Appear thus to us? 6 DER. I am call'd Dercetas ; Mark Antony I ferv'd, who beft was worthy Beft to be ferv'd: whilft he ftood up, and fpoke, He was my mafter; and I wore my life, To spend upon his haters: If thou please To take me to thee, as I was to him I'll be to Cæfar; if thou pleasest not, I yield thee up my life. that nod unto the world, "And mock our eyes with air." The fecond interpretation given by Mr. Steevens in the following note is a juft interpretation of the text as now regulated; but extracts from the words in the old copy a meaning, which, without those that I have fupplied, they certainly do not afford. MALONE. I have left Mr. Malone's emendation in the text; though, to complete the meafure, we might read-fruftrated, or Being fo fruftrate, tell him that he mocks-&c; as I am well convinced we are not yet acquainted with the full and exact meaning of the verb mock, as fometimes employed by Shakfpeare. In Othello it is used again with equal departure from its common acceptation. My explanation of the words-He mocks the paufes that he makes, is as follows: He plays wantonly with the intervals of time which he fhould improve to his own prefervation. Or the meaning may be-being thus defeated in all his efforts, and left without refource, tell him that these affected paufes and delays of his in yielding himself up to me, are mere idle mockery. He mocks the pauses, be a licentious mode of expreffion for-he makes a mockery of us by thefe paufes; i. e. he trifles with us. STEEVENS. may 5 Cæfar, I fhall.] I make no doubt but it should be marked here, that Dolabella goes out. "Tis reasonable to imagine he should prefently depart upon Cæfar's command; fo that the fpeeches placed to him in the fequel of this scene, must be transferred to Agrippa, or he is introduced as a mute. Befides, that Dolabella fhould be gone out, appears from this, that when Cæfar asks for him, he recollects that he had fent him on bufinefs. THEOBALD, 6 — thus to us?] i. e. with a drawn and bloody fword in thy hand. STEEVENS. CES. What is't thou say'st? DER. I fay, O Cæfar, Antony is dead. CAS. The breaking of fo great a thing should make A greater crack: The round world fhould have fhook Lions into civil streets,' 7 The round world should have shook Lions into civil ftreets, &c.] I think here is a line loft, after which it is in vain to go in queft. The fenfe feems to have been this: The round world should have fhook, and this great alteration of the fyftem of things fhould fend lions into streets, and citizens inte dens. There is fenfe ftill, but it is harth and violent. JOHNSON, I believe we should read-A greater crack than this: The ruin'd world, i. e. the general difruption of elements fhould have book, &c. Shakspeare feems to mean that the death of fo great a man ought to have produced effects fimilar to those which might be expected from the diffolution of the univerfe, when all distinctions fhall be loft. To bake any thing out, is a phrafe in common use among our ancient writers. So Holinfhed, p. 743: "God's providence baking men out of their fhifts of fuppofed fafetie," &c. Perhaps, however, Shakspeare might mean nothing more here than merely an earthquake, in which the fhaking of the round world was to be fo violent as to tofs the inhabitants of woods into cities, and the inhabitants of cities into woods. STEEVENS. The fenfe, I think, is complete and plain, if we confider book (more properly baken) as the participle paft of a verb active. The metre would be improved if the lines were diftributed thus: The round world should have fbook Lions into civil ftreets, and citizens The defect of the metre ftrongly fupports Dr. Johnfon's conjecture, that fomething is loft. Perhaps the paffage originally stood thus: The breaking of fo great a thing fhould make A greater crack. The round world should have fhook; And citizens to their dens. In this very page, five entire lines between the word ook in my note, and the fame word in Mr. Tyrwhitt's note, were omitted by the compofitor, in the original proof sheet. And citizens to their dens :-The death of Antony Is not a fingle doom; in the name lay::: A moiety of the world. DER. He is dead, Cæfar; Not by a publick minifter of justice, Nor by a hired knife; but that felf hand, Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it, Splitted the heart.-This is his fword, That the words" the round world should have shook," contain a diftinct propofition, and have no immediate connexion with the next line, may be inferred from hence; that Shakspeare, when, he means to defcribe a violent derangement of nature, almost always mentions the earth's fhaking, or being otherwife convulfed; and in thefe paffages conftantly employs the word book, or some synonymous word, as a neutral verb. Thus in Macbeth: The obfcure bird "Clamour'd the live-long night; fome say, the earth Again, in Coriolanus : 66 as if the world "Our lodgings standing bleak upon "Shook, as the earth did quake.”.. Again, in King Henry IV. P. I. the fea, "I fay, the earth did shake, when I was born.- Again, in King Lear: thou all-baking thunder, "Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world, "Crack nature's moulds." This circumftance in my apprehenfion ftrongly confirms Dr. Johnfon's fuggeftion that fome words have been omitted in the next line, and is equally adverfe to Mr. Tyrwhitt's emendation. The words omitted were probably in the middle of the line, which oris ginally might have flood thus in the Mf. Lions been hurtled into civil streets, 142. 1 I robb'd his wound of it; behold it ftain'd CES. The gods rebuke me, but it is a tidings AGR. 8 Look you fad, friends? And strange it is, That nature must compel us to lament MEC. Waged equal with him.2 His taints and honours A rarer spirit never AGR. Did fteer humanity: but you, gods, will give us Some faults to make us men. Cæfar is touch'd. MEC. When fuch a spacious mirror's fet before him, He needs must see himself. 8 CES. a tidings Q Antony! -] Thus the fecond folio. In the first, the article had been cafually omitted. STEEVENS. but it is a tidings To wash the eyes of kings.] That is, May the gods rebuke me, if this be not tidings to make kings weep. But, again, for if not. JOHNSON. 2 Waged equal with him.] For waged, [the reading of the firft folio] the modern editions have weighed. JOHNSON. It is not eafy to determine the precife meaning of the word wage. In Othello it occurs again: "To wake and wage a danger profitlefs." It may fignify to oppofe. The fenfe will then be, his taints and honours were an equal match; i. e. were opposed to each other in juft proportions, like the counterparts of a wager. STEEVENS. Read weigh with the fecond folio, where it is only misfpelled way. So, in Shore's Wife, by A. Chute, 1593: notes her myndes difquyet "To be fo great the feemes downe wayed by it.” RITSON. I have follow'd thee to this;-But we do lance Unreconciliable, should divide Difeafes in our bodies :] [Old copy-launch.-] Launch was the ancient, and is ftill the vulgar pronunciation of lance. Nurfes always talk of launching the gums of children, when they have difficulty in cutting teeth. I have followed thee, fays Cæfar, to this; i. e. I have pursued thee, till I compelled thee to felf-deftruction. But, adds the speaker, (at once extenuating his own conduct, and confidering the deceased as one with whom he had been united by the ties of relationship as well as policy, as one who had been a part of himself) the violence, with which I proceeded, was not my choice; I have done but by him as we do by our own natural bodies. I have employed force, where force only could be effectual. I have fhed the blood of the irreclaimable Antony, on the fame principle that we lance a disease incurable by gentler means. STEEVENS. When we have any bodily complaint, that is curable by fcarifying, we ufe the lancet: and if we neglect to do fo, we are deftroyed by it. Antony was to me a disease; and by his being cut off, I am made whole. We could not both have lived in the world together. Launch, the word in the old copy, is only the old fpelling of launce. See Minfhew's DICT. in v. So alfo Daniel, in one of his Sonnets: 2 forrow's tooth ne'er rankles more, “Than when it bites, but launcheth not the fore.” MALONE. his thoughts His is here ufed for its. M. MASON. |