By their increase, now knows not which is which :} And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissention; We are the parents and original. Ob. Do you amend it then; it lies in you: Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy, Tita. Set your heart at rest, The fairy land buys not the child of me. His mother was a vot'ress 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,) Would imitate; and sail upon the land To fetch me trifles, and return again, As from a voyage, rich with merchandize. 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. Ob. 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. Ob. Give me that boy, and I will go with thee. Tita. Not for thy kingdom. Fairies, away : We shall chide down-right, if I long longer stay. [Exe. TITA. and her Train. Ob. Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove, Till I torment thee for this injury. [7] i.e. By their produce. JOHNS.-The expression is scriptural: "Then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our God, shall give us his blessing." Psalm Ixvii. MAL. [8] Page of honour. This office was abolished by queen Elizabeth. GREY. Upon the establishment of the houshold of Edward IV. were "henxmen six enfants, or more, as it pleyseth the king, eatinge in the halle, &c. There was also a maister of the henxmen, to shewe them the schoole of nurture, and learne them to ride, to wear their harnesse; to have all curtesis-to teach them all languages, and other virtues, as harping, pipynge, singing, dauncing, with honest behavioure of temperaunce and patyence." MS. Harl. 293. TYRWHITT. -My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, [9] thou remember'st Since once I sat upon a promontory, The first thing observable on these words is, that this action of the mermaid is laid in the same time and place with Cupid's attack upon the vestal By the vestal every one knows is meant Queen Elizabeth. It is very natural and reasonable then to think, that the mermaid stands for some eminent personage of her time. And if so, the allegorical covering, in which there is a mixture of satire and panegyric, wili lead us to conclude, that this person was one of whom it had been inconvenient for the author to speak openly, either in praise or dispraise. All this agrees with Mary queen of Scots, and with no other. Queen Elizabeth could not bear to hear her commended; and her successor would not forgive her satyrist. But the poet has so well marked out every distinguishing circumstance of her life and character in this beautiful allegory, as will leave no room to doubt about his secret meaning. She is called, mermaid, 1. to denote her reign over a kingdom situate in the sea, and 2. her beauty, and intemperate lust : "Ut turpiter atrum "Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne." For as Frizabeth for her chastity is called a vestal, this unfortunate lady on a contrary account is called a mermaid. 3. An ancient story may be supposed to be here alluded to. The emperor Julian tells us, Epis. 41, that the Syrens (which, with all the modern ports, are mermaids) contended for precedency with the Muses, who, overcoming them, took away their wings. The quarrels between Mary and Elizabeth had the same cause, and the same issue. -on a dolphin's back,] This evidently marks out that distinguishing circumstance of Mary's fortune, her marriage with the dauphin of France, son of Henry II. Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,] This alludes to her great abilities of genius and learning, which rendered her the most accomplished princess of her age. The French writers tell us, that, while she was in that court, she pronounced a Latin oration in the great hall of the Louvre, with so much grace and eloquence, as filled the whole court with admiration. That the rude sea grew civil at her song;] By the rude sex is meant Scotland encircled with the ocean which rose up in arms against the regent, while she was in France. But her return home presently quieted those disorders; and had not her strange ill conduct afterwards more violently inflamed them, she might have passed her whole life in peace. There is the greater beauty in this image, as the vulgar opinion is, that the mermaid always sings in storms. And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music.] This concludes the description, with that remarkable circumstance of this unhappy lady's fate, the destruction she brought upon several of the English nobility, whom she drew in to support her cause. This, in the boldest expression of the sublime, the poet images by certain stars shooting madly from their spheres: By which he meant the Puck. I remember. Ob. That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not) Flying between the cold moon and the earth, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, In maiden meditation, fancy-free. 1 earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, who fell in her quarrel; and principally the great duke of Norfolk, whose projected marriage with her was attended with such fatal consequences. Here again the reader may observe a peculiar justness in the imagery. The vulgar opinion being that the mermaid allured men to destruction by her songs. To which opinion Shakspeare alludes in his Comedy of Errors: "O train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, On the whole, it is the noblest and justest allegory that was ever written. The laying it in fairy land, and out of nature, is in the character of the speaker. And on these occasions Shakspeare always excels himself. He is borne away by the magic of his enthusiasm, and hurries his reader along with him into these ancient regions of poetry, by that power of verse, which we may well fancy to be like what, "Olim fauni vatesque canebant." WARBURTON. Every reader mav be induced to wish that the foregoing allusion, pointed out by so acute a critic as Dr. Warburton, should remain uncontroverted; and yet I cannot dissemble my doubts concerning it. -Why is the thricemarried Queen of Scotland styled a Sea-maid? and is it probable that Shakspeare (who understood his own political as well as poetical interest) should have ventured such a panegyric on this ill-fated Princess, during the reign of her rival Elizabeth? If it was unintelligible to his audience, it was thrown a way; if obvious, there was danger of offence to her Majesty. "A star dis-orb'd," however, (See Troilus and Cressida,) is one of our author's favourite images: and he has no where else so happily expressed it as in Antony ann Cleopatra : "the good stars that were my former guides, "Into th' abysm of hell." To these remarks may be added others of a like tendency, which I met with in The Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786.-"That a compliment to Queen Elizabeth was intended in the expression of the fair Vestal throned in the West, seems to generally allowed; but how far Shakspeare designed, under the image of the Mermaid, to figure Mary Queen of Scots, is more doubtful. If by the rude sea grew civil at her song, is meant, as Dr. Warburton supposes, that the tumults of Scotland were appeased by her address, the observation is not true; for that sea was in a storm during the whole of Mary's reign. Neither is the figure just, if by the stars shooting madly from their spheres to hear the sea-maid's music, the poet alluded to the fate of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, and particularly of the Duke of Norfolk, whose projected marriage with Mary was the occasion of his ruin. It would have been absurd and irreconcileable to the good sense of the poet, to have represented a nobleman aspiring to marry a Queea, by the image of a star shooting or descending from its sphere." STEEVENS. [1] i. e. exempt from the power of love. STEEVENS. 18* VOL, II. Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell : Fetch me that flower; the herb I show'd thee once; The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid, Puck. I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes. Ob. Having once this juice, [Exit. Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him. Dem. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. Hel. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant; [2] The flower or violet, commonly called pansies, or heart's ease, is named love-in-idleness in Warwickshire, and in Lyte's Herbal. There is a reason why Shakspeare says it is "now purple with love's wound," because one or wo of its petals are of a purple colour. TOLLET. [3] I thought proper here to observe, that, as Oberon and Puck his attendant may be frequently observed to speak, when there is no mention of their entering; they are designed by the poet to be supposed on the stage during the greatest part of the remainder of the play; and to mix, as they please, as spirits, with the other actors; and embroil the plot, by their interposition, without being seen, or heard, but when to their own purpose. THEOBALD. [4] Wood, or mad, wild, raving. POPE. Is true as steel: Leave you your power to draw, Dem. Do I entice you'? Do I speak you fair? Hel. And even for that do I love you the more. I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, What worser place can I beg in your love, Dem. Tempt not so much the hatred of my spirit; For I am sick, when I do look on thee. Hel. And I am sick, when I look not on you. Hel. Your virtue is my privilege for that. Dem. I'll run from thee, and hide me in the brakes, And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts. Hel. The wildest hath not such a heart as you. [5] This passage is paraphrased from two lines of an ancient poet (Tibullus) "Tu nocte vel atra "Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis." JOHNSON. As the works of King David might be more familiar to Shakspeare than Roman poetry, perhaps, on the present occasion, the ith verse of the 139th Psalm was in his thoughts: "Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as the day." STEEV. |