In their gold coats spots you see ; In those freckles live their savours: I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone ;7 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, Because that she, as her attendant, hath A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king; 'She never had so sweet a changeling :8 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, By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen, But they do square; that all their elves, for fear, 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 Good-fellow' are you not he, be found. Hence, says Mrs Quickly, in The Merry Wives, "-and yet there has been earls, Day, which is more, pensioners." They gave the modes of dress and diversions. They accompanied the Queen in her progress to Cambridge, where they held staff-torches at a play on Sunday evening, in King's College Chapel. T. WARTON. [6] Shakspeare, in Cymbeline, refers to the same red spots: "A mole cinque-spotted like the crimson drops [7] Lob, lubber, looby, lobcock, all denote both inactivity of body and dulness of mind. JOHNSON. [8] Changeling is commonly used for the child supposed to be left by the fairies, but here for a child taken away. JOHNSON. It is here properly used, and in its common acceptation; i. e. for a child got in exchange. A fairy is now speaking. RITSON. [9] Sheen, shining, bright, gay. To square here is to quarrel. The French word contrecarrer has the same meaning. JOHNSON. It is somewhat whimsical, that the glasiers use the words square and quarrel as synonymous terms for a pane of glass. BLACKSTONE. [1] This account of Robin Good-fellow corresponds, in every article, with that given of him in Harsenet's Declaration, ch. xx. p. 143. "And if that the bowle of curds and creame were not duly set out for Robin Good-fellow, the frier, and Sisse, the cairy-maid, why then either the pottage was burnt to next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not curdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat never would have good head. But if a Peeter-penny, or an housle-egge were behind, or That fright the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,* Puck. Thou speak'st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night. And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe; a patch of tythe unpaid, then 'ware of bull-beggars, spirits," &c. He is mentioned by Cartwright as a spirit particularly fond of disconcerting and disturbing domestic peace and economy. T WARTON. A Quern is a hand-mill, kuerna, mola, Islandic. STEEVENS. Barme is a name for yeast, yet used in our midland counties, and universally in Ireland. STEEVENŠ [4] To those traditionary opinions Milton has reference in L'Allegro: and a like account of Puck is given by Drayton, in his Nymphidia.—It will be apparent to him that shall compare Drayton's poem with this play, that either one of the poets copied the other, or, as I rather believe, that there was then some system of the fairy empire generally received, which they both represented as accurately as they could. Whether Drayton or Shakespeare wrote first, I cannot discover. JOHNSON. sweet Puck]-The epithet is by no means superfluous; as Puck alone was far from being an endearing appellation. It signified nothing better than fiend or devil. It seems to have been an old Gothic word. Puke, puken; Sathanas, Gudm. And. Lericon Island. TYRWHITT. [5] It seems that in the fairy mythology, Puck, or Hobgoblin, was the servant of Oberon, and always employed to watch or detect the intrigues of Queen Mab, called by Shakespeare, Titania. For in Drayton's Nymphidia, the same fairies are engaged in the same business. Mab has an amour with Pigwiggin; Oberon being jealous, sends Hobgoblin to catch them, and one of Mab's nymphs opposes him by a spell. JOHNSON. 16) i e. a wild apple of that name. STEEVENS. 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 on his board. JOHNSON. And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there. -But room, Faery," here comes Oberon. Fai. And here my mistress :-'Would that he were gone! SCENE II. Enter OBERON, at one door, with his train, and TITANIA, at another, with her's. Ob. Il met by moon-light, proud Titania. Tita. What, jealous Oberon ?-Fairy, skip hence; I have forsworn his bed and company. Ob. Tarry, rash wanton; Am not I thy lord? Ob. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Knowing I know thy love to Theseus? Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night [8] The word Fairy, or Faery, was sometimes of three syllables, as often in Spenser. JOHNSON, As to the Fairy Queen, (says Mr. Warton, in his Observations on Spenser,) considered apart from the race of fairies, Chaucer, in his Rime of Sir Thopas, mentions her, together with a Fairy land. Again, in the The Wif of Bathes Tale, v. 6439: "In old days of the king Artour. "Of which that Bretons spoken gret honour; STEEVENS. [1] Richard Brathwaite, (Strappado for the Devil, 1615,) has a poem addressed To the queen of harvest, &c. much honoured by the reed, corn-pipe, and whistle:" and it must be remembered, that the shepherd boys of Chaucer's time, had— ........many a floite and litling horne, "Ano pipes made of greene corné." RITSON. [2] The glimmering night is the night faintly illuminated with stars. STEEVENS From Perignia, whom he ravished?" And make him with fair Æglé break his faith, Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy: Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, [3] Thus all the editors; but our author who diligently perused Plutarch, and gleaned from him, where his subject would admit, knew, from the life of Theseus, that her name was Perygine, (or Perigune,) by whom Theseus had his son Menalippus. She was the daughter of Sinnis, a cruel robber, and tormenter of passengers in the Isthmus. Plutarch and Athenæus are both express in the circumstance of Theseus' ravishing her. THEOBALD. Egle, Ariadne, and Antiopa, were all at different times mistresses to Theseus. See Plutarch. Theobald cannot be blamed for his emendation; and yet it is well known that our ancient authors, as well as the French and the Italians, were not scrupulously nice about proper names, but almost always corrupted them. STEEVENS. [4] By the middle summer's spring our author seems to mean the beginning of middle or mid summer. Spring, for beginning, he uses again in King Henry IV. Part II. "As flaws congealed in the spring of day :" which expression has authority from the scripture, St. Luke, i. 78; whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us." STEEVENS. [5] A fountain laid round the edge with stone. JOHNSON. The epithet seems here intended to mean no more than that the beds of these fountains were covered with pebbles, in opposition to those of the rushy brooks which are oozy. HENLEY. [6] Thus the quartos: the folio reads, petty. Shakespeare has in Lear the same word, low pelting farms. The meaning is plainly, despicable, mean, sorry, wretched; but as it is a word without any reasonable etymology, I should be glad to dismiss it for petty: yet it is undoubtedly right. We have "petty pelting officer" in Measure for Measure. JOHNSON. [7] Borne down the banks that contained them. So, in Lear: -close pent up guilts, "Rive your concealing continents." [8] The murrain is the plague ID cattle. JOHNSON. The nine-men's morris is fill'd up with mud ;9 [9] In that part of Warwickshire where Shakespeare 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 3 or 4 yards. Within this is another, every side of which is a 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 grass at the end of ploughed lands, and in rainy seasons never fail to be choaked up with mud. JAMES. [1] This alludes to a sport still followed by boys; i. e. what is now called running the figure of eight. STEEVENS. [2] The confusion of seasons here described, is no more than a poetical account of the weather, which happened in England about the time when this play was first published. For this information I am indebted to chance, which furnished me with a few leaves of an old meteorological history. STEEVENS. [3] Rheumatic diseases signified in Shakespeare's time, not what we now call Theumatism, but distillations from the head, catarrhs, &c. MALONE. [4] i. e. this perturbation of the elements. STEEVENS. By distemperature, I imagine is meant, in this place, the perturbed state in which the king and queen had lived for some time past. MALONE. [5] This singular image was, I believe, suggested to our poet by Golding's translation of Ovid, Book II: "And lastly, quaking for the colde, stood Winter all forlorne, MAL. STE. [6] The childing autumn is the pregnant autumn, frugifer autumnus. Childing is an old term of botany, when a small dower grows out of a large one; "the childing autumn," therefore means the autumn which unseasonably produces dowers on those of summer. Florists have also a childing daisy, and a childing scabious. HOLT WHITE. |