II. One sees, &c.] For Chalmers’s theory that in this line there is a sarcasm on

Lodge’s Wits Miserie, see Appendix, Date of Composition.
202
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i.
The Poets eye in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance From heauen to earth, from earth to heauen. 1 5
And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things Vnknowne ; the Poets pen turnes them to fliapes,
And giues to aire nothing, a locall habitation,
And a name. Such tricks hath ftrong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend fome ioy, 20
It comprehends fome bringer of that ioy.
Or in the night, imagining fome feare,
How eafie is a bufh fuppos’d a Beare ?
Hip. But all the ftorie of the night told ouer,
And all their minds transfigur’d fo together, 25
More witneffeth than fancies images,
And growes to fomething of great conftancie; 27
14. frenzy rolling!] frenzy, rolling, Q,.
14, 15. doth glance. ..to heauen ] One line, Rowe et seq.
15, 16. From. ..And as] One line, Q,. 16-19. Lines end forth... pen... nothing
...name.. .imagination. Rowe ii et seq.
17. Vnknowne ; ] unknown, Pope et seq.
1 7. fiapes] shape Pope + , Dyce ii, iii.
18. aire] F3. ayery Q,. ayre F2. air F4. aiery Pope + . airy Q2, Rowe et cet.
20. it would ] he would Rowe ii. Pope, Theob.
22. Or] So Han. For Anon. ap. Cam.
13. Egipt] Steevens: By ‘a brow of Egypt’ Shakespeare means no more than the brow of a gypsy.
18. aire] An instance, cited by Walker ( Crit . ii, 48), of the confusion of e and ie final.
22, 23. R. G. White (ed. i) : Who can believe that these two lines are genuine ? . . . The two preceding lines are doubtless genuine. They close the speech appro priately with a clear and conclusive distinction between the apprehensive and the comprehensive power of the imaginative mind. Where, indeed, in the whole range of metaphysical writing is the difference between the two so accurately stated and so forcibly illustrated ? And would Shakespeare, after thus reaching the climax of his thought, fall a twaddling about bushes and bears ? Note, too, the loss of dignity in the rhythm. I cannot even bring myself to doubt that these lines are interpolated. [This last sentence White repeats in his second edition.] — The Cowden-Clarkes : This concluding couplet, superficially considered, has an odd, bald, fiat effect, as of an anti-climax, after the magnificent diction in the previous lines of the speech ; but viewed dramatically they serve to give character and naturalness to the dialogue. The speaker is carried away by the impulse of his thought and nature of his subject into lofty expression, ranging somewhat apart from the matter in hand ; then, feeling this, he brings back the conversation to the point of last night’s visions and the lovers’ related adventures by the two lines in question.
22. imagining] That is, if one imagines; for examples of participles without nouns, see Abbott, § 378.
27. constancie] Johnson : Consistency, stability, certainty.
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME But howfoeuer, ftrange, and admirable.
203
28
Enter loners , Lyf under, Demetrius , Hermia , and Helena.
The. Heere come the louers, full of ioy and mirth .* I°y, gentle friends, ioy and frefh dayes Of loue accompany your hearts.
Lyf. More then to vs, waite in your royall walkes, your boord, your bed.
The. Come now, what maskes, what dances fhall we haue,
To weare away this long age of three houres,
Between our after fupper, and bed-time ?
Where is our vfuall manager of mirth ?
What Reuels are in hand ? Is there no play,
To eafe the anguifh of a torturing houre?
Call Egeus
30
35
40
43
28. But] Be't Han.
32, 33. Ioy. ..Of loui] One line, Ff, Rowe et seq.
34, 35. waite. ..bed] One line, Ff,Rowe et seq.
34. waite in] wait on Rowe + , Cap. 38-43. Four lines, ending betweene...
manager... play. ..Philoitrate. Qt.
39. our after] or after Qq.
after fupper] after-supper F4> Rowe et seq.
43. Egeus.] Philoitrate. Qq, Pope et seq.
[Enter Philostrate. Pope + .
28. howsoeuer] Abbott, § 47 : For ‘ howsoe’er it be,’ * in any case.’
28. strange] The Cowden-Clarkes : Shakespeare uses this word with forcible and extensive meaning. Here, and in the opening lines of the scene, he uses it for marvellous , out of nature, anomalous. See also line 66, below.
28. admirable] That is, to be wondered at.
39. after supper] Staunton : The accepted explanation of an conveys but an imperfect idea of what this refection really was. lA rere-supper,' says Nares, ‘ seems to have been a late or second supper.’ Not exactly. The rere-supper was to the supper itself what the rere-banquet was to the dinner — a dessert. On ordi¬ nary occasions the gentlemen of Shakespeare’s age appear to have dined about eleven o’clock, and then to have retired either to a garden-house or other suitable apartment and enjoyed their rere-banquet or dessert. Supper was usually served between five and six ; and this, like the dinner, was frequently followed by a collation consisting of fruits and sweetmeats, called, in this country, the rere-supper; in Italy, Pocenio, from the Latin Pocoenium.
43- Egeus] Capell (p. 115^): The player editors’ error in making Egeus enterer in an act he has no concern in, arose (probably) from their laying Philostrate’s charac¬ ter in this act upon the player who had finished that of Egeus. [Which is another proof that the Folio was printed from a prompter’s copy. The Qq here have, cor¬ rectly, Philostrate, who was the master of the revels ; and so, too, has the Folio, at
204
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i.
Ege. Heere mighty Thefeus.
The. Say, what abridgement haue you for this eue- 45 ning?
What maske? What muficke? How fhall we beguile The lazie time, if not with fome delight ?
Ege. There is a breefe how many fports are rife : 49
44, 49, 68, 79. Ege.] Philoftrate Qf. Philo. Qs.
44. Thefeus.] Theseus, here Han.
49. There~\ Here Anon. ap. Hal.
rife'] ripe Q,, Theob. + , Cap.
Steev. Mai. Var. Coll. Dyce, White, Sta. Cam. Ktly.
49. breefe~\ brief e QqF2. brief H
[presenting a Paper. Cap. Giving a paper which Theseus hands to Lysan- der to read. Hal.
line 84, — an oversight on the part of the prompter who adapted for the stage the copy of Q, from which the Folio was subsequently printed. — Ed.]
45. abridgement] Steevens : By ‘abridgement’ our author may mean a dra¬ matic performance, which crowds the events of years into a few hours. It may be worth while to observe that in the North the word abatement had the same meaning as diversion or amusement. So in the Prologue to the Fifth book of Gawin Douglas’s version of the /Eneid : ‘ Ful mony myrry abaytmentis followis heir.’ — Henley : Does not ‘ abridgement,’ in the present instance, signify amusement to beguile the tedious¬ ness of the evening? or, in one word , pastime ? — W. A. Wright: An entertainment to make the time pass quickly. Used in Hamlet, II, ii, 439, in a double sense, the entry of the players cutting short Hamlet’s talk: ‘look, where my abridgement comes.’ In Steevens’s quotation from Gawin Douglas, ‘ abaytment ’ is clearly the same as the French ‘ esbatement,’ which Cotgrave defines, ‘A sporting, playing, dal¬ lying, ieasting, recreation.’ — [In an article on the etymology of the word ‘ merry,’ Zupitza ( Englische Studien, 1885, vol. 8, p. 471) shows that this word originally bore the meaning of short (like Old High German murg), and thence followed the meaning of that which makes the time seem short ; that is, pleasant, agreeable, enter¬ taining, delightful. Hence by a parallel process ‘ abridgement ’ is used thus poet¬ ically by Shakespeare in [the present passage] as that which abridges time — namely, pastime, diversion, amusement. ‘ With this poetic use of “ abridgement,” Vigfusson (Sturlunga saga, Oxford, 1878, i, Note xxiii) compares the Old Norse skemtan and skemta. The noun skemtan means entertainment, pastime, especially the entertain¬ ment derived from telling stories ; the verb skemta means to entertain, to pass the time. The Danish thus use skjemt, a joke, fun ; skjemte, to joke, to amuse, &c. The etymon of the words is Old Norse — skammr, short. . . . There is a development of the same idea in Scotch, as was observed long ago by Jamieson, which corresponds to Shakespeare’s “ abridgement ” ; we find in the Scotch the word schorte or short, equiv¬ alent to entertain, to pass the time ; and schortsum or shortsum, meaning cheerful, merry. ... In fine, the signification of merry does not debar us from referring it to the Gothic gamaurgian, to shorten, and Old High German murg, short, inasmuch as the Old Norse skemtan and skemta from skammr, and the Scotch schorte and schort¬ sum, reveal a corresponding development of meaning, and Shakespeare uses “ abridge¬ ment ” in the sense of amusement, pastime, diversion.’ For the reference to this article by Dr. Zupitza, I am indebted to the learning and courtesy of Prof. Dr. J. W. Bright of the Johns Hopkins University. — Ed.]
ACT v, sc. L] A MID SOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
Make choife of which your Highneffe will fee firft.
Lif The battell with the Centaurs to be fung By an Athenian Eunuch, to the Harpe.
The. Wee’l none of that. That haue I told my Loue In glory of my kinfman Hercules.
Lif. The riot of the tipfie Bachanals, f earing the Thracian finger, in their rage ?
51. Lif.] Ff, Rowe, Pope. The. or Thef. Qq, Cap. Lys. [reads] Knt, Hal. White i, Sta. Thes. [reads] Theob. et cet.
SI_^7. Given to Theseus. Qq, Theob. + , Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. Coll. Dyce, Cam. White ii.
51. Centaurs] Centaur F4, Rowe i.
52. Harpe. ] Harpe ? Qf.
S3- haue I ] I have Theob. Warb. Johns.
55) 59) 63. [Reads. Han. Dyce, Cam. 56. Thracian ] Thrafian F F . rage ?] rage. F4 et seq.
49. breefe] Steevens : That is, a short account or enumeration.
49. rife] Theobald corrected this manifest misprint, but Steevens dallied with it by citing examples from Sidney and from Gosson of its use (which is beside the mark. Does any question that * rife ’ is a good word in its proper place ?), and Hal- LIWELL retained it and sustained it. Ripe, of course, means ready. _ Ed.
51. Lis.] Theobald: What has Lysander to do in the affair? He is no courtier of Theseus’s, but only an occasional guest, and just come out of the woods, so not likely to know what sports were in preparation. I have taken the old Qq. for my guides. Theseus reads the titles of the sports out of the list, and then alternately makes his remarks upon them. Knight : The lines are generally printed as in the Qq, but the division of so long a passage is clearly better, and is perfectly natural and proper. ‘And the dignity of the monarch,’ adds Hali.iwei.l, ‘ is better sustained by this arrangement.’— White (ed. i) : It seems natural that, under the circumstances, a sovereign should hand such a paper to some one else to read aloud. [In his second edition White follows the Qq.]— F. A. Marshall: The arrangement in the Ff is much more effective as far as the stage requirements are concerned. — Collier : The more natural course seems to be for Theseus both to read and comment. [We have
had so many proofs that F, was printed from a stage-copy that, I think, it is safest to follow it here. — Ed.]
51. Centaurs] This, and the reference to Orpheus in line 56, are among the many proofs collected by Walker frit, i, 152) of Ovid’s influence on Shakespeare. The story of the Centaurs is in Book xii of the Metamorphoses, and of the singer’ in Book xi.
52. Harpe] Halliwell: It is a singular circumstance that the harp is not found m any of the known relics of the ancient Greeks, so that the poet has probably unwit¬ tingly fallen into an anachronism.
54. Hercules] Knight: Shakespeare has given to Theseus the attributes of a real hero, amongst which modesty is included. He has attributed the glory to his ‘ kmsman Hercules.’ The poets and sculptors of antiquity have made Theseus him¬ self the great object of their glorification.— W. A. Wright: The version by Theseus was different from that told by Nestor; the latter, in Ovid, purposely omitted all men¬ tion of Hercules.
206 a MID SOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. L
The. That is an old deuice, and it was plaid 57
When I from Thebes came laft a Conqueror.
Lif. The thrice three Mufes, mourning for the death of learning, late deceaft in beggerie. 60
The. That is fome Satire keene and criticall,
Not forting with a nuptiall ceremonie.
Lif. A tedious breefe Scene of yong Piramus ,
And his loue Thisby ; very tragicall mirth.
The. Merry and tragicall? Tedious, and briefe? That 65 is, hot ice, and wondrous ftrange fnow. How fhall wee finde the concord of this difeord ? 67
60. of\ Of Qq, Pope et seq. beggerie. ] beggery ? Qx.
64. mirth'] mirth ? Qq.
65-67. Prose, Q2Ff. Three lines, end¬ ing ice. ..concord. ..difeord. Q,. Three lines, ending briefe... fnow... difeord. Theob. et seq.
65. 66. That. ..fnow] Om. Pope.
66. ice] Ife Qf.
and wondrous Jl range fnow] Qq Ff, Rowe, Theob. i, Coll, i, Hal. White i, Sta. Dyce iii. and wonderous strange snow Theob. ii. and wondrous scorching snow Han. a wondrous strange shew Warb. and wondrous strange black snow Upton, Cap. and wondrous seething snow Coll, ii, iii (MS), and wondrous swarthy snow Sta. conj. Dyce ii. and wondrous
swarte snow Sta. conj. Kinnear. and won¬ drous sable snow Bailey, Ktly, Elze. and wondrous orange (or raven, or azure) snow Bailey, and wondrous strange in hue Bulloch, and wondrous sooty snow Herr. and wind-restraining snow Wetherell ( Athen . 2 Nov.’67). and pon¬ derous flakes of snow Leo (Athen. 27 Nov. ’80). and wondrous flakes of snow Ibid. and wondrous staining snow Nicholson (ap. Cam.), and wondrous flaming snow Joicey (N. &Qu. 1 1 Feb.’ 93). and won¬ drous fiery snow Orger. and wondrous scaldinge snow Ebsworth.
66. wondrous] wodrous Q,. wonderous Theob. ii, Johns. Steev. Rann, Mai. Var. Knt, Dyce i, White ii.
59, 60. For the various references supposed to be lying concealed in these lines, see Appendix, Date of Composition.
62. ceremonie] This example may be added to the many collected by Walker (Crit. ii, 73) of the trisyllabic pronunciation of ceremony. — Ed.
63. Piramus] For Golding’s translation of this story from Ovid, see Appendix, Source of the Plot.
66. hot ice, . . . snow] Steevens : The meaning of the line is ‘ hot ice, and snow of as strange a quality.’ — M. Mason: As there is no antithesis between ‘ strange ’ and ‘ snow ’ as there is between ‘ hot ’ and ‘ ice,’ I believe we should read, ‘ and wonderous strong snow.’ — Knight : Surely, snow is a common thing, and, there¬ fore, * wonderous strange ’ is sufficiently antithetical — 1 hot ice, and snow as strange.’
_ Halliwell : In other words, ice and snow, wonderous hot and wonderous strange;
or hot ice, and strange snow as wonderful. — Collier (ed. ii) : The MS has fortu¬ nately supplied us with what must have been the language of the poet — ‘ and won¬ drous seething snow.’ Seething is boiling, as we have already seen at the beginning of this act ; and seething and ‘ snow ’ are directly opposed to each other, like ‘ hot ’ and ‘ ice.’ Thus metre and meaning are both restored, and it is not difficult to see
ACT v, sc. i.J A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
Ege. A play there is, my Lord, fome ten words long, Which is as breefe, as I haue knowne a play ;
But by ten words, my Lord, it is too long ;
Which makes it tedious. For in all the play,
There is not one word apt, one Player fitted.
And tragicall my noble Lord it is : for Piramus Therein doth kill himfelfe. Which when I faw Rehearft, I muft confeffe, made mine eyes water :
But more merrie teares, the pafiion of loud laughter Neuer fhed.
The/. What are they that do play it ?
207
68
70
75
7»
...68‘ theP U “ Han- CaP- Dyce ii, 73, 77. Lines end, it is... himfelfe...
iii, Coll. iii. this is Coll, ii (MS). confeffe. ..teares. ..fhed. Ff, Rowe et seq.
74- I faw~\ I saw't Han.
how the misprint occurred. Here again the corr. fo., 1632, has been of most essen¬ tial service.— R. G. White (ed. i) : Collier’s MS emendation seems preferable to all the others, but there is hardly sufficient ground for making so great a change in a word which is found in the Qq and Ff.— Staunton : Upton’s ‘ black snow ’ comes nearest to the sense demanded, but ‘ strange ’ could hardly have been a misprint for black. Perhaps we should read ‘ swarthy snow.’ Swarte, as formerly spelt, is not so far removed from the text as black , scorching, or seething. — Walker ( Crit. iii, 51) ; Perhaps scorching [Hanmer’s] might serve as a bad makeshift. — Bailey’s prismatic conjectures ( The T ext, &c. i, 196) were suggested by the colours of the polar snow as described by Arctic voyagers.— Perring (p. 116) : The word, which has no doubt been lost in transcription, was probably a very small one, perhaps with letters or a sound corresponding to the termination of the word preceding it. The final letters of ‘ strange ’ are ge ; what word more fully and fairly satisfies the conditions required than the little word jet, used by Shakespeare in .2 Hen. VI: II, i, in three consecu¬ tive lines ? Perhaps, however, it would be too much to expect editors boldly to print ‘and, wondrous strange! jet snow.’— R. G. White (ed. ii) : The original text is unsatisfactory, but not surely corrupt. — The Cowden-Clarkes : ‘ Strange,’ as Shake¬ speare occasionally uses it (in the sense of anomalous, unnatural, prodigious), pre¬ sents sufficient image of contrast in itself. See note on line 28, above. [Surely there is no need of change. The mere fact that any child can suggest an appropriate adjective is a reason all-sufficient for retaining Shakespeare’s word, especially when that word bears the meaning given to it by the Cowden-Clarkes.— Ed.]
68. there is] Collier (ed. ii) : We need not hesitate here to receive this for there of the old copies. Philostrate evidently speaks of the particular play of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is ‘some ten words long.’ — Dyce (ed. ii) : Collier’s MS correction, this, is objectionable on account of the ‘ this ’ immediately above.
78. play it] Schmidt ( Programm , p. 7) finds in these lines two difficulties which could not have been in the original MS. The first is the incomplete verse of line 78, and the second is the blunt answer which, so he says, no Englishman would ever think of giving to a prince. He, therefore, thus emends : ‘ What are they that do play't f Hard-handed men, | My noble Lord (or My gracious Duke ) that work in Athens here.’
208
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. L
Ege. Hard handed men, that worke in Athens heere,
Which neuer labour’d in their mindes till now ; 80
And now haue toyled their vnbreathed memories With this fame play, againft your nuptiall.
The. And we will heare it.
Phi. No, my noble Lord, it is not for you. I haue heard It ouer, and it is nothing, nothing in the world ; 85
Vnleffe you can finde fport in their intents,
Extreamely ftretcht, and cond with cruell paine, 8 7
82. nuptiaW] nuptial! Ff, Rowed. et seq.
84, 85. it is...ouer\ One line, Rowe ii 86, 87. Transpose, Gould.
81. vnbreathed] Steevens: That is, unexercised, unpractised.
82 nuptiall] W. A. Wright: With only two exceptions Shakespeare always uses the singular form of this word [viz. in Othello, II, ii. 9, where the Ff have • nup tiall ’ and the Qq ‘ nuptialls ’ ; and Per. V, iii, 80].
86. intents] Johnson: As I know not what it is to ‘stretch’ and ‘con an « intent,’ I suspect a line to be lost.— Kenrick {Rev. 19) : By ‘ intents ’ is plainly meant the design or scheme of the piece intended for representation; the conceit of which being far-fetched or improbable, it might be with propriety enough called ‘ extremely stretched.’ As to this scheme or design being ‘ conn’d ’ (if any objection be made to the supposition of its having been written, fenn'd), it is no wonder such players as these are represented to be ‘ should con their several parts with cruel pain.’ —Douce (i, 196) : It is surely not the ‘ intents ’ that are ‘ stretched and conn’d,’ but the play, of ’which Philostrate is speaking. If the line 86 (‘ Unlesse you can,’ &c.) were printed in a parenthesis all would be right.— Knight and Delius follow Douce’s suggestion, the former exactly, the latter, Delius, substituting commas for the marks of parenthesis.-R. G. White (ed. i) : ‘ Intents’ here, as the subject of the two verbs, ‘ stretched ’ and ‘ conn’d,’ is used both for endeavour and for the object of endeavour, by a license which other writers than Shakespeare have assumed.— Dan¬ iel ,(p. 35): Qy. arrange and read thus: ‘No, my noble lord, it is not for you, | Unless you can find sport in their intents | To do you service. I have heard it o'er, \ And it is nothing, nothing in the world, | Extremely stretch’d and conn d with cruel pain.’ [To me, Grant White’s is the right interpretation, and renders any change unnecessary. Is it any more violent to say that my intents, my endeavors, to do you service shall be stretched to my utmost ability, than it is to say, as Antonio says in The Mer. of Ven., that ‘ my credit [for your sake] shall be rack’d to the uttermost ’ ? —Ed.]
87. stretcht] Ulrici (Ed. Dent. Sh. Gesellschaft, trans. by Dr A. Schmidt, p. 428) : I cannot avoid the conclusion that there is here a misprint, albeit no objection to the phrase has hitherto been made. ‘ Extremely stretch’d ’ can by no means apply to the ‘ tedious brief scene ’ which the rude mechanicals are to perform ; their ‘ merry tragedy,’ on the contrary, is ‘ extremely ’ short. Wherefore I believe that the phrase originally stood, in Shakespeare’s handwriting, not ‘ extremely stretch’d,’ but ‘ ex¬ tremely wretch' d.' [Shall we not all fervently thank the Goodness and the Grace that on our birth has smiled, and permitted us to read Shakespeare as an inheritance,
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME To doe you feruice.
Thef I will heare that play. For neuer any thing Can be amiffe, when fimpleneffe and duty tender it.
Goe bring them in, and take your places, Ladies.
89, 90. For. ..it] Two lines, ending 90, 93. duty] duety Qt. amiffe. ..it Rowe ii et seq. 91. [Exit Phil. Pope. '
instead of having to look at him through a medium which presents fantastic distor¬ tions ? Let the grateful English-speaking reader consider for a moment what would be his enjoyment of Shakespeare were he to read his verses stript of all charm of melody, of humour, and sometimes even of sense. What a tribute it is to the intel¬ ligence of our German brothers that under such disadvantages they have done what they have done ! — Ed.]
87. cruell] Halliwell quotes from an anonymous writer the remark that * cruel , among the Devonshire peasantry, is synonymous with monstrous in fashionable circles. The person whom the latter would denominate monstrous handsome, monstrous kind, or monstrous good-tempered, the other will style, with equal propriety, cruel hand¬ some, cruel kind, or cruel good-tempered. The word, however, was formerly in more general use to signify anything in a superlative degree.’ [It is not at all likely that this Devonshire use rules here ; * cruel ’ has here its ordinary meaning. — Ed.]
89, 90. For never, &c.] Steevens: Ben Jonson, in Cynthia's Revels [V, iii], has employed this sentiment of humanity on the same occasion, when Cynthia is preparing to see a masque : ‘ Nothing which duty and desire to please, Bears written in the forehead, comes amiss.’
91, &c. Julia Wedgwood ( Contemporary Rev. Apr. ’90, p. 584): The play of the tradesmen, which at first one is apt to regard as a somewhat irrelevant appendix to the rest of the drama, is seen, by a maturer judgement, to be, as it were, a piece of sombre tapestry, exactly adapted to form a background to the light forms and iri¬ descent colouring of the fairies as they flit before it. But this is not its greatest inter¬ est to our mind. It is most instructive when we watch the proof it gives of Shake speare’s strong interest in his own art. It is one of three occasions in which he intro duces a play within a play, and in all three the introduction, without being unnatural has just that touch of unnecessariness by means of which the productions of art take a biographic tinge, and seem as much a confidence as a creation. How often must Shakespeare have watched some player of an heroic part proclaim his own prosaic personality, like Snug, the joiner, letting his face be seen through the lion’s head ! . . . In the speech of Theseus, ordering the play, we may surely allow ourselves to believe that we hear not only the music, but the voice of Shakespeare, pleading the cause of patient effort against the scorn of a hard and narrow dilettantism. . . . ‘ This is the silliest stuff I ever heard,’ says Hippolyta, and Theseus’s answer, while it calls up deeper echoes, is full of the pathos that belongs to latent memories. ‘ The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.’ Here the poet is speaking to the audience ; in Hamlet, when he addresses the players, his sympathy naturally takes the form of criticism ; what the Athenian prince would excuse the Danish prince would amend. But in both alike we discern the same per¬ sonal interest in the actor’s part, and we learn that the greatest genius who ever lived was one who could show most sympathy with incompleteness and failure.
14
209
88
90
2io A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS D RE A ME [act v, sc. i.
Hip. I loue not to fee wretchedneffe orecharged ; 92
And duty in his feruice periftiing.
Thef. Why gentle fweet, you fhall fee no fuch thing.
Hip. He faies, they can doe nothing in this kinde. 95
Thef. The kinder we, to giue them thanks for nothing Our fport fhall be, to take what they miftake ;
And what poore duty cannot doe, noble refpe
Takes it in might, not merit. 99
92. orecharged ] o'ercharg’d Rowe et •eq.
97. /port'] sports Steev.’85.
98. poore duty"] poor ( willing ) duty Theob. Han. Warb. Cap. Dyce ii, iii, Coll, iii (subs.), poor faltering duty Ktly. poor duty meaning Spedding (ap. Cam.).
cannot doe~\ cannot aptly do Bailey,
Schmidt, cannot nobly do Wagner, can but poorly do Tiessen.
98, 99. noble. ..merit'] One line, Theob. et seq. (except Sta. Cam. White ii). re¬ spect Takes it in noble might , not noble merit. Bulloch.
99. might\ mind Bailey, Spedding (ap. Cam.).
97. Our sport, &c.] Edinburgh Maga. (Nov. 1786): That is, We will accept with pleasure even their blundering attempts. [Quoted by Steevens.]
98, 99. And what, &c.] Johnson : The sense of this passage as it now stands. If it has any sense, is this : What the inability of duty cannot perform, regardful gen¬ erosity receives as an act of ability, though not of merit. The contrary is rather true : What dutifulness tries to perform without ability, regardful generosity receives as having the merit, though not the power, of complete performance. We should there¬ fore read ‘ takes not in might, but merit.’ — Steevens : ‘ In might' is, perhaps, an elliptical expression for 7 vhat might have been. — Heath (p. 58) : Whatever failure there may be in the performance attempted by poor willing duty, the regard of a noble mind accepts it in proportion to the ability, not to the real merit. — Kenrick (p. 21) : That is, in consequence of ‘ poor duty’s ’ inability, taking the will for the deed, viz. accepting the best in its might to do for the best that might be done ; rating the merit of the deed itself as nothing, agreeable to the first line of Theseus’s speech,
• The kinder we to give them thanks for nothing.' — Coleridge (p. 103), referring to Theobald’s insertion, for the sake of rhythm, of willing before * * duty,’ says, ‘ to my ears it would read far more Shakespearian thus : ‘ what poor duty cannot do, yet would. Noble,’ &c. — Abbott, § 510, evidently unwitting that he had been anticipated by both Johnson and Coleridge, says : ‘ I feel confident that but would must be sup¬ plied, and we must read : “ what poor duty cannot do, but would. Noble respect takes not in might but merit.” ’ — Walker ( Crit. iii, 51) : Something evidently has dropped out. [Halliwell quotes ‘ another editor’ as proposing to read: ‘what poor duty would , but cannot do.’ This is practically the same as Coleridge’s emendation, but who this ‘ other editor ’ is I do not know, and he is apparently unknown to the Cam. Ed. In the textual notes of that edition this emendation is given as ‘ quoted by Hal¬ liwell.’ — F. A. Marshall adopted it. — Ed.] R. G. White (ed. i) : The only objec¬ tion to Theobald’s willing before * duty ’ is that simple, eager, struggling, or one of many other disyllabic words might be inserted with equal propriety. — W. A. Wright : There is no need for change ; the sense being, noble respect or consideration accepts the effort to please without regard to the merit of the performance. Compare Love’s
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
21 1
Where I haue come, great Clearkes haue purpofed To greete me with premeditated welcomes ;
Where I haue feene them fhiuer and looke pale ,
Make periods in the midft of fentences,
Throttle their pra
And in conclufion, dumbly haue broke off,
Not paying me a welcome. Truft me fweete,
Out of this filence yet, I pickt a welcome :
And in the modefty of fearefull duty ,
I read as much, as from the ratling tongue Of faucy and audacious eloquence.
Loue therefore, and tongue-tide fimplicity,
In leaft, fpeake mo ft, to my capacity.
Egeus. So pleafe your Grace, the Prologue is addreft.
ioo
105
no
1 13
100. Clear kes~\ Clerkes QI.
102. Where] When Han. Dyce ii, iii. 105. haue ] th ’ ave White i conj.
107. filence yet,] QaFf. filence, yet, Q„ Cap.
1 12. [Enter Philomon. Pope. Re¬ enter Philostrate. Cap. et seq. (subs.).
1 13. Egeus.] Philoft. Qq. Phil. Pope. your] you Pope i.
Lab. L. V, ii, 517 : difficulty here has arisen, I think, in taking ‘ might ’ in the sense of power, ability, rather than in the sense of will ; Kenrick states the meaning concisely when he says it is about the same as taking ‘ the will for the deed.’ _ Ed.]
ioo. Clearkes] Blakeway : An allusion, I think, to what happened at Warwick, where the recorder, being to address the Queen, was so confounded by the dignity of her presence as to be unable to proceed with his speech. I think it was in Nichols’s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth that I read this circumstance, and I have also read that her Majesty was very well pleased when such a thing happened. It was, there¬ fore, a very delicate way of flattering her to introduce it as Shakespeare has done ^ere- Walker ( Crit . iii, 51) calls attention to a parallel passage in Browne’s Brit- tania s Pastorals, B. ii, Song i, but as Brittania' s Pastorals were not published until 1613, they are not of the highest moment in illustrating this present play. It is more to the point to cite, as Malone cites, ‘ Deep clerks she dumbs.’— Pericles, V, Pro¬ logue 5.
io5- haue] R. G. White (ed. i) : As ‘ have ’ has no nominative except ‘ I,’ three lines above, it may be a misprint for th.' ave ; but it is far more probable that they is understood; for such license was common in Shakespeare’s day, or rather, it was hardly license then.
112. It is noteworthy, as tending to show the futility of almost all collation beyond that oi specified copies, even in the case of modem editions, that the Cam. Ed. here records ‘Enter Philostrate. Pope (ed. 2). Enter Philomon. Pope (ed. 1).’ In my copies of the first and second editions of Pope, it is ‘Enter Philomon’ in both instances. — Ed.
1 1 3. addrest] Steevens: That is, ready.
212
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. L
Duke. Let him approach. Flor. Trum.
Enter the Prologue. Quince. 1 1 5
Pro. If we offend, it is with our good will.
114. Flor. Tmm.] Om. Qq. 115. Enter...] Enter Quince for the
Pyramus and Thisbe. An Inter- prologue. Rowe, lude. Cap. Quince] Om. Qq.
Scene II. Pope + .
1 14, 220, 224, &c. Duke] See Fleay, line 41 7, below.
1 14. Flor. Trum.] Steevens: It appears from Dekker’s Guh Hornbook , 1609 [chap, vi, p. 250, ed. Grosart], that the prologue was anciently ushered in by trum¬ pets. ‘ Present not your selfe on the Stage (especially at a new play) vntill the quak¬ ing prologue hath (by rubbing) got culor into his cheekes, and is ready to giue the trumpets their Cue, that hees vpon point to enter.’
115. Enter the Prologue] Malone [Hist, of Eng. Stage, Var. 1821, vol. iii, 1 1 5) : The person who spoke the prologue, who entered immediately after the third sounding, usually wore a long black velvet cloak, which, I suppose, was best suited to a supplicatory address. Of this custom, whatever may have been its origin, some traces remained until very lately ; a black coat having been, if I mistake not, within these few years, the constant stage-habiliment of our modern prologue-speakers. The complete dress of the ancient prologue-speaker is still retained in the play exhibited in Hamlet, before the king and court of Denmark. — Collier [Dram. Hist, iii, 245, ed. ii) : In the earlier period of our drama the prologue-speaker was either the author in person or his representative. . . . From the Prologue to Beaumont & Fletcher’s Woman Hater, 1607, we learn that it was, even at that date, customary for the person who delivered that portion of the performance to be furnished with a garland of bay, as well as with a black velvet cloak. . . . The bay was the emblem of authorship, and the use of this arose out of the custom for the author, or a person representing him, to speak the prologue. The almost constant practice for the prologue-speaker to be dressed in a black cloak or in black, perhaps, had the same origin. [In the light of this statement by Collier, the appearance here in the Folio of * Quince ’ is noteworthy as an indication that the Duke was to accept Quince as the author of the play. — Ed.] KniGht [Introd. p. 331) : One thing is perfectly clear to us — that the original of these editions [the two Quartos], whichever it might be, was printed from a genuine copy and carefully superintended through the press. The text appears to us as per¬ fect as it is possible to be, considering the state of typography in that day. There is one remarkable evidence of this. The prologue to the interlude of the Clowns is purposely made inaccurate in its punctuation throughout. ... It was impossible to have effected the object better than by the punctuation of Roberts’s edition [Q ] ; and this is precisely one of those matters of nicety in which a printer would have failed, unless he had followed an extremely clear copy or his proofs had been corrected by an author or an editor.
116-125. Capell: In this prologue a gentle rub upon players (country ones, we’ll suppose) seems to have been intended; whose deep knowledge of what is rehears’d by them is most curiously mark’d in the pointing of this prologue ; upon which must have been taken some pains by the poet himself when it pass’d the press; for its punctuation, which is that of his First Quarto, can be mended by nobody. In read-
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
That you fhould thinke, we come not to offend,
But with good will. To fhew our fimple skill,
That is the true beginning of our end.
Confider then, we come but in defpight.
We do not come, as minding to content you,
Our true intent is. All for your delight,
We are not heere. That you fhould here repent you,
The Adlors are at hand ; and by their fhow,
You fhall know all, that you are like to know.
The/. This fellow doth not ftand vpon points.
Lyf. He hath rid his Prologue, like a rough Colt : he knowes not the flop. A good morall my Lord. It is not enough to fpeake, but to fpeake true.
Hip. Indeed hee hath plaid on his Prologue, like a 130 childe on a Recorder, a found, but not in gouernment.
213 1 17
120
122. is. All] is all Pope.
123. heere. Thaf\ here that Pope.
125. [Exit. Dyce ii.
126. points ] his points Rowe i, Coll, ii (MS), this points Rowe ii.
128. A good] Dem. A good Cam. conj.
130. hid] this Qq, Cap. Steev. MaL’90, Coll. Ktly.
131. a Recorder ] the Recorder Ff, Rowe + .
ing it, we apprehend we see something, and so there is; for it is just possible to point it into meaning (not sense), and that’s all; an experiment we shall leave to the reader. — Knight has kindly performed for the reader this task which Capell says ‘nobody’ can do: ‘Had the fellow stood “upon points,” it would have run thus: “ If we offend, it is with our good will That you should think we come not to offend ; But with good will to show our simple skill. That is the true beginning of our end. Consider then. We come : but in despite We do not come. As, minding to content you, Our true intent is all for your delight. We are not here that you should here repent you. The actors are at hand ; and, by their show, You shall know all that you are like to know.” We fear that we have taken longer to puzzle out this enigma than the poet did to produce it.’ — Staunton calls attention to a similar distortion by mis-punctuation in Roister Doister’s letter to Dame Custance, beginning ‘ Sweete mis- tresse, where as I love you nothing at all, Regarding your substance and richesse chiefe of all,’ & c. — Ralph Roister Doister, III, ii.
128. the stop] W. A. Wright: A term in horsemanship, used here in a punning sense. Compare A Lover's Complaint , 109: ‘What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes !’
131. Recorder] Chappell {Pop. Music , &c., 246) : Old English musical instru¬ ments were made of three or four different sizes, so that a player might take any of the four parts that were required to fill up the harmony. . . . Shakespeare speaks in Hamlet [III, ii, 329 of this ed., which see, if needful. — Ed.] of the recorder as a little pipe, and in [the present passage says] ‘ like a child on a recorder,’ but in an engraving of the instrument it reaches from the lip to the knee of the performer. . . . Salter describes the recorder , from which the instrument derives its name, as situate
214
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act V, sc. i.
The/. His fpeech was like a tangled chaine: nothing 132 impaired, but all difordered. Who is next ?
Tawyer with a Trumpet before them.
Enter Pyramus and Thisby, Wall, Moone-Jhine , and Lyon. 135 Prol. Gentles, perchance you wonder at this fhow,
132, 133- His... difordered] As verse. First line, ending chaine (reading im¬ pair'd) Coll. White i, Ktly (Ktly read¬ ing like unto).
132. chaine ] skein Anon. ap. Cam.
133. impaired... difordered] impair’d . . . disorder 3 d Rowe + .
next] the next Ff, Rowe+.
134. Tawyer...] Om. Qq, Pope et seq.
135. Enter] Enter the Presenter Coll.
ii, iii (MS), Dyce ii. Enter, with a Trumpet and the Presenter before them, White.
133. Wall, Moone-fhine] and Wall, and Moonelhine, Qr
Lyon.] Lion, as in dumb shew.
Theob.
136. Prol.] Presenter. White, Coll, ii, iii (MS), Dyce ii, iii.
in the upper part of it, i. e. between the hole below the mouth and the highest hole for the finger. He says : ‘ Of the kinds of music, vocal has always had the prefer¬ ence in esteem, and in consequence the recorder, as approaching nearest to the sweet delightfulness of the voice , ought to have the first place in opinion, as we see by the universal use of it confirmed.’ — Singer (ed. ii) : To record anciently signified to modulate. ... In modern cant recorders of corporations are called flutes , an ancient jest, the meaning of which is perhaps unknown to those who use it.
131. gouernment] M. Mason: Hamlet says, ‘•Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb’ — [III, ii, 372].
134. Tawyer, &c.] Collier (ed. ii) : In the MS ‘Tawyer’ and his trumpet are erased, and ‘ Enter Presenter ’ is made to precede the other characters. Such, no doubt, was the stage-arrangement when this play was played in the time of. the old annotator, and we may presume that it was so in the time of Shakespeare. In the early state of our drama a Presenter, as he was called, sometimes introduced the cha¬ racters of a play, and as Shakespeare was imitating this species of entertainment, we need entertain little doubt that ‘ Tawyer with a trumpet,’ of F,, was, in fact, the Pre¬ senter, a part then filled by a person of the name of Tawyer. In the MS also the Presenter is made to speak the argument of the play. This was to be made intelli¬ gible with a due observation of points, and could not properly be given to the same performer who had delivered the prologue, purposely made so blunderingly ridiculous. In the Qq and Ff, both the prologue and the argument, containing the history of the piece, are absurdly assigned to one man. Perhaps such was the case when the num¬ ber of the company could not afford separate actors. — R. G. White (ed. i) and Dyce (ed. ii) adopted this plausible ‘Presenter’ of Collier’s MS. The former says that ‘ the error in the prefix [‘ Prol.' in line 136] arose from the similarity of Pref. and Prol., which in the old MS could hardly be distinguished from each other.’ — W. A. Wright: ‘Tawyer’ looks like a misprint for Players, unless it is the name of the actor who played the part of Prologue. [All doubt, however, is set at rest, and proof afforded not only that the Folio was printed from a stage-copy, but that ‘ Tawyer ’ is neither a misprint nor a substitution for ‘ Presenter,’ through the discovery by IIalli- WELL ( Outlines, p. 500) that Tawyer ‘ was a subordinate in the pay of Hemmings,
ACT v, sc. i.J A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
But wonder on, till truth make all things plaine.
This man is Piramus, if you would know ;
This beauteous Lady, Thisby is certaine.
This man, with lyme and rough-cart, doth prefent Wall, that vile wall, which did thefe louers funder :
And through walls chink (poor foules) they are content To whifper. At the which, let no man wonder.
This man, with Lanthorne, dog, and bufh of thorne,
139. beauteous] beautious Qq. 143. whifper. At] whisper, at Theob.
141. that vile] the vile Ff, Rowe+. whisper ; at Cap.
144. Lanthorne] lanterne Q .
his burial at St Saviour’s in June, 1625, being thus noticed in the sexton’s MS note¬ book : 44 William Tawier, Mr. Heminges man, gr. and cl., xvj. d.” ’]
139. Thisby] Hanmer uniformly retains this spelling where the clowns are the
speakers ; elsewhere, in stage-directions, &c. his spelling is the correct, Thisbe. The inference is that he intends Thisby to be phonetic, and herein I quite agree with him. In the mouths of the clowns * * * 4 Thisbe ’ was pronounced, I doubt not, Thisbei, and
4 Pyramus,’ Peiramus. See next note and line 170, post. — Ed.
139. certaine] Steevens : A burlesque was here intended in the frequent recur¬ rence of certain as a bungling rhyme in poetry more ancient than the age of Shake¬ speare. Thus in a short poem entitled A lytell Treatise called the Dispulacyon or the Complaynte of the Herte through perced with the Lokynge of the Eye. Imprynted at Lodon in Flete-strete at the Sygne of the Sonne by Wynkyn de Worde : ‘And houndes syxescore and mo certayne — To whome my thought gan to strayne certayne — Whan I had fyrst syght of her certayne — In all honoure she hath no pere certayne — To loke upon a fayre Lady certayne — As moch as is in me I am contente certayne — They made there both two theyr promysse certayne — All armed with margaretes certayne,’ &c. Again, in The Romaunce of the Sowdone of Baby lone, 4 He saide “ the xij peres bene alle dede, And ye spende your goode in vayne, And therfore doth nowe by my rede, Ye shalle see hem no more certeyn.” ’ — [11. 2823-6, ed. E. E. Text. Soc.]. Again, * The kinge turned him ageyn, And alle his Ooste him with, Towarde Mount- rible certeyne.’ — [lb. 11. 2847-9. In the search through this Romaunce to verify Steevens’s quotations I found three other examples, in lines 567, 570, and 1453, of this * most convenient word,’ as W. A. Wright says, ‘ for filling up a line and at the same time conveying no meaning.’— Walker ( Crit . i, 114) cites this 4 certain ’ among other words as of ‘ a peculiar mode of rhyming — rhyming to the eye as at first sight appears.’ In this particular passage ‘ it is,’ he says, 4 of a piece with the purposely incondite composition of this dramaticle.' Wherein, I think, he is right as far as he goes, but he does not go far enough. Not only was this 4 dramaticle ’ 4 incondite,’ but it is meant to be thoroughly burlesque, where words are mispronounced and accents misplaced. See lines 170, 171, below. — Ed.]
140. lyme] Hudson [reading loam] : In Wall’s speech, a little after, the old copies have 4 This loame, this rough-cast,’ &c. So also in III, i : ‘And let him have some plaster, or some Lome, or some rough-cast about him.’ — R. G. White reverses the misprint, ar.d thinks that 4 lome ’ is a misprint for 4 lime.’ The Cam. Ed. notes that loam is als a conjecture of Capell in MS.
215
137
140
I44
216
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i.
Prefenteth moone-fhine. For if you will know, 145
By moone-fhine did thefe Louers thinke no fcorne To meet at Ninus toombe, there, there to wooe :
This grizy beaft (which Lyon hight by name)
The trufty Thisby, comming firft by night,
Did fcarre away, or rather did affright : 150
And as fhe fled, her mantle the did fall ;
Which Lyon vile with bloody mouth did ftaine.
Anon comes Piramus , fweet youth and tall,
And Andes his Thisbies Mantle flaine ;
Whereat, with blade, with bloody blamefull blade, 155
He brauely broacht his boiling bloudy bread: ,
148. grizy] Ft. grizly QqFf.
Lyon hight by name] by name Lion hight Theob. Warb. Johns. Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. Knt, Hal. Sta. Dyce ii, iii. lion by name hight Coll. iii.
149. Line marked as omitted, Ktly, Malone conj.
150. f carre] /care F3F^.
15 1. did fall~\ let fall Pope + .
154. his] his gentle Ff, Rowe, his trusty Qq, Pope et seq.
147. wooe] R. G. White (ed. i) : It may be remarked here upon the rhyme of ‘woo 5 with ‘ know ’ that the former word seems to have had the pure vowel sound of 0. It was spelled wooe or woe , and as often in the latter way as the former.
148. hight by name] Theobald : As all the other parts of this speech are in alternate rhyme, excepting that it closes with a couplet ; and as no rhyme is left to ‘ name,’ we must conclude either a verse is slipt out, which cannot now be retrieved ; or by a transposition of the words, as I have placed them, the poet intended a triplet. [See Text. Notes.] — The Cowden-Clarkes (Sh. Key , p. 674) : We believe that the defective rhyming was intentional, to denote the slipshod style of the doggerel that forms the dialogue in the Interlude, which we have always cherished a convic¬ tion Shakespeare intended to be taken as written by Peter Quince himself; because in the. Folio we find ‘ Enter the Prologue Quince ,’ and because in IV, i, Bottom says, ‘ I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream,’ showing that Quince is an author as well as stage-manager and deliverer of the Prologue. [The present Editor wholly agrees with the foregoing. In any attempt to improve the language of the rude mechanicals the critic runs a perilous risk of becoming identified with them. —Ed.]
151. fall] For other examples where this verb and other intransitive verbs are used transitively, see Abbott, § 291.
I52> * ISS> J57- Lyon . . . blade . . . Mulberry] Abbott, § 82: Except to ridi¬ cule it, Shakespeare rarely indulges in this archaism of omitting a and the.
1 55- I56- Johnson: Upton rightly observes that Shakespeare in these lines ridi¬ cules the affectation of beginning many words with the same letter. He might have remarked the same of ‘ The raging rocks And shivering shocks.’ Gascoigne, con¬ temporary with our poet, remarks and blames the same affectation. — Capell descries in these lines ‘ a particular burlesque of passages,’ which he reprints in his School, from Sir Clyomon and Sir Chlamydes, and refers to Gorboduc as ‘ blemished with one
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DR E A ME
And This by, tarrying in Mulberry fliade,
His dagger drew, and died. For all the reft,
Let Lyon, Moone-Jhme, Wall, and Louers twaine,
At large difcourfe, while here they doe remaine.
Exit all but Wall.
The/. I wonder if the Lion be to fpeake.
Deme. No wonder, my Lord : one Lion may, when many Affes doe.
Exit Lyon, Thisbie, and Moonejhine. Wall. In this fame Interlude, it doth befall,
That I, one Snowt (by name) prefent a wall :
And fuch a wall, as I would haue you thinke,
That had in it a crannied hole or chinke :
Through which the Louers, Piramus and Thisbie
21 7 157
160
165
170
157. AndThhhy, ...Jhade] And [This- by. ..shade,) Steev.’8s, Mai. Steev.’93, Var. Knt, Hal. Sta. (subs.).
in'] in the F3F4) Rowe + .
161. Om. Qq. Exeunt... Rowe+. Exeunt Prologue, Thisbe, Lion and Moonshine. Cap. Steev. Mai. Exeunt Pres. Thisbe, Lion and Moonshine. Coll. Exeunt Prologue, Presenter, Pyramus,
Thisbe, Lion and Moonshine. White.
r63, 164. one... doe] Separate line, Coll. White i.
165. Om. Rowe et seq.
166. Interlude] enter lude Qt.
167. Snowt] Flute Qq, Pope.
170. Piramus] Pyr’mus Theob. Warb. Johns.
Thisbie] This-be Theob. i.
affectation, an almost continual alliteration, which Shakespeare calls “ affecting the letter,” and has exposed to ridicule in Love's L. L. IV, ii, 57 : “ I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility. The preyful princess pierced and prick’d a pretty pleasing pricket,” &c.’ Steevens gives several examples of alliteration from early lit¬ erature, Halliwell adds more, and Staunton still others, but as I can discern no pos¬ sible light in which they illustrate Shakespeare, they are not here repeated. — W. A. W RIGHT says of this alliteration that ‘ it was an exaggeration of the principle upon which Anglo-Saxon verse was constructed.’
167. Snowt] Here again is an instance of the greater accuracy for stage purposes of the Folio. The Qq have ‘ Flute,’ who was to act Thisby.
169. crannied] See the extract from Golding’s Ovid, in the Appendix. — Capell, who, as an actor, was, I fear, a case of arrested developement, tells us that ‘ the reciter who would give a comic expression to “crannied” and to “cranny” must make both vowels long.’
170. Thisbie] Guest (i, 91) thus scans: ‘Through which | these lov | ers: Pyr | amus and | Thisby | ,’ and adds, ‘Shakespeare elsewhere accents it This \ by; he doubtless put the old and obsolete accent into the mouth of his “mechanicals” for the purposes of ridicule.’ As I understand Guest, ‘ the old and obsolete accent’ is Thisbee, to rhyme with ‘ secretlee.’— Walker (Crit. i, 114) here, as in line 139, suggests that there is a rhyme for the eye, and likewise proposes the same scansion as that just given by Guest, but adds ‘ this is not likely.’ I cannot wholly agree with either Guest or Walker That ‘Thisbie’ must rhyme with ‘secretly’ is clear, and
'218
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v. sc. i.
Did whifper often, very fecretly. 17 1
This loame, this rough-caft, and this ftone doth (hew,
That I am that fame Wall ; the truth is fo.
And this the cranny is, right and finifter,
Through which the fearefull Louers are to whifper. 175
The/. Would you defire Lime and Haire to fpeake better ?
Deme. It is the vvittieft partition, that euer I heard difcourfe, my Lord.
The/. Pyramus drawes neere the Wall, filence. 180
Enter Pyramus.
Pir. 0 grim lookt night, 6 night with hue fo blacke, 182
172. loame ] lome Qq. loam F3F4> lime Cap. conj. Var.’2i, Coll. Dyce i, ii, White i.
174. [holding up one hand with a finger expanded. Rann.
179. dificourfe~\ difcourfed F3F4.
180. Wall, filence] Wall .-filence Q,F4, Rowe et seq.
181. Om. Qq.
that in the mouth of rude mechanicals there must be an uncouth or an absurd pro¬ nunciation seems to me equally clear. ‘ Secretly,’ like the majority of words ending in an unaccented final y, was probably pronounced secretlei (see Ellis, Early Eng. Pron. pp. 959, 977, 981) by everybody, whether mechanicals or not. The absurdity then comes in by making ‘ Thisbie ’ rhyme with it : Thisbei. See line 139, above. — Ed.
172. loame . . . shew] The Var. 1821 (cited by Cam. Ed. as ‘ Reed,’ which is not, I think, strictly accurate) here reads lime, and notes ‘so folio; quartos lome,' a mis-statement which, in a note, the Cam. Ed. corrects, but fails to detect what is, I believe, the source of Boswell’s or Malone’s error. Either the one or the other of these latter editors had been examining Capell’s Various Readings, where occurs the following : ‘ This lime, | shew, Fs. | ,’ which those who are schooled in the ‘ an- fractuosities ’ of the Capellian mind understand as meaning that ‘ This lime ’ is a con¬ jectural emendation, and that the Folios read ‘ shew ’ instead of the show of Capell’s own text. Boswell or Malone overlooked the conjectural emendation and supposed that ‘ Fs ’ referred to lime, and hence, I think, the tears. — Ed.
174. sinister] Elsewhere in Hen. V: II, iv, 85, this word is accented on the middle syllable, as given by Abbott, § 490, but here, as Abbott says, this accent is used comically. — W. A. Wright says that ‘ sinister’ is used by Snout for two reasons — first, because it is a long word, and then because it gives a sort of rhyme to ‘ whisper.’
178. partition] Farmer: I believe the passage should be read, This is the wit¬ tiest partition that ever I heard in discourse. Alluding to the many stupid partitions in the argumentative writings of the time. Shakespeare himself, as well as his con¬ temporaries, uses ‘ discourse ’ for reasoning ; and he here avails himself of the double sense, as he had done before in the word ‘ partition.’
182. lookt] For examples of passive participles used not passively, see Abbott, § 374! albeit it is hardly worth while to attempt an explanation of any grammatical anomaly in the speeches of these ‘ mechanicals.’ — Ed.
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
O night, which euer art, when day is not :
O night, 6 night, alacke, alacke, alacke,
I feare my Thisbies promife is forgot.
And thou 6 wall, thou fweet and louely wall,
That ftands betweene her fathers ground and mine , Thou wall, 6 wall, 6 fweet and louely wall,
Shew me thy chinke, to blinke through with mine eine. Thankes courteous wall. lone thield thee well for this. But what fee I ? No Thisbie doe I fee.
0 wicked wall, through whom I fee no bliffe ,
Curft be thy ftones for thus deceiuing mee.
Thef The wall me-thinkes being fenfible , fhould curfe againe.
Pir. No in truth fir, he fhould not. Deceiuing me ,
Is Thisbies cue ; fhe is to enter, and I am to fpy Her through the wall. You fhall fee it will fall.
219
183
185
19a
195
Enter Thisbie.
Pat as I told you ; yonder the comes.
Thif. O wall, full often haft thou heard my mones, For parting my faire Piramus, and me.
My cherry lips haue often kift thy ftones ;
Thy ftones with Lime and Haire knit vp in thee.
186. thou fweet and~\ Ff, Rowe, White i. O sweet and Pope + , Ktly. d fweete, 8 Qq, Cap. et cet.
187. flands] Jlandes Fs. Jlandfl Qr, Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. Coll. Dyce, White, Sta. Cam. Ktly (subs.).
189. [Wall holds up his fingers. Cap. 196-200. Prose, Pope et seq.
197. enter, 1 enter now, Qq, Cap. et seq.
198. fall.'] fall QqF,, Pope et seq.
199. Enter Thisbie.] After line 200 Qq, Pope et seq.
203. haue] hath F4, Rowe.
204. Haire] hayire Q .
vp in thee] now againe Qq.
182, 184, 186, &c. 6] I suppose that this circumflexed o is used merely to avoid confusion with the 0 which is an abbreviation of of. It is scarcely likely that it has any reference to pronunciation. — Ed.
188. S wall, 6 sweet] Halliwell: The repetition of the vocative case is of frequent occurrence in Elizabethan writers. Thus Gascoigne, in his translation of the Jocasta of Euripides, 1566, paraphrases this brief sentence of the original, ‘O mother, O wife most wretched,’ into : ‘ O wife, O mother, O both wofull names, O wofull mother, and O wofull wyfe ! O woulde to God, alas ! O woulde to God, Thou nere had bene my mother, nor my wyfe !’ Compare also the following : ‘ Oh ! Love, sweet Love, oh ! high and heavenly Love, The only line that leades to happy life.’ — Breton’s Pilgrimage to Paradise, 1592.
204. in thee] See Text. Notes. — White (ed. i) : A variation of this kind between
220
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
[act v, sc. i.
Pyra . I fee a voyce ; now will I to the chinke , 205
To fpy and I can heare my Thisbics face. Thisbie ?
Thif. My Loue thou art, my Loue I thinke.
Pir. Thinke what thou wilt, I am thy Louers grace,
And like Limander am I trufty ftill.
Thif. And like Helen till the Fates me kill. 2 10
Pir. Not Shafalus to Procrus , was fo true.
Thif. As Shafalus to Procrus , I to you.
Pir. 0 kiffe me through the hole of this vile wall.
Thif. I kiffe the wals hole, not your lips at all.
Pir. Wilt thou at Ninnies tombe meete me ftraight 215 way ?
Thif. Tide life, tide death, I come without delay.
Wall. Thus haue I Wall, my part difcharged fo ;
And being done, thus Wall away doth go. Exit Clow.
Du. Now is the morall downe betweene the two 220
Neighbors.
205. 206. fee. ..heare] heare. ..fee Ff,
Rowe.
206. and I] an I Pope et seq.
Thisbie] Separate line, Rowe ii
et seq.
207. Loue thou art , my Loue] QqFf,
Cam. White ii. Love thou art , my love,
Rowe, Pope. Love ! thou art, my love,
Theob. Warb. Johns. Love ! thou art my love, Han. et cet.
209. Limander] Limandea Pope.
« seq.
213. vile] vilde Qt.
217. Tide. ..tide] ’ Tide. ..'tide Cap. et seq.
[Exeunt Pyra. and Th. Dyce.
219. Exit Clow.] Om. Qq. Exeunt Wall, Pyra. and Th. Cap.
220, 225, &c. Du.] Duk. Qt. Thes. Rowe et seq.
220. morall downe] Moon vfed Qq, Pope i. moral down Rowe, White i. mure all down Theobald conj. Han. Coll, ii. wall downe Coll. MS, White ii. mural obstacle [pc partition) down Wag¬ ner conj. Mural down Pope ii et cet.
F, and the Qq is not worthy of notice, save for the evidence it affords that the copy of Q2, which Heminge and Condell furnished as copy to the printers of F, had been corrected either by Shakespeare or some one else in his theatre.
209, 210, 211. Limander . . . Helen . . . Shafalus to Procrus] Capell (116 a): This ‘Limander’ should be Paris, by the lady he is coupl’d with; and he is call’d by his other name, Alexander, corrupted into ‘Alisander’ (as in Love’s Lab. L. v> ii) 5^7) et seq.) and ‘ Lisander,’ which master Bottom may be allow’d to make ‘Limander’ of. — Johnson: Limander and Helen are spoken by the blundering
player for Leander and Hero. Shafalus and Procrus, for Cephalus and Procris. _
Malone : Procris and Cephalus, by Henry Chute, was entered on the Stationers’ Registers by John Wolff in 1593, and probably published in the same year. It was a poem, but not dramatic, as has been suggested. — Halliwell : Chute’s poem is illuded to in Nash’s Have with You to Saffron Walden, 1596. — Blackstone:
221
act v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
Dem. No remedie my Lord, when Wals are fo wil- full, to heare without warning.
223. heart} rear Han. Warb. Cap. sheer Han. conj. MS (ap. Cam.), leave Gould.
Limander stands evidently for Leander, but how came ‘ Helen’ to be coupled with him ? Might it not have originally been wrote Heren , which is as ridiculous a cor¬ ruption of Hero as the other is of her lover ?
220. morall] Theobald (Sh. Rest. p. 142) : I am apt to think the poet wrote
‘ now is the mure all down,’ and then Demetrius’s reply is apposite enough. _ R. G.
White (ed. i) : Mural for wall is an anomaly in English, and is too infelicitous to be regarded as one of Shakespeare’s daring feats of language. . . . ‘ Moon used ’ of the Qq could not be a misprint for ‘moral down.’ ... It should be remembered that the moon figures in the interlude, as the spectators knew; and as to the use that the two neighbours were to make of the moon, the remark of Demetrius indicates it plainly enough : No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear without warn¬ ing.' But Shakespeare evidently thought that it would be plainer if the wall were represented both as the restraint upon the passions of the lovers and as a pander to them, and so he changed ‘ moon used ’ to ‘ moral down.’ He did this, I believe, with the more surety of attaining his point, because ‘ moral ’ was then pronounced mo-ral, and ‘ mural,’ as I am inclined to think, moo-ral. [In his ed. ii, White adopts Col¬ lier’s wall without comment.]— Collier (ed. ii) : It would seem that in the time of the old MS neither ‘ moral ’ nor mure all were the words on the stage ; he inserts wa!1- " • A. Wright: Pope’s emendation, so far as I am aware, has no evidence
m its favour. Perhaps the Qq reading ‘ Now is the Moon vsed ’ is a corruption of a stage-direction, and the reading of the Ff may have arisen from an attempt to correct in manuscript the words in a copy of the Qto by turning ‘ Moon ’ into ‘ Wall,’ the result being a compound having the beginning of one word and the end of the other. If there were any evidence of the existence of such a word as mural used as a sub¬ stantive, it would be but pedantic and affected, and so unsuited to Theseus. Having regard, therefore, to the double occurrence of the word ‘ wall ’ in the previous speech] and its repetition by Demetrius, I cannot but think that [Collier’s wall is right], just as Bottom says ‘ the wall is down,’ line 344.— Henry Johnson (p. xvi) : The agree¬ ment of the Qq gives a strong presumption in favour of the correctness of a reading. Something besides can be said for the reasonableness of this passage. The Prologue had announced [‘ moone-shine,’ see lines 144-147]- The Enterlude then proceeded as far as this agreement of Pyramus and Thisbie to meet at the tomb, and Wall, who had served between the two neighbors, makes his explanation and leaves the stage. Thereupon the Duke says that now, in accordance with the statement of the Pro- logue, the Moon will be used between the two neighbors, probably in some such ingen¬ uous way as the Wall had been. [The objection to Collier’s wall is, 1 think, that it makes Theseus’s remark so very tame, not far above the level of a remark by Bottom. Perhaps it may receive a little force if we suppose that Wall suddenly drops to his side his extended arm. I am inclined to accept White’s explanation that in the old pronunciation lay a pun, now lost, and for a pun, as Johnson said, Shakespeare would lose the world, and be content to lose it. — Ed.]
223. to beare] For ‘to hear,’ equivalent to as to hear, see Abbott, § 281.
22 3- heare] Warburton : Shakespeare could never write this nonsense; we should read: ‘to rear without warning,’ i. e. it is no wonder that walls should bf
222
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i.
Dut. This is the fillieft ftuffe that ere I heard. 224
224, 227, &c. Dut.] Hip. Rowe et seq. 224. ere\ euer Qt, Cap. Steev. Mai.
Var. Dyce i, Sta. Cam. Ktly, White ii.
suddenly down, when they were as suddenly up ; rear'd without warning. — Heath : Perhaps the reader may be pleased to think the poet might possibly have written, ' to disappear without warning,’ and in that case the words ‘ without warning ’ must be understood to refer solely to the neighbours whose dwellings the wall in question parted. — Kenrick ( Rev. p. 22) : The interview between Pyramus and Thisbe is no sooner over than Wall, apparently without waiting for his cue, as nobody speaks to him and he speaks to no person in the drama, takes his departure. When, therefore, Demetrius replies to Theseus ‘ when walls are so wilful to hear without warning ’ he means ‘ are so wilfull as to take their cue before it is given to them.’ That the expres¬ sion, however, may bear some latent meaning, I do not deny ; possibly it may refer to a custom practised by the magistrates in many places abroad, of sticking up a notice or warning on the walls of ruinated or untenanted houses, for the owners either to repair or pull them quite down. — Farmer : Demetrius’s reply alludes to the prov¬ erb, ‘ Walls have ears.’ A wall between almost any two neighbours would soon be down, were it to exercise this faculty, without previous warning. [This is, perhaps, the correct interpretation. — Ed.]
224. This is, &c.] Maginn (p. 119): When Hippolyta speaks scornfully of the tragedy, Theseus answers that the best of this kind (scenic performances) are but shadows, and the worst no worse if imagination amend them. She answers that it must be your imagination then, not theirs. He retorts with a joke on the vanity of actors, and the conversation is immediately changed. The meaning of the Duke is that, however we may laugh at the silliness of Bottom and his companions in their ridiculous play, the author labours under no more than the common calamity of dramatists. They are all but dealers in shadowy representations of life ; and if the worst among them can set the mind of the spectator at work, he is equal to the best. The answer to Theseus is that none but the best, or, at all events, those who approach to excellence, can call with success upon imagination to invest their shadows with substance. Such playwrights as Quince the carpenter, — and they abound in every literature and every theatre, — draw our attention so much to the absurdity of the per¬ formance actually going on before us that we have no inclination to trouble ourselves with considering what substance in the background their shadows should have repre¬ sented. Shakespeare intended the remark as a compliment or as a consolation to less successful wooers of the comic or the tragic Muse, and touches briefly on the matter; but it was also intended as an excuse for the want of effect upon the stage of some of the finer touches of such dramatists as himself, and an appeal to all true judges of poetry to bring it before the tribunal of their own imagination ; making but a matter of secondary inquiry how it appears in a theatre as delivered by those who, whatever others may think of them, would, if taken at their own estimation, ! pass for excellent men.’ His own magnificent creation of fairy land in the Athenian wood must have been in his mind, and he asks an indulgent play of fancy not more for Oberon and Titania, the glittering rulers of the elements, than for the shrewd and knavish Robin Goodfellow, the lord of practical jokes, or the dull and conceited Bottom, ‘ the shal¬ lowest thickskin of the barren sort.’ — Dowden (p. 70) : Maginn has missed the more important significance of the passage. Its dramatic appropriateness is the essential
ACT V. sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
Du. The belt in this kind are but fhadowes, and the worft are no worfe, if imagination amend them.
But. It muft be your imagination then, & not theirs.
Duk. If wee imagine no worfe of them then they of themfelues, they may paffe for excellent men. Here com two noble beafts, in a man and a Lion.
223
225
230
229. com] comes Ff, Rowe i. come beasts in a man Warb. beasts in, a moon
Qq, Rowe 11 et seq. Han. Johns. Steev. Sing. Dyce, Ktly.
23a beafls, in a man] QqFf, Rowe i, beasts in, a man Rowe ii et cet.
W. A. Wright, beasts in a moon Theob.
point to observe. To Theseus, the great man of action, the worst and the best of these shadowy representations are all one. He graciously lends himself to be amused, and will not give unmannerly rebuff to the painstaking craftsmen who have so labor¬ iously done their best to please him. But Shakespeare’s mind by no means goes along with the utterance of Theseus in this instance any more than when he places in a single group the lover, the lunatic, and the poet. With one principle enounced by the Duke, however, Shakespeare evidently does agree, namely, that it is the busi¬ ness of the dramatist to set the spectator’s imagination to work, that the dramatist must rather appeal to the mind’s eye than to the eye of sense, and that the co-opera¬ tion of the spectator with the poet is necessary. For the method of Bottom and his company is precisely the reverse, as Gervinus has observed, of Shakespeare’s own method. They are determined to leave nothing to be supplied by the imagination. Wall must be plastered ; Moonshine must carry lanthom and bush. And when Hip- polyta, again becoming impatient of absurdity, exclaims, would he would change!’ Shakespeare further insists on his piece of dramatic criti¬ cism by urging, through the Duke's mouth, the absolute necessity of the man in the moon being within his lanthom. Shakespeare as much as says, ‘ If you do not approve my dramatic method of presenting fairy-land and the heroic world, here is a specimen of the rival method. You think my fairy-world might be amended. Well, amend it with your own imagination. I can do no more unless I adopt the artistic ideas of these Athenian handicraftsmen.’
230. in a man] Theobald : Immediately after Theseus’s saying this, we have ‘ Enter Lyon and Moonshine.’ It seems very probable, therefore, that our author wrote ‘ in a moon and a lion.’ The one having a crescent and a lanthorn before him, and representing the man in the moon ; and the other in a lion’s hide. — Malone : Theseus only means to say that the * man ’ who represented the moon, and came in at the same time, with a lanthom in his hand and a bush of thorns at his back, was as much a beast as he who performed the part of the lion.— Farmer : Possibly was the marginal interpretation of moon-calf, and, being more intelligible, got into the text.— W. A. Wright adheres to the punctuation of the QqFf, although he deserted it in the second edition of the Cam. Ed. His note is that the change of the comma from before ‘ in ’ to after it is unnecessary. ‘ “ In ” here signifies « in the cha¬ racter of,” see IV, ii, 25 : “ sixpence a day in Piramus, or nothing.” Theobald, with peat plausibility, reads moon.' [Walker {Crit. i, 315) also conjectured moon, independently. Possibly the choice between ‘ man ’ and moon will lie in the degree of absurdity which strikes us in calling either the one or the other a beast. ■ — Harness has the shrewd remark, which almost settles the Question in favour of
724
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i
Enter Lyon and Moone-Jhine . "23 1
Lyon. You Ladies, you (whofe gentle harts do feare The fmalleft monftrous moufe that creepes on floore)
May now perchance, both quake and tremble heere,
When Lion rough in wildeft rage doth roare. 235
Then know that I, one Snug the Ioyner am A Lion fell, nor elfe no Lions dam : 237
236. one Snug] as Snug Qq, Steev.’85. 236, 237. one. ..dam] am Snug the joiner in A Lion-fell , or else a Lion' s skin. Daniel.
237. A Lion fell ] No lion fell Rowe + , Cap. Dyce ii, Coll. iii. A lion-fell Sing, ii, White, Cam. Ktly. A lion's fell Field, Dyce i, Coll. ii.
elfe'] eke Cap. conj.
effect that Theseus saw merely ‘ a man with a lantern, and could not possibly conceive that he was intended to “ disfigure moonshine.” ’ — Ed.]
237. Lion fell, nor else] Malone: That is, that I am Snug, the joiner, and neither a lion nor a lion’s dam. Dr Johnson has justly observed in a note on All's Well that nor , in the phraseology of our author’s time, often related to two members of a sentence, though only expressed in the latter. So, in the play just mentioned,
(Sh. Soc. Papers, ii, 60) : I would observe upon [this note of Malone] that where the verb follows the negative nominatives, as in the passage quoted by Malone, this is the phraseology not only of Shakespeare’s, but of the present time, as in Gray : ‘ Helm nor hauberk’s twisted mail, Nor ev’n thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail,’ &c., but I defy any commentator to produce an instance of such a construction where the verb precedes the nominatives. In that case, the verb has already affirmed before the word of nega¬ tion comes, and the negative cannot relate back, to make the verb deny. In other words, it is impossible that ‘ I am a lion, nor a lion’s dam ’ can mean ‘ I am not a lion, nor a lion’s dam,’ or ‘ I am neither a lion nor a lion’s dam.’ I boldly say there is no instance in the English language at any time of such a phraseology. And what does Malone do with the word ‘ else ’ ? He gives it no meaning. And why say a fell or cruel lion ? Or introduce a lion’s dam or mother ? I will now show how one little letter shall light up the whole passage with natural meaning and give a sense to every word: ‘A lion’j fell, nor else no lion’s dam.’ ‘ 1, Snug, the joiner, am only a lion’s skin ; nor any otherwise than as a lion’s skin may be said to be pregnant with a lion, am I the mother of one.’ Fell is a word scarcely yet obsolete for skin, and now the words ‘ else ’ and ‘ dam ’ have a meaning ; and all this sense is obtained by only sup¬ posing that the letter f has dropped from the text. It might, indeed, be done without any other alteration than that of a hyphen, lion-fell; but, as we find, in other parts of Shakespeare the words calf's skin and lion's skin with the genitive, I have thought it better to insert the s. — Collier (ed. ii) : This judicious change of Field is doubtless correct, as it is the reading of the MS. — Lettsom ( Blackwood , Aug. 1853) : Field’s excellent emendation ought to go into the text, if it has not done so already. — R. G. White (ed. i) : Field's change is the minutest ever proposed for the solution of a real difficulty. — Halliwell [substantially following Ritson, p. 48] : Snug means to say, ‘ I am neither a lion fell, nor in any respect a lion’s dam,’ that is, I am neither a lion nor a lioness. The conjunction nor frequently admitted of neither being pre-
ACT v, sc. i.] A MID SOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
For if I ftiould as Lion come in ftrife Into this place, ’twere pittie of my life.
Du. A verie gentle beaft, and of a good confcience. Dem. The verie belt at a beaft, my Lord, y ere I faw. Lif. This Lion is a verie Fox for his valor.
Du. True, and a Goofe for his difcretion.
Dem. Not fo my Lord : for his valor cannot carrie his difcretion, and the Fox carries the Goofe.
Du. His difcretion I am fure cannot carrie his valor : for the Goofe carries not the Fox. It is well ; leaue it to his difcretion, and let vs hearken to the Moone.
Moon. This Lanthorne doth the homed Moone pre- fent.
225
238
240
245
250
239- of my] on my Qq, Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. Coll. Sta. Dyce ii, Ktly, Cam. White ii. o' Cap. conj. MS (ap. Cam.).
248. hearken ] lijlen Q„ Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. Coll. Dyce, Cam. Ktly.
248. Moone ] man Anon. ap. Cam. 249> &c- Lanthorne'] lantern Steev. ’93, Mai. Reed, Knt, Sing. Dyce, Coll. Sta.
viously understood, and two negatives often merely strengthened the negation. Bar¬
ron Field ingeniously avoided the grammatical difficulty. — Staunton : Field’s emen¬ dation is extremely ingenious; but in the rehearsal of this scene Snug is expressly enjoined to show his face through the lion’s neck, tell his name and trade, and say: ‘ If you think l am come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life; No, I am no such tning.’ I am disposed, therefore, if nor is not to be taken as relating to both members of the sentence, to read [with Rowe] i. e. neither lion nor lioness. — Walker ( Crit. i, 262) : Field’s emendation is perhaps right, if A can be tolerated. But surely Shakespeare wrote and pointed [as in Rowe]. [All appeals to grammar in the inter¬ pretation of the speeches of these clowns seem to me superfluous ; its laws are here suspended. The change of ‘A’ into No is, therefore, needless. Since ‘A lion fell ’ (with or without a hyphen) may mean A lion's skin, no change whatever is required. Barron Field’s high deserving lies In his discerning that ‘ fell ’ is a noun and not an adjective ; and that by this interpretation point is given to ‘ lion’s dam.’ For Snug to say that he is • neither a lion nor a lioness ’ is, to me, pointless, but all is changed if we suppose him to say that he is a lion’s skin, and only because, as such, he encloses a lion, can he be a lioness. — Ed.]
239. of my] Collier (ed. ii) .- ‘ On your life ’ is the reading of the MS. We follow the older reading, but it is questionable. [The very fact that it is * question¬ able ’ makes it, in Snug’s mouth, the more probable. — Ed.]
241. best at a beast] White (ed. i) : From the nature of this speech it is plain that * best ’ and ‘ beast ’ were pronounced alike. [This is stated, I think, a little too strongly in a matter which is difficult of proof. Compositors, we know, were apt to spell phonetically, accordingly we find them spelling least , lest, which is a pretty good guide to the pronunciation of that word. But I can recall no instance where beast is spelled best. There may be such. Age and familiarity with the old compositors make one extremely cautious. — Ed.]
16
226
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. L
De. He fhould haue worne the homes on his head. 251
Du. Hee is no crefcent, and his homes are inuifible, within the circumference.
Moon. This lanthorne doth the horned Moone pre¬ sent : My felfe, the man i’th Moone doth feeme to be. 255
Du. This is the greateft error of all the reft ; the man fhould be put into the Lanthorne. How is it els the man i’th Moone?
Dem. He dares not come there for the candle.
For you fee, it is already in fnuffe. 260
Dut. I am vvearie of this Moone ; would he would change. 262
251. on his] upon his Han.
252. no] not Coll, ii, iii (MS), Dyce ii, iii.
254> 2S5- Two lines of verse, QqF3F4, Rowe et seq.
255, 268. man i'th Moone] man-i'- -the-moon Dyce ii, iii.
255. doth] Ff, Rowe + , White i, Sta. doe Qq, Cap. et cet.
259, 260. Prose, Qj, Pope et seq.
261. vvearie] aweary Qt, Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. Coll. Dyce, White, Sta. Cam. Ktly.
would] ’ would Theob.
249. Lanthorne] Steevens needlessly modernised this word into lantern , and has been followed by many of the best editors, thereby obliterating the jingle, if there be one, in ‘ This ~L&xAhorne doth the horned moone present.’ The Cambridge Edi¬ tion, both first and second, nicely discriminates between the pronunciation of Snug and of Theseus by giving lanthorn to the former and lantern to the latter. This dis¬ tinction W. A. Wright overlooked or disregarded in his own Clarendon Edition. —Ed.
252. no crescent] Collier [reading not] : The t most likely dropped out in the press.
255. the man i’th Moone] As an illustration of the text the voluminous mass of folk-lore which has gathered around this ‘ man ’ seems no more appropriate here than in Caliban’s allusion to him in The Tempest. The zealous student is referred to the two or three folio pages in Halliwell ad loc. or to Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie there cited. From tender years every English-speaking child knows that there is a man in the moon, and is familiar with his premature descent and with his mysterious desire to visit the town of Norwich. Which is all we need to know here. — Ed.
256. greatest error of all the rest] Abbott, § 409, cites this, among others, as an instance of ‘ the confusion of two constructions (a thoroughly Greek idiom, though independent in English),’ and illustrates it by Milton’s famous line : ‘ The fairest of her daughters, Eve,’ where the two confused constructions are ‘ Eve fairer than all her daughters ’ and ‘ Eve fairest of all women.’ — W. A. Wright cites Bacon’s Essay Of Envy (ed. Wright, p. 35) : ‘ Of all other Affections, it is the most importune and continuall.’
260. snuffe] Johnson : ‘ Snuff’ signifies both the cinder of a candle and hasty aager. — Steevens : Thus also, in Love's Lab. L. V, ii, 22, ‘ You’ll mar the light by taking it in snuff.’
ACT V, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
Du. It appeares by his fmal light of difcretion, that he is in the wane : but yet in courtefie, in all reafon, vve muft ftay the time.
Lyf. Proceed Moone.
Moon. All that I haue to fay, is to tell you, that the Lanthorne is the Moone; I, the man in the Moone; this thome bufh, my thorne bufh; and this dog, my dog.
Dem. Why all thefe fhould be in the Lanthorne : for they are in the Moone. But filence, heere comes Thisby.
Enter Thisby.
Thif. This is old Ninnies tombe .• where is my loue ?
Lyon. Oh.
The Lion roares , Thisby runs off.
Dem. Well roar’d Lion.
Du. Well run Thisby.
Dut. Well fhone Moone.
Truly the Moone fhines with a good grace.
Du. Wei mouz’d Lion.
Dem. And then came Piramus.
Lyf. And fo the Lion vanifht.
22 7 263
265
270
275
280
282
263. his] this Pope, Han. Mai.
268. in the ] ith Qt. i’the Cap. Hal. Cam.
270. Why all~\ Why ? all Qz.
270, 271. for they ] for all thefe Qt, Coll. Sing. Dyce, Cam. Ktly.
273. old. ..tombe ] ould...tumbe Qz. where w] when’s Q2.
274. Oh.] Oh. Ho. Ho. — Han.
275. Om. Qq.
278. fhone] fhoone Q2.
278, 279. As prose, Qq, Cap. et seq.
279. with a] with Rowe i.
[Lion shakes Thisbe’s mantle? and Exit. Cap.
280. mouz’d] QqFf, Theob. Warb. Johns. mouth’d Rowe, Pope, Han. mous’d Cap. et cet.
281, 282. then came...fo the Lion vanifht] so comes... so the moon vanishes Steev.’85. so comes ...then the moon van¬ ishes Farmer, Steev.’93, Var. Sing. i.
263. smal light of discretion] Staunton : So in Love's Lab. L. V, ii, 734, ‘ I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion.’ The expression was evidently familiar, though we have never met with any explanation of it.
280. mouz’d] Steevens : Theseus means that the lion has well tumbled and bloodied the veil of Thisby. — Malone : That is, to mammock, to tear in pieces, as a cat tears a mouse.
281, 282. And . . . vanisht] Farmer thus emended these lines: ‘And so comes Pyramus. And then the moon vanishes.' Of this emendation Steevens remarks that ‘ it were needless to say anything in its defence. The reader, indeed, may ask why this glaring corruption was suffered to remain so long in the text.’ — Harness : I have restored the text of Fx. Farmer’s alteration on the last line, ‘ and so the moon vanishes,’ cannot be right, for the very first lines of Pyramus on entering eulogise its
228
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. 1.
Enter Piramus. 283
Pyr. Sweet Moone, I thank thee for thy funny beames ,
I thanke thee Moone, for fhining now fo bright : 285
For by thy gracious, golden, glittering beames,
286. beames ] Qq. gleams Knt conj. Sta. i, White, Sing, ii, Cam. Dyce ii, iii, Mar¬ shall. Jlreames Ff, Rowe et cet.
beams, and his last words are addressed to it as present. [To the same effect, sub¬ stantially, Collier, ed. i.] — Knight [who also returns to the QqFf ] : Farmer makes this correction, because, in the mock-play, the moon vanishes after Pyramus dies. Bu' Demetrius and Lysander do not profess to have any knowledge of the play ; it is Philostrate who has ‘ heard it over.’ They are thinking of the classical story, and, like Hamlet, they are each ‘ a good chorus.’ — Dyce (ed. i) [in answer to Knight] : Now, if Demetrius and Lysander had no knowledge of the play , they must have been sound asleep during the Dumb-show and the laboured exposition of the Prologue- speaker. And if they were * thinking of the classical story,’ they must have read it in a version different from that of Ovid ; for, according to his account, the ‘ lea saeva ’ had returned ‘ in silvas ’ before the arrival of Pyramus, who, indeed, appears to have been somewhat slow in keeping the assignation, ‘ Serius egressus,’ &c. (Compare, too, the long and tedious History of Pyramus and Thisbie in the Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 1578, p. 171 of the reprint.) [To the foregoing Dyce adds in his ed. ii] : Mr W. N. Lettsom observes, * Should not we transpose these lines, and read, “And so the lion's vanished. Now then comes Pyramus” ?’ — Mr Swynfen Jer¬ vis would transpose the lines without altering the words. [Herein Jervis was antici¬ pated by Spedding, whose emendation is recorded in the first Cam. Ed., 1863, and is adopted by Hudson, by W. A. Wright, and by Wagner.]
286. glittering beames] Knight : If the editor of F2 had put gleams [instead
of streames ] the ridicule of excessive alliteration would have been carried further. _
Collier : The editor of Fa substituted streams, perhaps, upon some then existing authority which we have no right to dispute.— Dyce {Rem. p. 49) : The editor of gave here what Shakespeare undoubtedly wrote. Neither Knight nor Collier appears to recollect that from the earliest times stream has been frequently used in the sense of ray [Here follow eight examples of the use of stream in this sense from Chaucer to Beaumont and Fletcher, to which might be added another given by Capell, from Sackville’s Induction in the Mirror of Magistrates, all valuable, but superfluous here. — Staunton (ed. i) adopted Knight’s conj., but in his Library Edition returns to ‘ streams,’ which he says he prefers.]— Walker ( Crit. iii, 52) : I think the alliteration requires gleams. — Lettsom (footnote to Walker) : I must confess I should prefer gleams, but for one reason. If I may trust Mrs Cowden-Clarke, this common and convenient word never once appears in so voluminous a writer as Shakespeare. Even its kins¬ man, gloom, is also an exile from his pages. Glooming or gloomy has slipped in at the close of Rom. and Jul. ; otherwise it is confined to 1 Hen. VI and Tit. And. It really looks as if Shakespeare had an objection to these words ; still, for that very reason, he may have put gleams into the mouth of Bottom. [Mrs Furness’s Concord¬ ance gives an instance of gleam'd from the R. of L. 1378 : ‘And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights ’ ; and of gloomy, from the same, line 803 : ‘ Keep still posses¬ sion of thy gloomy place.’ The unanimity of the Quartos and First Folio cannot be 'ightly whistled down the wind. The fact that ‘ beams ’ is wrong and streams or
229
287
ACT v, sc. i.] A MID SOMMER NIGHTS D REA ME
I truft to tafte of trueft Thisbies fight.
But ftay : 0 fpight ! but marke, poore Knight, What dreadful dole is heere ?
Eyes do you fee ! How can it be 5 O dainty Ducke : O Deere !
Thy mantle good ; what ftaind with blood ! Approch you Furies fell :
O Fates / come, come : Cut thred and thrum, Quaile, crufh, conclude, and quell.
287. tafte] taheQq, Coll. Cam. Whiteii. Thisbies] Thifby Qz, Coll. Cam. White ii. Thisbie Qa.
288-295. Twelve lines, Pope et seq.
291. Deere ] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Theob.
Han. Warb. deare Qq, Johns, et seq.
292. good ; what] good, what, Qx. good, what Qa.
293. you] Ff, Rowe + , White i, ye Qq, Cap. et cet.
gleams manifestly right, seems to me the very reason why it should be retained in the speech of one whose eye had not heard, nor his ear seen, nor his hand tasted a dream which he had in the wood where he had gone to rehearse obscenely. _ Ed.]
287. taste] W. A. Wright : This is quite in keeping with ‘I see a voice,’ line 205. [And yet, after this true note, Wright, in his text, follows the correct but incor rect Qq. — Ed.]
293. Approch you Furies, &c.] Malone : In these lines and in those spoken by Thisbe, « O sisters three,’ &c„ lines 334, et seq. the poet probably intended, as Dr Farmer observed to me, to ridicule a passage in Damon and Pythias, by Richard Edwards. 1582 : ‘ Ye furies, all at once On me your torments trie : Gripe me, you greedy griefs, And present pangues of death, You sisters three, with cruel handes With speed come stop my breath!' [p. 44, ed. Hazlett’s Dodsley].— W. A. Wright (p. xx) : Certainly in this play [just cited] and in the tragical comedy of Appius and Virginia, printed in 1575, may be found doggerel no better than that which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Bottom. See, for example, the speech of Judge Appius to Claudius, beginning, « The furies fell of Limbo lake My princely days do short,’ &c. [p. 131, ed. Hazlett’s Dodsley ]. It is also worth while to notice that the song quoted in Rom. andjul. IV, v, 128, ‘ When griping grief the heart doth wound,’ &c. is by the author of Damon and Pythias.
294. thrum] Nares : The tufted part beyond the tie, at the end of the warp, in weaving ; or any collection or tuft of short thread. — Warner : It is popularly used for very coarse yam. The maids now call a mop of yarn a thrum mop. — Steevens : So in Howell’s Letter to Sir Paul Neale : ‘ Translations are like the wrong side of a Turkey carpet, which useth to be full of thrums and knots, and nothing so even as the right side.’ The thought is borrowed from Don Quixote. — Halliwell : So in Herrick, ‘ Thou who wilt not love, doe this ; Learne of me what Woman is. Some¬ thing made of thred and thrumme; A meere Botch of all and some.’— Poems, p. 84 [vol. i, p. 100, ed. Singer].
295. quell] Johnson : Murder; manquellers being, in the old language, the term for which murderers is now used— Nares : Hence ‘ Jack the giant-queller ’ was once used [Notes on Macbeth, I, vii, 72].
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i.
This paffion, and the death of a deare friend, 296
Would go neere to make a man looke fad.
Dut. Beflirew my heart, but I pittie the man.
Pir. O wherefore Nature, did’ft thou Lions frame ?
Since Lion vilde hath heere deflour’d my deere : 300
Which is : no, no, which was the faireft Dame
That liu’d, that lou’d, that lik’d, that look’d with cheere.
Come teares, confound : Out fword, and wound The pap of Piramus :
I, that left pap, where heart doth hop ; 3Q!;
Thus dye I, thus, thus, thus.
Now am I dead, now am I fled, my foule is in the sky,
Tongue lofe thy light, Moone take thy flight, 308
230
Du.
296. 297. As prose, Qq, Johns, et seq.
297. neere] well near Ktly.
298. /] I do Ktly.
300. vilde ] Qq. vild Ff, Hal. White i. wild Rowe, vile Pope et cet.
deere ] deare Qq, Rowe et seq. 302. lik'd, that look'd ] lik't, that look't Qq.
303-309. Twelve lines, Johns, et seq. 305. hop ] rap Gould.
[Stabs himself. Dyce.
308. Tongue ] Sunne or sun Capell conj. Moon Elze.
lofe] loofe Qr.
Moone] Dog Elze.
296. This passion] Collier {Notes, &c., p. 109) : This ‘ passion ’ has particular reference to the ‘ passion ’ of Pyramus on the fate of Thisbe, and therefore the MS properly changes * and ’ to on, and reads : ‘ This passion on the death,’ &c. [Collier did not afterwards, in his ed. ii, refer to this correction.] — R. G. White {Putnam's Maga. Oct. 1853, p. 393) : The humour of the present speech consists in coupling the ridiculous fustian of the clown’s assumed passion with an event which would, in itself, make a man look sad. Collier’s MS extinguishes the fun at once by reading on. — Staunton : This reading on by the MS is one proof among many of his inabil¬ ity to appreciate anything like subtle humour. Had he never heard the old proverbial saying, ‘ He that loseth his wife and sixpence, hath lost a tester' ? — W. A. Wright : For ‘passion,’ in the sense of violent expression of sorrow,’ see line 319, and Hamlet, II, ii, 587 : ‘ Had he the motive and the cue for passion.’
303. confound] Both Steevens and W. A. Wright cite examples to elucidate the meaning of this word. Where is the British National Anthem? — Ed.
305. pap] Steevens : It ought to be remembered that the broad pronunciation, now almost peculiar to the Scotch, was anciently current in England. ‘ Pap,’ there¬ fore, was sounded pop. [See Ellis, Early Eng. Pron. p. 954, where the rhyme in these lines is noted.]
306. thus, thus, thus] Collier (ed. ii) : Modern editors give no cause for the death of Pyramus, but the MS places these words in the margin : Stab himself as often, meaning, no doubt, every time he utters the word ‘ thus.’
308. Tongue] Capell : Bottom’s ‘ Tongue,’ instead of Sunne or Sun, is a very choice blunder. — Halliwell : The present error of ‘ tongue ’ for sun appears too absurd to be humorous, and it may well be questioned whether it be not a misprint.
ACT V, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS D RE A ME
231
Now dye, dye, dye, dye, dye.
Dem. No Die, but an ace for him ; for he is but one. 310
Lif. Leffe then an ace man. For he is dead, he is no¬ thing.
Du. With the helpe of a Surgeon, he might yet reco- uer, and proue an Affe.
Dut. How chance Moone-fhine is gone before ? 315
Tliisby comes backe, and Andes her Louer.
Enter Thisby.
Duke. She wil finde him by ftarre-light.
Heere fhe comes, and her paflion ends the play.
Dut. Me thinkes fhee fhould not vfe a long one for fuch a Piramus : I hope fhe will be breefe.
Dem. A Moth wil turne the ballance, which Piramus which Thisby is the better. (eyes.
Lyf. She hath fpyed him already, with thofe fweete
320
324
309. [Dies. Theob. dies. Exit Moon¬ shine. Cap.
314. and proue] and yet proue QJ( White i.
315, 316. Prose, Q„ Pope et seq.
315. chance] chance the F,F4> Rowe 4- . before ? Thisby . . . Louer. ] before
Thisby ...Lover ? Rowe et seq.
316. comes ] come Cap. (corrected in Errata).
317. Om. Qq. After comes line 319^ Cap. After line 3x9, Steev.
318, 319. Prose, Qq, Cap. et seq.
322. Noth'] QqFf, Rowe + , Cap. Steev.’85, Mai. mote Heath, Steev,’93 et seq.
323. better.] better : he for a man; God wamd vs : fhe , for a woman ; God bleffe vs. Qq (subs.), Coll. Sing. Hal. Dyce, White, Cam. Ktly (all reading warrant ), Sta. (reading warn'd).
310. Die] Capell ( 1 1 7 b): To make even a lame conundrum of this, you are to suppose that ‘ die ’ implies two, as if it came from duo.
315. chance] See I, i, 139.
317. Enter] In this command to the actor to be ready to enter before he has to make his actual appearance on the stage, we have another proof that the Folio was printed from a stage-copy. — Ed.
319. Heere she comes, &c.] Theobald (Nichols, Illust. ii, 240) : This, I think, should be spoken by Philostrate, and not by Theseus ; for the former had seen the interlude rehearsed and consequently knew how it ended. [Thi3 was not repeated in Theobald’s subsequent edition. He probably remembered that Theseus had seen the Dumb-show. — Ed.]
322. Moth] See III, i, 168.
323. better] See Text. Notes for a line in the Qq here omitted. We have already had a similar omission after III, ii, 364, which was there clearly due to carelessness, inasmuch as the necessary stage -direction * Exeunt ’ was included in the omission. But here there is no such proof of carelessness; and the only explanation advanced is
232
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i.
Dem. And thus the meanes, videlicit. 325
This. Afleepe my Loue ? What, dead my Doue ?
O Piramus arife :
Speake, Speake. Quite dumbe? Dead, dead? A tombe Muft couer thy fweet eyes.
Thefe Lilly Lips, this cherry nofe, 330
325. meanes] QqFf, Rowe, Pope, Cam. moans Theob. et cet.
325-341. Twenty-three lines, Pope, Han. Twenty-four lines, Theob. et seq.
328. tombe ] tumbe Q,. toombe Qa.
329. thy fweet] my fweet FjF,-
330. Thefe. ..nofe] This lily lip , This cherry tip Coll, ii, iii (MS). This lily brow , This cherry mow Kinnear. These ... With cherry tips Gould.
Lips ] brows Theob. Warb. Johns. Steev. Sing. Ktly. toes Bulloch.
that given first by COLLIER, that the omission was ‘ possibly on account of the statute against using the name of the Creator, &c., on the stage, 3 Jac. I, ch. 21, which had not passed when the original editions were printed.’ This statute, passed in 1605, imposed a penalty of ten pounds on any player who should ‘jestingly or prophanely speak or use the holy name of God.’ It was, however, so easy to convert ‘ God bless us ’ into ‘ Lord bless us,’ and was frequently so converted withal, that this explana¬ tion seems hardly adequate, and yet, until a better offers, it must suffice. — STAUNTON conjectures that for warn'd we should probably read ward, and interprets : ‘ From such a man, God defend us; from such a woman, God save us.’ See Staunton’s later note contributed to The Athenceum, cited at III, ii, 419. — Ed.
324. Does not this remark of Lysander’s give us an insight of the way in which Thisbe, like any amateur actor, ran at once to Pyramus’s body, without looking to the right or left ? — Ed.
325. meanes] Theobald : It should be moans, i. e. laments over her dead Pyra- mus. — Steevens : ‘ Lovers make moan ’ (line 332) appears to countenance the altera¬ tion. — Ritson : But ‘ means ’ had anciently the same signification as moans. Pinker¬ ton observes that it is a common term in the Scotch law, signifying to tell, to relate, to declare ; and the petitions to the lords of session in Scotland run : ‘ To the lords of council and session humbly means and shows your petitioner.’ Here, however, it evidently signifies complains. Bills in Chancery begin in a similar manner: ‘ Hum¬ bly complaining sheweth unto your lordship,’ &c. — Staunton : Theobald’s change is, perhaps, without necessity, as ‘ means ’ appears formerly to have sometimes borne the same signification. Thus in Two Gent. V, iv, 136: ‘The more degenerate and base art thou, To make such means for her as thou hast done.’ — Dyce (ed. ii) : But in this passage [cited by Staunton] ‘ To make such means ’ surely signifies (as Stee¬ vens explains it) ‘ to make such interest for, take such pains about.’ — W. A. Wright : Moans does not fit in well with ‘ videlicet.’ . . . The old word mene is of common occurrence. [Jamieson, Scotch Diet., gives : To Mene, Meane, To utter complaints, to make lamentations. ‘ If you should die for me, sir knight, There’s few for you will meane ; For mony a better has died for me, Whose graves are growing green.’ — Minstrelsy Border, iii, 276. Knowing the propensity which apparently, according to the critics, characterised Shakespeare, how is it that a modern poet has escaped the same condemnation ? With this stanza from the Border Minstrelsy still in our ears, recall the exquisite line in Andrew Lang’s Helen of Troy : ‘O’er Helen’s shrine
the grass is growing green In desolate Therapnae.’ — Ed.]
233
fcCT v, sc. i.J A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
Thefe yellow Cowflip cheekes
Are gone, are gone : Louers make mone :
His eyes v/ere greene as Leekes.
O fillers three, come, come to mee,
With hands as pale as Milke,
Lay them in gore, fince you haue fhore With fheeres, his thred of hike.
Tongue not a word : Come trufty fword :
331
335
338
2,2,6. Lay ] Lave Theob. Warb. Johns. 337. thred] threede O .
337- his~\ this F3F4, Rowe, Pope, Han.
330. Lilly . . . nose] Theobald : All Thisby’s lamentation till now runs in regu¬ lar rhyme and metre. I suspect, therefore, the poet wrote ‘ These lilly brows.' Now black brows being a beauty, lilly brows are as ridiculous as a cherry nose, green eyes, 3r cowslip cheeks. — Malone : ‘ Lips ’ could scarcely have been mistaken, either by the eye or ear, for brows. — Farmer: Theobald’s change cannot be right. Thisbe has before celebrated her Pyramus as * Lilly white of hue.’ It should be ‘ These lips lilly , This nose cherry.’ This mode of position adds not a little to the burlesque of the passage. — Steevens : We meet with somewhat like this passage in George Peek’s Old Wives Tale, 1595 : ‘ Huanebango . Her coral lips, her crimson chin. . . . Zantippa.
Fy gogs-bones, thou art a flowting knave : her coral lips, her crimson chin !’ _ [p. 239,
ed. Dyce. I can really see no parallelism here. Huanebango is in earnest ; he goes on to speak of her ‘ silver teeth,’ ‘ her golden hair,’ &c., and Zantippa is merely a coarse scold who rails at everybody; had not this citation been repeated in modern editions, it would not have been included here.— Ed.]— Collier (ed. ii) adopts the change of his MS, ‘ This lily lip, This cherry tip,’ and notes that this was ‘ in all prob¬ ability Shakespeare’s language, which would have additional comic effect if Thisbe at the same time pointed to the nose of the dead Pyramus.’ — R. G. White : Farmer’s emendation was ingenious at least. But nip, a term which is yet applied to the nose in the nursery, might be mistaken for * nofe,’ written with a long s, and it seems to me not improbable that it was so mistaken in this instance. [Of all tasks, that of con¬ verting the intentional nonsense of this interlude into sense seems to me the most needless. — Ed.]
33 2- green as leeks] In a private letter to Lady Martin, which I am permitted to quote, Mrs Anna Walter Thomas writes : ‘ I was interested when in Southern Wales to hear an old woman praising the beautiful blue eyes of a child in these words, “ mae nhw’n las fel y cenin,” i. e. they are as green as leeks, green and blue having the same word ( glas , from the same root as our glaucous) in Welsh. So Thisbe must have borrowed her phrase from Welsh.’ — Ed.
334- O sisters three] See Malone’s note on 1. 293, above.
338. sword] Halliwell ( Memrn . 1879, p. 35) : There are reasons for believing that, notwithstanding the general opinion of the unfitness of the Mid. N. D. for rep¬ resentation, it was a successful acting play in the seventeenth century. An obscure comedy, at least, would scarcely have furnished Sharpham with the following exceed¬ ingly curious allusion, evidently intended as one that would be familiar to the audi¬ ence, which occurs in his play of The Fleire, published in 1607: ‘A'ni. And how li-~s he with am? Fie. Faith, like Thisbe in the play, ’a has almost kil’d himselfe
234
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. L
Come blade, my breft imbrue :
And farwell friends, thus Thisbie ends ; 340
Adieu, adieu, adieu.
Duk. Moon-fhine & Lion are left to burie the dead.
Deme. I, and Wall too.
Bot. No, I affure you, the wall is downe, that parted their Fathers. Will it pleafe you to fee the Epilogue, or 345 to heare a Bergomask dance, betweene two of our com¬ pany ?
Duk. No Epilogue, I pray you ; for your play needs no excufe. Neuer excufe ; for when the plaiers are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if hee that 350 writ it had plaid Piramus , and hung himfelfe in Thisbies garter, it would haue beene a fine Tragedy : and fo it is truely, and very notably difcharg’d. But come, your Burgomaske ; let your Epilogue alone.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelue. 355
Louers to bed, Tis almoft Fairy time.
I feare we fhall out-fleepe the comming morne, 357
339. [Stabs herself. Dyce.
340. farwell] farewell QqFf.
341. [Dies. Theob.
344. Bot.] Lyon. Qq.
[Starting up. Cap.
346. Bergomask ] Bergomaske QtFa. 350. need] be Cap. conj.
350. Marry"] Mary Qr.
351. hung"] Ff, Rowe + .White, hangd or bang'd or hanged Qq, Cap. et cet.
354. Burgomaske ] Burgomask F3F4, Rowe. Bergomask Pope et seq.
[Here a dance of Clowns. Rowe. A dance by two of the Clowns. White.
with the scabberd,’ — a notice which is also valuable as recording a fragment belong¬ ing to the history of the original performance of Shakespeare’s comedy, the interlude of the clowns, it may be concluded, having been conducted in the extreme of burlesque, and the actor who represented Thisbe, when he pretends to kill himself, falling upon the scabbard instead of upon the sword. [See C. A. Brown in Appendix."]
344. Bot.] Collier (ed. ii) : The Qq give this speech to Lion. Perhaps such was the original distribution, but changed before F, was printed, to excite laughter on the resuscitation of Pyramus.
346. Bergomask] Hanmer [Gloss.) : A dance after the manner of the peasants of Bergomasco, a country in Italy belonging to the Venetians. All the buffoons in Italy affect to imitate the ridiculous jargon of that people ; and from thence it became a custom to mimic also their manner of dancing. — W. A. Wright: If we substitute Bergamo for Bergomasco, Hanmer’s explanation is correct. Alberti ( Dizion . Uni- vers.) says that in Italian ‘ Bergamasca ’ is a kind of dance, so called from Bergamo, or from a song which was formerly sung in Florence. The Italian Zanni (our ‘ zany ’) is a contraction for Giovanni in the dialect of Bergamo, and is the nickname for a peasant of that place.
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
As much as we this night haue ouer-watcht.
This palpable groffe play hath well beguil’d The heauy gate of night. Sweet friends to bed.
A fortnight hold we this folemnity.
In nightly Reuels ; and new iollitie. Exeunt .
235
358
360
Enter Pucke.
Puck Now the hungry Lyons rores, And the Wolfe beholds the Moone :
365
359- palpable groffe] QqFf, Rowe+, Coll. Hal. White i. palpable-gross Cap. et cet.
360. gate] gaite Rowe ii, Pope, gait Johns, et seq.
362. Reuels] Revel Rowe, Pope, Theob. Han. Warb.
Scene III. Pope + . Scene II.
Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. Knt, Coll. Sing. Hal. White i, Sta. Ktly. Scene continued, Dyce, Cam. White ii, Huds. Rife.
364. hungry] Hungarian so quoted by Grey i, 78.
Lyons] lion Rowe et seq.
365. beholds] QqFf, Rowe, Pope, Steev.’73, ’78, ’85. behowls Warb. et cet.
360. gate] Heath : I believe our poet wrote gait, that is, the tediousness of its progression. — Steevens : That is, slow progress. So in Rich. II: III, ii, 15 : ‘And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way.’ [ Gait is here applied metaphorically to hours, as in line 410 it is applied without metaphor to fairies. — Ed.]
363. Enter Pucke] Collier (ed. ii) adds, from his MS, ‘ with a broom on his shoulder.’ ‘A broom,’ says Collier, ‘ was unquestionably Puck’s usual property on the stage, and as he is represented on the title-page of the old history of his Mad Pranks, 1628.’
364. Now, &c.] Coleridge (p. 104) : Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity ! So far it is Greek ; but then add, O ! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of, English fancy ! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond.
364. Lyons] Malone : It has been justly observed by an anonymous writer that
* among this assemblage of familiar circumstances attending midnight, either in Eng¬ land or its neighbouring kingdoms, Shakespeare would never have thought of inter¬ mixing the exotic idea of the “ hungry lions roaring,” which can be heard no nearer than the deserts of Africa, if he had not read in the 104th Psalm : “ Thou makest darkness that it may be night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do move ; the lions roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from God.” ’ — Steevens : I do not per¬ ceive the justness of the foregoing anonymous writer’s observation. Puck, who could
* encircle the earth in forty minutes,’ like his fairy mistress, might have snuffed ‘ the spiced Indian air ;’ and consequently an image, foreign to Europeans, might have been obvious to him. . . . Our poet, however, inattentive to little proprieties, has sometimes introduced his wild beasts in regions where they are never found. Thus in Arden, a forest in French Flanders, we hear of a lioness, and a bear destroys Antigonus in Bohemia.
365. beholds] Warburton : I make no question that it should be behowls, which is the wolfs characteristic property. — Theobald [Letter to Warburt on, May, 173c,
236
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. l
Whileft the heauy ploughman fnores, 366
All with weary taske fore-done.
Now the wafted brands doe glow,
Whil’ft the fcritch-owle, fcritching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a fhrowd. Now it is the time of night ,
That the graues, all gaping wide, Euery one lets forth his fpright ,
366. Whilejl] Whilji Qq, Rowe et seq.
367. fore- done] foredoone Qt.
369. fcritch-owle] fcriech-owle Q,. screech-owl Coll. Dyce, Hal. White, Cam.
370
374
369. fcritching] fcrieching Qf. schrieking Johns, screeching Coll. Dyce, Hal. White, Cam.
Nichols, ii, 603) : I am prodigiously struck with the justness of your emendation [he- howls]. I remember no image whatever of the wolf simply gazing on the moon ; but of the night-howling of that beast we have authority from the poets. Virgil, Georgies, 1,486: again, SEneid, vii, 16. [In Theobald’s edition he added] So in Marston’s Antonio and Mellida [Second Part, III, iii], where the whole passage seems to be copied from this of our author : ‘ Now barkes the wolfe against the full cheekt moon ; Now lyons half-clamd entrals roare for food ; Now croakes the toad, and night crowes screech aloud, Fluttering ’bout casements of departed soules; Now gapes the graves,
and through their yawnes let loose Imprison’d spirits to revisit earth.’ _ Johnson :
The alteration is better than the original reading, but perhaps the author meant only to say that the wolf gazes at the moon.— Malone : The word ‘ beholds ’ was, in the time of Shakespeare, frequently written behoulds (as, I suppose, it was then pro¬ nounced), which probably occasioned the mistake. These lines also in Spenser’s Fairte Queene, Bk i, Canto v, 30, which Shakespeare might have remembered, add support to Warburton’s emendation: ‘And, all the while she [Night] stood upon the ground, The wakefull dogs did never cease to bay; As giving warning of th’ un¬ wonted sound, With which her yron wheeles did them affray, And her darke griesly looke them much dismay : The messenger of death, the ghastly owle, With drery shnekes did also her bewray; And hungry wolves continually did howle At her abhorred face, so filthy and so fowle.’ [If it be assumed that the compositors set up at dictation, the mishearing of ‘ beholds ’ for behowls is not difficult of comprehension —Ed.]
367. fore-done] Dyce: That is, overcome.— Abbott, § 441 : For- is used in two words now disused, ‘ Forslow no longer.’- 3 Hen. VI: II, iii, 56; ‘She fordid her¬ self.’ Lear, V, 111, 256. In both words the prefix has its proper sense of injury.— W. A. Wright: ‘ For’ in composition is like the German ver-, and has sometimes a negative and sometimes an intensive sense.
369. scritch-owle] Dyce (ed. ii) : I cannot but wonder that any editor should print here, with Q2 and Ff, ‘ scritch ’ and ‘ scritching,’ when the best of the old eds. Qx, has scnech-owle and scrieching .
272. Now it is, &c.] Steevens : So in Hamlet, III, ii, 406 : • ’Tis now the very witching time of night When church-yards yawn.’
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
In the Church-way paths to glide.
And we Fairies, that do runne,
By the triple Hecates teame ,
From the prefence of the Sunne,
Following darkenefle like a dreame,
Now are frollicke ; not a Moufe Shall difturbe this hallowed houfe.
I am fent with broome before ,
To fweep the duft behinde the doore.
Enter King and Queene of Fairies , with their traine. Ob. Through the houfe giue glimmering light ,
237
375
380
385
375. Church-way] church-yardPoole’s Eng. Parnassus (ap. Hal.).
381. hallowed] Aallow’dTheob.Warb. et seq.
384. with] with all Qt.
385, 386. houfe giue. ..light, ...fieri] house, gii/n... light. ..fire, Orger.
385. the] this Theob. ii, Warb. Johns. Steev. Var. Sing.
373. That] See IV, i, 150.
377- triple Hecates teame] Douce: The chariot of the moon was drawn by two horses, the one black, the other white. ‘ Hecate ’ is uniformly a disyllable in Shakespeare, except in / Hen. VI : III, ii, 64. In Spenser and Ben Jonson it is rightly a trisyllable. But Marlowe, though a scholar, and Middleton use it as a disyl¬ lable, and Golding has it both ways. [The daughter of Jupiter and Latona was called Luna and Cynthia in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpine and Hecate in hell.]
382. broome] Halliwell : Robin Goodfellow, and the fairies generally, were remarkable for their cleanliness. Reginald Scot thus says of Puck, ‘ Your grand- dames, maid, were wont to set a boll of milk for him, for (his pains in) grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight.’ Compare also Ben Jonson’s masque of Love Restored : ‘ Robin Goodfellow, he that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles for the country-maids, and does all their other drudgery.’ Hav¬ ing recounted several ineffectual attempts he had made to gain admittance, he adds,
‘ I e en went back . . . with my broom and my candles and came on confidently.’ The broom and candle were no doubt the principal external characteristics of Robin. In the Mad Prankes, 1628, it is stated that he ‘ would many times walke in the night with a broome on his shoulder.’
383. doore] Farmer says that ‘ To sweep the dust behind the door ’ is a common expression, and a common practice in large houses, where the doors of halls and gal¬ leries are thrown backward, and seldom or never shut. — Halliwell, however, gives a more cleanly interpretation. He says that it is ‘ to sweep away the dust which is behind the door.’
385. Through . . . light] Johnson : Milton, perhaps, had this picture in his thought : ‘And glowing embers through the gloom Teach light to counterfeit a gloom.’
II Penseroso, 79. I think it should be read, ‘ Through this house in glimmering light. R. G. White (ed. i, reading Though) : Plainly, Oberon does not intend to
238
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i.
By the dead and drowfie fier, 386
Euerie Elfe and Fairie fpright,
Hop as light as bird from brier,
And this Ditty after me, fing and dance it trippinglie.
Tita. Firft rehearfe this fong by roate, 390
To each word a warbling note.
386. pier,] QqFf, Rowe + , Sta. White. fire : Cap. et cet. (subs.).
389. Two lines, Rowe ii et seq. dance if\ dance F4.
command his sprites to ‘ give glimmering light through the house by the dead and drowsy fire ,’ but to direct every elf and fairy sprite to hop as light as bird from briar, though the house give glimmering light by the dead and drowsy fire. — Dyce (ed. ii) : A most perplexing passage. R. G. White’s reading and note, I must confess, are to me not quite intelligible. Lettsom conjectures, ‘ Through this hall go glimmering light,’ &c. — Hudson : R. G. White’s reading and note seem rather to darken what is certainly none too light. Lettsom’s conjecture is both ingenious and poetical in a high degree. ... I suspect that ‘ By ’ is simply to be taken as equivalent to by means of. Taking it so, I fail to perceive anything very dark or perplexing in the passage. — D. Wilson (p. 260) : My conjectural reading involves no great literal variation : ‘ Through the house-wives' glimmering light.’ The couplet of Puck, which immedi¬ ately precedes, sufficiently harmonises with such an idea, where with broom he sweeps the dust behind the door. — Kinnear (p. ioo) would read ‘ — the house gives glim¬ mering light Now the dead and drowsy fire,’ &c., and remarks : ‘ “ The dead and drowsy fire” tells the hour to the fairies, — so Puck says, 1. 368, “Now the wasted brands do glow.” He repeats “ Now ” four times, emphasizing the hour , ending with 1. 380, “And we fairies. . . . Now are frolic.” Oberon himself repeats the word, 1. 395, “Now, until the break of day,” &c. The whole context indicates that Now is the true reading. [I think it escaped the notice of Dyce and Hudson that R. G. White, in his text, restores the punctuation of the QqFf, and that it was Capell -who first closed, more or less, the sentence at ‘ fire,’ which I think is wrong; it increases the obscurity, which will still remain in spite of Hudson’s interpretation of ‘ by,’ its commonest interpretation, and it will still be perplexing to know how it is the fairies who give the glimmering light when it is given by means of the drowsy fire, unless the fairies carry the fire about with them, which is not likely. R. G. White’s emen¬ dation, obtained by an insignificant change, is to me satisfactory : ‘Albeit there is but a faint, glimmering light throughout the house, yet there is enough by means of the dead and drowsy fire for every Elf and Fairy to hop and sing and dance.’ — Ed.]
388. brier] Steevens : This comparison is a very ancient one, being found in one of the poems of Lawrence Minot, p. 31 — [ed. Ritson, ap. W. A. Wright] : * That are was blith als brid on brere.’
389. it trippinglie] This ‘ it ’ may be, as Abbott, § 226 says, used indefinitely, like ‘ daub it,’ or ‘ queen it,’ or ‘ prince it ’ ; but here it is not impossible that it refers to the ditty, which was to be both sung and danced. — Knight calls attention to the use by Shakespeare of ‘ trip ’ as the fairies’ pace ; it is so used in IV, i, 107. Milton’s use of it for the dances of the Nymphs and the Graces in L' Allegro and Comus will occur to every one. — Ed.
390. Tita.] Queen. Rowe.
this ] your Qt, Cap. Coll. Dyce, Sta. Cam. Ktly, White ii.
ACT V, SC. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
23S
Hand in hand, with Fairie grace,
Will we ling and bleffe this place.
The Song.
Now vntill the breake of day , Through this houfe each Fairy Jiray. To the beji Bnde-bed will we ,
Which by vs Jhall bleffe d be :
392
395
398
394- Om. Qq. Song and Dance. Cap. 395— 4^6. In Roman, and given to
Oberon, Qq, Johns, et seq.
394. The Song] Johnson : [This Song] I have restored to Oberon, as it appa¬ rently contains not the blessing which he intends to bestow on the bed, but his declaration that he will bless it, and his orders to the Fairies how to perform the necessary rites. But where then is the Song ? — I am afraid it is gone with many other things of greater value. The truth is that two songs are lost. The series of the Scene is this : after the speech of Puck, Oberon enters and calls his Fairies to a song, which song is apparently wanting in all the copies. Next Titania leads another song, which is indeed lost like the former, though the Editors have endeavoured to find it. Then Oberon dismisses his Fairies to the despatch of the ceremonies. The songs I suppose were lost, because they were not inserted in the players’ parts, from which the drama was printed. — Capell [whose Notes were written before he had read Johnson s edition] : That [lines 395—416] cannot be a Song is clear, even to demon¬ stration, from the measure, the matter, and very air of every part of it ; on the other hand, it is as clear that a song, or something in nature of a song, must have come in here 5 but, if this is not it, what are we to do for it? The manner in which Oberon in his first speech, and the queen in her reply, express themselves, may incline some to conjecture that this, which is at present before us, was designed by its Author to be delivered in a kind of recitative, danced to by Titania and her train, and accom¬ panied with their voices; but the arguments against its being a song are almost equally forcible against its being recitative; and the word ‘Now’ seems to argue a song preceding. Possibly such a one did exist ; but Shakespeare, not being pleased with it, nor yet inclined to mend it, scratched it out of his copy, and printed off the play without one, as we see in the Qq; and his friends, the players— sensible of the defect, but having nothing at hand to mend it — supplied it injudiciously in the manner above recited. If this simple but beautiful play should ever be brought on the stage, the insertion of some light song — in character and suited to the occasion — would do credit to a manager’s judgment, and honour to the poet who should compose it. [This last remark is noteworthy as a revelation of the influence, even on so conservative an editor as Capell, of an age which still believed that Shakespeare’s ‘ wood-notes ’ were ‘ wild,’ and that they could be not only improved by cultivation, but so successfully imitated as to elude detection. See Fleay’s note, line 4x7 below, where another explanation of this discrepancy between the Qq and Ff is given. — Ed.]
398. blessed be] Steevens : So in Chaucer’s Marchantes Tale, line 9693, ed. Tyrwhitt [line 575, ed. Morris] : ‘And whan the bed was with the prest i-blessid.’ We learn also from ‘Articles ordained by King Henry VII. for the Regulation of his Household ’ that this ceremony was observed at the marriage of a Princess : ‘All men at her comming to be voided, except woemen, till she be brought to her bedd ; and
240
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act v, sc. i.
And the iffue there create ,
Eiier Jhall be fortunate :
So Jhall all the couples three ,
Euer true in louing be :
And the blots of Natures hand, Shall not in their iffue Jland. Neuer mole , harelip , nor fcarre , Nor marke prodigious , fuch as are Defpifed in Natiuitie ,
Shall vpon their children be .
With this field dew confecrate ,
409
405
400
408, 409. be. With... confecrate,] be, With. ..confecrate. Coll, ii, iii (MS).
the man both; he sittinge in his bedd in his shirte, with a gowne cast aboute him. Then the Bishoppe, with the Chaplaines, to come in, and blesse the bedd.’ — Douce : Blessing the bed was observed at all marriages. This was the form, copied from the Manual for the use of Salisbury : ‘ Nocte vero sequente cum sponsus et sponsa ad lectum pervenerint, accedat sacerdos et benedicat thalamum, dicens : Benedic, Dom- ine, thalamum istum et omnes habitantes in eo; ut in tua pace consistant, et in tua voluntate permaneant : et in amore tuo vivant et senescant et multiplicentur in longi- tudine dierum. Per Dominum. — Item benedictio super lectum. Benedic, Domine, hoc cubiculum, respice, quinon dormis neque dormitas. Qui custodis Israel, custodi famulos tuos in hoc lecto quiescentes ab omnibus fantasmaticis demonum illusionibus : custodi eos vigilantes ut in preceptis tuis meditentur dormientes, et te per soporem sentiant : ut hie et ubique defensionis tuae muniantur auxilio. Per Dominum. — Deinde fiat benedictio super eos in lecto tantum cum Oremus. Benedicat Deus cor¬ pora vestra et animas vestras ; et det super vos benedictionem sicut benedixit Abra¬ ham, Isaac, et Jacob, Amen. — His peractis aspergat eos aqua benedicta, et sic discedat et dimittat eos in pace.’ — W. A. Wright : Compare The Romans of Partenay, or Melusine (ed. Skeat), 11. 1009-11 : ‘ Forsooth A Bisshop which that tyme ther was Signed and blessid the bedde holyly ; “ In nomine dei,” so said in that place.’
399. create] For a long list of participles like the present word, and ‘ consecrate,’ in line 409, where -ed is omitted after t or d, see Abbott, § 342.
408, 409. be. . . . consecrate,] Collier (Notes, &c., p. in): The MS puts a comma after ‘ be ’ and a period after ‘ consecrate,’ thus meaning that none of these disfigurements shall be seen on the children consecrated with this field-dew. Then begins a new sentence, which is judiciously altered in two words by the MS — namely, in line 413 it reads: ‘Ever shall it safely rest.’ [The reading of Rowe ii. — Ed.] The question is whether the fairies or the issue of the different couples are to be ‘ con¬ secrate ’ with the * field-dew,’ and there seems no reason why such delicate and immortal beings should require it, while children might need it, to secure them from ‘ marks prodigious.’ — Dyce (ed. ii) : Collier altogether misunderstands the line, which means ‘ with this consecrated field-dew,' i. e. fairy holy- water; and when he adds that the field-dew was intended for ‘ the children,’ he most unaccountably forgets that as ‘the couples three’ have only just retired to their respective bridal chambers, the usual period must elapse before the birth of ‘ the children,’ by which time ‘ this field
ACT v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
241
Euery Fairy take his gate , 410
And each feuerall chamber bleffe ,
Through this Pallace with fweet peace ,
Euer Jhall in fafety rejl ,
And the owner of it blefi.
Trip away, make no Jlay ; 415
Meet me all by breake of day.
410. gate'] gait Johns, et seq.
413, 414. Transposed, White, Sta. Huds. Ktly.
413. Euer fhall in fafety] Ever shall it safely Rowe ii + , Cap. Steev.’85, Sing, ii, Coll, ii, iii (MS). E'er shall it in
safety Mai. ’90, Steev. Sing. Ever shall ’t in safety Dyce ii, iii.
414. Two lines, Johns, of it] of't Han.
415. away] away then Han.
416. [Exeunt. Qq. Exeunt King, Queen and Train. Cap.
dew ’ (so very prematurely provided) was not unlikely to lose its virtue, and even to evaporate, though in the keeping of fairies.
409, &c. D. Wilson (p. 260) : Arranged in the following order, the consecutive rela¬ tion of ideas seems to be more clearly expressed : ‘ Through this palace with sweet peace Every fairy take his gait, And each several chamber bless, With this field-dew consecrate ; And the owners of it blest, Ever shall in safety rest,’ &c.
409. field dew] Douce : There seems to be in this line a covert satire against holy water. Whilst the popular confidence in the power of fairies existed they had obtained the credit of doing much good service to mankind ; and the great influence which they possessed gave so much offence to the holy monks that they determined to exert all their power to expel the imaginary beings from the minds of the people by taking the office of the fairies’ benedictions entirely into their own hands. Of this we have a curious proof in the beginning of Chaucer’s tale of The Wife of Bath.
410. gate] See line 360.
413, 414. Euer . . . blest.] Staunton : I at one time thought ‘ Ever shall ’ a mis¬ print for Every hall, but it has since been suggested to me by Mr Singer, and by an anonymous correspondent, that the difficulty in the passage arose from the printer’s having transposed the lines. — R. G. White (ed. i) : It was not until May, 1856, that the difficulty received its easy solution at the hands of a correspondent of the London Illustrated News, who signed his communication C. R. W. [Probably the ‘ anony¬ mous correspondent ’ referred to by Staunton, who had then the charge of one of the columns in The Illustrated News. — Ed.] This emendation is at once the simplest and the most consistent with the form and spirit of the context. — Dyce (ed. ii) : I cannot agree with R. G. White in his estimate of this emendation ; I must be allowed to prefer my own correction — the addition of a single letter. And compare the words of the supposed Fairy Queen concerning Windsor Castle : ‘ Strew good luck, ouphs, on every sacred room ; That it may stand till the perpetual doom, In state [seat ?] as wholesome as in slate ’tis fit, Worthy the owner, and the owner it.’ — Merry Wives V, v. — Halliwell: The original, in line 413, is probably correct, the nominative palace, being understood. — Keighti.ey (p. 137) : This is the third or, rather, fourth 16
242
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS D RE A ME [act v, sc i
Robin. If we fhadowes haue offended, 417
Thinke but this (and all is mended)
That you haue but flumbred heere,
While thefe vifions did appeare. 420
And this weake and idle theame,
417. Epilogue. Hal.
Robin.] Puck. Rowe.
418. but this ( and] but (this, and F3F4> but this, and Rowe et seq.
420. thefe] this Qa.
transposition in this play. We may observe that twice before it was the second line of the couplet that commenced with ‘ Ever.’ For a fifth transposition in the original eds., see III, i, 146.
417, &c. Fleay ( Life and Work, p. 182) : The traces of the play having been altered from a version for the stage are numerous. There is a double ending. Rob¬ in’s final speech is palpably a stage-epilogue, while what precedes, from ‘Enter Puck ’ to ‘ break of day — Exeunt ,’ is very appropriate for a marriage entertainment, but scarcely suited for the stage. In Acts IV and V again we find the speech-prefixes Duke, Duchess, Clown for Theseus, Hippolita, Bottom ; such variations are nearly always marks of alteration, the unnamed characters being anterior in date. In the prose scenes speeches are several times assigned to wrong speakers, another common mark of alteration. In the Fairies the character of Moth (Mote) has been excised in the text, though he still remains among the dramatis persona. [This statement is to me inexplicable. When Titania summons four fairies (among them Moth) there are four replies. In neither Quartos nor Folios is there a list of dramatis persona-.— Ed.] It is not, I think, possible to say which parts of the play were added for the Court performance, but a careful examination has convinced me that wherever Robin occurs in the stage-directions or speech-prefixes scarcely any, if any, alteration has been made ; Puck, on the contrary, indicates change. [Be it remembered that in this allusion to ‘ the Court performance ’ no special occasion is intended, for none has been recorded, but Fleay, throughout his History of the London Stage, is emphatic in his assertion of 4 the absolute subordination of public performances to Court pres¬ entations ( Introd . p. 11). In proper obedience to this belief he assumes, therefore, a Court performance in the present case. This opinion, that additions were made for a Court performance, Fleay subsequently deserted. See Date of Composition, post. — Ed.]
417. shadowes] Hunter (i, 298): Here we have a reference to a sentiment in the play : 4 The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them,’ an apology for the actor and a compliment for the critic. What the poet had put into the mouth of one of the characters in respect of the poor attempts of the Athenian clowns, he now, by the repetition of the word ‘shadows,’ in effect says for himself and his companions. 4 Shadows ’ is a beautiful term by which to express actors, those whose life is a perpetual personation, a semblance but of something real, a shadow only of actual experiences. The idea of this resem¬ blance was deeply inwrought in the mind of the poet and actor. When at a later period he looked upon man again as but 4 a walking shadow,’ his mind immediately passed to the long-cherished thought, and he proceeds : 4A poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more.’
*ct v, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
243
No more yeelding but a dreame, Centles, doe not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.
And as I am an honeft Puck '.e ,
If we haue vnearned lucke,
Now to fcape the Serpents tongue, We will make amends ere long :
Elfe the Pucke a lyar call.
So good night vnto you all.
Giue me your hands, if we be friends, Ar.d Robin fhall reftore amends.
422
425
430
432
422. more yeelding ] mere idling D. Wilson.
423. Centles ] Gentles QqFf.
425. I am] I'm Cap. Steev. Mai. Var.
Coll. White i, Dyce ii, iii, Ktly. 425. an] Om. F3F4, Rowe + . 429. lyar] Iyer Q,.
432. [Exeunt omnes. Rowe.
422. dreame] Compare the Prologue to Lily’s The Woman in the Moone, 1597 : ‘ This but the shadow of our author’s dreame, Argues the substance to be neere at hand ; At whose appearance I most humbly crave, That in your forehead she may read content. If many faults escape in her discourse. Remember all is but a poet’s dreame.’ — p. 15 1, ed. Fairholt. — Ed.
425. honest Pucke] Collier : ‘ Puck ’ or Pouke is a name of the devil, and as Tyrwhitt remarks [II, i, 39] it is used in that sense in Piers Ploughman' s Vision , and elsewhere. It was therefore necessary for Shakespeare’s fairy messenger to assert his honesty, and to clear himself from any connexion with the ‘ helle Pouke.’ [‘ Hon¬ est ’ here refers merely to his veracity, as is shown by line 429. — Ed.]
426. vnearned] Steevens : That is, if we have better fortune than we have deserved.
427. Serpents tongue] Johnson : That is, if we be dismissed without hisses. — Steevens: So in Markham’s English Arcadia, 1607: ‘But the nymph, after the custom of distrest tragedians, whose first act is entertained with a snaky salutation,’ &c.
431. Giue . . . hands] Johnson: That is, clap your hands. Give us your applause. Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasure which the author designed.
432. amends] Unwarrantably * apprehending ’ (Theseus would say) that in the second syllable cf ‘ am ends ’ there is a punning allusion to the end of the play, Sim- ROCK (Hildburghausen, 1868) takes the liberty thus to translate :
‘ Gute Nacht ! Klatscht in die H£nde,
Dass den Dank euch Ruprecht sp . .
Ende. (Exit.) ’
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
THE TEXT
The Text is so fully discussed in the Preface to this volume that little remains to be added, except the opinions of two or three editors, and an account of an alleged Third Quarto. From the days of Dr JOHNSON all editors mention, with more or less fullness and accuracy, the Quartos and Folios, but Knight is the earliest, I think, to express an opinion as to the degree of excellence with which the Text of this play has been transmitted to us. Although I have given the substance of his note at V, i, 1 15, I think it best to repeat it here.
‘One thing is clear to us,’ says Knight ( Introductory Notice, p. 331, 1840?), ‘ that the original of these editions [». e. the two Quartos], whichever it might be, was
* printed from a genuine copy, and carefully superintended through the press. The ‘ text appears to us as perfect as it is possible to be, considering the state of typography
* of that day. There is one remarkable evidence of this. The Prologue to the inter- ‘ lude of the Clowns in the Fifth Act is purposely made inaccurate in its punctuation ‘ throughout. The speaker “ does not stand upon points.” It was impossible to have ' effected the object better than by the punctuation of [QJ ; and this is precisely one
* of those matters of nicety in which a printer would have failed, unless he had fol-
* lowed an extremely clear copy, or his proofs had been corrected by an author or an ‘ editor.’
R. G. White (ed. i, p. 18, 1857) : * Fortunately, all of these editions [Qr, Q2, and ‘ FJ were printed quite carefully for books of their class at that day ; and the cases ‘ in which there is admissible doubt as to the reading are comparatively few, and, ‘ with one or two exceptions, unimportant.’
Rev. H. N. Hudson ( Introduction , p. 1, 1880) : ‘ In all three of these copies [the
* Quartos and Folio] the printing is remarkably clear and correct for the time, inso- ‘ much that modern editors have little difficulty about the text. Probably none of the ‘ Poet’s dramas has reached us in a more satisfactory state.’
In 1841 Halliwell stated {An Introd. to Shis Mid. N. D. p. 9) that ‘ Chetwood, ‘ in his work entitled The British Theatre, !2mo. Dublin, 1750, has given a list of ‘ titles and dates of the early editions of Shakespeare’s Plays, among which we find ‘ A moste pleasaunte comedie, called A Midsummer Night's Dreame, wythe the freakes
* of the fayries, stated to have been published in the year 1595. No copy either with
* this date or under this title has yet been discovered. It is, however, necessary to ‘ state that Steevens and others have pronounced many of the titles which Chetwood
has given to be fictitious.’
Hunter, biased, possibly, by an innocent desire to fix the date of composition, is the only critic who has a good word for Chetwood, whose accuracy is commonly held in light esteem. Hunter asks {New Illust. i, 283) : ‘ Have Chetwood’s statements
247
248
APPENDIX
‘ ever been examined in a fair and critical spirit, or do we dismiss them on the mere ‘ force of personal authority brought to bear against them ? A copy cannot be pro- ‘ duced ; but neither could a copy of the first edition of Hamlet be produced in the ‘time of Steevens and Malone; yet it would have been a mistaken conclusion that ‘ no such edition existed because neither of those commentators had seen a copy. ‘ Chetwood gives the title somewhat circumstantially, as if he had seen a copy; and ‘ if some of his traditions may be shewn to be unfounded, if he may be proved tc ‘ have been credulous, or even something worse, his writings contain some truth, and ‘ we cannot perhaps easily draw the line which shall separate that which is worthy ‘ of belief from that which is to be rejected without remorse.’
W. A. Wright ( Preface , iv) gives to Chetwood the coup de grace in the present instance : ‘ the spelling of “ wythe ” is sufficient to condemn the title as spurious.’
DATE OF COMPOSITION
It is stated in the Preface that the following lines and allusions furnish internal evidence of the Date of Composition : —
1. * Thorough bush, thorough briar.' — II, i, 5 ;
2. Titania’s description of the disastrous effects on the weather and harvests caused by the quarrel between her and Oberon. — II, i, 94-120;
3. ‘And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.’ — II, i, 14;
4. ‘ One sees more devils than vast Hell can hold.’ — V, i, 1 1 ;
5. A poem of Py ramus and Thisbe.
6. The date of Spenser’s Faerie Queene.
7. The ancient privilege of Athens, whereby Egeus claims the disposal of hit daughter either to give her in marriage or to put her to death. — I, i, 49 ;
8. * The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death of learning, late deceast in beggerie.’—V, i, 59;
9. And, finally, that the play was intended for the celebration of a noble marriage.
These will now be dealt with in their foregoing order :
1. ‘Thorough bush, thorough briar.’ — II, i, 5.
CAPELL in 1767 (i, In trod. p. 64) said: ‘if that pretty fantastical poem of Dray-
* ton’s, call’d — “ Nymphidia or The Court of Fairy ,” be early enough in time (as, I
* believe, it is; for I have seen an edition of that author’s pastorals printed in 1593, ‘ quarto) it is not improbable, that Shakespeare took from thence the hint of his ‘fairies: a line of that poem “Thorough bush, thorough briar” occurs also in his ‘ play.’
In the Variorum edition of 1773, Steevens asserted that Drayton’s Nymphidia ‘was printed in I593>’ but 'n the next Variorum the assertion was withdrawn, and no decisive conclusion as to the priority of Drayton or Shakespeare was reached, until Malone, in the Variorum of 1821, settled the question in a note on ‘Hob-
DATE OF COMPOSITION
249
goblin,’ II, i, 39, as follows: — ‘A copy of certain poems of this author [Drayton],
* The Batail of Agincourt, Nymphidia, &c., published in 1 627, which is in the col*
‘ lection of my friend, Mr. Bindley, puts the matter beyond a doubt ; for in one of ‘ the blank leaves before the book, the author has written, as follows: “ To the noble ‘ “ Knight, my most honored ffrend, Sir Henry Willoughby, one of the selected ‘“patrons of thes my latest poems , from his servant, Mi. Drayton.’”
Drayton having been thus disposed of, a new claimant to priority was brought for¬ ward. ‘There seems to be a certainty,’ says Halliwell ( Memoranda , 1879, p. 6), ‘ that Shakespeare, in the composition of the Midsummer Night's Dream, had in one ‘ place a recollection of the Sixth Book of The Faerie Queene, published in 1596, for ‘ he all but literally quotes the following [line 285] from the Eighth Canto of that ‘book: — “Through hils and dales, through bushes and through breres,” — Faerie ‘ Queene, ed. 1596, p. 460. As the Midsummer Night’s Dream was not printed ‘ until the year 1600, and it is impossible that Spenser could have been present at ‘ any representation of the comedy before he had written the Sixth Book of the ‘ Faerie Queene, it may be fairly concluded that Shakespeare’s play was not composed ‘ at the earliest before the year 1596, in fact, not until some time after January the ‘ 20th, 1595-6, on which day the Second Part of the Faerie Queene was entered on ‘ the books of the Stationers’ Company. The sixth book of that poem was probably
* written as early as 1592 or 1593, certainly in Ireland, and at some considerable time ‘before the month of November, 1594, the date of the entry of publication of the
* Amoretti, in the eightieth sonnet of which it is distinctly alluded to as having been ‘ completed previously to the composition of the latter work.’
This opinion Halliwell saw no reason to retract ; he repeats it almost word for word in his Outlines (1885, p. 500). But it does not meet Fleay’s approval. ‘ Mr
* Halliwell’s fancy that Spenser’s line . . . must have been imitated by Shakespeare ‘ ... is very flimsy ; hill and dale, bush and brier, are commonplaces of the time.’ — Life and Work, p. 186. They have been commonplaces ever since, unquestionably, and doubtless Fleay could have furnished many examples from contemporary authors or he would not have made the assertion. ‘ Nor is there any proof,’ Fleay goes on to say, ‘that this song could not have been transmitted to Ireland in 1593 or 1594.’ But what, we may ask, would have been the object in transmitting a ‘ commonplace ’ ? I quite agree with Fleay that there is small likelihood in Halliwell’s suggestion, but is it quite fair to scoff at a ‘ fancy,’ and in the same breath propose another, such as the ‘ transmission to Ireland ’ ?
2. Titania’s description of the perverted seasons. — II, i, 86-120.
As this item of internal evidence still walks about the orb like the sun, it deserves strict attention, and to that end, for the convenience of the reader, the whole passage is here recalled : —
‘ And neuer fince the middle Summers fpring ‘ Met vve on hil, in dale, forreft, or mead, *****
‘ But with thy braules thou haft diftubrb’d our fport.
‘ Therefore the Windes, piping to vs in vaine,
* As in reuenge, haue fuck’d vp from the fea ‘ Contagious fogges : Which falling in the Land,
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‘ Hath euerie petty Riuer made fo proud,
‘ That they haue ouer-borne their Continents.
‘ The oxe hath therefore ftretch’d his yoake in vaine,
‘ The Ploughman loft his fweat, and the greene Come ‘ Hath rotted, ere his youth attain’d a beard :
‘ The fold ftands empty in the drowned field,
‘ And Crowes are fatted with the murrion flocke,
* The nine mens Morris is fild vp with mud,
‘ And the queint Mazes in the wanton greene,
‘ For lacke of tread are vndiftinguifhable.
‘ The humane mortals want their winter heere,
‘ No night is now with hymne or caroll bleft ;
‘ Therefore the Moone (the gouemeffe of floods)
‘ Pale in her anger, washes all the aire ;
‘ That Rheumaticke difeafes doe abound.
‘ And through this diftemperature, we fee ‘ The feafons alter ; hoared headed frofts ‘ Fall in the frefh lap of the crimfon Rofe,
‘ And on old Hyetns chinne and Icie crowne,
‘ An odorous Chaplet of fweet Sommer buds ‘ Is as in mockery fet. The Spring, the Sommer,
‘ The childing Autumne, angry Winter change ‘ Their wonted Liueries, and the mazed world,
‘ By their increafe, now knowes not which is which ;
‘ And this fame progeny of euils,
‘ Comes from our debate, from our dilfention.’
‘The confusion of seasons here described,’ said Steevens, in 1773, ‘is no more ‘ than a poetical account of the weather which happened in England about the time ‘ when this play was first published. For this information I am indebted to chance, ‘ which furnished me with a few leaves of an old meteorological history.’ This asser¬ tion that the ‘ old meteorological history ’ applied to the weather about the time this play was published, that is, about 1600, Steevens repeated in 1778 and in 1785, but in 1793, having adopted Malone’s chronology of the Date of Composition, which placed this play in 1592, Steevens silently changed the application of his ‘old meteorological history ’ to the weather eight years earlier, and said that his few leaves referred to the weather ‘ about the time the play was written.' [Italics, mine.] ‘ The ‘ date of the season,’ Steevens goes on to say, ‘ may be better determined by a ‘ description of the same weather in Churchyard’s Charitie, 1595, when, says he, ‘ “a ‘ “ colder season, in all sorts, was never seene.” He then proceeds to say the same ‘ over again in rhyme : —
‘ “ A colder time in world was neuer seene :
‘ “ The skies do lowre, the sun and moone waxe dim;
‘ “ Sommer scarce knowne but that the leaues are greene.
‘ “ The winter’s waste driues water ore the brim ;
‘ “ Upon the land great flotes of wood may swim.
‘ “ Nature thinks scome to do hir dutie right
‘ “ Because we haue displeasde the I.ord of Light.”
DATE OF COMPOSITION
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* Let the reader compare these lines with Shakespeare’s, and he will find that they ' are both descriptive of the same weather and its consequences.’
It was, however, Blakeway who, in a note in the Variorum of '21 (vol. v, p. 342), adduced yet more conclusive proofs of the extremely bad weather in 1593 and 1594, which he found in extracts, printed by Strype (Ann. v, iv, p. 2x1), from ‘ Dr ' King’s Lectures, preached at York.’ As W. A. Wright, in his Preface to the present play, has given the extracts from the Lectures themselves, I prefer, where I can, to follow Wright, as more exact. From the second of a series of Lec¬ tures upon lonas, delivered at York in 1594 and published in 1618, the following extract, from p. 36, is given : ‘ The moneths of the year haue not yet gone about,
* wherein the Lord hath bowed the heauens, and come down amongst vs with more ‘ tokens and earnests of his wrath intended, then the agedst man of our land is able
* to recount of so small a time. For say, if euer the windes, since they blew one ‘ against the other, haue beene more common, & more tempestuous, as if the foure ‘ endes of heauen had conspired to tume the foundations of the earth vpside downe ;
‘ thunders and lightnings neither seasonable for the time, and withall most terrible,
‘ with such effects brought forth, that the childe vnborne shall speake of it. The ‘ anger of the clouds hath beene powred downe vpon our heads, both with abundance
and (sauing to those that felt it) with incredible violence ; the aire threatned our ‘ miseries with a blazing starre ; the pillers of the earth tottered in many whole coun- ‘ tries and tracts of our Ilande ; the arrowes of a woeful pestilence haue beene cast
* abroad at large in all the quarters of our realme, euen to the emptying and dispeo¬ pling of some parts thereof; treasons against our Queene and countrey wee haue ‘ knowne many and mighty, monstrous to bee imagined, from a number of Lyons ‘ whelps, lurking in their dennes and watching their houre, to vndoe vs ; our expecta- ‘ tion and comfort so fayled vs in France, as if our right armes had beene pulled from ‘ our shoulders.’ ‘ The marginal note,’ adds Wright, ‘ to this passage shews the date ‘ to which it refers : “ The yeare of the Lord 1593 and 1594.” ’
Halliwell added (Introd. to A Mid. N. D. 1841, p. 8) some passages from Stowe, under date of 1594, confirming the pudder of the elements in that year: ‘ In
* this moneth of March was many great stormes of winde, which ouertumed trees, ‘ steeples, bames, houses, &c., namely, in Worcestershire, in Beaudley forrest many ‘ Oakes were ouertumed. In Horton wood of the said shire more then 1500 Oakes ‘ were ouerthrowen in one day, namely, on the thursday next before Palmesunday. * . . . The 1 1 . of Aprill, a raine continued very sore more than 24. houres long and ‘ withall, such a winde from the north, as pearced the wals of houses, were they neuer ‘ so strong. ... In the moneth of May, namely, on the second day, came downe great ‘ water flouds, by reason of sodaine showres of haile and raine that had fallen, which ‘ bare downe houses, yron milles. . . . This yeere in the moneth of May, fell many ‘great showres of raine, but in the moneths of June and July, much more; for it ‘ commonly rained euerie day, or night, till S. lames day, and two daies after togither ‘ most extreamly, all which, notwithstanding in the moneth of August there followed ‘ a faire haruest, but in the moneth of September fell great raines, which raised high
* waters, such as staied the carriages, and bare downe bridges, at Cambridge, Ware, ‘ and elsewhere, in many places. Also the price of graine grewe to be such, as a ‘ strike or bushell of Rie was sold for flue shillings, a bushel of wheat for sixe, seuen, ‘ or eight shillings, &c., for still it rose in price, which dearth happened (after the
* common opinion) more by meanes of ouermuch transporting, by our owne merchants ‘ for their priuate gaine, than through the vnseasonablenesse of the weather passed.’
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Annales, ed. 1600, p. 1274-9- (I have added two or three sentences not given by Halliwell nor by Wright.)
Yet another testimony to these same meteorological disturbances is given by Hal¬ liwell ( Ibid . p. 6), from Dr Simon Forman’s MS (No. 384, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), where that unabashed astrologer, who foretold the day of his own death and had the grace to fulfil] the prophecy, has the following ‘ important observations, as Halliwell terms them, on the year 1594 : * Ther was moch sicknes but lyttle death, ‘ moch fruit and many plombs of all sorts this yeare and small nuts, but fewe walnuts. ‘ This monethes of June and July were very wet and wonderfull cold like winter, that ‘ the 10. dae of Julii many did syt by the fyer, yt was so cold ; and soe was yt in ‘ Maye and June ; and scarce too fair dais together all that tyme, but yt rayned every ‘ day more or lesse. Yf yt did not raine, then was yt cold and cloudye. Mani mur- 1 ders were done this quarter. There were many gret fludes this sommer, and about ‘ Michelmas, thorowe the abundaunce of raine that fell sodeinly ; the brige of Ware ‘ was broken downe, and at Stratford Bowe, the water was never seen so byg as yt was ; ‘ and in the lattere end of October, the waters burste downe the bridg at Cambridge. ‘ In Barkshire were many gret waters, wherewith was moch harm done sodenly.’
But the year 1594 is not to have all the bad weather; it would be poverty-stricken indeed if one and the same speech in any of Shakespeare’s plays could not furnish at least two divergent opinions. Accordingly, we find Chalmers ( Supp . Apology, p. 368) maintaining that Titania’s words refer to the fact that ‘ the prices of com rose to a great height in 1 597/ this, together with other items, to be hereafter duly men¬ tioned, ‘ fixes the epoch,’ according to Chalmers, ‘ of this fairy play to the beginning ‘ of the year 1598.’
As to the estimate which modem editors put on the value of these allusions by Titania in fixing the date of the play, Knight, in his edition ( circa 1840), is mildly tolerant of the weather, and thinks that the peculiarly ungenial seasons of 1593-4 ‘ may have suggested Titania’s beautiful description ’ ; but in his Biography (1843, p. 360) there is the shrewd remark that ‘ Stowe’s record that, in 1594, “ notwithstanding ‘ “ in the moneth of August there followed a faire haruest,” does not agree with “ The ‘ “ ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain, The ploughman lost his sweat, and ‘ “ the Sreen corn hath rotted, ere his youth attained a beard.” ’ ‘ It is not necessary,’
concludes Knight, ‘to fix Shakspere’s description of the ungenial season upon 1594 * in particular.’
Halliwell in his Introduction, in 1841, set great store by his witness, Dr. For¬ man, and by what was to be found in the Variorum 0/1821, but ‘ grizzling hair the ‘ brain doth clear,’ and in his folio edition in 1856 he says that the ‘presumed allu¬ sions to contemporary events are scarcely entitled to assume the dignity of evi- ‘ dences.’ Amongst these ‘ presumed allusions,’ however, he acknowledges that the ungenial seasons referred to in Titania’s speech may be, perhaps, * considered the ‘ most important.’ In his Memoranda, 1879 (P- 5), which we may accept as his final judgment, he asserts that ‘ the accounts of the bad weather of 1594 are valueless in ‘ the question of the chronology.’
Collier, in both his editions, alludes to Stowe and Forman, but expresses no opinion.
Dyce in all his editions, First, Second, and Third, with outspoken British hon¬ esty (and, for that vacillating editor, extraordinary unanimity withal), pronounced the supposition that the words of Titania allude to the state of the weather in England in *594. ‘ridiculous.’
DATE OF COMPOSITION
253
Grant White, in his First Edition ( 1 857* P- 1 5 ) > thinks that there is ‘no room for reasonable doubt ’ that the date of Titania’s speech is decided by the citations from Stowe and Forman. In his Second Edition, having in the mean time taken advice on the subject of Notes, as he tells us ( Preface , p. xii), ‘ of his washerwoman,’ he does not refer to the matter at all, — naturally, any allusion to a season when there were no ‘ drying days ’ could not but be extremely distasteful to his coadjutor.
Staunton (1857), while acknowledging that Titania’s fine description ‘is singu- ‘ larly applicable to a state of things prevalent in England in 1593 and 1594,’ is ‘not ‘ disposed to attach much importance to these coincidences as settling the date of ‘ the play.’
Kurz makes an observation which is not without weight. ‘A wide-spread calam- ‘ ity,’ he remarks {Sh. fahrbuch, iv, 268, 1869), ‘would have been, according to the ‘ ideas of those times, a topic more appropriate to the pulpit [as it really was there ‘ treated. — Ed.] than to the stage ; and, according to the ideas of all times, most ‘ inappropriate to the comic stage. We go to the theatre to forget our burdens; and
* Its who in the midst of a gay, joyous play, without the smallest need, reminds us ‘ that our fields are submerged, our harvests ruined, and man and beast plague- ‘ stricken, may rest assured that he will not catch us again very soon seated in front 4 of his stage.’
Hudson (1880) does ‘ not quite see ’ these allusions as Dyce sees them, ‘ albeit I ‘ am apt enough to believe most of the play was written before that date [1594]
‘ And surely, the truth of the allusion being granted, all must admit that passing
* events have seldom been turned to better account in the service of poetry.’
W. A. Wright {Preface, p. vi) reprints the passages from Dr. King and Stowe at length, ‘ if only for the purpose of showing that in all probability Shakespeare had ‘ not the year 1594 *n his mind at all.’ Notwithstanding the accounts of the direful weather in that year, there followed ‘ a faire harvest,’ and the ‘ subsequent high ‘ prices of com are attributed not to a deficiency of the crop, but to the avarice of 4 merchants exporting it for their own gain. Now this does not agree with Titania’s ' description of the fatal consequences of her quarrel with Oberon, through which ‘ “ The green com Hath rotted, ere his youth attain’d a beard.” In this point alone 4 there is such an important discrepancy, that if Shakespeare referred to any particular ‘ season we may, without doubt, affirm it was not to the year 1594, and therefore the 4 passages [from King, and Stowe, and Forman] have no bearing upon the date of 4 the play. I am even sceptical enough to think that Titania’s speech not only does 4 not describe the events of the year 1594, or of the other bad seasons which hap- 4 pened at this time, but that it is purely the product of the poet’s own imagination, ‘ and that the picture which it presents had no original in the world of fact, any more 4 than Oberon’s bank or Titania’s bower.’
Rev. H. P. Stokes ( Chronological Order, &c., 1878, p. 49) thinks it ‘probable’ that Titania’s lines refer to 4 the chief dearth in Shakespeare’s time in 1594-5.’
Fleay ( Life and Work, &c., 1886, p. 182) finds confirmation of the date 1595 in the recorded inversion of the seasons spoken of by Titania.
j. ‘And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.’ — II, i, 14.
In the Variorum of 1783, Steevens remarked on the above line that ‘ the same 4 thought occurs in an old comedy called The Wisdome of Doctor Dodypoll, 1600, 1 i. e. the same year in which the first printed copies of this play made their appeal
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ance. An enchanter says: “Twas I that lead you through the painted meadows, “ When the light Fairies daunst upon the flowers, Hanging on every leafe an orient i “pearle.” ’ [p. 135, ed. Bullen], The author of this tiresome and mediocre comedy is unknown, and seeing that it and the present play are of the same date in publi¬ cation, and that we know the latter was in existence in Meres’s time, 1598, Steevens wisely refrained from expressing any opinion as to priority. Dyce, in 1829, dis¬ covered that a song in Dr. Dodypoll, ‘ What thing is love ?’ was written by Peele in The Hunting of Cupid (Peek’s Works, ii, pp. 255, 260), and Fleay {Eng. Drama, ii, 155) sees ‘ no reason for depriving him of the rest of the play,’ and Fleay accord- ingly gives it to him. ‘ It was,’ says Fleay, ‘ most likely one of [the old plays acted by ‘ the children of Paul’s] produced c. 1590.’ Great as must be the admiration of all for Fleay’s industry and almost unrivalled grasp of early dramatic history, yet not even from Fleay can we without protest accept the phrase ‘ most likely,’ which is always, like the wrath of Achilles, the source of unnumbered woes. The present is no exception. If Fleay thought that in Doctor Dodypoll a line was imitated from A Midsummer Night's Dream, ‘ and spoiled in the imitation,’ as he asserted in 1886 {Life and Work, p. 186), and that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was ‘most cer ‘ tainly of this date [1595] ’ {P>. p. 181), he would never have said in 1891 that Doc¬ tor Dodypoll was ‘most likely’ produced ‘c. 1590,’ five years earlier than A Mid¬ summer Night's Dream.
Malone (ed. 179°) h 286) observes that ‘ Doctor Dodipowle is mentioned by ‘ Nashe in his preface to Gabriel Harvey’s Hunt is Up, printed in 1596.’ Nine years later Chalmers {Sup. Apol. 363) roundly asserts that Doctor Dodypoll ‘ was pub- ‘ lished in 1596, or before this year,’ but no copy, I believe, thus dated is now known. Chalmers is, therefore, led by his premises, ‘ to infer that Shakespeare, according to ‘ the laudable practice of the bee, which steals luscious sweets from rankest weeds, ‘ derived his extract from Dodipol, and not Dodipol from Shakespeare.’
Malone’s suggestion and Chalmers’s assertion seem to have beguiled Halliwell into the belief that Dr Dodypoll was ‘ known to have been written as early as 1596 ’ — {Introd. p. 10), and although he does not repeat this in his Folio Edition, but gives merely Malone’s reference, in his latest Memoranda (1879, p. 7), we find: ‘As Dr ‘Dodipowle is mentioned by Nash as early as 1596, this argument would prove ‘ Shakespeare’s comedy to have been then in existence.’
It is, however, W. A. Wright {Preface, p. iii) who has exorcised Nash’s Dr Dodypoll once and for ever as a factor in approximating to the date of the present play, thus : ‘ Nashe only mentions the name “ doctor Dodypowle,” without referring ‘ to the play, and Dodipoll was a synonym for a blockhead as early as Latimer’s time.
Again, H. Chichester Hart {AthencBum, 6 Oct. 1888) points out that ‘the iden- ‘ tical name occurs in Hickscorner (1552) : “ What, Master Doctor Dotypoll ? Can- ‘ “ not you preach well in a black boll, Or dispute any divinity?” ’— Hazlitt’s Dods- ley, i, 179.
4. ‘One sees more devils than vast Hell can hold.’ — V, i, n.
In these words of Theseus, Chalmers {Sup. Apol. p. 361), reading between the lines, sees something else besides ‘devils’: ‘plainly a sarcasm on Lodge’s pamphlet, called Wits Miserie and the Worlds Madnesse ; discovering the Incar- ‘ nate Devils of this age, which was published in 1 596. Theseus had already remarked, in the same speech: “The lunatic, the Louer, and the Poet, Are of
DATE OF COMPOSITION
255
imagination all compact. ’ Lodge has the same word, compact , as singularly coupled: “ Heinoufous thoughts compact them together.”’ This quotation from Lodge is certainly remarkable, not because Shakespeare purloined from it the com¬ mon-place word ‘ compact,’ but because he overlooked that vigorous and startling word ‘ Heinousous,’ with its untold depths of devilish meaning. Chalmers gives no clew to the page or chapter in IVits Miserie where this phrase is to be found, so that many hours had to be mis-spent before I found it. It occurs in The discouery of Asmodeus, &c. (p. 46, ed. Hunterian Club), and let the wits’ misery be imagined when the shuddering ‘ heinousous ’ stands forth as plain heinousest / and ‘ compact,’ which was the very fulcrum of Chalmers’s argument, turns out to be compacted. Lodge’s phrase is : ‘ Hee affembled his hainoufeft thoughts, & compacted them ' togither [sir].’ Apart from the childishness of founding an argument on the use of one and the same word by two voluminous writers, Chalmers’s quotation is appa¬ rently an example of that class, not so common now as aforetime, where a slight perver¬ sion may be ventured, in the hope that it will escape detection through lack of verifica¬ tion. A quotation from an author generally, without citing page or line, is suspicious.
But Chalmers is bound to prove that Theseus’s line is sarcastic, and that in it Shakespeare is * serving out ’ Lodge for some personal affront. This affront Chalmers detects in the omission of Shakespeare’s name in the four or five ‘ divine wits ’ enu¬ merated by Lodge: Lilly, Daniel, Spenser, Drayton, and Nash (p. 57, ib.). ‘Owing to this preference given to other poets,’ says Chalmers, p. 362, ‘ Shakespeare . . . now returned marked disdain for contemptuous silence.’ ‘There is another passage,’ continues Chalmers, still on the scent, as he believes, ‘ which Shakespeare may have ‘ felt : “ They fay likewife there is a Plaier Deuil, a handfome fonne of Mammons, ‘ “ but yet I haue not feen him, becaufe he skulks in the countrie,” ’ &c., &c. It is not worth while to cite the rest of this long quotation (p. 40, ed. Hunterian Club), wherein the bitterest sting to Shakespeare’s feelings, as is clear from Chalmers’s italics, is that he skulks in the country.
5. A Poem of ‘ Pyramus and Thisbe.’
‘There was,’ according to Chalmers (Sup. Apol. p. 363), ‘a poem, entitled Pyramus and Thisbe, published by Dr. Gale in 1597; but Mr. Malone believed this to be posterior to The Midsummer's [sic~\ Night's Dream. On the contrary, I believe, that Gale’s Pyramus and Thisbe was prior to Shakespeare’s most lament¬ able “Comedy of Pyramus and Thisby.” ’ This argument was thus effectively silenced by W. A. Wright (Preface, p. viii) : ‘As no one has seen this edition of ' Gale’s poem, and as the story of Pyramus and Thisbe was accessible to Shakespeare ‘ from other sources long before 1597, we may dismiss this piece of evidence brought ‘ forward by Chalmers as having no decisive weight.’ See further reference to Gale in Source of the Plot.
6. The Date of Spenser’s ‘ Faerie Queene.’
Again, Chalmers, a commentator very fertile in resources (such as they are), tays (Ib. p. 364) : ‘It is to be remembered, that the second volume of the Faerie ‘ Queene was published in 1596; being entered in the Stationers’ Registers on the ‘20th of January, 1595—6. This for some time furnished town talk; which never 1 fails to supply our poets with dramatical topicks. The Faerie Queene helped Shake¬ speare to many hints. In the Midsummer3 s Night's Dream the Second Act opens
APPENDIX
256
‘ with a fairy scene : The fairy is forward to tell, “ How I serve the fairy queen, 7 0 ‘ “ dew her orbs upon the green : And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight ‘ “ of his train, to trace the forests wild.” Here, then, are obvious allusions to the ‘ Faerie Queene of 1 596,’ subsequent to which, be it remembered, Chalmers maintains that A Midsummer Night's Dream was written.
Again, Chalmers may be safely left to W. A. Wright, who replies (p. ix) to the assertion that the second volume of The Faerie Queene was published in 1596: ‘To ‘ this I would add, what Chalmers himself should have stated, that although the ‘ second volume of Spenser’s poem was not published till 1596, the first appeared in ‘ 1590, and if Shakespeare borrowed any ideas from it at all, he had an opportunity ‘ of doing so long before 1596. This, therefore, may be consigned to the limbo of ‘ worthless evidence.’
7. The ancient privilege of Athens, whereby Egeus claims to dispose of his daughter either in marriage or to put her to death.
1, 1, 49-
Chalmers (Ecce, iterum Crispinus!) urges yet other evidence to prove the late date of the present play. ‘ In the first Act,’ he says (p. 365), ‘ Egeus comes in ‘ full of vexation, with complaint against his daughter, Hermia, who had been be- ‘ witched by Lysander with rhymes , and love tokens, and other messengers of strong ‘ prevailment in unharden' d youth ; and claimed of the Duke the ancient privilege ‘ of Athens ; insisting either to dispose of her to Demetrius, or to death, “ according ‘ “ to our Law, Immediately provided in that case.” . . . Our observant dramatist, ‘ probably, alluded to the proceedings of Parliament on this subject during the session ‘ of 1597. On the 7th of November of that year the bill wras committed, for depriv- ‘ ing offenders of clergy, who, against the statute of Henry VII, should be found ‘ guilty of the taking away of women against their wills. On the 14th of November, ‘ 1597, there was a report to the House touching the abuses from licenses for mar-
* riages, without bans ; and also touching the stealing away of men's children with-
* out the assent of their parents. . . . These obvious allusions to striking transactions, ‘ of an interesting nature, carry the epoch of this play beyond that session of Par- ‘ liament, which ended on the 9th of February, 1597-8.’
Again, W. A. Wright comes to the rescue (p. ix) : ‘ This is certainly the weak- ‘ est of all the proofs by which Chalmers endeavours to make out his case, for the ‘ law which Egeus wished to enforce was against a refractory daughter, who at the ‘ time at which he was speaking had not been stolen away by Lysander, and was ‘ only too willing to go with him.’ The Parliamentary laws were directed against the theft of heiresses, and against illegal marriages. The law Egeus invokes was directed against disobedient daughters, whether willing victims or not.
8. ‘The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death Of learning, late
DECEAST IN BEGGERIE.’ — V, i, 59.
In a note on ‘ The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death Of learning, ‘ late deceafl in beggerie.’ — V, i, 59, Warburton observed that the reference seemed to be intended as a compliment to Spenser, who wrote a poem called The • Teares of the Muses.' Twenty-five years later, in the Var. of 1773, Warton makes the same observation, and suggests that if the allusion be granted the date of the present play might be moved' somewhat nearer to 1591, the date of Spenser’s poem.
DATE OF COMPOSITION
257
In 1778 Steevens remarked that this ‘pretended title of a dramatic performance ‘ might be designed as a covert stroke of satire on those who had permitted Spenser ‘ to die through absolute want of bread in Dublin in the year 1598 — late deceas’d in ‘ beggary seems to refer to this circumstance.’ In his chronology of the play, how¬ ever, in this same year, Malone says that this allusion need not necessarily be incon¬ sistent with the early appearance of this comedy, for it might have been inserted between the time of Spenser s death and the year 1600, when the play was published. ‘ Spenser, we are told by Sir James Ware, ... did not die till 1599; ‘“others” (be ‘ “ adds), have it wrongly , 1598.” ’
Thus, this allusion to Spenser’s Tears of the Muses , and to his death, was accepted as evidence until Knight, who found it ‘ difficult to understand how an elegy on the ‘ P°et could have been called “ some satire keen and critical,” ’ started a new explanation. ‘ Spenser’s poem,’ says Knight ( Introductory Notice, p. 333), ‘ is cer- ‘ tainly a satire in one sense of the word ; for it makes the Muses lament that all the glorious productions of men that proceeded from their influence had vanished from ‘ the earth. . . . Clio complains that mighty peers “ only boast of arms and ancestry ” ; ‘ Melpomene, that “ all man’s life me seems a tragedy ” ; Thalia is “ made the servant ‘ “ of the many ” ; Euterpe weeps that “ now no pastoral is to be heard ” ; and so on. ‘ These laments do not seem identical with the “ — mourning for the death Of learn- ‘ “ lnS* *ate deceas’d in beggary." These expressions are too precise and limited to ‘ refer to the tears of the Muses for the decay of knowledge and art. We cannot ‘ divest ourselves of the belief that some real person, some real death, was alluded to.
‘ May we hazard a conjecture ? — Greene, a man of learning, and one whom Shak- spere, in the generosity of his nature, might wish to point at kindly, died in 1592,
‘ in a condition that might truly be called beggary. But how was his death, any more ‘ than that of Spenser, to be the occasion of “ some satire keen and critical ” ? Every ‘ student of our literary history will remember the famous controversy of Nash and ‘ Gabriel Harvey, which was begun by Harvey’s publication in 1592 of “Four Let¬ ters and certain Sonnets, especially touching Robert Greene, and other parties by ‘ “ him abused.” Robert Greene was dead; but Harvey came forward, in revenge of ‘ an incautious attack of the unhappy poet, to satirize him in his grave,— to hold up
* bis vices and his misfortunes to the public scorn,— to be “ keen and critical ” upon ‘ “ learning, late deceas’d in beggary.” ’
This conjecture of Knight ‘ bears great appearance of probability,’ says Halli- WELL ( Introd . Fol. Ed. 1856, p. 5). ‘ The miserable death of Greene in 1592,’ he con¬ tinues, ‘was a subject of general conversation for several years [it is to be regretted that no authority for this ‘ conversation ’ is given. — Ed.], and a reference to the cir¬ cumstance, though indistinctly expressed, would have been well understood in liter- ‘ ary circles at the time it is supposed the comedy was produced. “ Truely I have
* “ been ashamed,” observed Harvey, speaking of the last days of Greene, “ to heare ‘ “ some ascertayned reportes of hys most woefull and rascall estate : how the wretched
fellow, or shall I say the Prince of beggars, laid all to gage for some few shillinges:
‘ “ and was attended by lice; and would pittifully beg a penny pott of Malmesie:
* “ an ‘ “ extremity but Mistris Appleby, and the mother of Infortunatus.” — Foure Letters ‘ and certame Sonnets, 1592 [vol. i, p. 170, ed. Grosart], And again, in the same ‘ work, “ his hostisse Isam with teares in her eies, & sighes from a deeper fountaine ' “ (^or sbe l°ve(i him derely), tould me of his lamentable begging of a penny pott ' “ of Malmesy . . . and how he was faine poore soule, to borrow her husbandes shirte,
17
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258
« « whiles his owne was a washing : and how his dublet, and hose, and sword were '“sold for three shillinges.”— [Ik. p. 171]. This testimony, although emanating « from an ill-wisher, is not controverted by the statements of Nash, who had not the ' same opportunity of obtaining correct information ; and, on the whole, it cannot be « doubted that Greene “ deceas’d in beggary.” His “ learning ” was equally notorious.
« « For judgement Jove, for learning deepe he still Apollo seemde.” — Greenes Fune- ‘ rails, 1594. There is nothing in the consideration that the poet had been attacked

« unkind spirit; and the death of one who at most was probably rather jealous than

« speare.’ The possibility that the allusion is to Spenser is precluded, so thinks Hal- liwell, by the date of Spenser’s death, which took place early in 1599, ‘unless the
This explanation is not merely ‘ forced.’ It is impossible. ‘ There is greater probabil- « ity,’ continues Halliwell, ‘ in the supposition that there is a reference to Spenser’s ‘ poem, The Teares of the Muses, which appeared in 1591, . . . but the words of ‘ Shakespeare certainly appear to be more positive.’
In discussing this possible allusion to The Teares of the Muses, Collier, with more fanciful ingenuity than grave probability, detects ‘ a slight coincidence of expres-
‘ the other, which deserves remark : Spenser says “ Our pleasant Willy, ah, is dead • “ of late.” And one of Shakespeare’s lines is, “ Of learning, late deceas'd in beg-

« merely that he “ rather chose to sit in idle cell,” than write in such unfavourable ‘ times. In the same manner Shakespeare might not mean that Spenser (if the allu- ‘ sion be, indeed, to him) was actually “ deceas’d,” but merely, as Spenser expresses « it in his Colin Clout, that he was “ dead in dole.” ’ But by the time that Collier had come to edit Spenser (1862) he had become fully persuaded [ Works, i, xi] that the lines in question referred ‘ to the death of Spenser in grief and poverty. ... On
‘ adapted to the time ; and this, we apprehend, was one of the additions made by

R. G. White, in his first edition, regards the allusion to Greene with favour, mainly because it reveals ‘ the gentle and generous nature of Sweet Will ’ in forgiving and forgetting a petty wrong when the perpetrator was in the grave, and ‘ had been a ‘ fellow-labourer in the field of letters, and an unhappy one.’
Staunton attaches but little importance to the explanations of Titania’s allusions to the weather, and attaches still less to the present allusions to Spenser, albeit he acknowledges that an allusion to Greene is more plausible.
Dyce regards them, one and all, as ‘ ridiculous.’
Ward {Eng. Dram. Lit. 1875, •> 38°) having quoted Dyce’s all-embracing ridiculous,’ and mentioned Spenser’s Teares and his death, goes on to say that ' the term “ ridiculous ” is not too strong to characterise a third supposition that [the lines « The thrice three Muses,” &c.] contain a reference to the death of Robert Greene (1592), upon whose memory Shakespeare would certainly in that case have been resolved to heap co-als of fire.’
DATE OF COMPOSITION
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Stokes, however, is temerarious enough to say (Chrono. Order, p. 50) that he ventures to incur the ridicule [pronounced by Ward], for how can a ‘ satire, keen ‘ and critical, be used to “ heap coals of fire ” ? and we know that Greene was ‘regarded by Gabriel Harvey and others (including Shakespeare himself) [it is to be regretted that the authority for this assertion has been omitted. — Ed.] with ‘ anything but a forgiving spirit. Surely the reference to the death “ Of learning, ‘ “late deceased in beggary," must allude to Robert Greene, “ utriusque Academia in
Artibus M agister ” (as he styles himself on some of his title-pages), parson (miser- ‘ abile dictu), doctor, author, who died in misery and want in a London attic.’
Fleay ( Manual , 1876, p. 26) says that there may be an allusion to Spenser’s Tears of the Muses, published in 1591, or ‘possibly to the death of Greene in 1^02 ‘or to both.’
W. A. Wright ( Preface , p. viii) : ‘It is difficult to see any parallel between ‘ Gabriel Harvey's satire and “ The thrice three Muses mourning for the death of ‘ “ Of learning,” which must of necessity satirize some person or persons other than ‘ him whose death is mourned, even supposing that any particular person is referred ‘ to. On the whole, I am inclined to think that Spenser’s poem may have suggested ‘ to Shakespeare a tide for the piece submitted to Theseus, and that we need not ‘press for any closer parallel between them.’
To Grosart, Spenser’s latest editor, it seems ‘pretty clear the Teares of the ‘ Muses (“ thrice three ”) was intended to be designated. For only in the Teares of ‘ the Muses is there that combination of “ mourning ” with satire that leads to [The- ‘ seus’s] commentary on the proposal to have such a “ device ” for entertainment of ‘ the joyous marriage-company. . . . One wishes the suggested “ device . . . had ‘ approved itself to Theseus as it had to Philostrate. For then, instead of the fooling ‘ of Pyramus and Thisbe ... we might have had William Shakespeare’s estimate of ‘ Edmund Spenser. A thousand times must [Theseus’s] preference be grudged and * lamented.’ — Spenser, IVorks, i, 92.
9. And, finally, that the play was intended for the celebration of a
NOBLE MARRIAGE.
With our knowledge of the purposes for which Masques and Dramatic Entertain¬ ments were written, it is not improbable, from the final scene of the play, that this Dream was composed for the festivities of some marriage in high life, at which pos¬ sibly the Queen herself was present. If a noble marriage before 1598 can be found to which there are unmistakeable allusions in the play, we shall go far to confining the Date of Composition within narrow limits.
In the notes following Schlegel’s Translation, in 1830, Tieck has the following (p. 353) : * Whoever understands the poet and his style must feel assured that we owe ‘ this work of fantasie and imagination to that same poetic intoxication which gave us 'The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and Henry V. It was printed first in 1600, and we can assume that it had been already written before this ‘ year, for Mares [rzr] mentions it in 1598. In this same year, 1598, the friend of ‘ the poet, the Earl of Southampton, espoused his beloved Mistress Varnon, to whom ‘ he had been long betrothed. Perhaps the germ, or the first sketch, of the drama ‘ was a felicitation to the newly-married pair, in the shape of a so-called Mask, in ‘ which Oberon, Titania, and their fairies wished and prophesied health and happi- ' ness to the bridal couple. The comic antistrophe, the scene with the “ rude mechan-
z6o
APPENDIX
‘ “ icals,” formed what was termed the anti-mask. . . . Thus to this Occasional Poem ‘ there were added subsequently the other scenes of the comedy. Moreover, South- ‘ ampton married against the wishes of the Queen, who appeared not to have known ‘ of it at first, because she treated it as though it had been secret. The young Lady ‘ Vamon, when her lover left her to go to France, where he was presented to Henry ‘ IV, was an object of sympathy to all her friends. Through this alliance Essex ‘ became connected with Southampton, with whom he had not been before on good ‘ terms. For Southampton, as we learn from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, many a fair one ‘ sighed, attracted by his charms. Wherever we turn we meet references and allu- ‘ sions which, if they do not more clearly explain this wondrous poem, at least, by ‘ their half-glimmering explanations, tantalise the readers almost as much as Puck, in ‘ the play, teases the human mortals.’
Ulrici [Shakespeare' s Dram. Kunst, 1847, P- 539 ! trans- by L- Dora Schmitz, 1876, ii, 81) is inclined from ‘internal evidence to assume that 1596-97 was the year ‘ in which this piece was composed. . . . [Tieck’s conjecture that it was composed for ‘ Southampton’s marriage] I consider untenable ; at all events it is not easy to see ‘ how the title of A Midsummer Night's Dream . . . could be appropriate for the ‘ “ masque ” of Oberon and Titania with its “ anti-masque,” the play of the mechan- ‘ ics, in short, for a mere epithalamium. But, in fact, it would, in any case, be a ‘ strange and almost impertinent proceeding to present a noble patron with a wedding ‘ gift in the form of a poem where love — from its serious and ethical side — is made a ‘ subject for laughter and represented only from a comic aspect, in its faithlessness ‘ and levity, as a mere play of the imagination, and where even the marriage feast of ‘ Theseus appears in a comical light, owing to the manner in which it is celebrated.
‘ And it would have been even a greater want of tact to produce a piece, composed ‘ for such an occasion, on the public stage, either before or after the earl’s marriage.’
Gerald Massey, according to whose view Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and portions of many of his plays, are saturated with allusions to Southampton, Essex, Lady Pene¬ lope Rich, Elizabeth Vernon, and others of that circle, discusses Oberon’s command to Puck to bring that ‘ little Western flower,’ which, with Halpin, he believes to be Lettice Knollys, and comes to the conclusion that * Dian’s bud ’ is the emblem of Elizabeth Vernon, and, following Tieck, he has ‘no doubt’ [Shakespeare' s Sonnets, 1866 and 1872, p. 481, ed. 1888, p. 443) ‘that this [present] dainty drama was writ ‘ ten with the view of celebrating the marriage of Southampton and Elizabeth Ver ‘non; for them his Muse put on the wedding raiment of such richness; theirs was ‘ the bickering of jealousy so magically mirrored, the nuptial path so bestrewn with ‘ the choicest of our poet’s flowers, the wedding bond that he so fervently blessed in
* fairy guise. He is, as it were, the familiar friend at the marriage-feast, who gossips
* cheerily to the company of a perplexing passage in the lover’s courtship, which they ‘ can afford to smile at now ! [but that the marriage was disallowed by the Queen. — ‘ ed. 1888]. The play was probably composed some time before the marriage took ‘place [in 1598]) at a period when it may have been thought the Queen’s consent ‘ could be obtained, but not so early as the commentators have imagined. I have
* ventured the date of 1595.’ In a footnote there is added : ‘ Perhaps it was one of ‘ the plays presented before Mr Secretary Cecil and Lord Southampton when they ‘ were leaving Paris, in January, 1598, at which time, as Rowland White relates, the
Earl’s marriage was secretly talked of.’
Elze [Jahrbuch d. deutschen Sh.-Gesellschaft, 1869, p. 1 50; Essays trans. by L. Dora Schmitz, 1874, p. 30) finds objections to Tieck’s conjecture, in the date of
DATE OF COMPOSITION
261
Merv:s’s allusion in 15981 the very year of Southampton’s marriage, and in the clan¬ destine character of that marriage, and finds allusions in the play which enforce a much earlier date. ‘ To state it briefly,’ he says (p. 40), ‘ all indications point to the ‘ fact that [this play] was written for and performed at the marriage of the Earl of ‘ Essex in the year 1590.’ Essex’s marriage, though secret, was not clandestine, and Elze assumes that this secrecy did not extend so far but that there could be song and music and private theatricals, and that the main thing was to keep it from the ears of the Queen until it was too late for her to refuse to sanction it ; so far and no further was it secret. In Essex and his bride, the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, Elze finds a parallel to Theseus and Hippolyta. ‘ Like Theseus, the bridegroom, in spite of his ' youth, was a captain and, doubtless, a huntsman as well ; whether, certainly in a ‘ different sense from Theseus, he had won his bride by his sword could be intelligible ‘ only to the initiated. As a youth of seventeen he had followed his step-father, Lei- ‘ cester, into the Netherlands, . . . and at Zutphen, in 1586, he so distinguished him- ‘ self that Leicester knighted him.’ Great clerks purposed to greet Theseus with premeditated welcomes, and when Essex returned in 1589 from his Spanish cam¬ paign, Peele dedicated to him his Eclogue Gratulatory. ‘ Like Theseus, he courted ‘ many an Aegle and Perigenia, and then left them.’ From the fact that Lady Sidney accompanied her husband to Holland and nursed him when he was mortally wounded at Zutphen, and carried him to Amheim, Elze thinks ‘ we shall scarcely be mistaken ‘ in conceiving her a strong heroic woman like Hippolyta — in a good sense — who in ‘ merry days delighted in the chase and in the barking of the hounds, like the Ama- ‘ zon queen.’ Elze (p. 47) conceives the question, merely as a possibility, ‘whether ‘ two of Essex’s servants or officers did not enter upon their marriage at the same time ‘ as their master, so that the triple wedding in the play would have exactly corre- ‘ sponded to what actually took place.’ Of Puck’s concluding speech, ‘ If we shad- ‘ ows have offended,’ &c., Elze says that * these lines would be flat and meaningless ‘ if they had not been spoken at Essex’s wedding. The pardon asked for would cer- ‘ tainly have been granted, the more readily as it could scarcely have escaped those
* interested in the play that the object of the passage in question was to put in a good ‘ word for them with the queen.’ Elze (p. 60) concludes : ‘ Thus, from whatever ‘ side we may view A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and whatever points we may take ‘ into consideration, everything agrees with the supposition that it was written in the ‘ spring of the year 1590, for the wedding of the Earl of Essex with Lady Sidney.’
Kurz ( Jahrbuch d. deut. Sh.-Gesellschaft, 1869, p. 268) upholds Elze in the sup¬ position that Essex’s wedding was the festive occasion of the composition of this play, and suggests, as a proof, that it must have been acted before 1591 ; that the first three Books of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, with its idealised Queen Elizabeth, appeared in that year, and ‘ after that could Shakespeare let his fairy queen, albeit called Titania ‘ and the spouse of Oberon, fall in love with an ass ? A question not to be lightly
* tossed aside. Not within half a decade at least, one would think, could he venture ‘ on such an incident, until the burning suspicion of an intentional allusion had cooled
* down.’ Kurz has been taken seriously here. It is doubtful. There is a vein of quiet humour running through his Essay that makes it difficult to say whether or not he is anywhere really in earnest. From a thorough study of the Sidney Papers he comes to the conclusion that a certain entertainment, there mentioned, was given on the occasion of Essex’s marriage, which must have taken place some time in April, 159°) either before the sixth, on which day the bride’s father died, or sooner or later after it. In the latter case, her unprotected state might have accelerated the wed-
262
APPENDIX
diner and justified the haste. ‘ There is no doubt,’ says Kurz, p. 286, ‘ that the ‘ marriage itself was conducted quite privately. But the public after-celebration « demanded a certain caution, which forsooth could not be lost sight of for months to


‘ right off— namely, May Day, from time immemorial one of the freest festivals of fhe « whole year, in city or country, by young or old, rich or poor-all was merriment.
« On this day, then, or close enough to it, a banquet [mentioned in the Sidney Let-
explains the allusions to May. In short, Kurz reaches the positive conclusion (p. 289) that the Midsummer Night's Dream was performed, for the first time, at a banquet on the occasion of the unheralded festivities accompanying the marriage of Essex, and in conjunction with the observances of May in 1590, as a masque with significant characters, or as a masque-like comedy with a masque especially intro¬ duced, and all of it designed to conceal the object for which the festivities were given. Hence is explained the apparent incongruity, whereby the piece seems to have been written so emphatically for a marriage, and yet, on the other hand, does not in some of its details seem quite appropriate thereto. Among these latter is manifestly the allusion to Theseus’s former loves; this Kurz explains (p. 291) by supposing that, on account of the mourning for her father, the bride was not present at the performance of the play.
The discrepancy between Hippolyta’s ‘ new moon ’ and the full moon of Pyramus and Thisbe, Kurz explains by his theory that the play was not performed at the wedding itself, but was a part of the festivities of the following May day. ‘ If the « Kalendar of 1590 gives a full moon on the first of May, then all calculations are ‘upset. But be of good cheer: the old Ephemerides ( Cypr . Leovitius, 1556-1606, ‘Augsburg, 1557; Mart. Everart, 1590-1610, Leyden, 1597) agree in naming the ‘ 30 April as the day whereon that May moon renewed itself.’ If Kurz has rightly understood and quoted ‘the old Ephemerides,’ these latter certainly corroborate, quite remarkably, Hippolyta’s words as generally adopted since Rowe’s edition; but I fail to see how they help Kurz, who says distinctly (p. 286) that Essex’s marriage (i. e. Theseus’s) took place before or shortly after the sixth of April, and that it was merely the public festivities which were held on the following May day, when the ‘ silver bow ’ must, of course, be full or gibbous if it was ‘ newbent ’ about a fortnight or three weeks before. I am afraid no Ephemerides will reconcile Hippolyta, Quince, and Kurz. Moreover, there is a conflict of authority. W. A. Wright ( Preface , p. xi, footnote) took the pains to apply to Professor Adams, through whose kindness he was enabled to state that ‘ the nearest new moon to May I, 1590, was on April 23,
‘ and that there was a new moon on May I in i592-’ Kurz had better have left undisturbed the dust and moonshine on the ‘ old Ephemerides.’
By referring A Midsummer Night's Dream to Essex’s marriage, Kurz thinks to solve another problem hitherto insoluble, that of accounting for Shakespeare’s early patronage by the nobility. In Theseus, the hero and statesman, lofty of manner, appreciative of poesie, we find (p. 299) the ideal character which the popular verdict gave to Essex; and in Hippolyta the character of Lady Frances was adequately por¬ trayed. ‘ It is easy to see [p. 300] what an effect such a solution of the task must have had on Essex, a man who could appreciate all the beauties and delicacies of the play. . . . The performance, therefore, which so immeasurably surpassed all
DATE OF COMPOSITION
263
demands and expectations, must have drawn, of necessity, the attention of Essex to ‘ the poet. . . . The Earl of three and twenty and the Poet of six and twenty . . .
must have become intimate as soon as they had become personally acquainted, * Shakespeare in the inexhaustible fullness and grace of his genius ; Essex with his ‘ captivating condescension, whereby he elevated to his own level those in a lowly ‘station, and with that character so full of contradictions which offered fcr study at one and the same time a Plotspur and a Hamlet. Whose recommendation it was, ‘ whereon the poet three years afterwards was introduced to Southampton, is now ‘ placed beyond all doubt.’
It is in reference to these speculations by Kurz that W. A. Wright ( Preface , p. xi) caustically remarks : ‘ In such questions it would be well to remember the maxim ' of the ancient rabbis, « Teach thy tongue to say, I do not know.” ’ But is not this a little too severe on Kurz, who is merely copying the methods of English-speaking commentators in founding theory after theory on imaginary possibilities ?
Dowden (p. 67) : A Midsummer Night's Dream was written on the occasion of the marriage of some noble couple— possibly ... as Mr Gerald Massey supposes; possibly ... as Prof. Elze supposes.
Fleay, in his Manual, 1876, p. 26, gives the date as of 1592, but wider know¬ ledge led him to the belief that this was the date of the stage-play only. ‘ In its ‘ present form ’ it is of a later date. In his Life and Work of Shakespeare (1886, p. 181) we find, under the year 1595, as follows: ‘January 26 was the date of the mar¬ riage of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, at Greenwich. Such events were usually celebrated with the accompaniment of plays or interludes, masques written specially ‘for the occasion not having yet become fashionable. The company of players ‘ employed at these nuptials would certainly be the Chamberlain’s [the company to ‘ which Shakespeare belonged], who had, so lately as the year before, been in the ‘ employ of the Earl’s brother Ferdinand. No play known to us is so fit for the pur- ‘ pose as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which in its present form is certainly of this
* date- About the same time Edward Russel, Earl of Bedford, married Lucy Har-
‘ rington. Both marriages may have been enlivened by this performance. This is ‘ rendered more probable by the identity of the Oberon story with that of Drayton’s ‘ Nymphidia, whose special patroness at this time was the newly-married Countess of ‘ Bedford. . . . The date of the play here given is again confirmed by the description ‘ of the weather in II, ii. . . . Chute’s Cephalus and Procris was entered on the Sta- ‘ tionerd Registers, 28 September, 1593; Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, 22d October, ‘1593; Marlowe and Nash’s Dido was printed in 1594. All these stories are ‘ alluded to in the play. The date of the Court performance must be in the winter ‘ of I594-S- But the traces of the play having been altered from a version for the ‘ stage are numerous [see Fleay’s note on V, i, 417] _ The date of the stage-play
* may> 1 think> ^ Put in the winter of 1592; and if so, it was acted, not at the Rose,
‘ but where Lord Strange’s company were travelling. For the allusion in V, i, 59,
‘ “ Tbe thrice three Muses,” &c. to Spenser’s Tears of the Muses (1591), or Greene’s ‘ death, 3d September, I592> could not, on either interpretation, be much later than ‘ the autumn of I592> and the lines in III, i, 160, “ I am a spirit of no common rate :
* “ The summer still doth tend upon my state,” are so closely like those in Nash’s ‘ Summers Last Will [see Fleay’s note, ad loc.], that I think they are alluded to by ‘ Shakespeare. The singularly fine summer of 1592 is attributed to the influence of ‘ Elizabeth, the Fairy Queen. Nash’s play was performed at the Archbishop’s palace ‘ at Croydon in Michaelmas term of the same year by a “ number of hammer-handed
APPENDIX
264
' “ clowns (for so it pleaseth them in modesty to name themselves) but I believe the 1 company originally satirised in Shakespeare’s play was the Earl of Sussex’s, Bottom,
1 the chief clown, being intended for Robert Greene.’ See Prof. J. M. Browne ( Source ef the Plot), who has in this conjecture anticipated Fleay. In his English Drama, published in 1891, Fleay slightly modified his opinions. ‘This play,’ he there says (vol. ii, p. 194), ‘ has certainly alternative endings : one a song by Oberon for a mar-

* an Epilogue by Puck, apparently for the Court (cf. “ gentles ” in 1. 423). It might ‘ seem, as the Epilogue is placed last, that the marriage version was the earlier, and ‘ so I took it to be when I wrote my Life of Shakespeare, but the compliment to
* Elizabeth in II, i, 164, was certainly written for the Court; and this passage is essen- ‘ tial to the original conduct of the play, which may have been printed from a mar-
» for the marriage subsequent to the Court performance. One version must date 1596, « for the weather description, II, i, which can be omitted without in any way affecting ‘ the progress of the play, requires that date. I believe this passage was inserted for

‘ union of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon in 1598-9. In any case, this was ‘ Shakespeare’s first Epilogue now extant.’ Fleay finds further confirmation of his date ( Life and Work, p. 185) in the lion incident noted at III, i, 31.
W. A. Wright {Preface, ix) : If the occasion for which this play was written
* could be determined with any degree of probability, we should be able to ascertain
* within a little the time at which it was composed. But here again we embark upon
* a wide sea of conjecture, with neither star nor compass to guide us. That the Mid- ‘ summer Night’s Dream may have been first acted at the marriage of some noble- ‘ man, and that, from the various compliments which are paid to Elizabeth, the per- ‘ formance may have taken place when the Queen herself was present, are no improb-
‘ yet been proposed satisfies both conditions. ... In fact, we know nothing whatever ‘ about the matter, and of guesses like these [as set forth in the preceding pagesl
* there is neither end nor profit.’
Here ends the discussion of the nine specified topics which are supposed to deter¬ mine the Date of Composition. The opinions of several critics of weight, which are general in their scope, are as follows : —
Malone ( Variorum 1821, ii, p. 333) : ‘ The poetry of this piece, glowing with all
* the warmth of a youthful and lively imagination, the many scenes which it contains ‘ of almost continual rhyme, the poverty of the fable, and want of discrimination among ‘ the higher personages, dispose me to believe that it was one of our author’s earliest ‘ attempts in comedy.
‘ It seems to have been written while the ridiculous competitions prevalent among
* the histrionic tribe were strongly impressed by novelty on his mind. He would « naturally copy those manners first with which he was first acquainted. The ambi-
* tion of a theatrical candidate for applause he has happily ridiculed in Bottom the weaver. But among the more dignified persons of the drama we look in vain for any traits of character. The manners of Hippolyta, the Amazon, are undistinguished from those of other females. Theseus, the associate of Hercules, is not engaged in any adventure worthy of his rank or reputation, nor is he in reality an agent through-
DATE OF COMPOSITION
265
out the play. Like Henry VIII. he goes out a Maying. He meets the lovers in
perplexity, and makes no effort to promote their happiness; but when supernatural ‘ accidents have reconciled them, he joins their company, and concludes his day’s ‘ entertalnment uttering miserable puns at an interlude represented by a troop of ‘ clowns. Over the fairy part of the drama he cannot be supposed to have any influ- ‘ ence. This part of the fable, indeed (at least as much of it as relates to the quarrels ‘of Oberon and Titania), was not of our author’s invention.’ [This assertion rests on Tyrwhitt’s remark, that * the true progenitors of Shakespeare’s Oberon and Titania ’ appear to have been Pluto and Proserpine in Chaucer’s Merchant's Tale.— Ed.].
Through the whole piece, the more exalted characters are subservient to the interests ‘ 0f 111056 beneath them- We ^ugh with Bottom and his fellows; but is a single pas- ‘ sion agitated by the faint and childish solicitudes of Hermia and Demetrius, of Helena ‘ and Lysander, those shadows of each other ? That a drama, of which the principal ‘ personages are thus insignificant, and the fable thus meagre and uninteresting, was ‘ one of our author’s earliest compositions does not, therefore, seem a very improbable ‘ conjecture; nor are the beauties, with which it is embellished, inconsistent with this ‘ supposition; for the genius of Shakespeare, even in its minority, could embroider the ‘ coarsest materials with the brightest and most lasting colors.’
Verplanck {Introductory Remarks , p. 6, 1847) : It seems to me very probable (though I do not know that it has appeared so to any one else) that the Midsummer Night's Dream was originally written in a very different form from that in which we now have it, several years before the date of the drama in its present shape— that it was subsequently remoulded, after a long interval, with the addition of the heroic personages, and all the dialogue between Oberon and Titania, perhaps with some alteration of the lower comedy; the rhyming dialogue and the whole perplexity of the Athenian lovers being retained, with slight change, from the more boyish comedy. The completeness and unity of the piece would indeed quite exclude such a conjec¬ ture, if we were forced to reason only from the evidence afforded by itself; but, as in Romeo and Juliet (not to speak of other dramas), we have the certain proof of the amalgamation of the products of different periods of the author’s progressive intellect and power, the comparison leads to a similar conclusion here.
R. G. White (ed. i, p. 16, 1857) : It seems that A Midsummer Night's Dream was produced, in part at least, at an earlier period of Shakespeare’s life than his twenty-ninth year. [That is, in 1593.] Although as a whole it is the most exquis¬ ite, the daintiest, and most fanciful creation that exists in poetry, and abounds in pas¬ sages worthy even of Shakespeare in his full maturity, it also contains whole Scenes which are hardly worthy of his ’prentice hand that wrought Lowe's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Comedy of Errors, and which yet seem to bear the unmistakeable marks of his unmistakeable pen. These Scenes are the various interviews between Demetrius and Lysander, Hermia and Helen, in Acts II and III. It is difficult to believe that such lines as ‘ Do not say so, Lysander; say not so. What though he love your Hermia ? Lord what though ?' 1 When at your
hands did I deserve this scorn ? Is ’t not enough, is ’t not enough, young man. That I did never, no, nor never can,’ &c— Act II, Sc. i, — it is difficult to believe that these, and many others of a like character which accompany them, were written by Shakespeare after he had produced even Venus and Adonis and the plays mentioned above, and when he could write the poetry of the other parts of this very comedy. There seems, therefore, warrant for the opinion that this Dream was one of the very first conceptions of the young poet ; that, living in a rural district where tales of house-
266
APPENDIX
hold fairies were rife among his neighbors, memories of these were blended in his youthful reveries with images of the classic heroes that he found in the books which we know he read so eagerly ; that perhaps on some midsummer’s night he, in very deed, did dream a dream and see a vision of this comedy, and went from Strat¬ ford up to London with it partly written ; that, when there, he found it necessary at first to forego the completion of it for labor that would find readier acceptance at the theatre ; and that afterward, when he had more freedom of choice, he reverted to his early production, and in 1594 worked it up into the form in which it was produced. It seems to me that in spite of the silence of the Quarto title-pages on the subject, this might have been done, or at least that some additions might have been made to the play, for a performance at Court. The famous allusion to Queen Elizabeth as ‘ a ‘ fair vestal throned by the west ’ tends to confirm me in that opinion. Shakespeare never worked for nothing, and, besides, could he, could any man, have the heart to waste so exquisite a compliment as that is, and to such a woman as Queen Elizabeth, by uttering it behind her back ? Except in the play itself I have no support for this opinion, but I am willing to be alone in it.
[In a list of Shakespeare’s Works in the order in which they were probably writ¬ ten, R. G. White (vol. i, p. xlvi, 2d ed.) gives the date of the present play as of are additions to be found in the Folio which are not in the Quartos. There is none. — Ed.]
The CoWDEN-CLARKES : The internal evidence of the composition itself gives unmistakeable token of its having been written when the poet was in his flush of youthful manhood. The classicality of the principal personages, Theseus and Hip- polyta ; the Grecian-named characters ; the prevalence of rhyme ; the grace and whim¬ sicality of the fairy-folk; the rich warmth of coloring that pervades the poetic diction; the abundance of description, rather than of plot, action, and character-developement, all mark the young dramatist. With a manifest advance in beauty beyond those which we conceive to be his earliest-written productions — The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors, and Love's Labottr's Lost — we believe the Midsummer Night's Dream to be one of his very first-written dramas after those three plays. We feel it to have been, with Romeo and Juliet, the work of his happy hours, when he wrote from inspiration and out of the fulness of his luxuriant imagination, between the intervals of his business-work — the adaptation of such immediately needed stage- plays as the three parts of Henry VI. Those, we think, he touched up for current production, for the use of the theatre at which he was employed and had a share in ; but his overflowing poet-heart was put into productions like the Southern-storied Romeo and Juliet, and the fairy-favoured Midsummer Night' s Dream, where every page is a forest glade flooded with golden light amid the green glooms.
According to Prof. Ingram’s Table of Light and Weak Endings ( New Sh. Soc. Trans. 1874, p. 450) the present play stands fourth in the list.
According to Dr FuRNIVALL’s Order and Groups of the Plays, in his Introduc¬ tion to the Leopold Shakespeare, this play belongs to the First Period or Mistaken- Identity Group, and its date is given ‘ ? 15 90-1.’
Rev. H. P. Stokes ( Chronological Order of Sh.’s Plays, 1878, p. 52) : Mr Skeat, in his Shakespeare' s Plutarch, speaking of the various editions of North’s translation (viz. 1579, 1595, 1603, 1612, &c.), says: ‘Shakespeare must certainly have known ‘ the work before 1603, because there is a clear allusion to it in Midsummer Night's
DATE OF COMPOSITION
267
‘ I leave to the investigation of the reader.’ The present investigation seems to point to that very year, and may not the re-issue of North’s work in this year, after it had been so long out of print, have directed Shakespeare’s attention to what so soon became his chief store-house for material to work upon ?
To recapitulate, chronologically : — Malone (1790)
. I592
Chalmers
(1799)
• . . . beginning of 1598
Drake
(1817)
. 1593
Malone
(eSzi)
. 1594
Tieck
(1830)
. 1598
Campbell
(1838)
. 1594
Knight
(1840)
. 1594
Ulrici
(1847)
. 1596-7
Verplanck
(1847)
. 1595-6
Gervinus
(1849)
. 1594-6
W. W. Lloyd
(1856)
• • • . not before 1594
R. G. White i
(1857)
Shakespeare’s earliest play.
Collier
(1858)
. end of 1594 or beginning of 1595
Staunton
(1864)
. description of
seasons is singularly applicable to 1593-4
Dyce ii
(1866)
. two or three years before 1598
Keightley
(1867)
. 1594 or 1595
Elze, Kurz
(1869)

Furnivall
(1877)
. ? I590-I
Rolfe
(1877)
. . . perhaps as early as 1594
W. A. Wright (1878)
. before 1598
Stokes
(1878)
. 1595
Halliwell
(1879)
. . . after 20 January, 1595-6
Hudson
(1880)
. before 1594
R. G. White ii
(1883)
. . first draft
as early as 1592, if not earlier.
Fleay
(1886)
/ Stage play, 1592
Marshall
(1888)
l Court play, 1 5 94-5 • . . approximately, 1595
Massey
(1888)
. 1595
Deighton
(»893)
. 1592-1594
Verity
(1894)
. at end of 1594 or beginning of 1595
268
APPENDIX
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
Capell ( Introd . vol. i, p. 64, 1767) suggested that it was ‘not improbable that 4 Shakespeare took a hint of his fairies ’ from Drayton’s Nymphidia ; ‘ a line of that 4 poem, “ Thorough bush, thorough briar,” occurs also in this play.’
Mai.one set at rest this suggestion by showing that the Nymphidia was printed after A Midsummer Night's Dream. See p. 246, above*.
4 The rest of the play,’ continues Capell, 4 is, doubtless, invention, the names only 4 of Theseus, Hippolyta , and Theseus' former loves, Antiopa and others, being his- 4 torical ; and taken from the translated Plutarch in the article Theseus.'
The passages in Plutarch which, as is alleged, supplied Shakespeare with allu¬ sions, are as follows. They are taken from Skeat’s Shakespeare' s Plutarch, 1875 : —
4 [Theseus] pricked forwards with emulation and envy of [Hercules’s glory] . . . 4 determined with himself one day to do the like, and the rather, because they were 4 near kinsmen, being cousins removed by the mother’s side.’ — p. 278.
Again : ‘Albeit in his time other princes of Greece had done many goodly and 4 notable exploits in the wars, yet Herodotus is of opinion that Theseus was never in 4 any one of them, saving that he was at the battle of the Lapithae against the Cen- 4 taurs. . . . Also he did help Adrastus, King of the Argives, to recover the bodies of 4 those that were slain in the battle before the city of Thebes.’ — p. 288.
Compare : —
‘Lis. The battell with the Centaurs to be sung 4 By an Athenian Eunuch, to the Harpe.
4 The. Wee’l none of that. That haue I told my Loue 4 In glory of my kinsman Hercules.
‘Lis. The riot of the tipsie Bacchanals,
4 Tearing the Thracian singer, in their rage ?
4 The. That is an old deuice, and it was plaid 4 When I from Thebes came last a Conqueror.’
We read in Plutarch : 4 This Sinnis had a goodly fair daughter called Perigouna, 4 which fled away when she saw her father slain ; whom [Theseus] followed and 4 sought all about. But she had hidden herself in a grove full of certain kinds of 4 wild pricking rushes called stcebe, and wild sperage which she simply like a child 4 intreated to hide her, as if they had heard. . . . But Theseus finding her, called her, 4 and sware by his faith he would use her gently, and do her no hurt, nor displeasure 4 at all. Upon which promise she came out of the bush.’ — p. 279.
Again : ‘After he was arrived in Creta, he slew there the Minotaur ... by the • means and help of Ariadne : who being fallen in fancy with him, did give him a 4 clue of thread. . . . And he returned back the same way he went, bringing with him 4 those other young children of Athens, whom with Ariadne also he carried afterwards away. . . . And being a solemn custom of Creta, that the women should be present 4 to see those open sports and signts, Ariadne, being at these games among the rest, 4 fell further in love with Theseus seeing him so goodly a person, so strong, and invin- 4 cible in wrestling.’ — p. 283. 4 Some say, that Ariadne hung herself for sorrow, when 4 she saw that Theseus had cast her off. Other write, that she was transported by 4 mariners into the ile of Naxos, where she was married unto (Enarus the priest of 4 Bacchus : and they think that Theseus left her, because he was in love with another 4 as by these verses should appear : —
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
269
‘ /Egles, the nymph, was loved of Theseus,
W ho was the daughter of Panopeus.' — p, 284.
othertoM T°UChiDf, *e JW he made by the sea Major, Philochorus, and some other hold opmmn, that he went thither with Hercules against the Amazons: and that to honour his val.antness, Hercules gave him Antiopa, the Amazon. But the more part of the other historiographers ... do write, that Theseus went thither alone,
. . . and that he took this Amazon prisoner, which is likeliest to be true _ Bion
. . . saith, that he brought her away by deceit and stealth ... and that Theseus enticed her to come into his ship, who brought him a present; and so soon as she was aboard, he hoised his sail, and so carried her away.’— p 286 Again: ‘Afterwards, at the end of four months, peace was taken between fthe Athenians and the Amazons] by means of one of the women called Hippolyta. For this _ historiographer calleth the Amazon which Theseus married, Hippolyta, and not Antiopa. Nevertheless some say she was slain (fighting on Theseus’ side) with a art, y another called Molpadia. In memory whereof, the pillar which is joined to the temple of the Olympian ground was set up in her honour. We
are not to marvel, if the history of things so ancient be found so diversely written ’
— p. 288. J
From these weeds Shakespeare gathered this honey :—
* Qu- Why art thou here Come from the farthest steepe of India ?
But that forsooth the bouncing Amazon Your buskin’d Mistress, and your Warrior loue,
To Theseus must be wedded; and you come To giue their bed ioy and prosperitie.
‘ Ob. How canst thou thus for shame Tytania,
Glance at my credite, with Hippolita ?
Knowing I know thy loue to Theseus ?
Didst thou not leade him through the glimmering night From Peregenia, whom he rauished ?
And make him with faire Eagles breake his faith With Ariadne, and Antiopa ?'
CHAUCER’S KNIGHT’S TALE
In the First Variorum, 1773, Steevens remarked that it is ‘probable that the ‘ hint for this play was received from Chaucer’s Knight's Tale; thence it is that our ‘ author speaks of Theseus as duke of Athens.’
This suggestion was repeated in all the Variorums down to that of 1821 ; and was adopted by Knight, in what may be fairly considered as the first critical edition after that date. Singer’s edition of 1826 is little else than an abridgement, without acknowledgement, of the Variorum of 1821 ; and Harness’s contribution to his edi¬ tion of 1830 is mainly confined to The Life of Shakespeare. Knight even goes so far as to point out the very passages ‘ in which, as he says, p. 343, * it is not difficult to trace Shakespeare.’ These passages are as follows (ed. Morris) : _
‘ Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,
‘ Ther was a duk that highte Theseus;
270
APPENDIX
‘ Of Athenes he was lord and governour,
* And in his tyme swich a conquerour,
‘ That gretter was ther non under the sonne.
‘ Ful many a riche centre hadde he wonne ;
‘ That with his wisdam and his chivalrie ‘ He conquered al the regne of Femynye,
‘ That whilom was i-cleped Cithea ;
‘ And weddede the queen Ipolita,
‘ And brought hire hoom with him in his conlre ‘ With moche glorie and gret solempnit6,

‘ And thus with victorie and with melodye


‘ And certes, if it nere to long to heere,

‘ How wonnen was the regne of Femenye « By Theseus, and by his chivalrye ;
‘ And of the grete bataille for the nones ‘ Bytwix Athenes and the Amazones ;
‘ And how asegid was Ypolita,
‘ The faire hardy quyen of Cithea ;
‘ And of the feste that was at hire weddynge,
‘ And of the tempest at hire hoom comynge ;
« But al that thing I most as now forbere.
* I have, God wot, a large feeld to ere.’
In a note on I, i, 177, Knight says, ‘ The very expression “ to do observance ” in connection with the rites of May, occurs twice in Chaucer’s Knight s Tale ‘ This passeth yeer by yeer, and day by day,
‘ Til it fel oones in a morwe of May ‘ That Emelie, that fairer was to seene ‘ Than is the lilie on hire stalkes grene.
‘ And fresscher than the May with floures newe —
‘ For with the rose colour strof hire hewe,
‘ I not which was the fairer of hem two —
‘ Er it was day, as sche was wont to do,
‘ Sche was arisen, and al redy dight ;
‘ For May wole have no sloggardye a nyght.
‘ The sesoun priketh every gentil herte,
‘ And maketh hin out of his sleepe sterte,
* And seith, “Arys, and do thin observance [Page 33. The italics are Knight’s.] Again : —
‘ And Arcite, that is in the court ryal ‘ With Theseus, his squyer principal,
‘ Is risen, and loketh on the mery day.
‘ And for to doon his observance to May. [P- 47]- Furthermore in a note on III, ii, 412 : — ‘ Even till the Easteme gate all fiene reu, • Opening on Neptune, with faire blessed beames, Turnes into yellow gold, his salt
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
271
•greene streames.’ Knight says: ‘This splendid passage was, 1 by some line in Chaucer’s Knight's Tale :
* The busy larke, messager of day,
perhaps, suggested
Salueth in hire song the morwe gray ;
* And fyry Phebus ryseth up so bright,
‘ That al the orient laugheth of the light,
‘ And with his stremes dryeth in the greves
* The silver dropes, hongyng on the leeves.’ — [p. 46].
, J011 ‘ 006 °ne 0f you finde out the Forrester,’ &c., IV, i, 117, Knight observes : ihe Iheseus of Chaucer was a mighty hunter : _
‘ This mene I now by mighty Theseus
* That for to honte is so desirous,
‘ And namely the grete hart in May,
‘ That in his bed ther daweth him no day,
‘ That he nys clad, and redy for to ryde ‘ With hont and horn, and houndes him byside.
‘ For in his hontyng hath he such delyt,
‘ That it is al his joye and appetyt ' To been himself the grete hertes bane,
‘ lor after Mars he serveth now Dyane.’ _ [p. 52].
Halliwell (Introd. p. 11, 1841) thinks that commentators have overlooked tne following passage, ‘ which occurs nearly at the end of The Knight’s Tale, and may
‘ have furmshed Shakespeare with the idea of introducing an interlude at the end of ‘ his play : —
‘ “ — ne how the Grekes pleye ‘ “ The wake-pleyes, kepe I nat to seye ;
‘ “ Who wrastleth best naked, with oyle enoynt,
Ne who that bar him best in no disjoynt.
‘ “ I wol not telle eek how that they ben goon * “ Horn til Athenes whan the pley is doon ” [p. 91].
Hie introduction of the clowns and their interlude was perhaps an afterthought.
Again, in The Knight' s Tale, we have this passage : _
‘ “ Duk Theseus, and al his companye,
‘ “ Is comen hom to Athenes his citd,
‘ “ With alle blys and gret solempnitd ” [p. 83],
‘ which bears too remarkable a resemblance to what Theseus says in the Midsummer 1 Nights Dream to be accidental: — “ Away with us to Athens: Three and three, ‘ “ we’H hold a feast in great solempnity ” [IV, i, 202].
In the Legende of Thisbe of Babylon we read : _
‘ “ Thus wolde they seyn
* “ Thurgh thyn envye thow us lettest alle !’ ” _ [line 51],
‘ which is certainly similar to the following line in Pyramus’s address to Wall : “ O ‘ “ wicked Wall, through whom I see no bliss !” ’
The foregoing are all the extracts, I believe, which have been anywhere cited in proof of Steevens’s suggestion, the value whereof has been correctly estimated, I think, by Staunton, who says (p. 476) : ‘ The persistence [of the commentators] in ‘ assigning the groundwork of the fable to Chaucer’s Knight's Tale is a remarkable ‘ instance of the docility with which succeeding writers will adopt, one after the other,
‘ 411 assertion that has really little or no foundation in fact. There is scarcely any
APPENDIX
272
‘ resemblance whatever between Chaucer’s tale and Shakespeare’s play, beyond that ‘ of the scene in both being laid at the Court of Theseus. The Palamon, Arcite, and « Emilie of the former are very different persons indeed from the Demetrius, Lysan- ‘ der, Helena, and Hermia of the latter. Chaucer has made Duke Theseus a lead- ‘ ing character in his story, and has ascribed the unearthly incidents to mythological ‘ personages, conformable to a legend which professes to narrate events that actually ‘ happened in Greece. Shakespeare, on the other hand, has merely adopted Theseus, ‘ whose exploits he was acquainted with through the pages of North’s Plutarch , as a ‘ well-known character of romance, in subordination to whom the rest of the dramatis 'persona might fret their hour; and has employed for supernatural machinery those ‘ “ airy nothings ” familiar to the literature and traditions of various people and nearly ‘ all ages. There is little at all in common between the two stories except the name ‘ of Theseus, the representative of which appears in Shakespeare simply as a prince ‘ who lived in times when the introduction of ethereal beings, such as Oberon, Tita- ‘ nia, and Puck, was in accordance with tradition and romance.’
Fleay ( Life and Work, p. 185) says that Shakespeare got the name of Philos- trate from Chaucer’s Knight's Tale.
Tyrwhitt [In trod. p. 97, 1798), in discussing the original of The Marchaunde’ s Tale, says that he cannot help thinking that ‘ the Pluto and Preserpina in this tale ‘ were the true progenitors of Oberon and Titania, or rather, that they themselves ‘ have, once at least, deigned to revisit our poetical system under the latter names,’ — a remark which would not have been repeated here had it not been repeated, more than once, elsewhere.
PYRAMUS AND THISBE
Ritson ( Remarks , p. 47, 1783) in reference to Pyrarnus and Thisbe observes: ‘ There is an old pamphlet, containing the history of this amorous pair, in lamentable ‘ verse by one Dunstan Gale, which appears to have been printed in 1596; and may, ‘ not improbably, be found the butt of Shakespeare’s ridicule in some parts of this ‘ interlude.’
Malone, in a note on I, ii, 15, gives a later date : ‘A poem entitled Pyrarnus and ‘ Thisbe, by D. Gale, was published in 4to in 1597; but this, I believe, was posterior * to the Midsummer Night’s Dream.' * On the contrary,’ says Chalmers [Sup. Apol. p. 363), who also gives 1597 38 the date, * I believe that Gale’s Pyrarnus 6° ‘ Thisbe was prior to Shakespeare’s “ most lamentable comedy.” ’
Collier [Bibliog. Account, &c., 1865, ii, 43) thus allays the breeze evoked by Gale: ‘No earlier edition [than 1617, of this poem] is known; but the dedication ‘ “ to the worshipfull his verie friend D. B. H.” is dated by the author, Dunstan Gale, ‘“this 25th of November, 1596.”’ From the description and specimens of this ‘ poem ’ given by Collier, we need not ‘ desire it of more acquaintance ’ ; nor with Dr. Muffet’s Silkworms and their Flies, 1599, mentioned by Collier [lb. i, 97) and by Halliwell ad loc.
Steevens mentions a license recorded in the Stationers' Registers (vol. i, p. 215, ed. Arber) as given to ‘ William greffeth,’ in 1 562, ‘ for pryntynge of a boke intituled ‘ Perymus and Thesbye.’
Jit appears to me to be almost childish to attempt to fix upon any single source (except possibly Ovid ) as the authority to which Shakespeare went for a story, with which, in its every detail, the early literature of Europe abounds. Would it be possible to limit to one single writer the story of a pair of star-crost lovers, which had started iD
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
273
Babylon under the shadow of the tomb of Ninus, was familiar to the Greeks and Ro¬ mans, and used m the Middle Ages by pious monks as an allegory of the human soul?
The inquisitive reader is referred to a thorough and exhaustive compilation of the versions of this legend in Latin, in Greek, and in the ancient and modem literatures of France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Roumania, Italy, and England by Dr. Georg Hart (Tie Pyramus- 6° Tkisbe-Sage, Passau, 1889, and Part ii, 1891).
Many commentators have called attention to what they have assumed to be indi¬ cations here and there of Shakespeare’s having read the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in Golding’s translation of Ovid. The story is here given from Golding ( The fourth tooke, 1567, p. 43, verso)
Within the towne (of whose huge walles so monstrous high & thicke The fame is giuen Semyramis for making them of bricke)
Dwelt hard together two yong folke in houses ioyned so nere That vnder all one roofe well nie both twaine conueyed were.
The name of him was Pyramus, and Thisbe calde was she.
So faire a man- in all the East was none aliue as he,
Nor nere a woman maide nor wife in beautie like to hir.
This neighbrod bred acquaintance first, this neyghbrod first did stirre The secret sparkes, this neighbrod first an entrance in did showe,
For loue to come to that to which it afterward did growe.
And if that right had taken place they had bene man and wife,
But still their Parents went about to let which (for their life)
They could not let. For both their heartes with equall flame did bume.
No man was priuie to their thoughts. And for to serue their tume In steade of talke they vsed signes, the closelier they supprest The fire of loue, the fiercer still it raged in their brest.
The wall that parted house from house had riuen therein a crany Which shronke at making of the wall, this fault not markt of any Of many hundred yeares before (what doth not loue espie.)
These louers first of all found out, and made a way whereby To talke togither secretly, and through the same did goe Their louing whisprings verie light and safely to and fro.
Now as a toneside Pyramus and Thisbe on the tother
Stoode often drawing one of them the pleasant breath from other
O thou enuious wall (they sayd) why letst thou louers thus ?
What matter were it if that thou permitted both of vs In armes eche other to embrace ? Or if thou thinke that this Were ouermuch, yet mightest thou at least make roume to kisse.
And yet thou shaft not finde vs churles : we think our selues in det For this same piece of courtesie, in vouching safe to let Our sayings to our friendly eares thus freely come and goe,
Thus hauing where they stoode in vaine complayned of their woe,
When night drew nere, they bade adew and eche gaue kisses sweete Vnto the parget on their side, the which did neuer meete.
Next morning with hir cherefull light had driuen the starres aside And Phebus with his burning beames the dewie grasse had dride.
These louers at their wonted place by foreappointment met.
Where after much complaint and mone they couenanted to get Away from such as watched them, and in the Euening late 18
APPENDIX
274
To steale out of their fathers house and eke the Citie gate.
And to thentent that in the fieldes they strayde not vp and downe They did agree at Ninus Tumb to meete without the towne,
And tarie vnderneath a tree that by the same did grow Which was a faire high Mulberie with fruite as white as snow,
Hard by a cool and trickling spring. This bargaine pleasde them both And so daylight (which to their thought away but slowly goth)
Did in the Ocean fall to rest, and night from thence doth rise.
Assoone as darkenesse once was come, straight Thisbe did deuise A shift to wind hir out of doores, that none that were within Perceyued hir : And muffling hir with clothes about hir chin,
That no man might disceme hir face, to Ninus Tumb she came Vnto the tree, and sat hir downe there vnderneath the same.
Loue made hir bold. But see the chance, there comes besmerde with blood About the chappes a Lionesse all foming from the wood From slaughter lately made of Kine to staunch hir bloudie thurst With water of the foresaid spring. Whome Thisbe spying furst A farre by moonelight, therevpon with fearfull steppes gan flie,
And in a darke and yrkesome caue did hide hirselfe thereby.
And as she fled away for hast she let hir mantle fall
The whych for feare she left behind not looking backe at all.
Now when the cruell Lionesse hir thurst had stanched well,
In going to the Wood she found the slender weed that fell From Thisbe , which with bloudie teeth in pieces she did teare The night was somewhat further spent ere Pyramus came there Who seeing in the suttle sande the print of Lions paw,
Waxt pale for feare. But when also the bloudie cloke he saw All rent and tome, one night (he sayd) shall louers two confounde.
Of which long life deserued she of all that liue on ground.
My soule deserues of this mischaunce the perill for to beare.
I wretch haue bene the death of thee, which to this place of feare Did cause thee in the night to come, and came not here before.
My wicked limmes and wretched guttes with cruell teeth therfore Deuour ye O ye Lions all that in this rocke doe dwell.
But Cowardes vse to wish for death. The slender weede that fell From Thisbe vp he takes, and streight doth beare it to the tree.
Which was appointed erst the place of meeting for to bee.
And when he had bewept and kist the garment which he knew,
Receyue thou my bloud too (quoth he) and therewithall he drew His sworde, the which among his guttes he thrust, and by and by , Did draw it from the bleeding wound beginning for to die, V
And cast himselfe vpon his backe, the blood did spin on hie J
As when a Conduite pipe is crackt, the water bursting out Doth shote itselfe a great way off and pierce the Ayre about.
The leaues that were vpon the tree besprincled with his blood Were died blacke. The roote also bestained as it stoode,
A deepe darke purple colour straight vpon the Berries cast. v
Anon scarce ridded of hir feare with which she was agast, V
For doubt of disapointing him commes Thisbe forth in hast, )
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
And for hir louer lookes about, reioycing for to tell
How hardly she had scapt that night the daunger that befell.
And as she knew right well the place and facion of the tree (As whych she saw so late before) : euen so when she did see The colour of the Berries turnde, she was vncertain whither It were the tree at which they both agreed to meete togither.
While in this doubtful stounde she stoode, she cast hir eye aside
And there beweltred in his bloud hir louer she espide
Lie sprawling with his dying limmes : at which she started backe,
And looked pale as any Box, a shuddring through hir stracke,
Euen like the Sea which sodenly with whissing noyse doth moue,
When with a little blast of winde it is but toucht aboue.
But when approching nearer him she knew it was hir loue. J
She beate hir brest, she shrieked out, she tare hir golden heares,
And taking him betweene hir armes did wash his wounds with teares, She meynt hir weeping with his bloud, and kissing all his face (Which now became as colde as yse) she cride in wofull case Alas what chaunce my Pyramus hath parted thee and mee ? ^
Make aunswere O my Pyramus : It is thy Thisb, euen shee Whome thou doste loue most heartely that speaketh vnto thee. J
Giue eare and rayse thy heauie heade. He hearing Thisbes name,
Lift vp his dying eyes and hauing seene hir closde the same.
But when she knew hir mantle there and saw his scabberd lie Without the swoorde : Vnhappy man thy loue hath made thee die :
Thy loue (she said) hath made thee slea thy selfe. This hand of mine Is strong inough to doe the like. My loue no lesse than thine Shall giue me force to worke my wound. I will pursue the dead.
And wretched woman as I am, it shall of me be sed That like as of thy death I was the only cause and blame,
So am I thy companion eke and partner in the same,
For death which only coulde alas a sunder part vs twaine,
Shall neuer so disseuer vs but we will meete againe.
And you the Parentes of vs both, most wretched folke alyue,
Let this request that I shall make in both our names byliue Entreate you to permit that we whome chaste and stedfast loue And whome euen death hath ioynde in one, may as it doth behoue In one graue be together layd. And thou vnhappie tree Which shroudest now the corse of one, and shalt anon through mee Shroude two, of this same slaughter holde the sicker signes for ay \
Blacke be the colour of thy fruite and mourning like alway, L
Such as the murder of vs twaine may euermore bewray. J
This said, she tooke the sword yet warme with slaughter of hir loue And setting it beneath hir brest, did to hir heart it shoue.
Hir prayer with the Gods and with their Parentes tooke effect.
For when the fruite is throughly ripe, the Berrie is bespect With colour tending to a blacke. And that which after fire Remained, rested in one Tumbe as Thisbe did desire.
APPENDIX
276
Boswell ( Var. ’21, p. 193) observed that in A Handefull of Pleasant Delites, by Clement Robinson, 1584, there is ‘A new Sonet of Pyramus and Thisbie,’ — a remark which would have been scarcely worth repeating, had not Fleay ( Life and Work, p. 186) asserted that ‘ the Pyramus interlude is clearly based on C. Robinson’s HandfuU • of Pleasant Delights , 1584.’ Boswell’s allusion is clear enough : it is to the ‘ Sonet ’ signed ‘ I. Thomson.’ But Fleay’s is not so clear, inasmuch as in the ‘ Handfull,’ besides Thomson’s * Sonet,’ Pyramus is referred to by name in four other ‘ pleasant ‘ delights,’ so that we might infer that it is to the number of the allusions to Pyramus that Fleay refers, and yet this would not account for employing Pyramus’s story as an interlude. It is scarcely possible that Fleay could have referred, as the ‘ clear basis ’ of Shakespeare’s interlude, to the following (p. 30, Arber’s Reprint ) : —
A new Sonet of Pyramus and Thisbie.
To the, Downe right Squier.
Ou Dames (I say) that climbe the mount of Helicon,
Come on with me, and giue account, what hath been don :
Come tell the chaunce ye Muses all, and dolefull newes,
Which on these Louers did befall, which I accuse.
In Babilon not long agone,
a noble Prince did dwell :
whose daughter bright dimd ech ones sight, so farre she did excel.
An other Lord of high renowne, who had a sonne :
And dwelling there within the towne great loue begunne :
Pyramus this noble Knight,
I tel you true :
Who with the loue of Thisbie bright, did cares renue :
It came to passe, their secrets was, beknowne vnto them both :
And then in minde, their place do finde, where they their loue vnclothe.
This loue they vse long tract of time, till it befell :
At last they promised to meet at prime by Minus well :
Where they might louingly imbrace, in loues delight :
That he might see his Thisbies face and she his sight :
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
2 77
In ioyfull case, she approcht the place, where she her Pyramus
Had thought to viewd, but was renewd to them most dolorous.
Thus while she staies for Pyramus , there did proceed :
Out of the wood a Lion fierce, made Thisbie dreed :
And as in haste she fled awaie, her Mantle fine :
The Lion tare in stead of praie, till that the time
That Pyramus proceeded thus, and see how lion tare
The Mantle this of Thisbie his,
he desperately doth fare.
For why he thought the lion had, faire Thisbie slaine.
And then the beast with his bright blade, he slew certaine :
Then made he mone and said alas,
(O wretched wight)
Now art thou in a woful case For Thisbie bright :
Oh Gods aboue, my faithfull loue
shal neuer faile this need :
For this my breath by fatall death, shal weaue Atropos threed.
Then from his sheathe he drew his blade, and to his hart
He thrust the point, and life did vade, with painfull smart :
Then Thisbie she from cabin came with pleasure great,
And to the well apase she ran, there for to treat :
And to discusse, with Pyramus of al her former feares.
And when slaine she, found him truly, she shed foorth bitter teares.
When sorrow great that she had made, she took in hand
The bloudie knife, to end her life, by fatall hand.
Yru Ladies all, peruse and see, the faithfulnesse,
278
APPENDIX
How these two Louers did agree, to die in distresse :
You Muses waile, and do not faile, but still do you lament :
These louers twaine, who with such pame, did die so well content.
Finis. I. Thomson.
Greene's History of James IV.
Ward {Eng. Dram. Hist. 1875, i, 380) says that ‘the idea of the entire machin- ‘ ery of Oberon and his fairy-court was, in all probability, taken by Shakespeare from ‘ Greene’s Scottish History of James IV (1590 circ.).’
Steevens called attention to this drama, but he did not know at the time that Greene was the author. Ward, to whose excellent guidance we can all trust, is so outspoken that it behoves us to examine this play of James IV, and we can do no better than to take Ward’s own account of it.
‘ I think,’ says Ward {Ibid. p. 220), ‘ upon the whole the happiest of Greene’s ‘ dramas is The Scottish Historie of James IV, slaine at Flodden. Intermixed with a ‘ pleasant Comedie, presented by Oboram King of Fay eries (printed in 1598). The ‘ title is deceptive, for the fatal field of Flodden is not included in the drama, which ‘ ends happily by the reconciliation of King James with his Queen Dorothea. Indeed, ‘ the plot of the play has no historical foundation ; James IV’s consort, though of ‘ course she was an English princess, as she is in the play, was named Margaret, not ‘ Dorothea; and King Henry VII never undertook an expedition to avenge any mis- ‘ deeds committed against her by her husband. But though the play is founded on
* fiction, such as we may be astonished to find applied to an historical period so little
* remote from its spectators, it is very interesting ; and, besides being symmetrically
* constructed, has passages both of vigour and pathos.’ [Here follows the story, which, as it has no alleged connection with the Midsummer Night’s Dream, is here omitted.] ‘ But though The Scottish History of James IV is both effective in its ‘ serious and amusing in its comic scenes, . . . Greene seems to have thought it neces-
* sary to give to it an adventitious attraction by what appears a quite superfluous addi-
* tion. The title describes the play as “ intermixed with a pleasant Comedie pre-
* “ sen ted by Oboram King of Fayeries,” but the “ pleasant comedy,” in point of fact, ‘ consists only of a brief prelude, in which Oberon and a misanthropical Scotchman ‘ named Bohan introduce the play as a story written down by the latter, and of dances ‘ and antics by the fairies between the acts, which are perfectly supererogatory inter- ‘ mezzos. The “ history,” or body of the play itself, is represented by a set of play- ‘ ers, “ guid fellows of Bohan’s countrymen,” before “Aster Oberon,” who is the same ‘ personage as he who figures in the Midsummer Nights Dream, though very differ- ‘ ently drawn, if, indeed, he can be said to be drawn at all.’
That the reader may judge for himself how far Greene’s Oberon (‘ Oboram ’ in the title appears to be a mere misprint; according to the texts of both Dyce and Gro- sart, it is uniformly ‘ Oberon ’ in the body of the play) is ‘ the same personage ’ as Shakespeare’s Oberon, and to what extent * it is probable ’ that ‘ the entire machinery ‘ of Oberon and his fairy court ’ was taken by Shakespeare from Greene, I will here give every line of the scenes and stage-directions wherein Oberon appears in James