7 Trip away; Make no stay; Meet me all by break of day. [Exeunt OBERON, TITANIA, and train. Puck. If we shadows have offended, Think but this, (and all is mended,) That you have but slumber'd here, So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends. [Exit.1 · unearned luck—] i. e. if we have better fortune than we have deserved. 8 Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,] That is, if we be dismissed without hisses. 9 Give me your hands,] That is, clap your hands. Give us your applause. JOHNSON. 1 Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasure which the author designed. Fairies in his time were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great. JOHNSON. Johnson's concluding observation on this play, is not conceived with his usual judgment. There is no analogy or resemblance whatever between the Fairies of Spenser and those of Shakspeare. The Fairies of Spenser, as appears from his description of them in the second book of the Fairy Queen, canto x., were a race of mortals created by Prometheus, of the human size, shape, and affections, and subject to death. But those of Shakspeare, and of common tradition, as Johnson calls them, were a diminutive race of sportful beings, endowed with immortality and supernatural power, totally different from those of Spenser. M. MASON. I HAVE not hitherto discovered any novel on which this comedy appears to have been founded; and yet the story of it has most of the features of an ancient romance. STEEVENS. I suspect that there is an error in the title of this play, which I believe, should be-" Love's Labours Lost." M. MASON. Love's Labour's Lost, I conjecture to have been written in 1594. MALONE. |