roome, and passage for them did prepare."

_Fairy queen_, B. i. Canto 4, st. 13.

Cavendish, the servant of Cardinal Wolsey, speaking of his master's arrest by the Earl of Northumberland, says, "he toke the Earle by the hande, and led him in to his bedchamber. And they being there all alone, save onely I _who kept the dore according to my dutye, being gentleman ussher_, &c."--_Life of Wolsey_, MS.

SCENE 6. Page 544.

CÆS. ... and have prevented The ostent of our love.

Mr. Steevens, in claiming the merit of this necessary change from _ostentation_, had forgotten that it had been already made by Sir Thomas Hanmer.

SCENE 6. Page 544.

CÆS. ... Which soon he granted, Being an _obstruct_ 'tween his lust and him.

The change was made by Dr. Warburton from _abstract_, which he declares to be absurd; but, as an eminent critic has remarked, it has been made very unnecessarily. The canon somewhere laid down, viz. that where the old text is capable of a meaning, no alteration should be hazarded, ought to have been observed in this instance. The sense is obviously, "Octavia drew away or _abstracted_ Cleopatra from Antony," and she might therefore be very properly called, in Shakspeare's bold language, an _abstract_.

Another reason for retaining the old reading is, that, generally speaking, Dr. Warburton's _emendations_ are inadmissible.

SCENE 11. Page 587.

ANT. If from the field I shall return once more To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood-- I will be treble-sinew'd, hearted, breath'd, And fight maliciously: for when mine hours Were _nice_ and lucky, men did ransom lives Of me for jests----

The word _nice_, sometimes used by Shakspeare in a sense bordering on that of _amorous_ or _wanton_, seems in the present instance to have precisely that meaning. Antony says that his former _luxurious_ hours with Cleopatra were fortunate to those who asked his favours, but that now he will appear in blood. The historian Stowe, in recording an accident that happened to one Mary Breame in the year 1583, says that she "had beene _accused_ by her husband to bee a _nice woman of her body_." We have also an old play entitled _The nice wanton_.

SCENE 11. Page 589.

ENO. ... and in that mood, The dove will peck the _estridge_.

i. e. the _falcon_. See note p. 268, &c.

ACT IV.

SCENE 9. Page 611.

1. SOLD. ... so bad a prayer Was never yet for _sleeping_.

2. SOLD. Go we to him.