III. ii. 247. drachmas. These were Greek silver coins, of a value impossible to compute accurately in terms of modern currency. In purchasing power the bequest would perhaps be equivalent to-day to something over $100 per citizen.
III. ii. 254. On this side Tiber. The gardens lay across the Tiber from the Forum in which Antony was speaking, but 'on this side' from the French and English standpoint of Amyot and North—whom Shakespeare too literally follows.
IV. i. 37. one that feeds On objects, arts, and imitations Which, out of use and stal'd by other men. Begin his fashion. The Folio text here is at least as satisfactory as any emendation, if the punctuation makes it evident that the disputed 'objects, arts, and imitations' are immediately defined by the restrictive relative clause that follows. Despite his unbridled passions, Antony is eminently a practical politician,—as witness the form of Cassius' bribe offered to him after Brutus' futile expression of idealism (III. i. 177, 178); and witness also his masterly manipulation of the conspirators and the mob, in III. i and III. ii. He scorns Lepidus then for so lacking personality, initiative, shrewdness, and judgment that he takes even the superficial embellishments of life at second hand, unable to distinguish between the true values and the sham. (Staunton's emendation would substitute 'abjects,' meaning 'discarded scraps,' and 'orts,' meaning 'leavings.')
IV. i. 48, 49. we are at the stake. And bay'd about with many enemies. This refers to the very popular but very brutal Elizabethan amusement of bearbaiting, wherein the bear was chained to a stake in the center of the 'bear-garden' or arena (the best-known one was situated close by the Globe Theatre) and attacked by a number of dogs.
