"Thefe yellow cowflip cheeks, "His eyes were green as leeks. "Come, come, to me, "Since you have shore "Come, blade, my breaft imbrue: "Thus Thisby ends: "Adieu, adieu, adieu." [Dies. THE. Moonshine and lion are left to bury the dead. DEM. Ay, and wall too. Bor. No, I affure you; the wall is down that parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the but this cannot be right: Thisbe has before celebrated her Py "Thefe lips lilly, "This nofe cherry." This mode of pofition adds not a little to the burlesque of the paffage. FARMER. We meet with fomewhat like this paffage in George Peele's Old Wives Tale, 1595. "Her corall lippes, her crimson chinne.-Thou art a flouting knave. Her corall lippes, her crimson chinne!" STEEVENS. His eyes were green as leeks.] Thus alfo the Nurfe in Rome and Juliet, fpeaking of Paris, fays, 66 an eagle, madam, "Hath not fo green, so quick, fo fair an eye." See note on this paffage. STEEVENS. epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance, between two of our company?s THE. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excufe. Never excufe; 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 fo 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 almoft fairy time. I fear, we shall out-fleep the coming morn, [Exeunt. 4a Bergomask dance,] Sir Thomas Hanmer obferves in his Glofary, that this is a dance after the manner of the peasants of Bergomafco, a country in Italy, belonging to the Venetians. All the buffoons in Italy affect to imitate the ridiculous jargon of that people; and from thence it became alfo a custom to imitate their manner of dancing. STEEVENS. 5 -our company?] At the conclufion of Beaumont and Fletcher's Beggar's Bufh, there feems to be a fneer at this character of Bottom; but I do not very clearly perceive its drift. The beggars have refolved to embark for England, and exercise their profeffion there. One of them adds: "The fpirit of Bottom, is grown bottomlefs." This may mean, that either the publick grew indifferent to bad actors, to plays in general, or to characters, the humour of which confifted in blunders. STEEVENS. 6 heavy gait-] i.e. flow paffage, progrefs. So, in Love's Labour's Loft: You must fend the afs upon the horse, for he is flow-gaited." In another play we have heavy-gaited toads." STEEVENS. PUCK. Now the hungry lion roars," 7 Now the hungry lion roars, &c.] It has been juftly observed by an anonymous writer, that " among this affemblage of familiar circumftances attending midnight, either in England or its neighbouring kingdoms, Shak fpeare would never have thought of intermixing the exotick idea of the hungry lion roaring, which can be heard no nearer than in the defarts of Africa, if he had not read in the 104th Pfalm: Thou makeft darkness that it may be night, wherein all the beafts of the foreft do move; the lions roaring after their prey, do feek their meat from God." MALONE. Shak fpeare might have found the midnight roar of the Lion affociated with the bowl of the Wolf, in Phaer's tranflation of the following lines in the feventh Æneid: Hinc exaudiri gemitus iræque leonum Vincla recufantum, et fera fub nocte rudentum; ac formæ magnorum ululare luporum. I do not, however, perceive the juftnefs of the foregoing anonymous writer's obfervation. Puck, who could encircle the earth in forty minutes," like his fairy miftrefs, might have fnuffed" the fpiced Indian air;" and confequently an image, foreign to Europeans, might have been obvious to him. He therefore, was at liberty to "Talk as familiarly of roaring lions, "As maids of fifteen do of puppy-dogs." Our poet, however, inattentive to little proprieties, has fometimes introduced his wild beafts in regions where they are never found. Thus in Arden, a foreft in French Flanders, we hear of a lionefs, and a bear deftroys Antigonus in Bohemia. STEEVENS. 8 And the wolf behow is the moon;] In the old copies: And the wolf beholds the moon." As 'tis the defign of thefe lines to characterize the animals, as they prefent themfelves at the hour of midnight; and as the wolf is not justly characterized by faying he beholds the moon, which other beafts of prey, then awake, do; and as the founds these animals make at that feafon, feem alfo in tended to be reprefented, I make no queftion but the poet wrote: "And the wolf behowls the moon," Now the wafted brands do glow, Whilft the fcritch-owl, fcritching loud, In remembrance of a shroud. For fo the wolf is exactly characterized, it being his peculiar property to howl at the moon. (Behowl, as bemoan, beseem, and an hundred others.) WARBURTON. So, in Marfton's Antonio and Mellida, where the whole paffage feems to be copied from this of our author: "Now barks the wolfe against the full-cheek'd moon, "Now croaks the toad, and night-crows fcreech aloud, "Now gape the graves, and thro' their yawns let loofe The alteration is better than the original reading; but perhaps the author meant only to say, that the wolf gazes at the moon. JOHNSON. I think, "Now the wolf bebowls the moon," was the original text. The allufion is frequently met with in the works of our author and his contemporaries. "'Tis like the bowling of Irish wolves against the moon," fays he, in his As You Like It; and Maflinger, in his New Way to pay old Debts, makes an ufurer feel only 66 as the moon is mov'd "When wolves with hunger pin'd, bowl at her brightness." FARMER. The word beholds was in the time of Shakspeare frequently writ ten beboulds (as, I fuppofe, it was then pronounced,) which probably occafioned the mistake. It is obfervable, that in the paffage in Lodge's Rofalynde, 1592, which Shak fpeare feems to have had in his thoughts, when he wrote, in As You Like It—“ 'Tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon :"-the expreffion is found, that Marton has ufed instead of bebowls. "In courting Phebe, thou barkeft with the wolves of Syria against the moon." Thefe lines alfo in Spenfer's Faery Queen, B. I. c. v. ft. 30. which Shakspeare might have remembered, add fupport to the emendation now made: "And all the while fhe [Night] ftood upon the ground, "The wakeful dogs did never cease to bay ; "The meffenger of death, the ghaftly owle, "With drery fhrieks did also her bewray; "And hungry wolves continually did bowle "At her abhorred face, fo filthy and fo fowle." MALONE. 9 Now it is the time of night,* That the graves, all gaping wide, By the triple Hecat's team, c. x. ft. fordone.] i. e. overcome. So Spenfer, Faery Queen, B. I. 33: "And many fouls in dolour had foredone.” Again, in Jarvis Markham's English Arcadia, 1607: fore-wearied with striving, and fore-done with the tyrannous rage of her enemy.” Again, in the ancient metrical Romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton, bl. 1. no date: "But by the other day at none, "These two dragons were foredone." STEEVENS. "Norv it is the time of night, &c.] So, in Hamlet: 3 I am fent, with broom, before, To fweep the duft behind the door.] Cleanlinefs is always necef fary to invite the refidence and the favour of fairies: Thefe make our girls their flutt'ry rue, By pinching them both black and blue, And put a penny in their fhoe The boufe for cleanly fweeping. Drayton. JOHNSON. To fweep the duft behind the door, is a common expreffion, and a common practice in large old houfes; where the doors of halls and galleries are thrown backward, and feldon or ever shut. FARMER. |