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One word, sweet queen:

ANT. Of Cæsar seek your honour, with your safety.-O! CLEO. They do not go together.

ANT.

Gentle, hear me : None about Cæsar trust, but Proculeius.

CLEO. My resolution, and my hands, I'll trust; None about Cæsar.

8

ANT. The miserable change now at my end,
Lament nor sorrow at: but please your thoughts,
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I liv'd: the greatest prince o' the world,
The noblest and do now not basely die,
Nor cowardly; put off my helmet to

My countryman, a Roman, by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish'd. Now, my spirit is going;
I can no more.

CLEO.

Noblest of men, woo't die? Hast thou no care of me? shall I abide

[Dies.

In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a stye ?-O, see, my women,
The crown o' the earth doth melt :-My lord!—
O, wither'd is the garland of the war,
The soldier's pole 9 is fallen; young boys, and girls,

See As You Like It, vol. vi. p. 359: "Let us sit, and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel," &c. MALONE. "The miserable change, &c.] This speech stands thus in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch: "As for himself, she should not lament nor sorrow for the miserable change of his fortune at the end of his days; but rather, that she should think him the more fortunate, for the former triumphs and honours he had received, considering that while he lived, he was the noblest and greatest prince of the world, and that now he was overcome, not cowardly, but valiantly, a Roman, by another Roman."

STEEVENS.

9 The soldier's pole-] He at whom the soldiers pointed as at a pageant held high for observation. JOHNSON.

The pole, I apprehend, is the standard. Marlowe concludes his Doctor Faustus with a passage not unlike this :

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Are level now with men: the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon'.

CHAR.

[She faints.

O, quietness, lady!

IRAS. She is dead too, our sovereign.

CHAR.

IRAS.

Lady,

Madam,

Royal Egypt!.

CHAR. O madam, madam, madam !

IRAS.

Empress !

I

CHAR. Peace, peace, Iras.

CLEO. No more, but e'en a woman2; and commanded

"Cut is the branch that might have growne ful straight,

"And burned is Apolloes laurel bough." BOSWELl.

the odds is gone,

And there is nothing left remarkable

Beneath the visiting moon.] So, in Macbeth:

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from this instant

"There's nothing serious in mortality:
"All is but toys; renown, and grace,

is dead;

"The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

"Is left this vault to brag of." MALONE.

2 No more, but E'EN a woman;] Iras has just said,-Royal Egypt, Empress! Cleopatra completes the sentence, (without taking notice of the intervening words spoken by Charmian,)— Empress no more; but e'en a woman," now on a level with the meanest of my sex. So, in Julius Cæsar, vol. xii. p. 32, Cassius

says

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"No, it is Casca; one incorporate

"To our attempts. Am I not staied for, Cinna?”

to which Cinna replies, without taking any notice of the latter words [Am I not stay'd for?]:

"I am glad on't."

i. e. I am glad that Casca is incorporate to our attempts. See also Coriolanus, Act II. Sc. I.

The old copy reads-but in a woman. The emendation was made by Dr. Johnson. The same error has happened in many other places in these plays. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet, quarto,

1599:

"Is it in so? then I deny yon stars." See also vol. x. p. 337. MALOne.

By such poor passion as the maid that milks,
And does the meanest chares".-It were for me
To throw my scepter at the injurious gods;
To tell them, that this world did equal theirs,
Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught;
Patience is sottish; and impatience does
Become a dog that's mad: Then is it sin,
To rush into the secret house of death,

Ere death dare come to us?-How do you, women? What, what? good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian ?

My noble girls!—Ah, women, women! look,
Our lamp is spent, it's out:- Good sirs, take
[To the Guard below.
We'll bury him: and then, what's brave, what's

heart:

noble,

Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us.

Come, away:

This case of that huge spirit now is cold.
Ah, women, women! come; we have no friend
But resolution, and the briefest end.

[Exeunt; those above bearing off ANTONY'S
Body.

Peace, peace, Iras, is said by Charmian, when she sees the queen recovering, and thinks speech troublesome. JOHNSON.

3 - the meanest CHARES.] i. e. task-work. Hence our term chare-woman. So, in Heywood's Rape of Lucrece, 1630: "She, like a good wife, is teaching her servants sundry chares." Again, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613:

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spins,

"Cards, and does chare-work.”

Again, in Warner's Albion's England, ch. 91, Robin Goodfellow says

"And at my crummed messe of milke, each night from maid or dame,

"To do their chares, as they suppos'd," &c. STEEVENS.

ACT V. SCENE I.

CÆSAR'S Camp before Alexandria.

Enter CESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, MECENAS*, GALLUS, PROCULEIUS, and Others.

CAS. Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield; Being so frustrate, tell him, he mocks us by The pauses that he makes".

+ Enter Cæsar, Agrippa, Dolabella, and [Old copy] MENAS, &c.] But Menas and Menecrates, we may remember, were two famous pirates, linked with Sextus Pompeius, and who assisted him to infest the Italian coast. We no where learn, expressly, in the play, that Menas ever attached himself to Octavius's party. Notwithstanding the old folios concur in marking the entrance thus, yet in the two places in the scene, where this character is made to speak, they have marked in the margin, Mec. so that, as Dr. Thirlby sagaciously conjectured, we must cashier Menas, and substitute Mecænas in his room. Menas, indeed, deserted to Cæsar no less than twice, and was preferred by him. But then we are to consider, Alexandria was taken, and Antony killed himself, anno U. C. 723. Menas made the second revolt over to Augustus, U. C. 717; and the next year was slain at the siege of Belgrade, in Pannonia, five years before the death of Antony. THEOBALD.

5 Being so FRUSTRATE, tell him, he mocks US BY The pauses that he makes.] Frustrate, for frustrated, was the language of Shakspeare's time. So, in The Tempest:

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and the sea mocks

"Our frustrate search by land."

So consummate for consummated, contaminate for contaminated, &c.

Again, in Holland's translation of Suetonius, 1606: "But the designment both of the one and the other were defeated and frustrate by reason of Piso his death."

The last two words of the first of these lines are not found in the old copy. The defect of the metre shows that somewhat was omitted, and the passage, by the omission, was rendered unintelligible.

When, in the lines just quoted, the sea is said to mock the search of those who were seeking on the land for a body that had been drowned in the ocean, this is easily understood. But in that

DOL.

Cæsar, I shall°.

[Exit DOLABELLA.

before us the case is very different. When Antony himself made these pauses, would he mock, or laugh at them? and what is the meaning of mocking a pause?

In Measure for Measure, the concluding word of a line was omitted, and in like manner has been supplied:

"How I may formally in person bear [me]
"Like a true friar."

Again, in Romeo and Juliet, 1599, and 1623:
"And hide me with a dead man in his."

shroud or tomb being omitted.

Again, in Hamlet, 4to. 1604:

"Thus conscience doth make cowards."

the words of us all being omitted. Again, ibidem:

66

instead of

66

66

Seeming to feel this blow," &c.

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See also note on the words-" mock the meat it feeds on," in Othello, Act III. Sc. III.

And similar omissions have happened in many other plays.

In further support of the emendation now made, it may be observed, that the word mock, of which our author makes frequent use, is almost always employed as I suppose it to have been used here. Thus, in King Lear: "Pray do not mock me." Again, in Measure for Measure;

"You do blaspheme the good in mocking me.”.

Again, in All's Well That Ends Well:

"You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves,
"And mock us with our bareness."

Again, in the play before us :

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that nod unto the world,
with air."

"And mock our eyes

The second interpretation given by Mr. Steevens, in the following note, is a just interpretation of the text as now regulated; but extracts from the words in the old copy a meaning, which, without those that I have supplied, they certainly do not afford. MALONE. I have left Mr. Malone's emendation in the text; though, to complete the measure, we might read-frustrated, or—

"Being so frustrate, 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 sometimes employed by Shakspeare. In Othello it is used again with equal departure from its common acceptation.

My explanation of the words-" He mocks the pauses that he

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