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Clarenbom Stegg $ctics
AE AWG/, /S// C / A.S.S / CS
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S
DREAM
W. A. WA2/GA/T
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER. To THE UNIVERSITY OF OxFor D
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK.
(ſſarembom %ress Series
SHAKE SPEARE
S AE / A C 7T A2 /. A YS
A M I DSU M M E R N IG HT’S
DREAM
EDITED BY
WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M.A.
Åetzsar of 77°1212&y College, Cazzöz-zage
QB X fortſ
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M DCCCLXXIX
[All rights reserved]
£ombon
MACMILLAN AND CO.
PU B LISHERS TO THE UNI VERSITP OF
QBxfortſ.

P R E F A C E.
The first edition of this play was issued in quarto in 16oo
by Thomas Fisher, under the title ‘A Midsommer nights
dreame. As it hath beene sundry times publickely acted, by
the Right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants,
Written by William Shakespeare.’ It was entered at Sta-
tioners' Hall on the 8th of October, and in the same year
a pirated edition by James Roberts appeared. Fisher's and
Roberts's editions are spoken of in the Notes as the first
and second quartos, and from the latter of these the play
as it appears in the first folio was printed in 1623. But
although it was not printed, So far as we know, before 16oo,
it was written at least as early as 1598, for “Midsummers
Night Dreame’ is enumerated among Shakespeare’s plays
by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia (p. 282), which was
published in that year. How long before this time it had
been written is to a great extent a matter of pure conjecture.
Steevens, in his note on ii. i. 15, “And hang a pearl in every
cowslip’s ear,’ quotes a passage in which the same thought
occurs from an old comedy called The Wisdom of Doctor
Dodypoll, 16oo, where an enchanter says: —
‘’Twas I that led you through the painted meads
When the light fairies danc'd upon the flowers,
Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl.’
Malone pointed out that although no earlier edition is known
of this anonymous comedy than that of 16oo yet Doctor Dodi-
powle is mentioned by Nashe in 1596, in his preface to Gabriel
Harvey’s Hunt is Up. This however proves nothing, for Nashe
| 4354 A.
iv. PREFA CE.
only mentions the name ‘doctor Dodypowle, without refer-
ring to the play, and Dodipoll was a synonym for a blockhead
as early as Latimer's time. In endeavouring therefore to
approximate to the date of our play, we may leave out of
consideration the passage quoted by Steevens; for it is, to say
the least, quite as probable that the author of the Wisdom
of Doctor Dodypoll borrowed from the Midsummer Night's
Dream, as that Shakespeare borrowed from him a conceit
which is not very far-fetched. All that we really know is
that the Midsummer Night's Dream was written before 1598.
Chetwood, in his British Theatre, published in Dublin in
1750, gives a list of the early editions of Shakespeare's plays,
in which appears ‘A moste pleasaunte comedie, called A
Midsummer Night's Dreame, wythe the freakes of the ſayries,”
which is said to have been published in 1595. But Chetwood's
descriptions have been pronounced fictitious by Steevens, and
the spelling of ‘wythe' is sufficient to condemn the present
title as spurious. Malone at first placed the Midsummer
Night's Dream in the year 1595, then as early as 1592, but
his later opinion was that it was written in 1594. In that
year Dr. King, afterwards Bishop of London, preached at
York a series of sermons upon the history of Jonah, which
were published in 1618 under the title ‘Lectures upon Ionas.”
The second lecture (p. 36) contains a description of the
disastrous season, to which Titania is Supposed to refer in
her reproaches of Oberon (ii. 1. 81–117), and which she
attributes to their quarrel. ‘The moneths of the year haue
not yet gone about, wherin the Lord hath bowed the heauens,
and come down amongst vs with more tokens and earnests
of his wrath intended, then the agedst man of our land is
able to recount of so small a time. For say, if euer the
windes, since they blew one against the other, haue beene
more common, & more tempestuous, as if the foure endes of
heauen had conspired to turne the foundations of the earth
vpside downe; thunders and lightnings neither seasonable for
the time, and withall most terrible, with such effects brought
PREFA CE. V
forth, that the childe vnborne shall speake of it. The anger
of the clouds hath beene powred downe vpon our heads,
both with abundance and (sauing to those that felt it) with
incredible violence; the aire threatned our miseries with a
blazing starre; the pillers of the earth tottered in many whole
countries and tracts of our Ilande ; the arrowes of a woefull
pestilence haue beene cast abroad at large in all the quarters
of our realme, euen to the emptying and dispeopling of some
parts thereof; treasons against our Queene and countrey wee
have knowne many and mighty, monstrous to bee imagined,
from a number of Lyons whelps, lurking in their dennes
and watching their houre, to vndoe vs; our expectation and
comfort so fayled vs in France, as if our right armes had
beene pulled from our shoulders.’ The marginal note to this
passage shews the date to which it refers. ‘The yeare of
the Lord 1593, and 1594. Dr. King's description of the
extraordinary disturbance of the elements is confirmed by
Stowe in his Annals for the same year. Under date 1594
he says, “In this moneth of March was many great stormes
of winde, which ouerturned trees, steeples, barns, houses, &c.
namely in Worcestershire, in Beaudly forrest many Oakes were
Ouerturned . . . . The II. of Aprill, a raine continued very
sore more then 24. houres long and withall, such a winde
from the north, as pearced the wals of houses, were they
neuer so strong . . . This yeere in the month of May, fell
many great showres of raine, but in the moneths of Iune
and Iuly, much more: for it commonly rained euerie day,
or night, till S. Iames day, and two daies after togither most
extreamly, all which notwithstanding, in the moneth of August
there followed a faire haruest, but in the moneth of September
fell great raines, which raised high waters, such as staied the
carriages, and bare downe bridges, at Cambridge, Ware, and
else where, in many places. Also the price of graine grewe
to be such, as a strike or bushell of Rie was sold for fiae
shillings, a bushel of wheat for sixe, seuen, or eight shillings,
&c. for still it rose in price, which dearth happened (after
vi PREFA CE.
the common opinion) more by meanes of ouermuch trans-
porting, by our owne merchants for their priuate gaine,
than through the vnseasonablenesse of the weather passed.’
(Annales, ed. 16or, pp. 1274-9). A similar description is given
in the journal of Dr. Simon Forman, the astrologer, which
is quoted by Mr. Halliwell (Phillipps) in his Introduction to
A Midsummer Night's Dream (p. 6, ed. 1841), from MS.
384 in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. These passages
have been so often referred to as containing the prose version
of Titania’s speech that I have thought it best to give them
at length, if only for the purpose of shewing that in all
probability Shakespeare had not the year 1594 in his mind
at all. It is true that King, and Stowe, and Forman alike
describe great storms of wind and rain and disastrous floods
as characterising this year, but notwithstanding we are told
“in the moneth of August there followed a faire haruest,’
and the subsequent high prices of corn are attributed not
to a deficiency in the crop but to the avarice of merchants
in exporting it for their own gain. Now this does not agree
with Titania’s description of the fatal consequences of her
quarrel with Oberon, through which
“The green corn
Hath rotted, ere his youth attain’d a beard.’
In this point alone there is such an important discrepancy
that if Shakespeare referred to any particular season we may
without doubt affirm it was not to the year I 594, and there-
fore the passages which have been quoted have no bearing
upon the date of the play. I am even Sceptical enough to
think that Titania's speech not only does not describe the
events of the year 1594, or of the other bad Seasons which
happened at this time, but that it is purely the product of the
poet’s own imagination, and that the picture which it presents
had no original in the world of fact, any more than Oberon's
bank or Titania’s bower.
Another passage which has been appealed to as afford-
AREFA CE. vii
ing internal evidence of the date of our play is in v. 1.
52, 53, where Theseus reads from the list of performances
Submitted to him for approval by the master of the revels,
“The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceased in beggary ';
in which Some see an allusion to the death of Spenser in 1599,
others to that of Greene in 1592. In the former case the
lines must have been interpolated after Spenser's death, for we
know the play was in existence in 1598. It was Knight who
first suggested that the reference is to the death of Greene.
Rejecting the supposition of Warton that Shakespeare here
‘ alluded to Spenser's poem entitled “The Teares of the Muses,
on the neglect and contempt of learning,”’ which appeared
in 1591, he maintains, ‘These expressions are too precise and
limited to refer to the tears of the Muses for the decay of
knowledge and art. We cannot divest ourselves of the belief
that Some real person, and some real death, was alluded to.
May we hazard a conjecture ? Greene, a man of learning,
and one whom Shakspere in the generosity of his nature
might wish to point at kindly, died in 1592, in a condition
that might truly be called beggary. But how was his death,
any more than that of Spenser, to be the occasion of “some
satire keen and critical * * Every student of our literary
history will remember the famous controversy of Nash and
Gabriel Harvey, which was begun by Harvey’s publication, in
1592, of “Four Letters, and certain Sonnets, especially
touching Robert Greene, and other parties by him abused.”
Robert Greene was dead; but Harvey came forward, in
revenge of an incautious attack of the unhappy poet, to
satirize him in his grave—to hold up his vices and his mis-
fortunes to the public scorn—to be “keen and critical”
upon “learning, late deceas'd in beggary.” The conjecture
which we offer may have little weight, and the point is
certainly of very small consequence.’ It may safely be said
that the conjecture would have had more weight if the reasons
viii PREFA CE.
for it had not been given, for it is difficult to see any parallel
between Gabriel Harvey’s satire and
‘The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of learning,
which must of necessity satirize some person or persons other
than him whose death is mourned, even supposing that any
particular person is referred to. On the whole, I am inclined
to think that Spenser’s poem may have suggested to Shake-
speare a title for the piece submitted to Theseus, and that we
need not press for any closer parallel between them.
Chalmers, in his Supplemental Apology for the Believers in
the Shakspeare-Papers (pp. 359-370), gives the reasons which
induced him to place the composition of the Midsummer
Night's Dream in the early part of 1598. He finds, in the
speech of Theseus at the beginning of the fifth act, the line,
‘One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,”
which, he says, ‘is, plainly, a sarcasm on Lodge’s pamphlet,
called Wits Miserie, and the Worlds Madnesse; discovering
the Incarnate Devils of this age.’ Lodge's tract was printed
in 1596, and as he mentions other poets and suppresses
Shakespeare's name Chalmers infers that Shakespeare in
revenge wrote the line which is quoted above. An equally
strong reason for believing that Shakespeare had read Lodge's
tract before writing Midsummer Night's Dream, is that he
uses the word “compact,” which is also found in Lodge.
The next step in Chalmers's argument is that in 1597 there
was a poem, entitled Pyramus and Thisbe, published by
Dunstan Gale, which in his opinion was prior to Shakespeare's
work. But as no one has seen this edition of Gale's poem,
and as the story of Pyramus and Thisbe was accessible to
Shakespeare from other sources long before 1597, we may
dismiss this piece of evidence brought forward by Chalmers as
having no decisive weight. He next takes for granted what
is merely suggested by Malone, that Shakespeare borrowed
from a comedy called the Wisdom of Doctor Dodipoll, and
PREFA CE. 1X
further that this comedy was published in, or before, the year
1596. I have given reasons above for believing that this
suggestion also may be disregarded. Again, says Chalmers,
‘The Faiery Queen helped Shakspeare to many hints,’ and
‘the second volume of the Faiery Queen was published in
1596.’ To this I would add, what Chalmers himself should
have stated, that although the second volume of SpenSer’s
poem was not published till 1596, the first appeared in 1590,
and if Shakespeare borrowed any ideas from it at all he had
an opportunity of doing so long before 1596. This therefore
may be consigned to the limbo of worthless evidence. Fur-
ther, in the speech of Egeus, in which he claims the ancient
privilege of Athens, to dispose of his daughter either to
Demetrius or to death, Chalmers sees a direct reference to
a bill which was introduced into parliament in 1597 for
depriving offenders of clergy who should be found guilty of
taking away women against their wills. This is certainly the
weakest of all the proofs by which Chalmers endeavours to
make out his case, for the law which Egeus wished to enforce
was against a refractory daughter, who at the time at which
he was speaking had not been stolen away by Lysander, and
was only too willing to go with him. I have given Chalmers’s
theory rather more consideration than it deserves, because he
has supported it by a parade of evidence, which to him no
doubt appeared satisfactory, but which upon examination
proves to be of absolutely no value. -
Another point, which has a bearing upon the date of the
play, is the occasion for which it was written. If this could
be determined with any degree of probability we should be
able to ascertain within a little the time at which it was
composed. But here again we embark upon a wide Sea of
conjecture, with neither star nor compass to guide us.' That
the Midsummer Night's Dream may have been first acted at
the marriage of Some nobleman, and that, from the various
compliments which are paid to Elizabeth, the performance
may have taken place when the Queen herself was present,
X PREFA CE,
are no improbable suppositions. But when was this conjuncture
of events? No theory which has yet been proposed satisfies
both conditions. On the one hand Mr. Gerald Massey
maintains that it was to celebrate the marriage of Lord
Southampton with Elizabeth Vernon that Shakespeare com-
posed the Midsummer Night's Dream ; but as this marriage
did not take place till 1598, and was then kept secret in order
to avoid the Queen's displeasure, Mr. Massey supposes that
the play was written some time before, when it was thought
probable that the Queen’s consent might have been obtained,
and he accordingly places it in 1595. He goes further and
believes that in the play ‘many touches tend to show that
Hermia is Lady Rich, and Helena, Elizabeth Vernon' (The
Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets unfolded, p. 475).
‘Perhaps,’ he adds in a note (p. 481), ‘it was one of the Plays
presented before Mr. Secretary Cecil and Lord Southampton,
when they were leaving London for Paris, in January, 1598,
at which time, as Rowland White relates, the Earl’s marriage
was secretly talked of.” It appears that the exigencies of Mr.
Massey's theory have here driven him into great straits. That
Southampton was not married to Elizabeth Vernon till the
summer of 1598, is all but certain. If therefore the Mid-
summer Night's Dream was one of the plays acted before
Cecil and Southampton in January, 1598, it was not in honour
of the marriage of the latter. If it was not one of these plays
we are not concerned with what happened on that occasion.
In fact we know nothing whatever about the matter, and of
guesses like these there is neither end nor profit. Elze, who
rejects the date offered by Mr. Massey’s theory as too late,
advances a conjecture of his own which must be regarded as
a conjecture only, having no evidence whatever to support it.
To use his own language, he maintains that “all indications
point to the fact that the Midsummer Night's Dream was
written for and performed at the marriage of the Earl of
Essex in 1590' with Lady Frances Sidney the widow of Sir
Philip Sidney. He regards Theseus and Hippolyta as the
PREFA CE, X1
representatives of the bridal couple. Theseus was a cap-
tain, so was Essex. Theseus was a huntsman, So may
Essex have been. Theseus was welcomed by “great clerks’;
Essex had an Eclogue Gratulatory addressed to him by
George Peele on his return from the Spanish campaign in
1589. Theseus was faithless in love, and the amours of
Essex were matters of public notoriety. So, there being
a river at Monmouth and a river in Macedon, the parallel
is complete. Moreover, Kurz, who adopts Elze's hypothesis
and thinks that the Midsummer Night's Dream was per-
formed, “not on the marriage-day itself but on the May-day
festival which followed close afterwards,” looking in the
calendar found out moonshine, and ascertained that there was
a new moon on April 30, 1590, giving thereby an unexpected
significance to the introductory lines of the play". We have
but to take another step on this baseless ladder and we find
the Essex hypothesis explains, what has been hitherto un-
proved, how it was that Shakespeare enjoyed the early
patronage of Essex, and who it was that introduced him to
Southampton. It was the performance which “must ne-
cessarily have drawn the attention of Essex to the poet,”
and ‘it is now beyond all doubt” that Essex brought him
to the notice of Southampton. In such questions it would
be well to remember the maxim of the ancient rabbis, ‘Teach
thy tongue to say, I do not know.’
If we attempt to arrange the plays which Meres attributes
to Shakespeare, so as to distribute them over the period from
1589 to 1598, we shall find two gaps, in either of which we
might conjecturally place the Midsummer Night's Dream.
The interval from 1589 to 1591 is filled up by Love's Labour's
Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors,
and Titus Andronicus. In 1593, I 594 are placed Richard
* But in the play the new moon is on Theseus' wedding day, that is,
the 1st of May; and the kindness of Professor Adams enables me to
state that the nearest new moon to May 1, 1590, was on April 23, and
that there was a new moon on May I in 1592.
xii PREFA CE.
the Second, Richard the Third, King John, and in these years
appeared Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. The Merchant
of Venice is assigned to 1596, and Henry the Fourth to 1597.
Besides these there are the three Parts of Henry the Sixth,
which Meres does not mention, but which, if Shakespeare’s at
all, must belong to the earlier part of this period, and ‘LOue
Labours Wonne,’ whatever this may have been. On the
whole, I am disposed to agree with Professor Dowden in
regarding the Two Gentlemen of Verona as earlier than
the Midsummer Night’s Dream, while I cannot think the
latter was composed after the plays assigned above to 1593,
1594, and would therefore place it in the interval from 1591 to
1593, when perhaps Romeo and Juliet may have been begun.
But if conjecture has dealt freely with the indeterminate
problem of the date and first occasion of our play, these
speculations are outdone by the theories which have been
advanced to explain the famous speech of Oberon to Puck
(ii, I. 148–168), regarded as a political allegory. Warburton
was the first to propound an elaborate interpretation from
this point of view. Starting with the assumption that by the
“fair vestal throned by the west’ is meant Queen Elizabeth,
he argues that the mermaid must denote some eminent
personage of her time, ‘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.’ “She is called
a mermaid, I. To denote her reign over a kingdom situate in
the sea, and 2. Her beauty and intemperate lust.’ That she
was on a dolphin's back points to her marriage with the
dauphin of France. ‘Uttering such dulcet and harmonious
breath,” alludes to her great abilities and learning which
rendered her the most accomplished princess of her age.
The rude sea which grew civil at her song was ‘Scotland
encircled with the ocean, which rose up in arms against the
regent while she was in France. But her return home
PREFA CE. xiii
presently quieted those disorders.” The “certain stars’ who
shot madly from their spheres were some of the English
nobility who espoused her cause; “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.” Such is the
elaborate allegory which Warburton finds concealed in the
fanciful description given by Oberon of the origin of the
flower by means of whose magical properties he wished to
revenge himself upon Titania. That in the fair vestal throned
by the west Shakespeare intended a compliment to Queen
Elizabeth is probably the only part of Warburton’s theory
with which any one will agree. Ritson and others have
pointed out important discrepancies in his interpretation
which is really not worth serious investigation. But War-
burton is outdone by Boaden, who in his Essay on the Sonnets
of Shakespeare (1837) finds in Oberon's description of the
mermaid no royal siren like Mary Queen of Scots, but the
sham mermaid of the Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth when
Elizabeth paid her famous visit to Leicester in 1575. Shake-
speare was then a boy of eleven, and we are told may have
been present as a delighted spectator. His childhood recollec-
tion of the pageant takes the form some fifteen or twenty
years afterwards in which it now appears. Oberon speaks of
a mermaid on a dolphin's back, and at Kenilworth there was
Triton in the likeness of a mermaid, and Proteus appeared
sitting on a dolphin's back, “within the which dolphyn,’ says
Gascoigne, ‘a consort of musicke was secretly placed,” which
of course is in plain prose the dulcet and harmonious breath of
which Oberon describes the wondrous effects. The “certain
stars’ which shot madly from their spheres are according to
this interpretation no misguided nobles rushing upon their
own destruction, but the fireworks which accompanied the
royal entertainment. Surely no fireworks before or since
have been so glorified. Finally, misled by the magic of Sir
Walter Scott, the author of this theory identifies as ‘the little
xiv PREFA CE.
western flower’ poor Amy Robsart, who had been dead fifteen
years before. But what is more remarkable even than that
the wit of man should have conceived such an interpretation
is that the same conclusion was independently arrived at by
another investigator. Mr. Halpin, in his Oberon's Vision
(Shakes. Soc. Publ.), not only follows the outline of Boaden's
theory, that we have in this description an allegorical account
of what happened upon the occasion of Elizabeth’s visit to
Kenilworth, but pursues the allegory with a minuteness of
detail which Boaden did not attempt. In fact he takes up the
interpretation where Boaden leaves it, and identifying the
promontory on which Oberon sat with the ‘brays’ which are
described by Laneham as “linking a fair park with the castle
on the South,” he disposes of the rest of the allegory in this
wise. Cupid all armed, flying between the cold moon and
the earth, is the Earl of Leicester, wavering in his passion
between Queen Elizabeth and the Lady Douglas, Countess
of Sheffield, to whom he was believed to be privately married.
The aim which he took at a fair vestal throned by the west is
the attempt made by him upon this occasion to win the hand
of Elizabeth. This was defeated by “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 unshackled with a matrimonial
engagement, and as heartwhole as ever.” The little western
flower is Lettice, Countess of Essex, with whom Leicester
intrigued during the lifetime of her husband, and whom he after-
wards married. We must at any rate give the inventor of this
interpretation credit for remarkable ingenuity, but to accept
it requires the exercise of something more than faith. If there
be an allegorical meaning in Oberon's words why does he
suddenly drop allegory and come back to reality when he says
to Puck, “Fetch me that flower’? No one pretends that this
has an allegorical significance, and if so, how can it be
separated in such a manner from what precedes, that up to
this point all is allegory and from this point all is fact?
PREFA CE. XV
The fairy mythology of Shakespeare in the Midsummer
Night's Dream is described by Keightley (Fairy Mythology,
p. 325) as an attempt to blend ‘the Elves of the village with
the Fays of romance. His Fairies agree with the former in
their diminutive stature, -diminished, indeed, to dimensions
inappreciable by village gossips, in their fondness for dancing,
their love of cleanliness, and their child-abstracting propensi-
ties. Like the Fays, they form a community, ruled over by
the princely Oberon and the fair Titania. There is a court
and chivalry: Oberon would have the Queen’s Sweet changeling
to be a “knight of his train to trace the forest wild.” Like
earthly monarchs he had his jester, “the shrewd and knavish
sprite, called Robin Goodfellow.” It is true that Shakespeare
has presented these purely English fairies in combination with
‘the heroes and heroines of the mythic age of Greece, but
indeed Theseus is Greek in name only. He is an English
nobleman, who after service in the wars has returned to his
estate and his field sports, and Bottom and his fellows may
have been any Warwickshire peasants, hard-handed men of
Coventry, but no Athenians. There is no attempt in the whole
course of the play to give it a classical colouring, and there is
therefore nothing incongruous to a reader in finding himself in
company with the Greek-sounding names of Theseus, Egeus and
Philostrate in one scene, and Oberon and Robin Goodfellow in
another. The play is thoroughly English from beginning to end.
Oberon the fairy king first appears in the old French Ro-
mance of Huon of Bourdeaux, and is identical with Elberich
the dwarf king of the German story of Otnit in the Helden-
buch. The name Elberich, or as it appears in the Nibelung-
enlied, Albrich, was changed in passing into French first into
Auberich, then into Auberon, and finally became our Oberon.
He is introduced by Spenser in the Fairy Queen (bk. ii. cant.
I. St. 6), where he describes Sir Guyon –
“Well could he tournay, and in lists debate,
And knighthood tooke of good Sir Huon's hand,
When with King Oberon he came to Faery land.’
xvi. PREFA CE.
And in the tenth canto of the same book (st. 75) he is the
allegorical representative of Henry VIII. The wise Elficleos
left two sons,
“Of which faire Elferon,
The eldest brother, did untimely dy;
Whose emptie place the mightie Oberon
Doubly supplide, in spousall and dominion.’
‘Oboram King of Fayeries’ is one of the characters in Greene's
James the Fourth, which was not printed till 1598, but was of
course written in or before I 592.
The name Titania for the Queen of the Fairies appears to
have been the invention of Shakespeare. In Romeo and
Juliet she is known by the more familiar appellation Queen
Mab, and in an entertainment given to Elizabeth by the
Earl of Hertford at Elvetham in 1591, there was a speech
addressed to the Queen by ‘Aureola, the Quene of Fairy land,”
in which Auberon is mentioned as the Fairy King. Keightley
explains the origin of the name Titania, ‘ It was the belief of
those days that the Fairies were the same as the classic
Nymphs, the attendants of Diana: “That fourth kind of
spirits,” says King James, “ quhilk be the gentilis was called
Diana, and her wandering court, and amongst us called the
Phairie.” The Fairy Queen was therefore the same as Diana,
whom Ovid (Met. iii. 173) styles Titania.’ (Fairy Mythology,
p. 325, note.) In Chaucer's Merchant’s Tale, Pluto is the
King of Faerie and his Queen Proserpina, who danced and
sang about the well under the laurel in January's garden.
Puck or Robin Goodfellow is the mischief-loving sprite who
in one fairy genealogy is said to be the son of Oberon. His
former title is an appellative and not strictly a proper name,
and we find him speaking of himself, “As I am an honest
Puck,’ ‘Else the Puck a liar call.’ In fact Puck, or pouke, is
an old word for devil, and it is used in this sense in the
Vision of Piers Ploughman, I 1345 (ed. T. Wright):
‘Out of the poukes pondfold
No maymprise may us fecche.'
PREFA CE. xvii
And in the Romance of Richard Coer de Lion, 4326 (printed
in Weber's Metrical Romances, vol. ii):
‘He is no man he is a pouke.’
The Icelandic piłki is the same word, and in Friesland the
kobold or domestic spirit is called Puk. In Devonshire, pixy
is the name for a fairy, and in Worcestershire we are told
that the peasants are sometimes poake ledden, that is, misled by
a mischievous spirit called Poake. “Pouk-laden' is also given
in Hartshorne's Shropshire Glossary. Keightley was of
opinion that Shakespeare was the first to confound Puck with
the house-spirit or Robin Goodfellow, but it is evident that
in popular belief the same mischief-loving qualities which
belong to Puck were attributed to Robin Goodfellow long
before the time of Shakespeare. Tyndale, in his Obedience of a
Christian Man (Parker Soc. ed. p. 321) says, “The pope is kin
to Robin Goodfellow, which sweepeth the house, washeth the
dishes, and purgeth all, by night; but when day cometh, there
is nothing found clean.” And again, in his Exposition of the
Ist Epistle of St. John (Parker Soc. ed. p. 139), “By reason
whereof the scripture . . . is become a maze unto them, in
which they wander as in a mist, or (as we say) led by Robin
Goodfellow, that they cannot come to the right way, no,
though they turn their caps.’ The great source of information
with regard to popular beliefs in fairies and spirits is Reginald
Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, first published in 1584. Of
Robin Goodfellow he says (Book iv. ch. Io), ‘In deede your
grandams maides were woont to set a boll of milke before
him (Incubus) and his cousine Robin good-fellow, for grinding
of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight: and
you haue also heard that he would chafe exceedingly, if the
maid or good-wife of the house, hauing compassion of his naked-
nes, laid anie clothes for him, beesides his messe of white bread
and milke, which was his standing fee. For in that case he saith;
What haue we here 2 Hemton hamten, here will I neuer more
tread nor Stampen.” Again (Bk. vii. ch. I 5), ‘It is a common
b
xviii | PREFACE.
saieing; A lion feareth no bugs. But in our childhood our
mothers maids haue so terrified vs with an ouglie diuell hauing
hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breech,
eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skin
like a Niger, and a voice roring like a lion, whereby we start
and are afraid when we heare one crie Bough : and they haue SO
fraied us with bull beggers, spirits, witches, vrchens, elues, hags,
fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, Sylens, kit with the canSticke, tritons,
centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, coniurors, nymphes,
changlings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne, the mare,
the man in the Oke, the hell waine, the fierdrake, the puckle,
Tom thombe, hob gobblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such
other bugs, that we are afraid of our owne shadowes: in so
much as some neuer feare the diuell, but in a darke night;
and then a polled sheepe is a perillous beast, and manie times
is taken for our fathers soule, speciallie in a churchyard,
where a right hardie man heretofore scant durst passe by
night, but his haire would stand vpright.’ See also in the same
book A Discourse vpon diuels and spirits, c. 21. Burton, in
his Anatomy of Melancholy (Part I. Sec. 2. Mem. I. Subs. 2)
discusses the nature of spirits, and among other points the
important question whether they are mortal. One of his
divisions is as follows: “Terrestrial devils are those lares, genii,
faunes, satyrs, wood-nymphs, foliots, fairies, Robin Goodfellowſ,
Trulli, &c., which as they are most conversant with men, SO
they do them most harm . . . Some put our fairies into this
rank, which have been in former time adored with much
Superstition, with sweeping their houses, and setting of a pail
of clean water, good victuals, and the like; and then they
should not be pinched, but find money in their shoes, and be
fortunate in their enterprises. These are they that dance on
heaths and greens, as Lavater thinks with Trithemius, and as
Olaus Magnus adds, leave that green circle, which we com-
monly find in plain fields, which others hold to proceed from
a meteor falling, or some accidental rankness of the ground;
So nature sports herself . . . . Paracelsus reckons up many
PREFA CE. xix
places in Germany, where they do usually walk in little coats,
some two foot long. A bigger kind there is of them, called
with us hobgoblins, and Robin Goodfellows, that would, in those
superstitious times, grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood,
or do any manner of drudgery work . . . And so likewise those
which Mizaldus calls Ambulones, that walk about midnight on
great heaths and desert places, which (saith Lavater) draw
men out of the way, and lead them all night a by-way, or quite
bar them of their way. These have several names in several
places; we commonly call them pucks.” To the same effect
writes Harsnet in his Declaration of Popish Imposture (p. 134),
a book quoted in the Notes to King Lear: “And if that the
bowle of curds, & creame were not duly set out for Robin
good-fellow the Frier, & Sisse the dairy-maide, to meete at
hinch pinch, and laugh not, when the good wife was a bed, why
then, either the pottage was burnt to next day in the pot, or
the cheese would not curdle, or the butter would not come,
or the ale in the fat would neuer haue good head.” The
‘walking fire' in Lear, which Edgar takes for the foul fiend
Flibbertigibbet is but one of the forms in which Robin
appears. In the black-letter ballad of The Merry Puck, or
Robin Goodfellow, which is reprinted by Mr. Halliwell
(Phillipps) in his Introduction to a Midsummer Night's Dream,
is the following stanza (p. 36):
“Sometimes he’d counterfeit a voyce,
And travellers call astray,
Sometimes a walking fire he'd be,
And lead them from their way.”
Another ballad, printed in Percy's Reliques (vol. iii. book 2),
which relates ‘The Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow,'
may be consulted by those who wish to pursue the subject
further. See also Drayton, Nymphidia, 282 &c., Milton,
L’Allegro, Ioo—I 14, and an essay by Mr. Thoms on the
Folklore of Shakespeare.
It has been suggested that the device employed by Oberon
to enchant Titania, by anointing her eyelids with the juice
b 2
XX PREFA CE.
of a flower, may have been borrowed by Shakespeare from
the Spanish Romance of Diana by George of Montemayor.
But apart from the difficulty which arises from the fact that
no English translation of this romance is known before that
published by Yong in 1598, there is no necessity to suppose that
Shakespeare was indebted to any one for what must have been
a familiar element in all incantations at a time when a belief
in witchcraft was common. Percy (Reliques, vol. iii. book 2,
end) quotes a receipt by the celebrated astrologer Dr. Dee for
“An unguent to annoynt under the Eyelids, and upon the Eyelids
eveninge and morninge: but especially when you call,” that is,
upon the fairies. It consisted of a decoction of various flowers.
Dr. Farmer observed to Malone that in the lines spoken by
Pyramus ‘Approach, ye furies fell,’ &c., and in those of Thisbe's
Speech,
“O sisters three,
Come, come to me,
With hands as pale as milk,”
Shakespeare intended to ridicule a passage in Damon and
Pythias, by Richard Edwards, 1582: -
‘Ye furies, all at once
On me your torments trie . . .
Gripe me, you greedy griefs,
And present pangues of death,
You sisters three, with cruel handes
With speed come stop my breath !’
Certainly both in this play and in the tragical comedy of
Appius and Virginia, printed in 1575, may be found doggrel no
better than that which he puts into the mouth of Bottom. See
for example the speech of Judge Appius to Claudius, beginning,
‘The furies fell of Limbo lake
My princely days do short, &c.’
It is also worth while to notice that the song quoted in Romeo
and Juliet, iv. 5. 128, -
“When griping grief the heart doth wound &c.,’
is by the author of Damon and Pythias,
PREFA CE. xxi
In Mr. Collier's Annals of the Stage (ii. 30–36) is related
a curious story of a charge made against the Bishop of Lincoln
by one John Spencer for having had a play performed in his
house in London on Sunday, September 27, 1631. From
what follows it appears that the play in question was A
Midsummer Night's Dream, but there is evidently something
wrong about the story, for the 27th of September in the year
1631 was on a Tuesday. Taking it however for what it is
worth, the document from which Mr. Collier quotes, which
purports to be an order of the Archbishop’s Court, decrees,
* that Mr. Wilson, because he was a speciall plotter and con-
triver of this business, and did in such a brutishe manner acte
the same with an Asses head, and therefore hee shall, upport
Tuisday next, from 6 of the clocke in the morning till six of
the clocke at night, sitt in the Porters Lodge at my Lords
Bishopps House, with his feete in the stocks, and attyred with
his asse head, and a bottle of hay sett before him, and this
Subscription on his breast:
* Good people I have played the beast,
And brought ill things to passe:
I was a man, but thus have made
My selfe a silly Asse.’
After the Restoration we find in 1661 a play called The
Merry conceited Humors of Bottom the Weaver, in which
Theseus and his court are left out altogether, and nothing
remains but the fairies and the clowns. It had perhaps been
played privately after the suppression of the theatres. On
the 29th of September 1662, Mr. Pepys having endured a
period of abstinence from drink and play-going, in accordance
with a vow which came to an end on that day, rewarded his
constancy by going to the King's Theatre, where, he says,
‘we saw “Midsummer's Night's Dream,” which I had never
Seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid
ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.” Mr. Pepys was
perhaps a little difficult to please, and his critical judgement
was not final. The Tempest is the most innocent play he
xxii PREFA CE.
ever saw, and has no great wit. He calls The Taming of
the Shrew a ‘silly play,’ while Othello, which he had once
thought “mighty good, seemed to him but a mean thing
after reading ‘The Adventures of Five Houres.” No doubt
he reflected the taste of his time, and it is not much to be
wondered at that he did not care for A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. There...is in truth no plot in the play at all and ...
very little dramatic movement. indeed it is rather a masque
than a play, or at any rate a play of situation rather than
of plot or character. And as with a masque was combined
the antimasque as a kind of comic counterpart or farce,
so in the present play the fairies and the clowns supply the
place of the antimasque of which they form the sub-divisions
or semi-choruses.
The title of the play has often been the subject of dispute.
Aubrey has a story, which is as worthless as most of his
worthless gossip is, to the effect that “ The humour of the
constable in A Midsommer-Night-Dreame he happened to
take at Crendon [or Grendon] in Bucks (I think it was
Midsomer-night that he happened to be there); which is
the road from London to Stratford; and there was living
that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon.' (Shake-
speare, ed. I 821, ii. 491.) In the play itself the time is about
May day, but Shakespeare from haste or inadvertence has
fallen into some confusion in regard to it. Theseus' opening
words point to April 27, four days before the new moon which
was to behold the night of his marriage with Hippolyta. He
orders Hermia
“By the next new moon,
The sealing day between my love and me,’
to make up her mind either to wed Demetrius or be con-
demned to death or perpetual virginity. The next night,
which would be April 28, Lysander appoints for Hermia to
escape with him from Athens. ‘Steal forth thy father's house
to-morrow night.” The night of the second day is occupied
with the adventures in the wood, and in the morning the
PREFA CE. xxiii
lovers are discovered by Theseus and his huntsmen, and it is
Supposed that they have risen early to observe the rite of
May. So that the morning of the third day is the 1st of
May, and the last two days of April are lost altogether.
Titania's reference to the ‘middle-summer's spring” must
therefore be to the summer of the preceding year. It is
a curious fact, on which however I would not lay too much
stress, that in 1592 there was a new moon on the 1st of
May; SO that if A Midsummer Night's Dream was written so
as to be acted on a May day when the actual age of the
moon corresponded with its age in the play, it must have
been written for May day 1592.
Midsummer Eve appears to have been regarded as a period
when the imagination ran riot, and many of the old super-
stitions which characterised it are recorded in Brand’s Popular
Antiquities. For instance, ‘Grose tells us that any person
fasting on Midsummer Eve, and sitting in the church porch,
will at midnight see the spirits of the persons of that parish
who will die that year, come and knock at the church door,
in the order and succession in which they will die (i. p. 33.1).
‘Maidens practised divination on this night to find out their
future husbands, and Levinus Lemnius . . . tells us that the
Low Dutch have a proverb, that when men have passed a
troublesome night's rest, and could not sleep at all, they say,
we have passed St. John Baptist’s Night; that is, we have not
taken any sleep, but watched all night; and not only so, but
we have been in great troubles, noyses, clamours, and stirs,
that have held us waking’ (i. p. 305). We know that Mal-
volio's strange conduct is described by Olivia (Twelfth Night,
iii. 4. 61) as very Midsummer madness, and A Midsummer
Night's Dream therefore is no inappropriate title for the series
of wild incongruities of which the play consists.
W. A. W.
CAMBRIDGE,
20 October, 1877.
A MIDSU M M ER– NIGHT’S
D REAM.
E) RAMATIS PERSONAE.
THESEUS, Duke of Athens. HERMIA, daughter to Egeus, in love with
EGEUS, father to Hermia. Lysander. s
Bººs g in love with Hermia. HELENA, in love with Demetrius
PHILOSTRATE, master of the revels to The- OBERON, king of the fairies.
SellS. TITANIA, queen of the fairies.
QUINCE, a carpenter, PUCK, or Robin Goodfellow.
SNUG, a joiner. PEASEBLOSSOM,
BOTTOM, a weaver. COBWEB, fairies
FLUTE, a bellows-mender. MOTH, j *
SNOUT, a tinker. MUSTARDSEED, g
STARV y - s e e - - - -
ELING, a tailor. Other fairies attending their King and Queen.
HIPPOLYTA, queen of the Amazons, be- Attendants on Theseus and Hippolyta.
trothed to Theseus. SCENE : A &/texts, aztd. a zoood 7zeaz. zł.
A CT I.
SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS.
Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and Attendants.
The. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon : but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes I she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
Hip. Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow o
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night J. C.
Of our solemnities.
The . Go, Philostrate,
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;
B
2 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM.
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth:
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;
The pale companion is not for our pomp. [Exit Philostrate.
Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.
Enter EGEUS, HERMIA, LySANDER, and DEMETRIUS.
Ege. Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke 2 O
The. Thanks, good Egeus: what’s the news with thee
Ege. Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her.
Stand forth, Lysander: and, my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child:
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes
And interchanged love-tokens with my child:
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung 3o
With feigniag voice verses of feigning love,
And stolen the impression of jº.
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, Sweetmeats, messengers
Jf strong prevailment in unharden’d youth :
With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart,
Turn’d her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,
Be it so she will not here before your grace
Consent to marry with Demetrius, 40
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case. #
The. What say you, Hermia be advised, fair maid :
To you your father should be as a god;
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
A CT Y. SCENE 7. 3
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it.
Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.
Her. So is Lysander.
‘The. In himself he is;
But in this kind, wanting your father's voice,
The other must be held the worthier.
Her. I would my father look'd but with my eyes.
The Rather your eyes must with his judgement look.
5
Her. I do entreat your grace to pardon me.
I know not by what power I am made bold,
Nor how it may concern my modesty, 6 o
In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;
But I beseech your grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me in this case,
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.
The. Either to die the death or to abjure
For ever the society of men.
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires;
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,
S., You can endure the livery of a nun, 7 o
NF or aye to be in shady cloister mew’d,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo Such naiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d,
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.
Her. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up 8 o
Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.
The. Take time to pause; and, by the next new moon—
The sealing-day betwixt my love and me,
B 2
4 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM.
For everlasting bond of fellowship—
Upon that day either prepare to die
For disobedience to your father's will,
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would ;
Or on Diana's altar to protest
For aye austerity and single life. 9 o
Dem. Relent, sweet Hermia: and, Lysander, yield
Thy crazed title to my certain right.
Lys. You have her father's love, Demetrius;
Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.
Ege. Scornful Lysander true, he hath my love,
And what is mine my love shall render him.
And she is mine, and all my right of her
I do estate unto Demetrius.
Lys. I am, my lord, as well derived as he,
As well possess'd; my love is more than his; roo
My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd,
If not with vantage, as Demetrius’;
And, which is more than all these boasts can be,
I am beloved of beauteous Hermia :
Why should not I then prosecute my right?
Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,
And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,
Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,
Upon this spotted and inconstant man. I IO
The. I must confess that I have heard so much,
And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;
But, being over-full of self-affairs,
My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come;
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me,
I have some private schooling for you both.
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up—
Which by no means we may extenuate— I 2 C,
To death, or to a vow of single life.
A CT I. SCENE I. 5
Come, my Hippolyta : what cheer, my love
Demetrius and Egeus, go along :
I must employ you in Some business
Against Our nuptial and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.
Ege. With duty and desire we follow you.
[Exeunt all but Lysander and Hermia.
Lys. How now, my love! why is your cheek so pale; 2.
How chance the roses there do fade so fast 2
Her. Belike for want of rain, which I could well I 3 o
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.
Lys. Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth ;
But, either it was different in blood,
Her. O cross I too high to be enthrall'd to low.
Lys. Or else misgraffed in respect of years,
Her. O spite too old to be engaged to young.
Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends, –
Her. O hell! to choose love by another's eyes. I4 O
Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay Siege to it,
Making it momentany as a sound, .
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; -
Brief as the lightning in the collied night, 2^ V
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold !’
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
Her. If then true lovers have been ever cross'd, I5O
It stands as an edict in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary CrOSS,
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,
Wishes and tears, poor fancy's followers.
Lys. A good persuasion ºtherefore, hear me, Hermia.
6 - A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.
Her. My good Lysander
I swear to thee, by Cupid’s strongest bow,
By his best arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,
By that which knitteth Souls and prospers loves,
And by that fire which burn’d the Carthage queen,
When the false Troyan under sail was seen,
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke,
In that Same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.
16o
17o
Lys. Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.
Enter HELENA.
Her. God speed fair Helena whither away ?
Hel. Call you me fair 2 that fair again unsay.
Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair
Your eyes are 1. de-stars; and your tongue's sweet air
More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching : O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go ;
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody.
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I’ld give to be to you translated.
I8o
I 9o
A CT I. SCENE I. 7
O, teach me how you look, and with what art
You Sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.
Her. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.
Hel. O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill
Her. I give him curses, yet he gives me love.
Hel. O that my prayers could such affection move .
Her. The more I hate, the more he follows me.
Hel. The more I love, the more he hateth me.
Her. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine. 2 OO
Hel. None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine !
Her. Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seem’d Athens as a paradise to me:
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn’d a heaven unto a hell !
Lys. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:
To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass, 2 I O
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,
Through Athens' gates have we devised to steal.
Her. And in the wood, where often you and I P. !--
Upon faint primrose-beds, were wont to lie, -r
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,
There my Lysander and myself shall meet;
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,
To seek new friends and Stranger companies.
Farewell, sweet playfellow : pray thou for us;
And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!
Keep word, Lysander: we must starve our sight
From lovers’ food till morrow deep midnight.
Lys. I will, my Hermia. [Exit Herm.] Helena, adieu:
As you on him, Demetrius dote on you ! |Exit.
Hel. How happy some o'er other some can be
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she,
2
2
O
8 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
But what of that ? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know :
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes, 23 O
So I, admiring of his qualities:
ty- Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
_Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste :
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, 24O
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
For ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,
He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight :
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense :
But herein mean I to enrich my pain, 25O
To have his sight thither and back again. [Exit.
_T
SCENE II. Athens. QUINCE’s house.
Enter QUINCE, SNUG, Bottom, FLUTE, SNOUT, and
STARVELING.
Quin. Is all our company here?
Bot. You were best to call them generally, man by man,
according to the scrip.
Quin. Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is
thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude
before the duke and the duchess, on his wedding-day at
night.
A CT. T. SCENE II. 9
Bot. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats
on ; then read the names of the actors, and so grow to
a point. Io
Quin. Marry, our play is, The most lamentable comedy,
and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.
Bot. A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry.
Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll.
Masters, spread yourselves.
Quin. Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.
Bot. Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.
Quin. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.
Bot. What is Pyramus 2 a lover, or a tyrant?
Quin. A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love. 20
Bot. That will ask some tears in the true performing of
it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will
move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest:
yet my chief humour is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles
rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all Split.
The raging rocks
And shivering shocks ~
Shall break the locks
Of prison gates;
And Phibbus’ car / 3o
Shall shine from far
And make and mar
The foolish Fates.
This was lofty' Now name the rest of the players. This
is Ercles' vein, a tyrant’s vein; a lover is more condoling.
Quin. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.
Flu. Here, Peter Quince.
Quin. Flute, you must take Thisby on you.
Flu. What is Thisby 2 a wandering knight?
Quin. It is the lady that Pyramus must love. 4O
Flu. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I have a beard
coming.
IO A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
Quin. That’s all one: you shall play it in a mask, and
you may speak as Small as you will. &
Bot. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too,
I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice, “Thisne, Thisne;’
“Ah Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisby dear, and lady
dear!”
Quin. No, no; you must play Pyramus: and, Flute, you
Thisby. 50
Bot. Well, proceed.
Quin. Robin Starveling, the tailor.
Star. Here, Peter Quince.
Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's mother.
Tom Snout, the tinker.
Snout. Here, Peter Quince.
Quin. You, Pyramus' father : myself, Thisby's father.
Snug, the joiner; you, the lion’s part: and, I hope, here is
a play fitted.
Snug. Have you the lion's part written ? pray you, if it
be, give it me, for I am slow of study. 6 I
Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but
roaring.
Bot. Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will
do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar; that I
will make the duke say ‘Let him roar again, let him roar
again.”
Quin. An you should do it too terribly, you would fright
the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that
were enough to hang us all. 7o
All. That would hang us, every mother's son.
Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the
ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion
but to hang us : but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will
roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an
'twere any nightingale.
Quin. You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus
is a Sweet-faced man ; a proper man, as one shall see in a
A CT II. SCENE I. II
Summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man : therefore
you must needs play Pyramus. 8O
Bot. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best
to play it in 2
Quin. Why, what you will.
Bot. I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard,
your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your
French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.
Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all,
and then you will play barefaced. But, masters, here are
your parts: and I am to entreat you, request you and de-
sire you, to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me
in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight;
there will we rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall
be dogged with company, and our devices known. In the
meantime I will draw a bill of properties, such as our play
wants. I pray you, fail me not. - 95
Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse most
obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect: adieu.
Quin. At the duke's oak we meet.
Bot. Enough ; hold or cut bow-Strings. [Exeumt.
A CT II.
SCENE I. A wood near Athens.
Enter, from opposite sides, a FAIRY, and PUCK.
Puck. How now, spirit whither wander you?
Fai. Over hill, over dale, ~
Thorough bush, thorough brier, 2^
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander every where,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere ;
I 2 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
And I serve the fairy queen,
TN. To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be: | Q
In their gold coats spots you) see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thoujob of spirits; I'll be gone:
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.
Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, 2 C.
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, Stolen from an Indian king ;
She never had so Sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild ;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
TN By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But they do square, that all their elves for fear 39
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.
~
Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you) he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn ;
And Sometime make the drink to bear no barm ;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm :
Those that Hobgoblin, call you and sweet Puck, 4 O
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you) he
Puck. Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
A CT 77. SCENE 7. 13
ſ
I_jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, 2
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob Zº
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale. 5 O
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And “tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough ;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy ! here comes Oberon.
Fai. And here my mistress. Would that he were gone
Enter, from one side, OBFRON, with his train ; from the other,
TITANIA, with hers.
Obe. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. * 6o
Tita. What, jealous Oberon Fairies, skip hence:
I have forsworn his bed and company.
Obe. Tarry, rash wanton : am not I thy)lord?
Tita. Then I must be thy, lady; but I know
When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn and versing love
To amorous Phillida. Why art thou) here,
Come from the farthest steppe of India?
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, e 7o
Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded, and you, COIſle
To give their bed joy and prosperity.
Obe. How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus 2 /
Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night
I4. A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM.
From Perigenia, whom he ravished 2
And make him with fair AEgle break his faith,
With Ariadne and Antiopa P 8o
Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle Summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook, _2^
Or in the beached margent of the sea, ~
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our Sport,
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land 9 O
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere; his youth attain’d a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men's morris is fill’d up with mud,
And the quaint mazès in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable: | O O.
The human mortals...want their winter here ;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound :
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds I O
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which :
And this same progeny of evils comes


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A CT II, SCENE I. 17
I'll make her render up her page to me.
But who comes here 2 I am invisible;
And I will overhear their conference.
Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him.
Dem. I love thee aot, therefore pursue me not.
Where is Lysander and fair Hermia
The one I'll slay, the other slayeth me. I go
Thou told'st me they were stolen unto this wood;
And here am I, and wood within this wood,
Because I cannot- meet my Hermia.
Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.
Hel. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant:
But yet you draw not iron, for my heart
Is true as steel: leave you your power to draw,
And I shall have no power to follow you.
Dem. Do I entice you ? do I speak you fair :
Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth 2OO
Tell you, I do not, nor. I cannot love you?
Hel. And even for that do I love you the more.
I am your spaniel; and, T)emetrius, -
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love,
And yet a place of high respect with me,
Than to be used as you use your dog 2 I O
Dem. Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit,
For I am sick when I do look on thee.
Hel. And I am sick when I look not on you.
Dem. You do impeach your modesty too much,
To leave the city and commit yourself
Into the hands of one that loves you not;
To trust the opportunity of night
And the ill counsel of a desert place
With the rich worth of your virginity.
C
I 8 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
Hel. Your virtue is my privilege: for that 22 O
It is not night when I do see your)face,
Therefore I think I am not in the night;
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,
For you in my respect are all the world:
Then how can it be said I am alone,
When all the world is here to look on me
Dem. I’ll run from (thee and hide me in the brakes,
And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.
Hel. The wildest hath not such a heart as you.
Run when you will, the story shall be changed: 23 O
Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;
The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind
2Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed,
When cowardice pursues and valour flies.
Dem. I will not stay thy questions; let me go:
Or, if thou follow me, do not believe
But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.
Hel. Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,
You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius !
Your. wrongs do set a scandal on my sex : 24O
We cannot fight for love, as men may do;
We should be woo'd and were not made to woo.
) [Exit Demetrius.
I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well. ' [Exit.
Obe. Fare thee well, nymph : ere he do leave this grove,
Thou shalt fly him and he shall seek thy, love.
~~~ Re-enter PUCK.
Hast thou, the flower there Welcome, wanderer.
Puck. Ay, there it is. -
Obe. I pray thee, give it me.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 250
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
' With Sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
A CT II. SCENE II. I9
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, __^
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in :
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
Take (thod some of it, and seek through this grove:
A sweet Athenian lady is in love 26o
With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;
But do it when the next thing he espies
May be the lady: thou shalt know the man
By the Athenian garments he hath on.
Effect it with some care that he may prove
More fond on her than she upon her love:
And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.
Puck. Fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so.
[Exeunt.
SCENE II. Another part of the wood.
Enter TITANIA, with her train.
Tita. Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence;
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, M
To make my small elves coats, and Some keep back /
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;
Then to your offices and let me rest.
The Fairies sing.
*You spotted snakes with double tongueſ,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, /
Come not near our fairy queen.
Philomel, with melody
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby:
C 2
2O A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM.
Never harm,
Nor spell nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.
Weaving spiders, come not here; 2O
Hence, you)long-legg'd spinners, hence
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence.
Philomel, with melody, &c.
A Fairy. Hence, away ! now all is well:
One aloof stand sentinel.
[Exeunt Fairies. Titania sleeps.
Enter OBERON, and squeezes the ſlower on Titania’s eyelids.
Obe. What thou seest when thou. dost wake,
Do it for thy true-love take,
Love and languish for his sake:
Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, 3O
Pard, or boar with bristled hair,
In thy eye that shall appear
When thou wakest, it is thy dear:
Wake when some vile thing is near. [Exit.
Enter LY SANDER and HERMIA.
Lys. Fair love, you faint with wandering in the wood;
And to speak troth, I have forgot our way:
We’ll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good,
And tarry for the comfort of the day.
Her. Be it so, Lysander: find you out a bed;
or I upon this bank will rest my head. 4C
Lys. One turf shall serve as pillow for us both ;
One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.
Her. Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear,
Lie further off yet, do not lie so near.
Lys. O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocenceſ
Love takes the meaning in love's conference.
I mean, that my heart unto yourš is knit
So that but one heart we can-make of it;
ACT II. SCENE II. 2
Two bosoms interchained with an oath;
So then two bosoms and a single troth. 5 O
Then by your side no bed-room me deny;
For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.
Her. Lysander riddles very prettily:
Now much beshrew my manners and my pride,
If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied.
But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy
Lie further off; in human modesty,
Such separation as may well be said
Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid,
So far be distant; and, good night, sweet friend: 6o
Thy love ne'er alter till thy sweet life end
Lys. Amen, amen, to that fair prayer, say I;
And then end life when I end loyalty
Here is my bed: sleep give thee all his rest
Her. With half that wish the wisher's eyes be press'd
[They sleep.
Ezier PUCK.
Puck. Through the forest have I gone,
But Athenian found I none,
On whose eyes I might approve
This flower’s force in stirring love.
Night and silence.—Who is here 2 7 o
Weeds of Athens he doth wear:
This is he, my master Said,
Despised the Athenian maid;
And here the maiden, sleeping sound,
On the dank and dirty ground.
Pretty soul she durst not lie.
Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.-
Churl, upon thy eyes I throw
All the power this charm doth owe.
When thou wakest, let love forbid 8O
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid:
So awake when I am gone;
For I must now to Oberon. |Exit.
22 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
~~~~
2^
Enter DEMETRIUS and HELENA, running.
Hel. Stay, though thod kill me, sweet Demetrius.
Dem. I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus.
Hel. O, wilt thou darkling leave me? do not So.
Dem. Stay, on thy peril: I alone will go. [Exit.
Hel. O, I am out of breath in this fond chase !
The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.
Happy is Hermia, wheresoe'er she lies; 90
For she hath blessed and attractive eyes.
How came her eyes so bright Not with Salt tears:
If so, my eyes are oftener wash’d than hers.
No, no, I am as ugly as a bear;
For beasts that meet me run away for fear:
Therefore no marvel though Demetrius
Do, as a monster, fly my presence thus.
What wicked and dissembling glass of mine
Made me compare with Hermia’s sphery eyne 2
But who is here? Lysander! on the ground ! I OO
Dead 2 or asleep 2 I see no blood, no wound.
Lysander, if you live, good Sir, awake.
Lys. [Awaking.] And run through fire I will for thy sweet
Sake.
. Transparent Helena | Nature shows art, .
That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.
Where is Demetrius O, how fit a word
Is that vile name to perish on my sword
Hel. Do not say so, Lysander; say not so.
What though he love your Hermia? Lord, what though
Yet Hermia still loves you: then be content. I I O
Lys. Content with Hermia | No ; I do repent
The tedious minutes I with her have spent.
Not Hermia but Helena I love :
Who will not change a raven for a dove 2
The will of man is by his reason sway’d ;
And reason Says you are the worthier maid.
A CT II. SCENE II. 23
Things growing are not ripe until their season:
So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason ;
And touching now the point of human skill,
Reason becomes the marshal to my will I 2 O
And leads me to your eyes, where I o'erlook
Love's stories written in love’s richest book.
Hel. Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born ?
When at your hands did I deserve this scorn ?
Is 't not enough, is 't not enough, young man,
That I did never, no, nor never can,
Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius’ eye,
But you must flout my insufficiency
Good troth, you do me wrong, good sooth, you do,
In such disdainful manner me to woo. - - I 30
But fare you well: perforce I must confess
I thought you lord of more true gentleness.
O, that a lady, of one man refused,
Should of another therefore be abused .* [Exit.
Lys. She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there:
And never maySt thou come Lysander near !
For as a surfeit of the sweetest things
The deepest loathing to the stomach brings,
Or as the heresies that men do leave
Are hated most of those they did deceive, I4O
So thou, my surfeit and my heresy,
Of all be hated, but the most of me !
And, all my powers, address your love and might
To honour Helen and to be her knight! [Exit.
Her. [Awaking.] Help me, Lysander, help me ! do thy,
best . …"
To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast ! T
Ay me, for pity what a dream was here !
Lysander, look how I do quake with fear :
Methought a serpent eat my heart away, --
And you Sat smiling at his cruel prey.” I 50
Lysander what, removed 2 Lysander lord I
What, out of hearing 2 gone no sound, no word 2
24 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Alack, where are you ? Speak, an if you hear;
Speak, of all loves | I swoon almost with fear.
No then I well-perceive you are not nigh:
Either death or you I'll find immediately. |Exit.
A CT III.
SCENE I. The wood. Titania lying asleep.
Enter QUINCE, SNUG, Bottom, FLUTE, SNOUT, and
STARVELING.
Boż. Are we all met 2
Quin. Pat, pat; and here’s a marvellous convenient place
for our rehearsal. This green plot shall be our stage, this
hawthorn-brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action
as we will do it before the duke.
Bot. Peter Quince,—
Quin. What sayest thou, bully Bottom
Bot. There are things in this comedy of Pyramus
and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must
draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide.
How answer you that 2 I I
Snout. By’r lakin, a parlous fear.
Star. I believe we must leave the killing out, when all
is done.
Bot. Not a whit: I have a device to make all well. Write
me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to say, we will do
no harm with our swords and that Pyramus is not killed
indeed ; and, for the more better assurance, tell them that
I Pyramus am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this
will put them out of fear. 2 O
Quin. Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall
be written in eight and six.
A CT FII. SCENE 7. 25
Bot. No, make it two more; let it be written in eight
and eight.
Snout. Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion ? - O
Star. I fear it, I promise you.
Bot. Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves: to
bring in-God shield us !—a lion among ladies, is a most ſº
dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than
your lion living; and we ought to look to 't. 3o
Snout. Therefore another prologue must tell he is not
a lion.
Bot. Nay, you must name his name, and half his face / ſ:
must be seen through the lion's neck: and he himself must \}
speak through, Saying thus, or to the same defect, ‘Ladies,’
—or ‘Fair ladies, I would wish you,”—or ‘I would request
you,'—or ‘I would entreat you, -—not to fear, not to tremble:
my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it
were pity of my life: no, I am no such thing; I am a man
as other men are ; * and there indeed let him name his name,
and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner. 4 I
Quin. Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things;
that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for, you 2.
know, Pyramus and Thisby meet by moonlight. e. y
Snout. Doth the moon shine that night we play our play
Bot. A calendar, a calendar ! look in the almanac; find
out moonshine, find out moonshine.
Quin. Yes, it doth shine that night.
Bot. Why, then may you leave a casement of the great / o
chamber window, where we play, open, and the moon may V
shine in at the casement. 5 I
Quin. Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns /¥
and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, S
the person of Moonshine. Then, there is another thing:
we must have a wall in the great chamber; for Pyramus
and Thisby, says the story, did talk though the chink of a
wall.
Snout. You can never bring in a wall. What say you,
Bottom * 59
/ .
Ö
§
§
26 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Boi." Some man or other must present Wall : and let him
a have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about
T^him, to signify wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and
through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisby whisper.
Quin. If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down,
every mother's Son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you
begin : when you have spoken your speech, enter into that
brake : and So every one according to his cue.
Enter PUCK behind.

0 /Puck. What hempen home-spuns have we Swaggering
jš here,
/so near the cradle of the fairy queen
# What, a play toward I’ll be an auditor;
And actor too perhaps, if I see cause.
Quin. Speak, Pyramus. Thisby stand forth.
Bot. Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet,_
7o
f
f
.
Quin. Odours, odours.
Bot. . . . . . odours savours sweet:
So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisby dear.
But hark, a voice stay thou but here awhile,
And by and by I will to thee appear.
Puck. A stranger Pyramus than e'er played here.
Flu. Must I speak now
Quin. Ay, marry, must you; for you must understand he
goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again.
–, Flu. Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,
S Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier,
—s Most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew,
` As true as truest horse that yet would never tire,
I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb.
Quin. ‘Ninus’ tomb,” man: why, you must not speak that
yet ; that you answer to Pyramus: you speak all your part
at once, cues and all. Pyramus enter: your cue is past; it
is, “never tire.” 90
Flu. O,-As true as truest horse, that yet would never
tire.
[Exit.
|Exit.
82
A CT III. SCENE 7. 27
Re-enter PUCK, and BOTTOM with an ass’s head.
Bot. If I were fair, Thisby, I were only thine.
Quin. O monstrous ! O strange we are haunted. Pray,
masters fly, masters! Help!
[Exeunt Quince, Snug, Flute, Snout, and Starveling.
Puck. I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier y
Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; 3
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, 1oo
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. [Exit.
Bot. Why do they run away ? this is a knavery of them
to make me afeard.
Re-enter SNOUT.
Snout. O Bottom, thou art changed what do I see on
thee P / *.
Bot. What do you see : you see an ass-head of your /*
Own, do you ? |Exit Snout.
Re-enter QUINCE.
Quin. Bless thee, Bottom bless thee! thou art trans-
lated. [Exit.
Bot. I see their knavery : this is to make an ass of me;
to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this
place, do what they can : I will walk up and down here, /
and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid. [Sings.
The ousel cock So black of hue, L’ II 4
With orange-tawny bill,
The throstle with his note so true, /
The wren with little quill,— *
Tita. [Awaking.] What angel wakes me from my flowery v/
bed P
Bot. [Sings]
The finch, the sparrow and the lark, V
The plain-Song cuckoo gray, I 2 O
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay;-
28 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. ,
for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who
would give a bird the lie, though he cry ‘cuckoo’ never so?
Tita. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again : V
Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee. I 29
Bot. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for
hat: and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little
company together now-a-days; the more the pity that some
honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can
gleek upon Occasion.
Tita. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.
Bot. Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get
out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.
Tita. Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate : I 4o
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
..I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, *
y And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep:s
And I will purge thy mortal grossness So
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.
Peaseblossom Cobweb : Moth ! and Mustardseed
Enter PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH, and MUSTARDSEED.
Peas. Ready.
Cob. And I.
.' Moth. And I.
Mus. And I.
A/l. Where shall we go
Tita. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; I 5 O
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
sy Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
A CT III. SCENE I. 29
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;,
The honey-bags steal from the humble bees, ^
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs
And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes, / 9 3.
To have my love to bed and to arise; \ / º
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies / \,
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. I6o
3
# f
Peas. Hail, mortal | -
Cob. Hail!
Moth. Hail!
Muj. Hail!
Bot. I cry your worships mercy, heartily: I beseech your
worship's name.
Cob. Cobweb.
Bot. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master
Cobweb : if I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you.
Your name, honest gentleman 2 I 7 o
Peas. Peaseblossom.
Bot. I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your
mother, and to Master Peascod, your father. Good Master
Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more acquaintance too.
Your name, I beseech you, sir?
Mus. Mustardseed.
Bot. Good Master Mustardseed, I know your patience
well: that same cowardly, giant-like ox-beef hath devoured
many a gentleman of your house: I promise you your kin-
dred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire your
more acquaintance, good Master Mustardseed. I8 I
Tifa. Come, wait upon him ; lead him to my bower.
The moon methinks looks with a watery eye; ~
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, a’
Lamenting some enforced chastity.
Tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently. v. [Exeunt.
Ö
3O A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
SCENE II. Another part of the wood.
Enter OBERON.
Obe. I wonder if Titania be awaked;
Then, what it was that next came in her eye,
Which she must dote on in extremity.
Enter PUCK.
Here comes my messenger. How now, mad spirit !
What night-rule now about this haunted grove 2
Puck. My mistress with a monster is in love.
Near to her close and consecrated bower,
While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,
A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls, IC
Were met together to rehearse a play
Intended for great Theseus' nuptial-day.
The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort;
Who Pyramus presented, in their sport §
Forsook his scene and enter'd in a brake: {}
; :
* .
When I did him at this advantage take, ;
An ass’s nole I fixed on his head :
Anon his Thisbe must be answered, #
And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,
As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, 2O
Or russet-patted choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun's report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;
And, at our stamp, here o'er and o'er one falls;
He murder cries and help from Athens calls.
Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus strong,
Made senseless things begin to do them wrong;
For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;
Some sleeves, Some hats, from yielders all things catch. 30
.*
\{\
º
*i
i
}
§
A CT III. SCENE II. 31
I led them on in this distracted fear, :
And left sweet Pyramus translated there: ;
When in that moment, so it came to pass, t
Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.
Obe. This falls out better than I could devise.
But hast thou yet latch'd the Athenian's eyes
With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do 2
Puck. I took him sleeping, that is finish’d too,
And the Athenian woman by his side;
That, when he waked, of force she must be eyed. 4C
Enter HERMIA and DEMETRIUS.
Obe. Stand close : this is the same Athenian. *
Puck. This is the woman, but not this the man."
Dem. O, why rebuke you him that loves you so 2
Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe. -
Her. Now I but chide ; but I should use thee worse,
For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse.
If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep,
Being o'er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep,
And kill me too.
The sun was not so true unto the day 5o
As he to me: would he have stolen away
From sleeping Hermia I’ll believe as soon
This whole earth may be bored and that the moon
May through the centre creep and so displease
Her brother's noontide with the Antipodes.
It cannot be but thou hast murder'd him ;
So should a murderer look, so dead, so grim.
Dem. So should the murder'd look, and so should I,
Pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty:
Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear, 6o
As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.
Her. What’s this to my Lysander where is he
Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?
Dem. I had rather give his carcass to my hounds.
32 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Her. Out, dog out, curſ thou drivest me past the
bounds
Of maiden's patience. Hast thou slain him, then 2
Henceforth be never number'd among men :
O, once tell true, tell true, even for my sake
Durst thou have look’d upon him being awake,
And hast thou killed him sleeping? O brave touch 7o
Could not a worm, an adder, do so much
An adder did it; for with doubler tongue
Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.
Dem. You spend your passion on a misprised mood :
I am not guilty of Lysander's blood;
Nor is he dead, for aught that I can tell.
Her. I pray thee, tell me then that he is well.
Dem. An if I could, what should I get therefore ?
Her. A privilege never to see me more.
And from thy hated presence part I so: 8o
See me no more, whether he be dead or no. |Exit.
Dem. There is no following her in this fierce vein :
Here therefore for a while I will remain.
So Sorrow’s heaviness doth heavier grow
For debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe ;
Which now in some slight measure it will pay,
If for his tender here I make some stay.
[Lies down and sleeps.. .
Obe. What hast thou done? thou hast mistaken quite ;
And laid the love-juice on some true-love's sight: f
Of thy misprision must perforce ensue 9;
Some true love turn’d and not a false turn’d true.
Puck. Then fate o'er-rules, that, one man holding troth,
A million fail, confounding oath on oath.
Obe. About the wood go swifter than the wind,
And Helena of Athens look thou find:
f|%. fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer,
|
With Sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear:
By some illusion see thou bring her here:
I’ll charm his eyes against she do appear.
A CT III. SCENE II. 33
}
Puck. I go, I go; look how I go, V IOO
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow. [Exit.
Obe. Flower of this purple dye,
Hit with Cupid’s archery,
Sink in apple of his eye. |
When his love he doth espy, #
Let her shine as gloriously, y |
As the Venus of the sky. *
When thou wakest, if she be by,
Beg of her for remedy.
Re-enter PUCK.
Puck. Captain of our fairy band, I IO
Helena is here at hand;
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see 2
Lord, what fools these mortals be
Obe. Stand aside : the noise they make
Will cause Demetrius to awake. ,
Puck. Then will two at once woo one; *x
That must needs be sport alone;
And those things do best please me I 2 O
That befal preposterously.
Enter LY SANDER and HELENA.
Lys. Why should you think that I should woo in scorn ?
Scorn and derision never come in tears:
Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows So born,
In their nativity all truth appears.
How can these things in me seem scorn to you,
Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?
Hel. You do advance your cunning more and more.
When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray !
These vows are Hermia's: will you give her o'er I 3 O
Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh :
Your vows to her and me, put in two scales,
Will even weigh, and both as light as tales.
D
34 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Lys. I had no judgement when to her I swore.
Hel. Nor none, in my mind, now you give her o’er.
Lys. Demetrius loves her, and he loves not you.
Dem. [Awaking.] O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect,
divine !
To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne :
Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show
S Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow ! I4O
That pure congealed white, high Taurus' snow,
Fann’d with the eastern wind, turns to a crow
When thou hold'st up thy hand : O, let me kiss
~This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss
Hel. O spite O hell ! I see you all are bent
To set against me for your merriment:
If you were civil and knew courtesy,
You would not do me thus much injury.
Can you not hate me, as I know you do,
But you must join in souls to mock me too : I 5 O
If you were men, as men you are in show,
You would not use a gentle lady so;
To vow, and Swear, and Superpraise my parts,
When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.
You both are rivals, and love Hermia;
And now both rivals, to mock Helena :
A trim exploit, a manly enterprise,
Sº To conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes
With your derision none of noble sort
Would so offend a virgin and extort I 6o
A poor Soul’s patience, all to make you sport.
Lys. You are unkind, Demetrius; be not so;
For you love Hermia; this you know I know :
And here, with all good will, with all my heart,
In Hermia’s love I yield you up my part;
And yours of Helena to me bequeath,
Whom I do love and will do till my death.
Hel. Never did mockers waste more idle breath.
A CT III. SCENE II. 35
Dem. Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none:
If e'er I loved her, all that love is gone. 17 O
My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn’d,
And now to Helen is it home return’d,
There to remain.
Lys. Helen, it is not so.
Dem. Disparage not the faith thou dost not know,
Lest, to thy peril, thou aby it dear.
Look, where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear.
Re-enter HERMIA.
Her. Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,
The ear more quick of apprehension makes ;
Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,
It pays the hearing double recompense. I 8o
Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found ;
Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound.
But why unkindly didst thou leave me so :
Lys. Why should he stay, whom love doth press to go
Her. What love could press Lysander from my side 2
Lys. Lysander's love, that would not let him bide,
Fair Helena, who more engilds the night
Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light.
Why seek'st thou me 2 could not this make thee know,
The hate I bear thee made me leave thee so P I 9 O
Her. You speak not as you think: it cannot be.
Hel. Lo, she is one of this confederacy 1
Now I perceive they have conjoin’d all three
To fashion this false sport, in spite of me.
Injurious Hermia most ungrateful maid! SG
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived
To bait me with this foul derision ?
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time 2 OO
For parting us, O, is all forgot?
All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?
D 2
36 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
\ Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
V21 As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,
| Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
tº Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition ; 2 I C)
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
: So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly :
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.
/
!
Her. I am amazed at your passionate words. 22 O
I scorn you not : it seems that you scorn me.
Hel. Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn,
To follow me and praise my eyes and face 2
And made your other love, Demetrius,
Who even but now did spurn me with his foot,
To call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare,
Precious, celestial Wherefore speaks he this
To her he hates ? and wherefore doth Lysander
Deny your love, so rich within his soul,
And tender me, forsooth, affection, 23 O
But by your setting on, by your consent 2
What though I be not so in grace as you,
So hung upon with love, so fortunate,
But miserable most, to love unloved 2
This you should pity rather than despise.
Her. I understand not what you mean by this.
; Hel. Ay, do, persever, counterfeit sad looks,
y / Make mouths upon me when I turn my back;
Wink each at other; hold the sweet jest up: S

A CT III. SCENE II. 37
*A
This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled. 24 O
If you have any pity, grace, or manners,
You would not make me such an argument.
But fare ye well: ’tis partly my own fault;
Which death or absence soon shall remedy.
Lys. Stay, gentle Helena; hear my excuse:
My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena
Hel. O excellent
Her. Sweet, do not scorn her so.
Dem. If she cannot entreat, I can compel.
Lys. Thou canst compel no more than she entreat :
Thy threats have no more strength than her weak prayers.
Helen, I love thee; by my life I do: 25 I
I swear by that which I will lose for thee,
To prove him false that says I love thee not.
Dem. I say I love thee more than he can do.
Lys. If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too.
Dem. Quick, come !
Her. Lysander, whereto tends all this?
Lys. Away, you Ethiope 1
Dem. No, no; he’ll . . . .
Seem to break loose ; take on as you would follow,
But yet come not: you are a tame man, go!
Lys. Hang off, thou cat, thou burr vile thing, let loose,
Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent 26 I
Her. Why are you grown so rude what change is this?
Sweet love,
Lys. Thy love out, tawny Tartar, out!
Out, loathed medicine ! hated potion, hence
Her. Do you not jest?
Hel. Yes, sooth; and so do you.
Lys. Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee.
Dem. I would I had your bond, for I perceive
A weak bond holds you : I’ll not trust your word.
38 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Lys. What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead 2
Although I hate her, I’ll not harm her so. 27,o
Her. What, can you do me greater harm than hate 2
Hate me! wherefore ? O me ! what news, my love!
Am not I Hermia Ž are not you Lysander?
I am as fair now as I was erewhile.
Since night you loved me; yet since night you left me:
Why, then you left me—O, the gods forbid!—
In earnest, shall I say ?
Lys. Ay, by my life;
And never did desire to see thee more.
Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt;
Be certain, nothing truer; 'tis no jest 28o
That I do hate thee and love Helena.
—S Her. O me ! you juggler you canker-blossom
You thief of love what, have you come by night
And stolen my love’s heart from him
He!. Fine, i' faith !
Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,
No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear
Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?
Fie, fie you counterfeit, you puppet, you!
Her. Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare 29C
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem,
Because I am so dwarfish and so low 2
/ How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.
Hel. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,
Let her not hurt me: I was never curst; 3 oo
I have no gift at all in shrewishness;
I am a right maid for my cowardice:
Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,
A CT III. SCENE II. 39
Because she is something lower than myself,
That I can match her.
Her. Lower hark again.
Hel. Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.
I evermore did love you, Hermia,
Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong'd you;
Save that, in love unto Demetrius,
I told him of your stealth unto this wood. 3 Io
He follow'd you; for love I follow’d him ;
But he hath chid me hence and threaten’d me
To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too :
And now, so you will let me quiet go,
To Athens will I bear my folly back
And follow you no further: let me go:
You see how simple and how fond I am.
Her. Why, get you gone : who is 't that hinders you ?
Hel. A foolish heart, that I leave here behind.
Her. What, with Lysander 2
Hel. With Demetrius. 32O
Lys. Be not afraid ; she shall not harm thee, Helena.
Dem. No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part.
Hel. O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd
She was a vixen when she went to school;
And though she be but little, she is fierce.
Her. ‘Little” again nothing but “low” and ‘little ''
Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?
Let me come to her.
Lys. Get you gone, you dwarf32.* ..
You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made ; \
You bead, you acorn.
Dem. You are too officious 33C
In her behalf that scorns your services.
Let her alone: speak not of Helena;
Take not her part; for, if thou dost intend
4O A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Never so little show of love to her,
Thou shalt aby it.
Lys. Now she holds me not ;
Now follow, if thou darest, to try whose right,
Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.
Dem. Follow ! nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jole.
[Exeunt Lysander and Demetrius.
Her. You, mistress, all this coil is 'long of you:
Nay, go not back.
He!. I will not trust you, I, 34 O
Nor longer stay in your curst company.
Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray,
My legs are longer though, to run away. [Exit.
Her. I am amazed, and know not what to say. [Exit.
Obe. This is thy negligence, still thou mistakest,
Or else committ'st thy knaveries wilfully.
Puck. Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.
Did not you tell me I should know the man
*ABy the Athenian garments he had on ?
And so far blameless proves my enterprise, } 3.5 O
That I have 'nointed an Athenian’s eyes; :
And so far am I glad it so did sort i
As this their jangling I esteem a sport. |
Obe. Thou see'st these lovers seek a place to fight:
Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night; \
, The starry well-in cover thou anon -
With drooping fog as black as Acheron, \
And lead these testy rivals so astray *
As one come not within another's way.
Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue, 300
Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;
And sometime rail thou like Demetrius;
And from each other look thou lead them thus,
Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep :
Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye;
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,
**
*
}
3,
*
i
!
*
t
;
i.
º
ACT III. SCENE II. 4I
To take from thence all error with his might,
And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight. 9/
When they next wake all this derision 37 o
Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision,
And back to Athens shall the lovers wend, ---
With league whose date till death shall never end.
Whiles I in this affair do thee employ, º
I'll to my queen and beg her Indian boy;
And then I will her charmed eye release
From monster's view, and all things shall be peace.
Puck. My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,
For night's Swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, v.
And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger; -º-
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, V
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in crossways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone;
For fear lest day should look their shames upon,
They wilfully themselves exile from light
And must for aye consort with black-brow’d night.
Obe. But we are spirits of another sort:
I with the morning's love have oft made sport,
And, like a forester, the groves may tread, 390
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, Q V
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.
But, notwithstanding, haste; make no delay:
We may effect this business yet ere day. [Exit.
Puck. Up and down, up and down, -
I will lead them up and down :
I am fear'd in field and town :
Goblin, lead them up and down.
Here comes one. 4OO
Re-enter LY SANDER.
38o
Lys. Where art thou, proud Demetrius 2 speak thou
In OW.
Puck. Here, villain; drawn and ready. Where art thou ?
42 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Lys. I will be with thee straight.
Puck. Follow me, then,
To plainer ground. [Exit Lysander, as following the voice.
Re-enter DEMETRIUS.
ADem. Lysander speak again :
Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled 2
Speak . In some bush Where dost thou hide thy head?
Puck. Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars,
Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars,
And wilt not come 2 Come, recreant; come, thou child;
I’ll whip thee with a rod : he is defiled 4 Io
That draws a sword on thee.
JDem. Yea, art thou there 2
Puck. Follow my voice: we'll try no manhood here.
[Exeunt.
Re-enter LYSANDER.
Lys. He goes before me and still dares me on :
When I come where he calls, then he is gone.
The villain is much lighter-heel'd than I: ...
I follow'd fast, but faster he did fly;
That fallen am I in dark uneven way, V
And here will rest me. [Lies down.] Come, thou gentle
day !
For if but once thou show me thy grey light.\-
I’ll find Demetrius and revenge this spite. [Sleeps.
Re-enter PUCK and DEMETRIUS.
Puck. Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why comest thou not? 421
Dem. Abide me, if thou darest; for well I wot
Thou runn'st before me, shifting every place,
And darest not stand, nor look me in the face.
Where art thou now P
Puck. Come hither : I am here.
Dem. Nay, then, thou mock'st me. Thou shalt buy this
dear,
If ever I thy face by daylight see:
Now, go thy way. Faintness constraineth me
A CT III. SCENE II. 43
To measure out my length on this cold bed.
By day’s approach look to be visited. [Lies down and sleeps.
Re-enter HELENA.
Hel. O weary night, O long and tedious night, 43 I
Abate thy hours! Shine comforts from the east,
That I may back to Athens by daylight,
From these that my poor company datest:
And sleep, that sometimes shuts up Sorrow’s eye,
Steal me awhile from mine own company.
|Lies down and sleeps.
Puck. Yet but three ? Come one more;
Two of both kinds makes up four.
Here she comes, curst and sad:
Cupid is a knavish lad, 44C
Thus to make poor females mad.
Re-enter HERMIA.
Her. Never so weary, never so in woe,
Bedabbled with the dew and torn with briers"/
I can no further crawl, no further go;
My legs can keep no pace with my desires.
Here will I rest me till the break of day.
Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray !
- [Lies down and sleeps.
Puck. On the ground
Sleep sound:
I'll apply 450
To your eye,
Gentle lover, remedy.
|Squeezing the juice on Lysander's eyes.
When thou wakest,
Thou takest
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady's eye:
And the country proverb known,
That every man should take his own,
In your waking shall be shown : 460
44 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Jack shall have Jill ;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.
|Exit.
A CT IV.
SCENE I. The same. LysANDER, DEMETRIUS, HELENA,
and HERMIA lying asleep.
Enter TITANIA and Bottomſ; PEASEBLossOM, CoBWEB,
MOTH, MUSTARDSEED, and other Fairies attending; OBERON
behind unseen.
Tita. Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, /
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, Q. A
And Stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, /
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.
Bot. Where's Peaseblossom P
Peas. Ready.
Bot. Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where’s Mounsieur
Cobweb 2
Cob. Ready. 9
Bot. Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get you your
weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee &
on the top of a thistle; and, good mounsieur, bring me the
honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action,
mounsieur; and, good mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag V
break not; I would be loath to have you overflown with a
honey-bag, signior. Where’s Mounsieur Mustardseed?
Mus. Ready.
Bot. Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed. Pray
you, leave your courtesy, good mounsieur.
Mus. What’s your will? 2 O
A CT IV. SCENE I. 45 -
Bot. Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help Cavalery
Cobweb to scratch. I must to the barber's, mounsieur; for b_>
methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I am
such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must
scratch.
Tita. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?
Bot. I have a reasonable good ear in music. Ilet’s have
the tongs and the bones.
Tita. Or say, Sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.
Bot. Truly, a peck of provender: I could munch your
good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle
of hay: good hay, Sweet hay, hath no fellow. . 32
Tita. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek
The squirrel’s hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.
Bot. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas.
But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me; I have
an exposition of sleep come upon me.
Táta. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away. [Exeunt fairies.
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 4O
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee I [They sleep.
Enter PUCK.
Obe. [Advancing.] Welcome, good Robin. See'st thou
this sweet sight?
Her dotage now I do begin to pity:
For, meeting her of late behind the wood,
Seeking sweet favours for this hateful fool,
I did upbraid her and fall out with her;
For she his hairy temples then had rounded b 5o
With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;
And that same dew, which sometime on the buds/
Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls, y”
Stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes
Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.
wº
46 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM.
When I had at my pleasure taunted her
And she in mild terms begg'd my patience,
I then did ask of her her changeling child;
Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent
To bear him to my bower in fairy land. i 6o
And now I have the boy, I will undo
This hateful imperfection of her eyes:
And, gentle Puck, take this transformed Scalp
From off the head of this Athenian Swain;
That, he awaking when the other do,
May all to Athens back again repair
And think no more of this night’s accidents
But as the fierce vexation of a dream.
But first I will release the fairy queen.
Be as thou wast wont to be ; 7o
See as thou wast wont to see :
Dian’s bud o'er Cupid’s flower
Hath such force and blessed power.
Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.
Tita. My Oberon what visions have I seen
Methought I was enamour’d of an ass!
Obe. There lies your love.
Táta. How came these things to pass :
O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now !
Obe. Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.
Titania, music call; and strike more dead 8O
Than common sleep of all these five the sense.
Tita. Music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep! [Music, still.
T
Puck. Now, when thou wakest, with thine own fool's eyes
peep.
Obe. Sound, music Come, my queen, take hands with me,
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.
Now thou and I are new in amity
And will to-morrow midnight solemnly
Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly
§ And bless it to all fair prosperity:
A CT IV. SCENE I. - 47
There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be 9 O
Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.
Puck. Fairy king, attend, and mark:
I do hear the morning lark.
Obe. Then, my queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after night’s shade:
We the globe can compass soon, V
Swifter than the wandering moon.
Tita. Come, my lord, and in our flight
Tell me how it came this night
That I sleeping here was found I OO
With these mortals on the ground. [Exeunt.
|Horns winded within.
Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and train.
The. Go, one of you, find out the forester;
For now our observation is perform'd ;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley; let them go :
Dispatch, I say, and find the forester. [Exit an Attendant.
We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction. I F O
Hip. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bears’
With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear **
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the ºv/
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem’d all one mutual cry: I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
The. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew’d, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew; 9 - I 2 O
Crook-knee’d, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
48 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge when you hear. But, soft what nymphs are these ?
Ege. My lord, this is my daughter here asleep;
And this, Lysander; this Demetrius is;
This Helena, old Nedar’s Helena:
I wonder of their being here together. I 3o
The. No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May, and, hearing our intent,
Came here in grace of our solemnity.
But speak, Egeus; is not this the day
That Hermia should give answer of her choice
Ege. It is, my lord.
The. Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.
[Horn and shouts within. Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and
Hermia, wake and start up.
Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past:
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now
Lys. Pardon, my lord.
The. I pray you all, stand up. I4o
I know you two are rival enemies:
How comes this gentle concord in the world,
That hatred is so far from jealousy,
To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity ?
Lys. My lord, I shall reply amazedly,
Half sleep, half waking : but as yet, I swear,
I cannot truly say how I came here;
But, as I think,+for truly would I speak,
And now I do bethink me, so it is,
I came with Hermia hither: our intent I5o
Was to be gone from Athens, where we might,
Withost the peril of the Athenian law.
Ege. Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough:
I beg the law, the law, upon his head.
They would have stolen away; they would, Demetrius,
Thereby to have defeated you and me,
ACT IV. SCENE I. 49
You of your wife and me of my consent,
Of my consent that she should be your wife.
Dem. My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,
Of this their purpose hither to this wood; I 6o
And I in fury hither follow'd them,
Fair Helena in fancy following me.
But, my good lord, I wot not by what power,<-
But by some power it is, my love to Hermia,
Melted as the snow, seems to me now .
As the remembrance of an idle gawd
Which in my childhood I did dote upon ;
And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
The object and the pleasure of mine eye,
Is only Helena. To her, my lord, 170
Was I betroth’d ere I saw Hermia :
But, like in sickness, did I loathe this food;
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it.
The. Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:
Of this discourse we more will hear anon.
Egeus, I will overbear your will;
For in the temple, by and by, with us
These couples shall eternally be knit: I8o
And, for the morning now is something worn,
Our purposed hunting shall be set aside.
Away with us to Athens; three and three,
We'll hold a feast in great Solemnity.
Come, Hippolyta.
[Exeunt Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus, and train.
Dem. These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. Q •
Her. Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When every thing seems double.
He!. So methinks:
And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, I9 o
Mine own, and not mine own.
E
50 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
Dem. Are you sure
That we are awake It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think
The duke was here, and bid us follow him P
Her. Yea; and my father.
He!. And Hippolyta.
Lys. And he did bid us follow to the temple.
Dem. Why, then, we are awake: let’s follow him;
And by the way let us recount our dreams. [Exeunt.
Bot. [Awaking.] When my cue comes, call me, and I will
answer: my next is, “ Most fair Pyramus.’ Heigh-ho Peter
Quince Flute, the bellows-mender . Snout, the tinker :
Starveling ! God’s my life, stolen hence, and left me asleep!
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the
wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass,
if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—
there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and
methought I had, but man is but a patched fool, if he will
offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath
not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is
not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to
report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write
a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream,
because it hath no bottom ; and I will sing it in the latter
end of the play, before the duke : peradventure, to make
it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death. |Exit.
SCENE II. Athens. QUINCE’s house.
Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING.
Quin. Have you sent to Bottom's house? is he come
home yet?
Star. He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is
transported.
A CT IV. SCENE II. - 5 I
/
Flu. If he come not, then the play is marred: it goes not
forward, doth it?
Quin. It is not possible: you have not a man in all Athens
able to discharge Pyramus but he.
Flu. No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft
man in Athens. I O
Quin. Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very
paramour for a Sweet voice.
Flu. You must say ‘paragon’: a paramour is, God bless
us, a thing of naught.
Fzter SNUG.
Snug. Masters, the duke is coming from the temple, and
there is two or three lords and ladies more married : if our
sport had gone forward, we had all been made men.
Flu. O sweet bully Bottom . Thus hath he lost sixpence
a day during his life; he could not have 'scaped sixpence a
day: an the duke had not given him sixpence a day for
playing Pyramus, I’ll be hanged; he would have deserved it:
Sixpence a day in Pyramus, or nothing.
Enter BOTTOM.
Bot. Where are these lads 2 where are these hearts :
Quin. Bottom O most courageous day ! O most happy
hour ! -
Bot. Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me
not what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian. I will
tell you every thing, right as it fell out.
Quin. Let us hear, sweet Bottom.
Bot. Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that
the duke hath dined. Get your apparel together, good strings
to your beards, new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently
at the palace; every man look o'er his part; for the short
and the long is, our play is preferred. In any case, let Thisby
have clean linen ; and let not him that plays the lion pare
his nails, for they shall hang out for the lion’s claws. And,
most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to
E 2
52 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
utter sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear them
Say, it is a Sweet comedy. No more words: away I go,
away ! g [Exeunt.
A C T V.
SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUs.
Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and
Attendants.
Hip. 'Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.
The. More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such Seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
N. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman : the lover, all as frantic, IO
SS Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy; 2 O
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
& How easy is a bush supposed a bear !
Hip. But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
A CT V. SCENE I. - 53
More witnesseth than fancy’s images
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.
The. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.
Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and HELENA.
Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love
Accompany your hearts
Lys. More than to us 3o
Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!
The. Come now; what masques, what dances shall we
have,
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bed-time?
Where is our usual manager of mirth 2
What revels are in hand 2 Is there no play,
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour *
Call Philostrate.
Phil. Here, mighty Theseus.
The. Say, what abridgement have you for this evening 2
What masque what music How shall we beguile 4o
The lazy time, if not with some delight?
Phil. There is a brief how many sports are ripe:
Make choice of which your highness will see first.
w [Giving a paper.
The [Reads] ‘The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.’
We’ll none of that: that have I told my love,
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.
[Reads] ‘The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, 9 /
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.’’
That is an old device; and it was play’d - 5o
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.
[Reads] ‘The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of Learning, late deceased in beggary.”
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not Sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
54 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
[Reads] ‘A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe ; very tragical mirth.”
Merry and tragical tedious and brief
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange Snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord 2 6o
Phil. A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
Which is as brief as I have known a play;
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play
There is not one word apt, one player fitted :
And tragical, my noble lord, it is;
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.
Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,
Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed. 7o
The. What are they that do play it?
Phil. Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never labour’d in their minds till now,
And now have toil'd their unbreathed memories
With this same play, against your nuptial.
The. And we will hear it.
Phil. No, my noble lord;
It is not for you : I have heard it over,
And it is nothing, nothing in the world;
Unless you can find sport in their intents,
Extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain, 8o
To do you service.
The I will hear that play;
For never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.
Go, bring them in : and take your places, ladies.
|Exit Philostrate.
Hip. I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharged
And duty in his service perishing.
The. Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.
Hip. He says they can do nothing in this kind.
A CT V. SCENE I. - *...*
55
The. The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.
Our sport shall be to take what they mistake: 9 O
And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect .
Takes it in might, not merit.
Where I have come, great clerks have purposed
To greet me with premeditated welcomes;
Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,
Make periods in the midst of sentences,
Throttle their practised accent in their fears
And in conclusion dumbly have broke off,
Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,
Out of this silence yet I pick’d a welcome; I OO
And in the modesty of fearful duty
I read as much as from the rattling tongue
Of Saucy and audacious eloquence.
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least Speak most, to my capacity.
Re-enter PHILOSTRATE.
Phil. So please your grace, the Prologue is address'd.
The. Let him approach. [Flourish of trumpets.
Enter QUINCE for the Prologue.
Pro. If we offend, it is with our good will.
That you should think, we come not to offend,
But with good will. To show our simple skill, II.O
That is the true beginning of our end.
Consider then we come but in despite.
We do not come as minding to content you,
Our true intent is. All for your delight
We are not here. That you should here repent you,
The actors are at hand and by their show
You shall know all that you are like to know.
The. This fellow doth not stand upon points. /
Lys. He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows
not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to
speak, but to Speak true. I2 I
56 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Hip. Indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child on
a recorder; a sound, but not in government.
The. His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing im-
paired, but all disordered. Who is next? .
Enter PYRAMUS and THISBE, WALL, MoonSHINE, and LION.
Pro. Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;
But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.
This man is Pyramus, if you would know ;
This beauteous lady Thisby is certain.
This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present I 3o
Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;
And through Wall's chink, poor souls, they are content
To whisper. At the which let no man wonder.
2 This man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn
Presenteth Moonshine; for, if you willºw."
By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn
To meet at Ninus’ tomb, there, there to woo.
This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name,
/ The trusty Thisby, coming first by night,
Z Did scare away, or rather did affright; I4O
And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall,
° Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.
ſ Anon comes Pyramus, Sweet youth and tall,
And finds his trusty Thisby's mantle slain:
Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,
He bravely broach’d his boiling bloody breast;
And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,
His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest,
Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain
At large discourse, while here they do remain. I 5o
[Exeunt Prologue, Thisbe, Lion, and Moonshine.
The. I wonder if the lion be to speak.
Dem. No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many
asses do.
Wall. In this same interlude it doth befall
& That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;

A CT P. SCENE 7. 57
~x.|
* *
And such a wall, as I would have you think,
That had in it a crannied hole or chink,
Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,
Did whisper often very secretly.
This loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show 160
That I am that same wall; the truth is so:
And this the cranny is, right and sinister,
Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.
The. Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?
Dem. It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard dis-
course, my lord.
Enter PYRAMU.S.
The Pyramus draws near the wall: silenceſ
Pyr. O grim-look’d night ! O night with hue so black
O night, which ever art when day is not!
O night, O night ! alack, alack, alack, I 70
I fear my Thisby’s promise is forgot
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,
That stand'st between her father's ground and mine !
Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,
Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne !
[Wall holds up his fingers.
Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this!
But what see I ? No Thisby do I see.
O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss:
Cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me !
The. The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse
again. I 8 I
Pyr. No, in truth, sir, he should not. “Deceiving me ' is
Thisby's cue: she is to enter now, and I am to spy her
through the wall. You shall see, it will fall pat as I told you.
Yonder she comes.
Emier THISBE.
This. O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,
For parting my fair Pyramus and me !
My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones,
Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.
58 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
Pyr. I see a voice: now will I to the chink, I90
To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face.
Thisby
This. My love thou art, my love I think.
Pyr. Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover's grace;
And, like Limander, am I trusty still.
This. And I like Helen, till the fates me kill.
Pyr. Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.
This. As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.
Pyr. O, kiss me through the hole of this vile wall!
This. I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all.
Pyr. Wilt thou at Ninny’s tomb meet me straightway ?
This. 'Tide life, ’tide death, I come without delay. 20 I
[Exeunt Pyramus and Thisbe.
Wall. Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so :
And, being done, thus Wall away doth go. [Exit.
The. Now is the mural down between the two neighbours.
Dem. No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to
hear without warning.
Hip. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.
The. The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst
are no worse, if imagination amend them.
Hip. It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.
The. If we imagine no worse of them than they of them-
selves, they may pass for excellent men. Here come two
noble beasts, in a man and a lion. 2 I 3
Enter LION and MOONSHINE.
Lion. You, ladies, you, whose géntle hearts do fear
Nºrm. smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
May now perchance both quake and tremble here,
When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am
A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam ;
For, if I should as lion come in strife 22 O
Into this place, ’twere pity on my life.
A CT .V. SCENE I. 59
The. A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.
Dem. The very best at a beast, my lord, that e'er I saw.
Lys. This lion is a very fox for his valour.
The True; and a goose for his discretion.
Dem. Not so, my lord; for his valour cannot carry his
discretion ; and the fox carries the goose.
The. His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour;
for the goose carries not the fox. It is well : leave it to
his discretion, and let us listen to the moon. 23O
Moon. This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;--
Dem. He should have worn the horns on his head.
The. He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible within
the circumference.
Moon. This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;
Myself the man i' the moon do seem to be.
The. This is the greatest error of all the rest: the man
should be put into the lanthorn. How is it else the man i'
the moon?
Dem. He dares not come there for the candle; for, you
See, it is already in snuff. 24 I
Hip. I am aweary of this moon: would he would change
The. It appears, by his small light of discretion, that he is
in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all reason, we must stay
the time.
Lys. Proceed, Moon. *
Moon. All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the lant-
horn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn-
bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog. 249
Dem. Why, all these should be in the lanthorn; for all
these are in the moon. But, silence here comes Thisbe.
Enter THISBE.
This. This is old Ninny’s tomb. Where is my love?
Lion. [Roaring] Oh–— [Thisbe runs off.
Dem. Well roared, Lion.
6O A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
The. Well run, Thisbe.
Hip. Well shone, Moon. Truly the moon shines with
a good grace. [The Lion shakes Thisbe's mantle, and exit.
The. Well moused, Lion.
Lys. And so the lion vanished.
Dem. And then came Pyramus. 26o
Enter PYRAMU.S.
Pyr. Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;
I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;
*** by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams,
I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.
But stay, O spite
But mark, poor knight,
What dreadful dole is here !
Eyes, do you see ?
How can it be 2
O dainty duck! O dear! 27,o
Thy mantle good,
What, stain’d with blood |
Approach, ye Furies fell !
O Fates, come, come,
Cut thread and thrum ;
Quail, crush, conclude, and quell !
The. This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would
go near to make a man look Sad.
Hip. Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.
Pyr. O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame 280
Since lion vile hath here deflower'd my dear:
Which is—no, no – which was the fairest dame
That lived, that loved, that liked, that look’d with cheer.
Come, tears, confound;
Out, sword, and wound
The pap of Pyramus;
Ay, that left pap,
..Where heart doth hop: [Stabs himself.
A CT. W. SCENE 7. 6 I
Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.
Now am I dead, 29O
Now am I fled;
My soul is in the sky:
Tongue, lose thy light;
Moon, take thy flight: [Exit Moonshine,
Now die, die, die, die, die. [Dies.
Dem. No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.
Lys. Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.
The. With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover, and
prove an ass.
Hip. How chance Moonshine is gone before Thisbe comes
back and finds her lover ? 3o I
The. She will find him by starlight. Here she comes; and
her passion ends the play.
Re-enter THISBE.
Hip. Methinks she should not use a long one for such a
Pyramus: I hope she will be brief.
Dem. A mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which
Thisbe, is the better; he for a man, God warrant us; she for
a woman, God bless us.
Lys. She hath spied him already with those sweet eyes.
Dem. And thus she means, videlicet:— 3 IC
‘This. Asleep, my love?
What, dead, my dove 2
O Pyramus, arise!
Speak, speak. Quite dumb 2
Dead, dead 2 A tomb
Must cover thy Sweet eyes.
These lily lips,
This cherry nose,
These yellow cowslip cheeks,
Are gone, are gone: 32O
Lovers, make moan:
His eyes were green as leeks.<
O Sisters Three,
Come, come to me,
62 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM.
With hands as pale as milk;
Lay them in gore,
Since you have shore
With shears his thread of silk.
Tongue, not a word :
Come, trusty sword: 33O
Come, blade, my breast imbrue : [Stabs herself.
And, farewell, friends;
Thus Thisby ends:
Adieu, adieu, adieu. [Dies.
The. Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead.
Dem. Ay, and Wall too.
Bot. [Starting up.] No, I assure you; the wall is down that
parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the epilogue,
or to hear a Bergomask dance between two of our company
p".
•;
:
f
The. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no
excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all dead,
there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had
played Pyramus and hanged himself in Thisbe's garter, it
would have been a fine tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very
notably discharged. But, come, your Bergomask: let your
epilogue alone. |A dance.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:
Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.
I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn
As much as we this night have overwatch’d. 350
This palpable gross play hath well beguiled
The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.
A fortnight hold we this solemnity,
In nightly revels and new jollity. [Exeunt.
Enter PUCK.
\| Puck. Now the hungry lion roars,
/ And the wolf behowls the moon;
| Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task fordone.
Now the wasted brands do glow,
Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, 360

A CT V. SCENE I. 63
Obe.
Tita.
Obe.
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud.
Now it is the time of night
That the graves all gaping wide, ,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide: Af
And we fairies, that do run ...”
By the triple Hecate's team, ,”
From the presence of the sun, C) .*
Following darkness like a dream, / 37 o
Now are frolic: not a mouse A
Shall disturb this hallow’d house : /
I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.
Enter OBERON and TITANIA with their train.
Through the house give glimmering light,
By the dead and drowsy fire:
Every elf and fairy sprite
Hop as light as bird from brier;
And this ditty, after me,
Sing, and dance it trippingly. 38o
First, rehearse your song by rote,
To each word a warbling note:
Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
Will we sing, and bless this place. [Song and dance.

Now, until the break of day,
Through this house each fairy stray.
To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessed be;
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate. 390
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be;
And the blots of Nature’s hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious such as are
64
A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
Puck.
Despised in nativity,
Shall upon their children be.
With this field-dew consecrate,
Every fairy take his gait; 4oo
And each several chamber bless,
Through this palace, with sweet peace;
And the owner of it blest
Ever shall in safety rest.
Trip away; make no stay;
Meet me all by break of day.
[Exeunt Oberon, Titania and train.
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear. 4 IO
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call:
So, good night unto you all. - 42O
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin Shall restore amends, [Exit.
N O T E S.
A CT I.
Scene I.
I. The names of Theseus and Hippolyta queen of the Amazons may
have been borrowed by Shakespeare from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, although
there is nothing else in the play for which he can have been indebted
to the same source. But he was no doubt acquainted with the story of
Theseus in North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, and hence also he may
have taken the Greek names which he uses, Egeus, Lysander, Demetrius,
and Philostrate, which all occur in that work. Philostrate however is also the
name assumed by Arcite in the Knight's Tale, 1. I428.
4. She lingers my desires, protracts, delays the accomplishment of my
desires. For ‘linger’ in this transitive sense see Richard II, ii. 2.72:
‘Who gently would dissolve the bands of life,
Which false hope lingers in extremity.’
And Othello, iv. 2. 231 : “Unless his abode be lingered here by some accident.”
5. a step-dame, or a dowager, who has a life interest in the property which
falls to the heir at her death. Whalley quotes Horace [Epist. i. 1. 21, 22]:
‘ut piger annus
Pupillis quos dura premit custodia matrum.”
6. withering out, causing the revenue to dwindle as she herself withers
away. For the phrase Steevens quotes from Chapman's Homer, Iliad iv. [528]:
‘And there the goodly plant lies withering out his grace.”
Io. New-bent. Rowe's reading; the quartos and folios have “Now bent.’
II. solemnities, applied to the festivities on the solemnization of
marriage, as in King John, ii. I. 555, of the marriage of Blanch and the
Dauphin : -
“Call the Lady Constance:
Some speedy messenger bid her repair
To our solemnity.”
13. pert, lively; used in a good sense, and not as now as equivalent to
something a little less than impudent, saucy. Compare Love's Labour's
Lost, v. 2. 272 :
‘This pert Biron was out of countenance quite.’
F
66 NOTES. [ACT I.
Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) has, ‘Godinet: m. ette: f. Prettie, dapper, feat, peart,
indifferently handsome. Godinette ; f. A prettie peart lasse; a louing, or
louelie girle.” So Milton, Comus, II 8:
“And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.”
It is probably connected with the Fr. appert (whence malapert), for which
Cotgrave gives the equivalents ‘Expert, readie, dexter, prompt, actiue,
nimble; feat, handsome, in that he does.” Mr. Wedgwood however connects
it with “perk,” “to perk up the head, to prick up the head, or appear lively.’
In this sense ‘pert’ is used as a verb in Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight
of the Burning Pestle, i. 1 : “Sirrah, didst thou ever see a prettier child?
how it behaves itself, I warrant yel and speaks and looks, and perts up the
head.’
15. companion, fellow. These two words have completely exchanged
their meanings in later usage. ‘Companion’ is not now used contempt-
uously as it once was, and as ‘fellow' frequently is. Compare 2 Henry IV,
ii. 4. Ig2 : ‘I scorn you, scurvy companion.’
Ib. pomp. See below, note on 1. Ig.
19. With pomp, with triumph. A triumph was a public exhibition or
show, such as was originally used to celebrate a victory. The title of
Bacon’s 37th Essay is ‘Of Masques and Triumphs,” and the two words
appear to have been synonymous, for the Essay treats of masques alone. In
the same way Milton uses the word. See L’Allegro, I 20 :
‘Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold.”
And Samson Agonistes, I 31.2 :
‘This day to Dagon is a solemn feast,
With sacrifices, triumph, pomp, and games.”
In his note on the latter passage Warton suggests that Milton “applied pomp
in the appropriated sense which it bore to the Grecian festivals, where the
tropiſm, a principal part of the ceremony, was the spectacular procession.’
Shakespeare also, in King John, iii. I. 3O4, has the word with a trace of its
original meaning:
“Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums,
Clamours of hell, be measures to our pomp?’
20. duke, a title which Shakespeare might have found attached to Theseus
in Chaucer. See the Knight's Tale (Cant. Tales, l. 860):
“Whilom as olde stories tellen us,
There was a duk that highte Theseus.”
21. Egeus. Shakespeare for his own purposes makes three syllables of
this name.
Ib. what’s the news with thee ? What has happened to thee? Compare
iii. 2, 272.
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 67
27. This man hath bewitch'd. The later folios omit ‘man.’ Theobald
reads “witch'd.’
Ib. bosom, used like “heart” for the seat of the affections and desires.
See Lear, v. 3. 49, where ‘common bosom’ means the affections of the
common people :
“To pluck the common bosom on his side.”
32. Stolen the impression of her fantasy, secretly stamped his image on
her imagination.
33. gawds, trifling ornaments, toys. See iv. I. 166; and Troilus and
Cressida, iii. 3. I 76:
‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds.’
Both ‘gawd’ and ‘jewel’ are derived ultimately from the Latin gaudium ;
the latter coming to us immediately from the Old French joel, which is
itself gaudiale.
Ib. conceits, fanciful devices. Cotgrave has ‘Gentilesses. Prettie con-
ceits, deuises, knacks, feats, trickes.’
34. Knacks, knick-knacks, trinkets. Compare Winter's Tale, iv. 4. 360 :
- ‘Sooth, when I was young
And handed love as you do, I was wont
To load my she with knacks.’ -
35. prevailment, influence.
Ib. unharden'd, tender, and capable of receiving impressions; inex-
perienced.
38. harshness, unkindness, want of tenderness. Compare Lear, ii. 4. I 75:
“Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give
Thee o'er to harshness.’ -
41. Solon's laws gave a father the power of life and death over his child.
See Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhon. Hypot. iii. 24. But we need not suppose
that Shakespeare knew of this.
45. Immediately provided &c., as Steevens has remarked, Smacks of an
attorney’s office.
50. and within his power it is &c. For this ellipsis see Abbott $ 403.
51. To leave the figure &c., to let the figure remain, or to obliterate it.
54. in this kind, in this respect. Compare As You Like It, ii. I. 27:
“And in that kind swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.’
Ib. wanting your father's voice, as he lacks your father's authority or
suffrage in your favour. Compare All's Well, ii. 3. 60:
‘This youthful parcel
Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,
O'er whom both sovereign power and father's voice
I have to use.’
F 2
68 NOTES. [ACT 1.
6o, Nor how it may concern my modesty, nor how much it may affect my
modesty.
61. to plead my thoughts, to utter my thoughts by way of plea or
argument. “Plead ' is in many cases little more than ‘speak.’
65. to die the death, to die; generally but not uniformly applied to death
inflicted by law: for instance, it is apparently an intensive phrase in Sackville's
Induction, 1.55:
“It taught mee well all earthly things be borne
To dye the death.’
Shakespeare however uses the expression always of a judicial punishment.
Compare Antony and Cleopatra, iv. I4. 26:
“She hath betray’d me, and shall die the death.’
Even when Cloten says (Cymbeline, iv. 2. 96) to Guiderius “Die the death,’
he looks upon himself as the executioner of a judicial sentence in killing
an outlaw. See Matthew xv. 4.
68. Know of your youth, enquire of your youth, ascertain from your
youth. So King Lear, v. I. I :
‘Know of the duke if his last purpose hold.”
Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 278: “Do me this courteous office, as to know of
the knight what my offence to him is.’
Ib. blood, passion as opposed to reason. See below, l. 74, and Hamlet, iii.
2. 7A .
74 ‘Whose blood and judgement are so well commingled.’
69. Whether, a monosyllable ; as frequently in Shakespeare. See iii. I.
I39; iii. 2.81. It is sometimes written ‘where’; as in The Tempest, v. 2.
III, the first folio has “Where thou bee'st he or no.’
70, the livery of a nun. For the word “nun’ applied to a woman in the time
of Theseus see North's Plutarch (1631), p. 2: “But AEgeus desiring (as they
say) to know how he might haue children, went into the city of Delphes, to
the Oracle of Apollo : where, by a Nunne of the temple, this notable prophecie
was giuen him for an answer.’ “Livery,’ which now denotes the dress
of servants, formerly signified any distinctive dress, as in the present passage.
Comparo Pariclof, ii. 5 in .
‘One twelve moons more she'll wear Diana's livery.”
Again in the same play, iii. 4. Io:
“A vestal livery will I take me to.”
7I. For aye, for ever. A. S. d, or aa, ever, always.
Ib. mew'd, penned up, cooped up. Compare Richard III, i. I. I 32 :
“More pity that the eagle should be mew’d,
While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.’
From the French mue, which Cotgrave defines, ‘A Mue, or Coope wherein
foule is fattened.’
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 69
75. undergo, endure. So in The Tempest, iii. I. 3 :
* Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone.’
Ib, maiden pilgrimage, a course of life passed in virginity. This sense of
“pilgrimage’ is in accordance with the usage of scripture. Compare Genesis
xlvii. 9; ‘The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and
thirty years.’ And see As You Like It, iii. 2. 138:
“Some, how brief the life of man
Runs his erring pilgrimage.’
76. earthlier happy, more earthly happy, happier in an earthly sense.
Pope read “earlier happy”; Capell, ‘earthly happier’; and Steevens proposed
‘earthly happy.”
Ib. the rose distill’d. Malone refers to other instances in which Shake-
speare has used the same figure. See Sonnet v. I 3, 14:
“But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show ; their substance still lives sweet.’
The next sonnet begins, following up the same idea,
“Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd :
Make sweet some vial, &c.’
8o. my virgin patent, my privilege of virginity and the liberty that belongs
to it. Compare Othello, iv. I. 209: ‘If you are so fond over her iniquity,
give her patent to offend.” The word is derived from the literae patentes,
or letters patent, which conveyed the privilege.
81. lordship, power, authority; especially used of the authority of a
husband, as in All's Well, v. 3. 156:
‘I wonder, sir, Sith wives are monsters to you,
And that you fly them as you swear them lordship,
Yet you desire to marry.'
Ib. whose unwished yoke. So the quartos and first folio. The second
folio, to mend the grammar, read “to whose unwish’d yoke.” But the
omission of the preposition in such cases is of common occurrence. Compare
1 Henry VI, iii. 2. 25:
“No way to that, for weakness, which she enter'd’;
that is, by which she entered. See also Much Ado about Nothing, v. 2.47:
‘Let me go with that I came [for].” In his note on Cymbeline, v. 5. 465,
Malone quotes Winter's Tale, ii. 1. 94:
* Even as bad as those
That vulgars give bold'st titles [to].”
Again, in the same play, ii. I. I31 :
‘That the queen is spotless
I’ the eyes of heaven and to you ; I mean,
In this which you accuse her [of].'
7o NOTES. [ACT 1.
89. to protest to profess, promise solemnly to observe. Compare Two
Gentlemen of Verona, iv. 2. 7:
“When I protest true loyalty to her.’
90. austerity, severe self-mortification; used technically of the religious
discipline of a nun.
92. crazed title, a title with a flaw in it. Compare Lyly's Euphues (ed.
Arber), p. 58: ‘Yes, yes, Lucilla, well doth he knowe that the glasse once
crased, will with the least clappe be cracked.”
98. estate, convey as an estate. In other passages it is used with the
preposition “on” or “upon.’ See The Tempest, iv. I. 85 :
‘And some donation freely to estate
On the blest lovers.”
And As You Like It, v. 2. 13: “All the revenue that was old Sir
Rowland's will I estate upon you.’
99. derived, descended. So in Two Gentlemen of Verona, v. 4. I46:
‘Thou art a gentleman and well derived.”
Ioo. As well possessed, with as good possessions or property.
102. If not with vantage, if I have not even an advantage over him in
this respect.
106. to his head, before his face, openly and unreservedly. Compare
Measure for Measure, iv. 3. I47:
“He shall bring you
Before the duke, and to the head of Angelo
Accuse him home and home.’
And Much Ado about Nothing, v. I. 62 :
* Know, Claudio, to thy head,
Thou hast so wrong'd mine innocent child and me.’
11o. spotted, polluted, guilty; the opposite of ‘spotless.’ Compare
Richard II, iii. 2. I 34:
* Terrible hell make war
Upon their spotted souls for this offence!”
And Titus Andronicus, ii. 3. 74:
“Spotted, detested, and abominable.”
II 2. spoke. See 1. I?5.
II 3. self-affairs, my own business. Shakespeare has many similar
compounds: as ‘self-abuse,’ for self-deception, Macbeth, iii. 4. I42; ‘self-
bounty,’ natural goodness or benevolence, Othello, iii. 3. 200 ; ‘self-breath,’
one's own breath or words, Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3. 182; ‘self-danger,'
personal risk, Cymbeline, iii. 4. I49; ‘self-wrong,’ injury done to oneself,
Comedy of Errors, iii. 2. I68; &c.
I 20. extenuate, mitigate, weaken the force of.
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 71
123. go along, go with us. So in 3 Henry VI, iv. 5. 25:
‘Huntsman, what say'st thou? wilt thou go along?”
I 25. nuptial. The second and later folios read nuptialls,’ in accordance
with modern usage. Shakespeare, except in two instances, employs the
singular form. See note on The Tempest, v. I. 308. In the same way
we have “funeral ’ and ‘funerals.’ Compare Julius Caesar, v. 3. IoS :
“His funerals shall not be in our camp';
although in this case it is the singular form that has survived.
I 26. nearly that concerns, that nearly concerns.
I27. Exeunt &c. In the quartos and folios the stage direction is
“Exeunt. Manet Lysander and Hermia.’ It was a strange oversight on the
part of Egeus to leave his daughter with Lysander.
I29. How chance &c., how chances it. Compare King Lear, ii. 4.64:
‘How chance the king comes with so small a train P’
Abbott, $ 37.
130. Belike, probably, by likelihood. See Julius Caesar, iii. 2. 2.75:
* Belike they had some notice of the people.’
The word is unusual if not singular in form. It is recorded in Nodal and
Milner's Lancashire Glossary as still in use.
I31. Beteem them, allow them. Compare Hamlet, i. 2. 141 :
“So loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.’
In the present passage, as suggested in the notes to Hamlet, there is
probably a reference to the other meaning of the word ‘to pour.” In this
sense “teem ' is still used in the North and East of England.
134 &c. Bishop Newton in his edition of Milton called attention to the
resemblance between Lysander's complaint and that of Adam in Paradise
Lost, x. 898–906:
* For either
He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gain’d
By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld
By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already link’d and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame.’
136. cross, vexation, trial; from the figurative usage of the word in
Scripture. See Matthew x. 38; As You Like It, v. 4. I 37; and below, l. 153.
Ib. low. Theobald's correction. The quartos and folios read “loue.’
In support of the correction Malone refers to a very parallel passage in
Venus and Adonis, II 36-I 140 :
72 - NOTES. - [ACT I.
*Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend :
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end,
Ne'er settled equally, but high or low,
That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.”
137. misgraffed, ill grafted. Shakespeare uses both forms ‘graff,” Fr.
greffer, and ‘graft.’ See As You Like It, iii. 2. I24 (106 Clar. Press ed.),
and Richard II, iii. 4. IOI.
139. friends. The reading of the quartos. The folios have ‘merit.”
I4I. sympathy, congruity, equality. Compare Richard II, iv. I. 33 :
“If that thy valour stand on sympathy’;
that is, as explained in the note to the Clarendon Press edition, “If your
valour is so punctilious as to insist upon an antagonist of similar rank.’
See also Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. I. 7–10, and Othello, ii. I. 232:
‘Sympathy in years, manners and beauties.’
143. momentany. The reading of the quartos, altered in the folios to
‘momentary.’ The former seems to have been the earlier form of the
word, from Fr. momentaine, Lat. momentaneus, although both forms were
in use in Shakespeare's time. See Lucrece, 690. Tyndale's translation of
2 Cor. iv. I 7, is, ‘For oure excedinge tribulacion which is momentany
(Vulg. momentaneum) and light prepareth an excedinge and an eternall
wayght of glorye vnto vs.’
I45. collied, black; literally, begrimed as with soot or coal. In Hereford-
shire ‘colly’ signifies “dirty, smutty.’ See Sir G. C. Lewis's Glossary of
Provincial Words used in Herefordshire. “Collow, or Colly’ is in Wil-
braham's Cheshire Glossary. Palsgrave (Lesclaircissement de la Langue
Francoyse) gives: ‘I colowe, I make blake with a cole. Ie charbonne.’
And Cotgrave has, ‘Charbonner. To paint, marke, write, or smeare, with
a coale; to collowe; to bleach, or make black, with a coale.’
I47. in a spleen, in a swift, sudden fit, as of passion or caprice. The
word is used of swift and violent motion in King John, ii. I. 448 :
“With swifter spleen than powder can enforce,
The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope.”
And again, v. 7. 5o :
“O, I am scalded with my violent motion,
And spleen of speed to see your majesty 1"
148. Halliwell quotes Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2. I 19, I2O :
‘Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be,
Ere one can say “It lightens.”
I51. edict, with the accent on the last syllable. So in Love's Labour's
Lost, i. I. II:
‘Our late edict shall strongly stand in force.”
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 73
It occurs also with the accent on the penultimate, in accordance with
modern usage. See I Henry IV, iv. 3. 79:
“Some certain edicts and some strait decrees.”
I55. fancy's, love's. See iv. I. I62, and compare ‘fancy-sick,” iii. 2, 96;
‘ fancy-free,” ii. I. I64.
I56, persuasion, opinion, conviction. Compare Cymbeline, i. 4. I25 :
‘You are a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion.” It also signifies
a persuasive argument, and perhaps has that sense here.
I59. remote. The reading of the quartos. The folios have “remov’d,
which is used in the same sense in Hamlet, i. 4. 46.
I6o. respects, regards, considers. See ii. I. 224, and compare Coriolanus,
iii. I. 307:
“The service of the foot
Being once gangrened, is not then respected
For what before it was.”
164. forth, out of. So Coriolanus, i. 4. 23:
“They fear us not but issue forth their city.”
And Romeo and Juliet, i. I. I.26;
‘Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the east.”
167. To do observance to a morn of May, to observe the rites of May-
day. See iv. I. I 32, and Chaucer, Knight's Tale, I5oo:
‘And for to doon his observance to May.”
“It was anciently the custom for all ranks of people to go out a Maying
early on the first of May. Bourne tells us that in his time, in the villages in
the North of England, the juvenile part of both sexes were wont to rise a
little after midnight on the morning of that day, and walk to some
neighbouring wood, accompanied with music and the blowing of horns,
where they broke down branches from the trees and adorned them with
nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done, they returned homewards with
their booty about the time of Sunrise, and made their doors and windows
triumph in the flowery spoil.’ (Brand’s Popular Antiquities, i. 212; Bohn's
Ant, Lib.) The early rising is referred to in Henry VIII, v. 4. I4, I5 :
‘’Tis as much impossible . .
To scatter 'em, as 'tis to make 'em sleep
On May-day morning; which will never be.”
As fit, says the clown in All's Well, ii. 2. 25, as “a morris for May-day.”
Traces of this morris-dancing still remain in the villages about Cambridge.
The gathering of the whitethorn is described by Herrick in his poem on
Corinna's Going a Maying (Hesperides, i. 87, ed. 1846), and scarcely an
English poet from Chaucer to Tennyson is without a reference to the
simple customs by which our ancestors celebrated the advent of the flowers.
May-dew was held of virtue as a cosmetic. Mrs. Pepys would go to
74 NOTES. [ACT 1.
Woolwich for air and to gather May-dew while her husband diverted
himself at Vauxhall. For further information see Brand’s Popular Anti-
quities already quoted, and Chambers's Book of Days, i. 570–582.
169. Venus swears by Cupid's bow, Venus and Adonis, 581 :
‘Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart,
The which, by Cupid’s bow she doth protest,
He carries thence incaged in his breast.’
17o. with the golden head. Cupid’s arrows in the old mythology were
tipped either with gold or lead; the former causing, the latter repelling, love.
See Ovid, Metam. i. 468–471 :
“Eque sagittifera promsit duo tela pharetra
Diversorum operum : fugat hoc, facit illud amorem.
Quod facit, auratum est et cuspide fulget acuta ;
Quod fugat, obtusum est et habet sub arundine plumbum.’
Compare Twelfth Night, i. I. 35:
‘How will she love, when the rich golden shaft
Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else
That live in her.’
17 r. Venus’ doves, which drew her chariot. See Venus and Adonis, I 53,
I Igo; Lucrece, 58; Romeo and Juliet, ii. 5. 7.
I73. See Virgil, Aeneid, iv. 584, &c. Steevens pointed out the ana-
chronism of making Dido and Aeneas earlier in point of time than Theseus.
But Shakespeare's Hermia lived in the latter part of the sixteenth century
and was contemporary with Nick Bottom the weaver. ‘ Carthage’ as an
adjective occurs several times in Marlowe's Tragedy of Dido, as for instance
in Act iv. (p. 269, ed. Dyce, 1862):
‘Ye shall no more offend the Carthage queen.’
And again in Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, ii. 2:
‘Now, a tear;
And then thou art a piece expressing fully
The Carthage queen, when from a cold sea-rock,
Full with her sorrow, she tied fast her eyes
To the fair Trojan ships.”
I74. Troyan, the spelling of the quartos and first folio.
I75. broke, broken. Shakespeare uses both forms. See note on
Richard II, iii. I. I.3.
182. your fair, your beauty. Compare As You Like It, iii. 2. 99 (84
Clar. Press ed. and note); and Sonnet xvi. I 1 ;
* Neither in inward worth nor outward fair.’
I83. lode-stars, leading or guiding stars; as the polar star is to sailors.
Compare Lucrece, 179 :
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 75
‘Whereat a waxen torch forthwith he lighteth,
Which must be lode-star to his lustful eye.”
And Chaucer, Knight's Tale, 2059:
“Ther saugh I how woful Calystope,
Whan that Dyane was agreved with here,
Was turned from a womman to a bere,
And after was sche maad the loode sterre.”
So also in Maundevile’s Travels, ed. Halliwell, p. 180 : ‘In that Lond, ne in
many othere besonde that, no man may see the Sterre transmontane, that is
clept the Sterre of the See, that is unmevable, and that is toward the
Northe, that we clepen the Lode Sterre.” In the alliterative poem Morte
Arthur (ed. Brock), l. 751, the word occurs in the form “lade sterne ':
‘Lukkes to be lade-sterne, whene be lyghte faillez.”
It is the ‘cynosure’ of Milton’s L’Allegro, 8o:
‘Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes’;
kvvógovpa being the Greek name for the constellation Ursa Minor, in which
is the pole-star.
186. favour, outward appearance, aspect; with a play upon the other
meaning of the word. Compare As You Like It, iv. 3.87:
“The boy is fair,
Of female favour.”
It is generally applied to the face. See Macbeth, i. 5. 73; Hamlet, v. I.
2I4; and Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 363 :
‘Ant. You do mistake me, sir.
First Off. No, sir, no jot; I know your favour well.'
Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost (v. 2. 33) plays upon the word as Helena
does here:
“An if my face were but as fair as yours
My favour were as great.”
187. Pours would I catch. Hanmer's reading. The quartos and first
folio have ‘Your words I catch'; the later folios ‘Your words Ide catch.”
This Staunton approves, remarking, ‘Helena would catch not only the beauty
of her rival’s aspect, and the melody of her tones, but her language also.”
But Hanmer's correction gives a better sense.
190. bated, excepted. So The Tempest, ii. I. Ioo: ‘Bate, I beseech
you, widow Dido.”
I9 I. translated, transformed. See iii. I. Io'7. Compare Coriolanus, ii.
3. I96: -
“So his gracious nature
Would think upon you for your voices and
Translate his malice towards you into love.’
76 NOTES. [ACT I.
And Sonnet xcvi. Io :
‘How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
If like a lamb he could his looks translate l’
200. no fault. So the first quarto. The second quarto and the folios
read “none,’ -
209. To-morrow night. There is a discrepancy here in point of time.
At the opening of the play there are four days before the new moon.
2II. liquid pearl. See ii. I. I5.
Ib. bladed, with fresh green shoots. Compare Macbeth, iv. I. 55:
‘Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down.”
212. still, constantly. See iii. I. I 58; The Tempest, i. 2. 229 ; iii. 3.
64; and Two Gentlemen, iv. 3. 31 :
“To keep me from a most unholy match,
Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues.’
215. faint primrose-beds, on which those rest who are faint and weary.
This proleptic use of the adjective is common in Shakespeare. Compare
Troilus and Cressida, i. 3. I.47 :
* With him Patroclus
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
Breaks scurril jests.”
And As You Like It, ii. 7. I 32 :
‘Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger.’
216. Sweet. Theobald's correction. The quartos and folios read “sweld,”
or “swell’d,” which some have defended, although the rhyme is decisive in
favour of Theobald's conjecture. In support of this Heath quotes Psalm Iv.
14, ‘We took sweet counsel together,’ which Shakespeare may have had in
his mind.
219. stranger companies. Another emendation of Theobald's for “strange
companions’ which is the reading of the quartos and folios. He justifies the
use of ‘stranger’ as an adjective by referring to Richard II, i. 3. I43:
“But tread the stranger paths of banishment’;
and of ‘companies’ for companions, associates, from Henry V, i. I. 55;
“His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow.’
222. Keep word. Compare “Keep promise,’ 1. 179.
223. morrow, to-morrow. As in Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2. 186:
* Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
226. other some, others. Compare The Two Noble Kinsmen, iv. 3 :
“Her distraction is more at some time of the moon than at other some, is it
not ?’ And Measure for Measure, iii. 2. 94: “Some say he is with the
Emperor of Russia ; other some, he is in Rome.” Also 2 Esdras xiii. I 3 :
“Some of them were bound, and other some brought of them that were
offered.’ And Acts xvii. 18,
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 77
231. admiring of. In this construction ‘admiring’ is a verbal noun,
originally governed by a preposition “in” or ‘on,’ which has disappeared,
but which exists sometimes in the degraded form ‘a,’ in such words as ‘a
hunting,” “a building.’ See King Lear, ii. I. 4I : ‘mumbling of wicked
charms. Also As You Like It, ii. 4. 44: “searching of thy wound.’
232. holding no quantity, having no proportion to the estimate formed
of them. Compare Hamlet, iii. 2. I 77: -
‘For women's fear and love holds quantity.’
233. transpose, transform,
239. beguiled, deceived. So in Genesis iii. 13: ‘The serpent beguiled
me, and I did eat.”
24o. in game, in sport or jest. Chaucer (C. T. 1. 9468) has ‘Bitwix
ernest and game'; that is, between earnest and jest.
242. eyne, eyes; the Old English plural, which occurs again in ii. 2. 99 ;
iii. 2. 138; v. I. 178. See also Venus and Adonis, 633 :
“Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips and crystal eyne.’
In Shakespeare it is always used on account of the rhyme, except in Lucrece
I 2.29 and Pericles, iii. Gower, 5:
‘The cat with eyne of burning coal.’
It occurs in Chaucer in the forms eien, eyen, or eigen, A. S. edgan.
246. go tell. See ii. I. I.4. So “go sleep,” The Tempest, ii. I. 190;
‘go pray,’ Hamlet, i. 5. I 32. See note on the latter passage for other
examples.
249. it is a dear expense, it will cost me dear, because it will be in return
for my procuring him a sight of my rival.
25I. his sight, the sight of him.
Scene II.
Enter &c. The first folio has “Enter Quince the Carpenter, Snug the
Ioyner, Bottome the Weauer, Flute the bellowes-mender, Snout the Tinker,
and Starueling the Taylor.’ Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps thinks that Bottom
being a weaver takes his name from a ‘bottom ' of thread.
2. Pou were best, it were best for you. See note on The Tempest, i. 2.
367 : ‘Be quick, thou 'rt best.’
Ib. generally in Bottom's language means particularly, severally.
3. the scrip, or written document. Chaucer (C. T. 95.71, ed. Tyrwhitt)
uses ‘script' in the same sense :
“If I you told of every script and bond.”
The MSS. of the Six-text edition read ‘scrit’ or “scrite.” Compare Hol-
land’s Pliny, vii. 25: “But herein appeared his true hautinesse of mind
indeed, and that unmatchable spirit of his, That when upon the battell
at Pharsalia, as wel the cofers and caskets with letters & other writings of
78 NOTES. [ACT 1.
Pompey, as also those of Scipioes before Thapsus, came into his hands, he
was most true unto them, & burnt al, without reading one script or scroll.'
In Chaucer's Troylus and Creseyde (ii. II 30), to which Tyrwhitt in his
Glossary refers s. v. Script, we find in the edition of 1542 :
‘Scripe nor byl
For loue of god, that toucheth such matere
Ne bring me none.’
All the forms are from Lat. Scriptum, through the Fr. escript, or escrit.
6, 7, on his wedding-day at night. Compare Romeo and Juliet, i. 3. 21:
‘On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.’
9, Io. grow to a point, so the quartos. The first three folios have “grow
on to a point,’ and the fourth ‘grow on to appoint.’ It is not always quite
safe to interpret Bottom, but he seems to mean ‘ come to the point.”
II. Steevens quotes the title page of Cambyses, “A lamentable Tragedie,
mixed full of pleasant Mirth, containing, The Life of Cambises King of
Percia, &c. By Thomas Preston.” We might also refer to ‘A new
Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia . . . By R. B. . . . I 575.”
I2. Warton, in his History of English Poetry (ed. I824), iv. 243, men-
tions that “in 1562 was licenced “the boke of Perymus and Thesbye,”
copied perhaps in the Midsummer Night's Dream.’ He adds, “I suppose a
translation from Ovid's fable of Pyramus and Thisbe.”
2O. gallant. The reading of the quartos. The folios have “gallantly.”
2.I. ask, require. Compare Richard II, ii. I. I 59:
‘And for these great affairs do ask some charge.”
And Bacon, Advancement of Learning, ii. I4 (p. 85 Clar. Press ed.): “For
as it asketh some knowledge to demand a question not impertinent, so it
requireth some sense to make a wish not absurd.”
23. condole. Bottom of course blunders, but it is impossible to say what
word he intended to employ. Shakespeare only uses “condole’ once
besides, and he then puts it into the mouth of Ancient Pistol, who in such
matters is as little of an authority as Bottom. See Henry V, ii. I. I.33:
‘Let us condole the knight'; that is, mourn for him. In Hamlet, i. 2. 93,
‘condolement' signifies the expression of grief:
“To persever
In obstinate condolement.”
23, 24. To the rest; yet my &c., Theobald's reading. The early copies
print “To the rest yet, my &c., which may be the right punctuation: “yet'
in this unemphatic position being used in the sense of ‘however.’ Compare
Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Life, p. 57: ‘Before I departed yet I left her with
child of a son.’ And Measure for Measure, iii. 2. 187: ‘The duke yet
would have dark deeds darkly answered.”
24. Ercles. The part of Hercules in the old play to which reference is
made was like that of Herod in the mysteries, one in which the actor could
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’s DREAM. 79
indulge to the utmost his passion for ranting. Compare Sidney's Arcadia,
B. i. p. 50 (ed. I 598): “With the voyce of one that playeth Hercules in a
play.” Again in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (p. 23, New Shakspere
Soc. ed.), quoted by Malone: “ The twelue labors of Hercules haue I
terribly thundred on the stage.’ The verses recited by Bottom may be a
quotation from such a play.
25. to tear a cat in, 1o rant violently. Steevens refers to Middleton's
Roaring Girl, v. I (Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 535): “I am called by those who
have seen my valour Tear-cat. Again, he quotes from the anonymous play
Histriomastix (reprinted in Simpson's School of Shakspeare, ii. 73): “Sirrah,
is this you would rend and tear the cat upon a stage?’
Ib. to make all split, used to denote violent action or uproar; originally a
sailor's phrase. Farmer quotes Beaumont and Fletcher, Scornful Lady,
[ii. 3]: -
‘Two roaring boys of Rome that made all split.’
So also Middleton, The Roaring Girl, iv. 2 (Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 518):
“Well, since you’ll needs be clapped under hatches, if I sail not with you till
all split, hang me up at the mainyard and duck me.’ And Beaumont and
Fletcher, The Wild-Goose Chase, v. 6:
“I love a sea-voyage, and a blustering tempest;
And let all split.’
Again Chapman, The Widdowes Tears (Works, iii. 20): ‘Her wit I must
imploy vpon this businesse to prepare my next encounter, but in such a
fashion as shall make all split.’ Compare with all this, which it illustrates,
Hamlet’s advice to the players, iii. 2. 9 &c.: ‘O, it offends me to the soul to
hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,
to split the ears of the groundlings.”
39. a wandering knight, or knight errant.
4 L. let not me play a woman. Women's parts were commonly played by
men or boys till after the Restoration. See note on As You Like It,
Epilogue, 14, I5.
43. all one, all the same, no matter. So As You Like It, iii. 5. I 33:
“But that’s all one ; omittance is no quittance.’
44. you may speak as small, in as thin and clear a voice. Compare
Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 1. 49: ‘She has brown hair, and speaks small
like a woman.’ And Chaucer, C. T. 3360 :
‘He syngeth in his voys gentil and smal.’
45. An, if. Printed “And ’ in the old copies.
46. Thisme, Thisme. These words are printed in italic in the old copies,
as if they represented a proper name, and so “Thisne’ has been regarded as
a blunder of Bottom's for Thisbe. But as he has the name right in the
very next line it seems more probable that ‘Thisne’ signifies ‘in this way ’;
and he then gives a specimen of how he would aggravate his voice. ‘Thissen’
8o NOTES. [ACT I. Sc. 2.
is given in Wright's Provincial Dictionary as equivalent to “in this manner’;
and ‘thissens’ is so used in Norfolk.
54. Theobald has pointed out that the father and mother of Thisbe and
the father of Pyramus do not appear in the interlude.
74, aggravate. Bottom of course means the very opposite, like Mrs.
Quickly in 2 Henry IV, ii. 4. 175: ‘I beseek you now, aggravate your
choler.”
75. roar you. For this superfluous use of the pronoun see Abbott, $ 22 I.
Ib. an 'twere, as if it were. Compare Troilus and Cressida, i. 2. 189, “He
will weep you, an 'twere a man born in April.’
Ib. sucking dove. Oddly enough Bottom's blunder of ‘sucking dove' for
‘sucking lamb’ has crept into Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Concordance to
Shakespeare, where 2 Henry VI, iii. I. 71 is quoted “As is the sucking dove
or &c.”
78. as one shall see in a summer's day. So Henry V, iii. 6.67 : “I’ll
assure you, a’ uttered as brave words at the bridge as you shall see in a
summer's day.’ And again in the same play iv. 8. 23.
84. discharge, perform. See iv. 2.8; Coriolanus, iii. 2. Io9 :
‘You have put me now to such a part which never
I shall discharge to the life.’
It appears to have been a technical word belonging to the stage, and
occurs in this connexion in The Tempest, ii. 1. 254:
“To perform an act
Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.”
85. orange-tawny, reddish yellow. See iii. I. I.15. Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.)
gives, ‘Orangé: m. Ée : f. Orange-tawnie, orange-coloured.’
Ib. purple-in-grain, the dye obtained from the kermes (whence Fr. cramoisi,
and English crimson), an insect which attached itself to the leaves of the
Kermes oak (Quercus coccifera), a tree found in the south of Europe,
especially in Spain, and also in India and Persia. Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) has,
‘Migraine: f. . . . Scarlet, or Purple in graine.” An interesting discussion
of the etymology of ‘grain' in the sense of dye will be found in Marsh's
Lectures on the English Language, 66–75.
86. French-crown-colour, the colour of the gold coin of that name.
There are many equivocal references in Shakespeare to the ‘French crown,'
which was a name for baldness produced by a certain disease.
85. I am to entreat you. See iv. 2. 29.
90. to con them, to study them, learn them by heart. See v. I. 80, and As
You Like It, iii. 2. 289. ‘Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths'
wives, and conned them out of rings?’
9I. a mile. In i. I. 165 it is a league.
94, properties, a theatrical term for all the adjuncts of a play except the
Act II. sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM. 8I
scenery and the dresses of the actors. Compare Merry Wives of Windsor,
iv. 4. 78:
“Go get us properties
And tricking for our fairies.’
97. obscenely. Misused by Bottom as by Costard in Love's Labour’s
Lost, iv. I. I.45:
“When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit.’
99. hold or cut bowstrings. Capell seems to have hit upon the true
explanation of this expression. “When a party was made at butts,
assurance of Imeeting was given in the words of that phrase: the sense of the
person using them being, that he would “hold,” or keep promise, or they
might “cut his bowstrings,” demolish him for an archer.' Keep the
appointment, or give up shooting. Malone explains it, ‘To meet, whether
bowstrings hold or are cut, is to meet in all events.’ ‘To break
one's bowstrings’ was a phrase denoting the giving up of anything that was
in hand. Steevens quotes from The Ball, a play by Chapman and Shirley :
‘. . . Have you devices to jeer the rest?
Luc. All the regiment of 'em, or I'll break my bowstrings.”
In this case the bowstrings are the strings of the bow of a musical instru-
ment. For an illustration of Capell's note, see Much Ado about Nothing,
iii. 2. II: “He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid’s bowstring,' and so disabled
him.
A CT II.
Scene I.
In the early copies Puck is called Robin good-fellow. See Preface.
3. Thorough. The spelling of the first quarto. The second quarto and
the folios have ‘Through.” Drayton imitates this passage in his Nymphidia,
309-3 II :
“Thorough Brake, thorough Brier,
Thorough Mucke, thorough Mier,
Thorough Water, thorough Fier l’
7. moon's, a disyllable, as ‘Earth's ' in The Tempest, iv. I. IIo:
‘Earth's increase, foison plenty.’
Steevens quotes from Spenser, Fairy Queen, iii. I. I 5 :
“And eke through fear as white as whales bone.’
Compare also iv. 1. IoI of the present play, where the true reading is that
of the first quarto:
‘Trip we after night's shade.”
The second quarto and the folios read “the night's,’ in which modern
editors have followed them; but this disturbs the accent of the verse.
G.
82 - NOTES. [ACT II.
Ib. sphere, orbit. See 1. I53, and The Tempest, ii. I. 183: ‘You would
lift the moon out of her sphere.” Also Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (Works
ed. Dyce, 1862), p. 83 :
“Be it to make the moon drop from her sphere.”
9. dew, bedev, water. Compare Venus and Adonis, 66:
“Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers,
So they were dew’d with such distilling showers.”
And Romeo and Juliet, v. 3. I4:
“Which with sweet water nightly I will dew.’
Ib. orbs, the circles in the grass called fairy rings, popularly believed to
be caused by the fairies dancing. See line 86, and compare The Tempest,
V. I. 37:
- ‘You demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make.’
And Merry Wives of Windsor, v. 5. 69, 7o :
“And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring.’
Io. her pensioners, her body-guard. Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth
both had such a band of attendants. Compare Merry Wives of Windsor,
ii. 2. 79; of Mrs. Ford's suitors says Mrs. Quickly, and yet there has been
earls, nay, which is more, pensioners.’ They were young gentlemen of rank
and fortune who were selected for their handsome faces and figures. See
Osborne's Traditional Memoirs of Queene Elizabeth (in Secret History of
the Court of James the First, i. 55). Tyrwhitt quotes from Holles's Life of
the first Earl of Clare: “I have heard the Earl of Clare say, that when he was
pensioner to the Queen, he did not know a worse man of the whole band
than himself: and that all the world knew he had then an inheritance of
£4ooo a year.” From the present passage it may be inferred that their
dress was splendid. When Queen Elizabeth visited Cambridge in 1564 she
was present at a performance of the Aulularia of Plautus in the ante-chapel of
King's College, on which occasion her gentlemen pensioners kept the stage,
holding staff torches in their hands. (Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, ii. 193.)
II. spots. Compare Cymbeline, ii. 2. 38, 39 :
‘A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I’ the bottom of a cowslip.’
12. favours, love-tokens. See iv. I. 47, and Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2.
I QC) .
3 ‘Hold, Rosaline, this favour thou shalt wear,
And then the king will court thee for his dear.”
I4. go seek. See i. I. 246.
15. a pearl in every cowslip’s ear. There are numberless allusions to the
wearing of jewels in the ear both by men and women, in Shakespeare and in
contemporary writers. Compare Romeo and Juliet, i. 5, 48:
SC. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 83
‘It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.”
Marlowe, Tamburlaine, First Part, i. I :
“With costly jewels hanging at their ears.’
In Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, iv. 7, Matthew says: “O yes,
I’ll pawn this jewel in my ear.” Again, Every Man out of his Humour,
Induction:
“Coin new conceits, and hang my richest words
As polish’d jewels in their bounteous ears.’
I6. thou lob. “Lob’ is equivalent to lubber, lout, and like them is used
contemptuously. Other synonyms are given by Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) s. v.
Lourdaut, which he defines by the following equivalents: ‘A sof, dunce,
dullard, grotnoll, iobernoll, blockhead; a lowt, lob, luske, boore, clowne,
churle, clusterfist; a proud, ignorant, and vnmannerlie Swaine.”
I7. Alues, fairies; A. S. aelf. The singular occurs in v. I. 4oo:
“Every elf and fairy sprite.”
See notes on King Lear, ii. 3. Io, and The Tempest, v. I. 33.
2O. fell, fierce; from Old French, fel, Italian fello, with which felon is
connected. Compare Othello, v. 2. 362 :
“More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea l'
Ib. wrath, wroth, angry. So written for the sake of the rhyme. In
Anglo-Saxon wrač is both the substantive ‘wrath,’ and the adjective
‘wroth.’
23. changeling, usually a child ieft by the fairies: here, as a fairy is the
speaker, it denotes the one taken by them. See Winter’s Tale, iii. 3. 122 :
“It was told me I should be rich by the fairies. This is some changeling:
open't.”
(25) to trace, to traverse, wander through. So Much Ado about Nothing,
iii. ſ. 16:
‘As we do trace this alley up and down.”
Spenser uses it as equivalent to ‘walk, travel.’ See Fairy Queen, iv. 8. 34:
‘How all the way the Prince on footpace traced.’
And vi. 3. 29 :
“Not wont on foote with heavy armes to trace.'
Holt White quotes from Milton, Comus, 423 :
“And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen,
May trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths.”
29. Sheen, shining, brightness. As in Hamlet, iii. 2. I67:
‘And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen.’
Johnson takes it as an adjective, and renders it ‘shining, bright, gay’; but
Milton, with the passage in his mind, uses it as a substantive. See Comus,
IOo3:
G 2
84 NOTES. [ACT II.
“But far above, in spangled sheen,
Celestial Cupid her famed son advanced.”
3o. square, quarrel. Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) has, ‘Rioter. To chide,
brabble, scould, brawle; iangle; debate, square, contend, fall out, in words.’
Compare Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 13. 4I :
‘Mine honesty and I begin to square.”
Again, Titus Andronicus, ii. I. Ioo:
“And are you such fools
To square for this?’
Hence “squarer’ = quarreler; see Much Ado about Nothing, i. 1. 82: “Is
there no young squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil?”
In his description of the singing in the church at Augsburg, Ascham uses the
word “square' in the sense of jar or discord: ‘The praecentor begins the
psalm, all the church follows without any square, none behind, none before,
but there doth appear one sound of voice and heart amongst them all.'
(Works, ed. Giles, i. 270.) -
'Ib.;that, so that.
32. Either, used as a monosyllable. See ii. 2. 156, Macbeth, v. 7. 18,
and Richard III, iv. 4. I82:
“Either thou wilt die by God's just ordinance.”
So also “neither,” “whether,’ are frequently metrical monosyllables.
–33. Shrewd, mischievous. See note on As You Like It, v. 4. I65 (Clar.
Press ed.). "
~Ib. sprite, the spelling of the first quarto, and in consequence of the rhyme
the pronunciation of the other copies, although they read ‘spirit.’ See
Macbeth, ii. 3.84: -
“As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites.’
34. Robin Goodfellow. See Preface.
35. That frights. The later folios read fright, so as to agree with
‘skim” &c., that follow. Others rectify the irregularity by reading ‘skims,’
“labours,’ and so on. But it is not necessary to correct what Shakespeare
may very well have written. The first verb ‘frights’ is of course governed
by “he” which immediately precedes. The others are in agreement with
‘you.’ We have in English both constructions. For instance in Exodus vi.
7 : “And ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you
out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.’ And in 2 Samuel v. 2: ‘Thou
wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel.”
Ib. uillagery, village population, and so peasantry. Johnson defines it as
a district of villages, but it denotes rather a collection of villagers than a
collection of villages. The first quarto reads ‘Villageree'; the other old
copies ‘villagree’ or ‘vilagree.” No other instance of the word is re-
corded.
Sc.I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 85
36. Quern, a hand-mill. A. S. cweorn or cwyrn; Gothic kwairnus.
Compare Chaucer, Moukes Tale, 1. I408o (ed. Tyrwhitt) of Samson:
“But now is he in prison in a cave,
Wheras they made him at the querne grinde.”
Johnson imagined a difficulty. “The mention of the mill,’ he says, “seems
out of place, for she is not now telling the good but the evil he does.” He
suggested the transposition of lines 36 and 37, or the reading
“And sometimes make the breathless housewife churn
Skim milk, and bootless labour in the quern.”
But the fairy is enumerating all Robin Goodfellow’s pranks, and among
them when he was in a good humour the old song makes him say (Percy's
Reliques, vol. iii.):
‘I grind at mill
Their malt up still.’
See the quotation from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy in the Preface.
The only alternative is with Delius to regard “quern” as equivalent to ‘churn'
for which there appears to be no authority.
N38. sometime, sometimes. Compare ‘beside’ and “besides’; ‘while ’ and
‘whiles’; ‘toward’ and ‘towards’; and see iii. I. 98; iii. 2. 360.
Ib. barm, yeast; so called in many provincial dialects still : A. S. bearma.
Cotgrave has, ‘Leveton: m. Yeast, or Barme.’
39. night-wanderers. Milton had probably this passage in his mind when he
described the Will o' the wisp (Paradise Lost, ix. 640) which
‘Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads the amazed night wanderer from his way.”
Ib. harm, misfortune. Compare As You Like It, iii. 2. 8o: ‘Glad of
other men's good, content with my harm.’ |
40. Hobgoblin. So Drayton, Nymphidia, 283 :
“He meeteth Pucke, which most men call
Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall.’
47. a gossip's bowl, originally a christening cup ; for a gossip or godsib
was properly a sponsor. Hence, from signifying those who were associated
in the festivities of a christening, it came to denote generally those who were
accustomed to make merry together. Archbishop Trench mentions that the
word retains its original signification among the peasantry of Hampshire.
He adds, ‘Gossips are, first, the sponsors, brought by the act of a common
sponsorship into affinity and near familiarity with one another; secondly,
these sponsors, who being thus brought together, allow themselves one with
the other in familiar, and then in trivial and idle, talk; thirdly, any who
allow themselves in this trivial and idle talk, called in French “commérage,”
from the fact that “commère" has run through exactly the same stages as
its English equivalent.” (English Past and Present, pp. 204-5, 4th ed.).
Warton, in his note on Milton's L'Allegro, Ioo, identifies “the spicy
86 NOTES. [ACT II.
nut-brown ale' with the gossip's bowl of Shakespeare. ‘The composition
was ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples. It was called
Lambs-wool.’ See Breton's Fantastickes, January : “An Apple and a Nutmeg
make a Gossips cup.’ Compare Comedy of Errors, v. I. 405:
“Go to a gossips’ feast, and go with me.’
And Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5. 175:
~, ‘Utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl.'
@gal, crab apple. See King Lear, i. 5. 16: ‘For though she’s as like
this as a crab's like an apple, yet I can tell what I can tell.'
50. dewlap, spelt “dewlop” in the quartos and folios, is properly the loose
skin which hangs from the throat of cattle. See iv. I. 121, and The
Tempest, iii. 3. 45: ‘Dewlapp'd like bulls.’ Baret (Alvearie, s. v.) has:
‘the Dewlap of a rudder beast, hanging downe vnder the necke. Palear.’
§ 51. aunt, a familiar name for an old woman. Compare ‘nuncle’ in King
Lear, i. 4. II 7. It is elsewhere used in a bad sense, but not in this passage
or in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, ii. I ; where Justice Overdo in the
habit of a fool says, “Ale for thine aunt, boy.’ Mr. Grant White remarks
that “In New England villages good-natured old people are still called
“aunt” and “uncle” by the whole community.” In Cornwall, according to
Pegge (Grose's Glossary), the same usage prevails.
Ib, saddest tale, most grave or serious story. Compare Merchant of
Venice, ii. 2. 205:
“Like one well studied in a sad ostent
To please his grandam’;
where “sad ostent” means an assumed appearance of gravity. In the
present passage “sad’ may possibly be understood in its ordinary sense.
54.; tailor. Johnson says, “The custom of crying tailor at a sudden fall
backwards, I think I remember to have observed. He that slips beside his
chair, falls as a tailor squats upon his board.” If this be not the true ex-
planation it is at least the only one which has been proposed.
54–55. cough . . . laugh. The old copies for the sake of the rhyme
print ‘coffe. . . offe.’ -
56. waxen in their mirth, grow merrier and merrier. Farmer conjectured
‘yoxen” or “yexen, to hiccup; the latter was adopted by Singer. The old
plural ‘waxen” probably survived in the country dialects of Shakespeare's
time.
Ib. neeze, sneeze; A. S. niesan, Germ. niesen. Similarly we find the two
forms of the same word ‘knap' and snap’; ‘top' and ‘stop,’ ‘cratch' and
“scratch’; ‘lightly' and “slightly’; ‘quinsy’ and “squinancy.’ In 2 Kings
iv. 35 the text originally stood, “And the child neesed seven times’; but the
word has been altered in modern editions to ‘sneezed.” In Job xli. I8
however ‘neesings’ still holds its place. Compare Homilies (ed. Griffiths,
1859), p, 227: ‘Using these sayings: such as learn, God and St. Nicholas
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 87
be my speed; such as neese, God help and St John; to the horse, God and
St. Loy save thee.’ Palsgrave (Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse)
has, ‘I nese, Ie esterne.’ And Cotgrave gives both forms, ‘Esternuer. To
neeze, or sneeze.”
58. Johnson on account of the metre would read ‘fairy” as a trisyllable.
Dr. Abbott, for the same reason, would prolong ‘room.” (Shakesperian
Grammar, § 484). The metre is scarcely mended in either way. Pope read
‘make room.’ Dyce in his second edition read ‘room, now.' Dr. Nicholson
suggests ‘roomer,’ a sea term, which is applied to a ship when going from
the wind.
59. In the stage direction as it appears in the quartos and folios Oberon
is called ‘the King of Fairies,’ and Titania the Queen.’
61. Fairies, skip hence. The old copies have ‘Fairy,’ which Capell
understands of the leading fairy, her gentleman-usher, and therefore considers
Theobald's change to ‘Fairies’ unnecessary. See however 1. 144.
67. pipes of corn, made of oat straw. Ritson quotes from Chaucer [House
of Fame, iii. I 34]:
‘And many a floyfe and litling horne,
And pipes made of greene corne.’
Compare Cotgrave, ‘Sampongne: f. A bagpipe, or oaten pipe.’ And Love's
Labour's Lost, v. 2. 913:
• ‘When shepherds pipe on oaten straws.”
Also Milton, Lycidas, 33:
* Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute.’
And Comus, 345:
‘ Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops.”
Ib. versing love, making love in verse...
69. Steppe. So the first quarto. The second, followed by the folios,
reads “steepe’; and this was apparently in Milton's mind when he wrote
Comus, I 39:
‘Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
The nice morn on the Indian steep
From her cabin’d loop-hole peep.”
To the reading ‘steppe’ it is objected that the word in the sense in which it.
is applied to the vast plains of Central Asia was not known in Shakespeare's
day, but it is dangerous to assert a proposition which may be disproved
by a single instance of the contrary. There is certainly no a priori reason
why the present passage should not furnish that instance, inasmuch as a
word of similar origin, ‘horde,’ was perfectly well known in England at
the beginning of the 17th century. On the other hand, too much weight
must not be attached to the spelling of the first quarto, for in iii. 2. 85
‘sleep ’ is misprinted “slippe.’
88 NOTES. [ACT II.
75. Glance at, hint at, indirectly attack. Compare Julius Cæsar, i. 2.324:
“Wherein obscurely
Caesar's ambition shall be glanced at.”
For the substantive “glance' in the sense of ‘hint, allusion, see As You
Like It, ii. 7. 57 :
“The wise man's folly is anatomized
Even by the squandering glances of the fool.”
And Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, I. 7, § 8 (p. 57, ed. Wright):
“But when Marcus Philosophus came in, Silenus was gravelled and out of
countenance, not knowing where to carp at him ; save at the last he gave a
glance at his patience towards his wife.’
78. Perigenia. In North's Plutarch she is called Perigouma, the daughter
of the famous robber Sinnis, by whom Theseus had a son Menalippus.
79. Aºgle. Rowe's correction. The quartos and folios have ‘Eagles.”
In North’s Plutarch (ed. I631), Theseus, p. 9, we read: “For some say,
that Ariadne hung herselfe for sorrow, when she saw that Theseus had cast
her off. Other write, that she was transported by mariners into the Ile of
Naxos, where she was married unto Oenarus the priest of Bacchus : and
they thinke that Theseus left her because he was in love with another, as by
these verses should appeare,
AEgles the Nymph was lou'd of Theseus,
Who was the daughter of Panopeus.’
8o. Antiopa, according to some, was the name of the Amazon queen, and
the mother of Hippolytus. See North's Plutarch, p. 14.
82. middle summer's spring, the beginning of midsummer. Steevens
quotes 2 Henry IV, iv. 4.35:
‘As humorous as winter and as sudden
As flaws congealed in the spring of day.”
Also Luke i. 78 : ‘Whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.”
Again we find in Gower's Confessio Amantis (ii. p. 97):
‘For till I se the daies spring,
I sette slepe nought at a risshe.”
84, paved fountain, a fountain with pebbly bottom; not artificially
paved, for a fountain of this kind would scarcely be frequented by fairies.
See Milton, Comus II 9, of the wood-nymphs' dance:
“By dimpled brook and fountain-brim.”
And Paradise Lost, i. 783.
85. in, on. See below, l. 9o, and compare Venus and Adonis, 118 :
“What seest thou in the ground 2’ And the Lord's Prayer, Thy will be
done in earth as it is done in heaven.’
Ib. beached, formed by a beach, or which serves as a beach. Compare
Timon of Athens, v. I. 219 :
“Upon the beached verge of the salt flood.’
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’s DREAM. 89
For similar instances of adjectives formed from substantives, see “guiled,’
Merchant of Venice, iii. 2. 97; disdain'd,” I Henry IV, i. 3. I83; ‘simple-
answer'd,’ that is, simple in your answer, furnished with a simple answer,
which is the reading of the folios in King Lear, iii. 7.43: ‘the caged cloister,’
the cloister which serves as a cage, A Lover's Complaint, 249 : ‘ravin'd, for
ravenous, Macbeth, iv. I. 24: ‘poysened ’ for poisonous, Lyly, Euphues
(ed. Arber), p. 196: ‘Nylus breedeth the precious stone and the poysened
serpent.’
Ib. margent, margin. So in A Lover's Complaint, 39:
“Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set.’
And Romeo and Juliet, i. 3. 86 :
* And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.”
For the form of the word, compare ‘aliant’ for ‘alien,’ ‘tyrant’ from Túpavvos,
and ‘wild” which is a corrupt spelling of ‘vile.’ Milton has the same spelling
in Comus, 232 :
‘By slow Maeander's margent green.’
Shakespeare never uses “margin '; but in The Tempest, iv. I. 69, he
has -
“And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard.’
86. dance our ringlets. See above, l. 9.
87, brawls, quarrels. Originally a brawl was a French dance, as in
Love's Labour's Lost, iii. I. 9 : ‘Will you win your love with a French
brawl?’ And it was a dance of a violent and boisterous character, as
appears by the following extract from Cotgrave: ‘Bransle: m. A totter,
swing, or swidge ; a shake, shog, or shocke; a stirring, an vncertain and
inconstant motion; . . . also, a brawle, or daunce, wherein many (men,
and women) holding by the hands sometimes in a ring, and otherwhiles at
length, moue altogether.” It may be however that there is no etymological
connexion between these two words which are the same in form ; and
brawl', in the sense of “quarrel’ may be an imitative word and akin to
“brabble.”
88. piping to us in vain, because we could not dance to them. See
Matthew xi. I?: “We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced.”
89, 90. Compare King Lear, ii. 4. I68, 169:
‘Infect her beauty,
You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun.’
91. Have. So Rowe corrected the ‘Hath’ of the quartos and folios,
which is attracted into the singular by the preceding ‘land.’ See note on
Hamlet, i. 2. 38.
Ib. pelting, paltry, insignificant. The folios have ‘petty.’ The two
90 NOTES. [ACT II.
words occur together in Measure for Measure, ii. 2. II.2 : ‘Every pelting,
petty officer.’ Compare Richard II, ii. I. 6o:
“Like to a tenement or pelting farm.’
And King Lear, ii. 3. 18 :
“Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills.’
92. That they &c. The plural follows loosely as representing the collec-
tion of individual rivers.
(Ib) their continents, the banks... that contain them, or hold them in.
Compare King Lear, iii. 2.58:
“Close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace.”
And Hamlet, iv. 4.64:
“Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain.”
95. a beard. Malone quotes Sonnet xii. 8:
‘And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard.”
97. fatted, fattened. Compare Hamlet, ii. 2. 607:
“I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s Offal.” º
Ib, murrion. So the quartos and folios. Warburton altered it to
‘murrain,” the more common spelling. The murrain was a disease among
cattle, see Exodus ix. 3, and the murrion or murrain flock is the flock
that had died of the cattle plague. For the variety of the spelling compare
King Lear, i. I. 65, where the folios are divided between ‘ champains’ and
‘champions.”
98. nine men's morris. A rustic game, which is still extant in some parts
of England, so called from the counters (Fr. merelles) with which it is
played. It is described by James in the Variorum Shakespeare as follows:
“In that part of Warwickshire where Shakspeare was educated, and the
neighbouring parts of Northamptonshire, the shepherds and other boys dig
up the turf with their knives to represent a sort of imperfect chess-board.
It consists of a square, sometimes only a foot diameter, sometimes three or
four yards. Within this is another square, every side of which is parallel to
the external square ; and these squares are joined by lines drawn from each
corner of both squares, and the middle of each line. One party, or player,
has wooden pegs, the other stones, which they move in such a manner as to
take up each other's men, as they are called, and the area of the inner
square is called the pound, in which the men taken up are impounded.
These figures are by the country people called Nine Men's Morris, or
Merrils ; and are so called because each party has nine men. These figures
are always cut upon the green turf or leys, as they are called, or upon the
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 9 I
grass at the end of ploughed lands, and in rainy seasons never fail to be
choked up with mud.’ Another variety of the game as described by Alchorne
in the Variorum Shakespeare corresponds with what I have seen in Suffolk.
Three squares, instead of two, are drawn one within the other, and the
middle points of the parallel sides are joined by straight lines, leaving the
innermost square for the pound. But the corners of the squares are not
joined. The corners of the squares and the middle points of the sides are
the places where the men may be put, and they move from place to place
along the line which joins them. ‘A figure is made on the ground by
cutting out the turf; and two persons take each nine stones, which they
place by turns in the angles, and afterwards move alternately, as at chess or
draughts. He who can play three in a straight line may then take off any
one of his adversary's, where he pleases, till one, having lost all his men,
loses the game.’ See also Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, iv. 2, § 13.
9.) the quaint mazes in the wanton green. ‘This alludes,’ says Steevens,
“to a sport still followed by boys; i.e. what is now called running the figure
of eight.” But I have seen very much more complicated figures upon village
greens, and such as might strictly be called mazes or labyrinths. On St.
Catherine’s Hill, Winchester, “near the top of it, on the north-east side, is
the form of a labyrinth, impressed upon the turf, which is always kept
entire by the coursing of the sportive youth through its meanderings. The
fabled origin of this Daedalaean work is connected with that of the Dulce
Domum song.” (Milner, History of Winchester, ii. I55.)
IoI. human mortals. Titania speaks as a fairy. Compare what she
says below, l. 135 :
ë. “But she, being mortal, of that boy did die.’
* Ib. want, lack, are without. Compare The Tempest, iii. I. 79:
“At mine unworthiness that dare not offer
What I desire to give, and much less take
What I shall die fo want.”
Ib. their winter here. ‘Their winter’ Malone explains by “those sports
with which country people are wont to beguile a winter's evening, at the
season of Christmas, which, it appears from the next line, was particularly
in our author's contemplation.” For ‘here ' Theobald proposed and Hanmer
adopted ‘cheer, perhaps the true reading.
IO2. Carol, Christmas carol.
Io9. Therefore, because of our quarrel.
Ib. the governess of floods. Compare Hamlet, i. I. I.I.9 :
* The moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands.’
Io.4. Pale in her anger. For a similar fancy, compare Romeo and Juliet,
ii. 2.4:
92 NOTES. [ACT II.
* Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief.”
Douce quotes from the Prologue to Lydgate's Siege of Thebes:
“And was also in thopposicion
Of Lucina the Moone, moist and pale
That many shoures fro heauen made auaile.”
Ioff. That, so that. See iii. 2. 417.
Ib. rheumatic diseases, says Malone, ‘signified in Shakespeare's time, not
what we now call rheumatism, but distillations from the head, catarrhs, &c.’
He quotes from the Sydney Memorials, i. 94, where the health of Sir Henry
Sydney is described: “He hath verie much distemporid divers parts of his
bodie; as namelie, his hedde, his stomack, &c. And therby is always subject
to distillacions, coughes, and other rumatick diseases.’ It would be more
correct to say that the term included all this in addition to 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.” The accent is on the first syllable, as in Venus and Adonis, I 35:
‘ O'erworn, despised, rheumatic and cold.’
Ioé. thorough. See lines 3 &c.
Ib. this distemperature, this disturbance between Oberon and Titania;
not the perturbation of the elements. Compare Pericles, v. I. 27:
“Upon what ground is his distemperature?’
where it is used of the disturbance of mind caused by grief. Again, Romeo
and Juliet, ii. 3. 40 :
“Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
Thou art uproused by some distemperature.”
See also Hamlet, iii. 2. 31.2 :
“Guil. The king, sir,
Ham. Ay, sir, what of him 2
Guil. Is in his retirement marvellous distempered.
FIam. With drink, sir?
Guil. No, my lord, rather with choler.’
109. Hiems'. So Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 901 : “This side is Hiems,
Winter.”
Ib. thin and icy crown. The old copies read chimne’ or chin,' which
Steevens saw was not the place for a chaplet. Tyrwhitt proposed ‘thin,'
that is, thin-hair’d; in support of which Steevens quoted King Lear [iv.
7. 36]:
“To watch—poor perdu !—
With this thin helm ?
And Richard II [iii. 2. II 2):
“White-beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps
Against thy majesty.’
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’s DREAM. 93
He might have added Timon of Athens, iv. 3. I44:
‘Thatch your poor thin roofs
With burthens of the dead.”
112. childing autumn, autumn that brings forth the products of the year.
See Sonnet xcvii. 6, quoted below. Holt White quotes Fairfax's Tasso,
xviii. 26:
“An hundreth plants beside (euen in his sight)
Childed an hundreth Nymphes, so great. §2 dight.”
He adds, “ Childing is an old term in botany, when a small flower grows out
of a large one’; and so far his explanation is correct, but he misses the
point and falls into error when he says “the childing autumn therefore
means the autumn which unseasonably produces flowers on those of summer,’
whereas it means the autumn which seasonably produces its own fruits. It
is the change of seasons which makes it abnormal.
II.3, mazed, bewildered, thrown into confusion. Compare I Henry VI,
iv. 2.47:
‘A little herd of England's timorous deer,
Mazed with a yelping kennel of French curs.”
II.4. By their increase, by their products or fruits, which formerly dis-
tinguished them. Malone quotes Sonnet xcvii. 6:
‘The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime.”
So also Venus and Adonis, 169, 17o:
“Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed,
2- Unless the earth with thy increase be fed ?’
{II6; debate, quarrel. Compare 2 Henry IV, iv. 4. 2:
*... …" ‘Now, lords, if God doth give successful end
To this debate that bleedeth at our doors.”
II8. it lies in you, it is in your power. So Sonnet ci. Io:
* For ’t lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb.”
121. henchman, a page. The word is of uncertain origin. Spelman
derives it from Hengstman, equi curator. Percy in a note to the Earl of
Northumberland's Household Book (p. 432) says, “Haunsmen,” or ‘Hanshmen’
(more frequently written “Henchmen' or “Henxmen’) was the old English
Name for the Pages, so called from their standing at their Lords Haunch or
side. The Earl of Northumberland had three young Gentlemen who
attended him in this capacity, and are classed along with his Wards, &c.
and next to his own Sons.” Reed quotes from Lodge's Illustrations (i. 358)
a letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury, dated II December, 1565, in which
he says: ‘Her Highnes hathe of late, wherat some doo moche marvell,
dissolved the auncient office of henchemen.” In his note upon this, Lodge
remarks that the henchmen were “a certain number of youths, the sons of
94 NOTES. [ACT II.
gentlemen, who stood or walked near the person of the monarch on all
public occasions.” In Sherwood's English-French Dictionary (Cotgrave,
1632), we find, ‘A hench-man, or hench-boy. Page d’honneur; qui marche
devant quelque Seigneur de grand authorité.’
I 23. volaress, one that had taken vows. Compare Pericles, iv.
prologue 4:
“His woeful queen we leave at Ephesus,
Unto Diana there a votaress.’
So Milton, Comus, 189, uses ‘votarist':
‘The grey-hooded Even,
2-, Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed.’
I24, spiced, laden, with spices, balmy.
127, the embarked traders on the flood, the merchants embarked upon the
sea. For this position of the participle see Timon of Athens, iv. 2. I 3 :
“A dedicated beggar to the air’:
and note on Richard II, iii. 2. 8 (Clar. Press ed.). And for ‘flood’ compare
The Merchant of Venice, i. I. Io:
“Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood.’
I31. Following, her womb &c. The words placed between dashes are
in a parenthesis in the quartos and folios. Steevens adopted Kenrick's worse
than unnecessary alteration, “Following her womb &c.’
I38. intend you stay. “To is frequently omitted in such constructions.
See Abbott’s Shakespeare Grammar, § 349, and compare The Tempest, iii.
I. 63:
* Than to suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth.”
And King Lear, iv. 5. 35:
‘I pray, desire her call her wisdom to her.’
I4o. round, a circular dance. So Macbeth, iv. I. I 30 :
“I’ll charm the air to give a sound,
While you perform your antic round.’.
I46. thou shalt not from this grove, that is, go from this grove. For the
use of the preposition and an auxiliary verb without the verb of motion,
see Hamlet, ii. 2. 521 : “It shall to the barber's, with your beard.’ Abbott,
§ 405.
- I47, injury has here something of the meaning of insult and not of
wrong only. Compare iii. 2. I48, and the adjective ‘injurious ' in the
sense of “insulting, insolent,’ in iii. 2. 195. In the Authorised Version
of I Timothy i. 13, ‘injurious’ is the rendering of the Greek ióptaths.
I48 &c. For the supposed reference in this passage to Mary Queen of
Scots and Elizabeth, see Preface.
I5o. a mermaid. For the destructive quality of the mermaid’s song,
compare Comedy of Errors, iii. 2. 45:
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 95
“O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,
* * To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears.’
And 3 Henry VI, iii. 2. 186:
“I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall.’
Cotgrave gives ‘Serene: f. A Syren, or Mermaid.’
Ib. on a dolphin's back, like Arion, who charmed the fish with his song
and was saved from drowning. See Twelfth Night, i. 2. I5.
151. breath, voice; used of singing as in Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 21 :
‘I had rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a breath to
sing, as the fool has.’
I52. civil, softened...and as it were civilized by the refining influence of
music. Compare iii. 2. I47, and As You Like It, iii. 2. I 36 (II6 Clar.
Press ed.):
* Tongues I’ll hang on every tree,
That shall civil sayings show.’
I53. certain, here used of an indefinite number, as in The Tempest, v.
I. 55 : --- * * **** *-* .
“I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth.”
I56. the cold moon, representative of the goddess of chastity.
I57. all arm’d, not in full armour but with all his usual weapons. “All '
is merely emphatic. *_
I59. loosed, Jet go; an archery term. Compare Henry V, i. 2. 207 :
‘As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Come to one mark.”
160. As, as if. So Hamlet, iv. 7.88 :
* As had he been incorpsed and demi-natured
With the brave beast.’
16I. might, could, was able. So King John, ii. I. 325:
‘Heralds, from off our towers we might behold,
From first to last, the onset and retire
Of both your armies.’
162. votaress, having taken the vow of chastity. See 1. I23.
164 fancy-free, free from the power of love. See i. I. I55.
I67. Shakespeare may have taken the idea of the change of colour in the
flower from the change of the mulberry in the story of Pyramus and Thisbe
as told by Ovid.
168. love-in-idleness is one of the names given to the pansy or heartsease
in Lyte's Herball (1595): ‘in English Pances, Loue in Idlenes, and
Harts ease.’ Tollet says it was in use in his time in Warwickshire. Gerarde
(Herball, p. 705, ed. I 597) calls the flower ‘Harts ease, Pansies, Liue in
Idlenes, Cull me to you, and three faces in one hood.’

96 MOTES. [ACT II.
I7I. or . . . or, either… ... gr. Compare The Tempest, i. 2. 249 : .
“Without or grudge or grumblings.’
As You Like It, i. 2. 272:
“Or Charles or something weaker masters thee.’
174, the leviathan. The margins of the Bibles in Shakespeare's day ex-
plained leviathan as a whale, and so no doubt he thought it.
175. To “put a girdle round about the earth’ was a common expression.
for making a voyage round the world. It occurs, as Steevens points out, in
Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois, which was first printed in 1697 (Works, ii. 6),
“To put a Girdle round about the world.’ See also Dekker, If this be not a
good play, the devil is in it (Works, iii. 277, ed. 1873) :
‘About the world
My trauailes make a girdle (perfect round:).’
Staunton quotes from Shirley's Humorous Courtier, i. I :
* Thou hast been a traveller, and convers'd
With the Antipodes, almost put a girdle
About the world.”
I82. the $gul. of love, the most intense and passionate love. Compare
I Henry IV, iv. I. 50:
‘The very bottom and the soul of hope.”
And Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2. I4I :
‘See, see, your silence,
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
My very soul of counsel.”
190. slay . . . slayeth. So Theobald, adopting Thirlby's conjecture, cor-
rected the ‘stay . . . stayeth’ of the quartos and folios. If any justification
were required it would be found in iii. 2. 6o, 64.
192. wood, mad, raging; A. S. w8d; Sc. wod or wud, Compare Venus
and Adonis, 740 :
‘Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood.’
I Henry VI, iv. 7.33:
‘How the young whelp of Talbot's, raging wood,
Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen’s blood!"
The first quarto reads “wodde.’ Compare also Chaucer, C. T. 636 (ed.
Tyrwhitt):
‘Than wolde he speke and crie as he were wood’;
and 1659 .
“Thou mightest wenen, that this Palamon
In his fighting were as a wood leon.'
195. adamant, loadstone. Compare Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2, 186:
“As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre.'
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 97
197. leave, give up. See King John, v. 7.86:
- “With purpose presently to leave this war.’
I Henry VI, iv. I. IoS :
* Will not this malice, Somerset, be left 2'
20I.. nor I cannot. For the double negative see Venus and Adonis, I 13:
‘O, be not proud, nor brag not of thy might.”
And 409: z
“I know not love, quoth he, nor will not know it.’
208. Worser. So Hamlet, iii. 4. I57:
‘O, throw away the worser part of it.’
2 Io. use. See the quartos. The folios have ‘do,' and Reed combined
the readings into ‘do use.’
214. impeach, bring into question, expose to reproach. Compare Mer-
chant of Venice, iii. 2.28o:T
“And doth impeach the freedom of the state,
If they deny him justice.’
Again, iii. 3. 29:
* If it be denied,
Will much impeach the justice of his state.’
220. Pour virtue is my privilege : for that &c. Your virtue is my pro-
tection, because it is not &c. This is the reading of the early copies.
Malone, following Tyrwhitt’s conjecture, read
‘Your virtue is my privilege for that.
It is not night &c.
For ‘privilege’ in this sense see Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii. I. 16o:
“And think my patience, more than thy desert,
Is privilege for thy departure hence.”
221-4. Johnson points out the resemblance to the lines of Tibullus
[iv. 13. II, I2]:
“Tu nocte vel atra
Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.”
223-6. Malone compares 2 Henry VI, iii. 2. 360–362 :
* A wilderness is populous enough,
So Suffolk had thy heavenly company:
For where thou art, there is the world itself.”
224. in my respect, in my regard or estimation. Compare Cymbeline, ii.
3. I40 .
“His meanest garment,
That ever hath but clipp'd his body, is dearer
In my respect than all the hairs above thee,
Were they all made such men.”
H
98 * AWOTES. [ACT II.
227. in the brakes, in the thickets. See iii. 1. 4, 77, IIo; iii. 2. I5 ; and
Venus and Adonis, 876 :
“Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake.”
231. Apollo flies &c. See Ovid, Metam. i. 452 &c.
Ib. holds the chase, pursues.
232. the griffin, a fabulous creature, half beast, half bird of prey; now,
like the unicorn, only known in the zoology of heraldry. It occurs again in
I Henry IV, iii. I. 152 :
“A clip-wing'd griffin, and a moulten raven.’
And in the form “gripe’ in Lucrece, 543:
“Like a white hind under the gripe’s sharp claws.’
Baret in his Alvearie gives, ‘a Griffon, or gripe. Gryps.’ See also Holland's
Pliny, vii. 2 (vol. i. p. 154): “Griffons, a kind of wild beasts that flie.’ And
again x. 49 : “As for the foules called Pegasi, headed like horses; and the
Griffons, which are supposed to have long eares, and a hooked bill, I take
them to bee meere fables.’
233. bootless, profitless, worthless: from A. S. bot, profit, advantage. See
The Tempest, i. 2. 35.
236. I will not stay thy questions, I will not wait to talk with thee. For
g *—s.” serºszº-3-, 2, ... ... :-re
* question’ in the sense of conversation see As You Like It, iii. 4.39: ‘I met
the duke yesterday and had much question with him.’ And Merchant of
Venice, iv. I. 346: “I’ll stay no longer question.” Steevens in the present
passage conjectured ‘question’ in the singular, but the plural may denote
Helena's repeated efforts at inducing Demetrius to talk with her.
244. upon the hand. ‘Upon’ occurs in a temporal sense in some phrases,
where it is used with the cause of anything. In such cases the consequence
follows ‘upon' the cause. For instance, in Much Ado about Nothing, iv. I.
225 :
“When he shall hear she died upon his words.”
Again, in the same play, iv. 2.65 : “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. 2. Io'7:
‘O, how fit a word
Is that vile name to perish on my sword l’
And Julius Caesar, v. I. 58:
* I was not born to die on Brutus' sword.”
Hence metaphorically it occurs in King Lear, ii. 4. 34:
‘On whose contents,
They summon'd up their meiny, straight took horse.’
None of these instances are strictly parallel to the one before us, but they
shew 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
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 99
which is contained in the ordinary meaning of ‘upon.” A better example is
found in Fletcher's Chances, i. 9 :
“Give me dying,
As dying ought to be, upon mine enemy,
Parting with mankind by a man that’s manly.”
249. where, pronounced as a disyllable. See note on ‘year' which is so
used in The Tempest, i. 2.53. Pope altered it to ‘whereon,’ to fill up the
line. ,-- " - ~~.
250. oxlips) ‘The Oxelip, or the small kind of white Mulleyn, is very
like to the Cowslip aforesaid, sauing that his leaues be greater and larger,
and his floures be of a pale or faint yelow colour, almost white and without
sauour.” Lyte's Herball (1595), p. 134. The second quarto reads ‘oxslips’;
and ‘Oxeslips’ is a name of the plant given by Gerarde.
Ib. the nodding violet. Compare Drayton, Quest of Cynthia, 54:
‘I ask’d a nodding violet why
It sadly hung the head.’
Ib. grows, attracted into the singular by the nearer subject ‘violet.’
25I, luscious, sweet scented ; generally sweet to the taste. Compare
Drayton, Polyolbion, XV. I 53 :
“The azur'd Hare-bell next, with them, they neatly mixt:
Tº allay whose lushious smell, they Woodbind plac’t betwixt.’
On account of the metre, Theobald conjectured “ lush,” luxuriant, thick-
growing, which occurs in The Tempest, ii. I. 52 : “How lush and lusty the
grass looks l’
Ib. woodbine. In Lyte's Herball is a chapter (iii. 51) ‘Of Woodbine or
Honisuckle,' and it is said “This herbe or kinde of Bindeweede is called . . .
in English Honisuckle, or Woodbine, and of some Caprifoile.’ So also in
Gerarde the woodbine and honeysuckle are identified, and bindweed is a
different plant, but Shakespeare elsewhere (iv. I. 47) makes woodbine and
honeysuckle distinct, and apparently regards the former as the same as the
convolvulus or bindweed. In the same way Milton (L’Allegro, 47, 48)
mentions the sweetbriar and the eglantine as different plants.
252. musk-roses. Of the different kinds of roses, says Lyte (Herball,
p. 760), ‘The sixt is named of Plinie in Latine, Rosa Coroneola, of the
writers at this day Rosa sera, and Rosa autumnalis; in French, Rose Musquée,
and Roses de Damas : in base Almaigne, Musket Rooskens: in English also,
Muske Roses, bicause of their pleasant sent.’ So Milton, Lycidas, I46:
‘The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well attir'd woodbine.”
Except in fairy land these flowers would not be found all at the same
Se2SOſl.
Ib. glantine, the sweetbriar. See Cymbeline, iv. 2, 223:
H 2 :
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IOO ; NOTES. -- [Acr II.
‘No, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Outsweeten’d not thy breath.’
Continuing his description of the kinds of roses, Lyte (Herball, p. 760)
says, “ The last is called of Plinie in Greeke AvXvis, Lychnis; in Latine,
Rosa Graeca : in French, and base Almaigne, Eglantier: in English,
Eglantine.’
253. Sometime. In some editions the words are separated, but the accent
shows that they should be combined.
254. throws, throws off, sheds.
Ib. snake, like A.S. snaece, is feminine, as in Macbeth, iii. 2. 13:
‘We have scotch'd the snake, not kill’d it :
“N She 'll close and be herself.”
256: Weed, dress, garment; A. S. waid. Compare Lucrece, 196:
...' ‘Let fair humanity abhor the deed
*****- That spots and stains love's modest snow-white weed.’
2573 streak, stroke, touch gently. -
263, 264. Steevens appealed to the rhyme between “man’ and ‘on' to
shew that the broad Scotch pronunciation once prevailed in England. 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. I.
348, 9, iii. 2. 4II, 412, 462, 463, and V. I. 267, 268, it is unsafe to draw
any inference as to Shakespeare's pronunciation.
266. fond, doting. For the construction with ‘on,’ which Rowe changed
to ‘of’ compare Sonnet lxxxiv. I4: x
“Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.’
Scene II.
I. a roundel, like ‘round,’ and ‘roundelay,” signifies both a circular dance,
and a part song or catch. In the present passage it has apparently the
former meaning, as in Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub [ii. Il, quoted by
Tyrwhitt:
‘You’d have your daughter and maids
Dance o'er the fields like faies to church this frost.
I’ll have no rondels, I, in the queen's paths.”
In the other sense it is of frequent occurrence; as for instance in Chaucer's
Legend of Good Women, 423:
“And many an himpne for your holy daies,
That highten balades, rondels, virelaies.”
And Spenser, Shepherd's Calendar, August, I26:
* Wil. Now endeth our roundelay.
;
:
tº . Cud, Sicker, sike a roundle never heard I none.’
& e º º º * -
*: * e * . . :
tº p • sº ". .*
sc, 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM. IOI
The passage quoted by Steevens from Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie is
nothing to the purpose, for the ‘roundell’ of Puttenham is merely a circle,
one of the many fanciful figures described by him in which a poem might be
written. In the sense of a circular dancing place it is used by Browne,
Britannia’s Pastorals, book i, song 3, 1.373 :
‘Thus went they on, and Remond did discusse
Their cause of meeting, till they won with pacing
The circuit chosen for the Maidens tracing.
It was a Roundell seated on a plaine.’
And in the same poem, song 4, 1. 279, ‘roundelay' is a circular dance:
* In airie rankes
Tread Roundelayes vpon the siluer sands.’
2. the third part of a minute. The fairy divisions of time are small in
proportion to their own tiny dimensions.
3. musk-rose. See ii. I. 252.
4. Some war &c. Delius says the construction is ‘Some to war’ &c. as
in the previous line ; but it seems rather that ‘ war’ is imperative, ‘let some
war' &c.
Ib. rere-mice, bats; A. S. hrére-miſs, from hreran to stir, agitate, and so
equivalent to the old name ‘fittermouse.’ The old copies spell the word
“Reremise.” Cotgrave has, ‘Chauvesouris: m. A Batt; Flittermouse, Rere-
mouse.” The word occurs in the Wicliffite Versions of Lev. xi. 19, and the
plural in the form ‘reremees’ or ‘rere myis’ is found in Isa. ii. 20, where the
later version has “backis ether rere myis.’
7. quaint, fine, delicate. So Prospero in The Tempest, i. 2. 317, ex-
claims, ‘My quaint Ariel !” The word is derived from the Latin cognitus,
which in Old French became coint. Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) gives “Coint . . .
Quaint, compt, neat, fine, spruce, brisk, smirke, Smug, daintie, trim,
tricked vp.’
Ib. Sing me now asleep. Compare The Tempest, ii. I. 189: “Will you
laugh me now asleep, for I am very heavy 2 °
9. double, forked, cloven. Compare iii. 2. 72, and Richard II, iii. 2. 2 I :
‘A lurking adder,
Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch
Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies.’
Also The Tempest, ii. 2. I 3:
‘Adders who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.’
II. Newts, lizards. See King Lear, iii. 4, 135. “A newt’ is an evet or eft
(A. S. efete), the ‘n’ of the article having become attached to the following
word as in ‘nonce,’ ‘noumpere’ – umpire, and others. In “adder’ the
opposite process has taken place, and ‘a nadder” (A. S. naeddre) has become
“an adder’; so “an auger’ is really ‘a nauger’ (A. S. naſegar).
I O2 NOTES. [ACT II.
Ib. blind-worms, also called slow-worms, are used in the witches' caldron
in Macbeth, iv. I. I6:
‘Adder's fork and blind-worm’s sting.’
13. Philomel, or Philomela, the daughter of Pandion, was transformed
into a nightingale and lamented her sad fate in the plaintive notes of the bird
which bears her name. Compare Lucrece, Io?9:
“By this, lamenting Philomel had ended
The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow.’
Her story is told in Ovid, Metam. vi.
2.I. spinners. Compare Mercutio’s description of Queen Mab, Romeo
and Juliet, i. 4. 59:
‘Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs.’
25–26. These lines in the early editions are printed as part of the fairies' song.
28. true-love, possibly a corruption. In Icelandic triº-lofa is to betroth.
3o. ounce; Felis uncia, an animal resembling the leopard, but much
smaller.
Ib. cat must here be the wild cat.
31. Pard, panther or leopard. See notes on As You Like It, ii. 7. I50,
and The Tempest, iv. I. 257.
36. troth, truth. Compare Coriolanus, iv. 5. 198: ‘He was too hard for
him directly, to say the troth on't.” And Cymbeline, v. 5. 274:
‘Now fear is from me, I’ll speak troth.’
42. one troth, one faith or trust, pledged to each other in betrothal.
Compare Cymbeline, i. I. 96:
‘I will remain
The loyal'st husband that did e'er plight troth.’
49. interchained. So the quartos. The folios have “interchanged.”
45. take the sense, sweet, of my innocence, understand my innocent meaning.
46. takes the meaning, understands it aright, takes the true meaning.
‘Take” is opposed to ‘mistake in v. I. 9o.
54. beshrew is used in asseverations to give emphasis, or as here for a
mild oath, a ‘mischief on,” “evil befall.’ See v. I. 279, and compare Sonnet
CXXX111. I :
“Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan'
‘Shrew is used in the same way in Winter's Tale, i. 2. 281 : “Shrew my
heart.’ See note on ‘shrewd' in As You Like It, v. 4. 165. In the early
copies of Hamlet (ii. I. II.3) it is spelt “beshrow,” which no doubt represents
the pronunciation of the word.
Ib. my manners, here, my ill manners or want of manners.
57. human. The quartos and early folios have ‘humane,’ but the
meaning is the same.
68. approve, prove, test, try. Compare Winter's Tale, iv. 2, 31 : “Kings
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. IO3
are no less unhappy, their issue not being gracious, than they are in losing
them, when they have approved their virtues.’ And I Henry IV, iv. I. 9 :
“Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord.”
57–60. in human modesty . . . distant. The sense is clear though the
syntax is imperfect. Delius connects ‘as may well be said ' with ‘in
human modesty,’ but the construction is rather “in human modesty (let there
be) such separation &c.,’ and ‘So far be distant’ is merely a repetition of the
same thing.
7I. Weeds. See ii. 1. 256.
75. dank, damp, wet. Compare Romeo and Juliet, ii. 3. 6:
‘Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry.”
77. To mend the metre Theobald read ‘Near to this kill-courtesie.”
Steevens omits only the second ‘this.’ Malone, reading ‘Near’ as a disyllable,
makes a line of ten syllables.
78. Churl, a peasant, boor (A. S. ceorl); and hence one of rough and
rude manners.
79. Owe, own, possess. Compare The Tempest, i. 2. 407:
‘This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes.’
86. darkling, in the dark. See King Lear, i. 4. 237 : “So, out went the
candle and we were left darkling.” And Antony and Cleopatra, iv. I5. Io:
“O sun,
Burn the great sphere thou movest in darkling stand
The varying shore of the world.’
Milton borrowed the word in Paradise Lost, iii. 39:
‘As the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note.’
88. fond, foolish, with perhaps something of the other meaning which the
word now has. See ii. I. 266.
89. my grace, the favour I obtain.
97. as a monster, in apposition to “my presence.”
99, sphery, starlike. “Sphere' is used by Shakespeare to denote first the
orbit in which a star moves, and then the star itself. Compare A Lover's
Complaint, 23:
‘As they did battery to the spheres intend.”
Ib. eyne. See i. 1. 242.
IoA. Nature shows art. The quartos read ‘Nature shewes art’; the first
folio “Nature her shewes art” which was altered in the later folios to
“Nature here shews art,’ and by Malone to “Nature shews her art.’
Io9. what though 2 what then 2 what matters it? See note on As You
Like It, iii. 3. 4I (Clar. Press ed.).
IO4 NOTES. [ACT II. sc. I.
I 18. ripe not, grow not ripe, ripen not. So in As You Like It, ii. 7. 26:
“And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe.”
119. touching now the point of human skill, having reached the height of
discernment possible to man.
12o. My will, or desire, is guided by reason.
122. love's richest book. Compare the description of the County Paris
in Romeo and Juliet, i. 3.86:
‘And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.”
I 28. flout, mock. See iii. 2. 327, and Macbeth, i. 2.49 :
‘Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky
And fan our people cold.’
Compare Coriolanus ii. 3. 168:
* Thºrd Cit. Certainly
He flouted us downright.
First Cit. No, 'tis his kind of speech : he did not mock us.'
I 29. troth. See above, l. 36.
Ib. good sooth, in honest truth (A. S. soë). Compare Merchant of
Venice, ii. 6. 42:
“They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light.”
The full phrase is ‘in good sooth,” as in As You Like It, iii. 2. 4Io: “But,
in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosa-
lind is so admired 2’
I5o. prey, here used for the act of preying, as in Macbeth, iii. 2. 53 :
* Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse.’
I53. an if = if, as in The Tempest, v. I. I 17:
* This must crave,
An if this be at all, a most strange story.’
The quartos and folios read ‘ and if as usual.
154. of all loves 1 by everything that is loving I entreat you. See Merry
Wives of Windsor, ii. 2. 1 19: “But Mistress Page would desire you to send
her your little page, of all loves.” In Othello, iii. I. 13, where the folios
read “for loues sake,” the quarto has “ of all loves.”
Id, swoon. Spelt ‘Swoune’ in the earliest quarto; “sound” in the first folio,
and ‘Swound ’ in the rest.
I56. Either, a monosyllable. See ii. I. 32.
Act. III. sc. 1.) A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM, IO5
A CT III.
Scene I.
2. Pat, pat, just, exactly. Compare King Lear, i. 2. 146: “And pat he
comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy.’
Id. marvellous. The first quarto reads ‘marvailes,’ as in iv. I. 23, probably
to represent the vulgar pronunciation. In the same manner “wonders’ is
found for “wondrous’ in More's Utopia (ed. Arber), p. 136: “And when they
haue gotten it, they be wonders glad thereof.” Again, p. 141: ‘Engines for
warre they deuyse and inuent wonders wittelye.”
4. hawthorn brake, thicket of hawthorns. See ii. I. 227, and compare
Milton, Comus, 147:
“Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees.’
Ib. our tiring-house, or dressing room.
7. bully, a term of familiarity addressed by his companions to a jolly
blustering fellow. So the Host to Falstaff, in Merry Wives of Windsor,
i. 3.6: ‘Discard, bully Hercules; cashier.” Again, l. II; ‘Said I well, bully
Hector?’ It occurs besides only in Henry V, and probably was a slang word
which had come into use not long before 16oo. Florio (Ital. Dict.) gives,
‘Bullo, a swaggerer, a swash-buckler.’
12. By’r lakin, by our ladykin, or little lady. The same abbreviation is
found in The Tempest, iii. 3. I :
‘By’r lakin, I can go no further, sir.’
It occurs in a fuller form in Skelton’s Magnyfycence, 1. 1830 (i. 285):
“By our lakyn, syr, I haue ben a hawkyng for the wylde swan.’
In the first quarto it is spelt ‘Berlakin': in the second and in the folios
“Berlaken.”
Ib. parlous, perilous, dangerous. See As You Like It, iii. 2. 45: ‘Thou
art in a parlous state, shepherd.’
13. when all is done, after all. So Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3. 63;
Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 31 : “Excellent! why, this is the best fooling, when all
is done.’ And Macbeth, iii. 4.67:
“When all 's done,
You look but on a stool.”
I5. Not a whit. As has been remarked in the note to As You Like
It, iii. 2.42 (Clar. Press ed.), this is a redundant expression, since “not” itself
is a contraction of nåwiht or mawhit.
I6. seem to say. Compare Launcelot's language in The Merchant of
Venice, ii. 4. II : ‘An it shall please you to break up this, it shall seem to
signify.’
18, more better. This double comparative was common in Shakespeare's
IO6 MOTES. [ACT III.
time, and is suitable to Bottom as being rather exaggerated language, and not
because it was thought ungrammatical. Compare the Tempest, i. 2. I9,
“Nor that I am more better
Than Prospero.”
22. in eight and six, that is, in alternate verses of eight and six syllables'
each ; the common ballad metre.
25, afeard, afraid : though here used as a provincialism appropriate to
rustics, the word was otherwise in good use. Compare The Merchant of
Venice, ii. 7. 29:
‘And yet to be afeard of my deserving
Were but a weak disabling of myself.”
26. I promise you, I assure you. See line 179, and The Merchant of
Venice, iii. 5. 3: “Therefore, I promise ye, I fear you.’
27. you ought to consider with yourselves. In the folios there is only a
comma instead of a colon here, and the construction in this case is “ you
ought to consider with yourselves (that) to bring in &c.’
28. It appears from a pamphlet quoted by Malone in his note on this
passage (reprinted in Somers’ Tracts, ii. 179) that at the christening of
Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I, in 1594, a triumphal chariot was
brought in while the King and Queen were at dinner, drawn by “a black-
moor.’ ‘This chariot, which should have been drawne in by a lyon, (but
because his presence might have brought some feare to the nearest, or that
the sight of the lights and torches might have commoved his tameness) it
was thought meete that the Moor should supply that room.’
35. defect, for “effect.” Bottom’s blunders are generally very intelligible.
39. it were pity of my life, it were a sad thing for my life, that is, for me.
See v. I. 221. It would seem that in this expression of my life’ is either
all but superfluous or else a separate exclamation, as in The Merry Wives of
Windsor, i. 1. 4o: ‘Ha 1 o' my life, if I were young again, this sword should
end it.’ The phrase occurs again in Measure for Measure, ii. I. 77: ‘It is
pity of her life, for it is a naughty house.’ And in the same play, ii. 3. 42,
compare ‘’Tis pity of him,' = it is a sad thing for him.
41. Malone quotes from a collection of stories [made by Sir Nicholas
L’Estrange, according to a note of Sir F. Madden's] entitled Merry Passages
and Jeasts (MS. Harl. 6395, fol, 36 b); ‘There was a spectacle presented to
Q: Elizabeth vpon the water, and amongst others, Harr. Golding: was to
represent Arion vpon the Dolphin's backe, but finding his voice to be very
hoarse and Vnpleasant when he came to performe it, he teares of his Disguise,
and swears he was none of Arion not he, but eene honest Har. Goldingham ;
which blunt discoverie pleasd the Queene better, then if it had gone thorough
in the right way; yet he could order his voice to an instrument exceeding
well.' The reader of Kenilworth will remember that Scott has transferred
this story to ‘honest Mike Lambourne.’
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. Io?
53. lanthorn. This spelling is purposely left on account of the joke in
v. I. 231 : “This lanthorn doth the horned moon present.’
6o. present, act the part of. See iii. 2. I4, and The Tempest, iv. I. 167:
“When I presented Ceres.’
65. every mother's son. See i. 2.80.
67. brake. See 1. 4.
Ib. cue, a player's word; from Fr. queue, a tail. It technically denotes
the last words of a speech which give the next speaker the hint when to begin.
Hence it signifies generally the part an actor has to perform. See Othello,
i. 2. 83 : -
3 ‘Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it,
Without a prompter.”
7o. a play toward, or ready to be acted. Compare As You Like It,
v. 4. 35: ‘There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are
coming to the ark.’
73. odious. The same blunder reversed is put into Dogberry's mouth
in Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 5. I8: “Comparisons are odorous.”
76. awhile. Theobald reads “a whit’ to rhyme with “sweet.” Malone
supposes two lines to be lost, one rhyming with “sweet, the other with
“a while.”
84. juvenal. See Love's Labour's Lost, i. 2. 8: “How canst thou part
sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal?” The word was affectedly used
and appears to have been designedly ridiculed by Shakespeare.
92. Malone proposed to print the line thus:
“If I were, fair Thisby, I were only thine.’
97. To make up the line Johnson proposed to read “Through bog,
through mire &c.”; Ritson, ‘Through bog, through burn &c."
98. Sometime, sometimes. See King Lear, ii. 3. IQ :
“Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers.”
Ioo. The folios here insert the stage direction, ‘Enter Piramus with the
Asse head, which the quartos omit.
Ioff. Johnson proposed to add to Snout's speech, ‘An ass's head P’ in
order to give point to what Bottom says.
Ioé. you see an ass-head of your own. Bottom indulges in what appears
to have been a piece of familiar banter of the time, without knowing how
much it affected himself. Compare Mrs. Quickly's speech in The Merry
Wives of Windsor, i. 4. 134: ‘You shall have an fool's head of your
own.”
Io?. translated, transformed. See i. I. 191.
II.4. The ousel cock, the male blackbird. In the quartos and folios it is
spelt “woosell,” or “woosel,” and is probably the same as Fr. oiseau, of
which the old form was oisel. Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) gives, ‘Merle : m. A
Mearle, Owsell, Blackbird. Merle noir. The Blackbird, or ordinarie
Io8 NOTES. * [ACT III.
Owsell.’ Florio (Ital. Dict.) has, ‘Merlo, an Owsell, a Blackmacke, a
Merle, or Blacke-bird.’ In a note written by Douce he says, on the authority
of Lewin's English Birds, that the ousel differs from the blackbird by having
a white crescent on the breast. This is true of what is now called the ring
ousel. Willoughby (Ornithology, B. ii. ch. I6) says, “Of Blackbirds or
Ouzels England breeds and feeds three kinds, I. The Common Blackbird;
2. The Ring-Ouzels; 3. The Water-Ouzel.” In Breton's Arbor of Amor-
ous Devises [1587] occur the two following lines which Steevens quotes
from Capell’s copy in Trinity College Library:
“The chattering Pie, the Iay, and eke the Quaile,
The Thrustle-Cock that was so blacke of hewe.’
II.5. orange-tawny. See i. 2. 85. This is descriptive of the colour of
the bill of the male bird only, which is of a deep orange yellow. Compare
Drayton, Polyolbion, xiii. 58:
‘The Woosell neere at hand, that hath a golden bill.”
116. The throstle, or song-thrush. Compare The Merchant of Venice, i.
2.65 : ‘If a throstle sing, he falls straight a capering.’ Steevens quotes a
passage from Thomas Newton's Herball to the Bible (p. 200) to show that
the throstle and thrush are different birds : “There is also another sort of
myrte or myrtle which is wilde, whose berries the mauisses, throssels, owsels,
and thrushes, delite much to eate.” But it proves no more than that
‘throssel,” “mavis,’ and ‘thrush,’ were names indiscriminately used for the
same bird; for a mavis or mavish to this day is a thrush in Suffolk, and
Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) has, ‘Mauvis : f. A Mauis; a Throstle, or thrush.’
In Willoughby's Ornithology (B. ii. ch. 17, § 2) is a section on ‘The
Mavis, Throstle, or Song-Thrush.” Compare Drayton's Shepherd's Gar-
land, Eclogue iii. 67 :
‘The wosell and the throstle cock, chief musick of our May.”
12o. plain-song cuckoo, so called from his monotonous note. The plain-
song was the simple melody on which variations were made. Warton quotes
from Skelton [Works, ed. Dyce, i. 64]:
“But with a large and a longe
To kepe iust playne songe
Our chanters shalbe the cuckoue,
The culuer, the stockedowue.”
123. would set his wit to so foolish a bird, would match his wit against a
cuckoo's. So Troilus and Cressida, ii. I. 94: ‘Will you set your wit to a
fool's 2 ° -
127-129. In the folios and second quarto, line I 29 precedes line I26.
128. thy fair virtue's force, the power of thy beauty.
I34. gleek, jest, scoff. See Henry V, v. I. 78 : ‘I have seen you gleeking
and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice.’ The substantive occurs in
I Henry VI, iii. 2. I23:
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. IO9
‘Now where's the Bastard's braves, and Charles his gleeks?”
Staunton remarks upon this: ‘The all-accomplished Bottom is boasting of
his versatility. He has shown, by his last profound observation on the
disunion of love and reason, that he possesses a pretty turn for the didactic
and sententious; but he wishes Titania to understand that, upon fitting
occasion, he can be as waggish as he has just been grave.” But a ‘gleek’
is rather a satirical than a waggish joke, and in this vein Bottom flatters
himself he has just been rather successfully indulging. In Jamieson's Scottish
Dictionary ‘Glaik’ is defined as a glance of the eye, or a reflected gleam or
glance in general. Hence ‘to fling the glaiks in one's e'en’ is to dazzle the
eyes, throw dust in one's eyes, and so to cheat. Similarly ‘to play the
glaiks with one’ is to cheat; and ‘to get the glaiks’ is to be cheated.
With the derived sense of “glaik’ compare “glance’ in this play, ii.
I. 75.
I40. Still, ever, constantly. See iii. 2. 345, and The Merchant of Venice,
i. I. I.36:
‘And if it stand, as you yourself still do,
Within the eye of honour.”
Ib. tend upon, wait upon. So King Lear, ii. I. 97 :
*Was he not companion with the riotous knights
That tend upon my father ?’
I44, jewels from the deep. Steevens quotes from Richard III [i. 4.31]:
“Reflecting gems
Which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep.”
To which may be added what occurs a few lines before:
* Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea.”
I48. Moth. Mr. R. G. White regards this as equivalent to ‘Mote” and
prints it accordingly. No doubt “mote” is commonly though not uniformly
spelt ‘moth in the early editions of Shakespeare. For instance in Love's
Labour's Lost, iv. 3. I61 the first folio has :
‘You found his Moth, the King your Moth did see:
But I a Beame doe finde in each of three.”
See also the present play, v. I. 306.
I52, apricocks, the earlier and more correct spelling of ‘apricots.’ See
note on Richard II, iii. 4. 29:
‘Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks.’
The word has a curious history. In Latin the fruit was called praecoqua
(Martial, Epig. xiii. 46), or praecocia (Pliny, H. N. xv. II) from being
early ripe; Dioscorides (i. 165) called it in Greek trpaticóicia. Hence in
Arabic it became barquq or birqug, and with the article al-barquq or al-
birquq, Spanish albarcoque, Italian albricocco (Torriano), French abricot, and
English abricot, abricoct (Holland's Pliny, xv. 11), apricock, or apricot.
I IO NOTES. [ACT III.
Ib, dewberries, the fruit of the dewberry bush or blue bramble, of which
the botanical name is Rubus caesius. None of these fruits of course are ripe
when the action of the play is supposed to take place, and the same remark
applies to them as to the flowers in ii. 2. 250.
156. the fiery glow-worm's eyes. Johnson thought that Shakespeare's
observation was at fault, whereas he only uses the license of a poet. Com-
pare Herrick's Night-piece, to Julia (Hesperides, ii. 7, ed. I846):
“Her Eyes the Glow-worme lend thee.’
157. To have my love to bed and to arise, to conduct him to his bed and
to attend him when he rises. Compare Comedy of Errors, ii. 2. Io:
- ‘Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner ?’
And Taming of the Shrew, Ind. 2.39:
“Or wilt thou sleep? we'll have thee to a couch.”
See also 2 Kings xi. 15: ‘Have her forth without the ranges.”
161–164. The distribution of these speeches among the four fairies was
made by Capell. The quartos and folios make but three speakers, giving
“Haile, mortall, haile’ to the first.
165, &c. With this conversation of Bottom with the fairies Malone
compares Lyly's Maydes Metamorphosis, in which there is a dialogue
between some foresters and a troop of fairies:
‘Mopso. I pray, Sir, what might I call you ?
I Fai. My name is Penny.
Mop. I am sorry I cannot purse you.
Frisco. I pray you, Sir, what might I call you ?
2 Fai. My name is Cricket.
Fris. I would I were a chimney for your sake.’
168. I shall desire you of more acquaintance. The same construction is
found in The Merchant of Venice, iv. I. 402 :
‘I humbly do desire your grace of pardon.’
And in As You Like It, v. 4.56: “I desire you of the like.' Again in
Chapman's An Humerous Dayes Mirth (Works, i. 55): “I do desire you of
more acquaintance.”
I69. if I cut my finger, a cobweb being sometimes used to stanch blood.
172. Squash, an unripe peascod. Compare Twelfth Night, i. 5. I66:
“Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy ; as a squash
is before 'tis a peascod.’
177. your patience, your endurance, what you have endured. There is
no necessity to alter this, with Hanmer, to ‘your parentage,’ or with Farmer
to ‘your passions’; and Mason’s “I know you passing well’ is feeble.
Reed supposes the words to be spoken ironically, because mustard was
thought to excite to anger. But what follows shows that they are used in
their natural sense. The house of Mustard had endured much oppression
from the giant Ox-beef.
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT's DREAM. III
179. I promise you. See 1. 26.
180, 181. your more acquaintance. So the third and fourth folios.
The other early copies read “you more,’ and Porson conjectured “you of
more' as above, which was adopted by Dyce in his second edition.
186. love's. Pope's correction. The quartos and folios read “lovers,”
which Malone contended was the true reading and to be pronounced as a
monosyllable, as in Twelfth Night, ii. 4.66:
‘Sad true lover never find my grave.”
Steevens however maintained that here also “true lover’ was a mistake for
‘true love.’
Scene II.
3. in extremity, in the highest degree, to the utmost, excessively.
5. night-rule, night-order, revelry, or diversion. “Rule' is used in the
sense of conduct in Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 132 : “Mistress Mary, if you
prized my lady's favour at anything more than contempt, you would not
give means for this uncivil rule.’
7. close, secret, private, retired. So 2 Henry VI, ii. 2. 3:
“Give me leave
In this close walk to satisfy myself.”
9. patches, fools, foolish fellows; used as a familiarly contemptuous term,
as in The Merchant of Venice, ii. 5. 46, Shylock says of Launcelot:
‘The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder.’
It is probably derived from the Italian pazzo. See note on The Tempest,
iii. 2. 63 (Clar. Press ed.). Patch was the name of Cardinal Wolsey's
fool, whom he sent as a present to the king.
Ib. mechanicals, mechanics, artisans. Compare 2 Henry VI, i. 3. I96:
“Base dunghill villain and mechanical.’
13. thick-skin. So in Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 5. 2: ‘What wouldst
thou have, boor 2 what, thickskin 2' ;
Ib. barren, withess, stupid. Compare Twelfth Night, i. 5. 9o: ‘I marvel
your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal : I saw him put down
the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone.’
And Hamlet, iii. 2. 46: ‘For there be of them that will themselves laugh,
to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.”
Ib. sort, company, crew. See Richard II, iv. I. 246:
“And yet salt water blinds them not so much,
But they can See a sort of traitors here.”
And 2 Henry VI, iii. 2. 277:
“The lord ambassador
Sent from a sort of tinkers to the king.’
I4. Who Pyramus presented, played the part of Pyramus. See iii. I. 6o.
II 2. NOTES. [ACT III.
I5. enter'd in. In Shakespeare's time ‘enter’ was followed either by
“in” or ‘into.’ See iii. I. 77, and Hamlet, iii. 4. 95:
“These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears.”
Richard II, ii. 3. I60:
“ Unless you please to enter in the castle.’
I7. nole, a grotesque word for head, like pate, noddle. The A. S.
hnoll, knoll, the top of anything, is the same word. In the Wicliffite
versions of Genesis xlix. 8, where the earlier has ‘thin hondis in the skulles
of thin enemyes,” the later has “thin hondis schulen be in the mollis of thin
enemyes'; the Latin being cervicibus. Probably ‘nole,” like ‘noddle, was
the back part of the head and so included the neck. Cotgrave has
‘Occipital . . . belonging to the noddle; or hinder part of the head.’ The
following receipt is given in an English translation of Albertus Magnus de
Secretis Naturae, printed at London by William Copland : ‘If thou wilt that
a mans head seeme an Asse head. Take vp of the couering of an Asse, &
annoint the man on his head.” Much more elaborate directions are given in
Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, xiii. 19 (ed. I 584), quoted by Douce : “Cutt
off the head of a horsse or an asse (before they be dead) otherwise the vertue
or strength thereof will be the lesse effectuall, and make an earthen vessell
of fit capacitie to conteine the same, and let it be filled with the oile and fat
therof; couer it close, and dawbe it over with lome: let it boile over a soft
fier three daies continuallie, that the flesh boiled may run into oile, so as the
bare bones may be seene: beate the haire into powder, and mingle the same
with the oile; and annoint the heades of the standers by, and they shall
seeme to haue horsses or asses heads.’ A trick of this kind is attributed to
that notable conjurer Dr. Faustus, whose history (c. 43) is referred to by
Steevens and is printed in Thoms' Early English Prose Romances.
I9. mimic, actor, player. The first quarto has “Minnick,’ the second
‘Minnock, which Johnson thought the right reading. But both are
corruptions, the latter of the former, and the former of ‘mimick.” Malone
quotes from Decker's Guls Hornebooke (1609); ‘Draw what troop you can
from the stage after you; the mimicks are beholden to you ſor allowing
them elbow room.’ See also Herrick, The Wake (ii. 63):
* Morris-dancers thou shalt see,
Marian too in Pagentrie :
And a Mimick to devise
Many grinning properties.’
2O. eye, see ; as below, l. 4o, and Coriolanus, ii. I. 226: ‘Clambering the
walls to eye him.’
Ib. in sort, in company. See I. 18.
2 I. russet-patted. I have not hesitated to adopt Mr. Bennett's suggestion
(Zoological Journal, v. 496), communicated to me by Professor Newton,
to substitute “russet-patted,' or red-legged (Fr. & pattes rousses), for the old
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’s DREAM. II 3
reading ‘russet-pated,” which is untrue as a description of the chough, for it
has a russet coloured bill and feet but a perfectly black head.
25. at our stamp, at hearing the footsteps of the fairies, which were
powerful enough to ‘rock the ground ': see iv. I. 85. Theobald proposed
to read “at our stump,' and Johnson actually substituted ‘at a stump,'
quoting from Drayton's Nymphidia [ed. 1631, p. 184]:
“A stump doth trip him in his pace,
Downe comes poore Hob vpon his face,
And lamentably tore his case,
Amongst the Bryers and brambles.’
26. He, used indefinitely for ‘one,’ as in Sonnet xxix. 6:
“Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd.”
And The Merchant of Venice, iv. I. 54, 55:
‘Why he cannot abide a gaping pig,
Why he, a harmless necessary cat.”
32. translated. See iii. I. Ioy.
36. latch'd. In the other passages where “latch' is used by Shakespeare
it has the sense of ‘ catch,' from A. S. laeccan, or gelaccan. See Macbeth,
iv. 3, 196:
“But I have words
That would be howl'd out in the desert air,
Where hearing should not latch them.’
And Sonnet cKiii. 6, of the eye:
* For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth latch.”
Compare also Holland's Pliny, viii. 24, of the Ichneumon: “In fight he sets
up his taile, & whips about, turning his taile to the enemie, & therin
latcheth and receiveth all the strokes of the Aspis, and taketh no harme
thereby.” In the present passage ‘latch'd’ must signify caught and held fast
as by a charm or spell, like the disciples going to Emmaus (Luke xxiv. I6):
‘their eyes were holden, that they should not know him.’ Hammer inter-
prets it as ‘lick'd over,’ that is, smeared, anointed, from Fr. lecher, but there
appears to be no evidence for this meaning. On the other hand a ‘latch-
pan’ in Suffolk and Norfolk is a dripping-pan, which catches the dripping
from the meat; and Bailey gives ‘latching’ in the sense of catching,
infectious; as it is still used in the North of England. With this compere
“taking’ in King Lear, ii. 4. I66:
“Strike her young bones
You taking airs, with lameness l’
4O. of force, of necessity. Compare Julius Caesar, iv. 3. 203:
* Good reasons must, of force, give place to better.’
I
II.4. NOTES. - [ACT III.
41. close, so as to be unobserved. See above, l. 7, and Much Ado about
Nothing, iii. 3. IIo: ‘Stand thee close then under this penthouse.’
48. Being o'er shoes in blood. Steevens compares Macbeth, iii. 4. I36–138:
* I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’
Coleridge conjectured ‘plunge in knee deep,' which Phelps adopted. The
phrase “over shoes' in the sense of moderately deep occurs in The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, i. I. 24:
‘ Pro. That’s a deep story of a deeper love;
For he was more than over shoes in love.
Val. 'Tis true; for you are over boots in love,
And yet you never swum the Hellespont.”
50, so true unto the day. Compare Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2. I85:
“As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate.’
53. whole, solid. Compare Macbeth, iii. 4, 22:
‘I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock.’
57. so dead, so death-like. See 2 Henry IV, i. I. 71 :
* Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night.”
58. murder'd. The quartos have ‘murthered ' and ‘murdered,’ the
folios “murderer.”
61. sphere, orbit. See ii. I. 7. The epithet “glimmering,” or faintly
shining, seems in contradiction to ‘bright’ and ‘clear’ of the previous
line.
62. What's this to my Lysander ? what has this to do with him 2
68. Once, for once. So in The Tempest, iii. 2. 24 : “Moon-calf, speak
once in thy life, if thou beest a good moon-calf.”
Ib, tell true, speak truth. So in All's Well that Ends Well, i. 3. 225:
* Count. Wherefore ? tell true.
Hel. I will tell truth.”
And Love's Labour’s Lost, iv. 1. 18:
‘Here, good my glass, take this for telling true.”
So also ‘say true’ in Twelfth Night, ii. 5. 213; ‘speak true,” The Tempest,
iii. I. 7o.
7o. brave touch, fine stroke, heroic exploit.
7.I. a worm, a serpent. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. 243:
‘Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there,
That kills and pains not?’
72. doubler tongue. See ii. 2. 9.
Sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. II 5
74. a misprised mood, a mistaken humour or caprice; a temper of mind
arising from a mistake. “You spend your passion on,' that is, in giving
vent to this mistaken mood. So below, l. 9o, “misprision is “mistake.’
78. An if. See ii. 2. I53.
Ib. therefore, for that, thereby. So Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3. 20 :
“Often have you thanks therefore.”
80, 81. part I so: See me &c. This is Pope's correction of the reading
of the quartos and folios, which is ‘part I, see me no more Whether &c.’
with neither rhyme nor metre.
8I. whether, a monosyllable, as in i. I. 69.
85. sleep, misprinted “slippe’ in the first quarto, and “slip' in the second
and in the folios. Rowe corrected it.
87. tender, offer; keeping up the figure of debt and payment in the
previous lines, Compare The Tempest, ii. I. I94 :
“Do not omit the heavy offer of it:
It seldom visits sorrow.”
90. misprision, mistake. See above, l. 74, and Much Ado about Nothing,
iv. I. 187:
“There is some strange misprision in the princes.’
92. troth. See ii. 2. 42. ‘ One man holding troth,’ while one man
keeps faith.
93. confounding oath on oath, breaking one oath after another. For
“confound ’ in the sense of “ruin, destroy,” see Lucrece, I 202:
‘My shame be his that did my fame confound.’
96. fancy-sick, love-sick. See i. I. 155.
Ib. cheer, countenance; Fr. chère, Ital. ciera, or cera. Compare The
Merchant of Venice, iii. 2. 314:
‘Bid your friends welcome, shew a merry cheer.’
And I Henry VI, i. 2.48:
* Methinks your looks are sad, your cheer appall'd ';
that is, your countenance turned pale.
97. sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear. ‘Costs’ is here attracted
into the singular by the word ‘love’ which comes between it and its subject.
See notes on Hamlet, i. 2. 38, King Lear, iii. 6. 4, where the verb is plural
instead of singular. The following from The Comedy of Errors, v. I. 7o,
is exactly parallel to the present passage:
“The venom clamours of a jealous woman
Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.’
For the belief that sighs exhausted the blood, see Hamlet, iv. 7. 123:
“Like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.’
I 2
II6 NOTES. [ACT III.
And 2 Henry VI, iii. 2.61 :
‘Might liquid tears or heart-offending groans
Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life,
I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans,
Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs.'
IoI. the Tartar's bow. Compare Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 5:
‘Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath.’
Also Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, Bk. II. xiv. II : ‘Yet certain it
is that words, as a Tartar's bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of
the wisest.” The Tartars were famous for their skill in archery, like the
ancient Parthians. Douce quotes from Golding's translation of Ovid's
Met. x. [fol. 128 bl:
‘And though that she
Did fly as swift as Arrow from a Turkye bowe.’
Iog. Cupid’s archery. See ii. I. I65.
II 2. mistook. For this form of the participle see Hamlet, v. 2. 395.
II.4. fond. See ii. 2, 88. “Their fond pageant,’ the foolish spectacle
they present.
119. sport alone, to which nothing can be compared. See Twelfth Night,
i. I. I 5:
“So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.’
And Antony and Cleopatra, iv. 6. 39 :
‘I am alone the villain of the earth.”
I 24. vows so born, vows being so born.
127. badge of faith, in allusion to the badges of metal worn by servants
and marked with a device to indicate the family to which they belonged.
Compare Lucrece, IoS4:
“To clear this spot by death, at least I give
A badge of fame to slander's livery.”
And 2 Henry VI, V. I. 20 ! :
“And that I’ll write upon thy burgonet,
Might I but know thee by thy household badge.’
129. When truth kills truth. If Lysander's present protestations are true
they destroy the truth of his former vows to Hermia, and the contest
between these two truths, which in themselves are holy, must in the issue
be devilish and end in the destruction of both,
I33. Will even weigh, will counterbalance each other.
134. as light as tales, or idle words. There is the same contrast between
truths and tales in Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 2. I 36:
“Truths would be tales,
Where now half tales be truths.”
138. eyne. See i. i. 242.
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I 17
141. Taurus, a lofty range of mountains in Asia Minor.
142. Fann'd with the eastern wind. Compare Winter's Tale, iv, 4, 375:
“I take thy hand, this hand,
As soft as dove's down and as white as it,
Or Ethiopian’s tooth, or the fann’d snow that’s bolted
By the northern blasts twice o’er.’
144. This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss. Steevens compares
Antony and Cleopatra, iii. I3. I 25 :
‘My playfellow, your hand; this kingly seal
And plighter of high hearts.”
And Staunton justifies his adoption of ‘impress’ for ‘princess,' Mr. Collier's
conjecture, by a reference to Beaumont and Fletcher, Double Marriage,
iv. 3:
‘May I not take this hand, and on it sacrifice
The sorrows of my heart? white seal of virtue !’
The quotation illustrates the present passage, but the change is unnecessary.
I46. To set against me, attack me.
147, civil, polite, well-mannered. See ii. I. I52.
Ib. courtesy, good manners.
148. injury, not merely wrong, but insult. See ii. I. I.47.
15o. join in souls, combine heart and soul, join heartily. For this ex-
pression, the meaning of which is so clear, it has been proposed to read ‘join
in flouts,’ ‘join insolents,’ ‘join in soul,” “join, ill souls,’ ‘join in sport,” “join
insults.”
153. superpraise, overpraise, praise to excess.
157. a trim exploit, a pretty achievement ‘Trim’ is used many times
by Shakespeare ironically. Compare I Henry IV, v. I, 137: “What is
honour 2 A word. What is in that word honour 2 what is that honour 2
air. A trim reckoning !’
I59. sort, quality, kind. Compare 2 Henry IV, v. 2. 18:
‘How many nobles then should hold their places,
That must strike sail to spirits of vile sort l’
Cotgrave has ‘Gens de mise. Persons of worth, sort, qualitie.”
160, 16I. extort A poor soul's patience, wrest it from her, make her impa-
tient. Compare Much Ado about Nothing, v. I. Io.2 ; “We will not wake
your patience.” -
I69. I will none, will none of her, desire her not. Compare Romeo and
Juliet, iii. 5. I 4o:
‘Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.”
The full phrase occurs in 2 Henry IV, iii. 2. 271 : “And for your part, Bull-
calf, grow till you come unto it: I will none of you.’
I7I. to her, in regard to her my heart was but as a sojourner. Johnson
read “with her.' Delius suggests that ‘to her as guest-wise’ is equivalent
II.8 NOTES. [ACT III.
to “as a guest to her.” There are other instances of ‘to' in Shakespeare in
a sense not far different from that in the present passage. Compare Measure
for Measure, i. 2. I86 :
“Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends
To the strict deputy.”
Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. 1. 57:
“To Milan let me hear from thee by letters.”
Comedy of Errors, iv. I. 49:
‘You use this dalliance to excuse
Your breach of promise to the Porpentine.’
In all these cases the sense is quite clear, but there is a confusion in the
construction. In the Devonshire dialect ‘to' is frequently used for ‘at,’
and it is a common Americanism.
I75. aby it, pay for it, atone for it. See below, l. 335, and Spenser, ,
Fairy Queen, iv. I. 53:
‘Yet thou, false squire, his fault shalt deare aby.'
The folios read ‘abide’ in both passages, as does the second quarto here.
There is another word ‘aby,” in an entirely different sense, which is etymo-
logically the same as “abide’; but our word is from A.S. abicgan, to re-
deem. And “abide,” which is synonymous with the former, is often
confounded with the latter.
188. oes, circles, orbs. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2.81 : “The
little O, the earth.” Steevens quotes John Davies of Hereford’s Microcosmus,
I605, p. 233: *
“Which silver oes and spangles over-ran.’
Circular discs of metal which were used for ornaments were called ‘oes.’
See Bacon, Essay xxxvii. p. 157 (ed. Wright): “And Oes, and Spangs, as
they are of no great Cost, so they are of most Glory.’
I95. Injurious, insulting. See ii. I. I.47.
I96. contrived, plotted. Compare As You Like It, iv. 3. I35:
‘Was’t you that did so oft contrive to kill him **
200. chid. So in 1. 312. Shakespeare also uses ‘chidden' as the parti-
ciple of ‘chide.” So Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. I. 12: “And yet I was
last chidden for being too slow.’
20I. O, is all forgot? The verse is defective, as is frequently the case
when there is a pause in the middle. To mend it the second and later folios
read “O, and is all forgot?” Malone, ‘O, is all now forgot?” Reed, “O,
now is all forgot?” Mr. Spedding proposes the slightest change, ‘O, is it all
forgot?” But the broken line is suitable to the hurried ejaculations of Hermia.
202. childhood innocence. Compare The Merchant of Venice, i. I. I.44:
* I urge this childhood proof.”
203. two artificial gods, two gods exercising their creative skill in art; in
this case the art of embroidery.
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I 19
2O4. needles, a monosyllable; for which Steevens substituted the old form
‘neelds.” But see Lucrece, 319 :
‘And griping it, the needle his finger pricks.’
And King John, v. 2. I 57:
“Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,
Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts
To fierce and bloody inclination.’
2O6. warbling of one song. See i. I. 231, Abbott, Shakespeare Grammar,
§ 178, and note on King Lear, ii. I. 39 (Clar. Press ed.).
208, incorporate. See v. I. 399.
213. Two of the first, like coats in heraldry. The quartos and folios read
‘life’ for “like,” which Theobald substituted at the suggestion of Folkes.
Shakespeare borrows the language of heraldry, in which, when a tincture has
been once mentioned in the description of a coat of arms, it is always after-
wards referred to according to the order in which it occurs in the descrip-
tion; and a charge is accordingly said to be “ of the first,’ ‘of the second,’
&c., if its tincture be the same as that of the field which is always mentioned
first, or as that of the second or any other that has been specified. Hence
Douce's explanation is the correct one: ‘Helen says, “we had two seeming
bodies but only one heart.” She then exemplifies her position by a simile—
“we had two of the first, i.e. bodies, like the double coats in heraldry that
belong to man and wife as one person, but which, like our single heart, have
but one crest.” "
215. rent, the old form of ‘rend.’ Compare A Lover's Complaint, 55:
‘This said, in top of rage the lines she rents.’
It occurs also in several passages of the Authorised Version of the Bible, but
has been modernised in later editions, and is only left in Jer. iv. 30.
220. passionate. So the folios. The quartos omit.
225. even but now, a redundant phrase, as in Hamlet, i. I. 81.
237. Ay, do, persever. The first quarto reads “I doe. Persever;' which
Hunter maintains is the true reading, making Helena refer to what Hermia
had said, ‘I understand not,’ &c. To which Helena replies, “I do. Persever,’
&c. The reading of the second quarto and of the folios is ‘I, do, persever,’
which is the same as that adopted in the text, “I” being the common form
of ‘Ay’ in the printing of Shakespeare's time.
Ib. persever, with the accent on the second syllable, as uniformly in
Shakespeare. Compare King John, ii. I. 421 :
“Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings.”
Ib. Sad. See ii. I. 51, iv. I. 94.
238. Make mouths upon me, make faces at me in scorn. See Hamlet, iv.
4, 50 :
‘Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event.”
I 20 NOTES. [ACT III.
239, hold the sweet jest up, keep it going, carry it on. Compare Merry
Wives of Windsor, v. 5. Io9:
“I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.’
And Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3. 126; “He hath ta'en the infection:
hold it up;’ that is, keep up the sport.
240, well carried, well managed. Compare Much Ado about Nothing,
iv. I. 2 I 2 :
‘Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf
Change slander to remorse.’
242. such an argument, a subject for such merriment. For ‘argument’
in this sense see Much Ado about Nothing, i. 1. 258: “Well, if ever thou
dost fall from this faith, thou wilt prove a notable argument.’
250. prayers. The reading of Theobald. The quartos and folios have
“praise.” Capell, at Theobald’s suggestion, read “prays,’ a noun formed
from the verb in accordance with Shakespeare's usage. So ‘entreats’ for
‘entreaties, ‘exclaims’ for ‘exclamations.”
252. by that, by my life.
257. Ethiope. Hermia, like Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost, was a brun-
ette, as we learn from the banter that goes on with Biron, iv. 3. 266–268:
* Dum. To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.
Long. And since her time are colliers counted bright.
Ring. And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack.’
257, 8. No, no; he'll . . . Seem, &c. This is substantially the reading
of the quartos; the first has
* No, no; heele
Seeme to breake loose,’ &c.
The second,
‘No, no, hee 'I seeme to breake loose,'
as one line. The folios, also as one line, read,
‘No, no, sir, seem to break loose.”
Other readings which have been proposed are Pope's,
‘No, no, he'll seem
To break away’;
Capell's,
‘No, no, he’ll not come.—
Seem to break loose;’
Malone's, combining the quartos and folios,
‘No, no ; he'll—sir,
Seem to break loose';
which was slightly modified by Steevens,
‘No, no ; sir: he will
Seem to break loose.”
Unless a line has fallen out, the reading in the text gives as good a sense as
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I 2, I
any. Demetrius first addresses Hermia, and then breaks off abruptly to
taunt Lysander with not showing much eagerness to meet him. Delius
follows the folios, ‘No, no, Sir :-Seem,” &c., and regards the whole as
addressed to Lysander, the first words being a remonstrance with him for
his insulting language to Hermia.
259. you are a tame man, a spiritless, cowardly fellow. Compare Merry
Wives of Windsor, iii. 5. I53: ‘Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to
be what I would not shall not make me tame.’
Ib. go, be off with you : an exclamation of impatience. See Henry V, v.
I. 73: ‘Go, go; you are a counterfeit cowardly knave.’ And Romeo and
Juliet, i. 5.88: ‘You are a princox, go.”
26o. thou cat, used as a term of contempt, as in Coriolanus, iv. 2. 34:
‘’Twas you incensed the rabble:
Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth
As I can of those mysteries which heaven
Will not have earth to know.”
27.2. what news? what has happened? what is the matter? Compare i.
I. 21 : “What's the news with thee?’ And Hamlet, i. 2, 42:
“And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?”
Singer quite unnecessarily reads ‘what means my love?’
274. erewhile, a short time since, just now. So in As You Like It, ii.
4. 89: “That young Swain that you saw here but erewhile.”
279. An Alexandrine. Pope reads ‘doubt” for ‘of doubt.”
282. juggler, a trisyllable.
Ib. cankerblossom is generally taken to mean a blossom eaten by a canker,
having a show of fairness but hollow within. But it is probably a compound
formed like “kill-courtesy’ (ii. 2.77), “kill-joy,' and is equivalent to ‘blossom-
cankerer'; Hermia comparing Helena to a canker that has stealthily eaten
into and destroyed Lysander's love for her.
286. touch, delicate feeling. Compare Richard III, i. 2. 71 :
“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.”
And see note on The Tempest, v. 1. 21.
29O. compare, comparison. So Venus and Adonis, 8:
“The field's chief flower, sweet above compare.”
For examples of verbs formed from substantives see note on ‘exclaims,”
Richard II, i. 2. 2.
292. personage, figure. See Twelfth Night, i. 5. I64: ‘Of what personage
and years is he?’
296. thou painted maypole. Stow, in his Survey of London (ed. Thoms,
p. 54), gives an account of the great maypole in Cornhill, which when set
up on the south side of the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, was higher
than the church steeple. Steevens quotes from Stubbes' Anatomie of Abuses
(p. 94, ed. I585): “But their cheefestiewell they bring from thence is their
I 2.2 INOTES. [ACT III.
Maie poole, whiche they bring home with greate veneration, as thus. They
haue twentie, or fourtie yoke of Oxen, euery Oxe hauyng a sweete Nosegaie
of flowers, tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these Oxen drawe home this
Maie poole (this stinckyng Idoll rather) which is couered all ouer with
Flowers, and Hearbes bounde rounde aboute with stringes, from the top to
the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours, with twoo or
three hundred men, women, and children followyng it, with greate deuotion.’
3oo. curst, spiteful, mischievous; used of a woman who is a scold. So
in The Taming of the Shrew, i. I. 186: “Her eldest sister is so curst and
shrewd." Also applied to animals, as in Much Ado about Nothing, ii. I. 22 :
‘For it is said, God sends a curst cow short horns.” Cotgrave defines
* Meschant. Wicked, impious, vngracious ... also, curst, mischieuous, harsh,
froward.”
302. a right maid, a true maid. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, iv. I2.
28: ‘Like a right gipsy.” q
3Io. your stealth, your stealing away, going secretly. Compare iv. I. I59,
and Sonnet lxxvii. 7:
‘Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know
Time's thievish progress to eternity.’
3I4. so, provided that. See The Merchant of Venice, iii. 2, 197:
“With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife.”
317. fond. See ii. 2. 88.
323. Shrewd, mischievous, especially with the tongue. See ii. I. 33, and
Much Ado about Nothing, ii. I. 20: ‘Thou wilt never get thee a husband,
if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.”
324. vixen, properly a she-fox; hence applied to an ill-tempered spiteful
woman. The form of the word is especially interesting as being the only
instance in which the feminine termination -en has been preserved. See
Morris, English Accidence, c. x. § 73. It occurs in Anglo-Saxon as fixen,
and in German as füchsin.
327. flout. See ii. 2. I28.
329. minimus, smallest thing.
Ib. hindering knot-grass. The common knot-grass (polygonum avicu-
lare) was formerly believed to have the power of checking the growth of
children. See Beaumont and Fletcher, the Coxcomb, ii. 2:
“We want a boy extremely for this function,
Kept under for a year with milk and knot-grass.’
And The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ii. 2: ‘The child’s a fatherless child,
and say they should put him into a strait pair of gaskins, ’twere worse
than knot-grass; he would never grow after it.’
330. Pou bead. As beads were generally black, there is a reference here
to Hermia’s complexion as well as to her size.
333. intend, pretend. Demetrius does not think Lysander in earnest.
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I23
Compare Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 2. 35: ‘Intend a kind of zeal both
to the prince and Claudio.' And The Taming of the Shrew, iv. I. 216:
‘Ay, and amid this hurly I intend
That all is done in reverend care of her.”
335. aby. See 1. I75.
337. Of mine or thine. Compare The Tempest, ii. I. 28: “Which, of he
or Adrian, for a good wager, first begins to crow 2° And see the note on
that passage (Clar. Press ed.).
338. cheek by jole, side by side, close together, as the cheek to the jole or
jaw. ‘Jole’ is from A. S. ceaft.
339. coil, disturbance, turmoil. See The Tempest, i. 2. 207:
‘Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil
Would not infect his reason 2'
Ib. 'long of you, owing to you. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, ii. I. I 19:
‘'Tis 'long of you that spur me with such questions.”
340. I repeated for emphasis, as in Two Gentlemen of Verona, v. 4. I 32:
‘Sir Valentine, I care not for her, I.’
And Romeo and Juliet, iii. I. 58:
‘I will not budge for no man's pleasure, I.’
34I. curst. See l. 3OO.
345. Still. See iii. I. I4 I.
35 I. 'nointed, anointed. So in Winter's Tale, iv. 4. 813 : “He has a
son, who shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey, set on the
head of a wasp’s nest.’
352. sort, turn out, result. Compare Much Ado about Nothing, iv. I. 242 :
‘And if it sort not well, you may conceal her.’
And 2 Henry VI, i. 2. Io'ſ :
“Sort how it will, I shall have gold for all.’
353. As, inasmuch as.
356. welkin, sky; A. S. wolcen, cloud. See Lucrece, I 16:
“No cloudy show of stormy blustering weather
Doth yet in his fair well-in once appear.”
357. Acheron, the river of hell in classical mythology, supposed by
Shakespeare to be a pit or lake. Compare Macbeth, iii. 5. I5:
‘And at the pit of Acheron
Meet me i' the morning.’
Titus Andronicus, iv. 3. 44:
“I’ll dive into the burning lake below
And pull her out of Acheron by the heels.”
359. As, that. Compare Hamlet, ii. I. 95 (Clar. Press ed.):
“He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk’;
where the quartos read ‘As, the folios ‘That.”
I 24. NOTES. [ACT III.
36o. sometime. See ii. I. 38; iii. I. 98.
36I. wrong, reproach, insult. Compare King John, iii. I. 200 :
“Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these wrongs.”
364, death-counterfeiting sleep. Compare Cymbeline, ii. 2. 31 :
“O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her l’
367. virtuous property, healthful, beneficial quality. Compare 2 Henry IV,
iv. 5. 76:
“Culling from every flower
The virtuous sweets.”
For ‘virtue’ in the sense of ‘power, efficacy,” see Romeo and Juliet, ii. 3.
13, of the herbs gathered by Friar Laurence,
“Many for many virtues excellent.’
And The Merchant of Venice, v. I. 199:
“If you had known the virtue of the ring.’
Compare also Milton, Il Penseroso, II3:
“And who had Canacé to wife,
That own'd the virtuous ring and glass.’
And Comus, 62 I :
* Well skill’d
In every virtuous plant and healing herb.’
37.2. wend, go. See Measure for Measure, iv. 3. 150 : ‘Wend you with
this letter.” And Comedy of Errors, i. I. I58, where it is used as in the
present passage for the rhyme:
“Hopeless and helpless doth Ægeon wend,
But to procrastinate his lifeless end.”
374. Whiles, while. See As You Like It, ii. 7. 128.
Ib. employ. So the first quarto: the second has “apply,” and the folios
“imply.”
379. night's swift dragons. Compare Cymbeline, ii. 2.48:
* Swift, swift, you dragons of the night !”
And Troilus and Cressida, v. 8, 17:
‘The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth.”
Milton perhaps had this passage in his mind when he wrote, Il Penseroso, 59:
“While Cynthia checks her dragon-yoke
Gently o'er the accustom'd oak.’
On which Keightley remarks it is wrong mythology, ‘for Demeter, or Ceres,
alone had a dragon yoke.’ Drayton also (The Man in the Moon, 431) says
that Phoebe
“Calls downe the Dragons that her chariot drawe.”
380. Aurora's harbinger, the morning star. Douce quotes from Milton's
Song on May Morning what is evidently a reminiscence of this :
‘Now the bright morning-star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East.’
sc. 2.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I 25
381. See Hamlet, i. I. I50–156.
383. The bodies of those who had committed suicide were buried in
crossways, with a stake driven through them.
Ib. floods, rivers; or perhaps any large bodies of water as opposed to land.
The word is used of the sea in this play ii. I. I27, and in the sense of “river'
it is found in Joshua xxiv. 15: ‘The gods which your fathers served that were
on the other side of the flood'; that is, the river Euphrates. Steevens says the
ghosts of self-murderers and of those who were drowned ‘were condemned
(according to the opinion of the ancients) to wander for a hundred years, as
the rites of sepulture had never been regularly bestowed on their bodies.’
384, their wormy beds. Milton remembered this in his lines On the Death
of a Fair Infant, 3.I :
“Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed.’
385. upon. For the transposition of the preposition compare All's Well
that Ends Well, iii. 4. 6 :
‘That barefoot plod I the cold ground upon.’
387, black-brow’d night. Compare King John, v. 6. I 7:
“Why, here walk I in the black brow of night,
To find you out.’
389. the morning's love. Cephalus, with whom Oberon had hunted.
Compare Milton, Il Penseroso, I 24, of the Morn:
* Not trick'd and frounced, as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt.”
402. drawn, that is, with sword drawn. Compare The Tempest, ii. 1.
308: “Why are you drawn 2'
416. The folios here give the stage direction, ‘Shifting places.’
42 I. Ho, ho, ho! A taunting cry, which, according to Ritson in his note
on the passage, is uttered by Puck as his usual exclamation, having forgotten
the part he was assuming. It is quite true that in an old ballad on Puck,
printed by Percy (Reliques, iii. Bk. ii. 25), the stanzas all end with ‘Ho, ho,
ho!’ but there is nothing so exceptional in the cry as to make it inappropriate
to Puck in an assumed character.
422. Abide me, wait for me, that we may encounter. From this sense of
‘waiting for’ comes the further sense of awaiting the issue of an event, as
in 2 Henry IV, ii. 3. 36:
“To abide a field
Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur's name
Did seem defensible.”
And Cymbeline, iii. 4. I86 :
‘This attempt
I am soldier to, and will abide it with
A prince's courage.”
I 26 NOTES. [ACT Iv.
Ib. well I wot, well I know. See iv. I. I63.
426. Thou shalt buy this dear. Johnson conjectured ‘’by’ for ‘aby,' as
in ll. 175, 335, but the phrase, if a corruption, was so well established in
Shakespeare's time as to make a change unnecessary. Compare, for in-
stance, I Henry IV, v. 3. 7 :
“The Lord of Stafford dear to day hath bought
Thy likeness.’
And 2 Henry VI, ii. I. Ioo:
‘Too true; and bought his climbing very dear.”
Besides, the two words are etymologically connected. See note on 1. I 75.
432. Shine comforts, cause comforts to shine. Theobald reads “Shine,
comforts,’ &c. Or it may be simply “let comforts shine,’ &c.; just as below
we have “And sleep . . . steal me awhile,’ &c.
433. That I may back. For the omission of the verb of motion before
‘to' or an adverb of direction see ii. I. 164, and iv. 1. 22: ‘I must to the
barber's, mounsieur.” Also note on Hamlet, iii. 3. 4.
439. curst. See 1. 3oo.
461. Steevens refers to Heywood's Epigrams on Three Hundred Proverbs,
I 2 :
“All shalbe well, Iacke shall haue Gill :
Nay nay, Gill is wedded to wyll.’
See also Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2.805:
‘Our wooing doth not end like an old play;
Jack hath not Jill.’ -
“The man shall have his mare again” seems to have been a proverbial ex-
pression, implying that all would be right in the end. Compare Fletcher,
The Chances, iii. 4:
‘Fred. How now 2 How goes it?
john. Why, the man has his mare again, and all's well, Frederic.”
A CT IV.
Scene I.
I. Johnson remarks, “I see no reason why the fourth Act should begin
here, when there seems no interruption of the action.”
2. amiable, lovely. Compare Psalm lxxxiv. 1, “How amiable are thy
tabernacles 1’ And Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 250 :
“Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind,
Hung amiable.”
The word is now used only of persons.
SC. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 127
Ib. coy, coax, caress. Steevens quotes from Warner's Albion's England,
vi. 3o:
“And whilst she coyes his sooty Cheekes, or curles his sweaty top.’
And from Golding's Ovid, vii. (fol. 79 b, ed. I603):
‘Their dangling Dew-laps with his hand he coyd vnfearefully.
The verb is formed from the adjective, which is itself derived from the
French coy or quoy, the representative of the Latin quietus.
15. Overflown, flooded and drowned. Compare Titus Andronicus, iii. I.
22O :
3 “Then must my earth with her continual tears
Become a deluge, overflow’d and drown'd.’
18. neaf, fist; spelt in the quartos and first folios neafe': corrupted in
the later folios to ‘newfe,” “newse,’ and finally ‘news.” In 2 Henry IV,
ii. 4. 200, it occurs again: ‘Sweet knight, I kiss thy neif.’ It is found in
Early English in the form neve’ or ‘neſe.’ See Havelok the Dane, 2405:
- “With pe neue he robert sette
Biforn be teth a dint ful strong.’
The Old Norse word is hneft (Swedish mófve ; Dan. naeve). See Jamie-
son’s Scottish Dictionary, s. v. Neive.
19. leave your courtesy; that is, put on your hat, be covered. Compare
Love's Labour's Lost, v. I. Io9 : ‘I do beseech thee, remember thy
courtesy: I beseech thee, apparel thy head.’
22. Cobweb. Grey says, “Without doubt it should be Cavalero Peas-
blossom ; as for cavalero Cobweb, he had just been dispatched upon a
perilous adventure.”
Ib. I must to the barber's. See iii. 2. 433.
23. marvellous. See note on iii. I. 2.
27. the tongs and the bones. After this the folios have the stage direc-
tion, “ Musicke Tongs, Rurall Musicke.”
3I. a great desire to. The same construction is found in Pericles, iv.
I. 44 :
“Well, I will go;
But yet I have no desire to it.'
Ib. a bottle of hay, a bundle or truss of hay. The common proverb is
well known of the search for anything hard to find, that it is like looking
for a needle in a bottle of hay. Baret (Alvearie, s. v.) has, ‘a Bottle of
hay. Fasciculus vel manipulus foeni': and again, ‘To binde vp hay in
bottles. Foenum in manipulos vincire & colligare.’ Compare Florio (Ital.
Dict.): ‘Gregne, sheafes of corne, handfuls of flowers, wads of straw, bottles
of hay.’ And Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.): " Boteau, A bundle, or bottle, as of
hay, &c.’
34. Steevens reads “hoard’ as a disyllable, for the sake of the metre which
such a reading utterly destroys. Hanmer has “fetch thee thence’ and Sidney
128 - NOTES, [ACT Iv.
Walker suggested “fetch thee the new nuts.” But in the distinct enunciation
of “fetch thee' the time of a syllable is gained, as in the case of ‘moon's'
(ii. 1. 7), and ‘night’s ’ (iv. I. 95).
37. exposition, for ‘disposition.’
39. be all ways away, disperse yourselves in every direction. The quartos
and folios have “always’ variously spelt, which Theobald corrected to “all
ways.”
4o. So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle &c. Strictly speaking
“woodbine” and ‘honeysuckle” are the same, and in consequence various
readings and modes of punctuating this passage have been proposed. War-
burton suggested,
“So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle,
Gently entwist the maple; ivy so
Enrings,’ &c.
Upton would read “woodrine,” that is, the bark of the wood, instead of
“woodbine'; and Steevens says, “Were any change necessary, I would not
scruple to read weedbind, i.e. smilax.’ Johnson thought that “woodbine’
was the plant, and “honeysuckle’ the flower, and the same distinction is
apparently made in Baret's Alvearie, ‘Woodbin that beareth the Honie-
suckle.” But this last-quoted passage perhaps only indicates that “wood-
bine’ was a name for many climbing plants, one of which was the honey-
suckle. As a matter of fact it is to this day used in Suffolk to denote the
large white convolvulus, and Boswell is correct in saying that “in many of
our counties, the woodbine is still the name for the great convolvulus.’
Gifford quotes a very parallel passage from Ben Jonson's Vision of Delight:
* Behold
How the blue bindweed doth itself infold
With honeysuckle !’ -
The word only occurs in two other passages of Shakespeare, viz. in the
present play, ii. I. 251, where it is called ‘luscious woodbine,’ an epithet
which is appropriate to the honeysuckle; and in Much Ado about Nothing,
iii. I. 30, where ‘the woodbine coverture' is the same as
“The pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter.’
Supported by these instances, Steevens interprets the present passage thus:
“So the woodbine, i. e. the sweet honeysuckle, doth gently entwist the barky
fingers of the elm, and so does the female ivy enring the same fingers.' But the
word “entwist’ seems to describe the mutual action of two climbing plants,
twining about each other, and I therefore prefer to consider the woodbine
and the honeysuckle as distinct, the former being the convolvulus, rather
than to adopt a construction and interpretation which do violence to the
reader's intelligence. Mr. R. G. White finds no difficulty, because in
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I29
America what are called the woodbine and honeysuckle are commonly found
twining round each other; but it appears from his description that he calls
woodbine what we call honeysuckle, and that the honeysuckle of America
is the trumpet honeysuckle, which is not indigenous in this country, and
was unknown in Shakespeare's time. It is moreover instructive to observe,
as shewing how loosely the word is used, that the term “woodbine” in
America is sometimes applied to the Virginia creeper. See Bartlett's Dic-
tionary of Americanisms.
Ib. the female ivy, so called because it is as it were married to the elm ;
as Catullus says of the vine, lxii. 54:
‘Ulmo conjuncta marito.”
Compare Fairfax's Tasso, iii. 75:
* The married Elme fell with his fruitfull vine.”
And Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 215–217:
“Or they led the vine
To wed her elm ; she spoused about him twines
Her marriageable arms.’
47. favours, the reading of the first quarto and last folio: the others have
“savours.” For ‘favours' see ii. I. I 2.
50. rounded, encircled. Compare Richard II, iii. 2. 161 ;
* The hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king.’
And Macbeth, iv. 1.88: ‘the round and top of sovereignty.’
53. Orient pearls, bright, shining pearls. So The Passionate Pilgrim, I33:
s Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded !’
The epithet appears to be originally applied to the pearl and other gems as
coming from the orient or east, and to have acquired the general sense of
bright and shining from the objects which it most commonly describes.
Compare Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 546: -
* Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
With orient colours waving.’
54. flowerets', spelt ‘flouriets’ in the quartos and folios.
59, her fairy, her chief attendant fairy. See ii. I. 61. Dyce, here as in
the former passage, reads ‘fairies.’ It may be that in ii. I. 61 Titania gives
the order to the fairy who was in immediate attendance, and that Capell is
right in supposing the change unnecessary.
65, the other, plural: as in Venus and Adonis, IIo2 :
‘The birds such pleasure took,
That some would sing, some other in their bills
Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries.”
And The Merchant of Venice, i. I. 54:
“And other of such vinegar aspect.”
66. May all, that is, they may all, &c. See v. I. 69, Abbott, $ 399.
R
I 30 - NOTES. - [ACT Iv,
72. Dian’s bud, if it has a botanical existence at all, may be, as Steevens
suggests, the bud of the Agnus castus, or Chaste Tree, of which it is said in
Macer's Herball, “The vertue of this herbe is, that he wyll kepe man and
woman chaste. But it is more probably a product of Shakespeare's imagi-
nation, which had already endued ‘Cupid’s flower,’ the heart’s ease, with
qualities not recognized in botany. Steevens's suggestion is indeed supported
by Chaucer ; see The Flower and the Leaf, 472–5:
“That is Diane, goddesse of chastite,
And for because that she a maiden is,
In her hond the braunch she beareth this,
That agnus castus men call properly.”
Ib. o'er, Thirlby's correction, adopted by Theobald. The quartos and
folios have ‘or.”
81. Than common sleep . . . sense. The quartos and first two folios read
‘sleepe: of all these, fine the sense’; which was further altered in the third
and fourth folios to ‘sleep: of all these find the sense'; and by Rowe to
‘sleep. Of all these fine the sense.” The correction is Theobald's, and was
made independently by Thirlby, “these five ’ being the five sleepers.
85. rock the ground, like a cradle.
86. are new in amity, are again friends. It is difficult to say whether ‘new’
is here an adjective or adverb. Probably the latter, as in Hamlet, ii. 2. 5 Io:
“Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work.’
For ‘amity’ (Fr. amitié) see The Merchant of Venice, iii. 2. 3o:
‘There may as well be amity and life
'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.’
89. prosperity. So the first quarto. The other early copies have
“posterity,” which Monck Mason defends by referring to Oberon's blessing in
v. I. 4Io &c. But see ii. I. 73.
94, sad, grave, serious. See iii. 2. 237.
95. night's, a disyllable, as ‘moon’s’ in ii. I. 7, and ‘earth’s ’ in The
Tempest, iv. I. IIo:
‘Earth's increase, foison plenty.’
The first quarto reads “nights, the second quarto and the folios ‘the
night’s.’
103. our observation. The “observance to a morn of May” spoken of in
i. I. I67. See below, l. 131.
Io4. the vauard, the vanguard (Fr. avantgarde), or advanced guard of
an army, and hence, the early part of the day. In this metaphorical sense
it occurs in 2 Henry IV, i. 2. I99: “And we that are in the vaward of our
youth, I must confess, are wags too.” For the literal meaning see Henry V,
1W. 3. I 3O :
‘My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg
The leading of the vaward.'
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’s DREAM. I31
Io8. We will, fair queen, up &c. See iii. 2. 433.
II 2. they bay'd the bear. Hanmer substituted ‘boar” for ‘bear”; but the
references to ‘bear’ and “bear-hunting ' in Shakespeare are sufficiently
numerous to justify the old reading, without going into the naturalist's
question whether there are bears in Crete. See for instance Venus and
Adonis, 884: -
‘For now she knows it is no gentle chase,
But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud.’
Besides, according to Pliny (viii. 83), there were neither bears nor boars in
the island. We may therefore leave the natural history to adjust itself, as
well as the chronology which brings Cadmus with Hercules and Hippolyta
into the hunting field together. To ‘bay,’ which signifies to bark, or bark at,
is used technically for ‘to bring to bay,’ that is, to drive the animal pursued
to turn upon his pursuers. Compare Julius Caesar, iii. I. 204 : ‘Here wast
thou bay’d, brave hart.' And as ‘graft’ is a corruption of ‘graff,” and
‘hoist’ of ‘hoise,’ so “bait ’ may be a corruption of ‘bay.” Cotgrave has
‘Abbay: m. a barking, or baying of a dogge’: and “Aux derniers abbois.
At his last gaspe, or, breathing his last; also, put to his last shifts, driuen to
vse his last helpes: A metaphor from hunting: wherein a Stag is sayd,
Rendre les abbois, when wearie of running, he turnes vpon the hounds, and
holds them at, or puts them to, a bay.”
II 3. hounds of Sparta. The Spartan hounds were celebrated for their
swiftness and quickness of scent. Compare Virgil, Georgics, iii. 405:
“Veloces Sparta2 catulos acremgue Molossum
* Pasce sero pingui.’ -
And see Sophocles, Ajax, 8; Callimachus, Dian. 94. Compare also the
description of Actaeon's dogs in Ovid's Metamorphoses, iii. (Golding's trans-
lation, ed. I 603, fol. 33 a):
“His Hounds espyde him where he was, and Blackfoote first of all
And Stalker speciall good of sent began aloud to call.
This latter was a hound of Crete, the other was of Spart.”
And Gorges' translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, iv. p. 144:
“And therewithall in cooples clogges
His Spartane, and his Cretan dogges.’
II.4. Chiding, used of noise simply, as in As You Like It, ii. I. 7 :
“As the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind’;
where however the word has also somewhat of the sense of rebuke or
scolding. Compare I Henry IV, iii. I. 45:
“Clipp'd in with the sea
That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales”;
that is, dashes noisily against. So Henry VIII, iii. 2. 197:
‘As doth a rock against the chiding flood.’
K 2
I32 NOTES. [Act Iv.
II9. So flew'd. The flews of a hound are the large overhanging chaps.
Warton quotes from Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, iii.
(fol. 33 b, ed. I603): -
“And shaggie Rugge with other twaine that had a Sire of Crete,
And Dam of Sparta: Tone of them callde Iolly-boy, a great
And large flewd hound.’
Ib. so sanded, of such a sandy colour.
120. Steevens quotes inaccurately from Heywood's Brazen Age [ii. 2,
Works iii. p. 190] :
‘The fierce Thessalian hounds
With their flagge eares, ready to sweep the dew
From the moist earth.”
I2 I. dewlapp'd. See ii. 1. 50.
122. match'd in mouth like bells. Compare Markham's Country Content-
ments, p. 6: “If you would have your Kennel for sweetness of cry, then you
must compound it of some large dogs, that have deep solemn Mouths, and
are swift in spending, which must as it were bear the base in the consort;
then a double number of roaring, and loud-ringing Mouthes, which must
bear the counter-tenor; then some hollow plain sweet Mouths, which must
bear the mean or middle part; and so with these three parts of Musick, you
shall make your cry perfect.'
Ib, mouth, used of the bark of a dog. Compare Venus and Adonis, 695:
* Then do they spend their mouths.” And I Henry VI, ii. 4. 12:
“Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth.”
130. I wonder of &c. We should now say ‘I wonder at, but as “at”
marks the object of the wonder, so ‘of’ is used with that in respect of which
the wonder is excited. Compare Timon of Athens, iii. 4. Io: ‘I wonder
on’t '; where ‘on't’= of it. So below, l. 135, ‘of’ = concerning.
131–132. to observe The rite of May. Compare i. I. 167. The quartos
and folios have ‘right’ for ‘rite.’ See note on The Tempest, iv. I. 96
(Clar. Press. ed.).
I33, in grace of, in honour of Compare Hamlet, i. 2. I24:
“In grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell.'
Id. solemnity. See i. I. I. I.
140. Capell adds the stage-direction, “He and the rest kneel to Theseus.’
144. To sleep &c. For the omission of ‘as’ after ‘so see Abbott, Ś 281,
As You Like It, ii. 3. 7, and The Merchant of Venice, iii. 3. Io.
I45. amazedly, confusedly ; in a state of astonishment or confusion of
mind. Compare the stage direction in The Tempest, v, I. 2 I5, and Winter's
Tale, v. I. 187:
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I33
“I speak amazedly; and it becomes
My marvel and my message.’
146. Half sleep, half waking. Some editors regard ‘sleep’ and “waking’
as adjectives, and print the former ‘’sleep’ = asleep. Dr. Schmidt, in his
Shakespeare Lexicon, p. 1419, col. I, gives this as an instance of the same
termination applying to two words, so that ‘sleep and waking' = sleeping and
waking. He quotes, as a possibly parallel case, Troilus and Cressida, V.
8. 7:
“Even with the vail and darking of the sum.'
In this case however “vail’ may be a substantive formed from a verb, of
which there are may instances in Shakespeare. I am inclined to think that
both ‘sleep’ and “waking' are here substantives, and are loosely connected
with the verb ‘reply’; just as we find in Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 2. 69,
‘He speaks holiday’; Twelfth Night, i. 5. II 5; ‘He speaks nothing but
madman’; King John, ii. 1. 462, “He speaks plain cannon fire,’ and as the
folios read in As You Like It, iii. 2. 226, ‘Speak sad brow and true maid.’
I52. Without, beyond the reach of. Compare The Tempest, v. 1. 27 I :
‘And deal in her command without her power’;
that is, exercise the moon's influence to a greater extent than she has the
power to use it. Dyce reads the sentence as incomplete,
‘Where we might,
Without the peril of the Athenian law—’
The first quarto has only a comma at ‘law,” but we cannot lay much stress
upon this. The second quarto and the folios read “where we might be,”
but ‘where we might’ is simply ‘wheresoever we might.”
I53. you have enough, that is, you have enough evidence to convict him
by his own confession.
I59. their stealth, their stealing away. See iii. 2. 310.
H62. fancy. See i. F. I55.
I63. I wot not, I know not. See iii. 2. 422. ‘Wot' is properly a preterite
(A. S. wait, from witan to know), and is used as a present, just as oióa in
Greek and novi in Latin. And not only is it used as a present in sense, but
it is inflected like a present tense, for we find the third person singular
‘wots or ‘wotteth.’
I65. Melted as the snow. Pope, for the sake of the metre, read “Is
melted as the snow'; Capell, ‘Melted as doth the snow.' Staunton con-
jectured, ‘All melted as the snow.’
I66. gawd. See i, I. 33.
I70. Saw. So Steevans. The quartos and folios have ‘see.”
I 71. like in sickness. Farmer's correction, adopted by Steevens. The
quartos and folios have ‘like a sickness.’ I am not satisfied with this
reading, and the repetition of ‘But' inclines me to suspect that there is a
further corruption.
I34 . NOTES. [ACT Iv.
181. for, because. Compare Sonnet liv. 9 :
“But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade.”
Ib, worn, exhausted, consumed, wasted; used of time, as in v. I. 33,
and Coriolanus, ii. I. 77: ‘You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in
hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller.’
190, like a jewel, as one finds a jewel which does not belong to him.
Warburton conjectured ‘gemell” (from Lat. gemellus, a twin, because
Demetrius had that night acted two such different parts), which was not too
absurd to be adopted by Theobald and commended by Johnson. Demetrius
is not compared to a jewel, but the finding of him to the finding of a jewel.
191–192. Are you sure That we are awake 2 These words are in
the quartos, but are omitted in the folios. The defective metre has been
variously supplied.
195. Pea here is the answer to a question framed in the negative, con-
trary to the rule laid down by Sir Thomas More, according to which it should
be ‘yes.”
199. The quartos have no stage direction. The folios give “Bottom wakes.’
202. God’s my life. This exclamation is put into the mouth of Dogberry
in Much Ado about Nothing, iv. 2.72 : “God’s my life, where’s the sexton?”
205. go about, endeavour. Compare Lucrece, 412:
‘Who, like a foul usurper, went about
From this fair throne to heave the owner out.”
2O7. a patched fool, a motley fool (As You Like It, ii. 7. I 3), a pied ninny
(The Tempest, iii. 2. 71); so called from the parti-coloured dress worn by
jesters. See note on ‘patch," iii. 2. 9.
208. Douce has pointed out that this is Bottom's blundering version of
I Corinthians ii. 9.
215. at her death; that is, at Thisbe's death : for though Thisbe is not
mentioned, Bottom's head is full of the play. Theobald conjectured after
death,’ which is certainly ingenious and may be right.
Scene II.
4. transported, transformed, transfigured ; in Starveling's language this is
equivalent to “translated' in iii. i. Io'ſ. Dr. Schmidt takes the word to be
seriously used, in the sense of removed from this world to the next, killed
(euphemistically), as in Measure for Measure, iv. 3. 72 :
“And to transport him in the mind he is
Were damnable.”
5-6, it goes not forward, does not go on, take place. So in As You Like
It, i. 2, 193: “We will make it our suit to the duke that the wrestling
might not go forward.’ And Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4, 13: “But let
our plot go forward.”
sc. 2..] . A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’s DREAM. I35"
8. discharge. See i. 2.84.
I4, a thing of naught. So the second and later folios. The quartos and
first folio have “a thing of nought.' The two words “naught,' signifying
worthlessness, good-for-nothingness, and ‘nought nothing, are etymo-
logically the same, but the different senses they have acquired are distinguished
in the spelling.
I7. we had all been made men, our fortunes had all been made. Compare
The Tempest, ii. 2. 31 : “There would this monster make a man; any
strange beast there makes a man.’ And Twelfth Night, ii. 5. 168: “Go to,
thou art made, if thou desirest to be so.” *
22. Sixpence a day. Steevens supposes that Shakespeare may allude to
Some actor, who, like Preston the author of Cambyses, was pensioned for his
abilities on the stage.
Ib. in Pyramus, in the part of Pyramus. Compare Twelfth Night, i. 5.
168: ‘’Tis with him in standing water, between boy and man’; that is, he
is in the condition of standing water.
23. where are these hearts? these good fellows. So in Twelfth Night, ii.
3. I6: “How now, my hearts 1’
24. courageous. It is not worth while to guess what Quince intended to
say. He used the first long word that occurred to him without reference to
its meaning, a practice which is not yet altogether extinct. t
26. I am to discourse wonders. We should now say “I have to discourse,'
a form of phrase corresponding with, if not borrowed from, the French idiom.
Dr. Abbott (Shakespearian Grammar, § 405) quotes from Florio's trans-
lation of Montaigne, p. 3: ‘That ancient Painter who being to represent
the griefe of the bystanders &c., where the original is “ayant a représenter.’
In Latin the construction would be represented by using the participle in
-dus. Compare The Merchant of Venice, i. I. 5:
“But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn.”
And Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii. I. 59:
‘I am to break with thee of some affairs.”
28. right, exactly.
3o, good strings to your beards, to tie the false beards on with. Steevens
thought these strings were something ornamental, but there appears to be no
ground for supposing this.
34. preferred, offered for acceptance; if Bottom’s words have a meaning,
which is not always certain. Compare Julius Caesar, iii. I. 28 :
‘Let him go,
And presently prefer his suit to Caesar.’
136 NOTES. [ACT v.
A C T V.
Scene I.
2. may, can. Compare The Merchant of Venice, i. 3. 7: ‘May you
stead me?’ that is, can you assist me?
3. toys, trifles. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3. I 7o:
‘And critic Timon laugh at idle toys.”
4. such seething brains, such hot boiling brains, full of wild imagin-
ations. Compare Winter's Tale, iii. 3. 64: ‘Would any but these boiled
brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather?” Delius quotes
from Macbeth, ii. I. 39 :
‘A false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.”
5. that apprehend &c., that slightly catch at, as it were, or conceive the
idea of more than reason can ever fully grasp or contain.
8. compact, formed, composed ; literally, fastened or knit together. Com-
pare Venus and Adonis, 149: ‘Love is a spirit all compact of fire.’ And
Psalm czXii. 3: ‘Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together.’
11. a brow of Egypt, a swarthy brow, like a gipsy's. So in Othello, iii.
4. 56, ‘Egyptian' is used for gipsy:
* That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother give;
She was a charmer, and could almost read
The thoughts of people.’
14. bodies forth, gives them a bodily existence.
2.I. fear, cause or object of fear.
26. constancy, consistency, reality.
27. howsoever, nevertheless, in any case. So in Troilus and Cressida, iii.
. 297: “If tomorrow be a fair day, by eleven o’clock it will go one way or
other: howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he has me.”
Ib. admirable, to be wondered at. So ‘admired is used in Macbeth, iii.
4. I IO :
‘You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting,
With most admired disorder.’ .*
30. More (joy) than to us &c.
31. Wait in, unnecessarily changed to ‘wait on ” by Rowe. See note on
ii. I. 85.
34. our after supper, or rear-supper ; not the time after supper, as it is
usually explained, but a banquet so called which was taken after the meal.
So in Richard III, iv. 3. 3 I :
‘Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after supper.’
Cotgrave has ‘Regoubilloner. To make a reare supper, steale an after
sc. T.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. 137
supper; banquet late anights.' And Palsgrave (Lesclaircissement de la
langue Francoyse) gives “Rere supper—bancquet.’
38. Philostrate, the master of the revels. See i. 1. II. So the quartos:
the folios have “Egeus.’ Probably the same actor played both parts.
39. abridgement, an entertainment to make the time pass quickly. Used
in Hamlet, ii. 2. 439, in a double sense, the entry of the players cutting
short Hamlet’s talk: “For look, where my abridgement comes.’ Steevens
quotes from Gawin Douglas's prologue to his translation of the fifth book of
the Aeneid:
‘Ful mony myrry abaytmentis followis heir’;
where “abaitment’ is clearly the same as the French “esbatement,” which
Cotgrave defines “A sporting, playing, dallying, ieasting, recreation.’
4I. the lazy time, which moves so slowly, and in which we are idle.
42. a brief, a short statement, containing the programme of the per-
formance. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. I 38:
‘This is the brief of money, plate, and jewels,
I am possessed of.”
Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.) has : ‘Bref. . . A breefe, note, short writing.”
Ib. ripe, ready for representation. So the first quarto. The second
quarto and folios read “rife, a mere misprint.
44. In the folios the reading from the brief is given to Lysander and the
comments to Theseus. There is no such distinction in the quartos.
Ib. The battle with the Centaurs. Told by Nestor in the twelfth book of
Ovid's Metamorphoses. The version by Theseus was different, for Nestor
purposely omitted all mention of Hercules.
48. The death of Orpheus is told by Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi.
52. The thrice three Muses, &c. Warton suggested ‘ that Shakespeare
here, perhaps, alluded to Spenser's poem, entitled The Tears of the Muses,
on the neglect and contempt of learning. This piece first appeared in
quarto with others, I 591. It was supposed by Knight that the death of
Greene may be here referred to, which took place in 1592.
54. critical, censorious; as Iago says of himself in Othello, ii. I. I2O:
‘For I am nothing, if not critical.’
55. not sorting with, or agreeing with, not befitting. So 3 Henry VI,
v. 5. 26:
“His currish riddles sort not with this place.”
56. See note on i. 2. II.
59. Pope settled the difficulty in this line by omitting it altogether. War-
burton read ‘a wondrous strange shew.’ Many other solutions have been
proposed, none of them absolutely satisfactory; as ‘strange black snow'
(Upton), “strong snow' (Mason), “seething snow’ (Collier MS.), “swarthy
snow' (Staunton), “staining snow' (Nicholson), “sable snow.” (Elze), “wind-
restraining Snow’ (Wetherell), and finally Sir Philip Perring has suggested
I 38 - NOTES. t [ACT v.
to me ‘strange hot snow,' or ‘strangel jet snow.” From the words as they
stand Steevens extracts a certain sense. He says “The meaning of the line
is—“hot ice, and snow of as strange a quality.” But there is no such
antithesis between ‘strange’ and ‘snow ’ as between “hot” and ‘ice, and
this is what is required.
69. Made mine eyes water. We must supply ‘it’ as the nominative;
that is, the seeing of the play rehearsed. For this ellipsis see As You Like
It, i. I. 2, v. 4, 167, The Merchant of Venice, i. I. 98, and Abbott, § 399.
74. unbreathed, untrained, unpractised. Hamlet says (v. 2. 181), ‘’Tis
the breathing time of day with me’; that is, the time for taking exercise.
75. nuptial. With only two exceptions Shakespeare always uses the singular
form of this word. See note on i. I. 1 25.
79, their intents seems to be used in connexion with the following line,
both for the endeavour and the object of the endeavour. Their intents or
endeavours have been strained to the utmost to learn their parts which they
have conned or studied with cruel pain. Delius makes 1.79 parenthetic, and
connects 1.80 with 78; the play being “extremely stretch'd' or spun out.
8o. conn'd is the technical word for studying a part for the stage. See
1. 2. 9o.
83. Simpleness, simplicity, innocence. So Much Ado about Nothing, iii.
I. 7o :
“So turns she every man the wrong side out,
And never gives to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.’
90. to take. See ii. 2. 46.
9I, 92. And what poor duty, &c. Theobald read
‘And what poor willing duty cannot do,
Noble respect,’ &c.
The defective metre has been amended by reading “cannot do aright’
(Seymour), “cannot do, yet would’ (Coleridge). Johnson interprets the
passage thus, ‘What the inability of duty cannot perform, regardful gene-
rosity receives as an act of ability, though not of merit”; but he thinks the
contrary is rather true, and would read, “takes not in might, but merit.”
There is no need for change; the sense being, noble respect or consideration
accepts the effort to please without regard to the merit of the performance.
Compare Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 517:
‘That sport best pleases that doth least know how,’ &c.
Steevens takes “might’ as an elliptical expression for ‘what might have
been, but this does not seem likely.
93. clerks, scholars, learned men; learning having been at one time
almost confined to the clergy. Compare Pericles v, Prologue 5: “Deep
clerks she dumbs’; that is, she puts to silence profound scholars.
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I39
96. periods, full stops.
Ios. to my capacity, so far as I am able to understand.
Ioé. address'd, ready, prepared. Compare Julius Caesar, iii. I. 29:
‘He is address'd : press near and second him.’
And 2 Henry IV, iv. 4. 5: -
‘Our navy is address'd, our power collected.’
Io'7. Steevens quotes the following passage from Dekker's Guls Hornbook,
c. vi. (1609) to show that the prologue was anciently ushered in by trumpets:
‘Present not yourselfe on the stage (especially at a new play) until the
quaking prologue hath (by rubbing) got cullor in his cheekes, and is ready
to give the trumpets their cue that hee's upon point to enter.’
I 18. doth not stand upon points, is not very particular, with a reference to
his not minding his stops. Compare 3 Henry VI, iv. 7. 58:
‘Why, brother, wherefore stand you on nice points 2'
For a similar joke compare Roister Doister's letter to Mistress Custance
(Roister Doister, iii. 3).
I 20, the stop, a term in horsemanship; used here in a punning sense.
Compare A Lover's Complaint, Io9:
‘What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes 1’
122. a recorder, a kind of flageolet, or flute with a mouthpiece. See note
on Hamlet, iii. 2. 262 (Clar. Press ed.).
123. in government. So Hamlet in giving directions for playing on the
recorder (iii. 2. 372) says, “Govern these ventages with your fingers and
thumb.”
125. The folios have here the stage direction ‘Tawyer with a Trumpet
before them,' where ‘Tawyer” looks like a misprint for “Players, unless it
is the name of the actor who played the part of prologue.
129. certain. A most convenient word for filling up a line and at the
same time conveying no meaning. Instances of its occurrence are common,
and to those given by Steevens may be added from Sir Generydes (Early
Eng. Text Soc.), 4693:
‘Sir Amelok hath a doughter certayn.’
13o. present. See iii. I. 6o.
I36. think no scorn, not disdain. See 2 Henry VI, iv. 2. I 3: “The nobility
think scorn to go in leather aprons.’ And Love's Labour's Lost, i. 2. 66:
“I think scorn to sigh.’
I37. Ninus’ tomb. See Golding's Ovid, iv. fol. 44 a.
“They did agree at Ninus Tombe to meet without the towne.'
138. hight, was called; here used as an intentional archaism, as in Love's
Labour's Lost, i. I. I 71 :
‘This child of fancy that Armado hight.”
It was in common use in old writers, and is equivalent to the Germ. heissen;
A. S. hdtan ; Goth. haitan.
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I4O NOTES. [ACT v.
139. Malone supposes a line to be lost, as there is no rhyme to ‘name.’
141. fall, let fall. Compare The Tempest, ii. I. 296:
“And when I rear my hand, do you the like,
To fall it on Gonzalo.”
145, I.46. Shakespeare ridicules the alliteration which the poetasters of
his day affected. It was an exaggeration of the principle upon which Anglo-
Saxon verse was constructed, and comes again under his lash in Love's
Labour's Lost, iv. 2. 57–59, where Holofernes composes an ‘extemporal
epitaph' on the death of the deer, which is intentionally alliterative : ‘I will
something affect the letter, for it argues facility.
The preyful princess pierced and prick’d a pretty pleasing pricket;
Some say a sore; but not a sore, till now made sore with shooting.’
I5I. be to speak. See iv. 2. 26.
I55. Snout. So the folios. The quartos have “Flute,’ but he played the
part of Thisbe.
I 57. Compare Golding's Ovid, iv. fol. 43 b :
‘The wall that parted house from house had riuen therein a cranie.’
I6o. loam. See iii. I. 61. Reed substitutes “lime,’ as in 1. I 3o.
I62. sinister, left; used by Snout for two reasons; first, because it is a
long word, and then because it gives a sort of rhyme to ‘whisper.’
I65. partition. Farmer says, “I believe the passage should be read:
This is the wittiest partition, that ever I heard in discourse. Alluding to
the many stupid partitions in the argumentative writings of the time.”
I75. eyne. See i. I. 242 &c.
I76. jove shield thee. See iii. I. 31.
I83. cue. See iii. 1. 67.
I84. pat. See iii. I. 2.
I90, I see a voice. See iii. I. 82.
I95. Limander. Johnson has pointed out that Limander and Helen are
blunders for Leander and Hero, as Shafalus and Procrus are for Cephalus and
Procris. Capell takes Limander to be for Lisander, and this for Alisander,
Alexander or Paris.
2OI. 'Tide life, ’tide death, whether life or death betide.
2O4. Now is the mural down. This is Pope's emendation of the reading
of the folios, ‘Now is the morall downe.” The quartos have “Now is the
Moon vsed.’ Mr. Grant White thinks the wall is called a ‘moral' because
it acted as a restraint upon the lovers. The folio reading is evidently
corrupt, and Pope's emendation so far as I am aware has no evidence in its
favour. Perhaps the quarto reading ‘Now is the Moon vsed is a
corruption of a stage direction, and the reading of the folios may have
arisen from an attempt to correct in manuscript the words in a copy of the
quarto by turning ‘Moon' into “Wall,” the result being a compound having
the beginning of one word and the end of the other. If there were any
; : : • . * '. : :
& * tº is w •
a e tº gº.
SC. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I4I
evidence for the existence of such a word as “mural used as a substantive,
it would be but pedantic and affected and so unsuited to Theseus. Having
regard therefore to the double occurrence of the word ‘wall’ in the previous
speech and its repetition by Demetrius, I cannot but think that Theseus said
‘Now is the wall down between the two neighbours, just as Bottom says
later on, ‘The wall is down that parted their fathers.’
205. So wilful to hear. See Abbott $ 281 for examples of the omission
of ‘as.’
212, 213. Here come two noble beasts, in a man and a lion. This is the
punctuation of the quartos and folios which has been altered in modern
editions by putting the comma after ‘in,’ but as I think unnecessarily.
‘In here signifies ‘in the character of : see iv. 2. 22. Theobald with
great plausibility reads “in a moon and a lion'; as Theseus says a few lines
lower down ‘let us listen to the moon.’
219. A lion fell, nor else no lion's dam. Johnson explains this by
supposing ‘neither’ to be omitted before ‘a lion fell.’ Compare Sonnet
lxxxvi. 9 :
‘He nor that affable familiar ghost.”
Again Sonnet cxli. 9 :
“But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee.’
And Antony and Cleopatra, iv. I 5. 52 :
“The miserable change now at my end
Lament nor sorrow at.”
Rowe read “No lion fell,” and another emendation is ‘A lion-fell’ or ‘A lion's
fell,” that is, a lion’s skin.
22 I. 'twere pity on my life. See note on iii. I. 39.
224, 225. ‘Valour' and ‘discretion are associated as in the proverb
(I Henry IV, v. 4. I21): “The better part of valour is discretion.’
239. the greatest error of all the rest. Compare the often-quoted lines of
Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 323, 4:
“Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.”
And Bacon's Essay Of Envy (ed. Wright, p. 35): “Of all other Affections, it
is the most importune, and continuall.’ See Abbott $ 409, where it is
given as an instance of the confusion of two constructions.
243. it is already in snuff. Demetrius as a professed joker quibbles upon
the word ‘snuff.’ ‘To take in snuff” is to take offence ; and ‘to be in
snuff” is to be offended. See Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 22, where there is
the same pun:
‘You’ll mar the light by taking it in snuff.”
244. aweary, weary. Compare The Merchant of Venice, i. 2, 2: ‘By
I42 NOTES. [ACT v.
my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.’ Tennyson
has made the word familiar to modern ears in his song of Mariana :
* * She said, I am aweary, a weary,
I would that I were dead.”
258. moused, torn in pieces; as a cat tears a mouse.
259, 26o. These lines are arranged according to Mr. Spedding's sugges-
tion. In the old copies they stand thus:
“Dem. And then came Pyramus.
Lys. And so the lion vanished.’
Both Demetrius and Lysander speak in the past tense, as if they were telling
the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Farmer proposed, and his emendation
was adopted by Steevens:
“Dem. And so comes Pyramus.
Lys. And then the moon vanishes.’
263. gleams. The quartos and first folio have ‘beames,' which must be a
misprint. This was amended in the later folios to “streams’; but the
alliteration shews that “gleams’ is the true reading, which was suggested by
Knight.
264. The folios read here “I trust to taste of truest Thisbies sight,’ which
is quite in keeping with “I see a voice ’ &c. in, 1. Igo.
275. thrum is the loose end of a weaver’s warp, and is used of any coarse
yarn. Warner says, “the maids now call a mop of yarn a thrum-mop.”
The ‘thrummed hat’ of the fat woman of Brentford (Merry Wives of
Windsor, iv. 2.80) was made of coarse tufts. ‘Thread and thrum ” was
used as an expression for everything in general. So Herrick (Hesperides, i.
Ioo):
* Thou who wilt not love, do this;
Learne of me what Woman is.
Something made of thred and thrumme;
A meere Botch of all and some.’
276. quell, destroy; A.S. cwellan. In Macbeth, i. 7. 72, it is used as a
substantive for “murder.” In the Wicliffite versions of Acts xxviii. 4, ‘man-
quellere’ is equivalent to “manslayer.’
277. This passion, and the death of a dear friend. The annotator of the
Perkins Folio, with singular want of humour, changed this to ‘this passion
on the death of a dear friend.” For ‘passion' in the sense of violent
expression of sorrow, see 1. 303 and Hamlet, ii. 2. 587:
“What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have 2 ° -
279. Beshrew my heart. See ii. 2. 54.
283. cheer. See iii. 2. 96. Here it signifies ‘cheerfulness.’ Compare
Hamlet, iii. 2. I 74:
h
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I43
“But woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state.’
284. confound, destroy, ruin. In this sense it is used in the Authorised
Version of the Bible. See Jeremiah i. 17, where the marginal note to ‘con-
found' is “break to pieces,’ and the rendering in the Geneva and Bishops'
Bibles is ‘ destroy.’
And compare Macbeth, ii. 2. I2 :
“The attempt and not the deed
Confounds us.”
287, 288. Steevens again calls attention to the broad pronunciation which
must have been given to the ‘a’ in Shakespeare's time to make ‘pap' and
‘hop' a passable rhyme. See note on ii. I. 263.
296. die. There is the same play upon words in Timon of Athens, v. 4.
34, 35 ;
“And by the hazard of the spotted die
Let die the spotted.’
3oo. How chance. See i. I. 29.
303. passion. See 1. 277.
306. A mote. Spelt ‘moth' in the quartos and folios. The same
spelling occurs in three of the early quartos of Hamlet, i. I. II 2 ; and Love's
Labour's Lost, iv. 3. 16I, stands in the first folio thus:
‘You found his Moth, the King your Moth did see:
But I a Beame doe finde in each of three.'
Compare also Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3. 56–59:
* Balth. Note this before my notes;
There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.
D. Pedro. Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks;
Note, notes, forsooth, and nothing.’
Theobald reads “noting.’ On the other hand, in More's Utopia, p. 59 (ed.
Arber), we find ‘moth-eaten' spelt “moughteaten.” -
307, 8, he for a man . . . bless us, Omitted in the folios, probably in
consequence of the Act of 3 Jannes I for restraining the abuses of players,
which imposed a fine of ten pounds on any who should ‘jestingly or
prophanely speak, or use the holy name of God.”
307. God warrant us. The quartos have warnd,” which may stand for
‘warm ' or “warrant, for both expressions are used. See As You Like It,
iv. I. 77: “And for lovers lacking—God warn us!—matter, the cleanliest
shift is to kiss.’ And in the same play, iii. 3. 5: ‘Your features | Lord
warrant us! what features º'
3 Io. And thus she means. Theobald altered ‘means’ to “moans,’ which
does not fit in well with ‘videlicet.” Ritson maintained that “means’ is
here used in the sense of ‘complains, like the old word “mene’ which is of
common occurrence; and so it occurs in a phrase which according to
I44 - MOTES. - [ACT v.
Mr. Pinkerton is employed in petitions to the Lords of Session in Scotland,
which runs, ‘To the lords of council and session humbly means and shows
your petitioner.’
317, 318. These lily lips &c. To mend the rhyme Theobald read “lily
brows.” Mr. Collier adopts the correction of the Perkins Folio, “This lily
lip, This cherry tip.' Farmer conjectured ‘These lips lily, This nose cherry.”
Steevens quotes from Peele's Old Wives Tale (1595) a parallel to this
nonsense: ‘Her corall lippes, her crimson chinne.—Thou art a flouting
knave—Her corall lippes her crimson chimne !’
327. shore, for ‘shorn.” The rhyme is too much for Thisbe's grammar.
“Shore' is used elsewhere in Shakespeare for the preterite of “Shear.’
331. imbrue, make bloody, stain with blood. The word is evidently used
for purposes of alliteration and not in its strict sense; but an almost parallel
instance occurs in Titus Andronicus, ii. 3. 222 :
‘Lord Bassianus lies embrewed here.”
339. a Bergomask dance. Hanmer explains this “as a dance after the
manner of the peasants of Bergomasco, a country of Italy, belonging to
the Venetians. All the buffoons in Italy affect to imitate the ridiculous
jargon of that people, and from thence it became a custom to mimick also
their manner of dancing.” If we substitute Bergamo for Bergomasco his
explanation is correct. Alberti (Dizionario Universale) says that in Italian
“Bergamasca’ is a kind of dance, so called from Bergamo or from a song
which was formerly sung in Florence, The Italian Zanni (our ‘zany') is a
contraction for Giovanni in the dialect of Bergamo, and is the nickname for
a peasant of that place.
340. No epilogue, which was generally an apology for the play. See
The Tempest, As You Like It, All's Well that Ends Well, 2 Henry IV,
Henry V, Henry VIII.
342. writ. The common form of the preterite in Shakespeare, who
seldom uses ‘wrote.’ See As You Like It, v. 2.84:
“To show the letter that I writ to you.’
344. discharged, performed. See i. 2.84.
35I. palpable-gross, the grossness or roughness of which is palpable.
352. The heavy gait, or slow progress. “Gait' is now used of the
manner of walking. Compare Venus and Adonis, 529 : ~
‘Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait,
His day's hot task hath ended in the west.’
And Richard II, iii. 2. 15: ‘heavy-gaited toads.’
353. Solemnity. See i. I. II.
356. behowls. So Theobald. The quartos and folios have ‘beholds.”
Compare As You Like It, v. 2. 119 : ‘'Tis like the howling of Irish wolves
against the moon.’
358. fordone, exhausted. The first quarto has ‘foredoone’; the second
sc. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I45
and the folios ‘fore-done.’ ‘For in composition is like the German ver-,
and has sometimes a negative and sometimes an intensive sense. See note
on Hamlet, ii. I. Io9.
360. the screech-owl. Compare Macbeth, ii. 2. 3, 4:
* It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night.”
And see the note on that passage. Theobald pointed out that Marston in
his Antonio and Mellida (Second Part, iii. 3) has imitated this speech :
‘Now barkes the wolfe against the fulle cheekt moon;
Now lyons half-clamd entrals roare for food;
Now croakes the toad, and night crowes screech aloud,
Fluttering 'bout casements of departed soules;
Now gapes the graves, and through their yawnes let loose
Imprison'd spirits to revisit earth.”
And Malone quotes from Spenser's Fairy Queen, i. 5. 30, a passage which
may possibly have been in Shakespeare's memory and is certainly parallel to
this. The poet is describing Night.
“And, all the while she stood upon the ground,
The wakefull dogs did never cease to bay;
As giving warning of th' unwonted sound,
With which her yron wheeles did them affray,
And her darke griesly looke them much dismay :
The messenger of death, the ghastly owle,
With drery skriekes did also her bewray;
And hungry wolves continually did howle
At her abhorred face, so filthy and so fowle.”
363. Now it is the time of night &c. Steevens quotes from Hamlet, iii.
2. 406:
‘’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn.'
368, the triple Hecate's team. So in Golding's Ovid, vii. fol. 79 b (ed.
I603):
“By triple Hecats holy Rites.’
Compare As You Like It, iii. 2. 2: ‘thrice crowned queen of night'; as
ruling in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld. See also Drayton, The
Man in the Moon, 476–478:
“So the great three most powerfull of the rest,
Phoebe, Diana, Hecate, do tell,
Her domination in heauen, in earth and hell.'
Hecate is always a disyllable in Shakespeare, except in I Henry VI, iii. 2,
64. See note on King Lear, i. I. IoI (Clar. Press edition).
370. See iv. I. 95.
37I. frolic, merry. Compare Cotgrave (Fr. Dict.); ‘Ioyeux : m. euse; f.
L
X
I46 NOTES. [ACT v.
Ioyfull, ioyous, glad, merrie, iocond, blithe, buxome, frolicke, iollie, cheere-
full, pleasant, gamesome.’ And ‘Gaudir. To be frolicke, liuelie, iollie,
pleasant, merrie; gybe, ieast ; play the good fellow, make good cheere.”
374. To sweep the dust behind the door, where it would be likely to
escape notice. Robin Goodfellow was believed to help good housemaids in
their work, and to punish those who were sluttish. Compare Herrick
(Hesperides, vol. i. p. 270):
‘Sweep your house: Who doth not so,
Mab will pinch her by the toe.’
375. Johnson suggests that Milton may have had this picture in his
thought when he wrote (Il Penseroso, 79),
‘Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom.’
378. as bird from brier. A frequent comparison in the old poets.
Steevens quotes from Minot (ed. Ritson), p. 31 :
‘That are was blith als brid on brere.”
380. dance it. For ‘it’ used indefinitely as the object of a verb, without
any antecedent, see Abbott, § 226. Compare daub it’ in King Lear, iv. I.
54, and ‘outface it,” As You Like It, i. 3. I24. -
385. Oberon's speech, which is assigned to him in the quarto editions, is
called in the folios ‘The Song, and printed in italics. Johnson, who re-
stored it to Oberon, supposes that two songs are lost, one led by Oberon, the
other by Titania.
387, 388. The blessing of the bridal bed was one of the ancient ceremonies
of marriage. Steevens quotes from Chaucer, The Marchantes Tale (ed.
Tyrwhitt), l. 9693;
“And whan the bed was with the preest yblessed.’
Compare also The Romans of Partenay, or Melusine (ed. Skeat), ll. Ioog–II:
‘Forsoth A Bisshop which that tyme ther was
Signed and blissid the bedde holyly;
“In nomine dei" so said in that place.”
389. create. See note on 1. 399 below.
393. the blots of Nature's hand, like the “vicious mole of nature” (Ham-
let, i. 4. 24), were attributed to malignant fairies.
396. prodigious, monstrous, portentous. Compare King John, iii. I.46:
‘Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,
Patch'd with foul moles and eye-offending marks.’
399. consecrate, consecrated, sacred. This form of participle in words
derived from the Latin is of frequent occurrence. Compare Sonnet
lxxiv. 6:
SC. I.] A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM. I47
A
“When thou reviewest this, thou dost review
The very part was consecrate to thee.’
Similarly we find ‘create,’ ‘ dedicate,’ ‘excommunicate,” “incorporate.’
4oo. take his gait, take his way or course. Compare King Lear, iv. 6.
242 : “Go your gait’; though this is intentionally rustic language. Steevens
quotes from Lawrence Minot, p. 5o:
- ‘Take thi gate unto Gines,
And grete tham wele thare.’
The phrase is familiar in the dialect of the northern counties.
40.3, 4O4. These lines are arranged as by Staunton. In the quartos and
folios they stand thus:
“Ever shall in safety rest,
And the owner of it blest.’
Delius supposes the relative pronoun ‘which, referring to the palace, to be
omitted before ‘Ever.” Rowe reads “Ever shall it safely rest’; and Malone,
‘E’er shall it in safety rest.’
413. reprehend, censure, blame. Compare Venus and Adonis, IOG5:
‘And then she reprehends her mangling eye.”
416. unearned luck, good fortune which we have not deserved.
419. If we 'scape the serpent's tongue, that is, without being hissed. Stee-
vens quotes from Markham’s English Arcadia (1607): “But the nymph,
after the custom of distrest tragedians, whose first act is entertained with a
snaky salutation,’ &c. -
421. Give me your hands, that is, applaud by clapping. Compare All's
Well that Ends Well, v. 3. 34o : -
‘Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.”
7/2/99
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