Flourish. Enter ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, with their Trains; Eunuchs fanning her. Take but good note, and you shall see in him CLEO. If it be love indeed, tell me how much. ANT. There's beggary in the love that can be reckon❜d.5 CLEO. I'll fet a bourn how far to be belov'd. The triple pillar-] Triple is here used improperly for third, or one of three. One of the triumvirs, one of the three mafters of the world. WARBURTON. So, in All's well that ends well: Which, as the dearest issue of his practice, "He bade me store up as a triple eye." MALONE. To fuftain the pillars of the earth is a fcriptural phrafe. Thus, in Pfalm 75: "The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are diffolved. I bear up the pillars of it." STEEVENS. 5 There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.] Romeo and Juliet: 66 So, in They are but beggars that can count their worth." Bafia pauca cupit, qui numerare poteft." Mart. L. VI. Ep. 36. Again, in the 13th Book of Ovid's Metamorphofis; as tranflated by Golding, p. 172: Pauperis eft numerare pecus. "Tufh! beggars of their cattel ufe the number for to know." STEEVENS, Again, in Much Ado about Nothing: "I were but little happy, If I could say how much." bourn-] Bound or limit. POPE. So, in The Winter's Tale: "No bourn 'twixt his and mine." STEEVENS. MALONE. ANT. Then muft thou needs find out new hea ven, new earth,? Enter an Attendant. Arr. News, my good lord, from Rome. ANT. Grates me:-The fum.* CLEO. Nay, hear them, Antony : Fulvia, perchance, is angry; Or, who knows ANT. How, my love! CLEO. Perchance,-nay, and most like, You must not stay here longer, your difmiffion Call in the meffengers.-As I am Egypt's queen, Then must thou needs find out new heaven, &c.] Thou muft fet the boundary of my love at a greater distance than the prefent visible univerfe affords. JOHNSON. 8 The fum.] Be brief, sum thy business in a few words. JOHNSON. This word, in Shak 9 Nay, hear them,] i. e. the news. fpeare's time, was confidered as plural. So, in Plutarch's Life of Antony: "Antonius hearing thefe newes," &c. MALONE. Take in &c.] i. e. fubdue, conquer. See Vol. IX. p.374, n. 9; and Vol. XVI. p. 27, n. 9. Reed. 2 Where's Fulvia's procefs?] Procefs here means fummons. M. MASON. "The writings of our common lawyers fometimes call that the proceffe, by which a man is called into the court and no more." Mintheu's Dict. 1617, in v. Proceffe.-" To serve with proceffe. Vide to cite, to fummon." Ibid. MALONE. Thou blufheft, Antony; and that blood of thine gers. ANT. Let Rome in Tyber melt! and the wide arch Of the rang'd empire fall! Here is my space; Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike Feeds beaft as man: the noblenefs of life Is, to do thus; when such a mutual pair, [Embracing. And fuch a twain can do't, in which, bind CLEO. Excellent falfhood! Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?— and the wide arch Of the rang'd empire fall!] Taken from the Roman custom of raifing triumphal arches to perpetuate their victories. Extremely noble. WARBURTON. I am in doubt whether Shakspeare had any idea but of a fabrick standing on pillars. The later editions have all printed the raised empire, for the ranged empire, as it was first given. JOHNSON. The ran empire is certainly right. Shakspeare ufes the fame expreffion in Coriolanus: bury all which yet diftin&tly ranges, "In heaps and piles of ruin." Again, in Much Ado about Nothing, A& II. fc. ii: "Whatfoever comes athwart his affection, ranges evenly with mine." STEEVENS. The term range feems to have been applied, in a peculiar fenfe, to mafon-work, in our author's time. So, in Spenfer's Fairy Queen, B. II. c. ix: "It was a vault y-built for great difpence, "With many raunges rear'd along the wall." MALONE. What, in ancient mafons' or bricklayers' work, was denominated a range, is now called a courfe. STEEVENS. to weet,] To know. POPE. I'll feem the fool I am not; Antony ANT. But stirr'd by Cleopatra.5 Now, for the love of Love, and her foft hours," Let's not confound the time7 with conference harsh: There's not a minute of our lives fhould ftretch Without fome pleasure now: What fport to-night? CLEO. Hear the ambaffadors. ANT. Fye, wrangling queen! Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh, S -Antony Ant. But firr'd by Cleopatra.] But, in this paffage, feems to have the old Saxon fignification of without, unless, except. Antony, fays the queen, will recollect his thoughts. Unlefs kept, he replies, in commotion by Cleopatra. JOHNSON. What could Cleopatra mean by saying Antony will recollect his thoughts? What thoughts were they, for the recollection of which the was to appland him? It was not for her purpofe that he should think, or roufe himself from the lethargy in which the wifhed to keep him. By Antony will be himself, the means to fay, "that Antony will act like the joint fovereign of the world, and follow his own inclinations, without regard to the mandates of Cæfar, or the anger of Fulvia." To which he replies, If but firr'd by Cleopatra; that is, if moved to it in the flighteft degree by her. M. MASON. Now, for the love of Love, and her foft hours,] For the love of Love, means, for the fake of the queen of love. So, in The Comedy of Errors: "Let Love, being light, be drowned if he fink." Mr. Rowe fubftituted his for her, and this unjustifiable alteration was adopted by all the fubfequent editors. MALONE. "Let's not confound the time-] i. e. let us not confume the time. So, in Coriolanus: "How could't thou in a mile confound an hour, "And bring thy news fo late?" MALONE. Whom every thing becomes,] Quicquid enim dicit, feu facit, omne decet." Marullus, Lib. II. STEEVENS. To weep; whofe every paffion fully strives' note Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh, whofe every paffion fully firives-] The folio readswho. It was corrected by Mr. Rowe; but "whofe every paffion" was not, I fufpect, the phrafeology of Shakspeare's time. The text however is undoubtedly corrupt. MALONE. Whofe every, is an undoubted phrase of our author. So, in The Tempest: "A space, whofe every cubit "Seems to cry out," &c. See Vol. IV. p. 74. Again, in Cymbeline, A& I. fc. vii: this hand, whose touch, Whofe every touch" &c. The fame expreflion occurs again in another play, but I have loft my reference to it. STEEVENS. "Hear 2 No meffenger; but thine and all alone, &c.] Cleopatra has faid, "Call in the meffengers ;" and afterwards, the ambaffadors." Talk not to me, fays Antony, of meffengers; I am now wholly thine, and you and I unattended will to-night wander through the ftreets. The fubfequent words which he utters as he goes out, " Speak not to us," confirm this interpretation. MALONE. 3 To-night, we'll wander through the fireets, &c.] So, in Sir Thomas North's tranflation of The Life of Antonius:-Sometime alfo when he would goe up and downe the citie disguised like a flave in the night, and would peere into poore mens' windowes and their shops, and scold and brawl with them within the house; Cleopatra would be alfo in a chamber maides array, and amble up and down the streets with him," &c. STEEVENS. |