Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

PUCK. Thou coward, art thou bragging to the

ftars,

Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars, And wilt not come? Come, recreant; come, thou

child;

I'll whip thee with a rod: He is defil'd,
That draws a fword on thee.

DEM.

Yea; art thou there?

Puck. Follow my voice; we'll try no manhood

here.

Re-enter LYSANDER.

[Exeunt.

Lys. He goes before me, and ftill dares me on: When I come where he calls, the is gone. The villain is much lighter-heel'd,

I follow'd faft, but fafter he did fly;

an I:

That fallen am I in dark uneven way

And here will reft me. Come, thou gentle day!

[Lies down. For if but once thou fhow me thy grey light, I'll find Demetrius, and revenge this fpite.

Re-enter PUCK and DEMETRIUS.

PUCK. Ho, ho ho, ho!

thou not?

6

Coward, why com'ft

DEM. Abide me, if thou dar'ft; for well I wot,

6 Puck. Ho, ho ho, ho! Coward, why com'ft thou not?] This exclamation would have been uttered by Puck with greater propriety, if he were not now playing an affumed character, which he, in the prefent inftance, feems to forget. In the old fong printed by Peck and Percy, in which all his gambols are related, he concludes every ftanza with Ho, ho, ho! So, in Grim the Collier of Croydon:

[ocr errors]

Ho, ho, ho, my mafters! No good fellowship! "Is Robin Goodfellow a bug-bear grown,

"That he is not worthy to be bid fit down?"

Thou runn'ft before me, fhifting every place;
And dat not fland, nor look me in the face.
Where art thou? 6

Again, in Drayton's Nymphidia:

"Hoh, hoh, quoth Hob, God fave thy grace."

It was not, however, as has been afferted, the appropriate exclamation, in our author's time, of this eccentric charader; the Devil himself having, if not a better, at least an older, title to it. So, in Hifiriomatix (as quoted by Mr. Steevens in a note on hing Richard. 111.) a roaring devil enters, with the Vice on his back, Iniquity in one hand, and Juventus in the other, crying

[ocr errors]

Ho, ho, ho! thefe babes mine are all." Again, in Gammer Gurton's Needle:

"But Diccon, Diccon, did not the devil cry ko, ho, ho?" And, in the fame play:

[ocr errors]

By the maffe, ich faw him of late cal up a great blacke devill.

"O, the knave cryed ho, ho, he roared and he thundred.” So in the Epitaph attributed to Shakspeare:

[ocr errors]

Iloh! quoth the devill, 'tis my John o'Combe." Again, in Goulart's Hiftories, 1607:

The fellow . . . coming to the flove... fawe the Diuills in horrible formes, fome fitting, fome ftanding, others walking, fome ramping again the walles, but al of them affoone as they beheld him ran unto him, crying Hoh, Hoh, what makest thou here?” Again, in the fame book:

"The black guests teturned no anfwere, but roared and cryed out, Hoh firra let alone the child, or we will teare thee all to pieces."

Indeed, from a paffage in Wily Beguilei, 1606, (as quoted in the new edition of Dodlley's Old Plays) I fufpect that this fame "knavish sprite" was fometimes introduced on the flage as a demidevil: I'll rather," it is one Robin Goodfellow who fpeaks, "put on my fiajhing red nofe, and my flaming face, and come wrap'd in a calf's fkin, and ciy ho ho." See alfo, Grim the Collier of Croydon. RirSON.

The fong above alluded to may be found in Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Vol. III. p. 203. MALONE.

6 Where art thou? For the fake of the meafure, which is otherwife imperfect, I fuppofe we ought to read

66 Where art thou now?"

Dementius, conceiving Lyfander to have ftill been fhifting his ground, very naturally asks him where he is at that inftant.

STEEVENS.

PUCK.

Come hither; I am here.

DEM. Nay, then thou mock'ft me. buy this dear, 7

If ever I thy face by day-light fee:

Thou fhalt

Now, go thy way. Faintnefs conftraineth me To measure out my length on this cold bed.By day's approach look to be visited.

[Lies down and fleeps.

Enter HELENA.

HEL. O weary night, O long and tedious night, Abate thy hours: fhine, comforts, from the east;

That I may back to Athens, by day-light,

From thefe that my poor company deteft:And, fleep, that fometime thuts up forrow's eye, Steal me a while from mine own company. [Sleeps. PUCK. Yet but three? Come one more;

Two of both kinds makes up four.
Here he comes, curft, and fad:-

Cupid is a knavish lad,

Thus to make poor, females mad.

Enter HERMIA.

[ocr errors]

HER. Never fo weary, never fo in 'woe,

Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briers;

I can no further crawl, no further go;

[ocr errors]

My legs can keep no pace with my defires.

buy this dear, ]i. e. thou shalt dearly pay for this.

Though

So,

this is fenfe, and may well enough fland, yet the poet perhaps wrote thou shalt ly it dear. So, in another place, thou fhalt aby it. Milton, "How dearly I abide that boaft fo vain." JOHNSON. 8 Steal me a white from mine own company.] Thus alfo in an addrefs to fleep, in Daniel's Tragedy of Cleopatra, 1599: "That from ourfelves fo fteal'ft ourselves away."

STEEVENS.

Here will I reft me, till the break of day.
Heavens fhield Lyfander, if they mean a fray!

PUCK. On the ground

Sleep found:
I'll apply

To your eye,
Gentle lover, remedy.

[Lies down.

[Squeezing the juice on LYSANDER's cyc. When thou wak'ft,

Thou tak ft 7

True delight

In the fight

Of thy former lady's eye:

And the country proverb known,

That every man should take his own, your waking fhall be shown:

[ocr errors]

Jack fhall have Jill;

Nought fhall go ill;

The man fhall have his mare again, and all shall be [Exit PUCK,-DEM. HEL. &c. fleep.

well.

7 When thou wak'ft,

Thou tak ft, &c.] The fecond line would be improved, I think, both in its meafure and conftruction, if it were written thus:

When thou wak'jt,

See thou tak ft,

True delight, &c. TYRWHITT.

8 Jack shall have fill; &c.] These three laft lines are to be found among Heywood's Epigrams on three hundred Proverbs.

9

STEEVENS.

all fhall be well. ] Well is fo bad a rhyme to ill, that I cannot help fuppofing our author wrote-fill. i. e. all this difcord fhall fubfide in a calm, become hufh'd and quiet. So, in Othello:

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

ACT IV. SCENE I.a

The fame.

Enter TITANIA and BOTTOM, Fairies attending; OBERON behind, unfeen.

TITA. Come, fit thee down upon this flowery bed,

While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,3

And flick musk-rofes in thy fleek smooth head, And kifs thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. BOT. Where's Peas-bloffom?

PEAS. Ready.

BOT. Scratch my head, Peas-bloffom.-Where's monfieur Cobweb?

2 I fee no reason why the fourth a&t should begin here, when there feems no interruption of the a&tion: In the old quartos of 1600, there is no divifion of acts, which feems to have been afterwards arbitrarily made in the firft folio, and may therefore be altered at pleasure. JOHNSON.

3

do coy,] To coy is to footh, to ftroke. So, in The Arraignment of Paris, 1584:

[ocr errors]

Plays with Amyntas' lufty boy, and coys him in the dales." Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602. Book VI. ch. xxx: "And whilst she coys his footy cheeks, or curls his [weaty top." Again, in Sir A. Gorges' translation of Lucan, B. IX:

[ocr errors]

his fports 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, feems copied from that of the Lady in Apuleius, Lib. VIII. STEEVENS.

« AnteriorContinuar »