III. hoared headed] Q2. hoared-

-headed F2. hoary-headed F^. hoary
headed Q,F4 et cet.
1 13. Hyems] Adam’s Herr.
chinne] thin Tyrwhitt, Hal. White, Dyce, Sta. Cam.
what is now understood by it. Cotgrave has “ Rumatique : com. Rhewmaticke ; troubled with a Rhewme,” and he defines “ Rume : f. A Rhewme, Catarrhe ; Pose, Murre.” ’ — Dyce gives a somewhat different meaning, defining it : ‘ splenetic, humour- some, peevish,’ and cites 2 Hen. IV: II, iv, 62, ‘ as rheumatic as two dry toasts,’ which Johnson explains by ‘ which cannot meet but they grate one another.’
109, no. Johnson’s suggestion (see note on line 105, supra ) to transpose these two lines, Hudson adopts ; an emendation as harmless as it is needless, if ‘ distempera- ture ’ refers to the washing of the air by the moon, to which it is quite possible it may refer. — But W. A. Wright, following Malone, says that ‘ distemperature ’ refers to the ‘ disturbance between Oberon and Titania, not to the perturbation of the ele¬ ments,’ and cites Per. V, f, 27 : ‘ Upon what ground is his distemperature ? ’ ‘ where it is used of the disturbance of mind caused by grief. Again, Rom. and Jul. II, iii, 40 : “ Thou art uproused by some distemperature.” ’ On the other hand, Schmidt (Zex.) gives an example from 1 Hen. IV: V, i, 3, quite parallel to the present line, where * distemperature ’ refers not to mental, but to physical disturbance : * how bloodily the sun begins to peer above yon bosky hill ! the day looks pale at his dis¬ temperature.’ It must be confessed that the reiterated reference to a personal quarrel between atomies as the cause of elemental and planetary disturbances is in accord with the whole passage and to be preferred ; but at the same time it cannot be denied that the ‘ Therefore ’ in line 107 may contain a sufficient reference to the fairy brawl,, and that ‘ distemperature ’ may mean the anger of the moon. — Ed.
no. through] See II, i, 5.
1 13. chinne] The earliest critic who, in print, suggested chill is Grey (i, 49, 1754,), but in 1729 Theobald wrote to Warburton (Nichols, Lit. Hist, ii, 232) : ‘ it staggered me to hear of a chaplet or garland on the “ chin.” I therefore conjectured it should be “ chill and icy crown.” But upon looking into Paschalius de Coronis, I find many instances of the ancients having chaplets on their necks, as well as tem¬ ples ; so that, if we may suppose Hyem is represented here as an old man bending his chin towards his breast, then a chaplet round his neck may properly enough be said to be on his chin. So I am much in doubt about my first conjecture.’ — To Capell also [Notes, p. 104) the same emendation occurred independently, and he, too, was restrained from adopting it in his text by his classical knowledge ; he had a ‘ distant remembrance of the incana barba of a Silenus, or some such person, having a M chaplet ” put on it by nymphs that are playing with him.’ — In support of the text, however, or rather in what they considered support of the text, Weston and Ma¬ lone adduced passages from Virgil [JEneid, iv, 253) and Golding’s Ovid (Seconde Booke, p. 1 5) which have no parallelism with the present phrase, but contain merely a description of Winter with his ‘ hoarie beard ’ and ‘ snowie frozen crown.’ — It w a j reserved for Tyrwhitt to suggest an emendation which has been since adopte
68
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
[act ii, sc. i.
An odorous Chaplet of fweet Sommer buds
Is as in mockry fet. The Spring, the Sommer, 1 1 5
The childing Autumne, angry Winter change
1 1 6. childing ] chiding F4, Pope, Han. Cap. chilling ox churlish Herr.
by many of the ablest editors ; he remarked ‘ I should rather be for thin, i. e. thin¬ haired.’ — In support, STeevens cites Lear , IV, vii, 36 : ‘ To watch — poor perdu ! — With this thin helm;’ and Rich. II: III, ii, 112: ‘White-beards have arm’d their thin and hairless scalps Against thy majesty.’ — And W. A. Wright adds Timon, IV, iii, 144: ‘ Thatch your poor thin roofs With burthens of the dead.’ — Dyce ( Remarks , p. 46), after giving in full the citations of Weston and Malone just mentioned, ob¬ serves : ‘ Now, in good truth, there is not the slightest resemblance between these two quotations and the absurdity which they are adduced to illustrate and defend. When Virgil describes Atlas with rivers streaming from his chin, and when Ovid paints Winter with icicles dangling on his beard and crown, we have such pictures pre sented to us as the imagination not unwillingly receives ; but Hyems with a chaplet of summer buds on his CHIN is a grotesque which must surely startle even the dullest reader.’ — In deference to Dyce’s opinion, Halliwell adopted thin in his text, but confesses that he is ‘ not quite convinced that “ chin ” is incorrect,’ ‘ the author evi¬ dently intended a grotesque contrast, — “ is, as in mockery, set the proper appendage being ice.’ — ‘ What was a chaplet doing on old Hyems’s “ chin ” ?’ asks R. G. White, ‘ How did it get there ? and when it got there, how did it stay ?’ — Lastly, Walker ( Crit. ii, 275) in an Article on the confusion of c and t, pronounces thin clearly right. [I cannot but think that there is some slight corroboration of Tyrwhitt’s emendation in the use of the word ‘ chaplet,’ which is almost restricted to the head. Would not the word have been garland had it been meant to have the summer buds about old Hyems’s neck and resting in mockery on his chin or beard ? — Ed.]
ii 6. childing] Steevens : This is the frugifer autumnus. — Holt White: Thus in Fairfax’s Tasso, xviii, 26 : ‘An hundreth plants beside (euen in his sight) Childed an hundreth nymphes, so great, so dight.’ Childing is an old term in botany, when a small flower grows out of a large one ; ‘ the childing autumn ’ therefore means the autumn which unseasonably produces flowers on those of summer. — W. A. Wright : It means the autumn which seasonably produces its own fruits. It is the change of seasons which makes it abnormal. — Knight : ‘ The childing autumn ’ is the ‘ teem ing autumn ’ of our poet’s 97th Sonnet. — Abbott, § 290 : That is, autumn pro¬ ducing fruits as it were children. — J. B. Noyes (. Poet-Lore , p. 531, Oct. 1892) : No passage has yet been produced from any writer to justify the definition of ‘ childing ’ as fruitful, and it is presumed that none fairly can be. I believe the word ‘ childing > to be a corrupt spelling of the ignorant compositor, a vulgar and strong form of the true reading chilling. [See Herr’s conj., Text. Notes.] Edward Coote, in The English Schoole- Master, p. 19, 1624, 15th ed., writes: ‘But it is both unusual and needlesse to write bibbl and chi lid, to make them differ from bible and child.' It therefore seems extremely probable that ‘ childing ’ or chillding is simply a corrupt
spelling of chilling, formed in the same manner as ‘ oilde ’ from ‘ oile ’ [where ? _
Ed.], and ‘ beholds ’ from behowls, which corrupt spellings are found in the Folio text of this play. A passage from Greene’s Orpharion, 1599, p. 20 [p. 37, ed. Grosart], would seem to dispel any lingering doubt as to the proposed emendation : ‘ for the childing colde of Winter, makes the Sommers Sun more pleasant.’ — [In his Glossaria ,
KCT ii, SC. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME 69
Their wonted Liueries, and the mazed world, 117
By their increafe, now knowes not which is which ;
And this fame progeny of euills,
Comes from our debate, from our diffention, 120
We are their parents and originall.
Ober. Do you amend it then, it lies in you, 122
J17. mazed ] amazed F3F4, Rowe + . mazed Johns. Steev. Mai. Sing, ii, Ktly. 1 1 8. increafe ] inverse Han. inchase
Warb. encrease Cap.
1 1 9, 120. And... Carnes'] One line, Fl et seq. And. ..evil comes F4, Rowe ■)- .
Index , Grosart anticipates Noyes in the correction of ‘ childing ’ to chilling in this passage from Greene.— In Murray’s N. E. Diet, there are the following citations, in addition to the present passage, in support of the meaning fertile, fruitful, and also of the botanical meaning of * childing,’ noted by Holt White : ‘ 1609, Heywood, Brit. Troy, V, xix, hi, By him (Saturn) . . . Childing Tellus beares. 1636, Gerard’s Herbal, II, cciii, 635, Another pretty double daisie, which . . . puts forth many foot- stalkes carrying also little double floures . . . whence they haue fitly termed it the childing Daisie. 1688, R. Holme, Armoury, II, 64/2: The Childing Pink groweth ... on upright stalks. 1776, Withering, Bot. Arrangem. (1830), II, 539: Dian thus prolifer, Childing or Proliferous Pink. 1879, Prior, Plant-n., Childing Cud weed, Gnaphalium germanicum.’ Surely the text of the Folio may stand. From time immemorial Autumn has been symbolised by harvests and by fruits. If there be any virtue in illustrating Shakespeare by himself, we cannot overlook the parallel passage cited by Knight : ‘ The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime.’ In each of my three copies of F4 ‘ childing ’ is spelled chiding, yet it would be unsafe to assert that this is the reading in all copies. Neither Capell nor the Cambridge Editor makes any mention of it, but both credit it to Pope. Capell adopted it in his text, and justifies it in his notes by saying that he could not see ‘ how the epithet “ angry ” could well have presented itself to the poet, if “ chiding” had not preceded.’ — R. G. White supposed that the change was orig¬ inal with him. ‘I am so sure,’ he says (ed. i), ‘that “childing” is a misprint for chiding (in allusion to the lowering skies and harsh winds of Autumn, as the next epithet figures the increased inclemency of Winter,) . . . that I wonder that the sug¬ gestion has not been made before.’ — Ed.]
1 1 7. mazed] That is, confused, bewildered; it is not an abbreviation for amazed, as it is sometimes printed in modem editions. See Text. Notes.
1 18. increase] Warburton’s substitution inchase is unintelligible without his expla¬ nation that it refers to the temperature in which the seasons are set or inchased like jewels. — Whereupon Heath (p. 47) observes, none too strongly, that ‘ a season set in a warm or cold temperature borders very nearly upon downright nonsense.’ ‘ If [Warburton] had recollected the Psalm he every day repeats in the evening service of the Common Prayer, he would have found that “ increase ” signifies product, growth.’ ‘ The seasons had so changed their wonted liveries that it was no longer possible to distinguish them one from another by their products.’
1 19. progeny of euills] For contemporary references to these meteorological dis- lurbar ?es, see Appendix, Date of Composition.
70
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, sc. i.
Why fhould Titania croffe her Oberon ?
I do but beg a little changeling boy,
To be my Henchman.
Qu. Set your heart at reft,
The Fairy land buyes not the childe of me,
His mother was a Votreffe of my Order,
And in the fpiced Indian aire, by night Full often hath the goflipt by my fide,
And fat with me on Neptunes yellow fands,
Marking th’embarked traders on the flood,
When we haue laught to fee the failes conceiue,
And grow big bellied with the wanton winde :
Which the with pretty and with fwimming gate, Following (her wombe then rich with my yong fquire)
123
125
130
135
123. Oberon] Orberon F4.
128. Votreffe] votaress Dyce, Coll, ii, Cam.
1 30. hath fhe] fhe hath F3F4, Rowe + .
13 1. And fat] And fat, Qt.
132. on the] of the F3F4, Rowe, Pope, Han.
133. we haue] we F3F4.
135- gate] gait Cap. et seq.
136. Following (her., fquire')] Folly- ing (her... squire) Warb. Theob. Han. (Following her. ...squire) Kenrick, Far¬ mer, Steev. Rann. Mai. Following her womb, ...squire, Hal. White i (subs.). Following her womb ...squire. — White ii.
124. In this contest over a boy, Bell (ii, 207) detects the contest of Jupiter over Hercules.
125. Henchman] The meaning of this word is given as concisely as may be in Sherwood’s French- English Dictionary, appended to Cotgrave : ‘A hench-man, or hench boy. Page d’honneur; qui marche devant quelque Seigneur de grand authoritie.’ Its derivation is still somewhat in doubt. Skeat derives it from hengst-man, horse-man, groom; Anglosaxon hengest= horse. For a prolonged dis¬ cussion wherein many examples are cited, one as early as 1415, see Notes and Queries, 8th Ser. Ill, 478, 1893, where references are given to all the preceding communications in that periodical. Halliwell devotes more than two folio pages, with a wood-cut, to the elucidation of the word ; but for all purposes of present illus¬ tration, Sherwood’s definition appears to be ample. — Ed.
127. The Fairy land] Collier (ed. ii) : The MS has Thy; and as Titania after¬ wards speaks to Oberon of * thy fairy kingdom,’ it is probably right. [If improvement be justifiable, this trivial emendation is harmless. — Ed.]
1 35 - swimming] Of course this refers to a gliding motion on or in the water; at the same time, it is well to remember that to Elizabethan ears there may have been here the suggestion of a graceful dance. That there was a step in dancing called the swim we know, but of its style we are ignorant. Daniel (see note, As You Like It, iv> 73> °f this ed.) collected references to this dance from Beau. & FI., Massinger, and Steele ; Elze added another from Chapman ; to them may be added, from Jon- non’s Cynthia.' s Revels : ‘Moria. You wanted the swim in the turn. Philautia. Nay, ' • • the swim and the trip are properly mine ; everybody will affirm it that has anv
ACT it, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
7‘
Would imitate, and faile vpon the Land, 137
To fetch me trifles, and returne againe,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandize.
But the being mortall, of that boy did die, 140
And for her fake I do reare vp her boy,
And for her fake I will not part with him.
Ob. How long within this wood intend you ftay ?
Qu. Perchance till after Thefeus wedding day.
If you will patiently dance in our Round, 145
And fee our Moone-light reuels, goe with vs ;
If not, fhun me and I will fpare your haunts.
Ob. Giue me that boy, and I will goe with thee.
Qu. Not for thy Fairy Kingdome. Fairies away : 149
139. rich with.} ripe with Coll. MS. 144. Thefeus] Theseus's Rowe i. The-
merchandize ] marchandife Q,. sens' Rowe ii et seq.
141. I doc~\ doe I Qq, Cap. Mai. ’90, 149. Fairies ] Elves Pope + .
Sta. Cam. White ii.
judgement in dancing.’ — II, i, p. 270, ed. Gifford, 1816. Unfortunately, Gifford has no note on it. — Ed.
136. Following] Warburton’s emendations, not unfrequently, as in the present instance, composed of words coined by himself, need explanation ; a bare record in the Text. Notes is almost unintelligible. ‘ Following’ he changes to follying, and says it means ‘wantoning in sport and gaiety,’ — Heath rightly explained that the little mother ‘ followed on the land the ship which sailed on the water, . . . and that she continued following it for some time, . . . and would then pick up a few trifles, and “ return again, As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.” ’ Bad as is Warburton’s change, which, by the way, Dr Johnson pronounced ‘ very ingenious,’ it is to me pref¬ erable to Kenrick’s repulsive punctuation (Rev. p. 19). He removes the excellent parentheses of the Folio, and puts a comma after ‘ wombe ’ ; having thus coarsened Titania’s sweet picture and degraded her words to the slang level of ‘ following one’s nose,’ he complacently adds : * this is the method a critic should take with the poets. Trace out their images, and you will soon find how they expressed themselves.’ It is to be regretted that Kenrick has, substantially, so good a following ; it is incompre¬ hensible that Lettsom (ap. Dyce, ed. ii) should say he was right. — Ed.
137. imitate] C. C. Hense (Sh.’s Sommernachtstraum Erlautert, 1851, p. 7) : Shakespeare’s fairies delight in whatsoever is comic, hence it is thoroughly character¬ istic that Titania in recalling the loveliness of her friend should dwell with fondest recollection on the laughter called forth by the imitation of the embark’d traders.
143. stay] For other examples of the omission to before the infinitive, see Abbott,
§ 349-
145. Round] Halliwell : * Orbis saltatorius, the round danse, or the dansing of the rounds.’ — Nomenclator, 1585. So in Elyot’s Boke of the Govemour, 1537 : ‘ In stede of these we haue nowe base daunsis, bargenettes, pauions, turgions, and roundes ’ [i, 230, ed. Croft]. The round was, in fact, what is now called the country-dance.
149. Fairy] ‘ By the advice of Dr Farmer,’ Steevens ‘ omitted this useless adjec-
72 A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. i.
We (hall chide downe right, if I longer ftay. Exeunt. 150 Ob. Wei, go thy way: thou fhalt not from this groue,
Till I torment thee for this iniury.
My gentle Pucke come hither ; thou remembreft
Since once I fat vpon a promontory, 154
153. remembreJT\ rememberest Cam. that I Rowe. Since I once Coll. MS
154. Since once J] Since I Ff. Since ap. Cam.
tive as it spoils the metre.’ And then, can it be believed ? pronounced the following ‘ Fairies ’ as a trisyllable 1 — Ed.
152. iniury] W. A. Wright: This word has here something of the meaning of insult, and not of wrong only. Compare III, ii, 153, and the adjective ‘ injurious ’ in the sense of * insulting, insolent ’ in III, ii, 202. In the Authorised Version of 1 Tim¬ othy i, 13, ‘injurious’ is the rendering of vpfuari/g.
153— I75- For notes on this passage, see p. 75.
154- Since] For other examples of the use of ‘since’ for when, see Abbott, §132, where it is said that this meaning arises from the ‘omission of “it is” in such phrases as “ it is long since I saw you,” when condensed into “ long since, I saw you.” Thus since acquires the meaning of “ago,” “in past time,” adverbially, and hence is used conjunctively for “ when, long ago.” ’ — Verity gives a refined analysis of this usage : ‘ “ Since ” is used by Shakespeare as equivalent to when only after verbs denoting recollection. Perhaps this use comes from the meaning ever since ; if you recollect a thing ever since it occurred, you must recollect when it occurred.’ In 2 Hen. VI: III, i, 9, the Queen says, ‘ We know the time since he was mild and affable ’ ; at first sight, the use of ‘ since ’ appears here to disprove Verity’s rule, but in reality it conforms to it. In ‘we know the time’ there is involved the idea of recollection. — Ed.
154. Since once I sat, &c.] Delius (Sh. Jahrbuch, vol. xii, p. 1, 1877) has col¬ lected examples of what he ‘ ventures to term ’ ‘ the epic element ’ in Shakespeare’s dramas. By this ‘epic element’ is meant those passages where the poet, through the mouth of one of his characters, lets those circumstances be narrated or described which might have been presented scenically. It is needless to call attention to the important bearing of this subject on Shakespeare’s dramatic art. Of the present play Delius says (p. 4) : The previous quarrel between Oberon and Titania, which has such disastrous consequences for all nature and for mankind, Shakespeare describes at length through the mouths of the Fairy King and Queen themselves ; just as he had shortly before made the roguish Puck boast of his own knavish tricks in order to prepare the audience for those tricks which he was afterwards to play in the drama. A third descriptive or epic element is in the present passage, where Oberon describes the magic properties of the little western flower. Be the meaning of this much-vexed passage what it may, this much is certain, that a visible scenic representation of it was precluded by the meagre theatrical resources of the day ; and yet so essential to the developement of the action is this magic flower that a picture of it must be drawn as vividly and as visibly as possible before the mind’s eye. And here it is where- Shake¬ speare has completely succeeded. While listening in the theatre to Oberon’s words the spectators saw Oberon himself on the promontory. With Oberon’s eyes they saw Cupid’s love-shaft miss the fair vestal throned by the west, and fall upon the little
ACT H, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
And heard a Meare-maide on a Dolphins backe, Vttering fuch dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude fea grew ciuill at her fong,
And certaine ftarres fhot madly from their Spheares, To heare the Sea-maids muficke.
Puc. I remember.
Ob. That very time I fay (but thou couldft not) Flying betweene the cold Moone and the earth, Cupid all arm’d ; a certaine aime he tooke
73
155
160
163
155. Meare-maide] mermaid Rowe. 161. I fay] If aw Qt, Rowe et seq.
156. harmonious] hermonious Q,. 163. all arm'd] 'alarm'd Warb.
158. Spheares] Shfeares F3. Theob. all-arm' d Johns.
flower before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound. They saw the siren, as a contrast to the invulnerable chastity of that vestal, control the sea with her seductive songs, and entice the stars, maddened with love, from their spheres. [If the specta¬ tors saw this, did they see what Shakespeare intended ? Delius speaks of a ‘ siren ’ ; a mermaid was not necessarily a ‘ siren,’ nor is ‘ dulcet and harmonious breath ’ neces¬ sarily seductive. Moreover, does not Delius overshoot the mark when he represents Shakespeare as resorting to the epic element here, not from artistic reasons, but because of the poverty of his stage ? Delius’s Essay has been translated in the New Shakspere Society's Transactions, Part ii, pp. 207, 232. — Ed.]
158. certaine] W. A. Wright: Here used of an indefinite number, as in Temp. V, i, S3 : ‘ I’ll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth.’ [This interpre¬ tation is, of course, allowable, but I am by no means sure that there is not an added beauty in taking * certain ’ in the meaning of sure, fixed; does it not heighten the power of the mermaid’s song, that it could bring down the very stars, fixed in the sky. Schmidt {Lex.) furnishes a parallel example from the R. of L. where the skies
were sorry at the burning of Ilion, ‘And little stars shot from their fixed places.’ _
1. 1525. That this interpretation is hostile to the theory that the ‘ certain stars ’ were the Duke of Norfolk and the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, is pos¬ sibly an additional reason why it should be preferred. — Ed.]
1 57- Prof. A. S. Cook {Academy, 30 Nov. 1889) calls attention to the parallelism of this line to the description, in the Sixth Canto of the Orlando, of ‘ una Sirena Che col suo dolce canto accheta il mare.’
158. Spheares] See note on ‘ moon’s sphere ’ in line 7 of this scene.
163. all arm’d] Warburton, on the supposition that the beauty of the passage would be heightened if Cupid were represented as frightened at the Queen’s decla¬ ration for a single life, changed this to alarm'd, and Dr Johnson gravely defended the original text, and explained that ‘ it does not signify dressed in panoply.’ Earlier than Johnson, however, Grey (i, 52) had rightly remarked that ‘all arm’d’ means nothing more ‘ than being arm’d with bow and quiver, the proper and classical arms of Cupid, which yet he sometimes feigned to lay aside.’ — And Capell, too, came to the rescue of a phrase that would have needed no comment had not the perverse and ingenious Warburton given it a twist, whereof the effects have more or less endured until now. — W. A. Wright observes that ‘all’ is merely emphatic, — ‘not in full armour, but with all his usual weapons.’
7 4
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, SC. i.
At a faire Veftall, throned by the Weft,
And loos’d his loue-ftiaft fmartly from his bow, 165
As it fhould pierce a hundred thoufand hearts,
But I might fee young Cupids fiery (haft Quencht in the chafte beames of the watry Moone ;
And the imperiall Votreffe paffed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy free. 1 70
Yet markt I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell vpon a little wefterne flower ;
Before, milke-white ; now purple with loues wound,
And maidens call it, Loue in idleneffe. 174
164. by the] by Q q. 169. Votreffe] votaress Knt, Coll.
166. jhould] would F4, Rowe i. Dyce, Sta. Cam. White ii.
168. Quencht] Quench F3F4
164. by] For other examples of a similar use of ‘ by,’ see Abbott, § 145.
165. loos’d] Dyce: The technical term in archery. See Puttenham’s Arte of Poesie , 1589, p. 145 : ‘th’ Archer’s terme, who is not said to finish the feate of his shot before he give the loose, and deliuer his arrow from his bow.’ Compare, in the excellent old ballad of Adam Bell , Clim of the Clough , and William of Cloudesly , ‘ They loused theyr arowes bothe at ones.’ — [Child’s Eng. and Scot. Popular Bal¬ lads , V, 26.]
166. As] For other instances where ‘ as ’ is equivalent to as if, see Abbott, § 107 ; and see § 312 for examples of ‘ might,’ in the next line, used in the sense of was able , could.
170. fancy free] Steevens : That is, exempt from the power of love.
173. Before, milke-white] Hunter (i, 293) : The change of the flower from white to purple was evidently suggested by the change of the mulberry in Ovid’s story of Pyramus. Halliwell : Shakespeare was so minute an observer of nature, it is possible there is here an allusion to the changes which take place in the colours of plants arising from solar light and the character of the soil. [Lyte, in his Niewe Herball, 1578, p. 147, speaking of the different kinds of violets (and Love-in-idle ness is the viola tricolor, see next note), says : ‘ There is also a thirde kinde, bearing floures as white as snow. And also a fourth kinde (but not very common), whose floures be of a darke Crymsen, or old reddish purple colour, in all other poyntes like to the first, as in leaues, seede, and growing.’ If any appeal to Botany be needed, which I doubt, we appear to have here a sufficing response. — Ed.]
174. Loue in idlenesse] In his Part II, chap, ii, Of Pances or Hartes ease, Lyte
says : * This floure is called ... in Latine . . . Viola tricolor, Herba Trinitatis, Iacea, and Herba Clauellata : in English Pances, Loue in idlenes, and Hartes ease ’ (p. 149, ed. 1578). W. A. Wright quotes Gerard {Herball, p. 705, ed. 1597) as calling the flower * Harts ease, Pansies, Liue in Idlenes, Cull me to you, and three faces in one hood.’ — Ellacombe (p. 151) has added from Dr Prior more common names, such as : ‘ Herb Trinity, Fancy, Flamy, Kiss me, Cull me or Cuddle me to you, Tickle my fancy, Kiss me ere I rise, Jump up and kiss me, Kiss me at the garden gate, Pink of my John, &c.’ I think the commonest name in this country is Johnny-jump-up. _ Ed.
kci H, SC. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME Fetch me that flower ; the hearb I fhew’d thee once,
I7S- Jhcw' d~\Jhewcd Qf.
IS3~I75- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] This speech of Oberon has been the subject of more voluminous speculation than any other twenty-five lines in Shake¬ speare. Perhaps not unnaturally. Let an allegory be once scented and the divaga¬ tions are endless. That there is an allegory here has been noted from the days of Rowe, but how far it extended and what its limitations and its meanings have since then proved prolific themes. According to Rowe, it amounted to no more than a compliment to Queen Elizabeth, and this is the single point on which all critics since his day are agreed. In his Life of Shakespcar (p. viii, 1709) Rowe says that ‘ Queen Elizabeth had several of [Shakespear’s] plays acted before her, and without doubt gave him many gracious marks of her favour. It is that maiden Princess, plainly, whom he intends by a “ fair vestal throned by the West ” j and that whole passage is a Compliment very properly brought in, and very handsomly apply’d to her.’ The next advance was made by Warburton, and however unwilling we may be to accept instruction from his dogmatic lips, and however much he may have been derided and mangled by Ritson, it still remains that his interpretation has been accepted by one, at least, of the able critics of our day. — ‘ The first thing,’ says Warburton, ‘ observable in these words [the first seven lines of Oberon’s speech] is that this action of the Mermaid is laid in the same time and place with Cupid’s attack upon the ves¬ tal. By the vestal every one knows is meant Queen Elizabeth. It is very natural and reasonable then to think that the Mermaid stands for some eminent personage of her time. And if so, the allegorical covering, in which there is a mixture of satire and panegyric, will lead us to conclude that this person was one of whom it had been inconvenient for the author to speak openly, either in praise or dispraise. All this agrees with Mary Queen of Scots, and with no other. Queen Elizabeth could not bear to hear her commended ; and her successor would not forgive- her satirist. But the poet has so well marked out every distinguished circumstance of her life and character in this beautiful allegory, as will leave no room to doubt about his secret meaning. She is called a Mermaid — 1, to denote her reign over a kingdom situate in the sea, and 2, her beauty and intemperate lust, “ Ut turpiter atrum Desinat in pis- cem mulier formosa supemS,” for as Elizabeth, for her chastity, is called a Vestal, this unfortunate lady, on a contrary account, is called a Mermaid. 3. An ancient story may be supposed to be here alluded to. The emperor Julian tells us, Epistle 41, that the Sirens (which, with all the modem poets, are mermaids) contended for precedency with the Muses, who, overcoming them, took away their wings. The quarrels between Mary and Elizabeth had the same cause and the same issue.
‘ “ On a dolphin’s back ” : This evidently marks out that distinguishing circum¬ stance of Mary’s fortune, her marriage with the Dauphin of France, son of Henry II.
‘ “ Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath ” : This alludes to her great abilities of genius and learning, which rendered her the most accomplished Princess of her age -
That the rude sea grew civill at her song” : By “rude sea” is meant Scotland encircled with the ocean ; which rose up in arms against the Regent, while she was in France. But her return home presently quieted those disorders. . . . There is the greater justness and beauty in this image, as the vulgar opinion is, that the mermaid always sings in storms.
* “And certaine starres shot madly from their spheares, To heare the Sea-maids
;6
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. 4.
[153—175* My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] musicke ” : Thus concludes the description, with that remarkable circumstance of this unhappy lady’s fate, the destruction she brought upon several of the English nobility, whom she drew in to support her cause. This, in the boldest expression of the sub¬ lime, the poet images by certain stars shooting madly from their spheres. By which he meant the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, who fell in her quarrel ; and principally the great duke of Norfolk, whose projected marriage with her was attended with such fatal consequences. Here, again, the reader may observe a pecu¬ liar justness in the imagery. The vulgar opinion being that the mermaid allured men to destruction by her songs. . . . On the whole, it is the noblest and justest allegory that was ever written. The laying it in fairy land, and out of nature, is in the cha¬ racter of the speaker. And on these occasions Shakespeare always excels himself.’
This interpretation of the ‘noblest and justest allegory’ (Warburton’s innocent way of praising his own ingenuity) was accepted for forty years, and duly appeared in each succeeding edition of the Variorum down to ‘ Steevens’s Own,’ in 1793, when that editor found he could not ‘dissemble his doubts concerning it.’ ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘is the thrice-married Queen of Scotland styled a Sea-maid? and is it probable that Shakespeare (who understood his own political as well as poetical interest) should have ventured such a panegyric on this ill-fated Princess during the reign of her rival, Elizabeth ? If it was unintelligible to his audience, it was thrown away ; if obvious, there was danger of offence to her majesty. ... To these remarks may be added those of a like tendency which I met with in The Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786 : « That a complement to Queen Elizabeth was intended in the expression of the * fair Vestal throned in the West ’ seems to be generally allowed ; but how far Shakespeare de¬ signed, under the image of the mermaid, to figure Mary, Queen of Scots, is more doubtful. If by the ‘ rude sea grew civil at her song ’ is meant, as Dr Warburton supposes, that the tumults of Scotland were appeased by her address, the observation is not true ; for that sea was in a storm during the whole of Mary’s reign. Neither is the figure just, if by the ‘ stars shooting madly from their spheres ’ the poet alluded to the fate of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, and particularly of the Duke of Norfolk, whose projected marriage with Mary was the occasion of his ruin. It would have been absurd and irreconcileable to the good sense of the poet to have represented a nobleman aspiring to marry a queen, by the image of a star shooting or descending from its sphere.” ’
The doubts merely hinted at by Steevens become withering sneers from Ritson. I shall not dispute,’ says he, ‘ that by “ the fair vestal ” Shakspeare intended a com¬ pliment to Queen Elizabeth, who, I am willing to believe, at the age of sixty-eight, was no less chaste than beautiful ; but whether any other part of Oberon’s speech have an allegorical meaning or not, I presume, in direct opposition to Dr Warburton, to contend that it agrees with any other rather than with Mary, Queen of Scots. The “ mixture of satire and panegyric ” I shall examine anon. I only wish to know, for the present, why it should have been “ inconvenient for the author to speak openly” in “ dispraise ” of the Scottish queen. If he meant to please « the imperial votress,” no incense could have been half so grateful as the blackest calumny. But, it seems, “ her successor would not forgive her satirist.” Who then was her “ successor ” when this play was written ? Mary’s son, James ? I am persuaded that, had Dr Warbur¬ ton been better read in the history of those times, he would not have found this mon¬ arch’s succession quite so certain, at that period, as to have prevented Shakspeare. who was by no means the refined speculatist he would induce one to suppose, from
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
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[IS3~I7S- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] gratifying the “ fair vestal ” with sentiments so agreeable to her. However, if “ the poet has so well marked out every distinguishing circumstance of her life and cha¬ racter, in this beautiful allegory, as will leave no room to doubt about his secret mean¬ ing)’’ there is an end of all controversy. For, though the satire would be cowardly, false, and infamous, yet, since it was couched under an allegory, which, while per¬ spicuous as glass to Elizabeth, would have become opake as a mill-stone to her suc¬ cessor, Shakspeare, lying as snug as his own Ariel in a cowslip’s bell, would have had no reason to apprehend any ill consequences from it. Now, though our speculative bard might not be able to foresee the sagacity of the Scotish king in smelling out a plot, as I believe it was some years after that he gave any proof of his excellence that way, he could not but have heard of his being an admirable witch-finder, and, surely, the skill requisite to detect a witch must be sufficient to develope an allegory; so that I must needs question the propriety of the compliment here paid to the poet’s pru¬ dence. Queen Mary “ is called a Mermaid— I, to denote her reign over a kingdom situate in the sea.” In that respect, at least, Elizabeth was as much a mermaid as herself. “And 2, her beauty and intemperate lust; for as Elizabeth, for her chastity, is called a Vestal, this unfortunate lady, on a contrary account, is called a mermaid All this is as false as it is foolish : The mermaid was never the emblem of lust ; nor was the “ gentle Shakspeare ” of a character or disposition to have insulted the mem¬ ory of a murdered princess by so infamous a charge. The most abandoned libeller, even Buchanan himself, never accused her of “intemperate lust”; and it is pretty well understood at present that, if either of these ladies were remarkable for her purity, it was not Queen Elizabeth. “ 3. An ancient story may be supposed to be here alluded to : the Emperor Julian tells us that the Sirens (which, with all the mod¬ ern poets, are mermaids ) contended for precedency with the Muses, who, overcoming them, took away their wings.” Can anything be more ridiculous ? Mermaids are half women and half fishes : where then are their wings ? or what possible use could they make of them if they had any ? The Sirens which Julian speaks of were partly women and partly birds ; so that “the pollusion,” as good-man Dull hath it, by no means “ holds in the exchange.” [Florio gives : ‘ Sirena, a Syren, a Mermaide ,’ and Cotgrave : ‘ Serene : f. A Syren, or Mermaid.' Hence it seems that the words were to a certain extent interchangeable in Shakespeare’s day, and Ritson’s sneers in this regard must be tempered.] “The quarrels between Mary and Elizabeth had the same cause and the same issue.” That is, they contended for precedency, and Elizabeth, overcoming, took away the other’s wings. The secret of their contest for precedency should seem to have been confined to Dr Warburton. It would be in vain to enquire after it in the history of the time. The Queen of Scots, indeed, flew for refuge to her treacherous rival (who is here again the mermaid of the allegory, alluring to destruction, by her songs or fair speeches, and wearing, it should seem, like a cherubim, her wings on her neck), Elizabeth, who was determined she should fly no more, and in her eagerness to tear them away, happened, inadvertently, to take off her head. The situation of the poet’s mermaid, on a dolphin's back, “ evidently marks out that distinguishing circumstance in Mary’s fortune, her marriage with the dauphin of France.” A mermaid would seem to have but a strangely aukward seat on the back of a dolphin, but that, to be sure, is the poet’s affair, and not the commentator’s ; the latter, however, is certainly answerable for placing a Queen on the back of her husband — a very extraordinary situation, one would think, for a married lady ; and of which I only recollect a single instance, in the common print, of “ a poor man
78
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. i.
[I53-I75- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] loaded with mischief.” Mermaids are supposed to sing, but their dulcet and harmo¬ nious breath must, in this instance, to suit the allegory, allude to “ those great abilities of genius and learning,” which rendered Queen Mary “the most accomplished prin¬ cess of her age.” This compliment could not fail of being highly agreeable to the “ fair Vestal.” “ By the rude sea is meant Scotland incircled with the ocean, which rose up in arms against the regent, while she [Mary] was in France. But her return home quieted these disorders; and had not her strange ill conduct afterwards more violently inflamed them, she might have passed her whole life in peace.” Dr Warbur- ton, whose skill in geography seems to match his knowledge of history and acuteness in allegory, must be allowed the sole merit of discovering Scotland to be an island. But, as to the disorders of that country being quieted by the Queen’s return, it appears from history to be full as peaceable before as it is at any time after that event. Whether, in the revival or continuance of these disorders, she, or her idiot husband, or fanatical subjects, were most to blame, is a point upon which doctors still differ; but, it is evi¬ dent, that if the enchanting song of the commentator’s mermaid civilized the rude sea for a time, it was only to render it, in an instant, more boisterous than ever; those great abilities of genius and learning, which rendered her the most accomplished princess of her age, not availing her among a parcel of ferocious and enthusiastic barbarians, whom even the lyre of Orpheus had in vain warbled to humanize. Bran- tome, who accompanied her, says she was welcomed home by a mob of five or six hundred ragamuffins, who, in discord, with the most execrable instruments, sung psalms (which she was supposed to dislike) under her chamber window : "He!" adds he, “ quelle musique et quelle repos pour sa nuit /” However, it seems “ there is great justness and beauty in this image, as the vulgar opinion is that the mermaid always sings in storms.” “ The vulgar opinion,” I am persuaded, is peculiar to the ingenious commentator; as, if the mermaid is ever supposed to sing, it is in calms which presage storms. I can perceive no propriety in calling the insurrection of the North¬ ern earls the quarrel of Queen Mary, unless in so far as it was that of the religion she professed. But this, perhaps, is the least objectionable part of a chimerical allegory of which the poet himself had no idea, and which the commentator, to whose creative fancy it owes its existence, seems to have very justly characterised in telling us it is “ out of nature ” ; that is, as I conceive, perfectly groundless and unnatural.’
Warburton may have urged inappropriate reasons for representing Mary as a mer¬ maid, but history, it must be confessed, bears him out so far as to show that she was caricatured under this shape in her own day. In Notes Qu. (3d Ser. V, 338, 1864) W. Pinkerton quotes the following from Strickland’s Queens of Scotland, V, 231 : nmong other cruel devices practised against Mary at this season by her cowardly assailants was the dissemination of gross personal caricatures; which, like the placards charging her as an accomplice in her husband’s murder, were fixed on the doors of churches and other public places in Edinburgh. . . . Mary was peculiarly annoyed at one of these productions, called “ The Mermaid,” which represented her in the cha¬ racter of a crowned siren, with a sceptre [“ formed of a hawk’s lure ” — Pinkerton], and flanked with the regal initials “ M. R.” This curious specimen of party malignity is still preserved in the State Paper Office.’
In 1794) Whiter ( A Specimen of a Commentary, &c. p. 186) gave a wholly new turn to the discussion when he observed that the whole passage ‘ is very naturally derived from the Masque or the Pageant, which abounded in the age of Shakespeare ; and which would often quicken and enrich the fancy of the poet with wild and orig-
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
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tI53-I7S- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] inal combinations.’ To prove that a representation of a dolphin bearing a singer on his back was not uncommon at these spectacles, Whiter cites the anecdote about Harry Goldingbam, given by Malone (see III, i, 44), and then concludes: ‘ In the present example we may perhaps be inclined to suspect that Shakespeare, in this whole description of the mermaid, the dolphin, the vestal, and Cupid, directly alludes to some actual exhibition which contained all these particulars, and which had been purposely contrived and presented before Elizabeth to compliment that princess at the expense of her unfortunate rival. So favorite a representation does the riding on a dolphin appear to have been in the time of our poet, that it was sometimes intro¬ duced among the quaint devices in the art of cookery,’ whereof Whiter cites an example from Jonson’s Masque of Neptune's Triumph, and from his Staple of News ; as an illustration that the sea-maid’ s music is to be referred to the same source he cites a passage from Jonson’s Masque, performed on Twelfth Night, 1605.
These examples are eminently useful, I think, as evidence of the small likelihood there is that any one in Shakespeare’s audience attached any allegorical signifi¬ cance to Oberon’s description, beyond his allusion to the ‘ fair Vestal throned by the West.’
In 1797, Plumptre ( Appendix to Ohs. on Hamlet, p. 61) feebly answered Ritson’s criticisms ; for instance, it does not strike him 4 as necessary that the Queen should be placed on the back of her husband. The word “ back ” might suggest to the Poet merely the idea of her being united to him, or backing him, i. e. their interests strengthening (or seconding, or supporting) each other by their union.’ His only contribution to the discussion is his supposition that by 4 Cupid’s attack upon the Vestal’ was meant ‘the accomplishments of the Earl of Leicester.’
The pageant which Whiter supposed to have been the groundwork of Oberon’s description, Boaden found, as he believed, in 4 The Princelie Pleasures ,’ which Lei¬ cester devised for the entertainment of the Queen at Kenilworth in 1575, when Shakespeare was a boy. 4 Where is the improbability,’ he asks ( On the Sonnets , p. 8, 1837), ‘that Shakespeare in his youth should have ventured, under the wing of Greene, his townsman, even to Kenilworth itself? It was but fourteen miles distant from Stratford. Nay, that he should at eleven years of age have personally witnessed the reception of the great Queen by the mighty favourite, and perhaps have even dis¬ charged some youthful part in the pageant written by Mr Ferrers, sometime lord of misrule in the Court? Was there nothing about the spectacle likely to linger in one of 44 imagination all compact,” a youth of singular precocity, with a strong devotion to the Muses, and little inclined, as we know, to 44 drive on the affair of wool at home with his father ” ? Nay, is there no part of his immortal works which bears evidence upon the question of his youthful visit? We should expect to find such graphic record in a composition peculiarly devoted to Fancy, and there, if I do not greatly err, we undoubtedly find it.’ Boaden hereupon proceeds to show that this 4 compo¬ sition ’ is the Midsummer Night's Dream, and the 4 graphic record ’ is Shakespeare’s description from memory, in this speech of Oberon, of what Gascoigne calls The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, and, as a corroboration of his interpretation, briefly cites certain passages from Gascoigne and from Laneham’s Letter ; as these passages are given with greater fullness by Halpin, the next commentator, it is not worth while to give their abridgement here. Let it be noted, however, that to Boaden belongs the credit of first calling attention to them. He continues : —
4 Shakespeare’s impression of the scene was strong and general ; he does not write
8o
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, SC. L
[I53~I7S- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] as if the tracts of Gascoigne and Laneham lay upon his table. His description is exactly such as, after seventeen years had elapsed, a reminiscence would suggest to a mind highly poetical.’ After referring to Leicester as ‘ Cupid,’ ‘ who then, or never, expected to carry his romantic prize,’ and to the Queen as the ‘ fair vestal,’ Boaden concludes : — ‘ But the splendid captivations of Leicester were not disdained by all female minds, and the bolt of Cupid is seldom discharged in vain. Shakespeare has told us where it fell, “ upon a little western flower.” Why, alas ! can we not ask the kindred spirit, Sir Walter Scott, whether he can conceive his own Amy Robsart more beautifully and touchingly figured than she appears to be in this exquisite metaphor ?’
Doubtless Sir Walter’s ‘ kindred spirit,’ when in the flesh, would have smilingly answered his questioner that no fairer description could be anywhere found of ‘ his own Amy Robsart,’ but that the Earl of Leicester’s Amy Robsart had been dead fifteen years when The Princely Pleasures took place at Kenilworth.
The Rev. N. J. Halpin next takes up the wondrous tale, and in a remarkable Essay, printed by The Shakespeare Society {Oberon’s Vision , &c, 1843), followed Boaden (unwittingly, as he claims) in identifying the scene of Oberon’s vision with Leicester’s entertainment of Elizabeth at Kenilworth; but he carries the allegory much farther than it had ever been carried before, and finds an explanation for Oberon’s every phrase. His one hundred and eight octavo pages must be greatly condensed here.
However refined may be the interpretation, and however sure the elucidation of certain portions of Oberon’s speech, one thing, it seems to me, is beyond all allegorical explanation, and that is ‘ the little western flower ’ ; it is a genuine flower that Oberon wishes, and it is a genuine flower that Puck brings him. Let imagination run riot in a south sea of discovery with regard to every other detail — this little flower is a fact, and its magic properties must be put to use. But Halpin scouts the idea that this little flower is to be taken literally, oblivious of the difficulty into which his theory leads him, when it comes to squeezing this flower on the lover’s eyelids.
* It is obvious,’ says Halpin, p. 1 1, ‘ that throughout the passage under consideration the little flower is the leading object, the principal figure, to whose development all the rest — the mermaid and her dolphin, the music and the stars, Cupid and his quiver, the vestal and her moonbeams — are but accessories ; intimating the time, the place, and the occasion, of its investment of its singular properties. The language through¬ out, with the exception of the little flower, is admitted to be allegorical. If this be really the case — if we are to take the little flower in its literal meaning, as a little western flower and “ nothing more ” — we have then, instead of a poetical beauty, a poetical anomaly, of which it would be difficult to find another example in the whole range of literature — an allegory, to wit, in which all the accessories are allegorical, but the principal figure real and literal ! [Does not Halpin here forget that this elab¬ orate allegory in all its accessories is of his own creation ?] . . . I therefore infer that our “little western flower” is also an allegorical personage. ... I conclude also that this personage is a female ; not only because the delicate flower is an appropriate image of feminine beauty, but because the shaft levelled at a female bosom penetrates its heart and influences its destinies.’ Halpin digresses for short space to explain that ‘ Dian’s bud,’ which has power to dispel the charm of the little flower, is Queen Elizabeth ; and by way of proof cites a passage from Greene’s Friar Bacon, where she is styled ‘ Diana's Rose.’ [Is it not clear, therefore, that when Greene, in acknow¬ ledged adulation of the Queen, styles her Diana’s Rose, that Shakespeare, who had
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
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[153— *75- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] no connection with Greene’s play, can have no other reference when he too speaks of Diana’s bud ? If we refuse to accept a conclusion like this, there will soon be an end to all Shakespearian explanations.] Halpin disposes of the assumption that the 4 little western flower’ was Mary, Queen of Scots, by maintaining that, with reference to Elizabeth, 4 Mary was neither a little flower nor a western flower. She was Elizabeth’s equal, and her kingdom lay north of her rivals’ (p. 15). Due acknowledgment is given to Boaden for his discovery that in Oberon’s first speech the time and place of the action is intimated — namely, the 4 princely pleasures ’ at Kenilworth ; and in Obe¬ ron’s second speech the persons engaged in it, although, of course, Halpin was too well read to accept Amy Robsart as the ‘little western flower.’ It is clear that Leicester-Cupid was carrying on a double intrigue — with the fair Vestal on the one hand, and the little western flower on the other ; and that when his bolt missed one it fell upon the other ; the task now is to discover the identity of the latter, but before entering on it Halpin discusses more fully than had been hitherto discussed : first, the several features of 4 the princely pleasures ’ to which Oberon referred ; and, sec¬ ondly, Boaden’s conjecture that Shakespeare had himself witnessed those pleasures under the escort of his townsman, Greene.
First, in regard to the princely pleasures there are three authorities : Laneham’s Letter: whearin Part of the Entertainment untoo the Queenz Majesty, at Killing- woorth Castl in Warwick Sheer, in this Soommerz Progrest 1575, iz signified ; Gas¬ coigne’s Princely Pleasures, with the Masque, intended to have been presented before Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle ; and Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwick¬ shire. It will be well to give Halpin’s collation of the three authorities un¬ abridged, that the reader may judge how closely the scene is reproduced in Oberon’s description.
4 Shakespeare “A mermaid on a dolphin’s back.”
1 Laneham. 44 Her Highnesse returning, cam thear, upon a swimming mermayd, Triton, Neptune’s blaster,” &c. [The italics throughout are, of course, Halpin’s.]
4 Gascoigne. “ Triton, in the likenesse of a mermaide, came towards the Queen’s Majestie as she passed over the bridge.”
'Laneham (again). 44 Arion, that excellent and famouz muzicien, in tyre and appointment straunge, ryding alofte upon hiz old freend the dolphin ,” &c.
4 Gascoigne (again). 44 From thence her Majestie passing yet further on the bridge, Protheus appeared sitting on a dolphin's back." (The very words, as Mr. Boaden observes, of Shakespeare.)
4 Dugdale : 44 Besides all this, he had upon the pool a Triton riding on a mermaid 18 foot long; as also Arion on a dolphin."
4 From this collation it appears that the impressions made on the eye-witnesses of the spectacle did not exactly correspond. The mythological figure that to Laneham appeared to be 44 Triton upon a swimming mermaid," to Gascoigne seemed to be 44 Triton in the likeness of a mermaid." Again : the group that Gascoigne thought to be 44 Protheus on a dolphin’s back ” was taken by Laneham and Dugdale's informant for 44 Arion on the back of his old friend, the dolphin.” Who can wonder, then, that to a more imaginative fancy the group should present the idea of 44 a mer¬ maid on a dolphin’s back ” ? But to proceed :
4 Shakespeare. “ Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath.”
4 Laneham : “ Heerwith Arion, after a feaw well-coouched words unto her Majesty, beegan a delectabl ditty of a song well apted to a melodious noiz ; compounded of 6
8
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, SC. L
[I53~I75. My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] six severall instruments, al coovert, casting soound from the dolphin’s belly within ; Arion, the seaventh, sitting thus singing (az I say) without.”
‘Gascoigne : “And the dolphyn was conveyed upon a boate, so that the owera seemed to be his fynnes. Within the which dolphyn, a consort of musicke was secretly placed ; the which sounded ; and Protheus, clearing his voyce, sang this song of congratulation,” &c.
‘Dugdale : “Arion on a dolphin with rare musick.” Here, too, we observe a sim¬ ilar discrepancy between the two eye-witnesses, touching the musician which sang upon the dolphin’s back. Gascoigne supposed it to be Protheus ; Laneham (and Dugdale’s informant) thought it Arion. Laneham and Gascoigne were of the house¬ hold of Leicester ; if they could not agree what to make of this figure “ in its tyre and appointment straunge,” surely the mere spectator may be pardoned for the mis¬ take (if it were one) which transformed it into a mermaid. . . .
' Shakespeare : “ That the rude sea grew civill at her song.”
‘ Laneham : “ Mooving heerwith from the bridge, and fleeting more into the pool, chargeth he [ Triton on his mermaid] in Neptune’s name both Eolus and al his win- dez, the waters with hiz springs, hiz fysh, and fooul, and all his clients in the same, that they ne be so hardye in any fors to stur, but keep them calm and quiet while this Queen be prezent.”
‘ Gascoigne : “ Triton, in the likenesse of a mermaide, came towards the Queene’s Majestie as she passed over the bridge, and to her declared that Neptune had sent him to her Highnes ” (and here he makes a long speech, partly in prose, partly in verse, declaring the purport of his message :) “ furthermore commanding both the waues to be calme, and the fishes to giue their attendance.” “And herewith,” adds Gascoigne, “ Triton soundeth his trompe, and spake to the winds, waters, and fishes, as followeth :
“You windes, retume into your caues,
You waters wilde, suppress your waues,
You fishes all, and each thing else I charge you all, in Neptune’s name
‘ Here, again, we have the same slight variations which characterise the preceding parallels. In Laneham, it is “ Triton, on a swimming Mermaid,” that calms the waves ; in Gascoigne, “ Triton, in the likenesse of a Mermaid ” ; and in Shakespeare, the “ Mermaid ” herself.
‘ We come now to the last particular of the pageant :
‘Shakespeare : “And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid’s music.”
‘Laneham : “At last the Altitonant displaz me hiz mayn poour ; with blaz of burn¬ ing darts, flying too and fro, learns of starz corruscant, streamz and hail of firie sparkes, lightninges of wildfier a- water and lond ; flight and shoot of thunderboltz, all with such continuans, terror and vehemencie, that the heavins thundred, the waters scourged, the earth shooke.”
‘ Gascoigne : “ There were fireworks shewed upon the water, the which were both strange and well-executed; as sometimes passing under water a long space ; when all men thought they had been quenched, they would rise and mount out of the water egaine, and burn very furiously untill they were entirely consumed.”
‘ We have now, perhaps, sufficient evidence before us to identify the time and place of Oberon’s Vision with the Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth.’
and silent there remaine, and keep you calm and plaine ; that here haue any sway, you keep you at a stay.”
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
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C,53— *75- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower]
Secondly, Boaden’s surmise, that it was under the wing of a poor player that the boy, William Shakespeare, witnessed the festivities at Kenilworth, arouses Halpin’s gentle indignation ; it was under no such humble escort that the little boy of eleven went thither, but ‘ as a capable and gratified spectator in the suite of his high-minded kinsman, the head of the Arden family, and in the company of his father and mother,’ among the nobility and gentry. For, according to Halpin, ‘Shakespeare was of gentle birth on both sides of the house,’ and, following Malone, he connects the Ardens of Wilnecote with Robert Arden, Groom of the Chamber to Henry VII, and hereby makes Shakespeare of near kinship to the Edward Arden who incurred Lei¬ cester’s implacable hate (by what he said and did at these very festivities, according to Halpin), and was put to death in 1583. As this Edward Arden knew the secret history of Leicester’s amours, it was from his lips, so Halpin conjectures (p. 46), that Shakespeare, who was nineteen years of age when Arden was executed, may have learned the mystery of the Kenilworth festivities. This explains, so thinks Halpin, what Oberon means when he says, T could see, but thou could’st not.’
But (‘which doth allay the good precedence’) Halliwell {Life, p. 17) says there is ‘no good proof’ that Robert Arden, Groom of the Chamber to Henry VII, and ancestor of Edward Arden, was ‘ related to the Ardens of Wilnecote ’ ; and that ‘ we find the poet of nature rising where we would wish to find him rise, from the inhabitants of the valley and woodland.’ If the relationship between Qberon and Edward Arden vanishes into air, into thin air, then much of Halpin’s insubstan¬ tial pageant fades with it and leaves but a wreck behind.
Halpin now addresses himself (p. 25) to the discovery of the * little western flower’ : It is clear that the entertainment at Kenilworth was Leicester’s ‘ bold stroke for a wife ’ ; it was certainly an expensive one, it cost him ,£60,000, it is said ; and the stroke failed. Halpin thinks that from Laneham and Gascoigne we can learn the very day when the Earl’s plans were frustrated. There certainly appears to have been one day during which the Queen remained indoors, and the pageants prepared for that day were postponed. Both Laneham and Gascoigne attribute the Queen’s seclusion to the weather, but Halpin prefers to believe that it was due to a cause, which Sir Walter Scott imagined and made use of, in Kenilworth ; ‘ or to an event of a similar kind, m offence, to wit, arising out of female jealousy. And such precisely is the trans¬ action which — visible to Oberon and the superior intelligences — was indiscernible to Fuck and the meaner spirits in attendance.’ Of course the object of Elizabeth’s jealousy was the little western flower, and Leicester’s history must be scanned to find her out. ‘ Leicester,’ says Halpin, p. 30, ‘ was, in fact, married (whether lawfully or otherwise) to three wives : first, Amy Robsart, in the year 1550; secondly, to Douglas widow of the Earl of Sheffield, in or about 1572; and lastly, to Lettice, widow of Walter, Earl of Essex, 1576. This last date brings us so close upon the royal visit to Kenilworth and to the disturbance of its festivities, that whatsoever were the embar¬ rassments ascribed to Leicester by Sir Walter Scott, or whatever the incident alluded to by Shakespeare in the line — “ before milk-white, now purple with Love’s wound ” —I cannot withhold my belief that they bear true reference to the Lady Lettice, Countess of Essex and none other.’
It is not worth while to follow Halpin in his history of Leicester, especially as his statements by no means tally in all particulars with the facts set forth in Devereux’s Lives and Letters of the Earls of Essex, 1853. I am here giving Halpin’s conclu¬ sions drawn from other sources. At the time of the Princely Pleasures, Leicester’s wife
84
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, SC. i.
[153-175. My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] was Lady Douglas, Countess of Sheffield, but he was having an intrigue with Lady Essex, whose husband was in Ireland. ‘ Doubtless the ladies of the court attended their mistress on her Summer Progress ; doubtless the wives of her principal officers of state and of her chief nobility either attended in her suite or were invited to grace her reception. Amongst one or other of these classes it is but natural to suppose that the wife of a nobleman so high as Essex in the confidence and employment of the Queen, and a mistress so dear to the heart of her Majesty’s princely entertainer, would not have been omitted. We may then safely conclude that the Countess of Essex was a partaker of these splendid festivities ; and as lovers are known to think them selves most unobserved when most in a crowd of company, no occasion can be imag¬ ined more likely to encourage those petty indiscretions which would betray their secret to the keen-sighted few than the crowded and bustling scenes of pleasure in which they were engaged. “/ saw, but thou couldst not,” is the sly remark of Oberon ’ (pp. 42, 43).
Among these ‘ keen-sighted few ’ was Edward Arden, Shakespeare’s ‘ distinguished kinsman,’ and his informant. When, eight years afterwards, Arden fell a victim to Leicester’s vengeance, although the ostensible cause of his condemnation to death was high treason, the chief cause was, according to Dugdale, for ‘ certain harsh expressions touching his [Leicester’s] private accesses to the Countess of Essex before she was his wife.’ As Leicester was married to Lady Essex ‘soon after’ the death of the Earl of Essex in 1576, and as the princely pleasures took place in 1575, Hal- pin thinks it is clear that Arden’s ‘ harsh expressions ’ must have been uttered at Kenilworth during the festivities. In regard to the time that elapsed between Essex’s death and the marriage of his widow to Leicester, Halpin’s ‘ soon after ’ is in reality two years. Essex died in September, 1576, and the marriage took place in September, 1578, three years after the Princely Pleasures. ‘Shakespeare was nineteen years of age at the death of his kinsman ; he may, therefore, have heard the story from his own lips. . . . Have we not, then, in the connection between the death of Edward Arden and the guilty secret of the Lady Essex the grounds of a probable conclusion that her Ladyship is the person intended to be designated under the alle¬ gory of the “little western flower?” ’ (p. 46). So varied is taste in such matters that I cannot presume to decide whether or not it detracts from the sentiment of the occa¬ sion, to reflect that the ‘ little western flower,’ at the time of the festivities of Kenil¬ worth, was between thirty-five and forty years old.
Halpin now turns to one of Lylie’s court-plays, called Endymion, wherein he finds such collateral evidence of his theory as will bring satisfaction to ‘ the most incredu¬ lous minds.’ The earliest known edition of Endymion is dated 1591, ‘ though prob¬ ably written and performed (if not published) some years before.’ It will not prove worth the labour to enter here into all the details of Halpin’s analysis of this play, which fills nigh thirty of his hundred pages ; it is sufficient to accept his conclusions, viz. that Endymion is an allegory from beginning to end, veiling Leicester’s clandes¬ tine marriage with Lady Douglas Sheffield, pending his suit for the hand of his royal mistress, and the consequences of that hazardous engagement ; it is parallel to Shake¬ speare’s allegory, except that instead of the little western flower, we have the Countess of Sheffield. If here and there known facts belie the allegory, such as where the Lady Douglas, under the name of Tellus, represents herself as a ‘poor credulous vir¬ gin,’ we can always apply the reflection that ‘ in works of fiction we must not expect a rigid conformity with the facts they shadow forth.’ Halpin concludes that Endymion
kCT ii, sc. i.] A MJDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
85
[153—175- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] is the Earl of Leicester ; Cynthia , Queen Elizabeth ; Tellus, the Countess of Sheffield, and so on. There is also another character in Lylie’s allegory which finds its par¬ allel in Oberon’s vision, and this is the ‘ unobtrusive Floscula, who contributes nothing tr the action, and but little to the dialogue.’ In her, Halpin recognises the little west- era. flower, the Countess of Essex ; and finding that, in this instance, Shakespeare’s English is a translation of Lylie’s Latin, he observes that the same holds good in the case of Lylie’s Cynthia , who is Shakespeare’s Moon, i. e. Queen Elizabeth; and Lylie’s Tellus, who is Shakespeare’s Earth, i. e. the Countess of Sheffield. Oberon says that he saw * Cupid ’ * Flying between the cold moon and the earth ’ ‘ it is neces¬ sary to observe,’ says Halpin (p. 89), ‘ how accurately, discriminately, and delicately the nice, descriptive touches of the poet are adapted to the rank, family, and misfor¬ tunes of the unhappy lady who is shadowed out under the allegory of “ the Little Flower.” I. She is a “little” flower, as compared with the royal vestal — she a countess, Elizabeth a queen. [As a fact, the Countess of Essex’s grandmother and Anne Bulleyn were sisters; her mother and Queen Elizabeth were therefore cousins.] 2. She is a “ western ” flower, that is, an English flower — an Englishwoman, a mem¬ ber of the English court. If, beyond this, the epithet have a special signification, it may refer to the office and residence of her noble husband, the Earl of Essex, who was warden of Wales, the most western part of Britain, and she, therefore, par excel¬ lence, a western flower, i. e. a western lady. [Halpin forgets that relatively to Oberon and the scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream the whole British isle was in the west — the fair vestal herself was throned by the west.] 3. She was once “ milk- white,” indicating her purity and reputation while true to the nuptial bond with Essex ; but, 4, has become “ purple with Love’s wound,” signifying either the shame of her fall from virtue, or the deeper crimson of a husband’s blood. Finally, her name is “ Love in idleness,” one of the many fanciful names of the Viola tricolor — all indicative of the tender passion accompanied with concealment — such as “ Pan¬ sies ” ( pensies , thoughts), “ Cuddle-me-close,” “ Kiss-at-the-garden-gate,” “ Two- faces-under-a-hood,” &c. But there is a peculiar elegance and significancy in the synonym which Shakespeare has selected — “Love-in-Idleness.” It indicates the
occasion of her fall, — the absence of her lord, the waste of her affections, the “ idle¬ ness,” as it were, of her heart, unoccupied with domestic duties, and left a prey to the sedulous villany of a powerful and crafty betrayer. . . . The story is an eventful one. It involves the fate of princes, statesmen, and nobles, and is therefore fitly ushered in with portents, which, in the universal belief of the time, omened the for¬ tunes of the great. The mermaid singing her enchantments — a superstition descended from the ancient fable of the sirens — was the old and apposite type of those female seductions generally so fatal to their objects. The “ stars shooting madly from their spheres ” were, in that stage of the march of intellect, the prodigies which foreboded disasters to the great. The whole literature of that period abounds with allusions to those “skiey influences.” On this occasion, the phenomenon seems to have signified a Star — a high and mighty potentate — wildly rushing from the sphere of the bright and lofty Moon — a princess of the highest rank — darting beneath the attractions of the Earth — another lady, but of inferior grade — and falling in a jelly, as falling stars are apt to do, on the lap of Love in idleness, an emblematic flower, signifying, in the typical language of the day, a mistress in concealment. . . . Let us now compare the poetical allegory (in juxtaposition) with a simple paraphrase of the literal meaning which has been assigned to it. . . .
86
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II. sc. i.
[153-175. My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] Text Paraphrase
Oberon.
Oberon.
My gentle Puck , come hither.
Thou rememberest, When once I sat upon a pro¬ montory *
And saw
Come hither, Puck. You doubtless remember when, once upon a time, sit¬ ting together on a rising ground, or bray* by the side of a piece of water, we saw what to us appeared (though to others it might have worn a different semblance)
a mermaid on a dolphin's back , Uttering such dulcet and harmoni¬ ous breath
a mermaid sitting on a dolphin’s back, and singing so sweetly to the accompani¬ ment of a band of music placed inside of the artificial dolphin that one could very
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
well imagine the waves of the mimic sea before us would, had they been ruffled, have calmed down to listen to her mel-
And certain stars shot madly
ody; and at the same time, there was a flight of artificial fireworks resembling
from their spheres
stars, which plunged very strangely out of their natural element into the water, and, after remaining there a while, rose again into the air, as if wishing to hear once
To hear the sea-maid's music.
more the sea-maid’s music.
Puck.
/ remember.
Puck.
I remember such things to have been exhibited amongst the pageantry at Kenil¬ worth Castle, during the Princely Plea¬ sures given on the occasion of Queen Eliz¬ abeth’s visit in 1575.
Oberon.
Oberon.
That very time I saw —
You are right. Well, at that very time and place, I (and perhaps a few other of the choicer spirits) could discern a circum-
( but thou couldst not,)
stance that was imperceptible to you (and the meaner multitude of guests and visit-
Flying
ants) : in fact, I saw — wavering in his
between the cold moon
and the Earth,
Cupid
passion
between (Cynthia, or) Queen Elizabeth, and (Tellus, or) the Lady Douglas, Count¬ ess of Sheffield, (Endymion, or) the Earl of Leicester,
all-armed.
all-armed, in the magnificence of his prep¬ arations for storming the heart of his Royal Mistress.
* Probably “the Brayz” mentioned by Laneham as “linking a fair park with the castle on the South,” and adjacent to the “goodly pool of rare beauty, breadth, length, and depth.” — See Nichols’s Progresses.
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
8 7
CI53— 175- My gentle Text
A certain aim he took At a fair Vesta l
throned by the IVest ; And loosed a love-shaft madly [sic] from his bow,
As it should pierce
a hundred thousand hearts ; But I might see
young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams
of the wat'ry Moon ; And the imperial Votaress
passed on,
j>: maiden meditation
fancy-free.
Yet
marked I
where the bolt of Cupid
fell:
It fell
upon a little western flower.
Before milk-white ;
now purple with Love's wound ;
And maidens
call it
Lome in Idleness.
Fetch me that flower.
Pucke . . . that flower]
Paraphrase
He made a pre-determined and a well- directed effort for the hand of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen of England; and presumptuously made such love to her — rash under all the circumstances — as if he fancied that neither she nor any woman in the world could resist his suit ; but it was evident to me (and to the rest of the initiated), that the ardent Leices¬ ter’s desperate venture was lost in the pride, prudery, and jealousy of power, which invariably swayed the tide of Elizabeth’s passions; and the Virgin Queen
finally departed from Kenilworth Castle un¬ shackled with a matrimonial engagement, and as heart-whole as ever.
And yet (continues Oberon) curious to observe the collateral issues of this amor¬ ous preparation, I watched (whatever others may have done) and discovered the person on whom Leicester’s irregular passion was secretly fixed : it was fixed
upon Lettice, at that time the wife of Wal¬ ter, Earl of Essex, an Englishwoman of rank inferior to the object of his great ambition; who, previous to this unhappy attachment, was not only pure and inno¬ cent in conduct, but unblemished also in reputation; after which she became not only deeply inflamed with a criminal pas¬ sion, and still more deeply (perhaps) stained with a husband’s blood, but the subject, also, of shame and obloquy.
Those, however, who pity her weakness, and compassionate her misery, still offer a feeble apology for her conduct, by calling it the result of her husband’s voluntary ab¬ sence, of the waste of affections naturally tender and fond, and of the idleness of a heart that might have been faithful if busied with honest duties, and filled with domestic loves.
You cannot mistake, after all I have said —
Go — fetch me that flower.
88
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, SC. i.
[ 1 53-1 75. My gentle Pucke . . . that flower]
Such is Halpin’s explanation of ‘ Oberon’s vision.’ It does not appear, despite its ingenuity, to have made any impression on some of the best Shakespearian editors ; it may well be that they were appalled by its intricacy and length. It is not even alluded to by Dyce, Collier, or Staunton. Possibly they were repelled by the cruel conclusion that it was not a flower, but Lettice Knollys, that was to be squeezed in Titania’s eyes. However, Halpin has one staunch follower, one who with a greedy ear will devour up any discourse which aims at identifying Shakespeare’s characters with that group around Southampton, to whose loves, to whose jealousies, to whose hates he would fain have us believe Shakespeare crammed his plays to bursting with allusions.
Mr Gerald Massey ( The Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1888) asserts that Halpin has ‘ conclusively shown the “ little western flower ” ’ to be Lettice Knollys, but on one or two minor points Halpin does not take Massey with him. ‘ My interpretation,’ says Massey (p. 446), ‘ of Oberon’s remark, “ That very time I saw, but thou couldst not," is to this effect : Shakespeare is treating Puck, for the moment, as a personification of his own boyhood. “ Thou rememberest the rare vision we saw at the ‘ Princely Pleasures ’ of Kenilworth ?” “I remember,” replies Puck. So that he was then present, and saw the sights and all the outer realities of the pageant. But the Boy of eleven could not see what Oberon saw — the matrimonial mysteries of Leicester ; the lofty aim of the Earl at a Royal prize, and the secret intrigue then pursued by him and the Countess of Essex. Whereupon, the Fairy King unfolds in Allegory what he before saw in vision, and clothes the naked skele¬ ton of fact in the very bloom of beauty. My reading will dovetail with the other to the strengthening of both. But Mr Halpin does not explain why this “little flower” should play so important a part; why it should be the chief object and final cause of the whole allegory, so that the royal range of the imagery is but the mere setting ; why it should be the only link of connection betwixt the allegory and the play. My rendering alone will show why and how. The allegory was introduced on account of these two cousins ; [it should be here observed that, according to Mr Massey, the causa causans of the present play was the jealousy of Elizabeth Vernon, and her bick¬ erings with her cousin Lady Rich, who are, respectively, Helena and Hermia] ; the “ little western flower ” being mother to Lady Rich and aunt to Elizabeth Vemou. The POet pays the Queen a compliment by the way, but his allusion to the love-shaft loosed so impetuously by Cupid is only for the sake of marking where it fell, and bringing in the Flower. It is the little flower alone that is necessary to his present purpose, for he is entertaining his “ Private Friends ” more than catering for the amusement of the Court. This personal consideration will explain the tenderness of the treatment. Such delicate dealing with the subject was not likely to win the Royal favour; the “imperial votaress” never forgave the “little western flower,” and only permitted her to come to Court once, and then for a private interview, after her Majesty learned that Lettice Knollys had really become Countess of Leicester. Shakespeare himself must have had sterner thoughts about the lady, but this was not the time to show them ; he had introduced the subject for poetic beauty, not for poetic justice. He brings in his allegory, then, on account of those who are related to the “ little western flower,” and in his use of the flower he is playfully tracing up an effect to its natural cause. The mother of Lady Rich is typified as the flower called “ Love- in-idleness.” . . . And the daughter was like the mother. “ It comes from his mother,” said the Queen, with a sigh, speaking of the dash of wilful devilry and the Will-o’-
ACT ll, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
89
[I53-I75* My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] the-wisp fire in the Earl of Essex’s blood ! Shakespeare, in a smiling mood, says the very same of Lady Rich and her love-in-idleness. “ It comes from her mother !” She, too, was a genuine “light-o’-love,” and possessed the qualities attributed to the “ little western flower ” — the vicious virtue of its juice, the power of glamourie by communicating the poison with which Cupid’s arrow was touched when dipped for doing its deadliest work. These she derives by inheritance ; and these she has tried to exercise in real life on the lover of her cousin. The juice of “ love-in-idleness ” has been dropped into Southampton’s eyes, and in the Play its enchantment has to be counteracted. And here I part company with Mr Halpin. “ Dian’s bud," the “ other herb]' does not represent his Elizabeth, the Queen, but my Elizabeth, the “ faire Ver¬ non.” It cannot be made to fit the Queen in any shape. If the herb of more poten¬ tial spell, “ whose liquor hath this virtuous property ” that it can correct all errors ol sight, and “ undo this hateful imperfection ” of the enamoured eyes — “ Dian’s bud, o’er Cupid’s flower, Hath such force and blessed power, — ” were meant for the Queen, it would have no application whatever in life, and the allegory would not impinge on the Play. Whose eyes did this virtue of the Queen purge from the grossness of wan¬ ton love ? Assuredly not Leicester’s, and as certainly not those of the Lady Lettice. The facts of real life would have made the allusion a sarcasm on the Queen’s virgin force and “ blessed power,” such as would have warranted Iago’s expression, “ blessed fig's end /” If it be applied to Titania and Lysander, what had the Queen to do with them, or they with her ? The allegory will not go thus far ; the link is missing that should connect it with the drama. No. “ Dian’s bud ” is not the Queen. It is the emblem of Elizabeth Vernon’s true love and its virtue in restoring the “ precious seeing ” to her lover’s eyes, which had in the human world been doating wrongly. It symbols the triumph of love-in-eamest over love-in-idleness; the influence of that purity which is here represented as the offspring of Dian. Only thus can we find that the meeting-point of Queen and Countess, of Cupid’s flower and Dian’s bud, in the Play, which is absolutely essential to the existence and the oneness of the work ; only thus can we connect the cause of the mischief with its cure. The allusion to the Queen was but a passing compliment; the influence of the “ little western flower" and its necessary connection with persons in the drama are as much the sine qua non of the Play’s continuity and developement as was the jealousy of Elizabeth Vernon a motive-incident in the poetic creation.’
Warburton’s explanation that by the mermaid the Queen of Scots was meant, was silently adopted by Johnson, and was praised by Capell. I have said that one of our best modem critics had also accepted it. — Hunter ( New Illust. i, 291) observes, as follows : I profess at once my adherence to the interpretation which Bishop War- burton has given of the allegorical portion of this celebrated passage, so far as to the mermaid representing the Queen of Scots ; and I think I can perceive some reasons for this, which were not adverted to by himself and which have been left unnoticed by Ritson, [by Boaden, and by Halpin]. ... It may be admitted that to place a mer¬ maid on the back of a dolphin is perhaps not the happiest conception that might have been formed, and there have been found critics who have scoffed at it ; but this has nothing to do with the question whether the mermaid had any counterpart in the allegory, and whether that counterpart was the Queen of Scots. . . . Seeing the large space which the mermaid occupies, it can hardly be that, if there is an allegory at all, she does not bear a part in it ; and, seeing how everything said of the mermaid has its counterpart in the Queen of Scots, and not in ar y other person, it can hardly be that
go
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, SC. L
[153— 175- My gentle Pucke . . . that flower] the mermaid was not intended to represent her. She has the dolphin with her, which may certainly seem very well to arise out of the fact that she had been mar¬ ried to the Dauphin of France ; she utters ‘ dulcet and harmonious breath ’ ; and , beside the general charm which surrounded this royal lady, ... if we must interpret the allegory in a literal spirit, we know on the best authority that she had an ‘ allur- ing Scottish accent,’ which, with the agreeableness of her conversation, fascinated all that approached her, and subdued even harsh and uncivil minds. But some wer* touched by it more than others. She had not been long in England when two North¬ ern earls broke out in open rebellion, and would have made her queen. . . . Here, at least, it must be admitted that we have what answers very well to stars that ‘ shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music.’ There is not indeed a cir¬ cumstance about the mermaid to which we do not find something correspondent in the Scottish Queen. Now proceed to the other half of the allegory. ‘ That very time I saw (but thou could’st not).’ That very time : — These words are most im¬ portant. At the very time when the Duke of Norfolk was aspiring to the hand of the Queen of Scots, and so, shooting from his sphere, the Queen of England was her¬ self strongly solicited to marry. [See lines 161-165.] Halpin would give Cupid a counterpart. The Earl of Leicester, according to his theory, is Cupid. This never could have been the intention of the poet, who uses one of the most ordinary of all figures, supplied from the store-house of the ancient mythology, to represent the advances which were made to Elizabeth. The expression at that very time appears to have escaped the notice of the learned commentator who shewed the true inter¬ pretation of this passage, and yet it appears to me to connect the two parts and to leave no shadow of doubt that his hypothesis is the right one. The identity in respect of time happens to be very distinctly marked in a few lines in Camden’s Annals :
1 Non maj°rem curam et operam ad has nuptias conficiendas adhibuerunt Galli, quam Angli nonnulli ad alias accelerandas inter Scotorum Reginam et Norfolchium.’ The suitor to Queen Elizabeth was, of course, the Duke of Anjou. At the very time when at the sea-maid’s music certain stars shot from their spheres, the strong dart aimed by Cupid against Elizabeth fell innocuous ; and she passed on ‘ In maiden meditation fancy-free.’ The allegory ends here, according to all just rule, when the flower is introduced. This flower was a real flower about to perform a conspicuous part in the drama, and the allegory is written expressly to give a dignity to the flower; it is the splendour of preparation intended to fix attention on the flower, whose peculiar vir¬ tues were to be the means of effecting some of the most important purposes of the drama. The passage resembles, in this respect, one a little before, in which there is an interest given to the little henchman by the recital of the gambols of Titania with his mother on the sea-shore of India, and the interest thrown around Othello’s hand¬ kerchief. The allegory has been complete, and has fulfilled its purpose when we come to the flower, which in the hands of the poet undergoes a beautiful metamor¬ phose, and has now acquired all the interest which it was desirable to give it, and poetically and dramatically necessary, considering the very important part which was afterwards to be performed by it.
In the copy of Hanmer’s Shakespeare , which Mrs F. A. Kemble used in her Pub¬ lic Readings, and which she gave to the present Editor, there is in the margin oppo¬ site this passage the following MS note by that loved and venerated hand ‘ It always seems to me the crowning hardship of Mary Stuart’s hard life to have had this precious stone thrown at her by the hand of Shakespeare— it seems to me most miserable, even
ACT xi, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
91
176
The iuyce of it, on fleeping eye-lids laid,
Will make or man or woman madly dote Vpon the next liue creature that it fees.
Fetch me this hearbe,and be thou heere againe,
Ere the Leuiathan can fwim a league. 180
Pucke. lie put a girdle about the earth, in forty mi¬ nutes. 182
177. or mart] a man F3F
178. it fees ] is seen Coll. MS. about Pope et seq.
181. lie. ..earth] One line, Pope et 182. [Exit. Ff.
seq.
when I think of all her misery, that she should have had this beautiful, bad record from the humanest man that ever lived, and, for her sins, the greatest poet — and she that was wise (not good) and prosperous, to have this crown of stars set on her narrow forehead by the same hand.’
Apart from the impossibility, which Hunter sees, but Halpin and Massey do not see, of including in the allegory ‘ the little western flower,’ there is to me in the acceptance of Halpin’s whole theory one obstacle which is insurmountable, and this is, the length of time which had elapsed between the festivities at Kenilworth and the date of this play. To suppose that Shakespeare’s audience, whether at court or at the theatre, would at once, on hearing Oberon’s vision, recall Leicester’s intrigue of twenty years before, is to assume a capacity for court-scandal which verges on the supernatural, and a memory for it which could be regarded only with awe. Moreover, taking the very earliest date ascribed by any critic to this play, 1590, at that time ‘ Cupid ’ had been dead two years, and ‘ the little western flower ’ was living with her third husband. Finally, Kurz has pointed out (Sh. Jahrbuch, 1869, p. 295) that as far as the Princelie Pleasures were concerned the age was so accustomed to such per¬ formances that any reference to these particular festivities would be understood by no one but the poet himself; ‘ they were a drop, glittering ’tis true, but yet a mere drop in a sea of similar festivals, with pageants and plays wherein there was a deadly sameness of subjects drawn from the mythology of the Renaissance-Antique. Nay, a glance at the various Courts of the Continent enlarges this sea to an ocean ; such revelries were everywhere, and all of them described and printed and engraved and passed on from Court to Court — from highest Jove to the latest sea-monsters, all hack neyed alike.’ — Ed.
180. Leuiathan] W. A. Wright: The margins of the Bibles in Shakespeare’s day explained leviathan as a whale, and so no doubt he thought it.
181. lie] Collier’s MS changed this to I'd, which Lettsom (ap. Dyce, ed. ii) says the sense requires. Collier, however, did not adopt it ; Hudson did.
1 81. girdle] Steevens: Perhaps this phrase is proverbial. Compare Chapman’s Bussy d'Ambois, 1607: ‘To put a girdle round about the world.’ — Works, ii, 6. — Halliwell : This metaphor is not peculiar to Shakespeare. The idea and expres¬ sion were probably derived from the old plans of the world, in which the Zodiac is represented as ‘ a girdle round about the earth.’ Thus, says the author of The Com¬ post of Ptolomeus, ‘ the other is large, in maner of a girdle, or as a garland of flowers, which they doe call the Zodiack.’ [Halliwell cites several other examples to the
92
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. i.
Ober. Hauing once this iuyce, lie watch Titania,vthen the is afleepe,
And drop the liquor of it in her eyes .*
The next thing when the waking lookes vpon ,
(Be it on Lyon, Beare, or Wolfe, or Bull,
On medling Monkey, or on bufie Ape)
Shee fhall purfue it, with the foule of loue.
And ere I take this charme off from her fight,
(As I can take it with another hearbe) lie make her render vp her Page to me.
But who comes heere? I am inuifible,
And I will ouer-heare their conference.
Enter Demetrius , Helena following him.
Deme . I loue thee not, therefore purfue me not,
184. when] whence Qa. 188. On medling ] Or medling Row e,
afleepe] a fleepe Q,F3. Pope.
185. in her ] on her Han. 190. off from'] from ofQr from off
186. when] which Rowe + . then Q,, Theob. Cap. Sta. Cam. White ii.
Cap. et seq. i94. [Scene III. Pope-f .
same effect, and Staunton, who says that the phrase seems to have been a proverbial mode of expressing a voyage round the world, adds another from Shirley’s Humour¬ ous Courtier, I, i : * Thou hast been a traveller, and convers’d With the Antipodes, almost put a girdle About the world.’ See also, to the same purpose, Walker, Crit. iii, 48.— Green (. Emblem Writers, p. 413) gives an Emblem by Whitney, 1586, rep¬ resenting a globe whereon rides Drake’s ship, which first circumnavigated the earth ; to the prow of this ship is attached a girdle which goes round the world, while the other end is held by the hand of God, issuing from the clouds. — Ed.]
1 81. forty] Elze [Notes, &c. 1889, p. 230) has collected a large number of instances of the use of * forty ’ as an indefinite number, in German as well as in English, from the ‘ forty days and forty nights ’ of the Deluge to Whittier’s Barbara Frietchie, 1879 Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars.’
184. when she] Note how the ear of the compositor of Qa misled him when he set up whence she for ‘ when she.’ — Ed.
185. drop the liquor] See the extract from the Diana of George of Montemayor, in Appendix, Source of the Plot.
193. inuisible] Theobald: As Oberon and Puck may be frequently observed to speak when there is no mention of their entering, they are designed by the poet to be supposed on the stage during the greatest part of the remainder of the play, and to mix, as they please, as spirits, with the other actors, without being seen or heard, but when to their own purpose.— Collier (ed. ii) : Among the ‘ properties ’ enumerated in Henslowe’s Diary is ‘ a robe for to go invisible.’ Possibly Oberon wore, or put on, such a robe, by which it was understood that he was not to be seen.
196. pursue me not] Mrs F. A. Kemble [MS note] : Was it not well devised
183
i85
190
*CT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
93
Where is Ly fancier, and faire Herinia ? 197
The one lie ftay, the other ftayeth me.
Thou toldft me they were ftolne into this wood ;
And heere am I, and wood within this wood, 200
Becaufe I cannot meet my Hermia.
198. Jlay...Jlayeth] QqFf, Knt, Hal. slay ...slay eth Thirlby, Theob. et cet.
199. into I vnto Qq, Cap. Steev.’85, Sta. Cam. White ii.
200. wood... wood] wodde,...wood Qf. wode...wood Han. Cap. Cam.
201. my] with Mai. Steev.’93, Var. Sing. i.
to make the timid, feminine Helena the pursuer of her indifferent, inconstant lover ? We know how she looked — tall and slender, fair, delicate, and fragile. If the short, round, dark-eyed Hermia had thus wooed a man, it would have been unlovely. Shakespeare has wonderfully given this bold position to a ‘ maiden never bold ’ ; and the pale, pathetic figure imploring vainly a man’s love, and enduring patiently his contemptuous refusal, still represents a more tender and feminine idea than the bloom¬ ing, well-beloved maiden pointing to the remote turf where she will have her lover lie that he may not offend her by his nearness while they sleep together in the wood.
198. stay . . . stayeth] At an early date, 1729, the Rev. Styan Thirlby, in a letter to Theobald, proposed, without comment, the change of ‘ stay . . . stayeth ’ to slay . . . slayeth, and this excellent emendation has commended itself to almost every editor since then. As far as I know, the only defenders of the original text are Heath, Knight, and Halliwell. The first urges (p. 50) that ‘ there is not the least foundation for imputing this bloody disposition [expressed by Thirlby’s change] to Demetrius. His real intention is sufficiently expressed by [the Folio, viz :] “ I will arrest Lysander, and disappoint his scheme of carrying off Hermia ; for ’tis upon the account of this latter that I am wasting away the night in this wood.” I believe, too, another instance cannot be given, wherein a lady is said to slay her lover by the slight she expresses for him.’ [ Aliquando dormitat, &c. The truly admirable Heath quite forgot the song in Twelfth Night : ‘ I am slain by a fair, cruel maid,’ II, iv, 55- He properly referred, however, ‘ stay ’ to Lysander, and ‘ stayeth ’ to Hermia. But Knight, who adds no new argument, confuses them. Halliwell merely reprints Heath’s note, and adds two needless instances, where ‘ stay ’ means to arrest. Zach ary Jackson, who, with his tribesmen, Becket and Lord Chedworth, is never quoted in these pages, upholds the Folio, so says Knight ; this is quite sufficient to condemn it.— R. G. White (ed. i), in reference to the plea urged by Heath, that it is unnecessary to attribute murderous designs to Demetrius, properly calls attention to Demetrius’s wish (III, ii, 67) to give Lysander’s carcase to his hounds, and he might have added Hermia’s fear, expressed more than once, that her lover had been slain by Demetrius. — Ed.]
200. wood . . . wood] Of course, a play upon words, where the former * wood ’ means enraged, and, as it is the Anglosaxon wod, examples of it may be found in our earliest literature. It is worth considering whether, in a modernised text, it would not be well to indicate the difference in meaning by spelling the former wode, as has been done by Hanmer, Capell, and by W. A. Wright, in The Cambridge Edition. A slight objection to it lies in the fact that we are by no means sure that there was a distinction between the words in general pronunciation. The wodde of Q, may be a mere misprint, or the peculiar spelling of a single compositor. — Ed.
94
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS D RE A ME [act 1 1, SC. i.
Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more. 202
Hel. You draw me, you hard-hearted Adamant,
But yet you draw not Iron, for my heart
Is true as fteele. Leaue you your power to draw, 205
And I fhall haue no power to follow you.
Deme. Do I entice you ? do I fpeake you faire ?
Or rather doe I not in plained: truth,
Tell you I doe not, nor I cannot loue you ?
Hel. And euen for that doe I loue thee the more ; 210
I am your fpaniell, and Demetrius ,
The more you beat me, I will fawne on you. 212
202. thee] the QIF3. 209. nor] not Qq. and Pope, Han.
204. Iron, for] Iron for Gould. 210. thee] Q2F f, Rowe+, White i.
205. you] Om. F3F4. you Qt et cet.
203. You] If Shakespeare indicated shades of meaning by the use of thou and you (and sometimes I am inclined, so difficult or so fanciful is the analysis, to think he did not always so indicate them), it would be interesting to note in this dialogue the varying emotions of love, contempt, respect, and anger that flit over the speakers and find expression in these personal pronouns. — Ed.
203. Adamant] Cotgrave gives . ‘Aimant : m. A louer, a seruant, a sweet-heart, also, the Adamant, or Load-stone. ’ Again, * Calamite : m. The Adamant, Loadstone, or Magnes-stone.’ The qualities of the lodestone are well known at the present day, and as they were no less well known in Shakespeare’s day, examples of their use in poetry or prose are superfluous. It is sufficient to know that lodestone and ‘adamant’ were formerly synonymous. — Ed.
204. for] Lettsom (ap. Dyce, ed. ii) queries if this should not be though, and Hudson suspects that • he is right, as he is apt to be.’ — Marshall ( Henry Irving Sh. p. 372) adopts though, and says ‘ for ’ in the sense of because is nonsense. ‘If we retain “for,”’ he urges, ‘we must take it as equivalent to for all, i. e. in spite of all.' — D. Wilson (p. 248): In the Ff ‘Iron’ is printed with a capital, which, in F2 is somewhat displaced and separated from the ron. This has apparently suggested to the former possessor of my copy an ingenious emendation, which he has written on the margin, thus : ‘ You draw, not I run, for, &c. Among my own annotations are [«V] included this conjectural reading, ‘ you draw no truer ; for,’ &c. [There is no need of change if we take ‘ draw not ’ in the sense of the opposite of drawing, namely, of repulsion, which is not logical, it must be granted, but then Helena was not logical ; ‘ you are,’ she says, in effect, ‘ adamant only as far as I am concerned ; you repel iron, as is shown by your repelling my heart, which is true steel ’ ; or there may have been the image in Helena’s mind of a piece of lodestone, such as all of ns have often seen, encrusted with bits of iron, which have been drawn to it, and she says to Demetrius, in effect, ‘ You do not draw iron, because if you did, my heart, which is the truest steel, would be close to your heart, and I should be folded in your arms.’ — Ed.]
209. nor I cannot] For examples of this common double negative, see Abbott* § 406, and for ‘ euen,’ in the next line, see line 31 of this scene.
ACT II. sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
95
213
Vfe me but as your fpaniell ; fpurne me, ftrike me,
Negle6l me, lofe me ; onely giue me leaue (Vnworthy as I am) to follow you. 215
What worfer place can I beg in your loue,
(And yet a place of high refpe6t with me)
Then to be vfed as you doe your dogge.
Dem. Tempt not too much the hatred of my fpirit,
For I am ficke when I do looke on thee. 220
Hel. And I am ficke when I looke not on you.
Dem. You doe impeach your modefty too much,
To leaue the Citty, and commit your felfe Into the hands of one that loues you not,
To truft the opportunity of night, 225
And the ill counfell of a defert place,
With the rich worth of your virginity.
Hel. Your vertue is my priuiledge : for that It is not night when I doe fee your face.
Therefore I thinke I am not in the night, 230
Nor doth this wood lacke world’s of company,
For you in my refpe6t are nil the world.
Then how can it be faid I am alone,
When all the world is heere to looke on me ? 234
214. lofe] loofe Q,. loathe Anon. ap. Hal.
216. can] can can Fa.
21 8. doe] Ff, Rowe, White i. do use Var.’2i, Sing. i. vfe Qq et cet. dogge.] dog ? Rowe.
228. priuiledge : for that] privilege for that. Tyrwhitt, Steev.’78, Rann. Mai. Sing. Knt, Coll. Dyce, Hal. White i, Ktly, C. Clarke, Huds. Rolfe.
232. nil] Ft.
214. lose] Halliwell : Perhaps this means blot me out of your memory, lose all remembrance of me.
222. impeach] Steevens : That is, bring it into question, as in Mer. of Ven. Ill, ii, 280 : ‘ doth impeach the freedom of the state.’
228. for that] Tyrwhitt’s punctuation (see Text. Notes), which makes ‘that’ refer to Helena’s leaving the city, has been adopted by all the best editors down to Staunton, who returned to the Ff and Qq. Every editor, without exception I think, has substituted a comma at the end of the next line, after ‘ face,’ instead of the full stop. Staunton has a respectable following in the Cambridge Editors. — Abbott § 287, expresses no preference, and, indeed, the present question is one of the many instances where the scales are so nicely balanced that a transient mood may decide it. — En.
229. It is not night, &c.] Johnson : Compare ‘ — Tu nocte vel atra Lumen, et >n solis tu mihi turba locis.’ — Tibullus, Carm. IV, xiii, 11.
232. respect] That is, as far as I am concerned.
96
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act II, SC. i.
Dem. lie run from thee, and hide me in the brakes, 235
And leaue thee to the mercy of wilde beafts.
Hel. The wildeft hath not fuch a heart as you ;
Runne when you will, the ftory fhall be chang’d :
Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chafe ;
The Doue purfues the Griffin, the milde Hinde 240
Makes fpeed to catch the Tyger. Bootleffe fpeede,
When cowardife purfues, and valour flies.
Demet. I will not flay thy queftions, let me go ;
Or if thou follow me, doe not beleeue,
But I fhall doe thee mifchiefe in the wood. 245
Hel. I, in the Temple, in the Towne,and Field You doe me mifchiefe. Fye Demetrius ,
Your wrongs doe fet a fcandall on my fexe :
We cannot fight for loue, as men may doe ;
We fhould be woo’d, and were not made to wooe. 250
I follow thee, and make a heauen of hell ,
243. questions] question Steev. conj. Dyce ii, iii, Walker, Huds.
244. thou] you Rowe, Pope, Han. 246, 257. 7] Ay Rowe et seq.
246. and] QaFf, Rowe, Pope, Han.
Var. Knt, Hal. White i, Sta. the Qf et cet.
250. [Demetrius breaks from her, and Exit. Cap. et seq. (subs.).
251. I] lie Qq, Cap. et seq.
240. Griffin] Way ( Prompt . Parv. s. v. Grype , footnote) : This fabulous animal is particularly described by Sir John Maundevile, in his account of Bacharie. ‘ In that contree ben many griffounes, more plentee than in ony other contree. Sum men seyn that thei han the body upward as an eagle, and benethe as a lyoune, and treuly thei seyn sothe that thei ben of that schapp. But o griffoun hathe the body more gret, and is more strong thanne viij. lyouns, of suche lyouns as ben o this half, and more gret and strongere than an c. egles, suche as we han amonges us.’ He further states that a griffin would bear to its nest a horse, or a couple of oxen yoked to the plough; its talons being like horns of great oxen, and serving as drinking cups; and of the ribs and wing feathers strong bows were made.
240. the milde] For other examples of unemphatic monosyllables, like the pres¬ ent ‘the,’ standing in an emphatic place, see Abbott, § 457.
243. questions] Steevens: Though Helena certainly puts a few Insignificant ‘ questions ’ to Demetrius, I cannot but think our author wrote question , i. e. discourse, conversation. So in As You Like Ii, III, iv, 39 : ‘ I met the duke yesterday, and had much question with him.’ [The same emendation occurred to Walker, Crit. i, 248.] — W. A. Wright : The plural may denote Helena’s repeated efforts at inducing Demetrius to talk with her.
245. But] For many other passages illustrating the * preventive meaning ’ of but , lee Abbott, § 122.
251. I follow] There is really no reason for deserting the Ff here. — Ed.
ACT II, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
97
To die vpon the hand I loue fo well. Exit. 252
Ob. Fare thee well Nymph, ere he do leaue this groue,
Thou (halt flie him, and he (hall feeke thy loue.
Haft thou the flower there? Welcome wanderer. 255
Enter Pucke.
F*uck. I, there it is.
Ob. I pray thee giue it me.
I know a banke where the wilde time blowes, 259
252. Exit.] Om. Qj. Exeunt. Rowe + . 257. there] here Lettsom, Huds.
254. [Re-enter Puck. Cap. et seq. 259. where] whereon Pope -I- , Cap.
256. [Scene IV. Pope + . Steev. Rann, Sing, i, Dyce ii, iii, Huds.
252. To die] That is, in dying, not in order to die. For similar instances of this gerundial usage, see Abbott, § 356.
252. die vpon the hand] W. A. Wright: ‘Upon’ occurs in a temporal sense in some phrases, where it is used with the cause of anything. In such cases the con¬ sequence follows ‘ upon ’ the cause. For instance, in Much Ado, IV, i, 225 : ‘ When he shall hear she died upon his words.’ Again, in the same play, IV, ii, 65 : ‘And upon the grief of this suddenly died.’ Also ‘ on ’ is used in a local sense with the instrument of an action. See below, II, ii, 112 : ‘ O how fit a word, Is that vile name to perish on my sword !’ And Jul. Cces. V, i, 58 : ‘I was not bom to die on Brutus’ sword.’ Hence, metaphorically, it occurs in Lear, II, iv, 34 : ‘ On whose contents They summoned up their meiny.’ None of these instances are strictly parallel to the one before us, but they show how ‘ upon the hand ’ comes to be nearly equivalent to ‘ by the hand,’ while with this is combined the idea of local nearness to the beloved object which is contained in the ordinary meaning of ‘ upon.’ A better example is found in Fletcher’s Chances, I, ix : ‘ Give me dying, As dying ought to be, upon mine enemy, Parting with mankind by a man that’s manly.’
255-258. Hast . . . me.] Dyce (ed. ii) : ‘The first part of each of these two verses,’ says Mr W. N. Lettsom, ‘ is inconsistent with the second part. Should we not read and point ? “ Hast thou the flower there, welcome wanderer ? Puck. Ay, here it is. Obe. I pray thee give it me.” ’ Mr Swynfen Jervis proposes : ‘ Wel¬ come, wanderer. Hast thou the flower there ?’ [Lettsom’s punctuation of line 255 is certainly good, but the change of ‘ there ’ to here seems needless ; in either case the word would be uttered with a gesture. According to the footnotes in the Cam. Ed., Zachary Jackson anticipated Swynfen Jervis. The reason is given in the Prefact to this volume for the exclusion from these Textual Notes of Jackson’s conjectures. —Ed.]
259. where] Malone, Keightley, Abbott (§480), and W. A. Wright pro¬ nounce this as a disyllable. — R. G. White (ed. i) says that ‘ Malone reasonably sup¬ posed ’ it to be ‘ used as a disyllable,’ and added, ‘ it may, at least, very properly have a disyllabic quantity,’ — a distinction which it is somewhat difficult to comprehend ; it is even more difficult to comprehend what rhythmical advantage these eminent edi¬ tors imagine has been gained by this conversion of a monosyllable into a disyllable, when by its position in the verse the ictus must fall on its manufactured second syl¬ lable. Can it be that their ears are pleased by ‘ I kndw | a bhnk | whe-dre | the 7
98
A MID SOMMER NIGHTS DREAME [act ii, sc. i.
Where Oxflips and the nodding Violet growes, 260
Quite ouer-cannoped with lufcious woodbine,
With fweet muske rofes, and with Eglantine ; 262
260. OxJlips\ Oxlips Qt. the Oxjlips F4, Rowe, ox dip Pope, Han. ox-lip Theob. Warb. Johns.
261. Quite ouer-cannoped ] Quite ouer- cannopi'd Qt. O’ er-cannopy' d Pope,
Theob. Warb. Johns. Cap. White clover canopied Bulloch.
261. lufcious~\ lujhious Qq. lush Theob. conj. Steev.’93, Coll, ii (MS), Dyce ii, Huds.
wild | thyme bldws. | ’ ? Unless the ictus be preserved the disyllable has been made in vain. To me, it would be better ignominiously to adopt Pope’s wheredn. But there is no need of appealing either to Pope or to Malone. Let a pause before ‘where’ take the place of a syllable, as in ‘swifter than the moon’s sphere’ in line 7 of this scene ; which see. With my latest editorial breath I will denounce these disyllables devised to supply the place of a pause. _ Ed.
260. Oxslips] * The Oxelip, or the small kinde of white Mulleyn, is very like to the Cowslippe aforesaide, sauing that his leaues be greater and larger, and his floures be of a pale or faynt yellow colour, almost white and without sauour.’— Lyte, p. 123, ed. 1578. Keightley {Exp. 132, and N. & Qu. 2d Ser. xii, 264) transposes * oxlip ’ and ‘ violet,’ because, as he alleges, the former ‘ nods ’ and the latter does not. This wanton change in the character of the oxl ip he justifies by a line from Lycidas about the cows] ip, a different plant : ‘ With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head.’— v. 14. Unquestionably the violets in this country nod, whatever their British brothers may do. — Ed.
260. grows] Either the singular by attraction, or from the image in the mind of
one bed of oxlips and violets growing together. _ Ed.
261. luscious] Johnson : On the margin of one of my Folios an unknown hand has written ‘ lush woodbine,’ which, I think, is right. This hand I have since dis¬ covered to be Theobald’s.— Ritson: Lush is clearly preferable in point of sense, and absolutely necessary in point of metre. — Steevens : Compare Temp. II, i, 52 :
How lush and lusty the grass looks !’— W. A. Wright: That is, sweet-scented;’ generally sweet to the taste. [It can be no disgrace to accept this line as an Alexan¬ drine : ‘ Quite 6 | ver-chn | op£d | with lhs | cious | woodbine,’ where the resolved syllables of ‘ lus-ci-ous ’ need not be harshly nor strongly emphasised. _ Ed.]
261. woodbine] ‘Woodbine or Honysuckle hath many small branches, whereby it windeth and wrappeth it selfe about trees and hedges. . . . Woodbine groweth in all this Countrie in hedges, about inclosed feeldes, and amongst broome or firres. It
is founde also in woodes - This herbe, or kinde of Bindeweede, is called ... in
Englishe Honysuckle, or Woodbine, and of some Caprifoyle.’— Lyte, p. 390, ed. 1578 [See IV, i, 48.] ’
262. muske roses . . . Eglantine] ‘ The sixth kinde of Roses called Muske Roses, hath slender springes and shutes, the leaues and flowers be smaller then the other Roses, yet they grow vp almost as high as the Damaske or Prouince Rose. The flowers be small and single, and sometimes double, of a white colour and pleas¬ ant sauour, in proportion not muche vnlyke the wilde Roses, or Canel Roses. ... The Eglentine or sweete brier, may be also counted of the kindes of Roses, for it is lyke
to the wilde Rose plante, in sharpe and cruel shutes, springes, and rough branches ’ _
Lyte, p. 654.
ACT ii, sc. i.] A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAA/E 99
There fleepes Tytania , fometime of the night, 263
Lul’d in thefe flowers, with dances and delight :
And there the fnake throwes her enammel’d skinne, 265
Weed wide enough to rap a Fairy in.
And with the iuyce of this lie ftreake her eyes,
And make her full of hatefull fantafies.
Take thou fome of it, and feek through this groue ; 269
263. fometime QqFf, Dyce, Sta. Cam. White ii. some time Rowe et cet.
264. flowers ] bowers Coll. MS, White i. witJi\ from Han.
266. rap\ wrappe Q,. wrap Ff.
267. And"] There Han. Then Ktly. Now Lettsom.
263. sometime of the night] Abbott, § 176: That is, sometimes during the night. — W. A. Wright: The accent shows that ‘sometime’ should not be separated into two words.
264. these flowers] Collier (ed. ii) : Where the MS substitutes bowers for ‘ flowers,’ we refuse the emendation, because it is not required. — R. G. White (ed. i) : The context plainly shows that ‘ flowers ’ is a misprint. ‘A bank ’ ‘ oer canopied' with woodbine, musk-roses, and eglantine is certainly a bower; and, says Oberon, 1 there sleeps Titania,’ and ‘ there the snake throws her enamell’d skin.’ Finally, Puck says, III, ii, 9, ‘near to her close and consecrated bower.' — Dyce (ed. ii) :
‘ Oddly enough, Knight has attacked the MS Corrector’s reading bowers with a string of absurdities ; while R. G. White, who adopts it, makes a remark that is conclusive against it, viz. that “ a bank overcanopied with woodbine, musk-roses, and eglantine is certainly a bower.” I strongly suspect that the genuine reading is “ this bower.” ’ — W. N. Lettsom. [Hudson adopted this conjecture of Lettsom. I do not know where to find Knight’s attack on Collier’s MS to which Lettsom refers, and I can¬ not see why R. G. White’s remark, which Lettsom quotes, is conclusive against the adoption of bowers. Hudson adds another reference, III, i, 205, ‘ lead him to my bower.’ — Ed.]
265. 266. And ... in] Keightley (Exp. 132, and N. &• Qu. 2d Ser. xii, 264) transposes these two lines so as to follow line 262, a transposition which is, so he says, ‘ imperatively demanded by the sequence of ideas ’ ; he also suggests that these two lines ‘ may have been an addition made by the poet or transcriber in the margin, and taken in in the wrong place.’ — Hudson adopted this transposition, which certainly has much in its favour, and reads, ‘And where the snake ’ instead of ‘And there the snake.’ ‘ With the old order,’ says Hudson, ‘ it would naturally seem that Oberon was to streak the snake’s eyes instead of Titania’s,’ especially, he might have added, since ‘ snake ’ is, as W. A. Wright points out, feminine, see Macb. Ill, ii, 13 : ‘ We have scotch’d the snake. . . . She’ll close,’ &c. — J. Crosby (Lit. World, Boston, 1 June, ’78) anticipated Hudson in substituting where for ‘ there.’
266. Weed] A garment ; the word now survives in ‘ widows’ weeds.’
267. And] Keightley: If this be the right word, something must have been lost, e. g. * Upon her will I steal there as she lies ’ ; but the poet’s word may have been what I have given, Then, strongly emphaticized, and written Than, the two first letters of which having been effaced, the printer made it ‘And.’
267. streake] W. A. Wright: That is, stroke, touch gently.
IOO
A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME 'act ii, sc. i
A fweet Athenian Lady is in loue 270
With a difdainefull youth : annoint his eyes,
But doe it when the next thing he efpies,
May be the Lady. Thou (halt know the man,
By tfye Athetiian garments he hath on.
Effect it with fome care, that he may proue 275
More fond on her, then the vpon her loue ;
And looke thou meet me ere the firft Cocke crow.
Pu. Feare not my Lord, your feruant fhall do fo. Exit. 278
276. on her ] of her Rowe, Pope, Theob. Han. Warb.
her loue ] his love Han.
277. thou\you Rowe + .
278. Exit.] Exeunt. Qq.
273i 274- man . . . on] Steevens : I desire no surer evidence to prove that the broad Scotch pronunciation once prevailed in England, than such a rhyme as the first of these words affords to the second. — W. A. Wright : In an earlier part of the scene ‘crab’ rhymes to ‘bob,’ and ‘cough’ to ‘laugh’; but from such imperfect rhymes, of which other examples occur in III, ii, 369, 370 [where the present rhyme of man, on, is repeated] ; III, ii, 435, 436 {there, here ] ; lb. 484, 486 {ill, well,— is any rhyme here intended ? Wright’s last reference is to ‘ V, i, 267, 268 ’ of his own text (corresponding to V, i, 289, 290 of the present text), which must be, of course, a misprint ; the two words are here and see. Wright then continues] it is unsafe to draw any inference as to Shakespeare’s pronunciation. [But is it not begging the question to call these rhymes ‘ imperfect ’ ? The presumption is that they are perfect, and to say that they are not, assumes a complete knowledge of Shakespeare’s pro¬ nunciation. If Shakespeare again and again rhymes short a with short o, and Ellis {E. E. Pronun. p. 954) gives ten or a dozen instances, is it unfair to infer that to his ear the rhyme was perfect ? may we not thus approximate to his pronunciation ? Of course, the standard which Ellis derived from certain lists in Salesbury is not here involved. I am merely urging a gentle plea against a general condemnation of Steevens’s remark, which, when it was made, indicated, I think, that Steevens’s face was turned in the right direction. — Ed.]
276. on] For numerous examples of this construction with ‘ on,’ see Abbott, §5 180, 181 ; and for the subjunctive ‘ meet,’ in the next line, see lb. § 369.
ACT II. sc. ii.] A MWSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME
IOI
5
[Scene II]
Enter Queene of Fairies , with her trains. Queen. Come, now a Roundell,and a Fairy fong; Then for the third part of a minute hence ,
Some to kill Cankers in the muske rofe buds,
Some warre with Reremife, for their leathern wings,
To make my fmall Elues coates, and fome keepe backe The clamorous Owle that nightly hoots and wonders
[Scene V. Pope + . Scene III. Steev. Mai. Sing. Knt, Coll, ii, Ktly. Act III, »c. i. Fleay. Scene II. Cap. et cet. [Another Part of the Wood. Cap.