66 "Now am I dead, My soul is in the sky : 66 Tongue, lose thy light! Moon, take thy flight! "Now die, die, die, die, die. [Dies.-Exit Moonshine. DEM. No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one. Lys. Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing. THE. With the help of a surgeon, he might yet recover, and prove an ass 3. 5 HIP. How chance moonshine is gone, before Thisbe comes back and finds her lover? THE. She will find him by star-light.-Here she comes; and her passion ends the play. Enter THISbe. HIP. Methinks, she should not use a long one, for such a Pyramus: I hope, she will be brief. DEM. A mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which Thisbe, is the better". the broad pronunciation, now almost peculiar to the Scotch, was anciently current in England. Throughout the old copies of Shakspeare's plays, "tattered" is always spelt "tottered; pap therefore was sounded, pop. The context reminds us of a passage in the seventh Satire of Juvenal : 5 and prove an ass.] The character of Theseus throughout this play is more exalted in its humanity, than its greatness. Though some sensible observations on life, and animated descriptions fall from him, as it is said of lago, You shall taste him more as a soldier than as a wit," which is a distinction he is here striving to deserve, though with little success; as in support of his pretensions he never rises higher than a pun, and frequently sinks as low as a quibble. STEEVENS. A MOTE will turn the balance,] The old copies have-moth ; but Mr. Malone very justly observes that moth was merely the Lys. She hath spied him already with those sweet eyes. DEM. And thus she moans, videlicet.-— THIS." Asleep, my love? ancient mode of spelling mote. So, in King Henry V.: "Wash every moth (i. e. mote) out of his conscience." STEEVENS. 7 — is the better.] The first quarto makes this speech a little longer, but not better. JOHNSON. The passage omitted is,-" He for a man, God warned us; she for a woman, God bless us." STEEVENS. 8 And thus she MOANS,] The old copies concur in readingmeans; which Mr. Theobald changed into-moans; and the next speech of Thisbe appears to countenance his alteration: 66 Lovers, make moan.” STEEVENS. Mr. Theobald alters means to moans: but means had anciently the same signification. Mr. Pinkerton (under the name of Robert Heron, Esq.) observes that it is a common term in the Scotch law, signifying to tell, to relate, to declare; and the petitions to the lords of session in Scotland, run: "To the lords of council and session humbly means and shows your petitioner." Here, however, it evidently signifies complains. Bills in Chancery begin in a similar manner; Humbly complaining sheweth unto your lordship," &c. The word occurs in an ancient manuscript in my own possession: This ender day wen me was wo, So again, in a very ancient Scottish 66 song: I hard ane may sair mwrne and meyne." RITSON. Thus also, in the Cronykil of A. Wyntown, b. viii. ch. xxxvi. v.87: Bot playnt; ná duie, ná yhit mening 66 "Mycht helpe noucht-;' See also v. 110. STEEVENS. 9 These lily LIPS,] Mr. Theobald, for the sake of rhyme, would read-lily brows. But lips could scarcely have been mistaken, either by the eye or ear, for brows. MALONE. All Thisbe's lamentation, till now, runs in regular rhyme and But both, by some accident, are in this single instance metre. interrupted. I suspect the poet wrote: "These lily brows, "This cherry nose." Now black brows being a beauty, lily brows are culous as a cherry nose, green eyes, or cowslip cheeks. as ridi THEOBALD. Theobald's emendation is supported by the following passage in As You Like It.: ""Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair-.” And by another, in The Winter's Tale : "Your brows are blacker, yet black brows they say Lily lips are changed to lily brows for the sake of the rhyme, but this cannot be right: Thisbe has before celebrated her Py ramus, as "Lilly-white of hue." It should be: "These lips lilly, "This nose cherry." This mode of position adds not a little to the burlesque of the passage. FARMER. We meet with somewhat like this passage 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 also the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, speaking of Paris, says: 66 an eagle, madam, "Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye.” See note on this passage. STEEVENS. 66 Come, blade, my breast imbrue : "And farewell, friends;— "Thus Thisbe ends: "Adieu, adieu, adieu." [Dies. THE. Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead. DEM. Ay, and wall too. Bor. No, I assure you; the wall is down that parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance, between two of our company? THE. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it, had play'd Pyramus, and hanged himself in Thisbe's garter, it would have been a fine tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably discharged. 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 almost fairy time. I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn, 2 -a Bergomask dance,] Sir Thomas Hanmer observes in his Glossary, that this is a dance after the manner of the peasants of Bergomasco, 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 also a custom to imitate their manner of dancing. STEEVENS. 3 -our company?] At the conclusion of Beaumont and Fletcher's Beggar's Bush, there seems to be a sneer at this character of Bottom; but I do not very clearly perceive its drift. The beggars have resolved to embark for England, and exercise their profession there. One of them adds: "The spirit of Bottom, is grown bottomless." This may mean, that either the publick grew indifferent to bad actors, to plays in general, or to characters, the humour of which consisted in blunders. STEEVENS. As much as we this night have o'erwatch'd. This palpable-gross play hath well beguil'd 4 The heavy gait of night.-Sweet friends, to bed.— SCENE II. Enter PUCK. PUCK. Now the hungry lion roars, 6 [Exeunt. 4 — HEAVY gait-] i. e. slow passage, progress. So, in Love's Labour's Lost: "You must send the ass upon the horse, for he is slow-gaited." In another play we have "heavy-gaited toads." STEEVENS. 5 Now the hungry lion roars, &c.] It has been justly observed by an anonymous writer, that "among this assemblage of familiar circumstances attending midnight, either in England or its neighbouring kingdoms, Shakspeare would never have thought of intermixing the exotick idea of the hungry lion roaring, which can be heard no nearer than in the deserts of Africa, if he had not read in the 104th Psalm: “Thou makest darkness that it may be night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do move; the lions roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from God." MALONE. Shakspeare might have found the midnight roar of the Lion associated with the howl of the Wolf, in Phaer's translation of the following lines in the seventh Æneid: "Hinc exaudiri gemitus iræque leonum "Vincla recusantum, et sera sub nocte rudentum ; ac formæ magnorum ululare luporum. 66 I do not, however, perceive the justness of the foregoing anonymous writer's observation. Puck, who could encircle the earth in forty minutes," like his fairy mistress, might have snuffed "the spiced Indian air;" and consequently 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 sometimes introduced his wild beasts in regions where they are never found. Thus in Arden, a forest in French Flanders, we hear of a lioness, and a bear destroys Antigonus in Bohemia. STEEVENS. |
