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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. 1. 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. 146: Thou art a gentleman and well derived.'

100. 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. 147:

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,

Compare

Thou hast so wrong'd mine innocent child and me.' 110. spotted, polluted, guilty; the opposite of 'spotless.' Richard II, iii. 2. 134:

Terrible hell make war

Upon their spotted souls for this offence!'

And Titus Andronicus, ii. 3. 74:

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112. spoke. See 1. 175.

113. self-affairs, my own business. Shakespeare has many similar compounds: as 'self-abuse,' for self-deception, Macbeth, iii. 4. 142; 'selfbounty,' 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. 149; self-wrong,' injury done to oneself, Comedy of Errors, iii. 2. 168; &c.

120. extenuate, mitigate, weaken the force of.

123. go along, go with us. So in 3 Henry VI, iv. 5. 25:

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Huntsman, what say'st thou? wilt thou go along?'

125. 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 Cæsar, v. 3. 105:

His funerals shall not be in our camp';

although in this case it is the singular form that has survived.

126. nearly that concerns, that nearly concerns.

127. 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.

129. How chance &c., how chances it. Compare King Lear, ii. 4. 64: 'How chance the king comes with so small a train?'

Abbott, § 37.

130. Belike, probably, by likelihood. See Julius Cæsar, iii. 2. 275:

'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.

131. 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:

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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. 137; 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 paral'el passage in Venus and Adonis, 1136-1140:

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'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. 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. 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. 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.'

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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 fling 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:

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'Some certain edicts and some strait decrees.'

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

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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. 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.'

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:

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