HER. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine". HEL. None, but your beauty; 'Would that fault were mine! HER. Take comfort; he no more shall see my face; Lysander and myself will fly this place.— Lys. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold: Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, 1 7 His folly, Helena, is no FAULT of mine.] The folio, and the quarto printed by Roberts, read: "His folly, Helena, is none of mine." JOHNSON. 8 None, but your beauty; 'Would that fault were mine!] I would point this line thus: 66 None.-But your beauty;-'Would that fault were mine!" 9 Take comfort; he no more shall see my face; Before the time I did Lysander see,] 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. JOHNSON. FAINT primrose-beds-] Whether the epithet faint has reference to the colour or smell of primroses, let the reader determine. STEEVENS. Emptying our bosoms of their counsel SWEET;] That is, emptying our bosoms of those secrets upon which we were wont to consult each other with so sweet a satisfaction. HEATH. There my Lysander and myself shall meet: "Emptying our bosoms of their counsel swell'd; "There my Lysander and myself shall meet : "And thence, from Athens, turn away our eyes, "To seek new friends, and strange companions." This whole scene is strictly in rhyme; and that it deviates in these two couplets, I am persuaded, is owing to the ignorance of the first, and the inaccuracy of the later editors. I have therefore ventured to restore the rhymes, as I make no doubt but the poet first gave them. Sweet was easily corrupted into swell'd, because that made an antithesis to emptying and strange companions our editors thought was plain English; but stranger companies, a little quaint and unintelligible. Our author very often uses the substantive, stranger, adjectively; and companies to signify companions as in Richard II. Act I.: "To tread the stranger paths of banishment." And in Henry V.: 66 His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow." THEOBALD. Dr. Warburton retains the old reading, and perhaps justifiably; for a bosom swell'd with secrets does not appear as an expression unlikely to have been used by our author, who speaks of a stuff'd bosom in Macbeth. In Lyly's Midas, 1592, is a somewhat similar expression: "I am one of those whose tongues are swell'd with silence." Again, in our author's King Richard II. : 66 the unseen grief "That swells in silence in the tortur'd soul." Of counsels swell'd" may mean-swell'd with counsels. Of and with, in other ancient writers have the same signification. See also, Macbeth-Note on "Of Kernes and Gallow-glasses was supplied." i. e. with them. In the scenes of King Richard II. there is likewise a mixture of rhyme and blank yerse. Mr. Tyrwhitt, however, concurs with Theobald. Though I have thus far defended the old reading, in deference to the opinion of other criticks I have given Theobald's conjectures a place in the text. STEEVENS. I think, sweet, the reading proposed by Theobald, is right. The latter of Mr. Theobald's emendations is likewise supported by Stowe's Annales, p. 291, edit. 1615: "The prince himself was faine to get upon the high altar, to girt his aforesaid companies with the order of knighthood." Mr. Heath observes, that our author seems to have had the following passage in the 55th Psalm, (v. 14, 15,) in his thoughts: But it was even thou, To seek new friends and stranger companies. As [Exit Lys. HEL. How happy some, o'er other some can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know. And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities. Things base and vile, holding no quantity*, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; 5 * Quarto R. omits so; first folio reads often. my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend. We took sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends." MALONE. 3- -when Phoebe doth behold, &c. -deep midnight.] Shakspeare has a little forgotten himself. It appears from p. 175, that to-morrow night would be within three nights of the new moon, when there is no moonshine at all, much less at deep midnight. The same oversight occurs in Act III. Sc. I. BLACKSTONE. -holding no QUANTITY,] Quality seems a word more suitable to the sense than quantity, but either may serve. JOHNSON. Quantity is our author's word. So, in Hamlet, Act III. Sc. II. : "And women's fear and love hold quantity." STEEVENS. in GAME-] Game here signifies not contentious play, but sport, jest. So Spenser: 'twixt earnest, and 'twixt game." JOHNSON. So the boy love is perjur'd every where : If I have thanks, it is a dear expence": To have his sight thither, and back again. [Exit. SCENE II. The Same. A Room in A Room in a Cottage. Enter SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, QUINCE, and STARVELING. QUIN. Is all our company here? 6 - Hermia's EYNE,] This plural is common both in Chaucer and Spenser. So, in Chaucer's Character of the Prioresse, Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 152: Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. i. c. iv. st. 9: "While flashing beams do dare his feeble eyen." STEEVENS. 7 — THIS hail-] Thus all the editions, except the 4to. 1600, printed by Roberts, which reads instead of this hail,-his hail. STEEVENS. 8 — it is a DEAR EXPENCE:] i. e. it will cost him much, (be a severe constraint on his feelings,) to make even so slight a return for my communication. STEEVENS. 9 In this scene Shakspeare 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. Bor. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip'. QUIN. Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the duke and duchess, on his wedding-day at night. Bor. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point 2. * QUIN. Marry, our play is-The most lamentable *First folio, grow on. 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 Lion, at the same time. I JOHNSON. -the SCRIP.] A scrip, Fr. escript, now written ecrit. So, Chaucer, in Troilus and Cressida, 1. 2. 1130: 66 Scripe nor bill." Again, in Heywood's, If you know not me you know Nobody, 1606, Part II. : "I'll take thy own word without scrip or scroll.” Holinshed likewise uses the word. STEEVENS. 2 GROW to a point.] Dr. Warburton reads-go on; but grow is used, in allusion to his name, Quince. JOHNSON. To grow to a point, I believe, has no reference to the name of Quince. I meet with the same kind of expression in Wily Beguiled: "As yet we are grown to no conclusion." Again, in The Arraignment of Paris, 1584: "Our reasons will be infinite, I trow, "Unless unto some other point we grow." STEEVENS. "And so grow to a point." The sense, in my opinion, hath been hitherto mistaken; and instead of a point, a substantive, I would read appoint, a verb, that is, appoint what part each actor is to perform, which is the real case. Quince first tells them the name of the play, then calls the actors by their names, and after that, tells each of them what part is set down for him to act. Perhaps, however, only the particle a may be inserted by the printer, and Shakspeare wrote to point, i. e. to appoint. The word occurs in that sense in a poem by N. B. 1614, called, I Would and I Would Not, stanza iii. : "To point the captains every one their fight." Warner. |