Scene 6. Page 544.
Cæs. ... and have prevented
The ostent of our love.
Mr. Steevens, in claiming the merit of this necessary change from ostentation, had forgotten that it had been already made by Sir Thomas Hanmer.
Scene 6. Page 544.
Cæs. ... Which soon he granted,
Being an obstruct 'tween his lust and him.
The change was made by Dr. Warburton from abstract, which he declares to be absurd; but, as an eminent critic has remarked, it has been made very unnecessarily. The canon somewhere laid down, viz. that where the old text is capable of a meaning, no alteration should be hazarded, ought to have been observed in this instance. The sense is obviously, "Octavia drew away or abstracted Cleopatra from Antony," and she might therefore be very properly called, in Shakspeare's bold language, an abstract.
Another reason for retaining the old reading is, that, generally speaking, Dr. Warburton's emendations are inadmissible.
Scene 11. Page 587.
Ant. If from the field I shall return once more
To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood—
I will be treble-sinew'd, hearted, breath'd,
And fight maliciously: for when mine hours
Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives
Of me for jests——
The word nice, sometimes used by Shakspeare in a sense bordering on that of amorous or wanton, seems in the present instance to have precisely that meaning. Antony says that his former luxurious hours with Cleopatra were fortunate to those who asked his favours, but that now he will appear in blood. The historian Stowe, in recording an accident that happened to one Mary Breame in the year 1583, says that she "had beene accused by her husband to bee a nice woman of her body." We have also an old play entitled The nice wanton.