SOLD. O noble emperor 2, do not fight by sea; Trust not to rotten planks: Do you misdoubt This sword, and these my wounds? Let the Egyptians, And the Phoenicians, go a ducking; we Have used to conquer, standing on the earth, ANT. Well, well, away. [Exeunt ANTONy, Cleopatra, and Eno BARBUS. SOLD. By Hercules, I think, I am i̇' the right. CAN. Soldier, thou art: but his whole action grows Not in the power on't: So our leader's led, SOLD. 2 O noble emperor, &c.] So, in the old translation of Plutarch: "Now, as he was setting his men in order of battel, there was a captaine, & a valiant man, that had serued Antonius in many battels & conflicts, & had all his body hacked and cut: who as Antonius passed by him, cryed out vnto him, and sayd: O, noble emperor, how commeth it to passe that you trust to these vile brittle shippes? what, doe you mistrust these woundes of myne, and this sword? let the Ægyptians and Phoenicians fight by sea, and set vs on the maine land, where we vse to conquer, or to be slayne on our feete. Antonius passed by him, and sayd neuer a word, but only beckoned to him with his hand and head, as though he willed him to be of good corage, although indeede he had no great corage himselfe." STEEVENS. 3 Sold. By Hercules, I think, I am i' the right. Can. Soldier, thou art: but his whole action grows Not in the power on't :] That is, his whole conduct becomes ungoverned by the right, or by reason. JOHNSON. I think the sense is very different, and that Canidius means to say, His whole conduct in the war is not founded upon that which is his greatest strength, (namely, his land force,) but on the caprice of a woman, who wishes that he should fight by sea. Johnson refers the word on't to right in the preceding speech. I apprehend, it refers to action in the speech before us. MALONE. Dr. Publicola, and Cælius, are for sea : But we keep whole by land. This speed of Cæsar's Carries beyond belief *. Enter a Messenger. MESS. The emperor calls Canidius 7. CAN. With news the time's with labour; and throes forth R, Each minute, some. SCENE VIII. A Plain near Actium. [Exeunt. Enter CESAR, TAURUS, Officers, and Others. CES. Taurus, 4 CARRIES beyond belief.] Perhaps this phrase is from archery. So, in King Henry IV. Part II. : 66 - he would have carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half." STEEVENS. 5 While HE WAS ] Of what use are the words—he was, except to vitiate the metre? STEEVENS. JOHNSON. distractions,] Detachments, separate bodies. The word is thus used by Sir Paul Rycaut, in his Maxims of Turkish Polity: 66 and not suffer his affections to wander on other wives, slaves, or distractions of his love." STEEVENS. 7 The emperor calls FOR Canidius.] The preposition-for, was judiciously inserted by Sir Thomas Hanmer, to complete the measure. So, in a future scene : 8 66 call for Enobarbus." STEEVENS. and THROES forth,] i. e. emits as in parturition. So, in The Tempest: 66 proclaim a birth Which throes thee much to yield." STEEVENS. CES. Strike not by land; keep whole: Provoke not battle, till we have done at sea. Do not exceed the prescript of this scroll: Enter ANTONY and ENOBarbus. [Exeunt. ANT. Set we our squadrons on yon' side o' the hill, In eye of Cæsar's battle; from which place [Exeunt. Enter CANIDIUS, marching with his Land Army one Way over the Stage; and TAURUS, the Lieutenant of Cæsar, the other Way. After their going in, is heard the Noise of a Sea-Fight. Alarum. Re-enter ENOBArbus. ENO. Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer : The Antoniad', the Egyptian admiral, With all their sixty, fly, and turn the rudder; SCAR. Enter SCARUS. Gods, and goddesses, What's thy passion? All the whole synod of them! ENO. 2 9-this JUMP.] i. e. hazard. So, in Macbeth: 66 'We'd jump the life to come." STEEVENS. The Antoniad, &c.] Which Plutarch says, was the name of Cleopatra's ship. POPE. 2 The greater CANTLE] A piece or lump. PoPe. Cantle is rather a corner. Cæsar, in this play, mentions the three-nook'd world. Of this triangular world every triumvir had a corner. JOHNSON. The word is used by Chaucer, in The Knight's Tale, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 3010: "Of no partie ne cantel of a thing." STEEVENS. With very ignorance; we have kiss'd way ENO. How appears the fight? SCAR. On our side the token'd3 pestilence, Where death is sure. Yon' ribald-rid nag of Egypt, So, in King Henry IV. Part I. Act III. Sc. I.: "See how this river comes me cranking in, "And cuts me, from the best of all my land, "A huge half moon, a monstrous cantle out." Cockeram, in his Dictionary of Hard Words, gives cantle as the explanation of fragment. BoS WELL. 3-token'd] Spotted. JOHNSON. MALONE. The death of those visited by the plague was certain, when particular eruptions appeared on the skin; and these were called God's tokens. So, in the comedy of Two Wise Men and all the Rest Fools, in seven Acts, 1619: "A will and a tolling bell are as present death as God's tokens." Again, in Herod and Antipater, 1622: "His sickness, madam, rageth like a plague, Again, in Love's Labour's Lost: "For the Lord's tokens on you do I see." See vol. iv. p. 430, n. 4. STEEVENS. 4 ribald A luxurious squanderer. POPE. The word is in the old edition ribaudred, which I do not understand, but mention it, in hopes others may raise some happy conjecture. JOHNSON. A ribald is a lewd fellow. So, in Arden of Feversham, 1592: that injurious riball that attempts 66 "To vyolate my dear wyve's chastity." Again: "Injurious strumpet, and thou ribald knave." Ribaudred, the old reading, is, I believe, no more than a corruption. Shakspeare, who is not always very nice about his versification, might have written : "Yon ribald-rid nag of Egypt-," i. e. Yon strumpet, who is common to every wanton fellow. We find, however, in The Golden Legend, Wynkyn de Worde's edit. fol. 186, b. that "Antony was wylde, ioly, and rybauldous, and had ye syster of Octauyan to his wyfe." STEEVENS. I have adopted the happy emendation proposed by Mr. Steevens. Ribaud was only the old spelling of ribald; and the misprint of red for rid is easily accounted for. Whenever, by any negligence in writing, a dot is omitted over an i, compor tors at Whom leprosy o'ertake! i' the midst o' the fight, the press invariably print an e. Of this I have had experience in many sheets of my edition of Shakspeare, being very often guilty of that negligence which probably produced the error in the passage before us. In our author's own edition of his Rape of Lucrece, 1594, I have lately observed the same error: "Afflict him in his bed with bed-red groans." Again, in Hamlet, 1604, sign. B 3, Act I. Sc. II. : lar, "Who impotent, and bed-red, scarcely hears By ribald, Scarus, I think, means the lewd Antony in particunot every lewd fellow," as Mr. Steevens has explained it. 66 MALONE. - Yon ribald nag of Egypt." I believe we should read-hag. What follows seems to prove it: 66 She once being loof'd, "The noble ruin of her magick, Antony, "Claps on his sea-wing." TYRWHITT. Odd as this use of nag might appear to Mr. Tyrwhitt, jade is daily used in the same manner. HENLEY. The brize, or œstrum, the fly that stings cattle, proves that nag is the right word. JOHNSON. 5 Whom LEPROSY o'ertake !] Leprosy, an epidemical distemper of the Ægyptians; to which Horace probably alludes in the controverted line: Contaminato cum grege turpium Morbo virorum. JOHNSON. Leprosy was one of the various names by which the Lues venerea was distinguished. So, in Greene's Disputation between a He Coneycatcher and a She Coneycatcher, 1592: "Into what jeopardy a man will thrust himself for her that he loves, although for his sweete villanie he be brought to loathsome leprosie." STEEVENS. 66 Pliny, who says, the white leprosy, or elephantiasis, was not seen in Italy before the time of Pompey the Great, adds, it is a peculiar maladie, and naturall to the Egyptians; but looke when any of their kings fell into it, woe worth the subjects and poore people: for then were the tubs and bathing vessels wherein they sate in the baine, filled with men's bloud for their cure." Philemon Holland's Translation, b. xxvi. c. i. REED. 6 Both as the same, or rather ours the elder,] So, in Julius Cæsar: |