As you did mean indeed to be our brother; Post. Your servant, princes.-Good my lord of Call forth your soothsayer. As I slept, methought "When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking, find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty." Thou, Leonatus, art the lion's whelp; Which we call mollis aer; and mollis aer And to the Roman empire; promising Sooth. The fingers of the powers above do tune NOTES. "His father Was called Sicilius, who did join his honour Against the Romans, with Cassibelan; But had his titles by Tenantius."-Act I., Scene 1. Tenantius was the father of Cymbeline, and nephew of Cassibelan, being the younger son of Cassibelan's elder brother Lud, on whose death Cassibelan was admitted king. He repulsed the Romans on their first attack; but, being vanquished on Cæsar's second invasion, he agreed to pay an annual tribute to Rome. After his death, Tenantius, Lud's younger son (the elder brother, Androgeus, having fled to Rome), was established on the throne, of which they had been deprived by their uncle. According to some authorities, Tenantius quietly paid the tribute stipulated by Cassibelan: according to others, he refused to pay it, and warred with the Romans. Shakspere supposes the last account to be the true one. "Enter the QUEEN, POSTHUMUS, and IMOGEN." Act. I., Scene 2. Holinshed's "CHRONICLE" probably supplied Shakspere with the beautiful name "Imogen." In the old black letter, it is scarcely distinguishable from " Innogen," the wife of Brute, King of Britain. From the same source, the Poet may have derived the name of Cloten, who, when the line of Brute became extinct, was one of the five kings that governed Britain. Cloten, or Cloton, was King of Cornwall. -Leonatus (the prefix of Posthumus) is a name found in Sydney's "ARCADIA." It is that of the legitimate son of the blind King of Paphlagonia, on whose story is formed the episode of Glo'ster, Edgar, and Edmund, in "KING LEAR." "A man worth any woman; overbuys me That is the most minute portion of his worth would be too high a price for the wife he has acquired. "If he should write, And I not have it, 't were a paper lost, The meaning probably is, that the loss of that paper would prove as fatal to her (Imogen) as the loss of a pardon to a condemned criminal. A thought resembling this occurs in "ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL:"— "Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried." "Enter PHILARIO, IACHIMO, a Frenchman, a Dutchman, and a Spaniard."-Act I., Scene 5. The name of Giacomo occurs in the "Two GENTLEMEN OF VENICE," a novel which immediately follows that of "ROMEO AND JULIETTA," in the second tome of Painter's "PALACE OF PLEASURE."-The behaviour of the Spaniard and the Dutchman, who are stated to be present during this animated scene, is in humorous accordance with the apathy and taciturnity usually attributed to their countrymen. Neither the Don nor Mynheer utters a syllable. "What was Imogen to them, or they to Imogen, that they should speak of her?" "Your highness Shall from this practice but make hard your heart." Johnson's indignant comment on these lines is highly honourable to his feelings. It tends to justify Goldsmith's remark, that he had nothing of the bear but the skin :"There is in this passage nothing that much requires a note, yet I cannot forbear to push it forward into observation. The thought would probably have been more amplified, had our author lived to be shocked with such experiments as have been published in later times, by a race of men that have practised tortures without pity, and are yet suffered to erect their heads among human beings." To what particular "experiments" the moralist alluded, we are not at present aware: but the great duty which both he and the Poet seek to inculcate, that of mercy towards the inferior creatures, is of imperishable application. "Was there ever man had such luck! when I kissed the jack upon an up-cast, to be hit away!"-Act II., Scene 1. Cloten is here describing his fate at bowls. The subject is mentioned in the notes to "TROILUS AND CRESSIDA." It is objected by Steevens to the character of Cloten, that "he is represented at once as brave and dastardly, civil and brutish, sagacious and cruel, without that subtilty of distinction, and those shades of gradation between sense and folly, virtue and vice, which constitute the excellence of such mixed characters as Polonius in HAMLET,' and the Nurse in ROMEO AND JULIET.'"-Such inconsistency is, however, far more puzzling than unnatural. Miss Seward (as quoted by Mr. Singer) assures us, in one of her letters, that singular as the character of Cloten may appear, it is the exact prototype of a being she once knew:-"The unmeaning frown of the countenance; the shuffling gait; the burst of voice; the bustling insignificance; the fever and ague fits of valour; the froward techiness; the unprincipled malice; and, what is most curious, those occasional gleams of good sense amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain, and which, in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity of character; but in the sometime Captain C-n I saw the portrait of Cloten was not out of nature." "Swift, swift, you dragons of the night!"-Act II., Scene 2. The task of drawing the chariot of night was assigned to dragons, on account of their supposed watchfulness. Milton mentions "the dragon yoke of night" in "IL PENSEROSO;" and in his "MASQUE AT LUDLOW CASTLE" we find "the dragon womb of Stygian darkness." "Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings." Act II., Scene 3. The same highly poetic hyperbole occurs in Milton's "PARADISE LOST," (book v.):— "Ye birds, That, singing, up to heaven's gate ascend." Also in Shakspere's 29th Sonnet: "Like to the lark, at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate." And again in "VENUS AND ADONIS:" "Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, "Your mother too: She's my good lady."-Act II., Scene 3. This is said ironically. "My good lady" is equivalent to "my good friend." So in "HENRY IV.," Part 2, Falstaff says to Prince John:-" And when you come to court, stand my good lord, pray, in your good report." "The story, Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman, And Cydnus swelled above the banks, or for The press of boats, or pride.”—Act II., Scene 4. Johnson observes of this scene, that "Iachimo's language is such as a skilful villain would naturally use,-a mixture of airy triumph and serious deposition. His gaiety shews his seriousness to be without anxiety; and his seriousness proves his gaiety to be without art." "Her andirons (I had forgot them) were two winking Cupids The andirons of our ancestors were sometimes costly pieces of furniture; the standards were often, as in this instance, of silver, representing some terminal figure or device; the transverse or horizontal pieces, upon which the wood was supported, were what Shakspere here calls the brands, properly brandirons. Upon these the Cupids which formed the standards "nicely depended," seeming to stand on one foot. "Her attendants are All sworn and honourable."—Act II., Scene 4. It was anciently the custom for attendants on the nobility (as it is now for the servants of the sovereign) to take an oath of fidelity, on their entrance into office. "Under her breast (Worthy the pressing)."-Act II., Scene 4. The original folio reads, "worthy her pressing." Rowe made the correction. We mention the matter merely as it affords an opportunity of saying, in justice to Rowe, that in his edition he made many other verbal emendations of unquestionable taste and correctness, which are now incorporated with the received text. "Is there no way for men to be, but women This bitter sarcasm of Posthumus (which, by the way, is in reality caused by the villany of a man, not by the frailty of a woman) probably suggested the similar sentiment that Milton has put into the mouth of Adam: "O why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven "Mulmutius made our laws, Who was the first of Britain which did put Himself a king."-Act III., Scene 1. The title of the first chapter of Holinshed's third book of the "HISTORY OF ENGLAND," is:-" Of Mulmutius, the first King of Britain who was crowned with a golden crown, his laws, his foundations, &c. "Mulmutius, the son of Cloten, got the upper hand of the other dukes or rulers; and, after his father's decease, began his reign over the whole monarchy of Britain in the year of the world 3529. He made many good laws, which were long after used, called Mulmutius' laws, turned out of the British speech into Latin by Gildas Priscus, and long time after translated out of Latin into English by Alfred, King of England, and mingled in his statutes. After he had established his land, he ordained him, by the advice of his lords, a crown of gold, and caused himself with great solemnity to be crowned:-and because he was the first that bare a crown here in Britain, after the opinion of some writers, he is named the first king of Britain, and all the other before rehearsed are named rulers, dukes, or governors. Among other of his ordinances, he appointed weights and measures, with the which men should buy and sell: and further, he caused sore and strait orders for the punishment of theft." "Thou art welcome, Caius. Thy Cæsar knighted me: my youth I spent Much under him."—Act III., Scene 1. Holinshed throws light on this passage also:-"Kymbe line (as some write) was brought up at Rome, and there was made knight by Augustus Cæsar, under whom he served in the wars, and was in such favour with him that he was at liberty to pay his tribute or not. Yet we find in the Roman writers, that after Julius Cæsar's death, when Augustus had taken upon him the rule of the empire, the Britons refused to pay that tribute.--But whether the controversy which appeared to fall forth between the Britons and Augustus was occasioned by Kymbeline, I have not a vouch.- -Kymbeline reigned thirty-five years, leaving behind him two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus." "Good wax, thy leave. Blessed be, You bees, that make these locks of counsel! Lovers And men in dangerous bonds pray not alike: Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet You clasp young Cupid's tables."-Act III., Scene 2. The meaning is, that the bees are not blessed by the man who is sent to prison for forfeiting a bond, which is sealed with their product-wax, as they are by lovers, for whom the same substance performs the more pleasing office of sealing letters. "What should we speak of, When we are old as you."-Act III., Scene 3. This dread of an old age unsupplied with matter for discourse and meditation, is a sentiment natural and noble. No state can be more destitute than that of him who, when the delights of sense forsake him, has no pleasures of the mind.-JOHNSON. If it be summer news, Smile to 't before.”—Act III., Scene 4. A similar phrase occurs in the Poet's 98th Sonnet:- "Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him.” Act III., Scene 4. Meaning, some beauty made by art; the creature, not of nature, but of painting. "In this sense," says Johnson, "painting may be not improperly termed her mother." "Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion; Act III., Scene 4. Clothes were not formerly, as at present, made of slight materials; they were not kept in drawers, or given away as soon as lapse of time or change of fashion had impaired their value. On the contrary, they were hung up on wooden pegs, in a room appropriated to the sole purpose of receiving them; and though such cast-off things as were composed of rich substances were occasionally ripped for domestic uses, articles of inferior quality were suffered to hang by the wall till age and moths had destroyed what pride would not permit to be worn by servants or poor relations. When Queen Elizabeth died, she was found to have left above three thousand dresses behind her. Steevens states himself to have seen, at an ancient mansion in Suffolk, one of these dress repositories, which had been preserved with superstitious reverence for almost a century and a half. "Come, here's my heart: Something's afore 't: soft, soft; we'll no defence." Act III., Scene 4. In this passage, we have another of Rowe's happy verbal corrections. The original copy reads, "Something's afoot.' "Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night, It seems probable that here, as also on a similar occasion in "RICHARD II.," Shakspere had in his thoughts a passage in Lily's "EUPHUES:"-" Nature hath given to no man a country, no more than she hath house, or lands, or living. Plato would never account him banished that had the sun, air, water, and earth, that he had before: where he felt the winter's blast, and the summer's blaze; where the same sun and the same moon shined: whereby he noted that every place was a country to a wise man, and all parts a palace to a quiet mind." "True to thee, Were to prove false (which I will never be) To him that is most true."-Act III., Scene 5. Pisanio, notwithstanding his master's letter commanding the murder of Imogen, considers him true; supposing, as he has already said to her, that Posthumus was abused by some villain, equally an enemy to them both. "The bird is dead That we have made so much on." Act IV., Scene 2. The sweet and wholesome pathos of this scene has been thus noted by Mrs. Radcliffe :-"No master ever knew how to touch the accordant springs of sympathy by small circumstances, like our own Shakspere. In 'CYMBELINE,' for instance, how finely such circumstances are made use of to awaken, at once, solemn expectation and tenderness, and, by recalling the softened remembrance of a sorrow long past, to prepare the mind to melt at one that was approaching; mingling at the same time, by means of a mysterious occurrence, a slight tremor of awe with our pity. Thus, when Belarius and Arviragus return to the cave where they had left the unhappy and worn-out Imogen to repose, while they are yet standing before it, and Arviragus-speaking of her with tenderest pity as 'poor sick Fidele'-goes out to inquire for her, solemn music is heard from the cave, sounded by that harp of which Guiderius says, 'Since the death of my dearest mother, it did not speak before. All solemn things should answer solemn accidents.' Immediately Arviragus enters with Fidele senseless in his arms: 'Are. The bird is dead that we have made so much on." Bel. How found you him? Art. Stark, as you see: thus smiling. I thought he slept; and put My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness Answered my steps too loud. Gui. Why, he but sleeps. Arv. With fairest flowers, While summer lasts, AND I LIVE HERE, FIDELE, I'll sweeten thy sad grave.' Tears alone can speak the touching simplicity of the whole scene." "The ruddock would With charitable bill."—Act IV., Scene 2. The ruddock is the redbreast. It is so called by Chaucer and Spenser. The office of covering the dead is likewise ascribed to this bird by Drayton, in his poem called "THE OWL" (1604): "Covering with moss the dead's unclosed eye, "Reverence (That angel of the world)."-Act IV., Scene 2. Reverence, or due regard to subordination, is the power that keeps peace and order in the world.-JOHNSON. "Fear no more the heat o' the sun, The Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages." Act IV., Scene 2. "This," says Warburton, "is the topic of consolation that nature dictates to all men on these occasions. same farewell we have over the dead body in Lucian."-In the same strain of regret and tender envy, it may be added, Macbeth speaks of his slaughtered victim Duncan: feeling, at the very instant when he should rejoice in the consummation of his wishes, the utter nothingness of perturbed earthly pleasures, when compared with the peaceful slumbers of the innocent dead. Collins has given an imitation, rather than a version, of this beautiful dirge. It exhibits his usual exquisite taste and felicity of expression, although inferior to the original in condensation and characteristic simplicity : "To fair Fidele's grassy tomb : Soft maids and village hinds shall bring To vex with shrieks this quiet grove; No goblins lead their nightly crew: Shall kindly lend his little aid, To deck the ground where thou art laid. "When howling winds and beating rain In tempests shake the sylvan cell; Or, midst the chase, on every plain, The tender thought on thee shall dwell. "Each lonely scene shall thee restore; For thee the tear be truly shed; Beloved till life can charm no more, And mourned till pity's self be dead." "Yea, bloody cloth, I'll keep thee; for I wished Thou shouldst be coloured thus."-Act V., Scene 1. The handkerchief spoken of is the token of Imogen's death, which Pisanio, in the foregoing Act, determined to |