To judge of this question fairly, it will be necessary to cite the passage
in which it occurs, as it stands in the folio, Act III. Sc. 8., somewhat at
large.
"_Eno._ Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer;
Th' Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,
With all their sixty, fly, and turn the rudder;
To see't, mine eyes are blasted.
_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."
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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 of the commentators; and we see here our eminent lexicographer
confessing his ignorance of a word which the dictionaries of the poet's age
would have enabled him readily to explain. For although we have not the
participle _ribaudred_, which may be peculiar to the poet, in Baret's
_Alvearie_ we find "_Ribaudrie_, vilanie in actes or wordes, filthiness,
uncleanness"--"A _ribaudrous_ and filthie tongue, os obscoenum et
impudicum:" in Minsheu, _ribaudrie_ and _ribauldrie_, which is the
prevailing orthography of the word, and indicates its sound and derivation
from the French, rather than from the Italian _ribalderia_.
That _nagge_ is a misprint for _hagge_, will be evident from the
circumstance, that in the first folio we have a similar error in the _Merry
Wives of Windsor_, Act IV. Sc. 2., where instead of "you witch, you
_hagge_," it is misprinted "you witch, you _ragge_." It is observable that
_hagge_ is the form in which the word is most frequently found in the
folios, and it is the epithet the poet applies to a witch or enchantress.
I cannot, therefore, but consider the alteration of the text by Steevens as
one of the most violent and uncalled-for innovations of which he has been
guilty; and he himself seems to have had his misgivings, for his
observation that Shakspeare "is not always very nice about his
versification" was meant as an apology for marring its harmony by the
substitution of _ribald-rid_ for the poet's own _ribaudred_.
It is to me a matter of surprise that Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight, in their
laudable zeal for adherence as closely as possible to the old copies,
should not have perceived the injury done both to the sense and harmony of
the passage by this unwarrantable substitution.