ed.

_Enter_ SCARUS.

_Scar._ Gods and goddesses, all the whole synod of them!

_Eno._ What's the passion?

_Scar._ The greater cantle of the world is lost
With very ignorance; we have kiss'd away
Kingdoms and provinces.

_Eno._ How appears the fight?

_Scar._ On our side like the token'd pestilence,
Where death is sure. Yond _ribaudred Nagge_ of Egypt,
Whom leprosy o'ertake, i' the midst o' the fight
When vantage like a pair of twins appear'd,
Both as the same, or rather ours the elder,
The Breeze upon her, like a cow in June,
Hoists sail and flies.

_Eno._ That I beheld:
Mine eyes did sicken at the sight, and could not
Endure a further view.

_Scar._ She once being loof'd,
The noble ruin of her magick, Antony,
Claps on his sea-wing, and, like a doting mallard,
Leaving the fight in height, flies after her;
I never saw an action of such shame;
Experience, manhood, honour, ne'er before
Did violate so itself.

_Eno._ Alack, alack!"

The notes in the variorum edition begin by one from Johnson, in which he
says:

"The word is in the old edition _ribaudred_, which I do not understand,
but mention it in hopes that others may raise some happy conjecture."

Then Steevens, after having told us that a _ribald_ is a _lewd fellow_,
says:

"_Ribaudred_, the old reading, is I believe no more than a corruption.
Shakspeare, who is not always very nice about his versification, might
have written,

'Yon _ribald-rid_ nag of Egypt'--

_i.e._ Yon strumpet, who is common to every wanton fellow."

Malone approves Steevens's _ribald-rid_, but adds,

"By _ribald_, Scarus, I think, means the lewd Antony in particular, not
_every_ lewd fellow."

{274}

Tyrwhitt saw the necessity of reading _hag_ instead of _nag_, and says what
follows seems to prove it:

"She once being loof'd,
The noble ruin of her magick, Antony,
Claps on his sea-wing."

It is obvious that the poet would not have made Scarus speak of Antony as
the noble ruin of Cleopatra's magick, and of his manhood and honour, and in
the same breath designate him as a ribald. He would be much more likely to
apply the epithet _lewd hag_ to such an enchantress as Cleopatra, than that
of _ribald-rid nag_, which I feel convinced never entered the imagination
of the poet.

Imperfect acquaintance with our older language has been too frequently the
weak point o