As they go out, BOTTOм awakes. Bot. When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer: my next is, Most fair Pyramus.Hey, ho!Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God's my life! stolen hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream,-past the wit of man to say what dream it was: Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was-there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,-But man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man5 hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen; man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the duke: Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death." 4 [Exit. 4 - patched fool,] That is, a fool in a particoloured coat. Johnson. 5 The eye of man, &c.] He is here blundering upon the scriptural passage of " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things," &c. 1 Cor. ii, 9. Douce. 6 I shall sing it at her death.] At whose death? In Bottom's speech there is no mention of any she-creature, to whom this relative can be coupled. I make not the least scruple but Bottom, for the sake of a jest, and to render his voluntary, as we may call it, the more gracious and extraordinary, said:—I shall sing it after death. He, as Pyramus, is killed upon the scene; and so might promise to rise again at the conclusion of the interlude, and give the Duke his dream by way of song. The source of the corruption of the text is very obvious. The ƒ in after being sunk by the vulgar pronunciation, the copyist might write it from the sound,-a'ter; which the wise editors not understanding, concluded, two words were erroneously got together; so, splitting them, and clapping in an h, produced the present reading-at her. Theobald. Theobald might have quoted the following passage in The Tempest in support of his emendation. "This is a very scurvy tune (says Trinculo) for a man to sing at his funeral.”—Yet I believe the text is right. Malone. - at her death.] He may mean the death of Thisbe, which his head might be at present full of; and yet I cannot but prefer the happy conjecture of Mr. Theobald to my own attempt at explanation. Steevens. SCENE II. Athens. A room in Quince's House. Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING. Quin. Have you sent to Bottom's house? is he come home yet? Star. He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt, he is transported. Flu. If he come not, then the play is marred; It goes not forward, doth it? Quin. It is not possible: you have not a man in all Athens, able to discharge Pyramus, but he. Flu. No; he hath simply the best wit of any handycraft man in Athens. Quin. Yea, and the best person too: and he is a very paramour, for a sweet voice. Flu. You must say, paragon: a paramour is, God bless us, a thing of nought.7 Enter SNUG. Snug. Masters, the duke is coming from the temple, and there is two or three lords and ladies more married: if our sport had gone forward, we had all been made men. 8 Flu. O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a-day during his life; he could not have 'scaped sixpence a-day: an the duke had not given him sixpence 7a thing of nought.] This Mr. Theobald changes with great pomp to a thing of naught; i. e. a good for nothing thing. Johnson. A thing of nought may be the true reading. So, in Hamlet: "Ham. The king is a thing "Guil. A thing my lord? "Ham. Of nothing." See the note on this passage. Paramour being a word which Flute did not understand, he may design to say that it had no meaning, i. e. was a thing of nought. Mr. M. Mason, however, is of a different opinion. "The ejaculation (says he) God bless us! proves that Flute imagined he was saying a naughty word." Steevens. 8 -made men.] In the same sense as in The Tempest: any monster in England makes a man." Johnson. a-day for playing Pyramus, I'll be hanged; he would have deserved it: sixpence a-day, in Pyramus, or nothing." Enter BOTTOM. Bot. Where are these lads? where are these hearts? Quin. Bottom!- -O most courageous day! O most happy hour! Bot. Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not what; for, if I tell you, I am no true Athenian. I will tell you every thing, right as it fell out. Quin. Let us hear, sweet Bottom. Bot. Not a word of me. All that I will tell you, is, that the duke hath dined: Get your apparel together; good strings to your beards,1 new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently at the palace; every man look o'er his part; for, the short and the long is, our play is preferred.2 In any case, let Thisby have clean linen; and let not him, that plays the lion, pare his nails, for they shall hang out 9 sixpence a day, in Pyramus, or nothing.] Shakspeare has already ridiculed the title-page of Cambyses, by Thomas Preston; and here he seems to allude to him, or some other person who, like him, had been pensioned for his dramatic abilities. Preston acted a part in John Ritwise's play of Dido, before Queen Elizabeth at Cambridge, in 1564; and the Queen was so well pleased, that she bestowed on him a pension of twenty pounds a year, which is little more than a shilling a day. Steevens. 1 good strings to your beards,] i. e. to prevent the false beards, which they were to wear, from falling off. Malone. As no false beard could be worn, without a ligature to fasten it on, (and a slender one would suffice) the caution of Bottom, considered in such a light, is superfluous. I suspect, therefore, that the good strings recommended by him were ornamental, or employed to give an air of novelty to the countenances of the performers. Thus in Measure for Measure (where the natural beard is unquestionably spoken of) the Duke, intent on disfiguring the head of Ragozine, says: "O, death's a great disguiser; and you may add to it. Shave the head, and tie the beard." Steevens. 2 our play is preferred.] This word is not to be understood in its most common acceptation here, as if their play was chosen in preference to the others; (for that appears afterwards not to be the fact;) but means, that it was given in among others for the duke's option. So, in Julius Cæsar, Decius says: "Where is Metellus Cimber? let him go, "And presently prefer his suit to Cæsar." Theobald, for the lion's claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onions, nor garlick, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I do not doubt, but to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy. No more words; away; go, away. [Exeunt. The same. ACT V..... SCENE I. An Apartment in the Palace of Theseus. Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and Attendants. Hip. 'Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of. The. More strange than true. I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. Lovers, and madmen, have such seething brains,3 The lunatick, the lover, and the poet,* Are of imagination all compact:5 One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; 3 66 such seething brains,] So, in The Tempest: thy brains, "Now useless, boil'd within thy scull." Steevens. We meet with the same expression in The Winter's Tale: "Would any but these boil'd brains of three and twenty hunt this weather?" Malone. 4 The lunatick, the lover, and the poet,] An ingenious modern writer supposes that our author had here in contemplation Orestes, Mark Antony, and himself; but I do not recollect any passage in his works that shows him to have been acquainted with the story of Agamemnon's son,—scelerum furiis agitatus Orestes: and indeed, if even such were found, the supposed allusion would still remain very problematical. Malone. 5 Are of imagination all compact:] i. e. are made of mere imagination. So, in As you like it: "If he, compact of jars, grow musical." Steevens. 6 That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantick,] Such is the reading of all the old copies; instead of which, the modern edi. tors have given us: "The madman: while the lover," &c. Steevens. Hh Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:7 8 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Such tricks hath strong imagination; That, if it would but apprehend some joy, Hip. But all the story of the night told over, And grows to something of great constancy;o But, howsoever, strange and admirable. Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and HELENA. The. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.— Joy, gentle friends! joy, and fresh days of love, Accompany your hearts! Lys. More than to us Wait on your royal walks, your board, your bed! The. Come now; what masks, what dances shall we have, To wear away this long age of three hours, 7 Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:] By "a brow of Egypt," Shakspeare means no more than the brow of a gipsy. So much for some ingenious modern's ideal Cleopatra. See note 5. Steevens. 8 in a fine frenzy rolling,] This seems to have been imi. tated by Drayton, in his Epistle to F. Reynolds, on Poets and Poetry : describing Marlowe, he says: 9 66 that fine madness still he did retain, "Which rightly should possess a poet's brain." Malone. constancy;] Consistency, stability, certainty. Johnson, 1 Wait on] The old copies have-wait in. Corrected by Mr. Rowe. Malone, |