passion either, the parties are disproportioned, in degree of blood and quality; or unequal, in respect of years; or brought together by the appointment of friends, and not by their own choice. These are the complaints represented by Lysander; and Hermia, to answer to the first, as she has done to the other two, must necessarily say:

"O cross!-too high to be enthrall'd to low!"

So the antithesis is kept up in the terms; and so she is made to condole the disproportion of blood and quality in lovers. THEOB.

"To be enthrall'd to low," as proposed by Theobald, is very unmeaning. I think, indeed, that he is right in changing love to low —to low, however, should be too low. A transposition is likewise necessary. I read and print-“ O cross, to be enthrall'd! too high, too low." This, by a periphrasis, may be explained-“O how vexatious is it to be in love! There is ever some inequality either in birth or riches." B.

Lys. Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the colly'd night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
Brief as the lightning in the colly'd night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say,-Behold!

The jaws of darkness do devour it up:]

Though the word spleen be here employed oddly enough, yet I believe it right. Shakspeare, always hurried on by the grandeur and multitude of his ideas, assumes, every now and then, an uncommon licence in the use of his words. Particularly in complex moral modes it is usual with him to employ one, only to express a very few ideas of that number of which it is composed. Thus wanting here to express the ideas of a sudden, or in a trice, he uses the word spleen; which, partially considered, signifying a hasty sudden fit, is enough for him, and he never troubles himself about the further or fuller signification of the word. Here, he uses the word spleen for a sudden hasty fit; so just the contrary, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, he uses sudden for splenetic-sudden quips. And it must be owned this sort of conversation adds a force to the diction. WARB.

It is scarcely possible that i. e. shining, Chauc. Spens. flash, sudden bluze. B.

spleen should be right. I read shene, Shakspeare uses it as a substantive, —

Hel. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, The rest I'll give to be to you translated.

To be to you translated.] To translate, in our author, sometimes signi fies to change, to transform. So, in Timon:

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to present slaves and servants "Translates his rivals."STEEV.

"To be to you translated!" To "translate" is no doubt to change, to remove. So we talk of translating a bishop to another see; but to translate, is certainly not to transform, whatever Mr. Steevens may advance in respect to it, since to transform can signify nothing but to metamorphose, to change the external shape: and no such sense can be given to Helena's expression, which scarcely any

one indeed can mistake. Mr. S. has somewhere observed that his notes may tend, perhaps, to render his author obscure; and he to know his own talent à merveille. appears

B.

Bot. 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.

I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a CAT in.] In the old comedy of the Roaring Girl, 1611. there is a character called Tear-cat, who says: “I am called, by those who have seen my valour, Tear-cat." In an anonymous piece called Histriomastix, or The Player Whipt, 1610. in six acts, a parcel of soldiers drag a company of players on the stage, and the captain says: Sirrah, this is you that would rend and tear a cat upon a stage," &c. Again, in The Isle of Gulls, a comedy by J. Day, 1606: "I had rather hear two such jests, than a whole play of such Tear-cat thunderclaps." STEEV.

"A part to tear a cat in." The sense is wholly mistaken by the editors. It is not the domestic animal the cat, which is spoken of. For what can possibly be understood of "a part to tear a cat in?” “To tear,” is to rant, We must read: a part to tear: à catin."

to bluster. Catin is a french word signifying a drab, a low, vulgar woman. A is the french particle which has the power of the adverb like. The whole will run thus: "My chief humor is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part in which I might rant and bluster like a very drab, a common roarer." Hamlet, we may remember, says;

"Must I unpack my heart with words,

"Aud fall a railing like a very drab.”

In the quotations in which tear cat appears, it should be noted that cat is contracted of catin. Thus, in the Comedy of the Roaring Girl, Tear-cat, [roaring woman] the name of a character of the play. It must not he objected that tear-cat is, in some of the pieces, a male character. A man may be said to rant or rail like a drab, a common woman-and we have an example of it in the lines from Hamlet. B.

Snug. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.

if

Slow of study. Study is still the cant term used in a theatre, for getting any nonsense by rote. Hamlet asks the player if he can "study" a speech. STEEV.

Slow of study." What can be meant by this (and according to the vulgar acceptation of the term) impertinent note? As the player must be perfect in his part, he is necessarily obliged to study it, however great the nonsense may be: nay, such must be the case were he even required to imprint on his memory the annotations of Mr. Steevens. B.

Quin. At the duke's oak we meet.

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

At the Duke's oak we meet--hold, or cut bow-strings.] This proverbial phrase came originally from the camp. When a rendezvous was appointed, the militia soldiers would frequently make excuse for not keeping word, that ti eir bowstrings were broke, i. e. their arms unserviceable. Hence when one would give another absolute assurance of meeting him, he would say proverbially-hold or cut bow-strings-i. e, whether the bow-strings held or broke. For cut is used as a neuter, like the verb frets. As when we say, the string frets, the silk frets, for the passive, it is cut or fret'ed. WARB.

This interpretation is very ingenious, but somewhat disputable. The excuse made by the militia soldiers is a mere supposition, without proof; and it is well known that while bows were in use, no archer ever entered the field without a supply of strings in his pocket; whence originated the proverb," to have two strings to one's bow." STEEV.

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"fold, or cut bow-strings." Perhaps it is used proverbially for to mar, to destroy. Keep all to this, or we shall have our bowstrings cut-all will be spoilt. We shall not be able to play." Bowstrings are here the strings of the filler's bow, and not those belonging to the bow of the soldier or the archer. Flute says of one of his brethren in a subsequent scene; " If he come not the play is marred." B.

Puck. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me.

The wisest aunt.] Aunt is procuress. In Gascoigne's Glass of Go vernment, 1575, the bawd Pandarina is always called aunt. "These are aunts of Antwerp, which can make twenty marriages in one week for their kins women." See Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. i. Among Ray's proverbial phrases is the following. "She is one of mine aunts that made mine uncle to go a begging." The wisest aunt may mean the most sentimental bawd. STEEV.

The author of The Remarks says: "This conjecture is much too wanton and injurious to the word aunt, which in this place at least certainly means no other than an "innocent old woman." ED.

"Aunt"-this word should be written aunct-abbreviation of auncient. It means an old person, man or woman, B.

Puck.

Down topples she,

And taylor cries, and falls into a cough;

And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe,

And taylor cries.] The custom of crying taylor at a sudden fall backwards, I think I remember to have observed. He that slips beside his chair, falls as a taylor squats upon his board. The Oxford editor, and Dr. Warburton after him, read and rails or cries, plausibly, but I believe not rightly. Besides, the trick of the fairy is represented as producing rather merriment than anger. JoHN.

"And taylor cries." We must read" Tailloir cries." Tailleir is a term in architecture, and signifies the square stone or basement belonging to the capital of a pillar. The meaning of tailloir

cries, is: The architecture is bad-the building gives way. The context will show that this is right. B.

Queen. The human mortals want their winter here.

The human mortals,] Shakspeare might have employ'd this epithet, which, at first sight, appears redundant, to mark the difference between men and fairies. Fairies were not human, but they were yet subject to mortality. STEEV.

The human mortals want their winter HERE.] But sure it was not one of the circumstances of misery, here recapitulated, that the sufferers wanted their winter. On the contrary, in the poetical descriptions of the golden age, it was always one circumstance of their happiness that they wanted winter. This is an idle blunder of the editors. Shakspeare without question wrote:

"The human mortals want their winter HERYED,"

i. e. praised, celebrated. The word is obsolete; but used both by Chaucer and Spenser in this signification:

"Tho' wouldest thou learne to CAROLL of love,

"And HERY with HYMNES thy lassie's glove." Spenc. Cal. Feb.. The following line confirms the emendation.

"No night is now with Hymn or Carol blest;"

and the propriety of the sentiment is evident. For the winter is the season of rural rejoicing, as the gloominess of it and its vacancy from country labors, give them the inclination and opportunity for mirth; and the fruits, now gathered in, the means. Well, therefore, might she say, when she had described the dearths of the seasons and fruitless toil of the husbandmen, that

"The human mortals want their winter heryed."

Dr.

But, principally, since the coming of Christianity, this season, in commemoration of the birth of Christ, has been particularly devoted to festivity. And to this custom, notwithstanding the impropriety, hymn or carol blest, certainly alludes. Mr. Theobald says: "he should undoubtedly have advanced this conjecture into the text, but that Shakspeare seems rather fond of hallowed." Rather than what? hallowed is not synonymous to heryed, but to blest. What was he thinking of? The ambiguity of the English word blest contounded him, which signifies" either prais'd or sanctified. WARB. After all the endeavours of the editors, this passage still remains to me unintelligible. I cannot see why winter is, in the general confusion of the year now described, more wanted than any other season. Warburton observes that he alludes to our practice of singing carols in December; but though Shakspeare is no great chronologer in his dramas, I think he has never so mingled true and false religion, as to give us reason for believing that he would make the moon incensed for the omission of our carols. I therefore imagine him to have meant heathen rites of adoration. This is not all the difficulty. Titania's account of this calamity is not sufficiently consequential. Men find no winter," therefore they sing no hymns: the moon provoked by this omission, alters the seasons that is, the alteration of the seasons produces the alteration of the seasons. I am far from supposing that Shakspeare might not sometimes think confusedly, and therefore am not sure that the passage is corrupted. If we should read:

"And human mortals want their wonted year," yet will not this licence of alteration much mend the narrative; the cause and the effect are still confounded. Joнy.

I think we ought to read:

The human mortals want their winter cheer.

according to sir T. Hanmer's correction, suggested by Theobald. TYRWA. The repeated adverb therefore, throughout this speech, I suppose to have constant reference to the first time when it is used.-All these irre-gularities of season, happened in consequence of the disagreement between the king and queen of the fairies, and not in consequence of each other.-Ideas crowded fast on Shakspeare; and as he committed them to paper, he did not attend to the distance of the leading object from which they took their rise.—Mr. Malone concurs with me on this occasion. STEEV.

"The human mortals want their winter here.' Human mortals' is no doubt used by Titania for the ordinary race of men, in contradistinction to fairies, who were subject to death, though they had not the failings of humanity. The construction is not that winter is wanted, but that mankind want. I read the line as follows-( Heer' is harslı, severe)

The human mortals want: their winter heer.'

i. e. "Men are greatly in want: their winter [being] severe.” That this is the true sense of the passage, an attention to the circumstances enumerated in the immediately preceding lines will shew. 'The green corn hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.' The crows are fatted with the murrain flock,' &c. &c. Hence, the inhabitants are distressed, they are in want: their winter [being likewise] heer-i. e. hard, rigorous.

Mr. Malone is right in saying that the illative therefore, isemployed in reference to the dissensious of the King and Queen: but in other respects he is evidently wrong. The interpretation of the whole is easy. Oberon and Titania quarrel; and what are the consequences ?-why-1. The elements are so disturbed as nearly to lay waste the country: and by it, the people are in actual want. 2. Their nights are no longer blest with hymn or carol. 3. The moon in her anger, causes such humidity of the atmosphere that diseases abound. The Queen then speaks of the changes made in the character of the seasons by the distemperature of the air, &c.: which changes have from time to time been particularly observable, and which are to be considered as a farther consequence of their repeated brawls. Thus all proceeds regularly, and a sufficiently logical deduction is found: though the expression may not perhaps

be the clearest and best.

It may indeed be objected by some who are not sufficiently attentive to the text, that the season cannot be called heer or rigorous, when it is remarked immediately after, that a chaplet of summer buds is placed on Hyems' head. But Titania speaks not of one single effect of their dissension, but of several, and at different times, as the word 'therefore' particularly shews. At one time the winter is severe, and the people in want: at another the seasons change, &c. B.

Queen. On old Hyems' chin, and icy crown,
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set.