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Queen. What, jealous Oberon? Fairy, skip hence;

I have forfworn his bed and company.

Ob. Tarry, rafh wanton; Am not I thy lord?
Queen. Then I must be thy lady: But I know
When thou haft ftol'n away from fairy land,
And in the fhape of Corin fate all day,
Playing on pipes of corn, and verfing love
To amorous Philida. Why art thou here,
Come from the fartheft fteep of India?
But that, forfooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your bufkin'd mistress, and your warrior love,
To Thefeus muft be wedded; and you come
To give their bed joy and profperity.

Ob. How can't thou thus, for fhame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolita,

Knowing I know thy love to Thefeus?

Didft thou not lead him through the glimmering night'

Fairies." The judicious editor of the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, in his Introductory Difcourfe, (See vol. iv. p. 161.) obferves, that Pluto and Proferpina in the Marchant's Tale, appear to have been the true progenitors of Shakspeare's Oberon and Titania." STEEVENS.

1

Queen.] As to the Fairy Queen, (fays Mr. Warton in his Obfervations on Spenfer) confidered apart from the race of fairies, the notion of fuch an imaginary perfonage was very common. Chaucer, in his Rime of Sir Thopas, mentions her, together with a Fairy land:

"In the old dayis of the king Arthure,

"Of which the Bretons fpeken great honour;
"All was this lond fulfillid of fayry:
"The Elf-quene, with her jolly company
"Daunfid full oft in many a grene mede:
"This was the old opinion as I rede."

Wife of Bath's Tale. STEEVENS.

2 Didft thou not lead him through the glimmering night] The glimmering night is the night faintly illuminated by itars. In Macbeth our author fays:

"The welt yet glimmers with fome ftreaks of day."

STEEVENS.

From

From Periguné, whom he ravished?

And make him with fair Ægle break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa?

Queen. Thefe are the forgeries of jealoufy:
And never, fince the middle fummer's spring 4,
Met

3 From Perigenia, whom he ravisbed?] Thus all the editors; but our author, who diligently perus'd Plutarch, and glean'd from him, where his fubject would admit, knew, from the life of Thefeus, that her name was Perigyne, (or Perigune) by whom Thefeus had his fon Melanippus. She was the daughter of Sinnis, a cruel robber, and tormentor of paflengers in the Ifthmus. Plutarch and Athenæus are both exprefs in the circumstance of Thefeus ravishing her. THEOBALD.

Egle, Ariadne, and Antiopa were all at different times miftreffes to Thefeus. See Plutarch..

Theobald cannot be blamed for his emendation; and yet it is well known that our ancient authors, as well as the French and the Italians, were not fcrupuloufly nice about proper names, but almost always corrupted them. STEEVENS.

4 And never, fince the middle fummer's Spring, &c.] There are not many paffages in Shakspeare which one can be certain he has borrowed from the ancients; but this is one of the few that, I think, will admit of no difpute. Our author's admirable defcription of the miseries of the country being plainly an imitation of that which Ovid draws, as confequent on the grief of Ceres for the lofs of her daughter:

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Nefcit adhuc ubi fit; terras tamen increpat omnes,
Ingratafque vocat, nec frugum muuere dignas.
-Ergo illic fava vertentia glebas

Fregit aratra manu, parilique irata colonos
Ruricolafque boves letho dedit: arvaque jufit
Fallere depofitum, vitiataque femina fecit.
Fertilitas terræ latum vulgata per orbem
Sparfa jacet. Primis fegetes moriuntur in herbis.
Et modo fol nimius, nimius modo corripit imber :
Sideraque ventique nocent.

THE middle fummer's Spring,] We should read THAT. appears to have been fome years fince the quarrel first began.

For it

WARBURTON.

By the middle fummer's Spring, our author feems to mean the beginning of middle of mid fummer. Spring for beginning he uses again: 2d. P. Hen. IV.

"As flaws congealed in the fpring of day."

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which expreffion has authority from the fcripture, St. Luke, ch. i. v. 78: whereby the day spring from on high hath vifited us.

VOL. III.

Again,

Met we on hill, in dale, foreft, or mead,
5 By paved fountain, or by rufhy brook,
Or on the beached margent of the fea,
To dance our ringlets to the whiftling wind,
But with thy brawls thou haft disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have fuck'd up from the fea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land,
Have every pelting river made fo proud,

Again, in the romance of Kyng Appolyn of Thyre, 1510:

That

"-arofe in a mornynge at the prynge of the day, &c.”

Again, in Spenfer's Faery Queen, b. iii. c. 10:

"He wooed her till day-spring he efpyde."

Ovid had been tranflated by Golding:-the first four books in 1565, and all the reft, in a few years afterwards. STEEVENS.

Dr. Warburton's reafon for reading That instead of The appears to be fatisfactory and authorized by the context. The middle fummer's 's fpring, is, I apprehend, the feason when trees put forth their Second, or as they are frequently called their midfummer Shoots. Thus, Evelyn in his Silva: "Cut off all the fide boughs, and efpecially at midfummer if you fpy them breaking out." And, again, "Where the rows and brufli lie longer than midfummer, unbound, or made up, you endanger the lofs of the second spring.

HENLEY.

5 Paved fountain ;] A fountain laid round the edge with stone. JOHNSON.

Perhaps paved at the bottom. So, Lord Bacon in his Efay on Gardens: "As for the other kind of fountaine, which we may call a bathing-poole, it may admit much curiofity and beauty. As that the bottom be finely paved.... the fides like

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wife, &c.

STEEVENS.

The epithet feems here intended to mean no more than that the beds of thefe fountains were covered with peebles in oppofition to thofe of the rushy brooks which are oozy. HENLEY.

-the winds, piping.] So, Milton:

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"While rocking winds, are piping loud." JOHNSON.

? -pelting river] Thus the quartos: the folio reads petty. Shakspeare has in Lear the fame word, low pelting farms. The meaning is plainly, defpicable, mean, forry, wretched; but as it is a word without any reasonable etymology, I fhould be glad to difmifs it for petty: yet it is undoubtedly right. We have "perty pelting officer in Meafare for Measure." See vol. ii. p. 51. JOHNSON.

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That they have over-borne their continents ;
The ox hath therefore, ftretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman loft his fweat; and the green corn
Hath rotted, ere his youth attain'd a beard:
The fold ftands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock?!
The nine-mens' morris is fill'd up with mud'

So, in Gafcoigne's Glafs of Government,. 1575;

And

"Doway is a pelting town pack'd full of poor fcholars." This word is always ufed as a term of contempt. So, again, in Lylly's Midas, 1592: "-attire never ufed but of old women and pelting priests." STEEVENS.

Overborn their continents.] Born down the banks that contain them. So, in Lear:

9

66

-clofe pent up quilts

"Rive your concealing continents!" JOHNSON.

-murrain fock:] The murrain is the plague in cattle. It is here used by Shakspeare as an adjective; as a fubftantive by others :

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fends him as a murrain

To ftrike our herds; or as a worfer plague, "Your people to destroy."

Heywood's Silver Age, 1613. SEEVENS, The nine mens' morris is fill'd up with mud;] In that part of Warwickshire where Shakspeare was educated, and the neighbouring parts of Northamptonshire, the fhepherds and other boys dig up the turf with their knives to reprefent a fort of imperfect chefsboard. It confifts of a fquare, fometimes only a foot diameter, fometimes three or four yards. Within this is another square, every fide of which is parallel to the external fquare; and thefe fquares are joined by lines drawn from each corner of both squares, and the middle of each line. One party, or player, has wooden pegs, the other stones, which, they move in fuck a manner as to take up each other's men as they are called, and the area of the inner fquare is called the Pound, in which the men taken up are impounded. Thefe figures are by the country people called Nine Men's Morris, or Merrils, and are fo called, becaufe each party has nine men. These figures are always cut upon the green turf or leys, as they are called, or upon the grafs at the end of ploughed lands, and in rainy feafons never fail to be choaked up with mud. JAMES

See Peek on Milton's Mafque, 115, vol. i. p. 135. STEEVENS, Nine mens' morris is a game ftill play'd by the shepherds, cow keepers, &c. in the midland counties, as follows :

D:

A figure

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are undiftinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter here 3,

No

A figure is made on the ground (like this which I have drawn) by cutting out the turf; and two perfons take each nine ftones, which they place by turns in the angles, and afterwards more alternately, as at chefs or drafts. He who can place three in a ftrait liue, may then take off any one of his adverfary's where he pleafes, till one, having loft all his men, lofes the game.

ALCHORNE.

In Cotgrave's Dictionary, under the article Merelles, is the following explanation. "Le Jeu des Merelles. The boyish game called Merils, or fivepenny morris; played here most commonly with ftones, but in France with pawns, or men made on purpose, and termed merelles." The pawns or figures of men used in the game might originally be black, and hence called morris, or me relles, as we yet term a black cherry a morello, and a small black cherry a merry, perhaps from Maurus a Moor, or rather from morum a mulberry. TOLLET.

2 The human mortals.] Shakspeare might have employ'd this epithet, which, at first fight, appears redundant, to mark the difference between men and fairies. Fairies were not human, but they were yet fubject to mortality. STEEVENS.

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"This however (fays the author of THE REMARKS) does not by any means appear to be the cafe. Oberon, Titania, and Puck,

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