The tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. Edited by RH Case

288 Pages·2011·20.84 MB·English

by  Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616

THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE
GENERAL EDITOR: W. CRAIG
J.
1899-1906: R. H. CASE, 1909
THE TRAGEDY
OP
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

THE WORKS
OF
SHAKESPEARE
THE TRAGEDY OF
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
EDITED BY
CASE
R. H.
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First Published
SecondEdition
Third Edition
Fourth Edition
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION^
Apart from the addition and enlargement of notes in the
Appendices, the new matter in this edition is confined towhat
follows on the verb plurals which end like singulars in -th and
-J, and which are alluded to in the Introduction, p. vii, as re-
stored in the text, where they appear (with illustrations in the
notes) in I. ii. 120 ; L iv. 21, 49; HI. i. 29?; III. vi. 22, 78, 88.
Though Abbott treated these inflexions as probably sur-
vivals of old Southern and Northern plurals respectively, in
A Shakesperian Grammar paragraphs 333-8, and with some
y
fulness, they are not always respected by modern editors, and
are not referred to in connection with the identical singular
inflexions, or the old Midland plural in -en, in the chapter on
"Shakespeare's English" in the two large volumes of Shake-
speare's England issued last year by the Clarendon Press.
Hence it does not seem superfluous to stress again this ap-
parent survival or surviving influence^ of old forms, if it is
desirable to despise no detail of Elizabethan language, to
tamper with the words of original texts as little as possible,
and to retain distinctions on which the sense ofa passage may
sometimes depend. The position will be unchanged whether
the forms in question are rightly explained as survivals or are
found to have otherwise arisen.
It is of course likely, and occasionally demonstrable, that
either inflexion is sometimes singular in spite of its plural
subject, whether ungrammatically, or in some of the cases
where singularity may have been suggested because a relative
intervenes between subject and verb, or because the subject is
a collective noun or thought of as such, or because the verb
precedes the plural subject or the subject consists of two
singular nouns. The effect, for instance, of an intervening
relative may be seen in a different case, where it attracts the
verb into the third person, as in: " Should I seeke life thaAt
finds no place of rest" (T. Churchyard, Chippes, 1565,
^Tbe only changes in this fourth edition are: (i) additions in notes on
IV..iii.i.6211,6p,.A1p3p;.IL.,ivp..2210,8p;.(229);aiiria.thieiir. 3f3u,lleArppt.reIa.t,mpe.nt20o6f;Saednldeya'sneAnwtonnotyeaonnd
Cleopatrain Introduction,p. xxv.
in'52"ItthiastpienrdhuacpesdwthhaeteAqbubaoltltyccaolmlsmo"naugseeneorfalispraenddilewcatsio(nwhfoirchthceouinlfdlencetvieorn
havebeenpluralsatall) afterpluralsubjects.
i
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
ii
Tragicall Discourse^ etc., st. 90), and in an apposite case
in "So we must change as checking chaunces falls^ Who
tosseth men about like tennis Balls. This chaunce is *she,'"
etc. {ib. stanzas 52-3).
But all the doubtful casesenumerated above might be left
out ofthe question. Without the intervening relative, as well
as with it, both the ending in -x, and the ending in -th in the
verbs have (hath) and do (doth) are too common after plural
subjects to need further illustration than the notes already
provide. In other verbs than have and do, however, the latter
ending seldom occurs, and hence the following examples of
cases (tf) with and without the relative, {b) with two—singular
nouns or one plural noun as subject, are added here:
"the ioyes w<* in Christewe obtayne \C\onsisteth in true louing
children and wife" etc. (Mtsogonus, 1577, i. 11. 46, 47. Early Plays
fromthe Italian, ed. Bond, 1911, p. 177).
"Wher-by I see, that olde men are not vnlyke vnto olde Trees,
whose barkes seemeth to be sound, when their bodies are rotten"
(Lyly, Euphues andhis England, 1580, ed. Arber, p. 231).
"And as the hurtand damagegreeueth all men," etc. {TheBooke
ofSir Thomas Moore, 1592?, 1. 88, p. 4. Malone Soc. Reprint).
"When calmie skyes, sayth bitter stormes are past," etc. (T.
Churchyard, The Worthines of Wales, 1587, Reprint 1776, p. 128).
"Calling the same booke a mirror ofman (though many mirrors
excelleth this) that shews," etc (T. Churchyard, The MirrorofMan,
1594, in dedication).
"Meddlenotwith matters, thatpasseth thy powre," etc. (i<J.,text,
1. 165).
"So manyAprinces now there are That loueth Poetrie well" (T.
Churchyard, Praise ofPoetrie, 1595, st. 28).
"the evidences . . . which they unjustly detayneth," etc.
(Grosart's Spenser, vol. ii., p. 556, from "Original Petition [of
Sylvanus Spenser, 1603] in H.M. Public Records, Dublin").
"but it is the surfeits of peace that bringeth in the Phisitians
gaine," etc. (B. Rich, The Honestie of the Age, 1614. Percy Soc.
Reprint, p. 21).
"the mind is oppressed with idle thoughts which spurreth on the
tongue to contentious quarrelling," etc. {ib., p. 54).
I have to thank Professor H. C. Wyld of the University
of Liverpool for the example from Lyly's Euphues, and for
others which I do not cite from earlier writers, such as Lord
Berners, Sir Thomas Elyot, and Hugh Latimer.