• sisters three, Come, come, to me, Lay them in gore, • Come, trusty sword; Thus Thisby ends : [Dies. The. Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead. Dem. Ay, and Wall too. Bot. No, I assure you ; the wall is down that parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergornask dance, between two of our com pany? The. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse ; for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it, had play'd Pyramus, and hanged himself in Thisbe's garter, it would have been a fine tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably discharged. But come, your Bergomask: let your epilogue alone. [Here a dance of Clowns. The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve :Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn, As much as we this night have overwatch'd. This palpable-gross play hath well beguil'd The heavy gait of night.-Sweet friends, to bed.-A fortnight hold we this solemnity, In nightly revels, and new jollity. (Exeunt. SCENE II. Enter Puck. And the wolf behowls the moon ; [9] A Burgomask dance (as Sir T. Hanmer observes in his Glossuty) is a dance after the manner of the peasants of Bergomasco, a country in Italy, belonging to the Venetians. All the buffoons in Italy affect to imitate the ridiculous jargon of ebat people, as well as their manner of dancing. STEEVENS. [1] It has been justly observed by an anonymous writer, that among this assemblage of familiar circumstances attending midnight, either in England Vol. III. Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with weary task fordone.' Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud, In remembrance of a shroud. That the graves, all gaping wide, In the church-way paths to glide : By the triple Hecat's team, Following darkness like a dream, By the dead and drowsy fire: Hop as light as bird from brier ; To each word a warbling note, or its neighbouring kingdoms, Shakespeare would never have thought of intermixing the exotic idea of the hungry lion roaring, which can be heard no nearer than in the deserts of Africa, if he had not read in the 104th Psalm : " Thou makest darkness that it may be night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do move; the lions roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from God." MALONE. I do not perceive the justness of the foregoing anonymous writer's observation. Puck, who could " encircle the earth in forty minutes," like his fairy mistress, might have snuffed “the spiced Indian air;" and consequently an image, foreign to Europeans, might have been obvious to him. Our poet, however, inattentive to little proprieties, has sometiines introduced his wild beasts in regions where they are never found. STEEVENS. [1] Fordone--i. e. overcome. STEEVENS. [2] Cleanliness is always necessary to invite the residence and the favour of the fairies : " These make our girls their slutt'ry rue, Tee couse for clean!y sweeping Dravton. JOHNSON, 10 SONG,' AND DANCE. their children be... (3) I am afraid this song is gone after many other things of greater value. The truth is that two songs are lost. The series of the scene is this; after the speech of Puck, Oberon enters, and calls his fairies to a song, which song is apparently wanting in all the copies. Next Titania leads another song, which is indeed lost like the former, though the editors have endeavoured to find it. The Oberop dismisses his fairies to the despatch of the ceremonies. The songs, I suppose were lost, because they were not inserted in the players' parts, from which the drama was printed. JOHNSON. [4] This defect in children seems to have been so much dreaded, that numerous were the charms applied for its prevention. The following might be as efficacious as any of the rest. “If a woman with chylde have her smocke slyt at the neather ende or skyrt thereof, &c. the same chylde that she then goeth withall, shall be safe from having a cloven or hare lippe." Thomas Lupton's Fourth Book of Notable Thinges, 4to, bl. I. STEEVENS. [5] Prodigious has here its primitive signification of portentous. STEEVENS. (6) i. e. take his way, or direct his steps. STEEVENS. Gait, for a path or road, is commonly used at present in the northern counties. HARRIS. [7] The same superstitious kind of benediction occurs in Chaucer's Miller's Tāle, v. 3479, Tyrwhitt's edition : "I crouche thee from elves, and from wightes. Trip away ; Make no stay ; [Exe. OBER. TITA. and Train. Puck. If we shadows have offended, Think but this, (and all is mended,) [Exit. (8) i. e. if we have better fortune than we have deserved. STEEVENS. |