IV. 3. DESDEMONA.

Heaven me such uses send,

Not to pick bad from bad; but by bad mend.

Shakespeare having remarked in King John

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds

Makes ill deeds done,

we may probably take these words of Desdemona, as beside their purpose in the drama itself, intended as a hint and warning to the audience not to be infected by the fearful instance about to be presented of the higher paroxysms of passion. We have noticed similar caution on other occasions.

Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men,

All the original copies agree in this reading: and, as far as I know, none of the modern editors have found any difficulty in accepting it, and giving it a place in the text without note or comment. Yet I confess the sense is not clear to me. It seems as if it should be that Othello is the "betrayed,” not Cassio, or any other person whom the Moor in his disor dered mind may suppose to be a second Cassio. I would therefore suggest, as worthy of consideration, that the line may have been originally—

Yet she must die, else she'll betray me more.

This conjecture is to a certain extent supported by the use of the word betray in the following passage of Beard's Theatre of God's Judgment, 4to 1531:-"Out of the same fountain sprang the words of Queen Hecuba in Euripides, speaking to Menelaus touching Helen, when she admonished him to enact this law, that any woman which should betray

her husband's credit and her own chastity to another man, should die the death." p. 387.

The commentators have not informed us what tree or what gum is here intended.

The gum is probably that called Bernix, of which the following account is given in The Great Herbal:-"Bernix is the gomme of a tre that groweth beyond the see. For this tre droppeth a gommy thicknesse that hardeneth by heat of the sonne." Its uses in medicine are then described,

ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA.

THIS is another of those historical tragedies on which the genius of Shakespeare delighted to employ itself in the maturity of his powers. We know that it existed in 1608, for in the May of that year it was entered in the Stationers' Books, but no edition of it of that date is known, the earliest being that in the folio of 1623. It was no doubt written about 1608, and in succession with Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus. I have as little to observe upon this as on the other Roman plays.

I. 1. DEMETRIUS.
I'm full sorry,

That he APPROVES the common liar, who
Thus speaks of him at Rome.

Shakespeare uses approve here and elsewhere in the sense of gain credit for; as in this passage, and in King Lear, "Good King, thou must approve the common saw;" and again in Hamlet, "He may approve our eyes and speak to it." It is an intermediate stage between the original sense of prove and the modern sense of the word approve.

V. 2. CÆSAR.

Bravest at the last :

She levell'd at our purposes, and, being ROYAL,

Took her own way.

This passage is left without any annotation, and yet there is meaning in it which many readers might not discover. Dollabella had alluded to the augurs. This introduces the idea of the flight of birds; this the idea of hawking; and Cleopatra, brave in her death, is represented under the image of a hawk levelling at the purposes of her conqueror,

and rendering them dead or ineffectual. The idea of hawking introduced the idea of other field-sports, and to the hawk Shakespeare transfers the attribute of a hart-royal, which had the privilege of roaming at large unmolested, and taking its own way to its lair. Thus Cleopatra being "royal" had "taken her own way " in self-destruction.

In The Gentleman's Recreation, p. 6, the liberty of the hart-royal is thus described :- "If the King or Queen shall happen to hunt or chase a hart, and he escape with life, he shall ever after be called a hart-royal; but if he fly so far from the forest or chase that it is unlikely he will ever return of his own accord to the place aforesaid, and that proclamation be made in all towns and villages thereabout, that none shall kill or offend him, but that he may safely return, if he list, he is then called a hart royal proclaimed.”

V. 2. FIRST GUARD.

This is an aspick's trail; and these fig leaves

Have slime upon them, such as the aspick leaves

Upon the CAVES of Nile.

Mr. Barry has suggested to me that for caves we should read canes, the reeds of Nile. In the original copies it is caues. This reading may be supported by the following passage in the writings of Bishop Taylor:-"The canes of Egypt, when they newly arise from their bed of mud and slime of Nilus, start into equal and continual length, and are interrupted with hard knots," &c.

CYMBELINE.

THIS play was not printed till it appeared in the folio of 1623. There are in it few notes of time. The kind of history to which it belongs renders it probable that it was written about the same time with King Lear, the date of which is about 1605.

See the Introductory Remarks on The Merchant of Venice for a ballad containing an incident resembling a principal incident of this play. I would not, however, be at all confident that this beautiful play, which classes rather with those produced in the freshness of the Poet's age and genius, does not belong to the reign of Elizabeth, about the time when he produced As You Like It.

I. 1. FIRST GENTLEMAN.

You do not meet a man but frowns; our bloods

No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers
Still seem, as does the king's.

This is the way in which the text of the old copy is exhibited in the modern editions: the original text being this :

You do not meet a man but frowns.

Our bloods no more obey the heavens
Than our courtiers :

Still seem as do's the kings.

Neither can be right. The following regulation was suggested to me by Mr. Bright.

You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods
No more obey the heavens then our courtiers
Still seem as does the king.