Chapter CXIII: Act III: SCENE 6. Page 543

CÆS. ... The wife of Antony
Should have an army for an _usher_.

An _usher_ is a person who introduces others ceremoniously, though originally a door-keeper, from the French _huissier_, and that from _huis_, _ostium_. This is no otherwise worth the mention, than to mark the corrupt orthography of the word, which ought to be written _husher_. Thus Spencer,

"A gentle _husher_, vanitie by name,
Made roome, and passage for them did prepare."

_Fairy queen_, B. i. Canto 4, st. 13.

Cavendish, the servant of Cardinal Wolsey, speaking of his master's arrest by the Earl of Northumberland, says, "he toke the Earle by the hande, and led him in to his bedchamber. And they being there all alone, save onely I _who kept the dore according to my dutye, being gentleman ussher_, &c."--_Life of Wolsey_, MS.

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_.

SCENE 11. Page 589.

ENO. ... and in that mood,
The dove will peck the _estridge_.

i. e. the _falcon_. See note p. 268, &c.