Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Hath my poor boy done aught but well,
Whose face I never saw?

I died, whilst in the womb he stay'd
Attending Nature's law.

Whose father then (as men report,
Thou orphans' father art,)

Thou should'st have been, and shielded him
From this earth-vexing smart.

MOTH. Lucina lent not me her aid,
But took me in my throes;
That from me was Posthúmus ript,*
Came crying 'mongst his foes,
A thing of pity!

SICI. Great nature, like his ancestry,
Moulded the stuff so fair,

That he deserv'd the praise o'the world,
As great Sicilius' heir.

1 BRO. When once he was mature for man,
In Britain where was he

That could stand up his parallel;

Or fruitful object be
In eye of Imogen, that best

Could deem his dignity?

One would think that, Shakspeare's style being too refined for his audiences, the managers had employed some playwright of the old school to regale them with a touch of " King Cambyses' vein." The margin would be too honourable a place for so impertinent an interpolation. RITSON,

That from me was Posthumus ript,] Perhaps we should read:
That from my womb Posthumus ript,

Came crying 'mongst his foes. JOHNSON.

This circumstance is met with in The Devil's Charter, 1607. The play of Cymbeline did not appear in print till 1623:

"What would'st thou run again into my womb?
"If thou wert there, thou should'st be Posthumus,
"And ript out of my sides," &c. STEEVENS,

MOTH. With marriage wherefore was he mock'd,

To be exil❜d, and thrown
From Leonati' seat, and cast
From her his dearest one,
Sweet Imogen?

SICI. Why did you suffer Iachimo,
Slight thing of Italy,

To taint his nobler heart and brain
With needless jealousy;

6

And to become the geck and scorn

O' the other's villainy?

2 BRO. For this, from stiller seats we came,
Our parents, and us twain,
That, striking in our country's cause,
Fell bravely, and were slain;

Our fealty, and Tenantius" right,
With honour to maintain.

1 BRO. Like hardiment Posthúmus hath
To Cymbeline perform❜d:
Then Jupiter, thou king of gods,

Why hast thou thus adjourn'd

The graces for his merits due;
Being all to dolours turn'd?

SICI. Thy crystal window ope; look out;

No longer exercise,

Upon a valiant race, thy harsh

And potent injuries:

With marriage wherefore was he mock'd,] The same phrase occurs in Measure for Measure:

"I hope you will not mock me with a husband.”

STEEVENS.

"And to become the geck-] And permit Posthumus to become the geck, &c. MALONE.

A geck is a fool. See Vol. V. p. 415, n. 7. STEEVENS. 7 -Tenantius'-] See p. 407, n. 7. STEEVENS.

MOTH. Since, Jupiter, our son is good,

Take off his miseries.

SICI. Peep through thy marble mansion; help!
Or we poor ghosts will cry

To the shining synod of the rest,
Against thy deity.

2 BRO. Help, Jupiter; or we appeal,
And from thy justice fly.

JUPITER descends in Thunder and Lightning, sitting upon an Eagle: he throws a Thunder-bolt. The Ghosts fall on their Knees.

JUP. No more, you petty spirits of region low,
Offend our hearing; hush!-How dare you ghosts,
Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt you know,
Sky-planted, batters all rebelling coasts?
Poor shadows of Elysium, hence; and rest
Upon your never-withering banks of flowers:
Be not with mortal accidents opprest;

No care of yours it is; you know, 'tis ours.
Whom best I love, I cross; to make my gift,
The more delay'd, delighted. Be content;
Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift:

8

His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent.

Jupiter descends-] It appears from Acolastus, a comedy by T.Palsgrave, chaplain to King Henry VIII. bl. 1. 1540, that the descent of deities was common to our stage in its earliest state: "Of whyche the lyke thyng is used to be shewed now a days in stage-plaies, when some God or some Saynt is made to appere forth of a cloude, and succoureth the parties which seemed to be towardes some great danger, through the Soudan's crueltie." The author, for fear this description should not be supposed to extend itself to our theatres, adds in a marginal note, "the lyke maner used nowe at our days in stage playes." STEEVENS.

The more delay'd, delighted.] That is, the more delightful

Our Jovial star reign'd at his birth, and in
Our temple was he married.-Rise, and fade!—
He shall be lord of lady Imogen,

And happier much by his affliction made.
This tablet lay upon his breast; wherein
Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine;
And so, away: no further with your din
Express impatience, lest you stir up mine.-
Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline.'

[Ascends.

SICI. He came in thunder; his celestial breath Was sulphurous to smell: the holy eagle

for being delayed. It is scarcely necessary to observe, in the eighteenth volume, that Shakspeare uses indiscriminately the active and passive participles. M. MASON.

Delighted is here either used for delighted in, or for delighting. So, in Othello:

"If virtue no delighted beauty lack" MALONE. Though it be hardly worth while to waste a conjecture on the wretched stuff before us, perhaps the author of it, instead of delighted wrote dilated, i. e. expanded, rendered more copious. This participle occurs in King Henry V. and the verb in Othello.

1

STEEVENS

1my palace crystalline.] Milton has transplanted this idea into his verses In Obitum Præsulis Eliensis :

"Ventum est Olympi & regiam chrystallinam."

"He came in thunder; his celestial breath

STEEVENS.

Was sulphurous to smell:] A passage like this one may suppose to have been ridiculed by Ben Jonson, when in Every Man in his Humour he puts the following strain of poetry into the mouth of Justice Clement:

66

testify,

"How Saturn sitting in an ebon cloud, "Disrob'd his podex white as ivory,

"And through the welkin thunder'd all aloud.'

If, however, the dates of Jonson's play and Chapman's translation of the eleventh Book of Homer's Iliad, are at all reconcileable, one might be tempted to regard the passage last quoted as a ridicule on the following:

3

Stoop'd, as to foot us: his ascension is

More sweet than our bless'd fields: his royal bird
Prunes the immortal wing, and cloys his beak,5
As when his god is pleas'd.

3

ALL.

Thanks, Jupiter!

SICI. The marble pavement closes, he is enter'd

bert:

[blocks in formation]

"(To bring them furious to the field) sat thundring out
aloud." Fol. edit. p. 143.

STEEVENS.

to foot us:] i. e. to grasp us in his pounces. So, Her-

"And till they foot and clutch their prey." STEEVENS.
• Prunes the immortal wing,] A bird is said to prune himself
when he clears his feathers from superfluities. So, in Drayton's
Polyolbion, Song I:

"Some sitting on the beach, to prune their painted

breasts."

See Vol. VII. p. 115, n. 7; and Vol. XI. p. 189, n. 2.

cloys his beak,]

claws his beak.

Perhaps we should read:

TYRWHITT.

STEEVENS.

A cley is the same with a claw in old language. FARmer.
So in Gower, De Confessione Amantis, Lib. IV. fol. 69:
"And as a catte would ete fishes

"Without wetyng of his clees." :

Again, in Ben Jonson's Underwoods:

[blocks in formation]

"Of vulture death and those relentless cleys."

Barrett, in his Alvearie, 1580, speaks "of a disease in cattell
betwixt the clees of their feete." And in The Book of Hawking,
&c. bl. 1. no date, under the article Pounces, it is said, "The
cleis within the fote ye shall call aright her pounces.
"" To claw
their beaks, is an accustomed action with hawks and eagles.

STEEVENS.

The marble pavement closes,] So, in T. Heywood's Troia
Britannica, Cant. xii. st. 77, 1609:

"A general shout is given,

"And strikes against the marble floors of heaven."

HOLT WHITE.

« AnteriorContinuar »