This was lofty!

Now name the rest of the

players. -This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein;

a lover is more condoling.

Quin. Francis. Flute, the bellows-mender.
Flu. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. You must take Thisby on you.

Flu. What is Thisby? a wandering knight? Quin. It is the lady that Pyramus must love. Flu. Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.

Quin. That's all one; you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will3

-

Bot. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too: I'll speak in a monstrous little voice: Thisne, Thisne Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear; thy Thisby dear! and lady dear!

Quin. No, no; you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisby,

Bot. Well, proceed.

Quin. Robin Starveling, the tailor,

Star. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's mother. Tom Snout, the tinker,

Snout. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. You, Pyramus's father; myself, Thisby's father; Snug, the joiner, you, the lion's part; -and, I hope, here is a play fitted.

Snug. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.

3 This passage shows how the want of women on the old stage was supplied. If they had not a young man who could perform the part with a face that might pass for feminine, the character was acted in a mask, which was at that time a part of a lady's dress, and so much in use that it did not give any unusual appearance to the scene; and he that could modulate his voice to a female tone might play the woman very successfully, Downes, in his Roscius Anglicanus, celebrates Kynaston's excellence in female charactere, Some of the catastrophes of the old Comedies, which make lovers marry the wrong women, are, by recollection of the common use of maske, brought nearer to probability,

Vol. II.

10

Bot. Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar, that I will make the duke say, Let him roar again, Let him roar again.

Quin. An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all.

All. That would hang us every mother's son. Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an1 'twere any nightingale.

Quin. You can play no part but Pyramus: for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely, gentleman-like man; therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

Bot. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?

Quin. Why, what you will.

Bot. I will discharge it in either your straw-coloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow5.

Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced. But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by

4 As if.

s It seems to have been a custom to stain or dye the beard. So in the old comedy of Ram Alley, 1611:

What coloured beard comes next by the window?

A black man's, I think;

I think, a red: for that is most in fashion.

Again, in The Silent Woman: 'I have fitted my divine and canonist, dyed their beards and all. And, in The Alchemist he has dy'd his beard and all'.

6 This allusion to the Corona Veneris, or baldness attendant npon a particular stage of, what was then termed, the French disease, is too frequent in Shakspeare, and is here explained once for all.

to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace-wood, a mile without the town, by moon-light; there will we rehearse: for if we meet in the city, we shall be dogg'd with company, and our devices known. In the mean time I will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not. Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse more obscenely, and courageously, Take pains ;

be perfect, adieu.

Quin. At the duke's oak we meet.

Bot. Enough; Hold, or cut bow-strings.

[Exeunt,

ACT II..

SCENE I. A Wood near Athens,

Enter a Fairy at one door, and Puck at another.. Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you? Fai. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough briar1, Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander every where,

Swifter than the moones sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,

To dew her orbs? upon the green;

7 Articles required in performing a play.

8 To meet whether bowstrings hold or are cut is to meet in all events. But the origin of the phrase has not been satisfactorily explained,

So Drayton, in his Nymphidia, or Court of Fairy:

Thorough brake, thorough briar,

Thorough muck, thorough mire,
Thorough water, thorough fire,

2 The orbs here mentioned are those circles in the herbage commonly called fairy-rings, the cause of which is not yet cere tainly known. Thus, also, Drayton:

"They in courses make that round,
In meadows and in marshes found,
Of them so called fairy ground.'

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy. favours,

In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear4.
Farewell, thou lob5 of spirits, I'll be gone;
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.
Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to-
night;

Take heed the queen come not within his sight.
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling:
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forest wild :
But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove, or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen,
But they do squares; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn-cups, and hide them there.

Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite, Call'd Robin Good-fellow are you not he,

Olaus Magnus says that these dancers parched up the grass; and therefore it is properly made the office of the fairy to refresh it, 3 The allusion is to Elizabeth's band of gentlemen pensioners, who were chosen from among the handsomest and tallest young men of family and fortune; they were dressed in habits richly garnished with gold lace. See vol. i. p. 205, note 9.

In the old comedy of Doctor Dodypoll, 1600, an enchanter says,
'Twas I that led you through the painted meads

Where the light fairies danc'd upon the flowers,
Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl,

5 Lubber or clown. Lob, lobcock, looby, and lubber, all denote inactivity of body and dulness of mind. The reader will remember Milton in L'Allegro :

"Then lays him down the lubber fiend.'

6 A changeling was a child changed by a fairy; it here means one stolen or got in exchange.

Shining.

8 Quarrel. For the probable cause of the use of square for quarrel, see Mr. Douce's Illustrations, vol. 1. p. 182.

That fright the maidens of the villagery:
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern9,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm10;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work11; and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?

Puck.

Thou speak'st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal: And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab12; And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her wither'd dew-lap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And tailor cries13, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe; And yexen14 in their mirth, and neeze, and swear

9 A quern was a handmill.

or

10 And if that the bowle of curds and creame were not duly set out for Robin Goodfellow, the frier, and Sisse the dairy-maid, why then either the pottage was burnt next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not curdle, or the butter would not come, the ale in the fat never would have good head. But if a Peeter. penny, or an housle-egg were behind, or a patch of tythe unpaid, then ware of bull-beggars, spirits, &c. Harsnet's Declaration, &c. ch. xx. p. 134. So also, Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, 4to. p. 66. "Your grandames' maids were wont to set a bowl of milk for him, for his pains in grinding malt and mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight;-this white bread and milk was his standing fee.'

11 Milton refers to these traditions in L'Allegro. And Drayton, in his Nymphidia, gives a like account of Puck. Drayton fol lowed Shakspeare; the Nymphidia was one of his latest poems and was published for the first time in 1619.

12 Wild apple.

13 Dr. Johnson thought he remembered to have heard this Judicrous exclamation upon a person's seat slipping from under him. He that slips from his chair falls as a tailor squats upon his board. Hanmer thought the passage corrupt, and proposed

to read 'rails or cries.'

14 The old copy reads: And waren in their mirth, &c.' Though a glimmering of sense may be extracted from this pas