Select Plays; A Midsummer Night's Dream

75. Glance at, hint at, indirectly attack. Compare Julius Cæsar, i. 2. 324: • Wherein obscurely

Cæsar's ambition shall be glanced at.'

For the substantive 'glance' in the sense of hint, allusion,' see As You Like It, ii. 7. 57:

'The wise man's folly is anatomized

Even by the squandering glances of the fool.'

And Bacon's Advancement of Learning, 1. 7, § 8 (p. 57, ed. Wright): 'But when Marcus Philosophus came in, Silenus was gravelled and out of countenance, not knowing where to carp at him; save at the last he gave a glance at his patience towards his wife.'

78. Perigenia. In North's Plutarch she is called Perigouna, the daughter of the famous robber Sinnis, by whom Theseus had a son Menalippus.

79. Ægle. Rowe's correction. The quartos and folios have 'Eagles.' In North's Plutarch (ed. 1631), Theseus, p. 9, we read: For some say, that Ariadne hung herselfe for sorrow, when she saw that Theseus had cast her off. Other write, that she was transported by mariners into the Ile of Naxos, where she was married unto Oenarus the priest of Bacchus and they thinke that Theseus left her because he was in love with another, as by these verses should appeare,

Egles the Nymph was lou'd of Theseus,

Who was the daughter of Panopeus.'

80. Antiopa, according to some, was the name of the Amazon queen, and the mother of Hippolytus. See North's Plutarch, p. 14.

82. middle summer's spring, the beginning of midsummer. quotes 2 Henry IV, iv. 4. 35:

'As humorous as winter and as sudden

As flaws congealed in the spring of day.'

Steevens

Also Luke i. 78: 78: 'Whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.' Again we find in Gower's Confessio Amantis (ii. p. 97):

For till I se the daies spring,

I sette slepe nought at a risshe.'

84. paved fountain, a fountain with pebbly bottom; not artificially paved, for a fountain of this kind would scarcely be frequented by fairies. See Milton, Comus 119, of the wood-nymphs' dance:

'By dimpled brook and fountain-brim.'

And Paradise Lost, i. 783.

85. in, on. See below, 1. 90, and compare Venus and Adonis, 118: 'What seest thou in the ground?' And the Lord's Prayer, Thy will be done in earth as it is done in heaven.'

Ib. beached, formed by a beach, or which serves as a beach. Compare Timon of Athens, v. I. 219:

"Upon the beached verge of the salt flood.'

For similar instances of adjectives formed from substantives, see 'guiled,' Merchant of Venice, iii. 2.97; 'disdain'd,' 1 Henry IV, i. 3. 183; ‘simpleanswer'd,' that is, simple in your answer, furnished with a simple answer, which is the reading of the folios in King Lear, iii. 7.43: 'the caged cloister,' the cloister which serves as a cage, A Lover's Complaint, 249: ‘ravin'd,' for ravenous, Macbeth, iv. 1. 24: poysened' for poisonous, Lyly, Euphues (ed. Arber), p. 196: Nylus breedeth the precious stone and the poysened serpent.'

Ib. margent, margin. So in A Lover's Complaint, 39:

Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set.'

And Romeo and Juliet, i. 3. 86:

'And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.'

For the form of the word, compare ‘aliant' for ‘alien,' 'tyrant' from Túpavvos, and ‘vild' which is a corrupt spelling of 'vile.' Milton has the same spelling in Comus, 232:

By slow Meander's margent green.'

Shakespeare never uses 'margin'; but in The Tempest, iv. 1. 69, he

has

And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard.'

86. dance our ringlets. See above, 1. 9.

87. brawls, quarrels. Originally a brawl was a French dance, as in Love's Labour's Lost, iii. I. 9: "Will you win your love with a French brawl?' And it was a dance of a violent and boisterous character, as appears by the following extract from Cotgrave: Bransle: m. A totter, swing, or swidge; a shake, shog, or shocke; a stirring, an vncertain and inconstant motion; also, a brawle, or daunce, wherein many (men, and women) holding by the hands sometimes in a ring, and other whiles at length, moue altogether.' It may be however that there is no etymological connexion between these two words which are the same in form; and 6 brawl' in the sense of 'quarrel' may be an imitative word and akin to 'brabble.'

88. piping to us in vain, because we could not dance to them. See Matthew xi. 17: 'We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced.' 89, 90. Compare King Lear, ii. 4. 168, 169:

'Infect her beauty,

You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun.'

91. Have. So Rowe corrected the 'Hath' of the quartos and folios, which is attracted into the singular by the preceding 'land.' See note on Hamlet, i. 2. 38.

Ib. pelting, paltry, insignificant. The folios have 'petty.' The two

words occur together in Measure for Measure, ii. 2. 112: 'Every pelting, petty officer.' Compare Richard II, ii. 1. 60:

'Like to a tenement or pelting farm.'

And King Lear, ii. 3. 18:

'Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills.'

92. That they &c.

tion of individual rivers.

The plural follows loosely as representing the collec

Ib. their continents, the banks that contain them, or hold them in. Compare King Lear, iii. 2. 58:

'And summer's green all girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard.' 97. fatted, fattened. Compare Hamlet, ii. 2. 607 :

'I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal.'

So the quartos and folios.

Ib. murrion. Warburton altered it to 'murrain,' the more common spelling. The murrain was a disease among cattle, see Exodus ix. 3, and the murrion or murrain flock is the flock that had died of the cattle plague. For the variety of the spelling compare King Lear, i. 1. 65, where the folios are divided between champains' and 'champions.'

98. nine men's morris. A rustic game, which is still extant in some parts of England, so called from the counters (Fr. merelles) with which it is played. It is described by James in the Variorum Shakespeare as follows: 'In that part of Warwickshire where Shakspeare was educated, and the neighbouring parts of Northamptonshire, the shepherds and other boys dig up the turf with their knives to represent a sort of imperfect chess-board. It consists of a square, sometimes only a foot diameter, sometimes three or four yards. Within this is another square, every side of which is parallel to the external square; and these squares are joined by lines drawn from each corner of both squares, and the middle of each line. One party, or player, has wooden pegs, the other stones, which they move in such a manner as to take up each other's men, as they are called, and the area of the inner square is called the pound, in which the men taken up are impounded. These figures are by the country people called Nine Men's Morris, or Merrils; and are so called because each party has nine men. These figures are always cut upon the green turf or leys, as they are called, or upon the

grass at the end of ploughed lands, and in rainy seasons never fail to be choked up with mud.' Another variety of the game as described by Alchorne in the Variorum Shakespeare corresponds with what I have seen in Suffolk. Three squares, instead of two, are drawn one within the other, and the middle points of the parallel sides are joined by straight lines, leaving the innermost square for the pound. But the corners of the squares are not joined. The corners of the squares and the middle points of the sides are the places where the men may be put, and they move from place to place along the line which joins them. A figure is made on the ground by cutting out the turf; and two persons take each nine stones, which they place by turns in the angles, and afterwards move alternately, as at chess or draughts. He who can play three in a straight line may then take off any one of his adversary's, where he pleases, till one, having lost all his men, loses the game.' See also Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, iv. 2, § 13.

99. the quaint mazes in the wanton green. This alludes,' says Steevens, 'to a sport still followed by boys; i. e. what is now called running the figure of eight.' But I have seen very much more complicated figures upon village greens, and such as might strictly be called mazes or labyrinths. On St. Catherine's Hill, Winchester, 'near the top of it, on the north-east side, is the form of a labyrinth, impressed upon the turf, which is always kept entire by the coursing of the sportive youth through its meanderings. The fabled origin of this Dædalæan work is connected with that of the Dulce Domum song.' (Milner, History of Winchester, ii. 155.)

IOI. human mortals. Titania speaks as a fairy. Compare what she says below, 1. 135:

'But she, being mortal, of that boy did die.'

Ib. want, lack, are without. Compare The Tempest, iii. 1. 79: 'At mine unworthiness that dare not offer

What I desire to give, and much less take

What I shall die to want."

Ib. their winter here. Their winter' Malone explains by 'those sports with which country people are wont to beguile a winter's evening, at the season of Christmas, which, it appears from the next line, was particularly in our author's contemplation.' For 'here' Theobald proposed and Hanmer adopted 'cheer,' perhaps the true reading.

102. carol, Christmas carol.

103. Therefore, because of our quarrel.

Ib. the governess of floods. Compare Hamlet, i. 1. 119:

The moist star

Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands.'

104. Pale in her anger. For a similar fancy, compare Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2. 4:

Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief.'

Douce quotes from the Prologue to Lydgate's Siege of Thebes:
And was also in thopposicion

Of Lucina the Moone, moist and pale

That many shoures fro heauen made auaile.'

105. That, so that. See iii. 2. 417.

Ib. rheumatic diseases, says Malone, 'signified in Shakespeare's time, not what we now call rheumatism, but distillations from the head, catarrhs, &c.' He quotes from the Sydney Memorials, i. 94, where the health of Sir Henry Sydney is described: He hath verie much distemporid divers parts of his bodie; as namelie, his hedde, his stomack, &c. And therby is always subject to distillacions, coughes, and other rumatick diseases.' It would be more correct to say that the term included all this in addition to what is now understood by it. Cotgrave has 'Rumatique : com. Rhewmaticke; troubled with a Rhewme'; and he defines 'Rume: f. A Rhewme, Catarrhe; Pose, Murre.' The accent is on the first syllable, as in Venus and Adonis, 135: 'O'erworn, despised, rheumatic and cold.'

106. thorough. See lines 3 &c.

Ib. this distemperature, this disturbance between Oberon and Titania; not the perturbation of the elements. Compare Pericles, v. 1. 27:

'Upon what ground is his distemperature?'

where it is used of the disturbance of mind caused by grief. Again, Romeo and Juliet, ii. 3. 40:

Therefore thy earliness doth me assure

Thou art uproused by some distemperature.'

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