666 Walker (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 292) says, 'Indian,' certainly;" and quotes the preceding line of Drayton, which I had long before adduced in my Remarks on Mr. Collier's and Mr. Knight's editions of Shakespeare, So the folio ("Medicinable").-The quartos have "medicinall." P. 469. (113) "[Stabs himself with a dagger. The quartos have "He stabs himselfe."-The folio has no stage-direction here. In p. 466 Othello, on offering to stab Iago, is disarmed by Montano; but he has "another weapon-a sword of Spain," ibid. Of that second weapon, after wounding Iago, he is also deprived: this is shown, not only by the exclamation of Lodovico, "Wrench his sword from him," p. 467, but by the remark of Cassio, "This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon," p. 469. The instrument he now uses must therefore have been a dagger which was concealed about his person. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. ON May 20th, 1608, "A booke called Anthony and Cleopatra" was entered in the Stationers' Registers by Edward Blount; and the entry, no doubt, refers to our author's play, which, we may presume, had been produced only a short time before that date. It did not, however, make its appearance in print till the publication of the folio of 1623.-In Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare has adhered with remarkable closeness to the Life of Antonius in North's Plutarch (translated from the French of Amiot). He owes nothing, either to Daniel's Cleopatra, 1594, or to the Countess of Pembroke's Tragedie of Antonie (a translation from the French of Garnier), 1595. |