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5 Mer. You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings, And foar with them above a common bound.

Rom. I am too fore enpearced with his shaft,
To foar with his light feathers; and ❝ so bound,
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.
Under love's heavy burden do I fink.

Mer. And to fink in it, fhould you burden love? Too great oppreffion for a tender thing.

Rom. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boift'rous; and it pricks like thorn. Mer. If love be rough with you, be rough with

love;

Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.--Give me a cafe to put my vifage in:

[Putting on his mask.

A vifor for a vifor!what care I,

What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle-brows fhall blufh for me.

Ben. Come, knock, and enter; and no fooner in, But ev'ry man betake him to his legs.

Rom. A torch for me. 7 Let wantons, light of heart, Tickle the fenfelefs rufhes with their heels; For I am proverb'd with a grand-fire phrafe;

Mer. You are a lover, &c.] The twelve following lines are not to be found in the first edition. POPE.

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I cannot bound, &c.] Let Milton's example, on this occafion, keep Shakespeare in countenance:

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"At one fight bound high over-leap'd all bound

"Of hill, &c." P. L. book iv. 1. 180. STEEVENS. 7 Let wantons light of heart, &c.] Middleton has borrowed this thought in his play of Blurt Mafter Constable, 1602. bid him, whofe heart no forrow feels,

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"Tickle the rushes with his wanton heels,

"I have too much lead at mine." STEEVENS. The grandfire-phrafe is-The black ox has trod upon my foot. JOHNSON,

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I'll be a candle-holder, and look on.

The game was ne'er fo fair, and I am done.

Mer. 9 Tut! dun's the moufe, the conftable's own

word:

If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire;

I Or

9 Tut! dun's the moufe, the conflable's own word:] This poor obfcure ftuff fhould have an explanation in mere charity. It is an answer to these two lines of Romeo:

For I am proverb'd with a grandfire's phrafe ;-and
The game was ne'er fo fair, and I am done.

Mercutio, in his reply, anfwers the laft line firft. The thought of which, and of the preceding, is taken from gaming. I'll be a candle-holder (fays Romeo) and look on. It is true, if I could play myself, I could never expect a fairer chance than in the company we are going to but, alas! I am done. I have nothing to play with; I have loft my heart already. Mercutio catches at the word done, and quibbles with it, as if Romeo had faid, The ladies indeed are fair, but I am dun, i. e. of a dark complexion. And fo replies, Tut! dun's the moufe; a proverbial expreffion of the fame import with the French, La nuit tous les chats font gris: as much as to fay, You need not fear, night will make all your complexions alike. And be caufe Romeo had introduced his obfervation with,

I am proverb'd with a grandfire phrafe,

Mercutio adds to his reply, the conftable's own word: as much as to fay, If you are for old proverbs, I'll fit you with one; 'tis the conftable's own word; whofe custom was, when he fummoned his watch, and affigned them their feveral stations, to give them what the foldiers call, the word. But this night, guard being diftinguished for their pacific character, the conftable, as an emblem of their harmlefs difpofition, chofe that domeftic animal for his word: which, in time, might become proverbial. WARBURTON.

A proverbial faying, ufed by Mr. Tho. Heywood, in his play, intitled The Dutchefs of Suffolk, act 3.

"A rope for Bishop Bonner, Clunce run,

"Call help, a rope, or we are all undone.
"Draw dun out of the ditch." Dr. GRAY.

Draw dun cut of the mire, feems to have been a game. In an old collection of Satyres, Epigrams, &c. I find it enumerated among other paftimes:

"At fhove-groate, venter-point, or croffe and pile,
"At leaping o'er a Midfommer bone-fier,
"Or at the drawing dun out of the pyer."

So

'Or (fave your reverence) love, wherein thou stickest Up to thine ears. Come, we burn day-light, ho. Rom. Nay, that's not fo.

Mer. I mean, Sir, in delay

We wafte our lights in vain, 2 like lamps by day.
Take our good meaning; for our judgment fits
Five times in that, ere once in our fine wits.

Rom. And we mean well in going to this mask; But 'tis no wit to go.

Mer. Why, may one afk?

Rom. I dreamt a dream to-night.

Mer. And fo did I.

Rom. Well, what was yours?

Mer. That dreamers often lye.

So Skelton in his Crowne of Lawrel,

"Dun is in the mire, dame reach me my fpur." Again, in Humour out of Breath, a comedy, 1607.

"Imuft play dun, and draw them all out of the mire." Dun's the moufe is a proverbial phrafe, which I have met with frequently in the old comedies. So in Every Woman in her Humour, 1609.

"If my hoft fay the word, the moufe fhall be dun." Of this cant expreffion I cannot determine the precife meaning. It is ufed again in Weflavard Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607, but apparently in a fenfe different from that which Dr. Warburton would affix to it. STEEVENS.

Or (fave your reverence) love,-] The word or obfcures the fentence; we should read O! for or love. Mercutio having called the affection with which Romeo was entangled by fo difrefpectful a word as mire, cries out,

O! fave your reverence, love. JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnfon has imputed a greater fhare of politeness to Mercutio than he is found to be poffeffed of in the quarto, 1597. Mercutio as he paffes through different editions,

"Works himself clear, and as he runs refines:"

for in the former he is made to say,

from the mire

Of this fir-reverence, love, wherein thou ftick'ft. STEEV. 2-like lamps by day.] Lamps is the reading of the old quarto. The folio and fubfequent quarto's read lights, lights by day. STEEVENS.

Rom.

Rom. In bed afleep; while they do dream things

true 3.

Mer. 4 O, then, I fee, Queen Mab has been with

you.

She is the Fairies' midwife, and she comes

3 the quarto 1597, after the first line of Mercutio's fpeech, Romeo fays, Queen Mab, what's fe? and the printer, by a blunder, has given all the reft of the fpeech to the fame character. STEEVENS.

↑ O, then, I fee, Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the FAIRIES' midwife,] Thus begins that admirable fpeech upon the effects of the imagination in dreams. But, Queen Mab the fairies mid-wife? What is the then Queen of? Why, the fairies. What! and their midwife too? But this is not the greatest of the abfurdities. Let us fee upon what occafion fhe is introduced, and under what quality. It is as a being that has great power over human imagination. But then the title given her muft have reference to the employment fhe is put upon : Firft then, fhe is called Queen; which is very pertinent, for that defigns her power: then she is called the fairies' mid-wife; but what has that to do with the point in hand? If we would think that Shakespeare wrote fenfe, we muft fay, he wrote the FANCY's midwife; and this is a proper title, as it introduces all that is faid afterwards of her vagaries. Befides, it exactly quadrates with thefe lines: I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantafie.

Thefe dreams are begot upon fantafie, and Mab is the midwife to bring them forth. And fancy's mid-wife is a phrafe altogether in the manner of our author. WARBURTON.

All the copies, three of which were published in the author's life-time, concur in reading fairies' mid-wife. Queen Mab's bufinefs is to infpire people with thoughts, to impregnate them with fancies, and not to deliver them of fuch thoughts or fancies as they have already conceived. There is no reason then for making her the fancy's midwife, when Shakespeare had appointed her to that office in the fairy court. Dr. Warburton feems to have forgot that Juno, though the Queen of Heaven, was not difparaged by being a mid-wife. By this title too, among others, Horace invokes Diana:

"Montium cuftos nemorumq; virgo

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Quæ laborantes utero puellas," &c.

It may be worth while to add, that the word Queen was used by the Saxons only to fignify the female fex. Queen-Fugol was a ken-fowl, queen-cat a fe-cat. STEEVENS.

In

In fhape no bigger than an agat-stone
5 On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart mens' nofes as they lie afleep:
Her waggon-fpokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grafhoppers;
The traces, of the smallest fpider's web;
The collars, of the moonfhine's watry beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lafh, of film:
Her waggoner a fmall grey-coated gnat,
Not half fo big as a round little worm,
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid.
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut,
Made by the joiner fquirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this ftate fhe gallops, night by night,
Through lover's brains, and then they dream of love
On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'fies ftrait;
O'er lawyers' fingers, who ftrait dream on fees:
O'er ladies' lips, who ftrait on kiffes dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with fweet-meats tainted are.
Sometimes fhe gallops o'er a courtier's nofe,
And then dreams he of fmelling out a fuit:

And

On the fore-finger of an alderman,] The quarto, 1597, reads, of a burgo-mafter. The alteration was probably made by the poet himself, as we find it in the fucceeding copy 1599; but in order to familiarize the idea, he has diminished its propriety. In the pictures of burgo-mafters, the ring is generally placed on the fore-finger; and from a paffage in The First Part of Hen. IV. we may fuppofe the citizens in Shakespeare's time to have worn this ornament on the thumb. So again, Glapthorne, in his comedy of Wit in a Conftable, 1639,

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and an alderman,

"As I may fay to you, he has no more

"Wit than the rest o' the bench; and that lies in his thumb-ring." STEEVENS.

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Sometimes fhe gallops o'er a LAWYER's nose,

And then dreams be of smelling out a fuit:] The old editions..

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