In Twelfth Night (act iii. sc. 2, l. 73, vol. iii. p. 271) Maria thus describes the love-demented steward,—
“He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies; you have not seen such a thing as ’tis.”
And in the Merry Wives of Windsor (act i. sc. 3, l. 64, vol. i. p. 177), Sir John Falstaff avers respecting Mistress Page and Mistress Ford,—
“I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both.”
Yet in agreement with the map of Sambucus, with the three capes prominent upon it, of Gibraltar Rock, the Cape of Good Hope, and that of Malacca, Shakespeare on other occasions ignores America and all its western neighbours. At the consultation by Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, about the division of the Roman Empire (Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. 1, l. 12, vol. vii. p. 384), Antony, on the exit of Lepidus, remarks,—
“This is a slight unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands: is it fit,
The three-fold world divided, he should stand
One of the three to share it?”
And when the camp of Octavius is near Alexandria (Antony and Cleopatra, act iv. sc. 6, l. 5, vol. ix. p. 109), and orders are issued to take Antony alive, Cæsar declares,—