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. An 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.

All. That would hang us every mother's son.

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 'twere any nightingale.

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

Bot. I will discharge it in either your strawcolour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purplein-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow."

Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-fac'd."- But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat

women by boys and men: he could endure the histrionic art nowhere but in religion.

H.

5 It seems to have been a custom to stain or dye the beard. So, in Ben Jonson's Silent Woman: "I have fitted my divine and canonist, dyed their beards and all." And, in The Alchemist: "He has dy'd his beard and all.”

6 This allusion to the Corona Veneris, or baldness attendant upon a particular stage of what was then termed the French disease, is too frequent in Shakespeare, and is here explained once for all.

you, request you, and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moon-light: 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 more obscenely, and courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu.

Quin. At the duke's oak we meet.

Bot. Enough: Hold, or cut bow-strings.

[Exeunt.

ACT II.

SCENE I. A Wood near Athens.

Enter a Fairy, and PUCK, from opposite sides.
Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you?
Fai. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

7 The properties were the furnishings of the stage, the keeper of which is still called the property-man. A curious list of them is given by Brome, 1640:

"He has got into our tiring-house amongst us,
And ta'en a strict survey of all our properties;
Our statues and our images of gods,

Our planets and our constellations,

Our giants, monsters, furies, beasts, and bugbears,
Our helmets, shields and vizors, hairs and beards,
Our pasteboard marchpanes, and our wooden pies."

H.

8 Capell informs us that this was a common pledge of punctu

1

I do wander every where,
Swifter than the moon's sphere; 1
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs 2 upon the green :
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see :

3

"I'll be there, rain or

H.

1 Mr. Collier informs us that " Coleridge, in his lectures in 1818, was very emphatic in his praises of the beauty of these lines: 'the measure,' he said, 'had been invented and employed by Shakespeare for the sake of its appropriateness to the rapid and airy motion of the Fairy by whom the passage is delivered.'" And in his Literary Remains, after analyzing the measure, he speaks of the "delightful effect on the ear," caused by "the sweet transition" from the amphimacers of the first four lines to the trochaic of the next two. An absurd passion for rhymed regularity has caused moon's to be usually printed as a dissyllable, moones. There is no authority for this: besides, it mars the beauty of the verse; and is quite unnecessary, as the pronouncing of moon's naturally occupies the time of a trochee. Coleridge is rather hard upon Theobald for shortening thorough into through, as he had the authority of the folio and one of the quartos for doing so. But if any confirmation of thorough be wanted, we have it in Drayton's imitation of the passage in his Nymphidia, 1619:

"Thorough brake, thorough brier,

Thorough muck, thorough mier,
Thorough water, thorough fier,

And thus goes Puck about it."

H.

2 These orbs were the verdant circles which the sweet old superstition here so sweetly delineated called fairy-rings, supposing them to be made by the night-tripping fairies dancing their merry roundels. As the ground became parched under the feet of the moonlight dancers, Puck's office was to refresh it with sprinklings of dew, thus making it greener than ever. Science has of course brushed away the charm that once hung about these circles; but we are not aware that it has given any better explanation of them than that of the old superstition.

H.

3 The allusion is to Elizabeth's band of gentlemen pensioners, who were chosen from among the handsomest and tallest young men of family and fortune; they were dressed in habits richly garnished with gold lace. See The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act ii. sc. 2, note 9.

These be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours:

I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.*
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone:
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.

5

Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to

night;

Take heed the queen come not within his sight.
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling:

6

4 In the old comedy of Doctor Dodypoll, 1600, an enchanter says:

""Twas I that led you through the painted meads
Where the light fairies danc'd upon the flowers,
Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl."

5 It would seem that Puck, though he could "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," was heavy and sluggish in comparison with the other fairies: he was the lubber of the spirit tribe. Shakespeare's "lob of spirits "is the same as Milton's "lubbar fiend," thus spoken of in his L'Allegro :

"And he, by friar's lantern led,

Tells how the drudging goblin swet,
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn,
That ten day-labourers could not end :
Then lies him down the lubbar fiend,
And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,

And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings."

H.

6 A changeling was a child taken or given in exchange; it being a roguish custom of the fairies, if a child of great promise were born, to steal it away, and leave an ugly, or foolish, or ill-conditioned one in its stead. Thus, in The Faerie Queene, Book i. Can. 10, stan. 65:

"From thence a Faery thee unweeting reft,

There as thou sleptst in tender swadling band,

And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forest wild;
But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove, or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,7
But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.

Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Call'd Robin Goodfellow are you not he,
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skims milk; and sometimes labours in the quern,9
And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime makes the drink to bear no barm;
Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

And her base Elfin brood there for thee left:

10

Such, men do chaungelings call, so chaung'd by Faeries theft." Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, sec. 30, speaking of the devil's practices, says, -"Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality, there is not any that puzzleth me more than the legerdemain of changelings." How much comfort this old belief sometimes gave to parents, may be seen from Drayton's Nymphidia:

7 Shining.

"When a child haps to be got,

Which after proves an idiot,

When folk perceive it thriveth not;
The fault therein to smother,
Some silly, doating, brainless calf,
That understands things by the half,
Says, that the fairy left this aulf,
And took away the other."

H.

8 That is, quarrel. See Much Ado about Nothing, Act i. sc. 1, note 12.

9 A quern was a handmill.

H.

10 Barm is yeast. Thus, in Holland's Pliny: "Now the froth

or barm, that riseth from these ales or beers, have a property to keep the skin fair and clear in women's faces."

H.