'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. 124 (106 Clar. Press ed.), and Richard II, iii. 4. 101.

139. friends. The reading of the quartos. The folios have 'merit.' 141. sympathy, congruity, equality. Compare Richard II, iv. 1. 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. 1. 7-10, and Othello, ii. 1. 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. 17, is, 'For oure excedinge tribulacion which is momentany (Vulg. momentaneum) and light prepareth an excedinge and an eternall wayght of glorye vnto vs.'

·

145. collied, black; literally, begrimed as with soot or coal. In Herefordshire 'colly' signifies 'dirty, smutty.' See Sir G. C. Lewis's Glossary of Provincial Words used in Herefordshire. Collow, or Colly' is in Wilbraham's Cheshire Glossary. Palsgrave (Lesclaircissement de la Langue Francoyse) gives: 'I colowe, I make blake with a cole. le charbonne.' And Cotgrave has, Charbonner. To paint, marke, write, or smeare, with a coale; to collowe; to bleach, or make black, with a coale.'

147. 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. 1. 448:

'With swifter spleen than powder can enforce,
The mouth of passage shall we filing wide ope.

And again, v. 7. 50:

'O, I am scalded with my violent motion,
And spleen of speed to see your majesty!'

148. Halliwell quotes Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2. 119, 120:
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be,
Ere one can say "It lightens."

151. 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.'

>

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.'

155. fancy's, love's. See iv. 1. 162, and compare 'fancy-sick,' iii. 2. 96; 'fancy-free,' ii. 1. 164.

156. persuasion, opinion, conviction. Compare Cymbeline, i. 4. 125: 'You are a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion.' It also signifies a persuasive argument, and perhaps has that sense here.

159. remote. The reading of the quartos. The folios have 'remov'd,' which is used in the same sense in Hamlet, i. 4. 46.

160. respects, regards, considers. See ii. 1. 224, and compare Coriolanus, iii. 1. 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. 1. 126:

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 Mayday. See iv. 1. 132, and Chaucer, Knight's Tale, 1500:

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. 14, 15:
'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

Woolwich for air and to gather May-dew while her husband diverted himself at Vauxhall. For further information see Brand's Popular Antiquities 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.'

170. 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. Sce 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. 1. 35:

'How will she love, when the rich golden shaft

Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else

That live in her.'

171. Venus' doves, which drew her chariot. See Venus and Adonis, 153, 1190; Lucrece, 58; Romeo and Juliet, ii. 5. 7.

173. See Virgil, Aeneid, iv. 584, &c. Steevens pointed out the anachronism 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.'

174. Troyan, the spelling of the quartos and first folio.

175. broke, broken. Shakespeare uses both forms. See note on Richard II, iii. 1. 13.

182. your fair, your beauty. Compare As You Like It, iii. 2. 99 (84 Clar. Press ed. and note); and Sonnet xvi. II;

Neither in inward worth nor outward fair.'

183. lode-stars, leading or guiding stars; as the polar star is to sailors. Compare Lucrece, 179:

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 bezonde 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 pe lade-sterne, whene pe lyghte faillez.'

It is the cynosure' of Milton's L'Allegro, 80:

'Where perhaps some beauty lies,

The cynosure of neighbouring eyes';

Kuvóσoupa 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:

Of female favour.'

The boy is fair,

It is generally applied to the face. See Macbeth, i. 5. 73; Hamlet, v. 1. 214; and Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 363:

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. Yours 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. 100: 'Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido.'

191. translated, transformed. See iii. 1. 107. Compare Coriolanus, ii. 3. 196:

'So his gracious nature Would think upon you for your voices and Translate his malice towards you into love.'

And Sonnet xcvi. 10:

'How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, If like a lamb he could his looks translate!' 200. no fault. So the first quarto. read 'none.'

The second quarto and the folios

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. 211. liquid pearl. See ii. 1. 15.

Ib. bladed, with fresh green shoots.

Compare Macbeth, iv. 1. 55:

Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down.'

212. still, constantly. See iii. 1. 158; 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. 147:

With him Patroclus

Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
Breaks scurril jests.'

And As You Like It, ii. 7. 132:

'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 lv. 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. 143: 'But tread the stranger paths of banishment';

6

and of companies' for companions, associates, from Henry V, i. 1. 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. 13: Some of them were bound, and other some brought of them that were offered.' And Acts xvii. 18.