ACT IV. SCENE I. The fame. Enter TITANIA and BOTTOM, Fairies attending; OBERON behind, unseen. TITA. Come, fit thee down upon this flowery bed, 3 While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk-roses in thy fleek smooth head, And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. Bor. Where's Peas-blofsom? PEAS. Ready. Bor. Scratch my head, Peas-blossom.-Where's monfieur Cobweb? * I fee no reason why the fourth act should begin here, when there seems no interruption of the action. In the old quartos of 1600, there is no division of acts, which seems to have been afterwards arbitrarily made in the first folio, and may therefore be altered at pleasure. JOHNSON. 3-do coy,] To coy is to footh, to stroke. So, in The Arraignment of Paris, 1584: Plays with Amyntas' lusty boy, and coys him in the dales." Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602. Book VI. ch. xxx : "And whilft the coys his footy cheeks, or curls his sweaty top." Again, in Sir A. Gorges' tranflation of Lucan, B. IX : " - his sports to prove, Coying that powerful queen of love." Again, in Golding's Tranflation of the 7th Book of Ovid's Metamorphofis: "Their dangling dewclaps with his hand he coid unfearfully." Again, ibid: - and with her hand had coid "The dragons' reined neckes." The behaviour of Titania, on this occafion, seems copied from that of the Lady in Apuleius, Lib. VIII. STEEVENS. : Сов. Ready. Bor. Monfieur Cobweb; good monfieur, get your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hip'd humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourfelf too much in the action, monfieur; and, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loth to have you over-flown with a honey-bag, fignior.-Where's monfieur Mustardfeed? MUST. Ready. Bor. Give me your neif, monfieur Mustardfeed. Pray you, leave your courtesy, good monsieur. Must. What's your will? Bor. Nothing, good monfieur, but to help cavalero Cobweb to scratch. I must to the barber's, monfieur; for, methinks, I am marvellous hairy about the face: and I am fuch a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch. TITA. What, wilt thou hear fome musick, my fweet love? Bor. I have a reasonable good ear in musick: let us have the tongs and the bones. 4 -over-flown] It should be overflow'd; but it appears from a rhyme in another play that the mistake was our author's. MALONE. I perceive no mistake. Overflown is the participle paffive. See Johnson's Dict. STEEVENS. 5-neif,] i. e. fift. So, in K. Henry IV. Act II. fc. x: "Sweet knight, I kiss thy neif." GREY. 6-cavalero Cobweb-] Without doubt it should be Cavalero Peas-blossom; as for cavalero Cobweb, he had just been dispatched upon a perilous adventure. GREY. 7 the tongs] The old rustic musick of the tongs and key. The folio has this stage direction." Muficke Tongs, Rurall Muficke." STEEVENS. : i TITA. Or, say, sweet love, what thou defir'st to eat. Bor. Truly, a peck of provender; I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks, I have a great defire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow. TITA. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts. Bor. I had rather have a handful, or two, of dried peas. But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me; I have an expofition of fleep come upon me. TITA. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away. 2 8 The Squirrel's hoard, Hoard is here employed as a dissyllable. STEEVENS. 9- and be all ways away.] i. e. disperse yourselves, and scout out severally, in your watch, that danger approach us from no quarter. THEOBALD. The old copies read" be always." Corrected by Mr. Theobald. MALONE. Mr. Upton reads: "And be away-away." JOHNSON. Mr. Heath would read and be always i' th' way. STEEVENS. 2 So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle, Gently entwift, the female ivy fo Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.] What does the woodbine entwift? The honey-fuckle. But the woodbine and honey fuckle were, till now, but two names for one and the fame plant. Florio, in his Italian Dictionary, interprets Madre Selva by woodbine or honnie-fuckle. We must therefore find a support for the woodbine as well as for the ivy. Which is done by reading the lines thus: " So doth the woodbine, the sweet honey-fuckle, 66 Gently entwift the maple; ivy fo Enrings the barky fingers of the elm." The corruption might happen by the first blunderer dropping the pin writing the word maple, which word thence became male. A Gently entwift, -the female ivy fo [They leep. following tranfcriber, for the fake of a little sense and meafure, thought fit to change this male into female; and then tacked it as an epithet to ivy. WARBURTON. Mr. Upton reads: "So doth the woodrine the sweet honey fuckle," for bark of the wood. Shakspeare perhaps only meant, so the leaves involve the flower, ufing woodbine for the plant, and honeyfuckle for the flower; or perhaps Shakspeare made a blunder. JOHNSON. The thought is Chaucer's. See his Troilus and Creffeide, v. 1236, "And as about a tre with many a twift What Shakspeare seems to mean, is this-So the woodbine, i. e, the sweet honey-fuckle, doth gently entwift the barky fingers of the elm, and so does the female ivy enring the fame fingers. It is not unfrequent in the poets, as well as other writers, to explain one word by another which is better known. The reason why Shakspeare thought woodbine wanted illustration, perhaps is this. In fome counties, by woodbine or woodbind would have been generally understood the ivy, which he had occafion to mention in the very next line. In the following instance from Old Fortunatus, 1600, woodbind is used for ivy: And, as the running wood-bind, spread her arms To choak thy with'ring boughs in her embrace." And Barrett in his Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionary, 1580, enforces the fame diftinction that Shakspeare thought it necessary to make: "Woodbin that beareth the honey-fuckle." STEEVENS. This passage has given rise to various conjectures. It is certain, that the wood-bine and the honey-fuckle were sometimes confidered as different plants. In one of Taylor's poems, we have "The woodbine, primrose, and the cowflip fine, But I think Mr. Steevens's interpretation the true one. The old writers did not always carry the auxiliary verb forward, as Mr. Capell seems to suppose by his alteration of enrings to enring. So bishop Lowth, in his excellent Introduction to Grammar, p. 126, has without reason corrected a fimilar passage in our tranflation of St. Matthew, FARMER. ! ! --- ! OBERON advances. Enter Puck. OBE. Welcome, good Robin. See'st thou this sweet fight? Her dotage now I do begin to pity. For meeting her of late, behind the wood, Were any change necessary, I should not fcruple to read the weedbind, i. e. fmilax: a plant that twists round every other that grows in its way. STEEVENS. In lord Bacon's Nat. Hift. Experiment 496, it is observed that there are two kinds of "honeysuckles, both the woodbine and the trefoil." i. e. the first is a plant that winds about trees, and the other is a three-leaved grafs. Perhaps these are meant in Dr. Farmer's quotation. The distinction, however, may serve to shew why Shakspeare and other authors frequently added woodbine to honey-fuckle, when they mean the plant and not the grass. TOLLET. The interpretation of either Dr. Johnfon or Mr. Steevens removes all difficulty. The following passage in Sicily and Naples, or The Fatal Union, 1640, in which the honeyfuckle is spoken of as the flower, and the woodbine as the plant, adds some support to Dr. Johnson's exposition: as fit a gift "As this were for a lord, a honey-fuckle, But Minshieu in v. Woodbinde, supposes them the fame : " Alio nomine nobis Anglis Honyfuckle dictus." If Dr. Johnfon's explanation be right, there should be no point after woodbine, honeyfuckle, or enrings. MALONE. 2 the female iny - Shakspeare calls it female ivy, because it always requires some support, which is poetically called its hufband. So Milton: "To wed her elm: she spous'd, about him twines "Her marriageable arms. "Ulmo conjuncta marito." Catull. "Evincet ulmos." Hor. STEEVENS. Though the ivy here represents the female, there is, notwithftanding, an evident reference in the words enrings and fingers, to the ring of the marriage rite. HENLEY. In our ancient marriage ceremony, (or rather, perhaps, contract,) the woman gave the man a ring, as well as received one from him. |