EGE. With duty, and desire, we follow you. [Exeunt THES. HIP. EGE. DEM. and train. Lys. How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale ? How chance the roses there do fade so fast? HER. Belike, for want of rain; which I could well Beteem them' from the tempest of mine eyes. The course of true love 2 never did run smooth: HER. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low3! BETEEM them-] Give them, bestow upon them. The word is used by Spenser. JOHNSON. "So would I, said th' enchanter, glad and fain "Beteem to you his sword, you to defend." Fairy Queen. Again, in The Case is Alter'd. How? Ask Dalio and Milo, 1605: “I could beteeme her a better match.” But I rather think that to beteem, in this place, signifies (as in the northern counties) to pour out; from tommer, Danish. STEEVENS. 2 The course of true love-] This passage seems to have been imitated by Milton, Paradise Lost, b. x.-896, & seqq. Malone. 3 too high to be enthrall'd to Low!] Love-possesses all the editions, but carries no just meaning in it. Nor was Hermia displeas'd at being in love; but regrets the inconveniences that generally attend the 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: 66 "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. THEOBALD. The emendation is fully supported, not only by the tenour of the preceding lines, but by a passage in our author's Venus and Adonis, in which the former predicts that the course of love never shall run smooth: Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years; Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; *So quartos; first folio, merit. "Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend, "Ne'er settled equally, too high, or low," &c. MALONE. -MOMENTANY as a sound,] Thus the quartos. The first folio reads-momentary. Momentany (says Dr. Johnson) is the old and proper word. STEEVENS. 66 that short momentany rage," is an expression of Dryden. HENLEY. 5 Brief as the lightning in the cOLLIED night,] Collied, i. e. black, smutted with coal, a word still used in the midland counties. So, in Ben Jonson's Poetaster: 66 - Thou hast not collied thy face enough." STEEvens. 6 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. WARBURTON. So quick bright things come to confusion. HER. If then true lovers have been ever cross'd, It stands as an edíct in destiny: Then let us teach our trial patience, Because it is a customary cross; As due to love, as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers". LYS. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia. I have a widow aunt, a dowager Of great revenue, and she hath no child: From Athens is her house remote seven leagues; There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee; My good Lysander! HER. 7 play: *First folio, for. FANCY's followers.] Fancy is love. So afterwards in this "Fair Helena in fancy following me." STEEVENS. So, in Turberville's Tragicall Tales: "The noblest nymphes that ever were alive, MALONE. 8 From Athens is her house REMOTE seven leagues ;] Remote is the reading of both the quartos; the folio has-remov'd. STEEVENS. 9 - his best ARROW with the GOLDEN head;] So, in Sidney's Arcadia, book ii. : 66 66 arrowes two, and tipt with gold or lead: Some hurt, accuse a third with horny head." STEEVENS. By the simplicity of Venus' doves; By that which knitteth souls, and prospers loves; Lys. Keep promise, love: Look, here comes Enter HELena. HER. God speed fair Helena! Whither away? HEL. Call you me fair? that fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair 2: O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars 3; and your tongue's sweet 1 air by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,] Shakspeare had forgot that Theseus performed his exploits before the Trojan war, and consequently long before the death of Dido. STEEVENS. 2 Demetrius loves your FAIR :] Fair is used again as a substantive in The Comedy of Errors, Act III. Sc. IV. : - My decayed fair, "A sunny look of his would soon repair." Again, in The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601: "But what foul hand hath arm'd Matilda's fair?" Again, in A Looking-Glass for London and England, 1598: "And fold in me the riches of thy fair.' Again, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599: 66 "Then tell me, love, shall I have all thy fair?" Again, in Greene's Never Too Late, 1616: Though she were false to Menelaus, yet her fair made him brook her follies." Again: "Flora in tawny hid up all her flowers, STEEVENS. 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 because it leads iron, or because it guides the sailor. Milton has the same thought in L'Allegro : More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, HER. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. HEL. O, that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill! HER. I give him curses, yet he gives me love. HEL. O, that my prayers could such affection move! HER. The more I hate, the more he follows me. "Towers and battlements it sees "The cynosure of neighb'ring eyes." Davies calls Queen Elizabeth: "Lode-stone to hearts, and lode-stone to all eyes." So, in the Spanish Tragedy: "Led by the loadstar of her heavenly looks." Again, in The Battle of Alcazar, 1594: JOHNSON. "The loadstar and the honour of our line." STEEVENS. O, were FAVOUR SO!] Favour is feature, countenance. So, in Twelfth-Night, Act II. Sc. IV.: thine eye "Hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves." STEEVENS. 5 Yours WOULD I catch,] This emendation is taken from the Oxford edition. The old reading is-" Your words I catch." JOHNSON. 6- to be to you TRANSLATED.] To translate, in our author, sometimes signifies to change, to transform. So, in Timon: to present slaves and servants Translates his rivals." STEEVENS. |