By their increase,7 now knows not which is which: Ob. Do you amend it then; it lies in you: Tita. Set your heart at rest, The fairy land buys not the child of me. To fetch me trifles, and return again, [Exe. TITA. and her Train. Ob. Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove, Till I torment thee for this injury. [7] i. e. By their produce. JOHNS.-The expression is scriptural: "Then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our God, shall give us his blessing." Psalm Ixvii. MALONE. GREY. [8] Page of honour. This office was abolished by queen Elizabeth. Upon the establishment of the household of Edward IV. were "henrmen six enfants, or more, as it pleyseth the king, eatinge in the halle, &c. There was also a maister of the henxmen, to shewe them the schoole of nurture, and learne them to ride, to wear their harnesse; to have all curtesie--to teach them all languages, and olher virtues, as harping, pipynge, singing, dauncing, with honest behavioure of temperaunce and patyence." MS. Harl. 293. TYRWHITT. Vol. III. B -My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st [9] -thou remember'st Since once I sat upon a promontory, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, The first thing observable on these words is, that this action of the mermaid is laid in the same time and place with Cupid's attack upon the vestal. By the vestal every one knows is meant Queen Elizabeth. It is very natural and reasonable then to think, that the mermaid stands for some eminent personage of her time. And if so, the allegorical covering, in which there is a mixture of satire and panegyric, will lead us to conclude, that this person was one of whom it had been inconvenient for the author to speak openly, either in praise or dispraise. All this agrees with Mary queen of Scots, and with no other. Queen Elizabeth could not bear to hear her commended; and her successor would not forgive her satyrist. But the poet has so well marked out every distinguishing circumstance of her life and character in this beautiful allegory, as will leave no room to doubt about his secret meaning. She is called, mermaid, 1. to denote her reign over a kingdom situate in the sea, and 2. her beauty, and intemperate lust: 66 -Ut turpiter atrum "Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne." For as Elizabeth for her chastity is called a vestal, this unfortunate lady on a contrary account is called a mermaid. 3. An ancient story may be supposed to be here alluded to. The emperor Julian tells us, Epis. 41, that the Syrens (which, with all the modern poets, are mermaids) contended for precedeney with the Muses, who, overcoming them, took away their wings. The quarrels between Mary and Elizabeth had the same cause, and the same issue. on a dolphin's back,] This evidently marks out that distinguishing cir cumstance of Mary's fortune, her marriage with the dauphin of France, son of Henry II. Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,] This alludes to her great abilities of genius and learning, which rendered her the most accomplished princess of her age. The French writers tell us, that, while she was in that court, she pronounced a Latin oration in the great hall of the Louvre, with so much grace and eloquence, as filled the whole court with admiration. That the rude sea grew civil at her song ;] By the rude sea is meant Scotland encircled with the ocean; which rose up in arms against the regent, while she was in France. But her return home presently quieted those disorders; and had not. her strange ill conduct afterwards more violently inflamed them, she might have passed her whole life in peace. There is the greater beauty in this image, as the vulgar opinion is, that the mermaid always sings in storms. And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music.] This concludes the description, with that remarkable circumstance of this unhappy lady's fate, the destruction she brought upon several of the English nobility, whom she drew in to support her cause. This, in the boldest expression of the sublime, the poet images by certain stars shooting madly from their spheres: By which he meant the earls of NorthumberLand and Westmoreland, who fell in her quarrel; and principally the great duke of Puck. I remember. Ob. That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not) Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the west; And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, In maiden meditation, fancy-free.' Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell : Norfolk, whose projected marriage with her was attended with such fatal consequences. Here again the reader may observe a peculiar justness in the imagery. The vulgar opinion being that the mermaid allured men to destruction by her songs. To which opinion Shakespeare alludes in his Comedy of Errors: "O train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears." On the whole, it is the noblest and justest allegory that was ever written. The laying it in fairy land, and out of nature, is in the character of the speaker. And on these occasions Shakespeare always excels himself. He is borne away by the magic of his enthusiasm, and hurries his reader along with him into these ancient regions of poetry, by that power of verse, which we may well fancy to be like what, WARBURTON. "Olim fauni vatesque canebant." Every reader may be induced to wish that the foregoing allusion, pointed out by EO acute a critic as Dr. Warburton, should remain uncontroverted; and yet I cannot dissemble my doubts concerning it.--Why is the thrice-married Queen of Scotland styled a Sea-maid? and is it probable that Shakespeare (who understood his own political as well as poetical interest) should have ventured such a panegyric on this ill-fated Princess, during the reign of her rival Elizabeth? If it was unintelligible to his audience, it was thrown away; if obvious, there was danger of offence to her Majesty. "A star dis-orb'd," however, (See Troilus and Cressida,) is one of our author's favourite images: and he has no where else so happily expressed it as in Antony and Cleopatra: 46 the good stars that were my former guides, "Have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires "Into th' abysm of hell." To these remarks may be added others of a like tendency, which I met with in The Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786.-" That a compliment to Queen Elizabeth was intended in the expression of the fair Vestal throned in the West, seems to be generally allowed; but how far Shakespeare designed, under the image of the Mermaid, to figure Mary Queen of Scots, is more doubtful. If by the rude sea grew civil at her song, is meant, as Dr. Warburton supposes, that the tumults of Scotland were appeased by her address, the observation is not true; for that sea was in a storm during the whole of Mary's reign. Neither is the figure just, if by the stars shooting madly from their spheres to hear the sea-maid's music, the poet alluded to the fate of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, and particularly of the Duke of Norfolk, whose projected marriage with Mary was the occasion of his ruin. It would have been absurd and irreconcileable to the good sense of the poet, to have represented a nobleman aspiring to marry a Queen, by the image of a star shooting or descending from its sphere." STEEVENS. STEEVENS. [1].e. exempt from the power of love. It fell upon a little western flower, Before, milk-white; now purple with love's wound,— Fetch me that flower; the herb I show'd thee once; Puck. I'll put a girdle round about the earth Ob. Having once this juice. I'll watch Titania when she is asleep, Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him. The one I'll slay, the other slayeth me. Thou told'st me, they were stol'n into this wood, Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more. [Exit [2] The flower or violet, commonly called pansies, or heart's ease, is named love-in-idleness in Warwickshire, and in Lyte's Herbal. There is a reason why Shakespeare says it is "now purple with love's wound," because one or two of its petals are of a purple colour. TOLLET. [3] I thought proper here to observe, that, as Oberon and Puck his attendant may be frequently observed to speak, when there is no mention of their entering: they are designed by the poet to be supposed on the stage during the greatest part of the remainder of the play; and to mix, as they please, as spirits, with the other actors; and embroil the plot, by their interposition, without being seen, or heard, but when to their own purpose. THEOBALD. Is true as steel: Leave you your power to draw, Dem. Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? Tell you-I do not, nor I cannot love you? Hel. And even for that do I love you the more. The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: What worser place can I beg in your love, Dem. Tempt not so much the hatred of my spirit; Hel. And I am sick, when I look not on you. Dem. I'll run from thee, and hide me in the brakes, And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts. Hel. The wildest hath not such a heart as you. [5] This passage is paraphrased from two lines of an ancient poet (Tibullus) 44Tu nocte vel atra "Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis." JOHNSON. As the works of King David might be more familiar to Shakespeare than Roman poetry, perhaps, on the present occasion, the 11th verse of the 139th Psalm was in his thoughts: Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as the day." STEEVENS. |