These lily lips, this cherry nose, These yellow cowslip cheeks, Are gone, are gone: Lovers, make moan! Lay them in gore, since you have shore With shears his thread of silk. Tongue, not a word:- - come, trusty sword; And farewell, friends; thus Thisby ends: [Dies. The. Moonshine and lion are left to bury the dead. Dem. Ay, and wall too. Bot. No, I assure you; the wall is down that parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance,19 between two of our company? The. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had play'd Pyramus, and hang'd himself in Thisbe's garter, it would have been a fine tragedy and so it is, truly; and very notably discharg'd. But come, your Bergomask : let your epilogue alone. [Here a dance of Clowns. The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve::Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall outsleep the coming morn, 19 A rustic dance framed in imitation of the people of Bergamasco, (a province in the state of Venice,) who are ridiculed as being more clownish in their manners and dialect than any other people of Italy. The lingua rustica of the buffoons, in the old Italian comedies, is an imitation of their jargon. The heavy gait of night.— Sweet friends, to bed.— A fortnight hold, we this solemnity In nightly revels, and new jollity. SCENE II. [Exeunt. Enter PUCK. 1 Puck. Now the hungry lion roars,' : Το sweep the dust behind the door.2 1 Upon this passage Coleridge thus remarks in his Literary Remains "Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far it is Greek ; — but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation, of English fancy! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty [twenty ?] lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond." H. 2 That is," to sweep the dust from behind the door." Mr. Collier informs us that on the title-page of the tract, "Robin Goodfellow, his Mad Pranks and Merry Jests," Puck is represented in Enter OBERON and TITANIA, with their Train. Obe. Through this house give glimmering light, Hop as light as bird from brier; Sing, and dance it trippingly. [They sing and dance. Obe. Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray. Which by us shall blessed be;1 a wood-cut with a broom over his shoulder. The whole fairy nation, for which he served as prime minister, were great sticklers for cleanliness. For some notices of their doings on this score, see The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act v. sc. 5, note 8. H. 3 The stage-direction here is usually printed as if what follows were the fairies' song; which is clearly wrong, the following lines being spoken by Oberon, after the song and dance are ended. As for the fairies' song on this occasion, it has never, so far as we know, been heard of since; and however we may regret the loss, it is hardly fair to put Oberon's speech in the place of it. The mistake was first made in the folio of 1623; the editors probably knowing of nothing else that they could print as the song. H. 4 This ceremony was in old times used at all marriages. Mr. Douce has given the formula from the Manual for the use of Salisbury. In the French romance of Melusine, the Bishop who marries her to Raymondin blesses the nuptial bed. The ceremony is there represented in a very ancient cut. The good prelate is sprinkling the parties with holy water. Sometimes, during the benediction, the married couple only sat on the bed; but they generally received a portion of the consecrated bread and wine. It was ordained, in the year 1577, that the ceremony of blessing the nuptial bed should be performed in the daytime, and in the presence of the bride and bridegroom, and of their nearest relations, only. And the issue, there create, So shall all the couples three And the blots of nature's hand Shall upon their children be. With this field-dew consecrate, And each several chamber bless,5 And the owner of it blest. Meet me all by break of day. [Exeunt OBERON, TITANIA, and Train. Puck. If we shadows have offended, Of this ancient rite Chaucer gives an example in The Milleres Tale: "Ther with the nightspel said he anon rightes, On foure halves of the hous aboute, And on the threswold of the dore withoute. Jesu Crist, and Seint Benedight, Blisse this hous from every wicked wight, H. And, as I'm an honest Puck, If we have unearned luck Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue," So, good night unto you all. 8 Give me your hands, if we be friends, [Exit. 6 Puck, it seems, was a suspicious name, which makes that this merry, mischievous gentleman does well to assert his honesty. As for the name itself, it was no better than fiend or devil. In Pierce Ploughman's Vision, some personage is called helle Pouke. the name thus occurs in Spenser's Epithalamion : "Ne let the pouke, nor other evill sprights, Ne let mischievous witches with theyr charmes, 7 That is, hisses. Clap your hands, give us your applause. 23 And H. |