Antwerp, which can make twenty marriages in one week for their kinswomen." See Winter's Tale, act iv. Among Ray's proverbial phrases is the following: "She is one of mine aunts that made mine uncle to go a begging." The wisest aunt may mean the most sentimental bawd. STEEVENS. This conjecture is much too wanton and injurious to the word aunt, which in this place at least certainly means no other than an innocent old woman. REMARKS. 55. And taylor cries- -] The custom of crying taylor at a sudden fall backwards, I think I remember to have observed. He that slips beside his chair, falls as a tailor squats upon his board. The Oxford editor, and Dr. Warburton after him, read and rails or cries, plausibly, but I believe not rightly. Besides, the trick of the fairy is represented as producing rather merriment than anger. JOHNSON. 56. —hold their hips, and loffe,] waxes. Milton. STEEVENS. 57. And waxen -] And increase, as the moon JOHNSON. 61. Enter Oberon.] Oberon had been introduced on the stage in 1594, by some other author. In the Stationers' book is entered "The Scottishe story of James the fourth, slain at Floddon; intermixed with a pleasant comedie presented by Oberon, King of Fairies." The judicious editor of the Canterbury Tales Tales of Chaucer, in his Introductory Discourse (See Vol. IV. p. 161.) observes, that Pluto and Proserpina in the Marchant's Tale, appear to have been "the true progenitors of Shakspere's Oberon and Titania.” STEEVENS. 62. Queen.] As to the Fairy Queen (says Mr. Warton in his Observations on Spenser) considered apart from the race of fairies, the notion of such an imaginary personage was very common. Chaucer, in his Rime of Sir Thopas, mentions her, together with a Fairy land: "In the old dayis of the king Arthure, "Of which the Bretons speken great honour; "This was the old opinion as I rede." Wife of Bath's Tale. 78. Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night] The glimmering night is the night faintly illumi nated by stars. In Macbeth our author says: "The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day." STEEVENS. 79. From Periguné whom he ravished ?] Periguné (or Perigyné) was the daughter of Sinnis, a cruel robber, and tormentor of passengers in the Isthmus. Plutarch and Athenæus are both express in the circumstance of Theseus ravishing her. THEOBALD. Ægle, Ægle, Ariadne, and Antopia, were all at different times mistresses to Theseus. See Plutarch. 83. And never, since the middle summer's spring, &c.] There are not many passages in Shakspere which one can be certain he has borrowed from the ancients; but this is one of the few that, I think, will admit of no dispute. Our author's admirable description of the miseries of the country being plainly an imitation of that which Ovid draws, as consequent on the grief of Cerus for the loss of her daughter: Nec scit adhuc ubi sit: terras tamen increpat omnes; Cassa jacet: primis segetes moriuntur in herbis: THE middle summer's spring,] We should read THAT. For it appears to have been some years since the quarrel first began. WARBURTON. By the middle summer's spring, our author seems to mean the beginning of middle or mid summer. Spring for beginning he uses again: Henry IV. Part II. "As flaws congeal'd in the spring of day.” which expression has authority from the scripture, St. Luke, ch. i. v. 78. "whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us." Ovid had been translated by Golding:-the first four books in 1565, and all the rest, in a few years afterwards. STEEVENS. Dr. Warburton's reason for reading That instead of The, appears to be satisfactory, and authorized by the context. The middle summer's spring, is, I apprehend, the season when trees put forth their second, or as they are frequently called their midsummer shoots. Thus, Evelyn in his Silva: "Cut off all the side boughs, and especially at midsummer, if you spy them breaking out." And, again, “Where the rows and brush lie longer than midsummer, unbound, or made up, you endanger the loss of the second spring." HENLEY. 85. paved fountain,] A fountain laid round the edge with stone. JOHNSON. Perhaps paved at the bottom. So, Lord Bacon in his Essay on Gardens: "As for the other kind of fountaine, which we may call a bathing-poole, it may admit much curiosity and beauty. . . . . As that the bottom be finely payed. . . . the sides likewise," &c. STEEVENS. 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. The same expression is used by Sylvester in a similar sense : "By some cleare river's lillie-PAVED side." HENLEY. 89. the winds, piping] So, Milton: "While rocking winds, are piping loud." JOHNSON. 92. -pelting river] Thus the quartos: the folio reads petty. Shakspere 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, So, in Gascoigne's Glass of Government, 1575: "Doway is a pelting town pack'd full of poor scholars." This word is always used as a term of contempt. So again, in Lylly's Midas, 1592: "attire never used but of old women and pelting priests." 93. STEEVENS. →overborne their continents.] Borne down the banks that contain them. So in Lear 3 98. -close pent up guilts "Rive your concealing continents!" plague in cattle. JOHNSON. murrain flock:] The murrain is the It is here used by Shakspere as an adjective; as a substantive by others : "sends him as a murrain "To strike our herds; or as a worser plague, Your people to destroy." Heywood's Silver Age, 1613. STEEVENS. |