Fetch me that flower; the herb I show'd thee once; Puck. I'll put a girdle round * about the Earth In forty minutes. [Exit Puck. Having once this juice, I'll watch Titania when she is asleep, On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,) 6 * So quarto F.; folio, and quarto R., omit round. Taylor, the water-poet, quibbling on the names of plants, mentions it as follows: "When passions are let loose without a bridle, "Then precious time is turn'd to love-in-idle." STEEVENS. The flower or violet, commonly called pansies, or heart's ease, is named love-in-idleness in Warwickshire, and in Lyte's Herbal. There is a reason why Shakspeare says it is "now purple with love's wound," because one or two of its petals are of a purple colour. TOLLET. It is called in other counties the Three coloured violet, the Herb of Trinity, Three faces in a hood, Cuddle me to you, &c. STEEVENS. 5 I'll put a GIRDLE ROUND ABOUT THE EARTH - This expression also occurs in The Bird in a Cage, 1633: " And when I have put a girdle 'bout the world, Perhaps it is proverbial. Again, in Bussy d'Ambois, by Chapman, 1613: "To put a girdle round about the world." And in other plays. STEEVENS. 6 - I am INVISIBLE:] I thought proper here to observe, And I will over-hear their conference. Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him. DEM. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. Where is Lysander, and fair Hermia? HEL. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant; But yet you draw not iron, for my heart that, as Oberon, and Puck his attendant, may be frequently observed to speak, when there is no mention of their entering, they are designed by the poet to be supposed on the stage during the greatest part of the remainder of the play; and to mix, as they please, as spirits, with the other actors; and embroil the plot, by their interposition, without being seen, or heard, but when to their own purpose. THEOBALD. 7 The one I'll SLAY, the other SLAYETH me.] The old copies read "The one I'll stay, the other stayeth me." STEEVENS. Dr. Thirlby ingeniously saw it must be, as I have corrected in the text. THEOBALD. 8-and wood within this wood,] Wood, or mad, wild, raving. POPE. In the third part of the Countess of Pembroke's Ivy-Church, 1591, is the same quibble on the word : "Daphne goes to the woods, and vowes herself to Diana; "Phœbus grows stark wood for love and fancie to Daphne." We also find the same word in Chaucer, in the character of the Monke, Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 184: "What shulde he studie, and make himselven wood!" Spenser also uses it, Æglogue III. March : "The elf was so wanton, and so wode." "The name Woden," says Verstegan in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1605: "signifies fierce or furious; and in like sense we still retain it, saying when one is in a great rage, that he is wood, or taketh on as if he were wood." STEEVENS. See Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Sc. III. HARRIS. 9 You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant; But yet you draw not iron,] I learn from Edward Fenton's Is true as steel: Leave you your power to draw, And I shall have no power to follow you. DEM. Do I entice you ? Do I speak you fair ? Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth Tell you I do not, nor I cannot love you? HEL. And even for that do I love you the more. I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, Unworthy as I am, to follow you. What worser place can I beg in your love, (And yet a place of high respect with me,) Than to be used as you do * use your dog ? DEM. Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit; For I am sick, when I do look on thee. HEL. And I am sick, when I look not on you. To leave the city, and commit yourself HEL. Your virtue is my privilege for that 2. * Quarto F. omits do. Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature, bl. 1. 1569, that-" there is now a dayes a kind of adamant which draweth unto it fleshe, and the same so strongly, that it hath power to knit and tie together, two mouthes of contrary persons, and drawe the heart of a man out of his bodie without offendyng any parte of him." I STEEVENS. - IMPEACH your modesty-] i. e. bring it into question. So, in The Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. II.: 2 "And doth impeach the freedom of the state, for that.] i. e. For leaving the city, &c. TYRWHITT. 3 It is not night, when I do see your face, &c.] This passage is paraphrased from two lines of an ancient poet [Tibullus] : Therefore I think I am not in the night: When all the world is here to look on me ? DEM. I'll run from thee, and hide me in the brakes, And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts. HEL. The wildest hath not such a heart as you'. Run when you will, the story shall be chang'd; Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase ; The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind Makes speed to catch the tiger: Bootless speed! When cowardice pursues, and valour flies. DEM. I will not stay thy questions; let me go: Or, if thou follow me, do not believe But I shall do thee mischief in the wood. HEL. Ay, in the temple, in the town, and * field, You do me mischief. Fye, Demetrius! Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex: * Quarto F. the field. "Tu nocte vel atra "Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis." JOHNSON. As the works of King David might be more familiar to Shakspeare than Roman poetry, perhaps, on the present occasion, the eleventh verse of the 139th Psalm was in his thoughts: "Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as the day." STEEVENS. 4 Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company;] The same thought occurs in King Henry VI. P. II. : "A wilderness is populous enough, MALONE. 5 The wildest hath not such a heart as you.] " Mitius inveni quam te genus omne ferarum." Ovid. See Timon of Athens, Act IV. Sc. I. : "where he shall find "The unkindest beasts more kinder than mankind." S. W: 6 I will not stay thy QUESTIONS ;) Though Helena certainly puts a few insignificant questions to Demetrius, I cannot but think our author wrote-question, i. e. discourse, conversation. So, in As You Like It: "I met the duke yesterday, and had much question with him." STEEVENS. We cannot fight for love, as men may do; [Exeunt DEM. and HEL. OBE. Fare thee well, nymph: ere he do leave this grove, Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love. Re-enter PUCK. Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer. PUCK. Ay, there it is. I pray thee, give it me. I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where ox-lips and the nodding violet1 grows; Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine 2, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine : 7 TO DIE UPON the hand, &c.] To die upon, &c. in our author's language, I believe, means-" to die by the hand." So, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona: 8 "I'll die on him that says so, but yourself." STEEVENS. - whereon-] The old copy reads-where. Mr. Malone supposes where to be used as a dissyllable; but offers no example of such a pronunciation. STEEVENS. If similar usages are shown in Shakspeare and other writers of his time, it is sufficient without producing express authority in every instance. Mr. Steevens saw no objection to desire as a trisyllable in Cymbeline, Act I. Sc. VII. : "Should make desire vomit emptiness." Yet no other example has been given. MALONE. 9 Where OX-LIPS - The ox-lip is the greater cowslip. So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, song xv. : "To sort these flowers of showe, with other that were sweet, "The cowslip then they couch, and th' oxlip for her meet." STEEVENS. I - the NODDING violet -] i. e. that declines its head, like a drowsy person. STEEVENS. 2 Quite over-canopied with LUSCIOUS woodbine,) Thus all the old copies. On the margin of one of my folios an unknown hand has written lush woodbine, which, I think, is right. This hand I have since discovered to be Theobald's. JOHNSON. Lush is clearly preferable in point of sense, and absolutely ne |