I. Johnson : In this scene Shakespeare takes advantage of his knowledge of the

theatre to ridicule the prejudices and the competitions of the players. Bottom, who
is generally acknowledged the principal actor, declares his inclination to be for a tyrant, for a part of fury, tumult, and noise, such as every young man pants to perform when he first steps upon the stage. The same Bottom, who seems bred in a tiring- room, has another histrionical passion. He is for engrossing every part, and would exclude his inferiors from all possibility of distinction. He is therefore desirous to play Pyramus, Thisbe, and the Lion, at the same time. — Staunton suggests the pos¬ sibility that ‘ in the rude dramatic performance of these handicraftsmen of Athens, Shakespeare was referring to the plays and pageants exhibited by the trading com panies of Coventry, which were celebrated down to his own time, and which he might very probably have witnessed.’ This is not impossible, especially in view of the fact, which I do not remember to have seen noticed in connection with the present play, that midsummer eve was especially chosen as the occasion for a ‘ showe ’ or 4 watche,’ performed by various companies of handicraftsmen. ‘ Heare we maye note that ye showe or watche, on midsomer eaue, called “ midsomer showe,” yearely now vsed within y® Citti of Chester, was vsed in y* tyme of those whitson playes & before,’ so says David Rogers, in 1609, Harl. MS, 1944, quoted by F. J. Furnivall in Appendix to I. * * 4 5 6 Forewords ’ of The Digby Mysteries, p. xxiii, New Sh. Soc. — Ed.
For remarks on Bottom’s character, see Appendix.
5. you were best] For this substitution for the full phrase to you it were best, see Abbott, § 230.
5. generally] W. A. Wright: This, in Bottom’s language, means particularly, severally.
6. scrip] Grey (i, 45) : Formerly used in the same sense with script, and signi¬ fied a scrip of paper or any manner of writing.
3
34
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act I, SC. il.
Boi. Fil ft, good Peter Quince , fay what the play treats 1 1 on : then read the names of the Aflors : and fo grow on to a point.
Quin. Many our play is the moil lamentable Come¬ dy, and moft cruell death of Pyramus and Thisbie. 15
Bot. A very good peece of worke I affure you, and a
1 I 1 J7> 4°- Peter] Peeter Qt. point P'4. go on to a point Warb. go
12, * I * * * * *3- grow. . -point ] grow to a point on to appoint Coll. MS.
Qq, Cap. Steev. Mai. Var. Coll. Sing. 14. Marry\ Mary QI.
Sta. Dyce, Ktly, Cam. grow on to ap-
9. his wedding] R. G. White (ed. i) : This use of ‘ bis ’ is in conformity to the usage of educated persons in Shakespeare’s day.
12, 13. grow ... point] Johnson: ‘Grow’ is used in allusion to his name, Quince. — Steevens : It has, I believe, no reference to the name. I meet with the same kind of expression in Wily Beguiled, ‘As yet we are grown to no conclusion.’ [I do not think this is to be found in Wily Beguiled.— Ed.] Again, in The Arraign¬ ment of Paris, 1584: ‘Our reasons will be infinite, I trow, Unless unto some other point we grow’ [II, i]. — Warner upholds, as an original emendation, the reading ‘ appoint ’ of F4, and explains : ‘ Quince first tells them the name of the play, then calls the actors by their names, and after that tells each of them what part is set down for him to act. Perhaps Shakespeare wrote “ to point," i. e. to appoint.’ — Halli- Well : Warner’s suggestion was probably derived from the Opera of The Fairy Queen, 1692, where the sentence is thus given : — ‘ and so go on to appoint the parts.’ Thomas White (p. 29) : Does not this mean draw to a conclusion, alluding to Bot¬ tom’s trade of a weaver ? In a tract in the public library at Cambridge, with the fol¬ lowing title — The Reformado precisely characterised by a modem Churchman — occurs this passage : ‘ Here are mechanicks of my profession who can seperate the pieces of salvation from those of damnation, measure out the thread, substantially pressing the points, till they have fashionably filled up their work with a well-bottomed conclusion.’
— Staunton : That is, and so to business. A common colloquial phrase formerly. _
R. G. White: The speech as it stands is good colloquial Bottom-ese. _ W. A.
Wright: It is not always quite safe to interpret Bottom, but he seems to mean ‘ come to the point.’
14. lamentable Comedy] Steevens : This is very probably a burlesque on the title-page of Cambyses, ‘A lamentable Tragedie, mixed full of pleasant Mirth, con - teyning the life of Cambises, King of Percia, &c. by Thomas Preston ’ [1561 ? It is,
I think, very doubtful if any burlesque of a particular play was meant. At any rate,
Shakespeare’s audiences probably were not so learned that they could at once appre¬
ciate the fling at a tragedy in all likelihood thirty years old. Moreover, even in Dry- den’s time the limits of Tragedy and Comedy were vague. Cymbeline is still classed
among Tragedies. — Ed.]
15. Pyramus] See Appendix, Source of the Plot.
16. worke] Knight: Bottom and Sly both speak of a theatrical representation as
they would of a piece of cloth or a pair of shoes. [Perhaps the antithesis may be in calling a ‘ play ’ a ‘ work.’ Ben Jonson was the first, I believe, to call his Plavs Works.— Ed.] 7
ACT I, sc. ii.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
merry. Now good Peter Quince , call forth your A&ors by the fcrowle. Mafters fpread your felues.
Quince. Anfwere as I call you. Nick Bottome the Weauer.
Bottome. Ready ; name what part I am for , and proceed.
Quince. You Nicke Bottome are fet downe for Py- ramus.
Bot. What is Py ramus, a louer, or a tyrant ?
Quin. A Louer that kills himfelfe moft gallantly for loue.
Bot. That will aske fome teares in the true perfor¬ ming of it .• if I do it, let the audience looke to their eies : I will mooue ftormes ; I will condole in fome meafure. To the reft yet, my chiefe humour is for a tyrant. I could
20. Weauer.-] Weauer ? Q,. 31. reft yet,] QqFf, Rowe, Pope, Sta.
25. Pyramus,] Pyramus ? Qz. Dyce ii, iii. rest yet, Theob. et cet.
26. gallantly] gallant Qq, Cap. Coll. (subs.).
Sing. Sta. Ktly, Cam. 7b the reft] As a stage direction,
29. it : if] it. If Q,. Opera, 1692, Deighton conj.
30. ftormes] stones Coll. MS.
20. Weauer] In the Transactions of The New Shakspere Soc. 1877-79, P- 425, G. H. Overend describes and transcribes a bill, addressed to Cardinal Wolsey as Chancellor, wherein is contained the ‘ complaint of one George Mailer, a glazier, against Thomas Arthur, a tailor, whom he had undertaken to train as a player.’
26. gallantly] Collier: This improves the grammar [of the Quartos], but ren¬ ders the expression less characteristic.— R. G. White (ed. 1) : On the contrary, it makes the speech quite unsuited to good Peter Quince, who always speaks correctly. Indeed, it should be observed that purely grammatical blunders are rarely or never put into the mouths of Shakespeare’s characters; probably because grammatical forms, in minute points at least, were not so fixed and so universally observed in his day as to make violations of them very ridiculous to a general audience. He depends for burlesque effect upon errors more radically nonsensical and ludicrous.
30. condole] W. A. Wright: Bottom, of course, blunders, but it is impossible to say what word he intended to employ. Shakespeare uses ‘ condole ’ only once be¬ sides, and he then puts it into the mouth of Ancient Pistol, who in such matters is as little of an authority as Bottom. See Hen. V: II, i, 133: ‘Let us condole the knight,’ that is, mourn for him. In Hamlet, I, ii, 93, ‘ condolement ’ signifies the expression of grief.
31. rest yet,] Staunton: The colon after ‘rest’ in modern editions is a deviation which originated perhaps in unconsciousness of one of the senses Shakespeare attrib¬ utes to the word ‘ yet.’ ‘ To the rest yet,’ is simply, ‘ To the rest now,’ or, as he shortly after repeats it, ‘Now, name the rest of the players.’ — W. A. Wright gives two in¬ stances of the use of ‘ yet ’ in this unemphatic position : Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s
36
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act I, sc. iL
play Ercles rarely, or a part to teare a Cat in, to make all 32 fplit the raging Rocks ; and (hiuering (hocks (hall break the locks of prifon gates , and Phibbus carre (hall (hine from farre, and make and marre the foolifh Fates. This 35
32. Cat] Cap Warb.
in, to'] in. To Pope, Han. in and to Ktly. in two, Bottom the Weaver, 1661. in: To Theob. et seq. (subs.).
32, 33. to make all fplit] Separate line, Cap.
33-35- the raging ... Fates] QqFf, Rowe+, Sta. Eight lines, Johns, et.
cet.
33. fplit the] QqFf, Rowe ii, Pope Han. Sta. fplit to F4, Rowe i. split— “ the Theob. et cet. (subs.).
and shiuering] With shivering Farmer, Steev.’85, ’93.
34. Phibbus] Phibbus' s Rowe i. Phio bus' Theob. ii et seq.
Life, p. 57: ‘Before I departed yet I left her with child of a son'; and Meas.for Meas. Ill, ii, 187 : ‘ The duke yet would have dark deeds darkly answered.’
32. Ercles] Malone: In Greene’s Groafs-worth of Wit, 1592, a player who is introduced says : ‘ The twelue labors of Hercules haue I terribly thundered on the stage.’ — Hallxwell : Henslowe, in his Diary, mentions ‘ the firste parte of Hercu- lous,’ a play acted in 1595, and afterwards, in the same manuscript, the ‘ two partes of Hercolus ’ are named as the work of Martin Slather or Slaughter. In Sidney’s Arcadia : ‘ leaning his hands vpon his bill, and his chin vpon his hands, with the voyce of one that playeth Hercules in a play’ [Lib. i, p. 50, ed. 1598], — W. A. Wright : The part of Hercules was like that of Herod in the Mysteries, one in which the actor could indulge to the utmost his passion for ranting.
32. teare a Cat] Edwards (p. 52) : A burlesque upon Hercules’s killing a lion. — Heath (p. 45) takes Warburton’s emendation, cap, seriously, and supposes ‘ it might not be unusual for a player, in the violence of his rant, sometimes to tear his cap.’ — And Capell takes Bottom seriously and supposes ‘he might have seen “Ercles” acted, and some strange thing torn which he mistook fora cat.’ — Stee- VENS: In Middleton’s The Roaring Girl, 1611, there is a character called ‘ Tearcat,’ who says : Tam called by those who have seen my valour, Tearcat ’ [V, i]. In an anonymous piece, called Histriomastix, 1610, a captain says to a company of players : ‘ Sirrah, this is you would rend and tear the cat upon a stage.’ [Act V, p. 73, ed. Simpson, who attributes large portions of the play to Marston, and places the date circa 1 599, but a few years later, therefore, than the Mid. N. Dream. — Ed.]
33- split] Farmer : In The Scornful Lady, II, iii, by Beau, and FI. we meet with ‘ Two roaring boys of Rome, that made all split.’ Dyce : The phrase was a favourite expression with our old dramatists. — In his Few Notes, p. 61, Dyce observes that he believes ‘ it has not been remarked ’ that the expression is properly a ‘ nautical phrase : “ He set downe this period with such a sigh, that, as the Marriners say-, a man would haue thought al would haue split againe." — Greene’s Neuer too late, sig. G3, ed. 1611.’] — W. A. Wright: Compare with all this, which it illustrates, Hamlet’s advice to the players, III, ii, 9, &c : ‘ to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,’ &c.
33-35- the raging . . . Fates] Theobald: I presume this to be either a quota¬ tion from some fustian old play, or a ridicule on some bombastic rants, very near resembling a direct quotation.— R. G. White (ed. i) : Does not Bottom’s expression in line 35, ‘This was lofty,’ make it certain that it is a quotation? — Staunton: The
ACT I, sc. ii.J A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
37
was lofty. Now name the reft of the Players. This 36 is Ercles vaine, a tyrants vaine : a louer is more condo- ling.
Quin . Francis Flute the Bellowes-mender.
Flu. Heere Peter Quince. 40
Quin. You muft take Tliisbie on you.
Flut. What is Thisbie , a wandring Knight ?
Quin. It is the Lady that Pyranius muft loue.
Flut. Nay faith, let not mee play a woman, I haue a beard comming. 45
37. Ercles] Ercles' s Opera, 1692; Ercles1 Theob. et seq.
vaine... vaine] veine...veine Ff. reign. ..reign Bottom the Weaver, 1661.
louer ] lover's Opera, 1692, Dan¬ iel, Huds.
39. mender .] mender ? Q .
41. You ] Flute, you Qf, Cap. Sta. Cam.
42. Flut.] Fla. Qt.
Thisbie,] Thifby? Q,.
chief humour of Bottom’s ‘ lofty ’ rant consists in the speaker’s barbarous disregard of sense and rhythm; yet, notwithstanding this, and that the whole is printed as prose, carefully punctuated to be unintelligible in all the old copies, modem editors will persist in presenting it in good set doggerel rhyme. [I think Staunton somewhat exaggerates the ‘ careful ’ mispunctuation of the old copies ; there is but one instance of mispunctuation, namely in * to make all split the raging rocks,’ which, after all, might be due to the compositor, a second Bottom perchance. As W. A. Wright says, it is not always quite safe to interpret Bottom, but I am inclined to think that ‘ raging ’ should be pronounced ragging, which will better indicate the word ragged, which was, perhaps, the true word, than ‘ raging.’ — Ed.]
39. Bellowes-mender] Steevens: In Ben Jonson’s Masque of Pan's Anniver¬ sary a man of the same profession is introduced. I have been told that a ‘ bellows mender ’ was one who had the care of organs, regals, &c. [But from the context in Ben Jonson’s masque the ‘ bellows ’ were of the ordinary, domestic kind. — Ed.]
44. woman] Johnson : This passage shows how the want of women on the old stage was supplied. If they had not a young man who could perform the part, with a face that might pass for feminine, the character was acted in a mask, which was at that time a part of a lady’s dress, so much in use that it did not give any unusual appearance to the scene; and he that could modulate his voice in a female tone, might play the woman very successfully. It is observed in Downes’s Roscius Angli- canus [(p. 26, ed. Davies) of Kynaston that he ‘ made a compleat Female Stage Beauty; performing his parts so well . . . that it has since been disputable among the judicious, whether any woman that succeeded him so sensibly touched the audience as he’]. Some of the catastrophes of the old comedies, which make lovers marry the wrong women, are, by recollection of the common use of masks, brought nearer to possibility. — Halliwell : Previously to the Restoration, the parts of women were usually performed by boys or young men. . ‘ In stage playes, for a boy to put one the attyre, the gesture, the passions of a woman ; for a meane person to take upon him the title of a Prince with counterfeit porte and traine, is by outwarde signes to she we
38
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act I, sc. ii.
Qui. That’s all one, you fhall play it in a Maske, and 46 you may fpeake as fmall as you will.
Bot. And I may hide my face, let me play Thisbie too : lie fpeake in a monftrous littl e voyce ; Thifne , Thifne , ah 49
48. And] An Pope et seq. {An' 49. Thifne, Thifne] Thisby, Thisby
Tohns.). Han. Listen, listen / White ii.
too] to Qq.
themselves otherwise then they are.’ — Gosson’s Playes Confuted in five Actions, n. d. Occasional instances, however, of women appearing on the London stage occurred early in the seventeenth century. Thus says Coryat, in his Crudities, 1611, p. 247, speaking of Venice, — ‘ here I observed certaine things that I never saw before, for I saw women acte, a thing that I never saw before, though I have heard that it hath beene sometimes used in London ; and they performed it with as good a grace, action, gesture, and whatsoever convenient for a player, as ever I saw any masculine actor.’ According to Prynne, some women acted at The Blackfriars in the year 1629, and one in the previous year. It appears from the passage in the text, and from what fol¬ lows, that the actor’s beard was concealed by a mask, when it was sufficiently promi¬ nent to render the personification incongruous ; but a story is told of Davenant stating as a reason why the play did not commence, that they were engaged in ‘ shaving the Queen.’ The appearance of female actors was certainly of very rare occurrence previously to the accession of Charles II. The following is a clause in the patent granted to Sir W. Davenant : — ‘ That, the women’s parts in plays have hitherto been acted by men in the habits of women, at which some have taken offence, we do per¬ mit, and give leave, for the time to come, that all women’s parts be acted by women.’ Langbaine in his Account of the English Dramatic Poets, 1691, p. 117, speaking of Davenport’s King John and Matilda, observes that the publisher, Andrew Penny- cuicke, acted the part of Matilda, ‘ women in those times not having appear’d on the stage.’ Hart and Clun, according to the Historia Histrionic a, 1699, 'were bred up boys at The Blackfriars, and acted women’s parts;’ and the same authority informs us that Stephen Hammerton ‘ was at first a most noted and beautifull woman-actor.’ An actor named Pate played a woman’s part in the Opera o T The Fairy Queen, 1692. [According to Malone (Var. ’21, iii, 126), it is the received tradition that Mrs Saunderson, who afterwards married Betterton, was the first English actress. Unmarried women were not styled ‘ Miss ’ until towards the close of the seventeenth century. For a discussion of the earliest appearance of actresses on the English stage, see notes on pp. 288, 289 of As You Like It, and p. 397 of Othello, in this edition. — Ed.]
47. small] Halliwell : That is, low, soft, feminine. Blender, describing Anne Page ( Mer. Wives, I, i, 49), observes that ‘she has brown hair and speaks small like a woman.’ The expression is an ancient one, an example of it occurring in Chaucer, The Flower and the Leaf, line 180, ‘ With voices sweet entuned and so smalle.’ [Many other examples are given by Halliwell, dating from 1532 to 1638, but the phrase in the present passage is amply explained by Bottom’s ‘ monstrous little voice,’ if any explanation be at all required. — Ed.]
49. Thisne, Thisne] W. A. Wright : These words are printed in italic in the old copies, as if they represented a proper name, and so ‘ Thisne ’ has been regarded as a blunder of Bottom’s for Thisbe. But as he has the name right in the very nex*
ACT I, sc. ii.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
Pyramus my louer deare, thy Thisbie deare, and Lady deare.
Quin. No no, you mull: play Pyramus , and Flute y you T/iisby.
Bot. Well, proceed.
Qu. Robin Starueling the Taylor.
Star. Heere Peter Quince.
Quince. Robin Starueling , you mull play Thisbies mother ?
Tom Snowt , the Tinker.
Snozvt. Heere Peter Quince.
Quin. You, Pyramus father ; my felf, Thisbies father ; Snugge the Ioyner, you the Lyons part : and I hope there is a play fitted.
39
50
55
60
63
52> 53- you Thisby] your Thisby Rowe i.
55. Taylor. ] Tailer ? Qt.
58. mother ?] mother : Qq.
59 closes line 58, Qq, Cap. et seq. Tinker. Tinker ? Qt.
60. Peter] Peeer F2.
62. and I hope] I hope Rowe ii + . there'] here Qq, Cap. Mai. Var. Knt, Coll. Sing. Hal. Sta. Dyce, Cam. White ii.
line, it seems more probable that ‘ Thisne ’ signifies in this way ; and he then gives a specimen of how he would aggravate his voice. Thissen is given in Wright’s Pro¬ vincial Dictionary as equivalent to in this manner ; and thissens is so used in Nor¬ folk. — R. G. White (ed. ii) says that Bottom did not use ‘in this way such words as thissen.' — Verity: Probably a mistake for ‘ Thisbe,’ — but whose ? Most likely not the printer’s (contrast the next line). And if Bottom’s, why does he make it only here ? Perhaps the reason is that the name is the first word that he has to utter in this his first attempt to speak in a * monstrous little voice.’ For an instant, may be, it plays him false, then by the next line he has recovered himself. [W. A. Wright’s note carries conviction. It is not impossible that Capell also thus interpreted the words, which he prints in Roman, with a dash before and after, whereas proper names he invariably prints in Italics. In Mrs Centlivre’s Platonick Lady , IV, i, 1707, Mrs Dowdy ‘enters drest extravagantly in French Night cloaths and Furbe¬ lows,’ and says : ‘ If old Roger Dowdy were alive and zeen me thisen, he wou’d zwear I was going to fly away.’ — Ed.]
58. mother] Theobald : There seems a double forgetfulness of our poet in rela¬ tion to the Characters of this Interlude. The father and mother of Thisbe, and the father of Pyramus, are here mentioned, who do not appear at all in the Interlude ; but ‘ Wall ’ and ‘ Moonshine ’ are both employed in it, of whom there is not the least notice taken here. — Capell : What the modems call a forgetfulness in the poet was, in truth, his judgement : [these parts] promised little, and had been too long in ex¬ pectance ; whereas Quince’s ‘ Prologue ’ and the other actors, ‘ Moon-shine ’ and ‘Wall,’ elevate and surprise. — Steevens: The introduction of Wall and Moonshine was an afterthought; see III, i, 59 and 67.
40
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act i, sg ii.
Snug. Haue you the Lions part written ? pray you if be, giue it me, for I am flow of ftudie. 65
Quin. You may doe it extemporie , for it is nothing but roaring.
Bot. Let mee play the Lyon too, I will roare that I will doe any mans heart good to heare me. I will roare, that I will make the Duke fay, Let him roare againe, let 70 him roare agame.
Quin. If you fhould doe it too terribly, you would fright the Dutcheffe and the Ladies, that they would fhrike, and that were enough to hang vs all.
All. That would hang vs euery mothers fonne. 75
Bottome. I graunt you friends, if that you fhould fright the Ladies out of their Wittes, they would haue no more difcretion but to hang vs : but I will ag- grauate my voyce fo, that I will roare you as gently as any fucking Doue ; I will roare and ’twere any Nightin- 80 gale.
64. »/] if it QqFf.
72. If] And Qt. An Cap. et seq. 76. friends] friend F4, Rowe i.
if that] if Qq, Pope + , Cap. Cam.
80. roare] roare you Qq, Pope + , Steev. Mai. Var. Knt, Coll. Hal. Sta. Dyce, Cam.
and] an Rowe ii et seq.
65. studie] Steevens : * Study ’ is still the cant term used in a theatre for getting any nonsense by heart. Hamlet asks the player if he can ‘ study a speech.’ — MA¬ LONE: Steevens wrote this note to vex Garrick, with whom he had quarreled. ‘ Study ’ is no more a ‘ cant term ’ than any other word of art, nor is it applied neces¬ sarily to * nonsense.’
71. againe] Cowden-Clarke : Not only does Bottom propose to play every part himself, but he anticipates the applause, and encores his own roar.
78. aggrauate] W. A. Wright: Bottom, of course, means the very opposite, like Mrs Quickly, in 2 Hen. IV: II, iv, 175 : ‘I beseek you now, aggravate your choler.’
80. sucking Doue] W. A. Wright: Oddly enough, Bottom’s blunder of ‘suck ing dove ’ for ‘ sucking lamb ’ has crept into Mrs Clarke’s Concordance, where 2 Hen. VI: III, i, 71 is quoted, ‘As is the sucking dove or,’ &c. — Bailey ( Received Text, &c. ii, 198) : ‘ Sucking dove ’ is so utterly nonsenical that it is marvellous how it has escaped criticism and condemnation. So far from suffering such a fate, it continues to be quoted as if it were some felicitous phrase. The plea can scarcely be set up that it is humorous, for the humour of the passage lies in Bottom’s undertaking to roar gently and musically, although acting the part of a lion, and is not at all depend¬ ent on the incongruity of representing a dove as sucking. The blunder, which is whimsical enough, may be rectified by the smallest of alterations — by striking out a single letter from ‘ dove,’ leaving the clause ‘ as gently as any sucking doe.' [Had Bailey no judicious friend? — Ed.]
80. and ’twere] Steevens: As if it were. Compare Tro. &° Cres. I, ii, 1881
ACT i, sc. ii.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
4*
82
Quin. You can play no part but Piramus, for Hra- mus 1S a fweet-fac’d man, a proper man as one fhall fee in a fummers day ; a moil louely Gentleman-like man, ther- fore you muft needs play Piramus.
Bot. Well, I will vndertake it. What beard were I beft to play it in ?
Quin. Why, what you will.
Bot. I will difcharge it, in either your ftraw-colour beard, your orange tawnie beard, your purple in graine
84. Gentleman-like man ] Gentleman-like-man F3F4, Rowe.
‘He will weep you, an ’twere a man born in April.’ [For many examples where an and and have been confounded, see Walker, Crit. ii, 153, or Abbott, § 104.]
89. straw-colour beard] Halliwell : The custom of dyeing beards is fre¬ quently referred to. ‘ I have fitted my divine and canonist, dyed their beards and all.’— Silent Woman. Sometimes the beards were named after Scriptural personages, the colours being probably attributed as they were seen in old tapestries. ‘ I ever thought by his red beard he would prove a Juda si— Insatiate Countess, 1613. ‘ That Abraham-coloured Trojon’ is mentioned in Soliman and Perseda, 1599; and ‘a goodly, long, thick Abraham-colour’d beard’ in Blurt, Master Constable , 1602. Steevens has conjectured that Abraham may be a corruption of auburn. A ‘ whay- coloured beard ’ and ‘ a kane-coloured beard ’ are mentioned in the Merry Wives, 1602, the latter being conjectured by some to signify a beard of the colour of cane,’ which would be nearly synonymous with the straw-coloured beard alluded to by Bottom.
90. purple in graine] Marsh ( Lectures , &c. p. 67) : The Latin granum signifies a seed, and was early applied to all small objects resembling seeds, and finally to all minute particles. A species of oak or ilex ( Quercus coccifera) is frequented by an insect of the genus cocctis, which, when dried, furnishes a variety of red dyes, and which, from its seed-like form, was called in Later Latin granum, in Spanish, grana, and gratne in French ; from one of these is derived the English word grain, which, as a coloring material, strictly taken, means the dye produced by the coccus insect, often called in the arts kermes ; this dye (like the murex of Tyre) is capable of assuming a variety of reddish hues, whence Milton and other poets often use grain as equivalent to Tyrean purple, as in II Penseroso : ‘All in a robe of darkest grain.’ [Marsh here gives many instances from Milton, Chaucer, and others showing that, in the use of the word gram, color is denoted.] The phrase ‘ purple-in-grain ’ in Bottom’s speech signifies a color obtained from kermes, and doubtless refers to a hair-dye of that material. The color obtained from kermes or grain was peculiarly durable, that is, fast, which word in this sense is etymologically the same as fixed. When, then, a merchant recommended his purple stuffs as being dyed in grain, he originally meant that they were dyed with kermes, and would wear well, and this phrase was after¬ wards applied to other colors as expressing their durability. Thus, in The Com. of Err. Ill, ii, 107, when Antipholus says, ‘ That’s a fault that water will mend,’ ‘ No, sir,’ Dromio replies,
42
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act I, sc. ii.
beard, or your French-crowne colour’d beard, your per- fe6t yellow.
Quin. Some of your French Crownes haue no haire at all, and then you will play bare-fac’d. But matters here are your parts, and I am to intreat you, requeft you, and defire you, to con them by too morrow night : and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the Towne, by Moone-light, there we will rehearfe : for if we meete in the Citie, we fhalbe dog’d with company, and our deui- fes knowne. In the meane time, I wil draw a bil of pro-
91. colour’d ] colour Qq, Cap. Steev. 96. too morrow ] Q3.
Mai. Var. Coll. Sing. Hal. Sta. Dyce, 98. we will) will wee Q,, Cap. Steev.
Cam. White ii. Mai. Var. Knt, Coll. Hal. Sta. Dyce,
91, 103. perfedT) perfit Qq. Cam. White ii.
Twelfth Night , I, v, 253, when Viola insinuates that Olivia’s complexion had been improved by art, the latter replies, ‘ ’Tis in grain, sir; ’twill endure wind and weather.’ In both these examples it is the sense of permanence, a well-known quality of the color produced by grain or kermes, that is expressed. It is familiarly known that if wool be dyed before spinning, the color is usually more permanent than when the spun yam or manufactured cloth is first dipped in the tincture. When the original sense of grain grew less familiar, and it was used chiefly as expressive of fastness of color, the name of the effect was transferred to an ordinary known cause, and dyed in grain, originally meaning dyed with kermes, then dyed with fast color, came at last to signify dyed in the wool, or raw material. The verb ingrain, meaning to incor¬ porate a color or quality with the natural substance, comes from grain used in this last sense. Kermes is the Arabic and Persian name of the coccus insect, and occurs in a still older form, krmi, in Sanscrit. Hence come the words carmine and crimson. The Romans sometimes applied to the coccus the generic name vermiculus, a little worm or insect, the diminutive of vermis, which is doubtless cognate with the Sans¬ crit krmi, and from which comes vermilion, erroneously supposed to be produced by the kermes, and it may be added that cochineal, as the name both of the dye, which has now largely superseded grain, and of the insect which produces it, is derived, through the Spanish, from coccum, the Latin name of the Spanish insect.
91. French-crowne colour’d] It is manifest that this means the yellowish color of a gold coin. In Quince’s reply there is a reference to the baldness which resulted from an illness supposed to be more prevalent in France than elsewhere.
97. a mile] See note on ‘league,’ in I, i, 175.
97. without] See IV, i, 171, ‘where we might be Without the perill of the Athe¬ nian Law,’ where ‘ without ’ is used locatively, as here. — Ed.
1 00. properties] From 1511, when the Church-wardens of Bassingbome, for a performance of the play of Saint George, disbursed ‘ xx, s ’ ‘ To the gamement-man for gamements and propyrts ’ (Warton’s Hist, of Eng. Poetry, iii, 326, cited by Steevens), to the present day, the ‘properties’ are the stage requisites of costume or furniture. In Henslowe’s Diary (p. 273, Sh. Soc.) there is an ‘Enventary tackei. of all the properties for my Lord Admiralles men, the 10 of Marche 1598 '
9*
95
100
ACT I, sc. ii.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
perties, fuch as our play wants. I pray you faile me not.
Bottom. We will meete, and there we may rehearfe more obfcenely and couragioufly. Take paines, be per¬ fect, adieu.
Quin. At the Dukes oake we meete.
103. more] mo/l Q„ Cap. Sta. Cam. to Quince, Coll, ii, iii (MS), Sing. Dvca Wh,t8'u* ii, iii, Ktly, Huds.
103-105. Take paines... meete] Given 103. paines] paine Ff, Rowe.
wherein we find such items as ‘ j rocke, j cage, j tombe, j Hell mought (». a mouth).* Again, Mahemetes head,’ &c. Halliwell, ad too. and Collier’s Eng. Dram. Poetry , iii, 159,
give abundant references to the use of the word. _ Ed.
103. obscenely] Grey (i, 47) : I should have imagined that Shakespeare wrote ‘ more obscurely,’ had I not met with the following distinction in Randolph’s Muses Looking-Glass , IV, ii (p. 244, ed. Hazlitt) : ‘ Kataplectus. Obscenum est, quod intra scxnam agi non opportuit.’ [The point is scarcely worth noting, but I think that scaenam is here used not as ‘ on the stage,’ but merely as ‘ in public,’ and the whole phrase is only an ordinary definition of ‘ obscenum.’ — Schmidt (Lex.) gives a mis¬ use of ‘ obscenely ’ by Costard similar to Bottom’s : ‘ When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit.’ — Love's Lab. L. IV, i, 145 ; from which example Deighton infers that Bottom meant ‘ more seemly.'— Ed.]
103, 105. Take pains . . . meete] Collier (Notes, p. 100) : These words are given to Quince by the Old Corrector, and they seem to belong to him, as the manager of the play, rather than to Bottom. [This plausible suggestion was adopted by Dyce and Hudson with due acknowledgement, by Singer and Keightley without acknow¬ ledgement : the latter is excusable because he printed from Singer, and more than once expressed his regret that he had followed Singer’s text without more careful thought, but Singer has less excuse. I know of no editor who more freely made use, without acknowledgement, of his fellow editors’ notes, than Singer, and no one was more bitter than he in denunciation of what he assumed to be Collier’s literary dishonesty. Plausible though this present emendation be, it is doubtful if an assumption of the manager’s duty be not characteristic of Bottom. — Ed.]
105. Dukes oake] Halliwell: The conjecture is, perhaps, a whimsical one, but the localities here mentioned, ‘ the Palace Wood ’ and the ‘ Duke’s Oak,’ bear some appearance of being derived from English sources, and, in a certain degree, support an opinion that they were either taken from an older drama, or were names familiar to Shakespeare as belonging to real places in some part of his own country.
105. Garrick thus ended the scene : —
Bot. But hold ye, hold ye, neighbours ; are your voices in order, and your tunes ready ? For if we miss our musical pitch, we shall be all sham’d and abandon’d.
Quin. Ay, ay 1 Nothing goes down so well as a little of your sol, fa, and long quaver ; therefore let us be in our airs — and for better assurance I have got the pitch pipe.
Bot. Stand round, stand round ! We’ll rehearse our eplog — Clear up your pipes, and every man in his turn take up his stanza-verse, — Are you all ready?
All. Ay, ay !— Sound the pitch-pipe, Peter Quince. [Quince blows.
Bot. Now make your reverency and begin.
44
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act I, sc. ii.
Bot. Enough, hold or cut bow-ftrings. Exeunt 106
106. cut] break or not Han. conj. MS ap. Cam.
Song — -for Epilogue.
3y Quince, Bottom, Snug, Flute, Starveling, Snout.
Quin. Most noble Duke, to us be kind ;
Be you and all your courtiers blind,
That you may not our errors find,
But smile upon our sport.
For we are simple actors all,
Some fat, some lean, some short, some tall ;
Our pride is great, our merit small ;
Will that, pray, do at court ?
Starv. The writer too of this same piece,
Like other poets here of Greece,
May think all swans, that are but geese,
And spoil your princely sport.
Six honest folk we are, no doubt,
But scarce know what we’ve been about,
And tho’ we’re honest, if we’re out,
That will not do at court.
[Bottom and Flute in turn continue the song, but the foregoing is as much as need be here repeated.]
Bot. Well said, my boys, my hearts ! Sing but like nightingales thus when you come to your misrepresentation, and we are made forever, you rogues ! So ! steal away now to your homes without inspection, meet me at the Duke’s oak — by moonlight — mum’s the word.
All. Mum 1 [ Exeunt all stealing out.
106. hold or cut bow-strings] Capell (Notes, p. 102) : This phrase is of the pro¬ verbial kind, and was born in the days of archery : when a party was made at butts, assurance of meeting was given in the words of that phrase ; the sense of the person using them being that he would ‘ hold ’ or keep promise, or they might ‘ cut his bow¬ strings] demolish him for an archer. — Steevens : In The Ball , by Chapman and Shirley, 1639 : ‘Scutilla. Have you devices To jeer the rest? Lucina. All the regi¬ ment o^ them, or I’ll break my bowstrings.’ — [II, iii]. The ‘bowstring’ in this instance may mean only the strings which make part of the bow of a musical instru¬ ment. [It is quite possible, but there is nothing in the context of the play to lead us to the inference. A ‘ kit ’ is mentioned in the preceding act.] — Malone : To meet, whether bowstrings hold or are cut, is to meet in all events. * He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid’s bowstring,’ says Don Pedro, in Much Ado, III, ii, 10, ‘ and the little hangman dare not shoot at him.’ — Staunton and W. A. Wright approve of Capell s explanation ; Dyce is unable to determine whether it be true or not.
45
ACT 'X, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
A this Secundus. [Scene /.]
Enter a Fairie at one doore, and Robin good- fellow at another.
Rob. How now fpirit, whether wander you ?
Fai. Ouer hil, ouer dale, through bufh, through briar, Ouer parke, ouer pale, through flood, through fire,
I do wander euerie where, fwifter then y Moons fphere ;
1. Om. Qq.
[Scene I. Rowe et seq. Scene, a Wood. Theob. A Wood near Athens. Cap.
2. Enter . . . doore] Enter, from opposite sides, a Fairy, Cap.
Fairie] fairy Q3.
and] and Puck, or Rowe.
3. at another.] Om. Cap.
4. Rob.] Puck. Rowe et seq.
4. whether ] Q,F3.
5-9. Ouer. ..[green] Eight lines, Pope et seq.
5, 6. through] thorough Q,, Cap. et seq.
7. then] than Qt.
Moons] moones Steev. Mai. Var. White ii. moony Steev. conj. White i Huds. moonl’s Ktly.
2» 4> I7> &c. Robin] See Fleay, V, i, 417.
2. doore] Dyce (Rem. p. 45) : The ‘ doors ’ refer to the actual stage-locality, not to the scene supposed to be represented. . . . More than one editor of early dramas has mistaken the meaning of door in the stage-directions. According to the old copies of Beau, and Fl.’s Wit without Money, III, iv, Luce enters, and ‘ lays a suit and letter at the door ’ (i. e. at the stage-door, at the side of the stage) ; according to Weber’s ed. she ‘ lays a suit and letter at a house door ’ ! !
4. To read this line rhythmically we must, according to Walker (see note, line 32
of this scene, and Vers. 103) and Abbott (§466), contract ‘spirit’ into sprite, and ‘whither’ into whi'er, thus: ‘ H6w now | sprite, whi’er | wander | y6u.’ I am not sure, however, that the ear is not quite as well satisfied with the line as it stands. _ Ed.
5, 6. According to Guest (i, 172), the sameness of rhythm in these lines calls up in the mind the idea of ‘ a multitudinous succession.’ — Coleridge, as quoted by Collier, said that ‘ the measure had been invented and employed by Shakespeare for the sake of its appropriateness to the rapid and airy motion of the Fairy by whom the passage is delivered.’ In line no of this scene we again have ‘ through,’ where, as here, the First Quarto has ‘ thorough,’ and is followed by every editor. ‘ Thorough ’ is merely a mode of spelling of the Early English thurh, to indicate the pronunciation of r final, which Abbott, § 478, calls ‘ a kind of “burr.” ’ Drayton imitated these lines in his Nymphidia, 1627.
7. Moons] Steevens : Unless we suppose this to be the Saxon genitive case, moones, the metre will be defective. So in Spenser, Fairie Queene, III, i, 15 : ‘And eke through fear as white as whales bone.’ Again, in a letter from Gabriel Harvey to Spenser, 1580: ‘ Have we not God hys wrath for God des wrath, and a thousand of the same stampe, wherein the corrupte orthography in the most, hath been the sole or prircipal cause of corrupte prosodye in over-many?’ The following passage
46
A MJDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. i.
[7. Moons sphere ;]
however, in Sidney’s Arcadia [Lib. Ill, p. 262, 1598] may suggest a different read¬ ing: ‘Diana did begin. What mov’d me to invite Your presence (sister deare) first to my Moony spheare.’ — Collier : It has been usual to print ‘ moons ’ as two syllables, as if it were to be pronounced like ‘ whales ’ in Love's Lab. Lost, V, ii, 332, ‘ To show his teeth as white as whale’s bone,’ but all that seems required for the measure is to dwell a little longer than usual upon the monosyllable ‘ moons.’ — With Collier, Abbott agrees, and in § 484 gives a long list of examples where ‘ monosyllables con¬ taining diphthongs and long vowels are so emphasized as to dispense with an unaccented syllable;’ among them is the present line, as well as line 58, ‘ But room Fairy, heere comes Oberon.’ — R. G. White (ed. i) and Hudson adopt ‘ moony sphere ’ on the ground not only that it is a common poetical phrase, but that it is certain Shakespeare would not have allowed, among lines of exquisite music, a line so unrhythmical as this as it stands in the Folio. — W. A. Wright : ‘ Moon’s ’ is a disyllable, as ‘ Earth's ’ in The Tempest , IV, i, 110: ‘Earth’s increase, foison plenty.’ Compare, also, IV, i, 107, of the present play, where the true reading is that of the First Quarto : ‘ Trip we after night’s shade.’ The Second Quarto and the Folios read ‘ the night’s,’ but this disturbs the accent of the verse. — Finally, we have Guest, whose rhythmical solution differs from all others, and is to me the true one. ‘ Steevens,’ says Guest (i, 294), ‘ with that mischievous ingenuity which called down the happy ridicule of Gif¬ ford, thought fit to improve the metre of Shakespeare [by reading moones. But the Qq and Ff are] against him. The flow of Shakespeare’s line is quite in keeping with the peculiar rhythm which he has devoted to his fairies. It wants nothing from the critic but his forbearance. Burns, in his Lucy, has used this section [viz. 5- P- of two accents] often enough to give a peculiar charm to his metre :
“ O wat ye wha’s : in yon || town | ,
Ye see the e’enin sun upon ?
The fairest dame’s : in yon || town | ,
The e’enin sun is shining on.”
Moore also, in one of his beautiful melodies, has used a compound stanza, which opens with a stave, like Burns’s :
“ While gazing on : the moon’s || light | ,
A moment from her smile I turn’d To look at orbs : that, more || bright, |
In lone and distant glory bum’d.” ’
To those who are familiar with Guest’s volumes the concise formula ‘5-/.’ needs no explanation, but to others it may be as well to explain, in fewest possible words, that it designates a section of a verse composed of two iambs, where a pause takes the place of the second unaccented syllable. As an illustration of ‘ 5.’ alone, without the ‘ p- , take the first section of the line, ‘ I’ll lodk | t6 like : if looking liking move ’ ; bt take the second section in one of the lines before us : ‘ I do wan : d£r gv’ | ry whgre.’ If now ' p' be added to ‘ 5.’, we have the scansion of the line under discus¬ sion, as well as the lines from Burns and Moore : ‘ Swifter than : the modns || sphdre ’ ; ‘ While gazing on : the modn’s || light, | &c. In the line in The Tem¬ pest, IV, i, no (IV, i, 122 of this ed.; which see, with the notes), this same rule could be applied, were it not that there is authority in the Folios for the insertion of a syl¬ lable : ‘ Ekrth’s Increase : _»_fol | zdn pldn | ty.’ The F3F3F4 inserted ‘ and,’ ‘ Earth’s
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
And I ferue die Fair}?- Queene, to dew her orbs vpon the The Cowflips tall, her penfioners bee, (green.
8. orbs'] herbs Grey, cup Wilson. 9. tall] all Coll. MS.
increase and foizon plenty,’ an addition which is as harmless as it is needless. It is important, I think, to emphasise this use of these more vacua -, or, as Guest calls them, ‘ the pauses filling the place of an unaccented syllable,’ so familiar to us in Greek and Latin, especially in Plautus ; a neglect of them is a serious defect, I think in much of the scansion of Shakespeare’s verse. _ Ed.
. 7' sPhere] Furnivall {New Sh. Soc. Trans. 1877-79, P- 430 : At the date of this play the Ptolemaic system was believed in, and the moon and all the planets and stars were supposed to be fixed in hollow crystalline spheres or globes. These spheres were supposed to be swung bodily round the earth in twenty-four hours by the top sphere, the primum mobile, thus making an entire revolution in one day and night. [Furnivall reprints from Batman on Bartholomeus de Proprietatibus Rerum, the following sections: ‘What is the World’; ‘Of the distinction of beauen’; ‘Of heauen Empeno ’ ; ‘ Of the sphere of heauen ’ ; ‘ Of double mouing of the Planets ’ • ‘Of the Sunne ’ ; ‘ Of the Moone ’ ; Of the starre Comets ’ ; and ‘ Of fixed Starres ’ For the ‘ music of the spheres,’ see notes, Mer. of Yen. V, i, 74, of this edition.— Ed ] 8. dew her orbs] Johnson: The ‘orbs’ are circles supposed to be made by the fairies on the ground, whose verdure proceeds from the fairies’ care to water them Thus, Drayton [. Nymphidia , p. 162, ed. 1748] : ‘And in their courses make that round, In meadows and in marshes found, Of them so call’d the Fairy ground.’— Steevens : Thus, in Olaus Magnus de Gentibus Septentrionalibus : ‘—similes illis spectns, quae in multis locis, praesertim nocturno tempore, suum saltatorium orbem cum ommum musarum concentu versare solent.’ It appears from the same author that these dancers always parched up the grass, and therefore it is properly made the office of the fairy to refresh it. Douce (i, 180): When the damsels of old gathered the May dew on the grass, and which they made use of to improve their complexions, they left undisturbed such of it as they perceived on the fairy rings; apprehensive that the faines should in revenge destroy their beauty. Nor was it reckoned safe to put the foot within the rings, lest they should be liable to the fairies’ power— Halliwell : These ‘ orbs ’ are the well-known circles of dark-green grass, frequently seen in old pasture-fields, generally called ‘ fairy-rings,’ and supposed to be created by the growth of a species of fungus, Agaricus arcades, Linn. These circles are usually from four to eight feet broad, and from six to twelve feet in diameter, and are more prominently marked in summer than in winter— Bell {Puck, &c. iii, 193) : The intention seems rather to point to gathering the dew for the queen to wash her face in ; a powerful means of continual youth. [See Brand’s Popular Antiq. ii, 480, ed. Bohn ; or Dyer, Folk-lore of Sh. p. 15 ; see also The Tempest, V, i, 44, of this ed— Capell gives what he terms ‘ a reverie of long standing ’ as to the origin of these fairy-rings : in sub¬ stance it is that if air from the earth rises into the vapours hanging over a meadow a bubble must be the consequence, and when the bubble breaks the matter of which it was composed is deposited in a circular form ; and as this matter is prolific, the grass of these circles is more verdant than elsewhere. Evidently Banquo had convinced Capell that the earth hath bubbles as the water hath. The latest explanation of these ‘ fairy-rings ’ is contained in an Address delivered by J. Sidney Turner at the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the South-Eastern Branch of the Brit. Med. Assoc., and
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act n, sc. l.
48
In their gold coats, fpots you fee, Thole be Rubies, Fairie fauors,
io. coats ] cups Coll. MS.
reported in the Brit. Med. Joum. 28 July, ’94, wherein it is noted that the “fairy-rings” on hills and downs were produced by the better and more vigorous growth of the grass, owing to the excess of nitrogen afforded by the fungi, which composed the ring of the previous year.’ — Ed.]
9. Cowslips . . . pensioners] Johnson : The cowslip was a favorite among the fairies. Thus, Drayton, Nymphidia : ‘And for the Queen a fitting bower, Quoth he. is that fair cowslip-flower, On Hipcut-hill that groweth ; In all your train there’s not a fay That ever went to gather May, But she hath made it in her way The tallest there that groweth.’ — T. WARTON : This was said in consequence of Queen Eliza¬ beth’s fashionable establishment of a band of military courtiers, by the name of pen¬ sioners. They were some of the handsomest and tallest young men, of the best fam¬ ilies and fortune that could be found. Hence, says Mrs Quickly, Merry Wives, II, ii, 79, ‘ and yet there has been earls, nay, which is more, pensioners.’ They gave the mode in dress and diversions. — Knight : They were the handsomest men of the first families, — tall, as the cowslip was to the fairy, and shining in their spotted gold coats like that flower under an April sun. — Halliwell : Holies, in his life of the first Earl of Clare, says : * I have heard the Earl of Clare say, that when he was pensioner to the Queen, he did not know a worse man of the whole band than himself; and that all the world knew he had then an inheritance of 4000/. a year.’ ‘ In the month of December,’ 1539, says Stowe, Annals, p. 973, ed. 1615, ‘were appointed to waite on the king’s person fifty gentlemen, called Pensioners or Speares, like as they were in the first yeare of the king ; unto whom was assigned the summe of fiftie pounds, yerely, for the maintenance of themselves, and everie man two horses, or one horse and a gelding of service.’ — W. A. Wright : See Osborne’s Traditional Memoirs of Queene Elizabeth (in Secret History of the Court of James the First, i, 55)- When Queen Elizabeth visited Cambridge in 1564, she was present at a performance of the Aulularia of Plautus in the ante-chapel of King’s College, on which occasion her gentlemen pensioners kept the stage, holding staff torches in their hands (Cooper’s Annals of Cambridge, ii, 193). — Walker ( Crit. iii, 47): The passage in Milton’s Penseroso, 1. 6, alludes to the pensioners’ dress : ‘ — gaudy shapes — As thick and num¬ berless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams, The fickle pensioners of Morpheus’ train.’ In those times pensioners, like pursuivants, progresses, &c., were still things familiar, and naturally suggested themselves as sub¬ jects for simile or metaphor. [In 1598 Paul Hentzner saw these pensioners guarding the queen on each side ; they were still ‘ fifty in number, with gilt halberds.’ See Rye’s England as seen by Foreigners, p. 105.]
10. spots] Percy : There is an allusion in Cymbeline to the same red spots, ‘A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I’ th’ bottom of a cowslip.’ — Halli¬ well : Parkinson, speaking of this species of cowslip (the Primula veris, the common cowslip of the fields), mentions its ‘faire yellow flowers, with spots of a deeper yel¬ low at the bottome of each leafe.’ — Paradisus Terrestris, 1629, p. 244. Collier’s MS Corrector, in altering ‘ coats ’ to cups was probably thinking of one of the names of the crowfoot, which was golde cup ; but the flowers of the cowslip are not, strictly Speaking, cups.
ACT ii, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
49
In thofe freckles, liue their fauors, 12
I muft go feeke fome dew drops heere,
And hang a pearle in euery cowflips eare.
Farewell thou Lob of fpirits, lie be gon, 15
13. heere] here and there Han. Cap. clear Daniel.
13. go seeke] Cf. ‘goe tell,’ I, i, 260.
14. bang a pearle] For the similarity of this line to ‘ Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl,’ in Doctor Dodypoll, and for the inferences thence drawn, see Appen¬ dix, Date of Composition. — W. A. Wright: There are numberless allusions to the wearing of jewels in the ear, both by men and women, in Shakespeare and in con¬ temporary writers. Cf. Rom. and Jul. I, v, 48 : ‘ like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear.’ Also Marlowe, Tamburlane, First Part, I, i; Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, IV, vii; Every Man out of his Humour, Induction. — Halliwell: There are two allusions in this line — first, to the custom of wearing a pearl in the ear ; sec¬ ond, to the notion that the dewdrop was the commencing form of the pearl. ‘ If we believe the naturalists, Pearl is ingendred of the dew of Heaven in those parts of the earth where it is most pure and serene, and the cockle opening at the first rayes of the sun to receive those precious drops, plungeth into the sea with its booty, and conceives in its shell the pearl which resembles the heavens, and imitateth its clearness.’ — The History of Jewels, & c. 1675. [One of the ‘naturalists’ just referred to, who assert that pearls originate from dew, is probably Pliny ; see Holland’s trans. Ninth Booke, cap. xxxv.]
14. After this line, in Garrick’s Version, the Fairy sings as follows. The Air is by * Mr Mich. Arne :’ —
‘ Kingcup, daffodil and rose,
Shall the fairy wreath compose ;
Beauty, sweetness, and delight,
Crown our revels of the night :
Lightly trip it o’er the green Where the Fairy ring is seen ;
So no step of earthly tread,
Shall offend our Lady’s head.
Virtue sometimes droops her wing,
Beauty’s bee, may lose her sting ;
Fairy land can both combine,
Roses with the eglantine :
Lightly be your measures seen,
Deftly footed o’er the green ;
Nor a spectre’s baleful head Peep at our nocturnal tread.’
15. Lob] Johnson : Lob, lubber, looby, lobcock, all denote inactivity of body and dulness of mind. — Warton ( Obs. on Spenser, i, 120, 1762), in a note on the ‘lubbar- fiend ’ in II Allegro, remarks that this ‘ seems to be the same traditionary being that is mentioned by Beaumont and Fletcher : “ — There’s a pretty tale of a witch, that had the devil’s mark about her (God bless us !), that had a giant to her son, that was
4
50 A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS D REA ME [act II, sc. i.
Our Queene and all her Elues come heere anon. 16
Rob. The King doth keepe his Reuels here to night,
Take heed the Queene come not within his fight,
For Oberon is pafsing fell and wrath,
Becaufe that fhe, as her attendant, hath 20
A louely boy ftolne from an Indian King,
She neuer had fo fweet a changeling, 22
16. her] our Globe (misprint). 21. boy flolne] boy flollen, Q,. boy ,
stol'n Theob. et seq. (except Knt).
called Lob-lie-by-the-fire.” — The Knight of the Burning Pestle'' [III, iv, p. 191, ed. Dyce, who says that this remark of Warton that ‘ Milton confounded the “ lubbar fiend” with the sleepy giant in The Knight of the Burning Pestle is erroneous.’] — Collier : The fairy, by this word ‘ lob,’ reproaches Puck with heaviness, compared with his own lightness. — Staunton : ‘ Lob ’ here, I believe, is no more than another name for clown or fool; and does not necessarily denote inactivity either of body or mind. — Thoms ( Three Notelets, p. 89) : Dr Johnson’s observation in the present place is altogether misplaced. For here the name ‘ Lob ’ is doubtless a well-established fairy epithet ; and the passage from The Knight of the Burning Pestle confirms this. Grimm mentions a remarkable document, dated 1492, in which Bishop Gebhard of Halberstadt, complains of the reverence paid to a spirit called den guden lubben, and to whom bones of animals were offered on a mountain. — R. G. White : ‘ Lob ’ is here used by the fairy as descriptive of the contrast between Puck’s squat figure and the airy shapes of the other fays. — Dyce: R. G. White is probably right. As Puck could fly ‘ swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow,’ and ‘ could put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes,’ the Fairy can hardly mean, as Collier supposes, ‘ to reproach Puck with heaviness.’ [Why should a merry wanderer of the night be ‘ squat ’ ? Omitting this epithet, I think White’s and Staunton’s explanation the true one. Any elf taller than a cowslip would be a lubber to a fairy that could creep into an acorn-cup. Many references to the use of the word * lob ’ will be found in Nares and Halliwell. — Ed.]
16. According to the List of Songs, &c of the New Shakspere Soc., the foregoing sixteen lines have been set to music by no less than seven different composers.
19. fell and wrath] W. A. Wright: ‘ Fell ’ is from the Old French fel, Italian fello, with which felon is connected. ‘ Wrath ’ is so written for the sake of the rhyme. In Anglo-Saxon wra'S is both the substantive ‘wrath’ and the adjective ‘ wroth.’
22. changeling] Johnson : This is commonly used for the child supposed to be left by the fairies, but here for the child taken away. [The e mute in this word is pronounced ; for other examples, see Abbott, § 487, or Walker, Crit. iff, 47.] — Drake (Sh. and His Times , ii, 325) : The Beings substituted [by the Fairies] for the healthy offspring of man were apparently idiots, monstrous and decrepid in their form, and defective in speech. . . . The cause assigned for this evil propensity on the part of the Fairies was the dreadful obligation they were under of sacrificing the tentli individ¬ ual to the Devil every, or every seventh, year. . . . For the recovery of the unfortunate substitutes thus selected for the payment of their infernal tribute, various charms and contrivances were adopted, of which the most effectual, though the most horrible, was
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
51
And iealous Oberon would haue the childe Knight of his train e, to trace the Forrefts wilde.
But the (perforce) with-holds the loued boy,
Crownes him with flowers, and makes him all her ioy. And now they neuer meete in groue, or greene,
By fountaine cleere, or fpangled ftar-light (heene,
24. of his] of this F3F4.
23
25
28
the assignment to the flames of the supposed changeling, which it was firmly believed would, in consequence of this treatment, disappear, and the real child return to the lap of its mother. ‘A beautiful child of Caerlaveroc, in Nithsdale,’ relates Mr Cromek from tradition, ‘ on the second day of its birth, and before its baptism, was changed, none knew how, for an antiquated elf of hideous aspect. It kept the family awake with its nightly yells, biting the mother’s breasts, and would be neither cradled nor nursed. The mother, obliged to be from home, left it in charge to the servant girl. The poor lass was sitting bemoaning herself, — “ Wer’t nae for thy giming face I would knock the big, winnow the corn, and grun the meal !” — « Lowse the cradle band,” quoth the Elf, “ and tent the neighbours, and I’ll work yere wark.” Up started the elf, the wind arose, the com was chaffed, the outlyers were foddered, and the hand-mill moved around, as by instinct, and the knocking mell did its work with amazing rapidity. The lass and her elfin servant rested and diverted themselves, till, on the mistress’s approach, it was restored to the cradle, and began to yell anew. The girl took the first opportunity of slyly telling her mistress the adventure. “What’ll we do wi’ the wee diel?” said she. “ I’ll wirk it a pirn,” replied the lass. At the middle hour of the night the chimney-top was covered up, and every inlet barred and closed. The embers were blown up until glowing hot, and the maid, undressing the elf, tossed it on the fire. It uttered the wildest and most piercing yells, and, in a moment, the Fairies were heard moaning at every wonted avenue, and rattling at the window-boards, at the chimney-head, and at the door. « In the name o’ God bring back the bairn,” cried the lass. The window flew up; the earthly child was laid unharmed in the mother’s lap, while its grisly substitute flew up the chimney with a loud laugh.” ’ — Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 308.
24. to trace] This has here, I think, a more restricted meaning than ‘ to walk over, to pace,’ as Schmidt defines it, or than ‘to traverse, wander through,’ as defined by W. A. Wright. There is an intimation here of hunting, of tracing the tracks of game (a tautological expression, but which illustrates the meaning). Spenser thus uses it transitively : ‘ The Monster swift as word, that from her went, Went forth in hast, and did her footing trace,’ Faerie Queene, III, vii, line 209 ; in the present pas¬ sage it is used intransitively, as in Milton’s Comus, also with the idea of hunting, although this meaning was not attached to it by Holt White, who first cited the passage : ‘And like a quiver’d Nymph with arrows keen May trace huge forests.’ — line 422. — Ed.
28. sheene] Johnson: Shining, bright, gay. — W. A. Wright: Milton, with the passage in his mind, uses ‘sheen’ as a substantive. See Comus, 1003: ‘But far above in spangled sheen, Celestial Cupid, her fam’d son, advanc’d.’ [If Milton, at the ime of his writing Comus had been blind, which he was not, and had listened to
52
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
[act ii, sc. i.
But they do fquare, that all their Elues for feare Creepe into Acorne cups and hide them there. 30
Fai. Either I miftake your fhape and making quite,
Or elfe you are that fhrew’d and knauifh fpirit 32
29. fquare] quarrel Wilson. 32. fpirit ] fprite Qt, Rowe et seq.
31. Either] Or Pope + .
the reading of A Mid. N. Dream , he might have readily accepted ‘sheen’ as a noun, with ‘ starlight ’ in the genitive, ‘ starlight’s sheen.’ — Ed.]
29. square] Peck (p. 223) : I fancied our author wrote jar (a word which sounds very like squar), but then a neighbour of mine, on my showing him the passage, guessed squall to be the true reading. And I should like squall as well as jar. . . . Yet, upon the whole, perhaps Shakespeare never wrote ‘square ’ to express a quarrel. For I am sometimes inclined to think he wrote, in most of these places, sparre. — Halliwell: ‘ I square, I chyde or vary, je prens noyse ; of all the men lyvyng, I love not to square with hym.’ — Palsgrave, 1530. ‘To square’ was, therefore, prop¬ erly, to quarrel noisily, to come to high words; but in Shakespeare’s time the term was applied generally in the sense of to quarrel , and it was also in common use as a substantive. — W. A. Wright: In his description of the singing in the church at Augsburg, Ascham uses the word ‘ square ’ in the sense of jar or discord : ‘ The prae- centor begins the psalm, all the church follows without any square, none behind, none before, but there doth appear one sound of voice and heart amongst them all.’ — Works, ed. Giles, i, 270. [Cotgrave gives : ‘ Se quarrer. To strout, or square it, looke big on ’t, carrie his armes a kemboll braggadochio-like.’ The examples in Nares and Dyce [Gloss.), which it is needless to repeat here, adequately prove the meaning to quarrel. — Ed.]
29. that] For instances of ‘ that ’ equivalent to so that, see, if need be, Abbott, §283.
31. Either] See Walker ( Vers. 103) or Abbott, § 466, for instances of the con¬ traction, in pronunciation, into monosyllables of such words as either, neither, -whether, mother, brother, even, heaven, & c. Another instance is in II, ii, 162.
32. spirit] See Q, in Textual Notes. Walker ( Crit. i, 193): It may safely be laid down as a canon that the word ‘ spirit,’ in our old poets, wherever the metre does not compel us to pronounce it disyllabically, is a monosyllable. And this is almost always the case. The truth of this rule is evident from several considerations. In the first place, we never meet with other disyllables — such, I mean, as are incapable of contraction — placed in a similar situation ; the apparent exceptions not being really exceptions (see Vers, passim). Another argument is founded on the unpleasant rip¬ ple which the common pronunciation occasions in the flow of numberless lines, inter¬ fering with the general run of the verse ; a harshness which, in some passages, must be evident to the dullest ear. Add to this the frequent substitution of spright or sprite for ‘ spirit ’ (in all the different senses of the word, I mean, and not merely in that of ghost, in which sprite is still used) ; also spreet, though rarely (only in the ante- Elizabethan age, I think, as far as I have observed) ; and sometimes sp'rit and sprit. For the double spelling, spright and sprite, one may compare despight and despite ; whi-h in like manner subsequently assumed different meanings, despight being used for contempt, despectus. . . . Perhaps it would be desirable, wherever the word occurs as a monosyllable, to write it spright, in order to ensure the proper pronunciation of
ACT ii, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
53
Cal’d Robin Good-fellow. Are you not hee,
That frights the maidens of the Villagree,
Skim milke, and fometimes labour in the querne, And bootleffe make the breathleffe hufwife cherne,
35
33
33. you not] not you Q„ Cap. Sta. Cam. White ii.
F,. villag’ry Cap. Steev. villagery Han. et cet.
34- frights ] fright F3F4, Rowe + , Mai. Steev. Var. White i.
35-38. Skim . . . labour. . . make.. . make ...M ijleade ] Skims ...labours... makes.. . makes... misleads Mai. conj. Coll. Dyce, Huds.
Villagree ] Q3F,F3. Villageree Q„ Rowe, Theob. Warb. Johns. Vilagree
35. fometimes ] sometime Dyce ii, iii.
the line. I prefer sp right to sprite, inasmuch as the latter invariably carries with it a spectral association. [See also Macbeth, IV, i, 127, or Mer. of Ven. V, i, 96, of this edition.]
33-40. In Garrick’s Version these lines are sung by the Fairy to an Air by Mr Mich. Arne. Many liberties are taken with the text which are not worth reprinting here.
33. Robin Good-fellow] See Appendix, Source of the Plot.
34, 35, &c. frights . . . Skim . . . labour] The Textual Notes will show the grammatical changes adopted by editors in order to give a uniformity which is, after all, needless. Abbott, § 224, after several examples of ‘ he ’ and ‘ she ’ used for man and woman, adds that ‘ this makes more natural the use [in the present line] of “ he that,” with the third person of the verb.’ See also ‘ are you he that hangs ?’ — As You Like It, III, ii, 375, of this ed. Again, in § 415, after sundry examples of a change of construction caused by a change of thought, Abbott says of the pres¬ ent passage that ‘the transition is natural from “Are not you the person who frights?” to “ Do not you skim ?” ’ — W. A. Wright: We have in English both constructions. For instance, in Exodus vi, 7 : ‘And ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.’ And in Samuel v, 2 : ‘ Thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel.’
34. Villagree] W. A. Wright: That is, village population, and so peasantry. Johnson defines it as a district of villages, but it denotes rather a collection of vil¬ lagers than a collection of villages. No other instance of the word is recorded.
35> 37- sometimes . . . sometime] R. G. White (ed. i) : Both forms of the word were used indifferently ; and in the present case the instinctive perception of euphony, which was so constant a guide of Shakespeare’s pen, and in this play, per¬ haps, more so than in any other, seems to have determined the choice.
35, 36. Johnson : The sense of these lines is confused. Are not you he (says the fairy) that fright the country girls, that skim milk, work in the hand-mill, and make the tired dairy-woman chum without effect ? The mention of the mill seems out of place, for she is not now telling the good, but the evil, that he does. I would regu¬ late the lines thus : ‘And sometimes make the breathless housewife chum Skim milk, and bootless labour in the quern.’ [Rann adopted this ‘ regulation.’] Or by a simple transposition of the lines. Yet there is no necessity of alteration. — Ritson : Dr Johnson’s observation will apply with equal force to his ‘ skimming the milk,’ which, if it were done at a proper time and the cream preserved, would be a piece of ser¬ vice. But we must understand both to be mischievous pranks. He skims the milk
54
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, SC. i.
And fometime make the drinke to beare no barme, 37
Mifleade night-wanderers, laughing at their harme,
Thofe that Hobgoblin call you, and fweet Pucke,
You do their worke, and they fhall haue good lucke. 40
Are not you he ?
Rob. Thou fpeak’ft aright ; 42
42, 43. One line, Qq.
42. Thou] The same, thou Han. I am — thou Johns. Fairy, thou Coll, ii, iii (MS), Dyce ii, iii, Huds. Indeed, thou Schmidt.
42. fpeak'Ji] fpeakejl Qt. speak est me Cap.
fpeak'Ji aright] speakest all aright Wagner conj.
when it ought not to be skimmed, and grinds the corn when it is not wanted. — Hal- LIWELL: ‘Labour in’ is equivalent to ‘ labour with.’ In the old ballad of Robin Goodfellow he is described as working at a malt-quern for the benefit of the maids. [See Appendix.]
35- querne] Halliwell: A hand-mill for grinding com ; cwlorn, Anglo-Saxon. In its most primitive form it consisted merely of one revolving stone, worked by a handle, moving in the circular cup of a larger one. Boswell, in his Tour to the Hebrides, speaks of its being in use there : * We saw an old woman grinding com with the quern, an ancient Highland instrument, which, it is said, was used by the Romans ’ ; and Dr Johnson, in his Tour to the same place, says, * when the water-mills in Skye and Raasa are too far distant, the housewives grind their oats with a quern, or hand-mill.’ See Chaucer, Monke's Tale, where Sampson is described, ‘ But now he is in prisoun in a cave, Ther as thay made him at the queme grynde ’ [1. 83, ed. Morris]. In Wiclif’s translation of the New Testament a passage is thus rendered: ‘ tweine wymmen schulen ben gryndynge in o queme, oon schal be taken and the tother lefte.’ — Delius unaccountably prefers to interpret ‘ quem ’ not as a hand-mill, but as the ordinary churn, ‘ in which,’ he adds, ‘ milk is turned into butter.’
37. barme] Steevens : A name for yeast, yet used in our Midland counties, and universally in Ireland. — Halliwell : This provincial term is still in use in Warwick¬ shire, and in 1847 I observed a card advertising ‘fresh barm’ in Henley Street, at Stratford-on-Avon, within a few yards of the poet’s birth-place.
38. Misleade] Halliwell : This line was remembered by Milton, ‘ a wand’ring fire. . . . Hovering and blazing with delusive light, Misleads th’ amaz’d night-wan- derer from his way.’ — Par. Lost, ix, 634.
39. sweet Pucke] Tyrwhitt: The epithet is by no means superfluous, as ‘ Puck ’ alone was far from being an endearing appellation. It signified nothing better than fiend or devil. [See p. 3, anti, or Appendix, Source of the Plot.]
42. Thou] Johnson : I would fill up the verse which, I suppose, the author left complete — ‘/ am, thou speak’ st aright.’ — Collier (ed. ii) : Fairy [see Text. Notes] is from the MS. Some word of two syllables is wanting to complete the line. (Ed. iii) : Here, we may be pretty sure, we have the poet’s own word. — Dyce : Fairy is far better than the other attempts that have been made to complete the metre. — R. G. White (ed. i) : Collier’s MS is probably correct. But as the pause naturally made before the reply to the fairy’s question may have been intended to take the place of the missing foot, I have made no addition to the text of the Qq and Ff. Abbott § 506, agrees with R. G. White, as also the present Ed.
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
55
I am that merrie wanderer of the night :
I ieft to Oberon, and make him fmile,
When I a fat and beane-fed horfe beguile, Neighing in likeneffe of a filly foale,
And fometime lurke I in a Goflips bole,
In very likeneffe of a roafted crab :
And when fhe drinkes, againft her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlop poure the Ale. The wifeft Aunt telling the faddeft tale,
46. of a] like a F^F4, Rowe.
filly'] Q2Ff, Rowe + , Hal. filly Q, et cet.
47. fometime~\ fometimes F,F4, Rowe + .
47. bole] bowl F4.
49. bob ] bab Gould.
50. withered ] QqFf, Rowe, Cam. ii. wither'd Pope et cet.
dewlop ] dewlap Rowe ii.
43. See Delius’s note on line 154, below.
46. silly foale] Halliwell : ‘ Silly ’ is probably the right reading, in the sense of simple. [For the folk-lore in reference to the various animals whereof the shapes were assumed by fairies, see Thoms’s Three Notelets , p. 55. I can see no reason for deserting the Folio. — Ed.]
47. Gossips bole] W. A. Wright: Originally a christening-cup; for a gossip or godsib was properly a sponsor. Hence, from signifying those who were associated at the festivities of a christening, it came to denote generally those who were accus¬ tomed to make merry together. Archbishop Trench mentions that the word retains its original signification among the peasantry of Hampshire. He adds, ‘ Gossips are first, the sponsors, brought by the act of a common sponsorship into affinity and near familiarity with one another; secondly, these sponsors, who, being thus brought together, allow themselves one with the other in familiar, and then in trivial and idle, talk ; thirdly, any who allow themselves in this trivial and idle talk, called in French commerage, from the fact that commlre has run through exactly the same stages as its English equivalent.’ — Eng. Past and Present , pp. 204-5, 4th ed. War- ton, in his note on Milton’s 11 Allegro, 100, identifies ‘ the spicy nut-brown ale ’ with the gossip’s bowl of Shakespeare. ‘ The composition was ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples. It was called Lambs-wool.’ See Breton’s Fantastickes, January : ‘An Apple and a Nutmeg make a Gossip’s cup.’
48. very] That is, true, exact.
48. crab] Steevens : That is, a wild apple of that name. — Halliwell : ‘ The crabbe groweth somewhat like the apple-tree, but full of thomes, and thicker of branches; the flowers are alike, but the fruite is generally small and very sower, yet some more than others, which the country people, to amend, doe usually rost them at the fire, and make them their winter’s junckets.’ — Parkinson’s Theat. Botanicum, 1640.
51. Aunt] Unquestionably ‘ aunt ’ was at times applied to a woman of low charac ter (see the examples cited by Nares, s. v.), but here the adjective ‘wisest ’ shows that it means merely ‘ the most sedate old woman.’ R. G. White calls attention to the common use of ‘ aunt ’ as well as ‘ uncle,’ as applied to ‘ good-natured old people ’ at
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. i.
56
Sometime for three-foot ftoole, miftaketh me, 5 2
Then flip I from her bum, downe topples the,
And tailour cries, and fals into a coffe.
And then the whole quire hold their hips, and lofife, 55
54. tailour] rails, or Han. Warb. Cap. 55. loffe~\ laugh Co\\. Cam.
tail-sore Anon ap. Cap.
the North and to the old negroes at the South ; Halliwell cites Pegge as authority for a similar usage in Cornwall.
54. tailour] Johnson : The custom of crying tailor at a sudden fall backwards I think I remember to have observed. He that slips beside his chair falls as a tailor squats upon his board. — Halliwell : This explanation by Dr Johnson has not been satisfactorily supported. The expression is probably one of contempt, equivalent to thief and possibly a corruption of the older word taylard , which occurs in the Romance of Richard Cceur de Lion , where two French justices term that sovereign, when reviling him, a ‘ taylard,’ upon which the choleric monarch instantly clove the skull of the first and nearly killed the second. The Elizabethan use of the term, as one of contempt, appears to be confirmed by the following passage in PasquiV s Night Cap, 1612: ‘Theeving is now an occupation made, Though men the name of tailor doe it give.’ — Bell (iii, 194) : It may be thought fanciful, but not altogether improb¬ able, to explain this custom by one equally low at the present day, as when black¬ guards press rudely the hats of passengers over their eyes ; and of a female’s cry : bonnet her. So that I should read : tail her. — Perring (p. 1 1 3) would read traitor, on the score that it would be much more consistent with the aunt’s ‘ disposition, her age, her dignity, and, I may add, with the serious nature of her story, to raise against her invisible foe that fierce cry of “ traitor,” which was wont to be raised against sus¬ pected political malcontents, ... in using which the “ wisest aunt ” associated herself with kings and queens and empresses of the earth.’ [It is difficult to believe that this is put forth seriously. A discussion was started in Notes & Queries (7th S. ii, 385, 1886) by J. Bouchier asking ‘Why tailor any more than cobbler, hosier, or barber?’ To which A. H. (7th S. iii, 42) replied that a tailor’s assistance would be needed when ‘ a sudden tumble eventuates in the rent of a necessary garment.’ This interpretation was pronounced untenable by C. F. S. Warren, M. A. (Ib. p. 264), ‘ because a sud¬ den fall backwards will not split petticoats as it will trousers.’ — Hyde Clarke adds, with more truth than appositeness, that * there were tailors for women in most coun¬ tries of the West and East, as there still are in many. In London tailors make riding breeches for women.’ In this diverting discussion, from Halliwell downwards, it needs scarcely an ounce of civet to sweeten the imagination, if it be suggested that the slight substitution of an e for an o in the word ‘ tailor ’ will show that, as boys in swimming take a ‘ header ,’ the wisest Aunt was subjected to the opposite. — Ed.]
55. quire] Dyce: A company, an assembly. [With a suggestion here of its meaning of acting in concert. — Ed.]
55. Ioffe] Capell (104): A rustic sounding of laugh, to whose spelling all the elder editions assimilate * cough,’ and its sound should incline to it. — Halliwell : This is the ancient pronunciation of the word. Ben Jonson, in The Fox , makes daughter rhyme with laughter ; and in the old nursery ballad of Mother Hubbard, after she had bought her dog a ‘ coffin ’ she came home and found he was loffing / In
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME 57
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and fweare, 56
A merrier houre was neuer wafted there.
But roome Fairy, heere comes Oberon. 58
56. waxen ] yexen Farmer, Sing. room , room Marshall.
58. roome ] make room Pope + , Cap. 58. Fairy"] Faery Johns, conj. Steev.
Ktly. room now Dyce ii, iii, Huds. Mai. Knt. Faery Sing, i, ii, Sta.
some line in Harrington’s Most Elegant and Wittie Epigrams, 1633, lafter (laughter) rhymes with after. There appears to have been some variation as to the pronuncia¬ tion of the word. Marston, in The Parasitaszer, 1606, mentions a critic who vowed ‘ to leve to posteritie the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing.’ [I doubt if Halliwell’s quotation from Marston be exactly germane. The ‘ critique ’ to whom it refers was in ‘ the Ship of Fools,’ and his puzzle was, I think, not the mere spelling or pronunciation of the word laugh or laughter, but what combination of letters would express the sound of laughing, a puzzle which need not be restricted to the days of Elizabeth. It is almost impossible to fix the exact pronunciation, in the XVIth or XVIIth century, of laugh or laughter, especially as there are indications of a change which was at this time creeping over these words as well as such words as daughter, slaughter, and the like. See Ellis ( Early Eng. Pronunciation , p. 963). As a boy of 16, in Warwickshire, Shakespeare may have heard a pronunciation of these words quite different from that which he heard in his mature years, in London. See Ibid. p. 144. In the present spelling I think we have, as Capell suggests, a phonetic attempt to reproduce the ‘ robustious ’ laughter of boors, just as, nowadays, Chaw- bacon’s laughter is spelled ‘ Haw ! haw !’ and * Ioffe ’ should be retained in the text. Whalley refers to Milton’s L' Allegro : ‘And Laughter holding both his sides,’ line 32.— Ed.]
56. waxen] Johnson : That is, increase, as the moon waxes. — Steevens : Dr Farmer observes to me that ‘waxen’ is probably corrupted from yoxen or yexen, to hiccup. It should be remembered that Puck is at present speaking with an affecta¬ tion of ancient phraseology. Singer pronounces Farmer’s needless emendation to be ‘ undoubtedly the true reading,’ and adopts, without acknowledgement, more suo, Steevens’s remark about the affectation of ancient phraseology, of which affectation I see no proof. — Ed.
56. neeze] W. A. Wright: That is , sneeze; A.-S. niesan ; Germ, niesen. Simi¬ larly, we find the two forms of the same word : * knap ’ and ‘ snap ’ ; ‘ top ’ and ‘ stop ’ ; ‘ cratch ’ and ‘ scratch ’ ; ' lightly ’ and ‘ slightly ’ ; ‘ quinsy ’ and ‘ squinancy.’ In 2 Kings iv, 35, the text originally stood, ‘And the child neesed seven times,’ but the word has been altered in modern editions to ‘sneezed.’ In Job xli, 18, however, ‘neesings’ still holds its place. Compare Homilies (ed. Griffiths, 1859), p. 227: ‘ Using these sayings : such as learn, God and St. Nicholas be my speed ; such as neese, God help and St. John ; to the horse, God and St. Loy save thee.’ Cotgrave gives both forms, ‘ Esternuer. To neeze or sneeze.’
58. roome Fairy] Johnson : Fairy, or Faery, was sometimes of three syllables, as often in Spenser. — Dyce (ed. ii) : I have inserted now for the metre’s sake, which is surely preferable to the usual modem emendation, ‘ make room.’ To print ‘ But room Fairy’ is too ridiculous. — Nicholson (N. Qu. 3d Ser. V, 49, 1864) sug¬ gests * oomer , a sea-phrase, ‘ which, in speaking of the sailing of ships, meant to altei the course, and go free of one another.’ Thus, in Hakluyt, Best, narrating how in
58
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. i.
Fair. And heere my Miftris : Would that he were gone.
60
Enter the King of Fairies at one doore with his traine, and the Queene at another with hers.
Ob. Ill met by Moone-light Proud Tytania.
Qu. What, iealous Oberon ?
59. 60. One line, Qq, Pope et seq.
60. he\ we Ff, Rowe, Johns.
[Scene II. Pope + , Var. Knt, Sing.
Ktly.
61. the King] King F3F4.
63, 64. One line, Qq, Pope et seq.
Fairy skip hence. 65
64. Tytania] Titania F3F4, Rowe et seq.
65. Qu.] Tit. Cap. et seq. (subs.). Fairy skip ] fairies, skip Theob
Han. Warb. Johns. Coll. Sing. White, Sta. Dyce, Cam. Ktly.
Frobisher’s second voyage the ships were caught in a storm amidst drifting icebergs, says : ‘ We went roomer [off our course, and more before the wind] for one (iceberg), and loofed [luffed up in the wind] for another.’ Hence roomer aptly expresses one of two courses which must be adopted by an inferior vessel when it meets another, whose sovereignty entitles her to hold on her way unchecked. The fairy had luffed, and so stayed her course to speak with Puck. Having interchanged civilities, Here, says Puck, comes Oberon, bearing down upon you full sail ; do you, vassal as you are of a power that he is unfriends with, alter your course ; go off before the wind, and free of him. In a word, roomer. If objection be made to the use, by Puck, of a sea- phrase, I would quote the inlander Romeo, who speaks of the high top-gallant of his joy. Abbott, § 484, who gives more than twenty pages to examples of the lengthen¬ ing of words in scanning, has ‘room’ in the present passage among them. [No change is absolutely necessary. The break in the line affords, I think, sufficient pause to fill up the metre. — Ed.]
63. See Delius’s note on line 154, below.
65. Fairy skip] Theobald silently changed this to Fairies skip, and the Text. Notes show how generally he has been followed by the best editors, who have urged as their plea : first, the ease with which the final s of Fairies might have been lost to the ear in the first s of ‘ skip.’ — Walker ( Crit. i, 265) cites this passage in his Article on the omission of the s, and says the words are * surely ’ ‘ Fairies skip.’ — Collier finds no reason why a particular fairy should be addressed unless we suppose that Oberon is referred to ; but this Dyce (ed. i) disproves by citing the following line : ‘ I have forsworn his bed and company.’ Secondly, Titania evidently wishes her
whole train to withdraw, because at line 149 she distinctly says, ‘ Fairies away.’ _ B.
Nicholson (W. (V Qu. 4th Ser. V, 56) questions the conclusiveness of this last com¬ mand, because the circumstances may have changed, and while the king and queen have been wrangling the attendant courtiers and maids of honour may have been frisking, flirting, intermingling, and have become scattered, and her majesty wishes to recall them. — Capell (p. 104) is the only editor who justifies the Folio, and, I think, with adequate reason for so trifling a question, which, after all, is mainly for the eye ; Capell says that the fairy thus addressed is Titania’s ‘ leading fairy, her gentleman- usher, whose moving-off would be a signal for all the rest of the train.’- Collier
ACT ii, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
I haue forfworne his bed and companie.
Ob. Tarrie rafh Wanton ; am not I thy Lord ?
Qu. Then I muft be thy Lady : but I know When thou waft ftolne away from Fairy Land,
And in the fhape of Corin, fate all day,
Playing on pipes of Corne, and verfing loue To amorous Phillida. Why art thou heere Come from the fartheft fteepe of India ?
69. waJT\ Ff, Rowe, Pope, Ktly. 70. fate] fat QqF4. kaft Qq. Theob. et seq. 73. fteepe] Jleppe Qt.
reports an emendation by Harness : * Fairies keep ’ ; and Dyce adds one of his own : * Fairies trip
69. vvast] Keightley (W. &> Qu. 2d Ser. IV, 262; Exp. 1 31) is the only editor who upholds the reading of the Ff. He maintains that by ‘ wast ’ Titania means that Oberon ‘ stole away ’ only once, whereas ‘ hast ’ of the Qq implies a habit. ‘ More¬ over, Shakespeare invariably employs the verb substantive with “ stolen away,” except in the case of a doubly-compound tense.’
71. Come] Ritson: The shepherd boys of Chaucer’s time had ‘ — many flowte and liltyng home, And pipes made of grene come.’ — [House of Fame, iii, 133, ed, Morris. Albeit that * com ’ is, in England, applied to any cereal, yet the ‘ pipes of com ’ on which Corin played were probably the same as the ‘ oaten straws’ on which ‘the shepherds pipe’ in Love's Lab. Lost, V, ii, 913; avena is used in Latin in the same way. The ‘ come ’ mentioned in line 98, below, is, of course, not oats, but wheat. — Ed.]
72. Phillida] F. A. Marshall (p. 369) : Do not these lines rather militate against the idea of Oberon and Titania being such very diminutive people ? Could a manikin hope to impress the * amorous Phillida ’ ? Again, Oberon’s retort on Titania seems to imply that she was capable of inspiring a passion in that prototype of all Don Juans, Theseus. Perhaps these fairies were supposed to possess the power of assuming the human shape and size, or, what is more likely, to Shakespeare they were so entirely creatures of the imagination that they never assumed, to his mind’s eye, any concrete form. [In the first place, if we must resort to a prosaic interpre¬ tation, Marshall’s query is answered by the fact that Oberon assumed ‘ the shape of Corin ’ ; in the second place, one of the strokes of humour in this whole scene, be tween atomies who can creep into acorn-cups, and for whom the waxen thigh of a bee affords an ample torch, lies in the assumption by them of human powers and of super¬ human importance. Not only is Titania jealous of the bouncing Amazon, but this their quarrel influences the moon in the sky, changes the seasons, and affects disas¬ trously the whole human race. There is a touch of the same humour, but deeply coarsened, in the scandal which Gulliver’s conduct started when he was at the court of Laputa. — Ed.]
73. steepe] White (ed. i) : Steppe, of the first Quarto, is ‘ but a strange accident, for the word was not known in Shakespeare’s day.’ — W. A. Wright: It is danger¬ ous to assert a proposition which may be disproved by a single instance of the con¬ trary. There is certainly no a priori reason why the present passage should not fur¬ nish that instance, inasmuch as a word of similar origin, ‘ horde,’ was perfectly well
59
66
70
73
step Cap.
6o
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, sc. \.
But that forfooth the bouncing Amazon
Your buskin’ d Miftreffe, and your Warrior loue, 75
To Thefeus muft be Wedded ; and you come,
To giue their bed ioy and profperitie.
Ob. How canft thou thus for fhame Tytania,
Glance at my credite, with Hippolita ?
Knowing I know thy loue to Thefeus ? 80
Didft thou not leade him through the glimmering night From Peregenia , whom he rauifhed ?
And make him with faire Eagles breake his faith 83
75. buskin' d] bukskined so quoted many times by Hermann.
81. through the glimmering night'] glimmering through the night Warb.
82. Peregenia] Perigune Theob. Pope ii. Perigunt Tbeob. ii. Perigynl Han. Perigouna White.
83. Eagles ] AEgle Rowe et seq.
known in England at the beginning of the 17th century. On the other hand, too much weight must not be attached to the spelling of Q,, for in III, ii, 88, * sleep ’ is misprinted slippe. [It is almost needless to restrict to Q, this variation in spelling ; it applies to the Folios as well ; in the very passage referred to by W. A. Wright, sleep is printed ‘ slip ’ in all the Folios, and was first corrected by Rowe. Accord¬ ing to the Century Dictionary , steppe was introduced into the scientific literature of Western Europe by Humboldt, and in popular use it is nowhere applied but to regions dominated by Russia; there is no need of its use, I think, in the present passage. — Ed.]
76. must] Simply definite futurity, as in Portia’s, ‘ Then must the Jew be merci¬ ful.’ For other instances, see Abbott, § 314.
79. Glance] W. A. Wright : That is, hint at , indirectly attack. Thus, in Bacon’s Advancement of Learning , i, 7, § 8 (p. 57, ed. Wright) : ‘ But when Marcus Philosophus came in, Silenus was gravelled and out of countenance, not knowing where to carp at him ; save at the last he gave a glance at his patience towards his wife.’ \
81. glimmering] Warburton upholds his wanton emendation by asserting that Titania conducted Theseus ‘ in the appearance of fire through the dark night.’ Had be forgotten ‘ The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day,’ Macb. Ill, iii, 5 ? —Ed.
82. Peregenia] Staunton : * This Sinnis had a goodly faire daughter called Peri¬ gouna, which fled away when she saw her father slaine. . . . But Theseus finding her, called her, and sware by his faith he would use her gently, and do her no hurt, nor displeasure at all.’ — North’s Plutarch [p. 279, ed. Skeat. Malone thinks that Shake¬ speare changed the name for the sake of rhythm, but the rhythm remains the same with either spelling, and we are by no means certain that Shakespeare took the name from Plutarch, or that he ever saw the name as it is thus spelled by the printer. — Ed.]
83. Eagles] Staunton : ‘ For some say that Ariadne hung herself for sorrow, when she saw that Theseus had cast her off. Other write, that she was transported by mariners into the ile of Naxos, where she was married unto CEnarus, the priest of Bacchus ; and they think that Theseus left her, because he was in love with another;
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
61
With Ariadne , and Atiopa ?
Que. Thefe are the forgeries of iealoufie, 85
And neuer fince the middle Summers fpring Met we on hil, in dale, forreft, or mead,
By paued fountaine, or by rufhie brooke,
Or in the beached margent of the fea, 89
84. Atiopa] Antiopa QqFf. 89. in the] QqFf, Rowe, Hal. Sta.
86. the] that Han. Warb. Cap. Dyce, Cam. Wh. ii. on the Pope et
fpring] prime D. Wilson. cet.
as by these verses should appear : .Egles, the nymph, was loved of Theseus, Who was the daughter of Panopeus.’— North’s Plutarch [p. 284, ed. Skeat].— Dyce [Remarks, p. 46) : In Shakespeare’s time it was not uncommon to use the genitive of proper names for the nominative. At an earlier period this practice prevailed almost universally. Even in a modem book, and the work of a scholar, we find, ‘ a natural grotto, more beautiful than ^Elian’s description of Atalanta’s, or that in Homer, where Calypsos lived.’— Amory’s Life of John Buncle, i, 214, ed. 1756. [Is it not a little misleading to call this added final s the sign of the ‘ genitive case ’ ? Walker’s long list (Crit. i, 233) shows the frequency with which the final s was added, not only to proper names, but to all words. If it be the genitive case in ‘ Eagles,’ why should this solitary genitive be surrounded by the nominative forms ‘ Peregenia,’ ‘Ariadne,’ and ‘Antiopa ’ ? We need some other cause than inflection, I think, to explain this sibilant tendency, be it in some peculiar flourish in writing, or be it in some delicate phonetic demand, which our modem ears have lost. — Ed.]
84. Atiopa] Staunton : ‘ Philochurus, and some other hold opinion, that [The¬ seus] went thither with Hercules against the Amazons : and that to honour his valiant¬ ness, Hercules gave him Antiopa the Amazone. . . . 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 aboord, he hoysed his sail, and so carried her away.’— North’s Plutarch [p. 286, ed. Skeat].
86. the] Warburton : We should read that. It appears to have been some years since the quarrel first began.— Capell adopts this emendation, and also believes that the midsummer was ‘ a distant one ’ ; it is not easy to see on what ground. Per¬ haps on the supposition that the quarrel began at the birth of the little Indian boy, or when Oberon piped to amorous Phillida. But there is no intimation of it in the text —Ed.
86. middle Summers spring] Capell (Notes, ii, 104) understands this as the spring preceding the ‘ midsummer in which the quarrel took place.* — But Steevens shows that it means ‘ the beginning of middle or mid summer.’ ‘ Spring,’ for begin- mng is used in 2 Hen. IV : IV, iv, 35 : ‘As flaws congealed in the spring of day.’ Also in Luke i, jS : ‘ Whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.’
88. paued fountaine] Henley: That is, fountains whose beds were covered with pebbles, in opposition to those of the rushy brooks, which are oozy. — Knight :
‘ Paved ’ is here used in the same sense as in the ‘ pearl-paved ford ’ of Drayton, the ‘pebble-paved channel ’ of Marlowe, and the ‘ coral-paven bed ’ of Milton.
89. in] Halliwell: That is, within; unnecessarily changed by Pope. — Dyce (ed. i) : ‘ In ’ was often used for on. So in Cymb. Ill, vi, 50 : ‘ Gold strew’d i’ the
62
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, SC. i.
To dance our ringlets to the whittling Winde, go
But with thy braules thou haft difturb’d our fport.
Therefore the Windes, piping to vs in vaine, 92
floor’ (where Boswell cites, from the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Thy will be done in earth '). — 1863. Mr W. N. Lettsom observes to me: ‘Is it not hazardous to retain “ in the beached margent,” when Shakespeare has written, in A Lover's Complaint , “ Upon whose margent weeping she was set ” ? It is true that in is frequently used before earth, mountain, hill, and the like ; but this scarcely warrants “ in the floor,” for the word floor seems to give exclusively the notion of surface , while the other words express also abode or locality. It is, besides, not merely more or less probable, but positively certain, that printers confound these prepositions, as, for instance, in Rich. Ill : V, i, “ To turn their own points on their masters’ bosoms,” where the Ff have in, the Qq on.' [See ‘ falling in the Land,’ line 94, below. Mrs Furness’s Concord¬ ance gives many instances where ‘ in ’ is used where we should use on. The question of changing the present text to on should be weighed only by an editor of a mod¬ em text, for the use of young beginners. — Ed.]
89. beached] W. A. Wright: That is, formed by a beach, or which serves as a beach. Cf. Timon, V. i, 219 : ‘ Upon the beached verge of the salt flood.’ For simi¬ lar instances of adjectives formed from substantives, see ‘ guiled,’ Mer. of Ven. Ill, ii, 97; ‘disdain’d,’ 1 Hen. IV: I, iii, 183; ‘ simple -answer’d,’ that is, simple in your answer, furnished with a simple answer, which is the reading of the Ff in Lear, III, vii, 43 ; ‘ the caged cloister,’ the cloister which serves as a cage, Loved s Com. 249 ; ‘ ravin’d,’ for ravenous, Macb. IV, i, 24 ; ‘ poysened,’ for poisonous, Lily, Euphues p. 196 (ed. Arber) : 1 Nylus breedeth the precious stone and the poysened serpent. [Also ‘the delighted spirit,’ Meas. for Meas. Ill, i, 121.]
89. margent] Halliwell: One of the old forms of margin, of so exceedingly common occurrence as merely to require a passing notice. It seems to have first come in use in the sixteenth century, and has only become obsolete within the past generation, many instances of it occurring in writers of the time of the first Georges. — W. A. Wright : Shakespeare never uses margin.
90. ringlets] W. A. Wright refers these ‘ ringlets ’ to the ‘ orbs ’ in line 8, above. Can they be the same ? The fairy rings ‘ whereof the ewe not bites ’ are found where grass grows green in pastures, but not by the paved fountain nor by rushy brook, and never in the beached margent of the sea, on those yellow sands where, of all places, from Shakespeare’s day to this, fairies foot it featly, and toss their gossamer ringlets to the whistling and the music of the wind. — Ed.
91. braules] W. A. Wright: That is, quarrels. Originally, a brawl was a French dance, as in Love's Lab. L. Ill, i, 9 : ‘ Will you win your love with a French brawl ?’ And it was a dance of a violent and boisterous character, as appears by the following extract from Cotgrave : ‘ Bransle : m. A totter, swing, or swidge ; a shake, shog, or shocke ; a stirring, an vncertain and inconstant motion ; . . . also, a brawle, or daunce, wherein many (men and women) holding by the hands sometimes in a ring, and other whiles at length, moue altogether.’ It may be, however, that there is
no etymological connexion between these two words, which are the same in form. _
Murray (New Eng. Diet.) separates this word from brawl, a French dance ; the origin and primary sense of the former are uncertain.
92. piping to us in vain] ‘We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced/ — Matt, xi, 17.
4CT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
As in reuenge, haue fuck’d vp from the fea Contagious fogges : Which falling in the Land,
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,
63
93
95
100
102
95. Hath'] QqFf, Rowe i, Ktly. Have Rowe ii et cet.
petty] Ff, White, paltry Bell. pelting Qq et cet.
99. his youth] its youth Pope, Han. Warb.
101. murrion] QqFf, Rowe, Pope,
Theob. i, Cam. murrain Theob. ii et cet.
102. nine mens Morris] nine mens morris F3. Nine-mens-morris F4, Rowe, Dyce ii, iii. nine-mens morris Pope. nine-mens morrice Cap.
95. Hath] For other examples of singular verbs following relatives, when the ante¬ cedents are plural, see Abbott, § 247.— W. A. Wright: is here singular by attraction.
95- petty] I can see no reason why we should here desert the Folio, especially as there is, according to all authorities, from Dr Johnson down, a tinge of contempt in the ‘ pelting ’ of the Qq, which is here needless ; insignificance is all-sufficient. — Ed.
96. they] W. A. Wright: The plural follows loosely, as representing the collec¬ tion of individual rivers.
96. Continents] Johnson : Borne down the banks that contain them. So in Lear , III, ii, 58: ‘ — close pent-up guilts Rive your concealing continents.’
97, &c. Warburton maintains that the assertion that Shakespeare borrowed the description of the miseries of the country from Ovid (Met. V, 474-484) will admit of no dispute. No editor, as far as I know, has taken any notice of this indisputable instance of Shakespeare’s thieving propensity, except FIalliwell, who gives at length Golding’s translation, which he who has time to waste may read on p. 64 of that Translation, ed. 1567. — Ed.
lot. murrion] No one familiar with the Old Testament needs to be told the meaning of this word ; see Exodus ix, 3. — ‘ For the variety of the spelling’, says W. A. Wright, ‘ compare Lear, I, i, 65, where the Ff are divided between “ champains ” and “ champions.” ’
102. nine mens Morris] James: In that part of Warwickshire where Shake¬ speare was educated, and in the neighbouring parts of Northamptonshire, the shep¬ herds and other boys dig up the turf with their knives to represent a sort of imperfect chess-board. It consists of a square, sometimes only a foot in diameter, sometimes three or four yards. Within this is another square, every side of which is parallel to the external square, and these squares are joined by lines drawn from each comer of both squares, and the middle of each line. One party, or player, has wooden pegs, the other stones, which they move in such a manner as to take up each other’s men as they are called, and the area of the inner square is called the pound, in which the
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. i.
64
And the queint Mazes in the wanton greene , 103
103. queint] quaint Johns. 103. in] on Coll. MS. _
men taken up are impounded. These figures are always cut upon the green turf or leys as they are called, or upon the grass at the end of ploughed lands, and in rainy seasons never fail to be choked up with mud.-ALCHORNE : A figure is made on the ground by cutting out the turf, and two persons take each nine stones, which they place by turns in the angles, and afterwards move alternately, as at chess or draughts. He who can place three in a straight line may then take off any one of his adversary’s, where he pleases, till one, having lost all his men, loses the game. [This variety of the game corresponds with what W. A. Wright says he has seen in Suffolk : ‘ Three squares, instead of two, are drawn one within the other, and the middle points of the parallel sides are joined by straight lines, leaving the inmost square for the pound. But the comers of the squares are not joined. The corners of the squares and the middle points of the sides are the places where the men may be put, and they move from place to place along the line which joins them.’ CotgrAVE gives s. v. Mere Iks, ‘The boyish game called Merills, or fiue-pennie Morris; played here most commonly with stones, but in France with pawnes, or men made of purpose, and tearmed Merelles ’—Douce (i, 184) : This game was sometimes called the nine mens mernls , from merelles or mereaux, an ancient French word for the jettons or counters, with which it was played. The other term, morris, is probably a corruption suggested by the sort of dance which in the progress of the game the counters performed. In the French merelles each party had three counters only, which were to be placed in a line in order to win the game. It appears to have been the Tremerel mentioned in an old fabliau. ... Dr Hyde thinks the morris or merrils was known during the time that the Normans continued in possession of England, and that the name was afterwards corrupted into three mens morals or nine mens morals. If this be true, the conversion of morals into morris, a term so very familiar to the country people, was extremely natural. The doctor adds that it was likewise called nine-penny , or nine-pin miracle, three-penny morris, five-penny morris, nine-penny morris, ox three-pin, five-pin, and nine-pin morris, all corruptions of three-pin, &c. merels.— Hyde, Hist. Ncrdiludn, p. 202— Staunton : Whether the game is now obsolete in France, I am unable to say ; but it is still practised, though rarely, in this country, both on the turf and on the table, its old title having undergone another mutation and become ‘ Mill.’ [See also Nares, Glossary; Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, p. 279, sec. ed. ; Halliwell ad loc.
&c., &c.]
103. queint Mazes] Steevens: This alludes to a sport still followed by boys, t. e. what is now called running the figure of eight. — W. A. Wright : But I have seen very much more complicated figures upon village greens, and such as might strictly be called mazes or labyrinths. On St. Catherine’s Hill, Winchester, ‘ near the top of it, on the north-east side, is the form of a labyrinth, impressed upon the turf, which is always kept entire by the coursing of the sportive youth through its mean- derings. The fabled origin of this Duedalsean work is connected with that of the Dulce Domum song.’ — Milner, Hist, of Winchester, ii, 155. — Hai.LIWELL gives a wood-cut from an old print of The Shepherd's Race or Robin Hood's Race, ‘ a maze which was formerly on the summit of a hill near St. Ann’s Well, about one mile from Nottingham. The length of the path was 535 yards, but it was all obliterated by the plough in the year 1797, on the occasion of the enclosure of the lordship of Sneinton.
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
65
For lacke of tread are vndiflinguifhable.
The humane mortals want their winter heere,
105, 106. Transposed to follow line 1 1 2. Elze {Notes, 1880, p. 41).
105. want ... heere, ] want, ... here ; White ii. wail. .. here ; Kinnear.
105. winter heere,] winter here. Qt. winter chear [i. e. cheer] Theob. conj. Han. Sing, ii, Coll, ii, Hal. Dyce ii, iii. winter hoar ; Herr, winter hire D. Wil¬ son. winter gear Brae ap. Cam.
105. humane mortals] That is, mankind as distinguished from fairies; Titania, herself immortal, afterwards (line 140) refers to the mother of her changeling as ‘ being mortal ’ ; and a fairy addresses Bottom with, ‘ Hail, mortal, hail !’ thus indi¬ cating that fairies were not mortal. But Steevens, unmindful of the fact that Shake¬ speare’s fairies are unlike all other fairies, especially unlike the fairies of Huon of Bordeaux, or of Spenser, started a controversy by asserting that ‘ fairies were not human, but they were yet subject to mortality ,’ and ‘ that “ human ” might have been here employed to mark the difference between men and fairies .’ The controversy which followed, which may be found in the Variorum of 1821, and in Ritson’s Quip Modest, p. 12, it would be a waste of time to transfer to these pages, and which, since Ritson was one of the disputants, it would be superfluous to characterise as acrimo¬ nious. — Ed.
105. want their winter heere] Theobald: I once suspected it should be ‘want their winter chear,’ i. e. their jollity, usual merry-makings at that season. — Warbur- TON : It seems to me as plain as day that we ought to read ‘ want their winters heried,’ i. e. praised, celebrated ; an old word, and the line that follows shows the propriety of it here. — Capell {Notes, ii, 104) : That is, their accustomed winter, in a country thus afflicted ; to wit, a winter enlivened with mirth and distinguished with grateful hymns to their deities. — Johnson proposed that we should read ‘ want their wonted year,' and transposed the lines as follows: 105, 111-118, 106, 107, 108, Iio, 109, 119. His conjecture re-appeared only in the Variorums of 1773, 1778, and 1785; it was omitted, after his death, from the Variorum of 1793. — Malone’s note in the Variorum of 1790, which is sometimes quoted as ‘ Malone’s own,’ is merely a combination of the note of Theobald and Capell. — Knight : The ingenious author of a pamphlet, Expla¬ nations and Emendations, &c., Edinburgh, 1814, would read: ‘The human mortals want ; their winter here, No night,’ &c. The writer does not support his emendation by any argument, but we believe that he is right. [Knight adopted this punctuation in his text.] The swollen rivers have rotted the corn, the fold stands empty, the flocks are murrain, the sports of summer are at an end, the human mortals want. This is the climax. Their winter is here — is come — although the season is the latter summer [how does this accord with the title of the play? — Ed.] or autumn; and in consequence the hymns and carols which gladdened the nights of a seasonable winter are wanting to this premature one. — R. G. White (ed. i) : It is barely possible that ‘ want ’ is a misprint for chant, and that Titania, wishing to contrast the gloom of the spurious, with the merriment of the real, Winter, says, ‘ when their Winter is here, the human mortals chant ; but now no night is blessed with hymn or carol ’ ; and that we should read : ‘ The human mortals chant, — their Winter here ;’ — Staunton : ‘ Want,’ in this passage does rot appear to mean need, lack, wish for, &c., but to be used in the sense of be without. The human mortals are without their winter here. It occurs,
with the same meaning, in a well-known passage in Macb. Ill, vi : ‘ Men must not 5
66
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, SC. L
No night is now with hymne or caroll bleft ; Therefore the Moone (the gouerneffe of floods) Pale in her anger, wafhes all the aire ;
That Rheumaticke difeafes doe abound.
walk too late Who cannot want the thought,’ &c. — Keightley [Exp. 131) : I should prefer summer for ‘ winter,’ for in Dr Forman’s Diary of the year 1594 — which year Shakespeare had certainly in view — we read : * 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 it in Maye and June ; and scarse too fair dais together all that tyme, but it rayned every day more or lesse. Yf it did not raine then was it cold and cloudye. . . . There were many gret fludes this sommer.’ It is pos¬ sible, however, that the error may lie in ‘ want,’ for which we might read have, or some such word. — Hudson (ed. ii) : ‘ Want their winter here ’ cannot possibly be right ; it gives a sense all out of harmony with the context. I think the next line nat¬ urally points out minstrelsy as the right correction. [And so Hudson’s text reads.]— Dyce (ed. ii) : * Heere ’ is proved to be nonsense by the attempts to explain it. [This puzzling line R. G. White, in his first edition, pronounces ‘ unless greatly corrupted, one of the most obscure and unsatisfactory in all Shakespeare’s works.’ Whether ‘ want ’ mean to lack , or to desire, or to be without, it cannot be satisfactorily interpreted in connection with ‘ here ’ in the sense of time. ‘ Here ’ and now, while Titania is talking, is either April or midsummer, and although at this season in the course of nature winter is assuredly lacking, it is erroneous to suppose that human mortals are now desiring its presence ; in fact, it is because there are signs of winter at midsum¬ mer that the world is mazed. The only solution which I can find is to take ‘ here,’ not in the sense of time, but of place. Here in Warwickshire, says Titania, in effect (for of course she and Oberon are in the Forest of Arden, with never a thought of Athens; whoever heard of the nine mens morris on the slopes of Pentelicus ?), ‘here the poor human mortals have no summer with its sports, and now they have had no winter with its hymns and carols.’ With this interpretation of * here,’ which Capell was the first to suggest, and whose words, * in this country,’ seem to have been over¬ looked by recent editors, the line scarcely needs emendation. — Ed.]
107. Therefore] To Johnson this passage ‘remained unintelligible,’ most prob¬ ably because he misinterpreted, I think, this ‘ therefore.’ He says, ‘ Men find no winter, therefore they sing no hymns, the moon provoked by this omission alters the seasons : That is, the alteration of the seasons produces the alteration of the seasons.’ — Malone points out that there is a succession of ‘ tberefores,’ all pointing to the fairy quarrel as the cause of the war of the elements : ‘ Therefore the winds,’ &c. ; ‘ the ox hath therefore,' &c., and the present line, which is not logically connected with the omission of hymns and carols.
108. Pale] Because it can shine but dimly through the contagious fogs. — Ed.
109. Rheumaticke] Again used with the accent on the first syllable in Ven. arid Ad. 135. — Malone: Rheumatic diseases signified, in Shakespeare’s time, not what we now call rheumatism, but distillations from the head, catarrhs, &c. So, in the Sydney Memorials, i, 94 (1567), we find: ‘he hath verie much distemporid divers parts of his bodie ; as namelie, his hedde, his stomack, &c. And therby is always subject to distillacions, coughes, and other rumatick diseases.— W. A. Wright adds that it would be * more correct to say that the term included all this in addition to
106
IO9
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
67
And through this diftemperature, we fee 1 10
The feafons alter ; hoared headed frofts Fall in the freth lap of the crimfon Rofe,
And on old Hyenis chinne and Icie crowne, 1 13
no. through"] thorough Q,F2F3, Rowe ii et seq.