yield

Thy crazed title to my certain right.

love;

Lys. You have her father's love, Demetrius ;
Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.
EGE. Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my
And what is mine my love shall render him;
And she is mine; and all my right of her
I do estate unto Demetrius.

Lys. I am, my lord, as well deriv'd as he,
As well possess'd; my love is more than his;
My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd,
If not with vantage, as Demetrius';

And, which is more than all these boasts can be,
I am belov'd of beauteous Hermia:
Why should not I then prosecute my right?
Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,
And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,
Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,

Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

THE. I must confess that I have heard so much, And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof, But, being over-full of self-affairs,

My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come;
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me,
I have some private schooling for you both.
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up
(Which by no means we may extenuate)
To death, or to a vow of single life.
Come, my Hippolyta ; what cheer, my love?
Demetrius, and Egeus, go along:
I must employ you in some business
Against our nuptial; and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.

EGE. With duty and desire, we follow you.
[Exeunt THES., HIP., EGE., DEM., and Train.
Lys. How now, my love? Why is your cheek
so pale ?

which I could well Beteem them—]

Allow them. In this sense the word occurs in "Hamlet," Act I. Sc. 2:

so loving to my mother

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly."

And in Spenser's "Faërie Queen," II. viii. 19:

"So would I, said the enchanter, glad and faine
Beteeme to you this sword you to defend."

b The course of true love never did run smooth:] This sentiment is not uncommon, but it has never been so beautifully expressed. It occurs in Milton's "Paradise Lost," Book x. 896, et seqq., and we meet with it in Middleton's "Blurt, Master Constable," Act III. Sc. 1:

HER. Belike for want of rain, which I could well Beteem them from the tempest of mine eyes.

Lys. Ay me!* for aught that I could evert read, Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth: b But, either it was different in blood ;

HER. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low! Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years; HER. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young! Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends; § HER. O hell! to choose love by another's eye! Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it; Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen,(2) unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say,-Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

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So quick bright things come to confusion.

HER. If then true lovers have been ever cross'd, It stands as an edict in destiny: Then let us teach our trial patience,

Because it is a customary cross;

As due to love, as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers.

Lys. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia.

I have a widow aunt, a dowager

Of great revénue, and she hath no child;
From Athens is her house remote || seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us.
If thou lov'st me then,
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to ¶ a morn of May,(3)
There will I stay for thee.

"Thou hast not collied thy face enough."

• Fancy's followers.] Fancy is used here in the same sense as in Act II. Sc. 2:

"In maiden meditation, fancy free;-"

And in Act IV. Ec. 1:

"Fair Helena in fancy following me.

More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching; O, were favour so,
Your words I'd catch, fair Hermia, ere I go,d
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet
melody.

Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I'll give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look, and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.

HER. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.
HEL. O that your frowns would teach my smiles
such skill!

HER. I give him curses, yet he gives me love.
HEL. O that my prayers could such affection
move!

HER. The more I hate, the more he follows me.
HEL. The more I love, the more he hateth me.
HER. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.
HEL. None, but your beauty; would that fault
were mine!
[face;

HER. Take comfort, he no more shall see my Lysander and myself will fly this place.

And prospers loves;] This is the reading of the quarto published by Fisher; that by Roberts, and the folio, have lore.

b Your fair:] That is, your beauty. See "Love's Labour's Lost," note (a), p. 69, and the "Comedy of Errors," note (b), p. 121. The folio reads, you fair.

co, were favour so,-] Favour, in Shakespeare sometimes means countenance, features, and occasionally, as here, good graces generally.

d Your words I'd catch, fair Hermia, ere I go,-] The old copies read, "Your words I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go." The very Blight alteration, which gives intelligibility to the line, was first made in the folio, 1632. Helena would catch not only the beauty of her rival's aspect, and the melody of her tones, but her language also. If the lection here proposed is inadmissible, we must adopt that of Hanmer,-"Yours would I catch," for the old text will never be accepted as the author's.

• His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.] Thus, Fisher's quarto;

Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seem'd Athens like a paradise to me:

O then, what graces in my love do dwell,

That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!

Lys. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold: To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass, Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, (A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,) Through Athens' gates have we devis'd to steal.

HER. And in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet, There my Lysander and myself shall meet: And thence, from Athens, turn away our eyes, To seek new friends and stranger companies.' Farewell, sweet playfellow, pray thou for us, And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius !Keep word, Lysander: we must starve our sight From lovers' food, till morrow deep midnight.

[Exit HERMIA. Lys. I will, my Hermia.-Helena, adieu : As you on him, Demetrius dotet on you! [Exit LYSANDER,

HEL. How happy some o'er other-some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know.
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste,
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste;
And therefore is love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft‡ beguil❜d.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy love is perjur'd everywhere:
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths, that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolv'd, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:

(*) First folio, into.

(+) First folio, dotes. (1) First folio, is often.

that by Roberts, and the folio, have, "none of mine." f And stranger companies.] In the old text the passage runs as follows:

"And in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, Emptying our bosoms of their counsel swell'd, There my Lysander and myself shall meet, And thence from Athens turn away our eyes To seek new friends and strange companions." The restoration of "counsel sweet," and "stranger companies," is due to Theobald, and as the rest of the scene from the entrance of Helena is in rhyme, there can be no reasonable doubt that these four lines were originally in rhyme also.

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BOT. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms; I will condole in some measure. To the rest yet," my chief humour is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split the raging rocks; and shivering shocks shall break the locks of prison-gates, and Phibbus' car shall shine from far, and make and mar the foolish fates. This was lofty!-Now name the rest of the players. This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein; a lover is more condoling.

QUIN. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.
FLU. Here, Peter Quince.

QUIN. Flute, you must take Thisbe on you.
FLU. What is Thisbe? a wandering knight?
QUIN. It is the lady that Pyramus must love.

(*) First folio, grow on.

(+) First folio, gallantly. (1) First folio omits Flute.

a And so grow to a point.] And so to business. A common colloquial phrase formerly :

"Our reasons will be infinite I trow,
Unless unto some other point we grow."

The Arraignment of Paris, 1584. b To the rest yet,-] So the old copies. The modern editors place a colon after rest, "To the rest: yet my chief humour," &c.; à deviation which originated perhaps in unconsciousness of one of the senses Shakespeare attributes to the word yet. "To the rest yet," is simply "To the rest now," or, as he shortly after repeats it, "Now, name the rest of the players."

c I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in,-] Hercules and his labours formed a popular subject of entertainment on the early English stage. The player in Greene's "Groat'sworth of Wit," 1592, recounts to Roberto how he had "terribly thundered" the Twelve Labours of Hercules. He could probably, too, have enumerated among his performances a part to tear a cat in, for this allusion was evidently to an incident familiar to

FLU. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I have a beard coming.

QUIN. That's all one; you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will.

Bor. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe too: I'll speak in a monstrous little voice; -Thisne, Thisne,-Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear;-thy Thisbe dear! and—lady dear!

QUIN. No, no, you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisbe.

BOT. Well, proceed.

QUIN. Robin Starveling, the tailor.
STAR. Here, Peter Quince.

QUIN. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbe's mother.—Tom Snout, the tinker.

SNOUT. Here, Peter Quince.

QUIN. You, Pyramus' father; myself, Thisbe's father;-Snug, the joiner, you, the lion's part:and, I hope, here* is a play fitted.

SNUG. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. QUIN. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.

BOT. Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar, that I will make the duke say, Let him roar again, let him roar again.

QUIN. Ant you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all.

son.

ALL. That would hang us, every mother's

BOT. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us; but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you‡an't were any nightingale.

QUIN. You can play no part but Pyramus: for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely,

(+) First folio, If.

(1) First folio omits, you.

(*) First folio, there. the auditory. In "Histriomastix, or the Player Whipt." an anonymous production published in 1610, some soldiers drag in a company of players; and the captain addresses one of them with, Sirrah, this is you that would rend and tear a cat upon the stage," &c. And in "The Roaring Girl," 1611, one of the characters is called Tear-cat.

The expression, to make all split, is thought to be of nautical extraction; it is met with in many of the old dramas:-" Two roaring boys of Rome, that made all split."-Beaumont and Fletcher's "Scornful Lady," Act II. Sc. 3. Again in Chapman's play of "The Widow's Tears:"-" Her wit I must employ upon this business to prepare my next encounter, but in such a fashion as shall make all split."

d The foolish fates.] The chief humour of Bottom's "lofty" rant consists in the speaker's barbarous disregard of sense and rhythm; yet, notwithstanding this, and that the whole is printed as prose, carefully punctuated to be unintelligible in all the old copies, modern editors will persist in presenting it in good set doggrel rhyme.

gentleman-like man; therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

BOT. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?

QUIN. Why, what you will.

Bor. I will discharge it in either your strawcolour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crowncolour beard, your perfect yellow.

QUIN. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced.But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to intreat you, request you, and desire you, to con

(*) First folio, coloured.

them by to-morrow night, and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight; there will we* rehearse: for if we meet in the city we shall be dogg'd with company, and our devices known. In the mean time I will draw a bill of properties such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not.

BOT. We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu.

QUIN. At the duke's oak we meet.

BOT. Enough. Hold, or cut bow-strings.(7)

(*) First folio, we will.

[Exeunt.

(+) First folio, more.