ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. ACT I. SCENE I. Vol. viii. p. 6. The heroine taunts Antony with supposed subjection to Cæsar: "Who knows If the scarce-bearded Cæsar have not sent His powerful mandate to you, 'Do this, or this; Such has been the universal reading, and there may be no sufficient reason to alter it; but the word "damn" sounds ill in Cleopatra's mouth, reads like a vulgarism in the place where it occurs, and may easily have been misprinted: "Perform't, or else we doom thee" is the emendation of the corrector of the folio, 1632. P. 7. An adverb, a decided misprint, as it seems to us, has hitherto escaped correction, where Antony tells Cleopatra that every mood becomes her: "Whose every passion fully strives To make itself in thee fair and admir'd." Fully strives" is a clumsy expression, and a manuscript note points out a word, so much more acceptable and appropriate, that we may be satisfied in future to reject the blunder: the whole passage is, "Fie, wrangling queen! Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh, To make itself, in thee, fair and admir'd." A compositor might carelessly commit such a blunder: the wonder seems to be that it has never been detected. SCENE II. P. 9. It only requires a brief note to state that Warburton's emendation of "fertile," for foretell of the folios, is not confirmed by the corrector of the folio, 1632: the word in the margin of that impression is fruitful; fertile may come nearer the letters, but fruitful is certainly better adapted to the sense: "If every of your wishes had a womb, And fruitful every wish, a million." P. 12. The subsequent quotation may be (as indeed it has been) construed into a meaning; but when we state the errors of the press it contains, we can scarcely doubt regarding corruption : "The present pleasure, By revolution lowering, does become Such has always been the text, and Johnson, after admitting it to be obscure, confesses himself " unable to add any thing to Warburton's explanation, which relates to the "revolutions of the sun in his diurnal course." Tollett and Steevens each made an attempt with about the same success; but can any thing be better than the changes offered by the old annotator? "The present pleasure, By repetition souring, does become This needs neither illustration nor enforcement: sour and souring were of old spelt sower and sowering. Two lines farther on, the printer of the folio, 1632, left out the epithet "enchanting" before "queen," but the old corrector inserted it, perhaps from the folio, 1623. SCENE III. P. 15. Few things can be clearer than that the punctuation of the line where Cleopatra tells Charmian,― "Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him," is wrong; yet it has been almost invariably followed. Malone, and others after him, have given it in that manner, but the sense unquestionably runs on : "Thou teachest, like a fool, the way to lose him." The corrector of the folio, 1632, erases the colon. P. 18. Cleopatra pretends to doubt the affection of Antony, who observes, in all editions, "Evidence" is one syllable too long for the verse, unless it be read ev'dence; but that, if any, is the smallest objection to it, as will be seen when we quote the passage as corrected, and as it must be given in future : "And give true credence to his love, which stands An honourable trial." SCENE IV. P. 19. For "one great competitor" we must hereafter read "our great competitor," as Johnson conjectured: the old corrector substitutes our for "one." In the first line of the next page, the negative at the end dropped out in the second folio; and if it were not obtained from the first folio, the sense would necessarily supply it. Lower down, it appears equally proper to read "Fall on him for't," and the Cis struck through, and F placed in the margin: Johnson's forced construction of "Visit him" for "Call on him," will not bear cxamination; surfeits and dryness of his bones were to fall (not to "call") on Antony for his unrestrained voluptuousness. P. 20. A messenger brings intelligence that "Pompey is strong at sea," and he adds, "To the ports The discontents repair, and men's reports The emendator of the folio, 1632, substitutes, with much plausibility, fleets for "ports;" and it seems likely that the compositor blundered in consequence of the word "report" being found two lines above, and "reports" just below. It is improbable that Shakespeare would have been guilty of the cacophony: nevertheless, it is not to be disputed that, as far as the sense is concerned, "ports" answers the purpose quite as well as fleets. SCENE V. P. 24. Alexas arrives, not "from Cæsar," as stated in the old copies, but from Antony, as an emendation in the folio, 1632, informs us; and at the end of his third speech he describes the manner of the hero as he delivered his message for Cleopatra, and then mounted his steed. The words have been usually printed in this manner: "So he nodded, And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed, Who neigh'd so high, that what I would have spoke The first difficulty has arisen out of the epithet "armgaunt," and, without noticing other proposed emendations, we may state that Sir Thomas Hanmer's "arm-girt" is precisely that of the old corrector, who also makes a very important change in the last hemistich, which, in the folios, stands, "Was beastly dumbe by him." The commentators have properly taken "dumbe" as a misprint for dumb'd, and have referred to "Pericles," where dumbs is used as a verb. It seems that "beastly" was not Shakespeare's word, which we can well suppose: in "Macbeth" we have seen "boast" misprinted beast, and in Henry V. (Chorus to Act IV.) we meet with the line, "Steed threatens steed in high and boastful neighs." In the passage before us, Alexas says that the " arm-girt steed" neighed so "high" that he could not address Antony: in what way, then, does the corrector of the folio, 1632, give the whole passage? "So he nodded, And soberly did mount an arm-girt steed, Who neigh'd so high, that what I would have spoke Was boastfully dumb'd by him." One slight objection to this change is that boastfully must be read as a dissyllable, and such is the case with various words, one of them being "evidence," in a preceding quotation, if we could refrain from admitting credence instead of it. Boastfully might be, and probably was, misprinted “beastly;" and the arm-girt steed, neighing proudly as Antony mounted him, "boastfully dumbed" what Alexas would have spoken to his master. ACT II. SCENE I. P. 27. We own that we do not like the first change in the following, where Pompey expresses his hope that the beauty and blandishments of Cleopatra will detain Antony in Egypt: "Salt Cleopatra, soften thy wand lip. Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both: Keep his brain fuming," &c. For "wand lip" the old corrector, prosaically as it seems to us, has "warm lip;" but it is very possible that warm was misheard "wand." However, he goes on to make a double alteration in the next line but one, where he puts Lay for "Tie," and flood for "field." It reads very unlike Shakespeare to talk of tying up a libertine in a field of feasts. The proposed emendations, then, are these: "Salt Cleopatra, soften thy warm lip. Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both : Keep his brain fuming," &c. To us the above appears one of the least satisfactory emendations made in this play in the folio, 1632: it sounds too much like conjecture; yet on p. 449 we have seen tying misprinted for "laying." SCENE II. P. 29. When Antony says to Cæsar, "Were we before our armies, and to fight, I should do thus," we are no where told, in ancient or modern editions, what Antony did, whether he embraced or shook hands with his |