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. The greater cantle of the world is lost With very ignorance; we have kiss'd away Kingdoms and provinces. How appears the fight? ENO. The Antoniad, &c.] Which Plutarch says, was the name. of Cleopatra's ship. POPE. * 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: 3 "Of no partie ne cantel of a thing." STEEVENS. See Vol. XI. p. 323, n. 3. MAlone. -token'd-] Spotted. JOHNSON. Where death is sure. Yon' ribald-rid+ nag of Egypt, 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 both I see." See Vol. VII. p. 172, n. 9. STEEVENS. "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 Again: 66 "To vyolate my dear wyve's chastity." "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, compositors at 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: "Who impotent, and bed-red, scarcely hears Whom leprosy o'ertake!5 i' the midst o' the fight,- 6 By ribald, Scarus, I think, means the lewd Antony in particular, not "every lewd fellow," as Mr. Steevens has explained it. 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 brieze, or ostrum, 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. 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. • Both as the same, or rather ours the elder,] So, in Julius Cæsar: "We were two lions, litter'd in one day, STEEVENS. 7 The brize upon her,] The brize is the gad-fly. So, in Spenser: 66 -a brize, a scorned little creature, "Through his fair hide his angry sting did threaten." Hoists sails, and flies. ENO. That I beheld: mine eyes Did sicken at the sight on't," and could not SCAR. She once being loof'd, The noble ruin of her magick, Antony, Claps on his sea-wing, and like a doting mallard, ENO. Alack, alack! Enter CANIDIUS. CAN. Our fortune on the sea is out of breath, And sinks most lamentably. Had our general Been what he knew himself, it had gone well: O, he has given example for our flight, Most grossly, by his own. ENO. Ay, are you thereabouts? Why then, good Indeed. night [Aside, CAN. Towards Peloponnesus are they fled. SCAR. 'Tis easy to't; and there I will attend What further comes. Did sicken at the sight on't,] For the insertion of-on't, to complete the measure, I am answerable, being backed, however, by the authority of the following passage in Cymbeline: the sweet view on't 9 66 Might well have warm'd old Saturn," STEEVens. being loof'd,] To loof is to bring a ship close to the wind. This expression is in the old translation of Plutarch. It also occurs frequently in Hackluyt's Voyages. See Vol. III. 589. STEEVENS, CAN. ENO. I'll yet follow [Exeunt. The wounded chance of Antony,' though my reason Sits in the wind against me. SCENE IX. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace. Enter ANTONY, and Attendants. ANT. Hark, the land bids me tread no more upon't, It is asham'd to bear me !-Friends, come hither, I am so lated in the world,2 that I 'The wounded chance of Antony,] I know not whether the author, who loves to draw his images from the sports of the field, might not have written : The wounded chase of Antony, The allusion is to a deer wounded and chased, whom all other deer avoid. I will, says Enobarbus, follow Antony, though chased and wounded. The common reading, however, may very well stand. JOHNSON. The wounded chance of Antony, is a phrase nearly of the same import as the broken fortunes of Antony. The old reading is indisputably the true one. So, in the fifth Act: "Or I shall show the cinders of my spirit, Through the ashes of my chance." MALONE. Mr. Malone has judiciously defended the old reading. In Othello we have a phrase somewhat similar to wounded chance; viz. " mangled matter." STEEVENS. o veller. so lated in the world,] Alluding to a benighted traJOHNSON. So, in Macbeth, Act III: "Now spurs the lated traveller apace." STEEVENS. |
