Notes to Shakespeare's Comedies (eBook)

 A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM

I.i.6 (4,2) [Long withering out a young man's revenue] [W: wintering] That the common reading is not good English, I cannot perceive, and therefore find in myself no temptation to change it.

I.i.47 (5,6) [To leave the figure, or disfigure it] [W: 'leve] I know not why so harsh a word should be admitted with so little need, a word that, spoken, could not be understood, and of which no example can be shown. The sense is plain, you owe to your father a being which he may at pleasure continue or destroy.

I.i.68 (6,8) [Know of your youth] Bring your youth to the question. Consider your youth. (1773)

I.i.76 (7,9) [But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd] Thus all the copies, yet earthlier is so harsh a word, and earthlier happy for happier earthly, a mode of speech so unusual, that I wonder none of the editors have proposed earlier happy.

I.i.110 (8,2) [spotted] As spotless is innocent, so spotted is wicked. (1773)

I.i.131 (9,3) [Beteem them] give them, bestow upon then. The word is used by Spenser.

I.i.157 (10,8) [I have a widow aunt, a dowager] These lines perhaps might more properly be regulated thus:

   I have a widow aunt, a dowager     Of great revenue, and she hath no child,     And she respects me as her only son;     Her house from Athens is remov'd seven leagues,     There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,     And to that place--

I.i.169-178 (11,1) [Warburton had reassigned speeches here] This emendation is judicious, but not necessary. I have therefore given the note without altering the text. The censure of men, as oftner perjured than women, seems to make that line more proper for the lady.

I.i.183 (12,3) [Your eyes are lode-stars] This was a complement not unfrequent among the old poets. The lode star is the leading or guiding star, that is, the pole-star. The magnet is, for the same reason, called the lode-stone, either became it leads iron, or because it guides the sailor. Milton has the same thought in L'Allegro:

   Tow'rs and battlements he sees     Bosom'd high in tufted trees,     Where perhaps some beauty lies,     The Cynosure of neighb'ring eyes.

Davies calls Elizabeth, lode-stone to hearts, and lode-stone to all eyes, (see 1765, 1,97,9)

I.i.204 (13,6)

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

Perhaps every reader may not discover the propriety of these lines. Hermia is willing to comfort Helena, and to avoid all appearance of triumph over her. She therefore bids her not to consider the power of pleasing, as an advantage to be much envied or much desired, since Hermia, whom she considers as possessing it in the supreme degree, has found no other effect of it than the loss of happiness.

I.i.232 (15,8) [Things base and vile, holding no quantity] quality seems a word more suitable to the sense than quantity, but either may serve. (1773)

I.i.240 (15,9) [in game] Game here signifies not contentious play, but sport, jest. So Spenser,

    'Twixt earnest and 'twixt game.

I.ii (16,2) [Enter Quince the carpenter, Snug the joiner. Bottom the weaver. Flute the bellows-mender. Snout the tinker, and Starveling the taylor] In this scene Shakespeare takes advantage of his knowledge of the theatre, to ridicule the prejudices and competitions of the players. Bottom, who is generally acknowledged the principal actor, declares his inclination to be for a tyrant, for a part of fury, tumult, and noise, such as every young man pants to perform when he first steps upon the stage. The same Bottom, who seems bred in a tiring-room, has another histrionical passion. He is for engrossing every part, and would exclude his inferiors from all possibility of distinction. He is therefore desirous to play Pyramus, Thisbe, and the Lyon at the same time.

I.ii.10 (17,4) [grow on to a point] Dr. Warburton read go on; but grow is used, in allusion to his name, Quince. (see 1765, I,100,8)

I.ii.52 (18,6)

[Flu. Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming. Quin. That's all one, you shall play it in a masque; and you may speak as small as you will]

This passage shews how the want of women on the old stage was supplied. If they had not a young man who could perform the part with a face that might pass for feminine, the character was acted in a mask, which was at that time part of a lady's dress so much in use that it did not give any unusual appearance to the scene: and he that could modulate his voice in a female tone might play the women very successfully. It is observed in Downes's Memoirs of the Playhouse, that one of these counterfeit heroines moved the passions more strongly than the women that have since been brought upon the stage. Some of the catastrophes of the old comedies, which make lovers marry the wrong women, are, by recollection of the common use of masks, brought nearer to probability.

I.ii.98 (20,8) [Bot. I will discharge it in either your straw-coloured beard, your orange tawny beard, your purple-in grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard; your perfect yellow] Here Bottom again discovers a true genius for the stage by his solicitude for propriety of dress, and his deliberation which beard to chuse among many beards, all unnatural.

II.i.2 (21,3) [Over hill, over dale] So Drayton in his Court of Fairy,

  Thorough brake, thorough brier.   Thorough muck, thorough mire.   Thorough water, thorough fire.

 II.i.9 (22,4) [To dew her orbs upon the green] For orbs Dr. Gray is inclined to substitute herbs. The orbs here mentioned are the circles supposed to be made by the Fairies on the ground, whose verdure proceeds from the fairy's care to water them.

  They in their courses make that round,   In meadows and in marshes found,   Of then so called the fairy ground.  Drayton.

II.i.10 (22,5) [The cowslips tall her pensioners be] The cowslip was a favourite among the fairies. There is a hint in Drayton of their attention to May morning.

 --for the queen a fitting tow'r,   Quoth he, is that fair cowslip flow'r.--   In all your train there's not a fay   That ever went to gather May,   But she hath made it in her way,   The tallest there that groweth.

 II.i.16 (22,7) [lob of spirits] Lob, lubber, looby, lobcock, all denote both inactivity of body and dulness of mind.

II.i.23 (23,8) [changeling] Changeling is commonly used for the child supposed to be left by the fairies, but here for the child taken away.

II.i.29 (23,9) [sheen] Shining, bright, gay.

II.i.30 (23,1) [But they do square] [To square here is to quarrel. And now you are such fools to square for this? Gray.]

The French word contrecarrer has the same import.

II.i.36 (24,4)

  [Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,   And bootless make the breathless huswife churn]

The sense of these lines is confused. Are not you he, says the fairy, that fright the country girls. that skim milk, work in the hand-mill, and make the tired dairy-woman churn without effect? The mention of the mill seem out of place, for she is not now telling the good but the evil that he does.  I would regulate the lines thus:

  And sometimes make the breathless housewife churn   Skim milk, and bootless labour in the quern.

Or by a simple transposition of the lines;

  And bootless, make the breathless housewife churn   Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern.

Yet there is no necessity of alteration. (see 1765, I,106,1)

II.i.40 (24,6) [Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work] To those traditionary opinions Milton has reference in L'Allegro,

  Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,   With stories told of many a feat.   How Fairy Mab the junkets eat;   She was pinch'd and pull'd she said.   And he by Frier's lapthorp led;   Tells how the drudging goblin sweat   To earn his cream-bowl duly set,   When in one night ere glimpse of morn   His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn   Which ten day-labourers could not end.   Then lies him down the lubber fiend.

A like account of Puck is given by Drayton,

  He meeteth Puck, which most men call   Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall.--   This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,   Still walking like a ragged colt,   And oft out of a bed doth bolt,     Of purpose to deceive us;   And leading us makes us to stray.   Long winter's nights out of the way.   And when we stick in mire and clay.     He doth with laughter leave...