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And "tailor" cries,13 and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe,
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.-
But room, Fairy: here comes Oberon.

Fai. And here my mistress:-'Would that he were gone!

Enter OBERON, from one side, with his Train, and TITANIA, from the other, with hers.

Obe. Ill met by moon-light, proud Titania. Tita. What! jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence: I have forsworn his bed and company.

Obe. Tarry, rash wanton: Am not I thy lord? Tita. Then I must be thy lady but I know When thou hast stol'n 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,

13 Dr. Johnson thought he remembered to have heard this ludicrous exclamation upon a person's seat slipping from under him. He that slips from his chair falls as a tailor squats upon his board. 14 Waxen seems to be an old plural form of wax; the meaning of course being, increase in their mirth. Dr. Farmer proposed to read yexen. Yex is an old synonyme of hiccup: so that the sense in this case would be, they laugh themselves into a hiccuping; which is indeed very good, but by no means such as to warrant the change. The Chiswick editor adopted yexen: why he should think that only "a glimmering of sense may be extracted from the passage as it stands in the old copies," is too deep for us

H.

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 Æglé break his faith,

With Ariadne, and Antiopa?

Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer's spring,'
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or on the beached margent of the sea,

17

15

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Have every pelting 16 river made so proud,
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn
Hath rotted, ere his youth attained a beard:
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock:
The nine men's morris 18 is fill'd up with mud;

15 Spring seems to be here used for beginning. The spring of day is used for the dawn of day in 2 Henry IV.

16 A very common epithet with our old writers to signify paltry. 17 That is, borne down the banks which contain them.

18 This was a plat of green turf cut into a sort of chess board, for the rustic youth to exercise their skill upon. The game was called nine men's morris, because the players had each nine men, which they moved along the lines cut in the ground, until one side had taken or penned up all those on the other. The game is said to have been brought into England by the Normans, under the name of merelles, which meant counters, and was corrupted into morris.—"The quaint mazes in the wanton green" were where the youths and maidens led their happy dances in the open air, before people were so wise but that they would suffer kind thoughts and tender loves to be cherished by the remembered pleasures of each other's company.

H

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are undistinguishable :
The human mortals want; their winter here,19
No night is now with hymn or carol blest.
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound;
And thorough this distemperature, we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose:
And on old Hyems' chin, and icy crown,'
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn,21 angry winter, change

20

19 That is, "their winter being here," or, "though their winter be here, no night is now," &c. The line is usually pointed thus: "The human mortals want their winter here;" which, though it have the authority of the old copies, can hardly be right, since they have winter here, and want it away. But, winter being here, what they do want is the evening hymns and carols that are wont to come with it. Theobald proposed cheer, which is indeed very plausible; yet we prefer the reading here given, which was proposed by an anonymous author in 1814, and has been adopted by Mr. Knight.

H.

20 The concurrence of all the old copies in the reading here given intimidates us from doing what we wish to do. Mr. Dyce remarks upon the passage, that " Hyems with a chaplet of summer buds on his CHIN is a grotesque which must surely startle even the dullest reader." He then quotes from Gifford, -"What child does not see that the line should be,- And on old Hyems' thin and icy crown?'" and adds, - This correction, requiring only the change of a single letter, had been long ago proposed by Tyrwhitt./ These authorities and reasons are indeed strong, yet we dare not admit the change. Nor can it well be denied that the old reading has some support in the passage so often quoted for that purpose from Golding's Ovid:

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And lastly, quaking for the colde, stood Winter all forlorne, With rugged head as white as dove, and garments all to-torne, Forladen with the isycles, that dangled up and downe Upon his gray and hoarie beard and snowie frozen crowne.”

H.

21 Childing autumn is fruitful, teeming autumn; as in the Poet's 97th Sonnet :

Their wonted liveries; and the 'mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.22

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.23

Tita.

Set your heart at rest:

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,)

"The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

Bearing the wanton burden of the prime."

H.

22 This disorder of the seasons, which Shakespeare with such an array of poetical witchery attributes to the strife between the fairy rulers, is otherwise accounted for by Churchyard, who, broken with age and sorrow, thus speaks of it in his Charity, a poem published in 1595 :

"A colder time in world was never seen:

The skies do lour, the sun and moon wax dim ;
Summer scarce known, but that the leaves are green.
The winter's waste drives water o'er the brim ;
Upon the land great floats of wood may swim.
Nature thinks scorn to do her duty right,

Because we have displeased the Lord of Light."

H.

23 Henchman is an attendant, or page: probably from the An glo-Saxon hengst, a horse. Thus, in Chaucer :

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Would imitate, and sail upon the land
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake I do rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.

Obe. How long within this wood intend you stay? Tita. Perchance, till after Theseus' wedding-day. If you will patiently dance in our round, And see our moon-light revels, go with us; If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

Obe. Give me that boy, and I will go with thee. Tita. Not for thy fairy kingdom.-Fairies, away: We shall chide down-right, if I longer stay.

[Exeunt TITANIA and her Train.

Obe. Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove,

Till I torment thee for this injury. –

My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.

Puck.

I remember.

Obe. 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,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
And the imperial votaress passed on,

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