14 And "tailor" cries,13 and falls into a cough; 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: 17 15 To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, 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, 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: -66 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, Obe. Do you amend it then; it lies in you: 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. "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 ; 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 : Would imitate, and sail upon the land 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 And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, 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, |