ACT IV.
Scene 9. Page 611.
1. Sold. ... so bad a prayer
Was never yet for sleeping.
2. Sold. Go we to him.
In the old copy sleep. The alteration is by Mr. Steevens, and, as he says, for the sake of measure; but that was already complete. The harmony is certainly improved, as the accent is to be laid on to in the ensuing line.
Scene 12. Page 624.
Ant. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body: here I am Antony;
Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.
I made these wars for Egypt; and the queen,—
Whose heart, I thought, I had, for she had mine;
... she, Eros, has
Pack'd cards with Cæsar, and false play'd my glory
Unto an enemy's triumph.
One should really suppose that Shakspeare had written this speech just after having lost a game at cards, and before the manner in which it had been played was out of his mind. Dr. Warburton's explanation is too superficial to merit the commendation which Dr. Johnson has bestowed on it. That of Mr. Malone is much more judicious and satisfactory; but it has not been perceived that a marked and particular allusion is intended. This is to the old card game of trump, which bore a very strong resemblance to our modern whist. It was played by two against two, and sometimes by three against three. It is thus mentioned in Gammer Gurton's needle, Act II. Scene 2: "We be fast set at trump man, hard by the fire;" and like wise in Dekkar's Belman of London, among other card games. In Eliot's Fruits for the French, 1593, p. 53, it is called "a verie common alehouse game in England;" and Rice, in his Invective against vices, 12mo, b. l. n. d. but printed before 1600, speaking of sharpers' tricks at cards, mentions "renouncyng the trompe and comming in againe." The Italians call it triomphetto; see Florio's dictionary. In Capitolo's poem on Primero, another card game, 1526, 8vo, it is called trionfi, and consigned to the peasants. Minsheu, in his Spanish dialogues, p. 25, makes it a game for old men. We, in all probability, received it from the French triomphe, which occurs in Rabelais as one of Gargantua's games. The term indicates a winning or triumphant card; and therefore there can be no pretence for deriving it from tromper, whatever Ben Jonson might have thought to the contrary, who, in reality, seems only to indulge in a pun upon the word.
Scene 12. Page 627.
Ant. I will o'ertake thee, Cleopatra, and
Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now
All length is torture.
Mr. Steevens suspects that the author wrote life; surely without reason. Length is extension or protraction of life.