2 That fright the maidens of the villagery; Puck. Thou speak'st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night. 4 And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe And waxen 6 in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there. But room, fairy: here comes Oberon. 1 Hand-mill. A lip flaccid with age. 2 Yeast. 3 Wild apple. He that slips beside his chair falls as a tailor squats on his board hence the custom of crying 'tailor' at a sudden fall backwards. : 6 Increase. Fai. And here my mistress.-Would that he were gone! SCENE II. Enter OBERON, at one door, with his train, and Obe. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. Obe. Tarry, rash wanton. Am not I thy lord? Tit. Then I must be thy lady: but I know When thou hast stolen away from fairy land, And in the shape of Corin sat all day, Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here, Come from the farthest steep of India? But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, Your buskin'd mistress, and your warrior love, To Theseus must be wedded; and you come To give their bed joy and prosperity. Obe. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, Knowing I know thy love to Theseus ? Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night From Perigenia, whom he ravished? And make him with fair Ægle break his faith, With Ariadne, and Antiopa? Tit. These are the forgeries of jealousy: And never, since the middle summer's spring,1 By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, 1 The beginning of the middle summer, or Midsummer. 2 Petty. 3 Banks that contain them. 4 A game played by shepherds in the midland counties of England. 5 Those sports with which country people are accustomed to beguile a winter's evening.'-Malone. And, thorough this distemperature,1 we see Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer, 2 The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries; and the 'mazed world, From our debate, from our dissension : We are their parents and original. Obe. Do you amend it then; it lies in you: Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy, To be my henchman.4 Set your heart at rest : Tit. The fairy land buys not the child of me. His mother was a votaress of my order ; And, in the spiced Indian air, by night, Full often hath she gossip'd by my side; And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, Marking the embarked traders on the flood; When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive, And grow big-bellied, with the wanton wind: Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait, (Following her womb, then rich with my young squire) 1 'Perturbation of the elements.'-Steevens. 2 Teeming. 3 Produce. 4 Page of honor. |