She meynt hir weepying with his bloud, and kissing all his face Is strong enough to doe the like. My loue no lesse than thine (7) SCENE II.-Hold, or cut bow-strings.] Capell's explication of this disputed saying is no doubt the true one. "When a party was made at butts, assurance of meeting was given in the words of that phrase: the sense of the person using them being, that he would hold,' or keep promise, or they might cut his bowstrings,' demolish him for an archer." There is another proverbial expression of the same character, which none of the commentators, that I am aware of, has mentioned :-" Hold, or cut cod-piece point." (1) SCENE I. Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite, Called Robin Goodfellow.] ACT II. The frolics Shakespeare attributes to Puck, or, as he was usually called, Robin Goodfellow, correspond in every particular with the popular characteristics of this "shrewd and meddling elf." According to the rare tract entitled "The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow," reprinted by Mr. Collier from the original in Lord Francis Egerton's library, Robin Goodfellow was the son of Oberon, or Obreon, his mother being "a proper young wench whom the fayry king was in the habit of visiting. Robin's knavish propensities as he grew up became so troublesome, that to avoid the punishment they entailed, he ran away from his mother and was engaged to a tailor. After a short time he leaves his master, and the tract relates "WHAT HAPNED TO ROBIN GOODFELLOW AFTER HE WENT FROM THE TAYLOR. After Robin had travailed a good dayes journy from his masters house hee sate downe, and beeing weary hee fell a sleepe. No sooner had slumber tooken full possession of him, and closed his long opened eye-lids, but hee thought he saw many goodly proper personages in anticke measures tripping about him, and withall hee heard such musicke, as he thought that Orpheus, that famous Greeke fidler (had hee beene alive), compared to one of these had beene as infamous as a Welchharper that playes for cheese and onions. As delights commonly last not long, so did those end sooner than hee would willingly they should have done; and for very griefe he awaked, and found by him lying a scroule, wherein was written these lines following in golden letters. Robin, my only sonne and heire, How to live take thou no care: Which Ile increase with other gifts. Wish what thou wilt, thou shalt it have; And for to vex both foole and knave, Thou hast the power to change thy shape, To horse, to hog, to dog, to ape. Transformed thus, by any meanes See none thou harm'st but knaves and queanes; But love thou those that honest be, And help them in necessity. Do thus, and all the world shall know If thou observe my just command, This more I give: who tels thy prankes From those that heare them shall have thankes. Robin having read this was very joyfull, yet longed he to know whether he had this power or not, and to try it hee wished for some meate: presently it was before him. Then wished hee for beere and wine: he straightway had it. This liked him well, and because he was weary, he wished himselfe a horse: no sooner was his wish ended, but he was transformed, and seemed a horse of twenty pound price, and leaped and curveted as nimble as if he had beene in stable at racke and manger a full moneth. Then wished he himselfe a dog, and was so: then a tree, and was so: so from one thing to another, till he was certaine and well assured that hee could change himselfe to any thing whatsoever." Though the edition from which Mr. Collier made his reprint is dated 1628, there is little doubt that the tract, as he remarks, was published at least forty years earlier, and was evidently known to Shakespeare. The following account, "How ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW LED A COMPANY OF FELLOWES OUT OF THEIR WAY," is a good illustration of the passage, "Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm." "A company of young men having beene making merry with their sweet hearts, were at their comming home to come over a heath. Robin Good-fellow, knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime, hee led them up and downe the heath a whole night, so that they could not get out of it: for hee went before them in the shape of a walking fire, which they all saw and followed till the day did appeare: then Robin left them, and at his departure spake these words: Get you home, you merry lads: If that you but weary be, It is sport alone for me. A way unto your houses goe And I'll goe laughing ho, ho, hoh! The fellowes were glad that he was gone, for they were all in a great feare that hee would have done them some mischiefe." The line which we have italicized will recal the same expression used by Puck in the play :-- "Then will two at once woo one; That must needs be sport alone."-Act III. Sc. 2. (2) SCENE I. OBERON. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.] The names of Oberon and Titania were, no doubt, familiar in connexion with the race of Faery before the time of Shakespeare. Oberon, the "dwarfe king of fayryes," is introduced into the popular romance of Huon de Bordeaux, translated by Lord Berners, probably earlier than 1558. The older part of Huon de Bordeaux, Mr. Keightley has shown to have been taken from the story of Otnit in the Heldenbuch, where the dwarf king Elberich performs nearly the same services to Otnit that Oberon does to Huon. The name of Oberon, in fact, according to Grimm, is only Elberich slightly altered. From the usual change of into u (as al, au, col, cou, &c.), in the French language, Elberich or Albrich (derived from Alp, Alf) becomes Auberich; and ich not being a French termination, the dominative on was substituted, and thus the name "became Auberon, or Oberon. The elf queen's name, Titania, was an appellation of Diana. "It was the belief, in those days, that the fairies were the same as the classic nymphs, the attendants of Diana. 'That fourth kind of sprites,' says King James, 'guhilk be the gentiles was called Diana, and her wandering court, and amongst us called the Phairee.' The Fairy-queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid styles Titania."-KEIGHTLEY. (3) SCENE I. Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night And make him with fair Eglé break his faith, Shakespeare's authority for all this was his diligently-read Perigenia.] "This Sinnis had a goodly faire daughter called Perigouna, which fled away when she saw her father slaine but Theseus finding her, called her, and sware by his faith he would use her gently, and do, her no hurt, nor displeasure her at all." Ariadne. Eglé.] "They report many other things also touching this matter, and specially of Ariadne but there is no troth nor certaintie in it. For some say that Ariadne hung herselfe for sorow, when she saw that Theseus had cast her off. Other write, that she was transported by mariners into the Ile of Naxos, where she was married unto Enarus, the priest of Bacchus: and they think that Theseus left her, because he was in love with another, as by these verses should appeare :— Egles the nymph was loved of Theseus, From this passage Shakespeare evidently got his "faire Eagles," as the lady's name is spelt in all the old editions. Antiopa.] "Touching the voyage he made by the sea Maior, Philochurus, and some other hold opinion, that he went thither with Hercules against the Amazons: and that to honour his valiantness, Hercules gave him Antiopa the Amazone. But the more part of the other Historiographers do write that Theseus went thither alone, after Hercules' voyage, and that he tooke this Amazone prisoner, which is likeliest to be true *** Bion also the Historiographer saith that he brought her away by deceit and stealth and that Theseus enticed her to come into his shippe, who ** brought him a present; and so soone as she was aboord, he hoysed his saile, and so carried her away."-NORTH'S Plutarch (Life of Theseus). (4) SCENE I.-The nine men's morris is filled up with mud.] Nine men's morris, or nine men's merrils, as it was sometimes called, from merelles, an old French word for the counters with which it was originally conducted, is a rustic sport, played on a diagram cut out of the turf of which the figure consists of three squares, one within another. Sometimes the largest square is not more than a foot in diameter, at others it is four or five yards. These squares are united by cross lines, which extend from the middle of each line of the innermost square to the middle of the outermost line. The stations or houses for the men (usually represented by stones or pieces of tile) are at the corners of the squares, and at the junctures of the intersecting lines, and number in all twenty-four. The game is played by two persons, each of whom has nine men, or counters, which they begin by playing alternately, one at a time, to any of the stations they may select. When the men are all deposited in the places chosen, each party, moving alternately, as in chess or draughts, aims to place three of them on a line; and every time he achieves this object he is entitled to remove one of the adversary's men from the field. Of course his opponent, if he foresee the scheme, endeavours to frustrate it by playing a man of his own on to the line. When one player succeeds in removing all his antagonist's men from the board, he wins the game. The original game, called Jeu de Merelles, was probably played on a board or table like chess, with men made for the purpose. It is supposed to have come from France, and is undoubtedly very ancient. Douce speaks of a representation of two monkeys engaged at it in a German edition of Petrarch "de remedio utriusque fortunæ," b. 1, ch. 26, the cuts of which were executed in 1520; but in the Bibliothèque of Paris there is a beautiful manuscript on parchment (7391) by Nicholas de St. Nicolai, of the 12th century, containing some hundred of illuminated diagrams of remarkable positions in Chess and in Merelles. Whether the game is now obsolete in France, I am unable to say; but it is still practised, though rarely, in this country, both on the turf and on the table, its old title having undergone another mutation, and become "Mill." In Cotgrave's Dictionary, 1611, under the article Merelles, the following explanation is given: "Le Ieu des merelles. The boyish game called Merills, or five-pennie Morris; played here most commonly with stones, but in France with pawnes, or men made of purpose, and tearmed Merelles." (5) SCENE I.—I am invisible.] Theobald remarks that as Oberon and Puck 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 so mix, as they please, as spirits, with the other actors, and embroil the plot without being seen or heard but when they choose. Among the stage properties mentioned in Henslowe's Diary is "a robe for to go invisible." It is not improbable that a similar robe was worn by supernatural beings, such as Oberon, Ariel, &c. ; who, when so habited, were understood by the audience to be invisible to the other characters. ACT III. (1) SCENE II.-An ass's now I fixed on his head.] Bottom's transformation might have been suggested, as Steevens observes, by a passage in the "History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus," chap. xliii. :-"The guests having sat, and well eat and drank, Dr. Faustus made that every.one had an ass's head on, with great and long ears, so they fell to dancing, and to drive away the time until it was midnight, and then every one departed home, and as soon as they were out of the house, each one was in his natural shape, and so they ended and went to sleep." A receipt for this metamorphosis is given in Albertus Magnus de Secretis :-"Si vis quod caput hominis assimiletur capiti asini, sume de segimine aselli, et unge hominem in capite, et sic apparebit." And another, in Scott's Discoverie of Witchcraft," b. 13, chap. xix. :— "Cutt off the head of a horsse or an asse (before they be dead), otherwise the vertue or strength thereof will be lesse effectuall, and make an earthern vessell of fit capacitie to containe the same, and let it be filled with the oile and fat thereof: cover it close, and daube it over with lome: let it boile over a soft fier three daies continuallie, that the flesh boiled may run into oile, so as the bare bones may be seene beate the haire into powder, and mingle the same with the oile; and annoint the heads of the standers by, and they shall seem to have horsses or asses heads." In all likelihood, however, the trick was familiar to playgoers long before Shakespeare's time; and Mr. Halliwell quotes a stage direction in the "Chester Mysteries," as proof of this: Tunc percutiet Balaham asinam suam, et nota quod hic oportet aliquis transformari in speciem asine, et quando Balaham percutiet dicat asina-;" which we take the liberty of rendering into befitting English-Then Balaham shall smyte his asse, and note that here it is fittyng that one shoulde bee dysguysed into the lykenesse of an asse, and when Balaham smyteth the asse shall saye-.. But it is not easy to see in what way this direction illustrates the passage of the text. allusion is to the simple impalements of two armorial ensigns, as they are marshalled side by side to represent a marriage; and the expression "Two of the First," is to that particular form of dividing the shield, being the first in order of the nine ordinary partitions of the Escutcheon, These principles were familiarly understood in the time of Shakespeare by all the readers of the many very popular heraldical works of the period, and an extract from one of these will probably render the meaning of the passage clear. In "The Accedence of Armorie," published by Gerard Leigh, in 1597, he says, "Now will I declare to you of IX sundrie Partitions:-the First whereof is a partition from the highest part of the Escocheon to the lowest. And though it must be blazed so, yet is it a joining together. It is also as a mariage, that is to say, two cotes; the man's on the right side, and the woman's on the left: as it might be said that Argent had maried with Gules." In different words, this is nothing else than an amplification of Helena's own expression,— "seeming parted; But yet a union in partition." The shield bearing the arms of two married persons would of course be surmounted by one crest only, as the text properly remarks, that of the husband. In Shakespeare's day, the only pleas for bearing two crests were ancient usage, or a special grant. The modern practice of introducing a second crest by an heiress has been most improperly adopted from the German heraldical system; for it should be remembered, that as a female cannot wear a helmet, so neither can she bear a crest. (3) SCENE II.-Ho, ho, ho!] There is an ancient Norfolk proverb, "To laugh like Robin Goodfellow," which means, we presume, to laugh in mockery or scorn. This derision was always expressed by the exclamation in the text, which is as old as the Devil of the early mysteries, whose "ho, ho, ho!" was habitual upon the stage long before the introduction of Robin Goodfellow. In Histriomastix" (quoted by Steevens) a roaring devil enters, with the Vice on his back, Iniquity in one hand, and Juventus in the other, crying;— "Ho, ho, ho! these babes mine are all." In "Gammer Gurton's Needle," the same form of cachinnation is attributed to the Evil One : "But Diccon, Diccon, did not the devil cry, ho, ho, ho?" It seems with our ancestors always to have conveyed the idea of something fiendish or supernatural, and is the established burden to the songs which describe the frolics of Robin Goodfellow. See the curious tract before mentioned, called The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow." ACT IV. (1) SCENE 1.-1 have a reasonable good ear in music; let us have the tongs and the bones.] If the employment of unusual instruments to produce a barbarous kind of music were ingeniously traced backward to extreme antiquity, the origin of it might perhaps be found when "Pyctagoras passed som tyme by a symythes' hous, and herde a swete sowne, accordynge to the mystynge of foure hamers upon an anvelt;" as Higden relates the story. The practice of performing rustic or burlesque music is, however, really ancient; and Strutt attributes the invention of it to the minstrels and joculators, who appear to have converted every species of amusement into a vehicle for mirth. He has engraved some parts of two illuminations of the fourteenth century, in one of which a youth is playing to a tumbler, by beating on a metal basin held on a staff; and in the other, an individual is depicted "holding a pair of bellows by way of fiddle, and using the tongs as the substitute for the bow." Mr. Halliwell has illustrated the passage which forms the subject of this note, by a reference to two figures in the original sketches of actors in the court masques, executed by Inigo Jones: of which represents a performer with tongs and key; and the other a player on knackers of bone or wood, clacked together between the fingers. These instruments must be regarded as the immediate precursors of the more musical marrow-bones and cleavers, the introduction of which may, with great probability, be referred to the establishment of Clare Market, in the middle of the seventeenth century; since the butchers of that place were particularly celebrated for their performances. In Addison's description of John Dentry's remarkable "kitchen music" (Spectator, No. 570, 1714), the marrow-bones and cleavers form no part of the Captain's harmonious apparatus, but the tongs and key are represented to have become a little unfashionable some years before. By the year 1749, however, the former had obtained a considerable degree of vulgar popularity, and one were introduced in Bonnell Thornton's burlesque "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, adapted to the Ancient British Musick." Ten years afterwards, this poem was recomposed by Dr. Burney, and performed at Ranelagh, on which occasion cleavers were cast in bell-metal to accompany the verses wherein they are mentioned. (2) SCENE I. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, The hounds of Sparta and Crete are classically celebrated :- with other twaine that had a syre of Crete, And dam of Sparta: tone of them called Jollyboy a greate, And large-flew'd hound." (1) SCENE I.— ACT V. "A What masks, what dances shall we have, To wear away this long age of three hours, Between our after-supper and bed-time?] The accepted explanation of an after-supper conveys but an imperfect idea of what this refection really was. "seems to have been a late or rere-supper," Nares says, second supper." Not exactly. The rere-supper was to the supper itself what the rere-banquet was to the dinner-a dessert. On ordinary occasions, the gentlemen of Shakespeare's age appear to have dined about eleven o'clock, and then to have retired either to a garden-house, or other suitable apartment, and enjoyed their rere-banquet or dessert. Supper was usually served between five and six; and this, like the dinner, was frequently followed by a collation consisting of fruits and sweetmeats, called, in this country, the rere-supper; in Italy, Pocenio, from the Latin Pocaniит. (2) SCENE I.-You shall know all, &c.] The humour of distorting the meaning of a passage by mispunctuation was a favourite one formerly. There is a good example in Roister Doister's letter to Dame Custance, beginning,— "Sweete mistresse, where as I love you nothing at all, Regarding your substance and richesse chiefe of all," &c. See Ralph Roister Doister, Act III. Sc. 4. I find another specimen in a MS. collection of short poems, epigrams, &c., written evidently in the early part of the seventeenth century, which belonged to Dr. Percy. JANUS BIFRONS. "The Feminine kinde is counted ill, To all Reason: subject and meeke, To no Bodye: malitiouse, To Frende and Foe: of gentle sort Read thus, the lines are anything but complimentary; but, by transposing the colons and commas, they become highly eulogistic. Taylor, the water poet, in his "Address to Nobody," prefixed to Sir Gregory Nonsense, alludes to the Prologue in the text:-"So ending at the beginning, I say as it is applawsefully written and commended to posterity in the Midsummer Night's Dream, If we offend, it is with our good will, we came with no intent, but to offend and shew our simple skill." (3) SCENE I. Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast.] The classical reader will remember the examples of alliterative trifling in Ennius, and his well-known "O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta, Tyranne, tulisti, At, Tuba terribili tonitru taratantara trusit." Perhaps the most famous of these puerilities, in later times, is the "Pugna Porcorum" of Leo Placentius, wherein every word begins with P. There is also the poem written by Hugald, in honour of Charles the Bold, in which the initial of each word is C; and a long poem, written in 1576, called "Christus Crucifixus," every word beginning with C also. Langland, the author of The Vision of Piers Ploughman," and Norton, who wrote "Gorboduc," both "affected the letter;" and Tusser's "Husbandry' contains a poem in which all the words begin with T. In this country, the foppery appears to have reached its culminat ng point in the reign of Henry VIII., if we may judge from the following exquisite specimen in a production by Wilfride Holme, on "The Fall and evil Success of Rebellion: "— "Loe, leprous lurdeins, lubricke in loquacitie, (4) SCENE I.-Myself the man i' th' moon doth seem to be.] "Although the legend of the man in the moon is perhaps one of the most singular and popular superstitions known, yet it is almost impossible to discover early materials for a connected account of its progress; nor have the researches of former writers been extended to this curious subject. It is very probable that the natural appearance of the moon, and those delineations on its disc, which modern philosophers have considered to belong to the geographical divisions of that body, may originally have suggested the similarity vulgarly supposed to exist between these outlines and a man 'pycchynde stake.' In fact, it is hardly possible to account for the universality of the legend by any other conjecture. "A manuscript of about the fourteenth century, preserved in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 2253), contains an exceedingly curious early English poem on the Man in the Moon, beginning, 'Mon in the mone stond and strit, On his bot forke is burthen he bereth For doute leste he valle he shoddreth aut shereth.' "Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 412, asserts that there are three legends connected with the Man in the Moon. The first, that this personage was Isaac, carrying a bundle of sticks for his own sacrifice; the second, that he was Cain; and the other, which is taken from the history of the Sabbath-breaker, as related in the Book of Numbers. Chaucer, in Troilus and Creseide,' I. 147, refers to the chorle' in the moon; and in the poem entitled the 'Testament of Creseide,' printed in Chaucer's works, there is an allusion to the same legend : Next after him came lady Cynthia, The laste of al, and swiftest in her sphere, For al the light she borowed at her brother Whiche for his theft might clime no ner the heven.' "From Manningham's diary (Harl. MS. 5353) we learn that, among the devises at Whitehall, in 1601, was the man in the moone with thornes on his backe looking downeward.' Ben Jonson, in one of his Masques, fol. ed., P 41, expressly alludes to the man in the moon having been introduced upon the English stage :-'Fac. Where? which is he? I must see his dog at his girdle, and the bushe of thornes at his backe, ere I beleeve it. 1 Her. Doe not trouble your faith then, for if that bush of thornes should prove a goodly grove of okes, in what case were you and your expectation? 2 Her. Those are stale ensignes o' the stages, man i' th moone, delivered doune to you by musty antiquitie, and are of as doubtfull credit as the makers.""-HALLIWELL. (5) SCENE I.-This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.] Mr. Collier's annotator reads, "This passion on the death of a dear friend," &c. ;-one proof among many of his inability to appreciate anything like subtle humour. Had he never heard the old proverbial saying, "He that loseth his wife and sixpence, hath lost a tester ?" (6) SCENE II. To the best bride-bed will we, Which by us shall blessed be.] The ceremony of blessing the bridal-bed was observed, Douce says, at all marriages; and we are indebted to him for the formula, copied from the "Manual," of the use of Salisbury:-"Nocte vero sequente cum sponsus et sponsa ad lectum pervenerint, accedat sacerdos et benedicat thalamum, dicens: Benedic, Domine, thalamum istum et omnes habitantes in eo; ut in tua pace consistant, et in tua voluntate permaneant: et in amore tuo vivant et senescant et multiplicentur in longitudine dierum. Per Dominum.-Item benedictio super lectum. Benedic, Domine, hoc cubiculum, respice, qui non dormis neque dormitas. Qui custodis Israel, custodi famulos tuos in hoc lecto quiescentes ab omnibus fantasmaticis demonum illusionibus: custodi eos vigilantes ut in preceptis tuis meditentur dormientes, et te per soporem sentiant: ut hic et ubique defensionis tuæ muniantur auxilio. Per Dominum. -Deinde fiat benedictio super eos in lecto tantum cum Oremus. Benedicat Deus corpora vestra et animas vestras; et det super vos benedictionem sicut benedixit Abraham, Isaac et Jacob, Amen.-His peractis aspergat aqua eos benedicta, et sic discedat et dimittat eos in pace." |