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noble poem, the "Vanity of Human Wishes," attempted to revive it

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate.

"Speak, OF ALL LOVES"-"Of all loves" is a pleasing adjuration used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. it may be found in OTHELLO.

ACT III.-SCENE I.

"-in EIGHT and SIX"-i. e. In alternate verse of eight and six syllables.

"-a lion among ladies, is a most dreadful thing"There is an odd coincidence between this passage and a real occurrence at the Scottish court, in 1594. Prince Henry, the oldest son of James the First, was christened in August, in that year. While the king and queen were at dinner, a triumphal chariot, with several allegorical personages on it, was drawn in "by a blackmoore. This chariot should have been drawn in by a lyon, but because his presence might have brought some fear to the nearest, or that the sight of the lighted torches might have commoved his tameness, it was thought meet that the Moore should supply that roome."

"-tell them plainly he is Snug, the joiner"-"This passage will suggest to our readers Sir Walter Scott's description of the pageant at Kenilworth, when Lambourne, not knowing his part, tore off his vizard, and swore, Cogs-bones! he was none of Arion or Orion either, but honest Mike Lambourne, that had been drinking her majesty's health from morning till midnight, and was come to bid her heartily welcome to Kenilworth Castle.' But a circumstance of this nature actually happened upon the queen's visit to Kenilworth, in 1575; and is recorded in the Merry Passages and Jests,' compiled by Sir Nicholas Lestrange, and lately published by the Camden Society, from the Harleian MS.:-There was a spectacle presented to Queen Elizabeth upon the water, and, among others, Harry Goldingham was to represent Arion upon the dolphin's back, but finding his voice to be very hoarse and unpleasant when he came to perform it, he tears off his disguise and swears he was none of Arion, not he, but even honest Harry Goldingham; which blunt discovery

pleased the queen better than if it had gone through in the right way; yet he could order his voice to an instrument exceeding well.' It is by no means improbable that Shakespeare was familiar with this local anecdote, and has applied it in the case of Snug, the joiner.' Bottom, and Quince, and the other hard-handed men,' must also have been exceedingly like the citizens of Coventry, who played their Hock play before the queen, on the memorable occasion of her visit to their neigh bourhood."-KNIGHT.

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"-CUES and all"-Untheatrical readers may require to be informed that in Shakespeare's day, as at present, a cue, technically, is the last word of the preceding speech, from which the next speaker commences.

"A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire"-So, in "Robin Good-fellow, his Mad Pranks and Merry Jests," reprinted by the Percy Society

Thou hast the power to change thy shape To horse, to hog, to dog, to ape. And in the ballad in the "Introduction" to the same

tract

Sometimes a walking fire he'd be,
And lead them from their way.

"The OOSEL-COCK, so black of hue"-By the "ooselcock," in Shakespeare's day, was meant the black-bird, and not another bird which has in later days been known as the oosel-cock. Yarrell states, ("British Birds," i. 211,) of the black-bird, "the beak and the edges of the eye-lids in the adult male are gamboge yellow," which is what Bottom means by "orange. tawney."

"PLAIN-SONG cuckoo"-The "cuckoo," having no variety of note, sings in "plain song," (plano cantu;) by which expression the uniform modulation or simplicity of the chant was distinguished in opposition to pricksong, or variated music sung by note.

"I can GLEEK"-To "gleek" is to joke, scoff, or gird. Bottom is congratulating himself on the humour of what he has just said.

"Be kind and courteous to this gentleman"-Hazlitt happily contrasts this exquisitely fanciful passage with the spirited freshness of the dialogue between Theseus

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and Hippolyta, in the hunting-scene, in the fourth act, which is as heroical and spirited as the other is full of luscious tenderness:-"The reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight; the descriptions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from the beds of flowers. Titania's exhortation to the fairies to wait upon Bottom is remarkable for a certain cloying sweetness, in the repetition of the rhymes. The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet are not more distinct than the poetry of this passage, and of the conversation between Theseus and Hippolyta."

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-light them at the fiery glow-worm's EYES""Shakespeare was certainly a much truer lover of nature, and therefore a much better naturalist, than Dr. Johnson, who indeed professed to despise such studies; but the critic has, nevertheless, ventured in this instance to be severe upon the Poet:-'I know not how Shakespeare, who commonly derived his knowledge of nature from his own observation, happened to place the glowworm's light in his eyes, which is only in his tail.' Well, then, let us correct the Poet, and make Titania describe the glow-worm with a hatred of all metaphorAnd light them at the fiery glow-worm's tail.

We fear this will not do. It reminds us of the attempt of a very eminent naturalist to unite science and poetry in verses which he called the Pleasures of Ornithology,' of which union the following is a specimen :

The morning wakes, as from the lofty elm
The cuckoo sends the monotone. Yet he,
Polygamous, ne'er knows what pleasures wait
On pure monogamy.

We may be wrong, but we would rather have Bottom'splain-song cuckoo gray

than these hard words."-KNIGHT.

"-mistress SQUASH"-"Squash," as elsewhere mentioned, then meant an immature peascod.

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"— brave TOUCH"-A "touch" anciently signified a trick. Ascham has-"the shrewd touches of many curst boys." And in the old story of Howleglas-" for at all times he did seme mad touch."

"ABY it dear"-To "aby" appears to be a form of abide, (though some have derived it from buy ;) and means not merely to stay, but to stay to answer, or suffer for any thing. Thus in the old play, "Ferrex and Por

rex"

Thou, Porrex, thou shalt dearly 'by the same.

"-is all forgot"-Gibbon points out in a poem of Gregory Nazianzen (a Greek father of the fourth century) on his own life, some beautiful lines, which burst from the heart, and speak the pangs of injured and lost friendship, resembling these. He adds'Shakespeare had never read the poems of Gregory Nazianzen: he was ignorant of the Greek language; but his mother tongue, the language of nature, is the same in Cappadocia as in Britain."

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ARTIFICIAL gods"-" Artificial" is used actively, as artist or artificer-like-a sense not found elsewhere,

and indicating a familiarity with its primitive Latin meaning.

"-like coats in heraldry"-In the Poet's day. heraldry was part of the familiar learning of all, and this passage doubtless needed no illustration. But modern heralds and commentators differ as to the allusion. Mr. Douce's solution of it is, perhaps, the best:"Helen says, we had two seeming bodies, but only one heart.' She then exemplifies the 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 one single heart, have but one crest.'"

"No, no, SIR"-There is some difference of the text here. The quartos, differing only in their metrical arrangement, have

No, no, he'll
Seem to break loose; take on, as you would follow.
:-

The folios give the passage thus:

No, no, sir, seem to break loose.

The last seems preferable in sense.

"-hated POISON"-One of the quartos has potion for "poison," which is preferred in some of the later editions.

"of hindering KNOT-GRASS made"-It appears that “knot-grass" was anciently supposed to prevent the growth of any animal or child. Beaumont and Fletcher mention this property of it in the "Knight of the Burning Pestle:""Should they put him into a straight pair of gaskins, 'twere worse than knot-grass: he would never grow after it."

"That prince of verbose and pedantic coxcombs, Richard Tomlinson, apothecary, in his translation of 'Renodæus his Dispensatory,' (1657,) informs us that knot-grass is a low reptant hearb, with exile, copious, nodose, and geniculated branches.' Perhaps no hypochondriac is to be found, who might not derive his cure from the perusal of any single chapter in this work."-STEVENS.

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"— in your CURST company"-Many a modern reader may take this phrase as answering to the participle cursed, and will of course be shocked by its vulgar profanity in a lady's mouth and a poetic scene. But the word "curst," as used here and elsewhere by Shakespeare, had then the very common sense, now antiquated, of ill-tempered, malicious, shrewish. Puck so uses it of Helena, when he describes her as coming "curst and sad" from her ill-treatment.

"-night's swift DRAGONS"-The chariot of night was drawn by "dragons," on account of their watchfulness. They were the serpents, whose " never shut." In Milton's "Il Penseroso,"―

eyes were

Cynthia checks her dragon yoke. "-damned spirits"-i. e. The ghosts of self-murderers, who are buried in cross-roads; and of those who, being drowned, were condemned (according to the opinion of the ancients) to wander for a hundred years, as the rites of sepulture had never been bestowed on their bodies.

"I with the morning's love have oft made sport"Stevens and Holt White have found room for much mythological and poetical discussion on the question whether Oberon meant to laugh at Tithonus, the old husband of Aurora, or sport "like a forester" with young Cephalus the morning's love.

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So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle,
Gently entwist-the female ivy so

Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.

This is certainly very different from the usual Shakespearian construction. Nor is our Poet fond of expletives. If the 'elm' is the only plant entwisted and enringed, we have only one image. But if the woodbine' is not meant to be indentical with the honeysuckle,' we have two images, each distinct and each beautiful. Gifford pointed out the true meaning of the passage, in his note upon a parallel passage in Ben Jonson:

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behold!

How the blue bindweed doth itself enfold
With honeysuckle, and both these intwine
Themselves with bryony and jessamine.

In many of our counties (says Gifford) the woodbine is still the name for the great convolvulus."

With this exposition of Gifford and Knight, Mr. Nares, a high authority, ("Glossary," word Woodbine,) coucurs. But, agreeing with them in rejecting the punctuation and understanding of the "sweet honeysuckle" as a mere expletive phrase, I yet doubt their botanical explanation. I think it certain that the distinction intended is that well known in the Poet's age, between the woodbine, as the plant itself, and the honeysuckle as its flower. Baret, in his Dictionary, (1580,) so defines them-" The woodbine that beareth the honeysuckle;" and some years later we find the distinction used in dramatic poetry. In the "Fatal Union," (1640,) we havea honeysuckle,

The amorous woodbine's offspring.

"Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower"-" Dian's bud" is the bud of the agnus castus, or chaste-tree. In "Macer's Herbal," by Lynacre, it is said-" The virtue of this hearbe is, that it will keep man and woman chaste." Cupid's flower" is that on which the "bolt of Cupid fell"-the viola tri-colour, love-in-idleness, or heart's

ease.

"-music! such as charmeth sleep"-After these words, in the folio, (1623,) we have the stage-direction, "Music still;" which (says Collier) means, probably, that the music was to cease before Puck spoke; as Oberon afterwards exclaims, "Sound, music!" when it was to be renewed. The other editors change it to "still music," or low and quiet strains, which was more probably the intention.

-to all fair PROSPERITY"-The two earliest editions differ in this word, a very slight alteration of letters giving two very different senses, and both characteristic. We give the substance of the editorial argument on each side, preferring our reading for the reason assigned by Malone, but allowing that the argument is nearly as strong on the other side.

"In the concluding song, where Oberon blesses the nuptial bed, part of his benediction is, that the posterity of Theseus shall be fair :—

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
Despised in nativity,

Shall upon their children be." M. MASON. "I have preferred 'fair prosperity,' which is the reading of the first and best quarto, to that of the other ing lines, in a former scene :quarto and the folio, (posterity,) induced by the follow

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your warrior love To Theseus must be wedded, and you come To give their bed joy and prosperity."

MALONE.

-in silence SAD"-"Sad" here signifies grave, sober; and is opposed to the dances and revels, which were now ended at the singing of the morning-lark. A statute of Henry VII. directs certain offences, committed in the king's palace, to be tried by twelve "sad" men of the household.

- these mortals on the ground"-Here the folio has the stage-direction, "Sleepers lie still:" meaning that they were not to be disturbed by the horns.

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now our OBSERVATION is perform'd"—The "observation" here spoken of is that alluded to by Lysander, in the first act:

Where I did meet thee once with Helena,

To do observance to a morn of May. Stubbs, in his "Anatomie of Abuses," (1585,) thus speaks of the general spirit of revelry which at this season took possession of the community, in his day :

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Against May, Whit-Sunday, or some other time of the year, every parish, town, and village, assemble themselves together, both men, women and children, old and young, even all indifferently; and either going all together, or dividing themselves into companies, they go some to the woods and groves, some to the hills and mountains, some to one place, some to another, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes; and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch-boughs and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withal." Marvellous as it may seem, all this innocent hilarity appears to be so much heathenism to Stubbs.

Chaucer, in his "Knight's Tale," (from which Shakespeare is supposed to have derived his Theseus and Hippolyta,) has some beautiful lines in reference to the rites of May:

Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day,
Till it fell ones, in a morne of May,
That Emilie, that fayrer was to sene
Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene,
And fresher than the May with floures newe,
(For with the rose colour strof hire hewe;
I wot which was the finer of hem two,)
Ere it was day, as she was wont to do,
She was arisen, and all redy dight,
For May wol have no slogardie a-night.
The seson pricketh every gentil herte,

And maketh him out of his slepe to starte,

And sayth, "Arise, and do thine observance."

the VAWARD of the day"-i. e. The early part of the day; the van-ward.

gallant CHIDING"-"Chiding" of old signified loud sharp sound, without reference to the rebuke generally conveyed in such tones. It afterwards became limited to that secondary sense; but Milton, in his prose works, still employs it as descriptive of noise.

"So FLEW'D, so SANDED"-The flews are the large chaps of a hound: "so sanded" refers to the sandy marks on the dogs, which is one of the indications of the true breed in bloodhounds. A century afterwards, Nat. Lee, in his "Theodosius," thus imitated this passage, and adopted its language:

When through the woods we chased the foaming boar,
With hounds that opened like Thessalian bulls,

Like tigers flewed, and sanded as the shore,

With ears and chests that dashed the morning dews.

"Without the peril of the Athenian law"-This is the reading of Fisher's quarto, so as to make Lysander interrupted by Egeus, with "Enough, enough!" The quarto (which the folio followed) added be after "might," in order to complete the sense at "Athenian law," to the destruction of the metre, and in opposition to the .context. All the modern editors have adopted the mistake, without reference to Fisher's quarto, until Mr. Collier.

“—in FANCY following me"-Here again "fancy" means affection, or love.

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"SIXPENCE A-DAY in Pyramus"-" Shakespeare has already ridiculed the title-page of Cambyses,' by Thomas Preston; and here he seems to allude to him, or some other person who, like him, had been pensioned for his dramatic abilities. Preston acted a part in John Ritwise's play of Dido,' before Queen Elizabeth, at Cambridge, in 1564; and the Queen was so well pleased that she bestowed on him a pension of twenty pounds a-year, which is little more than a shilling a-day."— STEVENS.

44

ACT V.-SCENE I.

SEETHING brains"—i. e. Boiling brains. Elsewhere (Malone remarks) Shakespeare speaks of "boiled brains," as in the WINTER'S TALE, and the TEMPEST.

"The battle with the Centaurs"-This text is in accordance with both the quartos; but the folio represents Lysander as reading the list, and Theseus as commenting upon it, instead of making Theseus both read and comment. Perhaps the change into dialogue was an afterthought to add to the theatrical effect.

"The thrice three Muses mourning'"-T. Warton observed 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, in 1591. The oldest edition of this play, now known, is dated in 1600. If the allusion be allowed, it seems to bring the play below 1591.

- hot ice, and wondrous strange snow"-There seems to be some want of an antithetic word here, which the editors have attempted to supply by conjecture. They want an antithesis for " snow," as "hot" is for "ice." Upton reads, "black snow;" Hanmer,

"scorching snow;" and Mason, "strong snow." Knight says, "snow is a common thing; and, therefore, "wondrous strange" is sufficiently antithetical—hot ice, and snow as strange."

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what poor duty cannot do"-i. e. "What dutifulness tries to perform without ability, lofty generosity receives with complacency; estimating it not by the actual merit of the performance, but by what it might have been, had the abilities of the performers been equal to their zeal."-MALONE.

I doubt "might" being used for possibility. It seems more obvious to receive "in might" as meaning, "according to the might or ability of the offerer, not the merit of his works."

"Flourish of trumpets"—" It was usual on the old English stage for the actor who spoke the Prologue to enter upon the stage when the trumpet or trumpets had sounded thrice."-COLLIER'S Hist. Eng. Dram. Poetry.

"This fellow doth not stand upon POINTS"-"The Prologue is very carefully mis-pointed in the original editions-'a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered.' Had the fellow stood upon points,' it I would have read thus:

If we offend, it is with our good will

That you should think we come not to offend;
But with good will to show our single skill.
That is the true beginning of our end.
Consider then. We come: but in despite
We do not come. As, minding to content you,
Our true intent is all for your delight.

We are not here that you should here repent you.
The actors are at hand; and, by their show,

You shall know all that you are like to know.

We fear that we have taken longer to puzzle out this enigma than the Poet did to produce it."-KNIGHT.

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-on a RECORDER"-The "recorder" was what we now call the flageolet. (See in HAMLET.)

"the wittiest PARTITION"-In the age of Elizabeth and James, eloquence in the pulpit, at the bar, and elsewhere, delighted in innumerable divisions and subdivisions, set out with great logical parade. These were known as " partitions" of the discourse, or serinon; and there seems here to be a play on the two senses of the word.

44- the MAN 'THE MOON"-"The man in the moon was a considerable personage in Shakespeare's day. He not only walked in the moon, (his lantern,') with his thorn-bush' and his 'dog,' but he did sundry other odd things, such as the man in the moon has ceased to do in these our unimaginative days. There is an old black-letter ballad, of the time of James II., preserved in the British Museum, entitled, 'The Man in the Moon drinks Claret,' adorned with a woodcut of this remarkable tippler."-KNIGHT.

"it is already in SNUFF"-To take any thing "in snuff" was to take it in anger. Here it is playful, but sometimes the phrase was used in grave language, as it may be found in HENRY IV., (act i. scene 3;) as well it might be, being drawn from the natural image of the impatient breathing of anger. Our modern luxury of "snuff" was named afterwards from this; and the phrase has fallen in dignity, and become slang, as the association of artificial habits has superseded the original allusion.

"And so the lion vanished"-Dr. Farmer suggested that the text ought to run

And so comes Pyramus.
And then the moon vanishes-

which has been adopted in the editions following the boldly altered text of Stevens. The critics talk from their familiarity with the story, not with the play. Besides, the moon does not vanish, but remains to be thanked by Pyramus, and to go out after his death.

46- hear a Bergomask dance"-A dance after the manner of the peasants of Bergomasco, proverbially clownish.

SCENE II.

"Now the hungry lion roars"-" Very Anacreon, (says Coleridge,) in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity. So far it is Greek; but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of English fancy. In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond."-("Literary Remains.")

"-triple HECATE's team"-Marlowe, Middleton, and Golding, also use "Hecate" as a dissyllable. In Spenser and Jonson we find "Hecaté."

"sweep the dust behind the door"-" Cleanliness was always supposed to be necessary to invite the residence and favour of the fairies. Drayton says

These make our girls their sluttery rue,
By pinching them both black and blue;
And put a penny in their shoe,

The house for cleanly sweeping.

To sweep the dust behind the door' is a common expression for to sweep the dust from behind the door; a necessary monition in large old houses, where the doors of halls and galleries are thrown backward, and seldom shut."

In the MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR

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About him, fairies, sing a scornful rhyme,
And as you trip still pinch him to your time.

Now, until the break of day"-"This speech, which both the old quartos give to Oberon, is, in the edition of 1623, and in all the following, printed as the song. I have restored it to Oberon, as it apparently contains not his declaration that he will bless it, and his orders to the the blessing which he intends to bestow on the bed, but fairies how to perform the necessary rites. But where, then, is the song? I am afraid it is gone after many other things of greater value. The truth is that two songs are lost. The series of the scene is this: after the speech of Puck, Oberon enters, and calls his fairies to a song, which song is apparently wanting in all the old copies. Next Titania leads another song, which is indeed lost, like the former, though the editors have endeavoured to find it. Then Oberon dismisses his fairies to the despatch of the ceremonies. The songs, I suppose, were lost; because they were not inserted in the players' parts, from which the drama was printed."

"I'm an HONEST PUCK"-" Puck,' or Pouke, meant the devil; and (as Tyrwhitt remarks) it is used in that sense in Pierce Ploughman's Vision," and else where. It was therefore necessary for Shakespeare's fairy messenger to assert his honesty, and to clear himCOLLIER.

"-dance it TRIPPINGLY"-The trip was the fairy self from any connection with the 'helle Pouke.'". pace: in the TEMPEST we have

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