For we intend so to dispose you, as Yourself shall give us counsel. Feed, and sleep: CLEO. My master, and my lord! CES. Not so: Adieu. [Exeunt CESAR, and his Train. CLEO. He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not Be noble to myself: but hark thee, Charmian. CLEO. Hie thee again: I have spoke already, and it is provided; Go, put it to the haste. DOL. Madam, as thereto sworn by your com mand, Which my love makes religion to obey, I tell you this: Cæsar through Syria * Make not your thoughts your prisons:] I once wished to read Make not your thoughts your poison: Do not destroy yourself by musing on your misfortune. Yet I would change nothing, as the old reading presents a very proper Be not a prisoner in imagination, when in reality you are sense. free. JOHNSON. Intends his journey; and, within three days, CLEO. I shall remain your debtor. DOL. Dolabella, I your servant. Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown IRAS. The gods forbid! CLEO. Nay, 'tis most certain, Iras: Saucy lictors Will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers Ballad us out o'tune: the quick comedians - and scald rhymers 5 Ballad us out o'tune:] So, in The Rape of Lucrece : 66 thou "Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes, MALONE. Scald was a word of contempt implying poverty, disease, and filth. JOHNSON. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Evans calls the Host of the Garter "scald, scurvy companion;" and in King Henry V. Fluellen bestows the same epithet on Pistol. STEevens. -the quick comedians-] The gay inventive players. JOHNSON. Quick means here, rather ready than gay. M. MASON. The lively, inventive, quick-witted comedians. So, (ut meos quoque attingam,) in an ancient tract, entitled A briefe Descrip Extemporally will stage us, and present Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see IRAS. O the good gods! CLEO. Nay, that is certain. IRAS. I'll never see it; for, I am sure, my nails Are stronger than mine eyes. CLEO. Why, that's the way To fool their preparation, and to conquer Their most absurd intents."-Nów, Charmian ?— tion of Ireland, made in this Yeare, 1589, by Robert Payne, &c. 8vo. 1589: "They are quick-witted, and of good constitution of bodie." See p. 23, n. 3; and Vol. VII. p. 55, n. 1. 7 MALONE. boy my greatness-] The parts of women were acted on the stage by boys. HANMER. Nash, in Pierce Pennylesse his Supplication, &c. 1595, says, "Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of squirting bawdy comedians, that have whores and common courtesans to play women's parts," &c. To obviate the impropriety of men representing women, T. Goff, in his tragedy of The Raging Turk, or Bajazet II. 1631, has no female character. STEEVENS. Their most absurd intents.] Why should Cleopatra call Cæsar's designs absurd? She could not think his intent of carrying her in triumph, such, with regard to his own glory; and her finding an expedient to disappoint him, could not bring it under that predicament. I much rather think the poet wrote: Their most assur'd intents. i. e. the purposes, which they make themselves most sure of accomplishing. THEOBALD. I have preserved the old reading. The design certainly appeared absurd enough to Cleopatra, both as she thought it unreasonable in itself, and as she knew it would fail. JOHNSON. Enter CHARMIAN. Show me, my women, like a queen ;-Go fetch leave To play till dooms-day.-Bring our crown and all. Wherefore's this noise? [Exit IRAS. A Noise within. GUARD. Enter one of the Guard. Here is a rural fellow, That will not be denied your highness' presence; He brings you figs. ment CLEO. Let him come in. How poor1 an instru[Exit Guard. May do a noble deed! he brings me liberty. My resolution's plac'd, and I have nothing Of woman in me: Now from head to foot I am marble-constant: now the fleeting moon 9 - Sirrah, Iras, go.] From hence it appears that Sirrah, an appellation generally addressed to males, was equally applicable to females. Thus, in Arthur Hall's translation of the sixth Iliad: "Unto the maides quoth Hector then, your mistresse where is she? "What, is not she now gone abroade some sister hers to see, "Or to my good sisters there hir griefe to put away, How poor &c.] Thus the second folio. The first nonsensically reads-What poor &c. STEEVENS. No planet is of mine." Re-enter Guard, with a Clown bringing a Basket. GUARD. This is the man. [Exit Guard. CLEO. Avoid, and leave him. Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus3 there, 2 now the fleeting moon No planet is of mine.] Alluding to the Ægyptian devotion paid to the moon under the name of Isis. WARBurton. I really believe that our poet was not at all acquainted with the devotion that the Ægyptians paid to this planet under the name of Isis; but that Cleopatra having said, I have nothing of woman in me, added, by way of amplification, that she had not even the changes of disposition peculiar to her sex, and which sometimes happen as frequently as those of the moon; or that she was not, like the sea, governed by the moon. So, in King Richard III: "I being governed by the watry moon," &c. Why should she say on this occasion that she no longer made use of the forms of worship peculiar to her country? Fleeting is inconstant. So, in William Walter's Guistard and Sismond, 12mo. 1597: "More variant than is the flitting lune." Again, in Greene's Metamorphosis, 1617: "to show the world she was not fleeting." See Vol. XIV. p. 325, n. 2. STEEVENS. Our author will himself furnish us with a commodious interpretation of this passage. I am now "whole as the marble, founded as the rock," and no longer changeable and fluctuating between different purposes, like the fleeting and inconstant moon, "That monthly changes in her circled orb." MALONE. the pretty worm of Nilus-] Worm is the Teutonick word for serpent; we have the blind-worm and slow-worm still in our language, and the Norwegians call an enormous monster, seen sometimes in the Northern ocean, the sea-worm. So, in The Dumb Knight, 1633: JOHNSON. "Those coals the Roman Portia did devour, |
