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CYMBELINE.

ACT I.

Scene 2. Page 18.

This has already been so ingeniously interpreted, that there is considerable hazard in the offer of any other conjecture on the subject; yet, may not Imogen mean, "the possession of me is much too dearly bought by the banishment to which you sentence him; he has almost nothing for so large a price."

Scene 5. Page 27.

Mr. Malone having shown that this name is borrowed from the Italian Giacomo, it should be printed Jachimo, in order to prevent any mistake in the pronunciation.

ACT II.

Scene 2. Page 65.

See p. 128.

Scene 3. Page 72.

The frequent mention of the lark, especially among our older poets, has been already exemplified in a variety of corresponding passages with the above, which either Shakspeare might have imitated, or which are imitations from him. To these the following may be added:—

Scene 4. Page 88.

Mr. Steevens calls the golden cherubims a tawdry image, and proceeds, justly enough, to ridicule an idle representation of the heavenly choirs; but the poet must be cleared from any imputation of blame. He is not accountable for the fashions or follies of his age, and has, in this instance, given a faithful description of the mode in which the rooms in great houses were sometimes ornamented. That brands were those parts of the andirons which supported the wood, according to Mr. Whalley, remains to be proved. The Cupids would not lean or hang over these bars, but rather stand with their faces turned from them, and opposite to the spectator. The brands are more likely to have been the inverted torches mentioned by Mr. Steevens.

Scene 5. Page 94.

A useless note on this speech, which would make our poet equally vulgar and obscene, when he was expressing a sentiment of the most refined delicacy, may be well dispensed with in any future edition.

ACT III.

Scene 1. Page 99.

The judicious and necessary omission of the words "made our laws," after the second Mulmutius, originally belongs to Sir Thomas Hanmer, who would have deserved more thanks from his readers for his regulations of Shakspeare's metre, if they had not been too frequently made without a proper regard to the accuracy of the text.

Scene 1. Page 100.

Although our old writers frequently make mention of Roman knights, that is, military chieftains, it is very much to be apprehended that the present expression must be regarded as a downright anachronism, as well as another similar passage, in p. 213, where Cymbeline addresses Belarius and his sons: "Bow your knees; arise my knights of the battle, &c." The word knight was formerly used with great latitude. Dr. Bullein calls Dioscorides "that olde famous Egyptian knyghte."

Scene 2. Page 105.

The whole of this should be included in the parenthesis, as in Mr. Malone's edition. No reason has been assigned by Mr. Steevens for the variation, which may be an error of the press.

Scene 3. Page 117.

The above name might have been borrowed from the story of Amphiaraus and Eriphile, in Pettie's Petite palace, 1598, 4to.

Scene 4. Page 120.

So in the anonymous play of Wily beguilde,

It is difficult to say which is the imitation.

ACT IV.

Scene 2. Page 154.

This speech has exercised the talents of a certain ingenious female illustrator of Shakspeare, who has endeavoured to ridicule the character of Imogen, and indeed the whole of the play. She degrades our heroine into a mere kitchen wench, and adverts to what she calls her œconomical education. Now what is this but to expose her own ignorance of ancient manners? If she had missed the advantage of qualifying herself as a commentator on Shakspeare's plots by a perusal of our old romances, she ought at least to have remembered, what every well informed woman of the present age is acquainted with, the education of the princesses in Homer's Odyssey. It is idle to attempt to judge of ancient simplicity by a mere knowledge of modern manners; and such fastidious critics had better close the book of Shakspeare for ever. In another part of her critique on this play, she condemns the giving of the drug to Imogen which Pisanio had received from the queen, from an idea that he was sufficiently warned of its soporific quality; and she positively states that the physician had, by a whisper, informed Pisanio of its property; not one word of which is to be found in Shakspeare. So much for the criticism and accuracy of a work to which Dr. Johnson condescended to write a dedication. He has likewise too often confided in its opinions in the course of several of his remarks on Shakspeare's plays.

Scene 2. Page 156.

Mr. Steevens's correct ear has on this, perhaps single, occasion been deceived. He objects to the negation no, as "at once superfluous and injurious to the metre;" yet it is impossible to read the line harmoniously without it. Nor does it constitute the superfluity of the metre, which has, exclusively, two redundant syllables. If any alteration were allowable, it might be the following:—

Scene 2. Page 164.

This judicious emendation from thou thyself, &c., claimed by one learned gentleman and adopted by another, is the original property of Sir Thomas Hanmer.

Scene 2. Page 168.

i. e. harmless and protecting spirits, not fairies of a mischievous nature.

Scene 2. Page 169.

Mr. Steevens imputes great violence to this change of person, and would read "come to him;" but there is no impropriety in Guiderius's sudden address to the body itself. It might indeed be ascribed to our author's careless manner, of which an instance like the present occurs at the beginning of the next act, where Posthumus says,

Scene 2. Page 169.

The question made by Dr. Percy, whether the notion of the redbreast covering dead bodies be older than the celebrated ballad of the babes of the wood, has been satisfactorily answered in the affirmative by Mr. Reed's note. In Dekker's Villanies discovered by lanthorn and candle light, 1616, 4to, it is said, "They that cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are Robin red breasts that bring strawes in their bils to cover a dead man in extremitie." See chap. xv.

With respect to winter-ground; until some other example of the use of this word be produced, there will be no impropriety in offering a substitute in winter-green, that is, "to preserve thy tomb green with moss in the winter season, when there will be no flowers wherewith to deck it." Such a verb might have been suggested to Shakspeare, who often coins in this way, by the plant winter-green, the pyrola.

Ruddock was the Saxon name ꞃuꝺꝺuc, for the redbreast, and long continued to be so. In Bullokar's Æsop, 1585, 12mo, there is a fable "Of a fowlor and the bird cale'd Robin-red-brest," which concludes in these words: "Then the fowlor, hop of-taking many being lost, when it waz now tym too-rest, drawing the netz, he cauht only on Robin-ruddok, which being unhappy [unlucky] had abydd stil in the shrap."

Scene 2. Page 175.

Mr. Steevens's derivation from God's my pity, is not quite correct. It is rather from God's pity, diminutively used by the addition of kin. In this manner we have 'od's bodikins.

ON THE STORY OF THIS PLAY.

For the plot of Cymbeline, Shakspeare has been almost exclusively indebted to Boccaccio's novel of Bernabo Lomellin, Day 2, novel 9, as Mr. Malone has proved beyond the possibility of doubt. Unless we suppose, what is not probable, that Shakspeare was acquainted with the Italian language, or that he had heard the above novel read by some person in English, a difficulty arises in accounting for the manner in which he got access to it. The earliest English translation of the whole of the Decameron was first printed in 1620, by Isaac Jaggard, in folio, and in two parts, the first of which was republished under the title of The modell of wit, mirth, eloquence, and conversation, framed in ten days of an hundred curious pieces, by seven honourable ladies, and three noble gentlemen, preserved to posterity by the renowned John Boccacio, the first refiner of Italian prose, and now translated into English, 1625, in folio. See more on this subject in a preceding note, p. 102. Had Shakspeare been intimately acquainted with Boccaccio's Decameron, one should have expected that he would have made considerable use of that work; but this is the only play in which the most material part of the plot has been extracted from it. There are indeed one or two instances in which a very slight use has been made of it, but then evidently through the medium of an English translation. Is it not possible that our author might have known French enough to have occasionally read the Decameron in that language?