on matters to an immediate decision. have,

The old eds.

"The extreme parts of time.”

Dyce and Delius print "part." Singer has " haste.” Staunton and the Camb. eds. retain "parts," but consider the text corrupt.

Note (24.)

Ib. Line 813,—

"If this austere insociable life

Change not your offer made in heat of blood;

If frosts, and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds,
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,

But that it bear this trial, and last true;

Then, at the expiration of the year,

Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts.”

"And last true," i.e. and continue faithful. Compare

John, v. 7, 118,—

"Naught shall make us rue,

If England to itself do rest but true.”

The old eds. have,

"Nip not the gaudie blossomes of your Loue,
But that it beare this triall, and last loue:"

It will be seen the misprint was an easy one. Shakespeare never uses last in the sense required for "last love." The expression, too, is weak; love might last as love, and yet not be what it was ;

“But that I know love is begun by time;
And that I see, in passages of proof,

Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick, or snuff that will abate it;
For nothing is at a like goodness still."

(Ham. iv. 7, 114.) All the compared eds. retain

"last love." Compare, for friends who do not last true, Tim. iii. 3, 6,

"They have all been touch'd, and found base metal; for
They have all denied him."

A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

Note (1.) Act II. Scene 1, Line 7,—

66

I do wander every where,

Swifter than the moones sphere.”

So W. T. iv. 4, 118,—

“O Proserpina,

For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Disses waggon!"

"Dysses" is the reading of the folio. See Notes (20) and (21) Tempest, and Note (21) L. L. L. The old eds. have "Moons sphere." Again, in Act iv. 1, 101,—

Here the folio has, following Roberts' surreptitious quarto, "the nights," but the quarto of Fisher, the best text, has "after nights;" evidently a careless or ignorant printing of nightes. "The nights" does not restore the metre; and "the" is as out of place here, as it would be before,

"For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast.”

(Act iii. 2, 379.) It is evident that the compositors followed the custom of the day, in modernizing the spelling generally; and that they did not comprehend those cases in which the metre required the retention of the old form of the possessive case. All the compared eds.

66

print "moon's sphere," and, with one exception, “ the night's shade." The Clar. P. ed. has "after night's shade," which is as harmonious as

66

Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both sides.”

Had this misprint been found in Shakespeare, we should have been told the line was quite metrical. One authority would have found "laughter" a trisyllable, and another a dissyllable in "both." Act ii. 1, 58, appears in the S. Grammar, p. 381,

"But room fairy here | comes Oberon."

and the Clar. P. ed. has a note (Act iv. 1, 101),—

66

'Night's, a dissyllable, as moon's in (Act ii. 1, 7), and earth's in The Tempest, iv. 1, 110.”

Doubtless, if, as well might have happened, (Act ii. 2, 81),

"When thou wak'st, let love forbid
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid."

had come down to us as "Sleep's seat," the error would have been defended in the same way. What would be discord in Milton, cannot be harmony in Shakespeare; but the number of syllables is a small matter and of course; in these verses of Shakespeare, as in L'Allegro, the intonation and sequence of every vowel, the strength and position of each consonant, is weighed and cannot be changed.

Note (2.) Ib. Line 101,—

"And never, since the middle summer's spring,

Met we,-"

(Line 82.)

“But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. (Line 87.)

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

"the green corn

(Line 94.)

(Line 98.)

Contagious fogs: "
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;—”
"The nine-men's-morris is fill'd up with mud;
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For want of tread, are undistinguishable:
The human mortals wail their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest;
Therefore the Moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter:"

The passage is pointed, generally, as in the folio; which has a comma after "winter here," a semicolon after "carol blest ;" and a full stop after " do abound." with which closes the episode of Diana's wrath [perhaps the four lines were a later introduction of Shakespeare]. "And thorough this distemperature we see

returns to the theme of the untimely weather. "We see" is, of course, equivalent to it occurs. Titania can only describe from hearsay the events afterwards referred to.

"The human mortals wail their winter here."

i.e. their winter weather at midsummer: the floods do not permit,

66

to root the summer-swelling flower,

And make rough winter everlastingly.”

(T. G. V. ii. 4, 163.) The old eds. have "want their winter," an evident misprint.

" Wail," as,

"To wail the dimming of our shining star."

(Rich. III. ii. 2, 102.)

"'Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes."

(Cor. iv. 1, 26.)

"Wise men ne'er sit and wail their woes."

(Rich. II. iii. 2, 178.) Dyce and Singer print, after Theobald, "want their winter cheer."

compared eds. retain the old text.

The other

The only view to

take of this play is that of Coleridge,

"I am convinced that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout."

Thus, as in dreams, May is the time with Theseus and his companions; but it is midsummer with the fairies,

"The summer still doth tend upon [their] state."

(Act iii. 1, 158.) Titania speaks of midsummer, somewhat past "the middle summer's spring," in "their winter here," and "no night is now-blest." The "green corn rotted," and the sports in "the wanton green,' also indicate that season. The Moon is Diana, as in

Act i. 1, 73,

66

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless Moon."

So M. of V. v. 1, 66,—

"Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn."

And line 109,

66

the moon sleeps with Endymion,

And would not be awak'd."

The rites of Diana were performed at night. So

M. A. v. 3, 11,—

66

'Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.”

Pardon, goddess of the night,

Will offer night-oblations to thee."