MEC. This in the publick eye ? CES. I' the common show-place, where they exercise. 8 His sons he there proclaim'd, The kings of kings: He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assign'd In the habiliments of the goddess Isis' That day appear'd; and oft before gave audience As 'tis reported so. MEC. Inform'd. Let Rome be thus AGR. Who, queasy with his insolence Already, will their good thoughts call from him. CES. The people know it; and have now receiv'd His accusations. AGR. Whom does he accuse? CES. Cæsar: and that, having in Sicily Sextus Pompeius spoil'd, we had not rated him Should be depos'd; and, being that, we detain AGR. Sir, this should be answer'd. CES. 'Tis done already, and the messenger gone. I have told him, Lepidus was grown too cruel; "First of all he did establish Cleopatra queen of Egypt, of Cyprus, of Lydia, and the lower Syria." FARMER. The present reading is right: for in p. 295, where Cæsar is recounting the several kings whom Antony had assembled, he gives the kingdom of Lybia to Bocchus. M. MASON. 8 he there] The old copy has-hither. The correction was made by Mr. Steevens. MALONE. 9 the goddess Isis -] So, in the old translation of Plutarch: "Now for Cleopatra, she did not onely weare at that time (but at all other times els when she came abroad) the apparell of the goddesse Isis, and so gaue audience vnto all her subjects, as a new Isis." STEEVENS. That he his high authority abus'd, And did deserve his change; for what I have con quer'd, I grant him part; but then, in his Armenia, Demand the like. MEC. He'll never yield to that. CES. Nor must not then be yielded to in this. Enter OCTAVIA, OCT. Hail, Cæsar, and my lord! hail, most dear Cæsar! CES. That ever I should call thee, cast-away! OCT. You have not call'd me so, nor have you cause. CES. Why have you stol'n upon us thus? You come not Like Cæsar's sister: The wife of Antony Should have an army for an usher, and Ост. 66 Good my lord, The OSTENT of our love,] Old copy-ostentation. But the metre, and our author's repeated use of the former word in The Merchant of Venice, Such fair ostents of love," sufficiently authorize the slight change I have made. Ostent occurs also in King Henry V.: Giving full trophy, signal, and ostent-." STEEVENS. To come thus was I not constrain'd, but did it CES. Being an obstruct 'tween his lust and him2. CES. Which soon he granted, I have eyes upon him, My lord, in Athens 3. He hath given his em And his affairs come to me on the wind. Where is he now? Ост. CES. No, my most wronged sister; Cleopatra Hath nodded him to her. Being an OBSTRUCT 'tween his lust and him.] [Old copyabstract.] Antony very soon complied to let Octavia go at her request, says Cæsar; and why? Because she was an abstract between his inordinate passion and him. This is absurd. We must read: 66 Being an obstruct 'tween his lust and him." i. e. his wife being an obstruction, a bar to the prosecution of his wanton pleasures with Cleopatra. WARBURTON. I am by no means certain that this change was necessary. Mr. Henley pronounces it to be " needless, and that it ought to be rejected, as perverting the sense." One of the meanings of abstracted is-separated, disjoined; and therefore our poet, with his usual licence, might have used it for a disjunctive. I believe there is no such substantive as obstruct: .besides, we say, an obstruction to a thing, but not between one thing and another. As Mr. Malone, however, is contented with Dr. Warburton's reading, I have left it in our text. STEEVENS. 3 My lord, in Athens.] Some words, necessary to the metre, being here omitted, Sir Thomas Hanmer reads: 66 My lord, he is in Athens." But I rather conceive the omission to have been in the former hemistich, which might originally have stood thus: "Where is he, 'pray you, now? "Oct. My lord, in Athens." STEEVENS. Up to a whore; who now are levying 4 The kings o' the earth for war3: He hath assem bled Bocchus, the king of Lybia; Archelaus, Of Cappadocia ; Philadelphos, king Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas: Of Comagene; Polemon and Amintas, Ост. Ah me, most wretched, That have my heart parted betwixt two friends, That do afflict each other! CES. Welcome hither: Your letters did withhold our breaking forth; Nothing more dear to me. Welcome to Rome; You are abus'd Beyond the mark of thought: and the high gods, To do you justice, make them ministers" 4— WHO now ARE levying-] That is, which two persons now are levying, &c. MALONE. 5 The kings o' the earth for war:] Mr. Upton remarks, that there are some errors in this enumeration of the auxiliary kings: but it is probable that the author did not much wish to be accurate. JOHNSON. Mr. Upton proposes to read : 66 Polemon and Amintas "Of Lycaonia: and the king of Mede." And this obviates all impropriety. STEEVENS. 6 THEM ministers -] Old copy-his ministers. Corrected by Mr. Capell. MALONE. Of us and those that love you. Best of comfort"; And ever welcome to us. AGR. Welcome, lady. MEC. Welcome, dear madam. Each heart in Rome does love and pity you: 8 And gives his potent regiment to a trull, 7 - BEST of comfort ;] Thus the original copy. The connecting particle, and, seems to favour the old reading. According to the modern innovation, Be of comfort, (which was introduced by Mr. Rowe,) it stands very aukwardly. “Best of comfort" may mean- "Thou best of comforters! a phrase which we meet with again in The Tempest: "A solemn air, and the best comforter "To an unsettled fancy's cure! Cæsar, however, may mean, that what he had just mentioned is the best kind of comfort that Octavia can receive. MALONE. This elliptical phrase, I believe, only signifies-" May the best of comfort be yours!' STEEVENS. 8-potent REGIMENT] Regiment, is government, authority; he puts his power and his empire into the hands of a false / woman. It may be observed, that trull was not, in our author's time, a term of mere infamy, but a word of slight contempt, as wench is now. JOHNSON. Trull is used in The First Part of King Henry VI. as synonymous to harlot, and is rendered by the Latin word Scortum, in Cole's Dictionary, 1679. There can therefore be no doubt of the sense in which it is used here. MALONE. Regiment is used for regimen or government by most of our ancient writers. The old translation of The Schola Salernitana, is called The Regiment of Helth. Again, in Lyly's Woman in the Moon, 1597: Or Hecate in Pluto's regiment." Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. ii. c. x. : "So when he had resign'd his regiment." Trull is not employed in an unfavourable sense by George Peele, in the Song of Coridon and Melampus, published in England's Helicon, 1600: "When swaines sweete pipes are puft, and trulls are warme." |