Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced.3-But, mafters, here are your parts and I am to entreat you, request you, and defire you, to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moon-light; there will we rehearse: for if we meet in the city, we fhall be dog'd with company, and our devices known. In the mean time, I will draw a bill of properties, 4 fuch as our play wants. I pray you fail me not. Bot. We will meet ; and there we may rehearse more obfcenely, and courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu. Quin. At the duke's oak we meet. Bot. Enough; Hold, or cut bow-ftrings, ACT II. [Exeunt SCENE I. A Wood near Athens. Enter a Fairy at one door, and Puck at another, Puck. How now, fpirit! whither wander you? This cuftom of wearing coloured beards, the reader will find more 1amply explained in Mcafure for Measure, A&t IV. sc. ii. 3 That is, a head from which the hair has fallen in one of the laft ftages of the lues venerea, called the corona veneris. To this our poet has too frequent allutions. STEEVENS. 4 Properties are whatever little articles are wanted in a play for the actors, according to their respective parts, reles and fcenes excepted. The perfon who delivers them out is to this day called the property-man. STEEVENS. 5 This proverbial phrase came originally from the camp. When a rendezvous was appointed, the militia foldiers would frequently make excufe for not keeping word, that their bowstrings were brok, i. e. their arms unferviceable. Hence when one would give another abfolute af. furance of meeting him, he would fay proverbially-bold or cat barv frings-i. e. whether the bow-ftrings held or broke. For cut is ufed as a neuter, like the verb fret. As when we fay, the firing frets, the filk frets, for the paffive, it is cut or fretted. WARBURTON. This interpretation is very ingenious, but fomewhat difputable. The excufe made by the militia foldiers is a mere fuppofition, without provi; and it is well known that while bows were in ufe, no archer ever entered the field without a fupply of ftrings in his pocket; whence originated the proverb, to have two firings to one's bow. STEEVENS. VOL. II. G Fai. To meet, whether bow-ftrings bold or are cut, is to meet in all events. To cut the bowftring, when bows were in ufe, was probably a common practice of thofe who bore enmity to the archer. MALONE. 6 Unless we fuppofe this to be the Saxon genitive cafe, (as it is here printed,) the metre will be defective. So, in a letter from Gabriel Harvey to Spenfer, 1580: "Have we not Gods bys wrath, for Goddes wrath, and a thousand of the fame stampe, wherein the corrupte orthography in the moste, hath been the fole or principal cause of corrupte profodye in over-many?" STEEVENS. 7 The orbs here mentioned are the circles fuppofed to be made by the fairies on the ground, whofe verdure proceeds from the fairies' care to water them. JoHNSON. 8 The cowflip was a favourite among the fairies. There is a hint in Drayton of their attention to May morning : 66 -For the queen a fitting tower, "In all your train there's not a fay << That ever went to gather May, "The talleft there that growetb. JOHNSON. This was faid in confequence of Queen Elizabeth's fashionable establishment of a band of military courtiers, by the name of penfioners. They of the beft famiwere fome of the handsomeft and tallest young men lies and fortune, that could be found. Hence, fays Mrs. Quickly, in The Merry Wives, A&t II. fc. ii: "and yet there has been earls, nay, which is more, Penfioners." They gave the mode in drefs and diverfions. They accompanied the queen in her progrefs to Cambridge, where they held ftaff-torches at a play on a Sunday evening in King's College Chapel. T. WARTON. 9 Shakspeare, in Cymbeline, refers to the fame red spots: "A mole cinque-fpotted, like the crimfin drops "I' th' bottom of a cowflip." PERCY. Perhaps there is likewife fome allusion to the habit of a pensioner. STEEVENS, I must go feek fome dew-drops here, Our queen and all her elves come here anon. Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to night; Because that she, as her attendant, hath Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, G 2 That 2 Lob, lubber, looby, lobcock, all denote both inactivity of body and dulnefs of mind. JOHNSON. 3 Changeling is commonly used for the child fuppofed to be left by the fairies, but here for a child taken away. JOHNSON. It is bere properly ufed, and in its common acceptation; that is for a child got in exchange. A fairy is now fpeaking. RITSON. 4 fheen,] Shining, bright, gay. JOHNSON. 5 To fquare here is to quarrel, The French word contrecarrer has the fame import. JOHNSON. It is fomewhat whimfical, that the glafiers ufe the words square and quarrel as fynonymous terms, for a pane of glafs. BLACKSTONE. • This account of Robin Good-fellow correfponds, in every article, with that given of him in Harfenet's Declaration, ch. xx. p. 134: "And if that the bowle of curds and creame were not duly fet out for Robin Good-fellow, the frier, and Siffe the dairy-maid, why then either the pottage was burnt to next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not eurdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat never would have good head. But if a Peter-penny, or an houfle-egge were behind, or a patch of tythe unpaid, then ware of bull-beggars, fpirits," &c. He is mentioned by Cartwright [Ordinary, Act III. fc. i.] as a fpirit particularly fond of difconcerting and difturbing domestic peace and economy. T. WARTO That fright the maidens of the villag'ry; Are Reginald Scot gives the fame account of this frolickfome spirit, in his Difcoverie of Witchcraft, Lond. 1584, 4to. p. 66 :" Your grandames' maids were wont to fet a bowl of milk for him, for his pains in grinding malt and mustard, and fweeping the house at midnight-this white bread and bread and milk, was his ftanding fee." STEEVENS. 7 The sense of these lines is confused. Are not you be, says the fairy, that fright the country girls, that fkim milk, work in the band-mill, and make the tired dairy-woman churn without effect? The mention of the mill feems out of place, for fhe is not now telling the good, but the evil that he does. I would regulate the lines thus: "And fometimes make the breathless bousewife churn Or, by a fimple tranfpofition of the lines: "And bootless make the breathless housewife churn "Skim milk, and fometimes labour in the quern." Yet there is no neceffity of alteration. JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson thinks the mention of the mill out of place, as the Fairy is not now telling the good but the evil he does. The obfervation will apply, with equal force, to his skimming the milk, which, if it were done at a proper time, and the cream preferved, would be a piece of fervice. But we must understand both to be mifchievous pranks. He fkims the milk, when it ought not to be fkimmed :-and grinds the corn, when it is not wanted; at the fame time perhaps throwing the flour about the house. RITSON A Quern is a hand-mill, kuerna, mola. Iflandic. STEEVENS. Barme is a name for yeaft, yet ufed in our midland counties, and univerfally in Ireland. STEEVENS. 9 It will be apparent to him that fhall compare Drayton's poem with this play, that either one of the poets copied the other, or, as I rather be lieve, that there was then fome fyftem of the fairy empire generally received, which they both reprefented as accurately as they could. Whether Drayton or Shakspeare wrote firft, I cannot difcover. JOHNSON. The editor of The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, in 4 vols. 8vo. 1775, fuppofes Drayton to have been the follower of Shakspeare; for, fays he, Don Quixote (which was not published till 1605,) is cited in The Nymphida, whereas we have an edition of A Midsummer-Night's Dream in 16go" In this century fome of our poets have been as little fcrupu. lous in adopting the ideas of their predeceffors. Mr. Are not you he? G 3 And Mr. Pope is more indebted to Chaucer for beauties inferted in his Eloifa to Abelard, than he has been willing to acknowledge. STEEVENS. Don Quixote, though published in Spain in 1605, was probably little known in England till Skelton's tranflation appeared in 1612. Drayton's poem was, I have no doubt, fubfequent to that year. The earliest edition of it that have feen, was printed in 1619. MALONE. 2 The epithet is by no means fuperfluous; as Puck alone was far from being an endearing appellation. It fignified nothing better than fiend, or devil. It feems to have been an old Gothic word. Puke, puken; Sathanas. Gudm And. Lexicon Ifland. TYRWHITT. 3 I would fill up the verfe which I fuppofe the author left complete : "I am, thou fpeak'st aright; It feems that in the Fairy mythology, Puck, or Hobgoblin, was the trufty fervant of Oberon, and always employed to watch or detect the in trigues of Queen Mab, called by Shakspeare Titania. For in Drayton's Nympbidia, the fame fairies are engaged in the fame business. Mab has an amour with Pigwiggen: Oberon being jealous, fends Hobgoblin to catch them, and one of Mab's nymphs opposes him by a spell.. JOHNSON. 4 i. e. the wild apple of that name. STEVENS. 5 Aunt is fometimes used for procurefs. In Gafcoigne's Glafs of "Government, 1575, the bawd Pandarina is always called aunt. Among Ray's proverbial phrafes is the following. She is one of mine aunts that made mine uncle to go a begging." The wifeft aunt may therefore mean the most fentimental bawd, or, perhaps, the most profaic old woman. STEEVENS. The first of thefe conjectures 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. RITSON. |