By her election may be truly read, 2 Gent. 1 honour him Even out of your report. But, 'pray you, tell me, 1 Gent. I' the swathing clothes the other, from their nursery 2 Gent. How long is this ago? 1 Gent. Some twenty years. 2 Gent. That a king's children should be so convey'd! So slackly guarded! And the search so slow, That could not trace them! 1 Gent. Howsoe'er 'tis strange, Or that the negligence may well be laugh'd at, 2 Gent. I do well believe you. 1 Gent. We must forbear: Here comes the gentleman, The queen, and princess. SCENE II. The same. [Exeunt. Enter the Queen, POSTHUMUS, and IMOGEN.3 Queen. No, be assur'd, you shall not find me, daughter, After the slander of most step-mothers, Evil-ey'd unto you: you are my prisoner, but Your gaoler shall deliver you the keys That lock up your restraint. For you, Posthumus, I will be known your advocate: marry, yet 3 Imogen.] Holinshed's Chronicle furnished Shakspeare with this name, which in the old black letter is scarcely distinguishable from Innogen, the wife of Brute, King of Britain. There too he found the name of Cloten, who, when the line of Brute was at an end, was one of the five kings that governed Britain. Cloten, or Cloton, was King of Cornwall. Malone. Post. Please your highness, You know the peril : I will from hence to-day. Queen. I'll fetch a turn about the garden, pitying The pangs of barr'd affections; though the king Imo. [Exit Queen. Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant Can tickle where she wounds!-My dearest husband, His rage can do on me: You must be gone; Post. My queen! my mistress! Than doth become a man! I will remain The loyal'st husband that did e'er plight troth. Known but by letter: thither write, my queen, Queen. Re-enter Queen. Be brief, I pray you: If the king come, I shall incur I know not How much of his displeasure:-Yet I 'll move him [aside. [Exit. 4 (Always reserv'd my holy duty)] I say I do not fear my father, so far as I may say it without breach of duty. Johnson. 5 Though ink be made of gall.] Shakspeare, even in this poor conceit, has confounded the vegetable galls used in ink, with the animal gall, supposed to be bitter. Johnson. The poet might mean either the vegetable or the animal galls with equal propriety, as the vegetable gall is bitter; and I have seen an ancient receipt for making ink, beginning, "Take of the black juice of the gall of oxen two ounces," &c. Steevens. Post. Should we be taking leave As long a term as yet we have to live, The lothness to depart would grow: Adieu! Were you but riding forth to air yourself, When Imogen is dead. Post. How! how! another? You gentle gods, give me but this I have, 6 And sear up my embracements from a next With bonds of death!] Shakspeare may poetically call the cerecloths in which the dead are wrapped, the bonds of death. If so, we should read cere instead, of sear: "Why thy canoniz'd bones hearsed in death, "Have burst their cerements?" To sear up, is properly to close up by burning; but in this passage the poet may have dropped that idea, and used the word simply for to close up. Steevens May not sear up, here mean solder up, and the reference be to a lead coffin Perhaps cerements in Hamlet's address to the Ghost, was used for searments in the same sense. Henley. I believe nothing more than close up was intended. In the spelling of the last age, however, no distinction was made between cere-cloth and sear-cloth. Cole, in his Latin Dictionary, 1679, explains the word cerot by sear-cloth. Shakspeare therefore certainly might have had that practice in his thoughts. Malone. 7 While sense can keep it on!] This expression, I suppose, means, while sense can maintain its operations; while sense continues to have its usual power. That to keep on signifies to continue in a state of action, is evident from the following passage in Othello: 66 keeps due on "To the Propontick" &c. The general sense of Posthumus's declaration, is equivalent to the Roman phrase,-dum spiritus hos regit artus Steevens. The poet [if it refers to the ring] ought to have written-can keep thee on, as Mr. Pope and the three subsequent editors read. But Shakspeare has many similar inaccuracies. So, in Julius Cæsar: "Casca, you are the first that rears your hand.” instead of his hand. Again, in The Rape of Lucrece: "Time's office is to calm contending kings, As I my poor self did exchange for you, Upon this fairest prisoner. [Putting a bracelet on her arm. When shall we see again? Post. Enter CYMBELINE, and Lords. Alack, the king! Cym. Thou basest thing, avoid! hence, from my sight"! If, after this command, thou fraught the court With thy unworthiness, thou diest: Away! Thou art poison to my blood. Post. The Gods protect you! [Exit. And bless the good remainders of the court! I am gone. Imo. There cannot be a pinch in death More sharp than this is. "To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light,"To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, instead of his hours. Again, in the third Act of the play before us: 66 Euriphile, "Thou wast their nurse; they took thee for their mother, "And every day do honour to her grave." Malone. As none of our author's productions were revised by himself as they passed from the theatre through the press; and as Julius Cesar and Cymbeline are among the plays which originally appeared in the blundering first folio; it is hardly fair to charge those irregularities on the poet, of which his publishers alone might have been guilty. I must therefore take leave to set down the present, and many similar offences against the established rules of language, under the article of Hemingisms and Condelisms; and, as such, in my opinion, they ought, without cere. mony, to be corrected. The instance brought from The Rape of Lucrece might only Dave been a compositorial inaccuracy, like those which occasionally have happened in the course of our present republication. Steevens. 8 a manacle-] A manacle properly means what we now call a hand-cuff. Steevens. 9 There cannot be a pinch in death More sharp than this is.] So, in King Henry VIII: 66 —— it is a sufferance, panging "As soul and body 's parting." Malone. Cym. O disloyal thing, That thou should'st repair my youth;1 thou heapest I beseech you, sir, Imo. Am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare Cym. Past grace? obedience? 1 That should'st repair my youth;] i. e. renovate my youth; make me young again. So, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609: " as for him, he brought his disease hither: here he doth but repair it." Again, in All's Well that Ends Well: 2 65 it much repairs me, "To talk of your good father." Malone. thou heapest A year's age on me!] The obvious sense of this passage, on which several experiments have been made, is in some degree countenanced by what follows in another scene: "And every day that comes, comes to decay "A day's work in him." Dr. Warburton would read " A yare (i. e. a speedy) age:" Sir T. Hanmer would restore the metre by a supplemental epithet: -thou heapest many A year's age &c. and Dr. Johnson would give us: Years, ages, on me! I prefer the additional word introduced by Sir Thomas Hanmer, to all the other attempts at emendation. "Many a year's age,” is an idea of some weight; but if Cymbeline meant to say that his daughter's conduct made him precisely one year older, his conceit is unworthy both of himself and Shakspeare.-I would read with Sir Thomas Hanmer. Steevens. 3 - a touch more rare Subdues all pangs, all fears.] A touch more rare, may mean e nobler passion. Johnson. A touch more rare is undoubtedly a more exquisite feeling; a superior sensation. So, in Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, sc. ii: "The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches, "Do strongly speak to us." Again, in The Tempest: "Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling "Of their afflictions?" &c. A touch is not unfrequently used, by other ancient writers, in this sense. So, in Daniel's Hymen's Triumph, a masque, 1623: "You must not, Philis, be so sensible "Of these small touches which your passion makes." Small touches, Lydia! do you count them small?” Steevens. |