VI. i. 4. 47: "My grisly countenance." See also Gray, Eton College, 82: "A grisly troop;" The Bard, 44: "a grisly band,” etc. Not to be confounded with grizzly. See Wb. Lion hight by name. So in all the early eds. Theo. transposed it, for the sake of the rhyme, to "by name Lion hight." Steevens suggests that a line rhyming with name may have been lost. Hight (=is_called) is used by S. as "a characteristic archaism" (Schmidt). See L. L. L. i. I. 171, 258, and Per. iv. prol. 18. See 141. Did fall. Changed by Pope to "let fall;" but fall is often used transitively by S. Cf. Temp. ii. 1. 296, v. 1. 64; J. C. iv. 2. 26, etc. 7. C. p. 175. For the line, cf. the legend in Chaucer: "And, as she ran, her wimple she let fall;" and Golding's Ovid (p. 119 above): “And as she fled away for haste, she let her mantle fall." 144. Trusty. Omitted in 1st folio; “gentle " in later folios. 145, 146. A burlesque of the excessive use of alliteration in many writers of the time. Cf. i. 2. 24, 25. Sidney ridicules the same affectation in his Astrophel and Stella, 15: "You that do Dictionaries' method bring Halliwell quotes Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie, 1589: "Ye have another manner of composing your metre nothing commendable, specially if it be too much used, and is when our maker takes too much delight to fill his verse with wordes beginning all with a letter, as an English rimer that said: "The deadly droppes of darke disdaine, do daily drench my due desartes.' And as the monke we spake of before wrote a whole poeme to the honor of Carolus Calvus, every word in his verse beginning with C." 154. Snout. The folio reading; the quartos have “Flute,” an obvious error. 156. Crannied. Used by S. nowhere else. The whole passage was evidently suggested by Golding's version of the story (p. 119 above). 159. Loam. So in all the early eds. The Var. ed. (1821) incorrectly gives "lime" as the folio reading.. 161. Right and sinister. Right and left. For the accent of sinister, see Gr. 490; and cf. Hen. V. ii. 4. 85. 164. The wittiest partition, etc. Farmer would read "in discourse," supposing it an allusion to "the many stupid partitions in the argumentative writings of the time." 167. Grim-look'd. Grim-looking. See Gr. 374. Cf. our well-spoken =well-speaking. 177. O wicked wall! Cf. Chaucer : "Thus would thei saine, alas! thou wicked wal, Thorough thine envie thou us lettist al." 179. Sensible. Possessed of sense, or perception. Cf. Cor. i. 3. 95: "I would your cambric were sensible as your finger," etc. 183. Pat. See on iii. I. 2. The pointing of the 1st folio is as follows: 188. Knit up in thee. The folio reading; the quartos have “knit now againe." 189. I see a voice. See on iv. I. 206. The 2d and later folios have "heare" for see, and in the next line "see" for hear. 193. Limander. For Leander, as Helen for Hero. Shafalus and Procrus are for Cephalus and Procris. A poem by Henry Chute, entitled Procris and Cephalus, was entered on the Stationers' Register by John Wolf in 1593, and probably published the same year. For a possible allusion to Cephalus, see on iii. 2. 389. 200. Tide. Betide, happen (A. S. tîdan). Cf. Robert of Gloucester: "tyde wat so bytyde;" Chaucer, T. and C. i. 908: "Thee shulde never have tidde so faire a grace" (so fair a fortune should never have happened to thee). 203. Mural down. The quartos have "Moon used;" the folios, "morall downe." Mural is Pope's emendation. Hanmer gave mure all down." Mure=wall, is found in 2 Hen. IV. iv. 4. 119; mural does not occur elsewhere in S., and is properly an adjective. The Coll. MS. has "wall down," which may be what S. wrote. 206. Hear. Farmer says: "This alludes to the proverb, 'Walls have ears.' A wall between almost any two neighbours would soon be down, were it to exercise this faculty without previous warning." Hanmer adopted Warburton's conjecture of "rear;" and Heath suggested "disappear." For the omission of as, see Gr. 281. 208. The best, etc. See Dowden's remarks on this passage, p. 35 above. 214. Beasts in, a man, etc. The early eds. put the comma after beasts; Rowe made the change. Theo. changed man to "moon," and Farmer conjectured "mooncalf;" but no change is called for. 220. A lion fell, nor else, etc. That is, neither a lion fell, nor a lioness. Johnson, in a note on A. W. i. 2. 36, remarks that "nor in the phraseology of our author's time often related to two members of a sentence, though only expressed in the latter;" and Schmidt gives many examples of "neither omitted." Cf. Oth. iv. 1. 278; Lear, iv. 6. 124; A. and C. iii. 12. 21; Cymb. v. i. 28; Sonn. 141. 9, etc. D. adopts Barron Field's conjecture of "lion's fell" (skin), and W. follows Sr. in reading "lionfell." Perhaps S. wrote "No lion fell," as Rowe and St. read. Cf. iii. 1. 38 fol. 235. No crescent. Not a waxing moon, but "in the wane," as Theseus says just below. 237. The horned moon. Douce thinks there is here a burlesque reference to the materials of the lantern, in which horn was generally used instead of glass. He quotes the History of the two Maids of Moreclacke, 1609: "Shine through the horne, as candles in the eve, to light out others." Grimm (Deutsche Mythologie, p. 412) informs us that there are three legends connected with the Man in the Moon; the first, that this personage was Isaac carrying a bundle of sticks for his own sacrifice; the second, that he was Cain; and the third, taken from the history of the Sabbath-breaker in the Book of Numbers (see on iii. 1. 52). The Italians of the thirteenth century imagined the Man in the Moon to be Cain, who is going to sacrifice to the Lord thorns-the most wretched production of the ground. Dante refers to this in the twentieth canto of the Inferno: "chè già tiene 'l confine D'amenduo gli emisperi, e tocca l'onda Sotto Sibilia, Caino e le spine." From Manningham's Diary (MS. Harl.) we learn that among the "devises" at Whitehall, in 1601, was "the man in the moone with thornes on his backe, looking downeward." Middleton also refers to this mythological personage-" as soon as he comes down, and the bush left at his back, Ralph is the dog behind him." 66 239. Of all the rest. For this "confusion of construction," see Gr. 409. J. H. takes the ground that the expression is good English, preposition does not mean out of, but as compared with." as the 243. In snuff. A play upon words, in snuff being a common phrase for in anger. Cf. L. L. L. v. 2. 22: "You 'll mar the light by taking it in snuff;" I Hen. IV. i. 3. 37: "And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held 244. Aweary. Gr. 24. A pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose, and took 't away again; So in Ist quarto; "weary" in the other early eds. 260. Moused. Cf. Macb. ii. 4. 13: "a mousing owl;" K. John, ii. 1. 354: "mousing the flesh of men" (that is, tearing it, as a cat does a mouse). Rowe unnecessarily substituted "mouth'd." 261, 262. Mr. Spedding conjectures that these lines should be transposed. Steevens, following Farmer, gives the lines thus: "Dem. And so comes Pyramus. Lys. And then the moon vanishes." 265. Gleams. The conjecture of K., adopted by St., the Camb. editors, and others. The quartos and the 1st folio have "beames;" the later folios, streams. The latter was sometimes applied to rays of light; as in The Mirror for Magistrates, ed. 1587: 66 "Which erst so glistned with the golden streames That chearfull Phoebus spred downe from his sphere," etc. But streams was probably only the guess of the editor of the 2d folio, and gleams is to be preferred for the alliteration. Lettsom thinks that S. has not used the word gleam, as it is not to be found in Mrs. Clarke's Concordance; but the verb occurs in R. of L. 1378: “And dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights." 277. Thread and thrum. "An expression borrowed from weaving: the thread being the substance of the warp; the thrum, the small tuft beyond, where it is tied" (Nares). Cf. Herrick, Poems: "Thou who wilt not love, doe this, Learne of me what woman is, Something made of thred and thrumme, A meere botch of all and some." We have thrummed (=made of coarse ends or tufts) in M. W. iv. 2. 75: "her thrummed hat." 66 278. Quell. Destroy, kill. Cf. T. G. of V. iv. 2. 13; T. of A. iv. 3. 163, etc. S. has the word once as a noun (=murder) in Macb. i. 7. 72: our great quell." So boy-queller-boy-killer, in T. and C. v. 5. 45; and man-queller and woman-queller=murderer, in 2 Hen. IV. ii. 1. 58. Steevens quotes the Coventry Mysteries: "with stonys her to quell." 66 279. This passion, and the death of a dear friend, etc. The joke would seem to be obvious enough, but the Coll. MS. spoils it by changing and to on." Of course, as W. remarks, the humor of the passage "consists in coupling the ridiculous fustian of the clown's assumed passion with an event which would, in itself, make a man look sad." St. quotes the old proverbial saying: "He that loseth his wife and sixpence hath lost a tester" (the tester being sixpence). 281. Beshrew. See on ii. 2. 54. 285. Cheer. Countenance. See on iii. 2. 96. 289. Pap. Pronounced pop, or with "the broad pronunciation, now almost peculiar to the Scotch, but anciently current in England" (Steevens). 295. Tongue. Halliwell thinks this "appears too absurd to be humorous," and that it may be a misprint for "Sun." 298. No die, but an ace. An allusion to the spots on dice. 303. How chance. See on i. 1. 129. Gr. 37. 309. Mote. The early eds. have "moth," the old spelling of mote. W. changes the name of the fairy Moth to "Mote." Which Pyramus, which Thisbe. Abbott suggests (Gr. 273) that which may here be used for the kindred whether. 310. He for a man... God bless us. This passage is in the quartos, but is omitted in the folios; perhaps, as Coll, suggests, on account of the statute of James I. against using the name of God on the stage. 314. Moans. All the early eds. have "means." The emendation is due to Theo. 321. Lips. Changed by Theo. to "brows," for the sake of the rhyme. Farmer would read and the Coll. MS. gives "These lips lilly, 327. Sisters three. The three Fates. Farmer remarked to Malone that this passage was probably intended to ridicule one in Richard Edwards's Damon and Pythias, 1582: "Ye furies, all at once On me your torments trie:- 331. Shore. Used instead of shorn for the rhyme. We have it as the past tense of shear in Oth. v. 2. 206: "Shore his old thread in twain." 343. A Bergomask dance. A rustic dance as performed by the peas ants of Bergomasco, a Venetian province, whose clownish manners were imitated by all the Italian buffoons (Nares). 356. Palpable-gross. Palpably gross, or stupid. For similar compound adjectives, see Gr. 2. We may omit the hyphen, bringing it under Gr. 1. 357. The heavy gait of night. Cf. Hen. V. iv. prol. 20: the cripple tardy-gaited night;" Rich. II. iii. 2. 15: "heavy-gaited toads." 66 360. Some editors begin a new scene here. Coleridge says of this speech of Puck's: "Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity. So far it is Greek; but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of English fancy. In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond." 361. Behowls. All the early eds. have "beholds;" corrected by Theo. Cf. A. Y. L. v. 2. 119: "'t is like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon." 66 363. Fordone. Exhausted, overcome. Elsewhere it means undone, destroyed. Cf. Lear, v. 3. 255: "She fordid herself;" Id. v. 3. 291: Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves ;" Oth. v. I. 129: "That either makes me or fordoes me quite," etc. See also Spenser, F. Q. i. 5. 41: "A fordonne wight from dore of death mote raise;" Id. iii. 3. 34: "thy sad people, utterly fordonne ;" Id. iv. 9. 28: "both shamefully fordonne," etc. 365. Screech-owl. Cf. 2 Hen. VI. i. 4. 21, iii. 2. 327; T. and C. v. 10. 16, etc. Screech (verb or noun) is not elsewhere used by S. 368. Now it is the time, etc. Cf. Ham. iii. 2. 406: ""T is now the very witching time of night," etc. See also Macb. ii. I. 51. 369. That. When. Cf. iv. 1. 133. Gr. 284. 371. Church-way. Used nowhere else by S. Cf. Gray, Elegy, 114: "Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne.” 373. The triple Hecate. Cf. A. Y. L. iii. 2. 2: "thrice-crowned queen of night;" also Virgil, Æn. iv. 511: "Tergeminamque Hecaten, tria virginis ora Dianae ;" and Horace, Od. iii. 22. 4: “Diva triformis." Hecate is always a dissyllable in S., unless we except 1 Hen. VI. iii. 2. 64, the authorship of which is doubtful. See Macb. p. 222. Ben Jonson, of course, always makes it a trisyllable; Marlowe and Middleton make it a dissyllable; Golding, in his Ovid, has used it both ways (Douce). 375. Following darkness, etc. See on iv. 1. 93. 376. Frolic. Used by S. only as an adjective; and nowhere else except in T. of S. iv. 3. 184. 378. I am sent, etc. Cf. M. W. v. 5. 48: "Where fires thou find'st unrak'd and hearths unswept, Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery;" and Id. v. 5. 59: "About, about, Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out: The several chairs of order look you scour |