"It lies as sightly on the back of him (Austria)
As great Alcides' (robe) shows upon an ass:—
But, ass, I'll take that burden from your back," &c.
Were it not that doth is the usual word in this play, I might be tempted to read does. In reading or acting, then, the cæsura should be made at Alcides', with a slight pause to give the hearer time to supply robe. I need not say that the robe is the lion's skin, and that there is an allusion to the fable of the ass.
Now to justify this reading. Our ancestors knew nothing of our mode of making genitives by turned commas. They formed the gen. sing., and nom. and gen. pl., by simply adding s to the nom. sing.; thus king made kings, kings, kings (not king's, kings, kings'), and the context gave the case. If the noun ended in se, ce, she, or che, the addition of s added a syllable, as horses, princes, &c., but it was not always added. Shakspeare, for example, uses Lucrece and cockatrice as genitives. I find the first instances of such words as James's, &c., about the middle of the seventeenth century, but I am not deeply read in old books, so it may have been used earlier.
In foreign words like Alcides, no change ever took place; it was the same for all numbers and cases, and the explanation was left to the context. Here are a couple of examples from Shakspeare himself:
"My fortunes every way as fairly ranked—
If not with vantage—as Demetrius."—Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I. Sc. 1.
"To Brutus, to Cassius. Burn all. Some to Decius house, and some to Cascas; some to Ligarius. Away! go!"—Julius Cæsar, Act III. Sc. 3.
All here are genitives, as well as Cascas. If any doubt, Brutus and Cassius, we have just been told, "Are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome," so they could not be burned. I say now, judicet lector!