And follow you no further: Let me go: HER. Why, get you gone: Who is't that hinders you? HEL. A foolish heart, that I leave here behind. HER. What, with Lysander? HEL. With Demetrius. Lys. Be not afraid she shall not harm thee, Helena. DEM. No, sir; she shall not, though you take her part. HEL. O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd : She was a vixen, when she went to school"; HER. Little again? nothing but low and little ?— Lys. Get you gone, you dwarf; You minimus, of hind'ring knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn. I how FOND I am.] Fond, i. e. foolish. So, in The Merchant of Venice: "Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond "To come abroad with him." STEEVENS. 2 She was a VIXEN, when she went to school;] Vixen or fixen primitively signifies a female fox. So, in The Boke of Hunting, that is cleped Mayster of Game; an ancient MS. in the collection of Francis Douce, Esq. Gray's Inn: "The fixen of the Foxe is assaute onys in the yer. She hath venomous biting as a wolfe." STEEVENS. 3 of hind'ring KNOT-GRASS made;] It appears that knotgrass was anciently supposed to prevent the growth of any animal or child. Beaumont and Fletcher mention this property of it in The Knight of the Burning Pestle : "Should they put him into a straight pair of gaskins, 'twere worse than knot-grass, he would never grow after it." Again, in the Coxcomb: "We want a boy extremely for this function, kept under, for DEM. You are too officious, In her behalf that scorns your services. Take not her part: for if thou dost intend1 Thou shalt aby it". LYS. Now she holds me not; Now follow, if thou dar'st, to try whose right, jole. DEM. Follow? nay, I'll go with thee, cheek by [Exeunt Lys. and DEM. HER. You, mistress, all this coil is 'long of you: Nay, go not back. HEL. I will not trust you, I; Nor longer stay in your curst company. a year, with milk and knot-grass." Daisy-roots were supposed to have the same effect. That prince of verbose and pedantic coxcombs, Richard Tomlinson, apothecary, in his translation of Renodæus his Dispensatory, 1657, informs us that knot-grass "is a low reptant hearb, with exile, copious, nodose, and geniculated branches." Perhaps no hypochondriack is to be found, who might not derive his cure from the perusal of any single chapter in this work. STEEVENS. 4- intend] i. e. pretend. So, in Much Ado : “Intend a kind of zeal both to the prince and Claudio.” STEEVENS. Thou shalt ABY it.] To aby is to pay dear for, to suffer. So, in The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601: "Had I sword and buckler here, "You should aby these questions." Again, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599: "- but thou shalt dear aby this blow." STEEVENS. "Thou shalt aby it." Aby it, is abide by it; i. e. stand to it, answer to it. So, in Psalm cxxx. v. 3, in Common Prayer: "If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss: O Lord, who may abide it?" HARRIS. 6 OR thine or mine, &c.] The old copies read-Of thine. The emendation is Mr. Theobald's. I am not sure that the old reading is corrupt. If the line had run-" Of mine or thine," I should have suspected that the phrase was borrowed from the Latin-Now follow, to try whose right of property,—of meum or tuum,—is the greatest in Helena. MALONE. Your hands, than mine, are quicker for a fray; [Exit, pursuing HELENA. OBE. This is thy negligence: still thou mistak'st, Or else commit'st thy knaveries wilfully. PUCK. Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook. Did not you tell me, I should know the man By the Athenian garments he had on? And so far blameless proves my enterprize, That I have 'nointed an Athenian's eyes: And so far am I glad it so did sort 7, As this their jangling I esteem a sport. OBE. Thou seest, these lovers seek a place to fight: Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night; The starry welkin cover thou anon With drooping fog, as black as Acheron; And lead these testy rivals so astray, As one come not within another's way. Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue, Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong; And sometime rail thou like Demetrius; And from each other look thou lead them thus, Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep : Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye; Whose liquor hath this virtuous property, To take from thence all error, with his might, And make his eye-balls roll with wonted sight. * First folio omits this speech. So both the quartos ; folio, willingly. Quarto R., and folio, hath. 7 - so did SORT,] So happen in the issue. JOHNSON. So, in Monsieur D'Olive, 1606; 8 66 never look to have any action sort to your honour." STEEVENS. VIRTUOUS property,] Salutiferous. So he calls, in The Tempest, poisonous dew, wicked dew. JOHNSON. When they next wake, all this derision I'll to my queen, and beg her Indian boy; From monster's view, and all things shall be peace. PUCK. My fairy lord, this must be done with haste; For night's swift dragons' cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to church-yards: damned spirits all, That in cross-ways and floods have burial 2, 9 66 * So Quarto F.; Quarto R. apply; folio, imply. wend,] i. e. go. So, in the Comedy of Errors: Hopeless and helpless doth Ægeon wend." STEEVENS. ' For NIGHT'S SWIFT DRAGONS, &c.] So, in Cymbeline, Act II. Sc. II. : Swift, swift, ye dragons of the night!" See my note on this passage, concerning the vigilance imputed to the serpent tribe. STEEVENS. This circumstance Shakspeare might have learned from a passage in Golding's translation of Ovid, which he has imitated in The Tempest: "Among the earth-bred brothers you a mortal war did set, "And brought asleep the dragon fell, whose eyes were never shet." MALONE. 2- damned spirits all, That in CROSS-WAYS and FLOODS have burial,] The ghosts of self-murderers, who are buried in cross-roads; and of those who being drowned, were condemned (according to the opinion of the ancients) to wander for a hundred years, as the rites of sepulture had never been regularly bestowed on their bodies. That the waters were sometimes the place of residence for damned spirits, we learn from the ancient bl. I. romance of Syr Eglamoure of Artoys, no date: "Let some preest a gospel saye, "For doute of fendes in the flode." STEEVENS. 3 Already to their wormy beds are gone; And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night*. I with the morning's love have oft made sport'; 3 -to their wORMY BEDS] This periphrasis for the grave has been borrowed by Milton, in his Ode on the Death of a Fair Infant : "Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed." STEEvens. "Why, here walk I, in the black-brow of night." STEEVENS. 5 I with the MORNING'S LOVE have oft made sport ;] Thus all the old copies, and I think, rightly. Tithonus was the husband of Aurora, and Tithonus was no young deity. Thus, in Aurora, a collection of sonnets, by Lord Sterline, 1604: "And why should Tithon thus, whose day grows late, 66 Again, in The Parasitaster, by J. Marston, 1606: "Aurora yet keeps chaste old Tithon's bed; Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. iii. c. iii. : "Doth by her blushing tell that she did lye Again, in The Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher: "Thou shame-fac'd morning, when from Tithon's bed How such a waggish spirit as the King of the Fairies might make sport with an antiquated lover, or his mistress in his absence, may be easily understood. Dr. Johnson reads with all the modern editors: "I with the morning light," &c. STEEVENS. Will not this passage bear a different explanation? By the morning's love I apprehend Cephalus, the mighty hunter and paramour of Aurora, is intended. The context, And, like a forester," &c. seems to show that the chace was the sport which Oberon boasts he partook with the morning's love. HOLT WHITE. The connection between Aurora and Cephalus is also pointed out in one of the Poems that form a collection intitled The Phonix Nest, &c. 4to, 1593, p. 95: |