ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. A Tragedy.

A pleasing and early octavo printing. Engraved frontispiece, engraved head-piece and a six-line engraved initial at the beginning of the text Small 8vo, bound in later blue wrappers, hand calligraphed on the cover in brown ink. 93 pp. A fine and well preserved copy, the blue wrappers as pristine.

Edizione: very scarce. from the important theobold oeuvre. although theobold ultimately gave way to johnson in popularity, he remains one of the pre-eminent shakespearean editors. churton collins, writing in the dnb, claimed it “would not be too much to say that the text of shakespeare owes more to theobold than to any other editor.”<br> the collection also draws on two rival editions, j. tonson’s and r. walker’s. although the two are nearly identical, tonson issued an advertisement warning the public against “such useless, pirated, and maim’d editions, as are publish’d by the said r. walker.” <br> antony and cleopatra contains many famous quotations among which are:<br><br>my salad days,<br>when i was green in judgement, cold in blood.<br>(cleopatra, act 1 scene 5)<br><br>age cannot wither her, nor custom stale<br>her infinite variety.<br>(enobarbus, act 2 scene 2)<br><br>i found you as a morsel cold upon<br>dead caesar's trencher.<br>(antony, act 3 scene 13)<br><br>the odds is gone<br>and there is nothing left remarkable<br>beneath the visiting moon.<br>(cleopatra, act 4 scene 15)<br><br>now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies<br>a lass unparalleled.<br>(charmian, act 5 scene 2)<br><br>she shall be buried by her antony,<br>no grave upon the earth shall clip in it<br>a pair so famous.<br>(caesar, act 5 scene 2)<br>