2 patience well that fame cowardly, giant-like, ox-beef hath devoured many a gentleman of your houfe: I promise you, your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I defire you more acquaintance, good mafter Muftard-feed. TITA. Come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower. The moon, methinks, looks with a wat'ry eye; And when the weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting fome enforced chastity. 2 Tie up my love's tongue, 3 bring him filently. patience] The Oxford edition reads parentage well. I believe the correction is right. Parentage was not eafily corrupted to patience. word is, paffions, fufferings. JOHNSON. I fancy, the true There is an ancient fatirical Poem entitled "The Poor Man's Paffions, [i. e. fufferings, ] or Poverty's patience." Patience and Paffions are fo alike in found, that a careless tranfcriber or compofitor might cafily have fubftituted the former word for the latter. FARMER. These words are fpoken ironically. According to the opinion prevailing in our author's time, muftard was fuppofed to excite to choler. See note on Taming of the Shrew, Ad IV. fc. iii. REED. Perhaps we thould read —“I know you paffing well. 3 M. MASON. my love's tongue,] The old copies read my lover's tongue." STEEVENS. Our poet has again ufed lover as a monofyllable in Twelfth Night: Sad true lover never find my grave." MALONE. In the paffage quoted from Twelfth Night, "true lover" is evidently a miflake for "true love, very fcene before us: a phrafe which occurs in the "And laid the love-juice on fome true love's fight." Lover, in both the foregoing inftances, I must therefore fuppofe to have been a printer's blunder for love, and have therefore continued Mr. Pope's emendation in the text. How is lover to be pronounced as a monofyllable? STEEVENS. SCENE II. Another part of the Wood, Enter OBERON, OBE. I wonder, if Titania be awak'd; Then, what it was that next came in her eye, Which he must dote on in extremity. Enter PUCK, Here comes my meffenger.-How now, mad fpirit? That work for bread upon Athenian falls, 4 what night-rule-] Night-rule in this place fhould feem to mean, what frolick of the night, what revelry is going forward? So, in Tom Tyler and his Wife, 1661: Again: Marry, here is good rule!" why how now ftrife! here is pretty rule!" It appears, from the old fong of Robin Goodfellow, in the third volume of Dr. Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, that it was the office of this waggifh fpirit "to viewe [or fuperiutend] the night-fports. STEVENS. patches,] Patch was in old language used as a term of opprobry; perhaps with much the fame import as we use raggauffin, or tatlerdemalion. JOHNSON. mu op Puck calls the players, a crew of patches. A common probrious term, which probably took its rife from Patch, cardinal Wolfey's fool. In the western countries, cross-patch is ftill used for perverfe, ill-natur'd fool. T. WARTON. The name was rather taken from the patch'd or pyed coats worn by the fools or jefters of those times. Were met together to rehearse a play, And forth my mimick comes: When they him fpy, As wild geefe that the creeping fowler eye, what a py'd ninny's this?" Again, in Preston's Cambyfes: "Hob and Lob, ah ye country patches!" Again, in The Three Ladies of London, 1584: It is fimplicitie, that patch. STEEVENS. I should fuppose patch to be merely a corruption of the Italian pazzo, which fignifies properly a fool. So, in The Merchant of Venice, A& II. fc. v. Shylock fays of Launcelot : The patch is kind enough; after having juft called him, that fool of Hagar's offSpring. TYRWHITT. 6 barren fort, ] Barren is dull, unpregnant. So, in Hamlet: "fome quantity of barren fpectators, &c. Sort is company. STEEVENS. 7 An afs's now I fixed on his head;] A head. Saxon. So, Chaucer, in The Hiftory of Beryn, 1524: JOHNSON, No fothly, quoth the fteward, it lieth all in thy noll, Again, in The Three Ladies of London, 1584: "One thumps me on the neck, and another ftrikes me on the nole." STEEVENS. The following receipt for the process tried on Bottom, occurs in Albertus Magnus de Secretis "Si vis quod caput hominis affimiletur capiti afini, sume de fegimine afelli, & unge hominem in capite, & fic apparebit. There was a tranflation of this book in Shakspeare's time. " DOUCE. 8 · mimick —] Minnock is the reading of the old quarto, and I believe right. Minnekin, now minx, is a nice trifling girl. Minnock is apparently a word of contempt. JOHNSON, Or ruffet-pated choughs, many in fort, And, at our ftamp, here o'er and o'er one falls; The folio reads-mimmick; perhaps for mimick, a word more familiar than that exhibited by one of the quartos, for the other reads-minnick. STEEVENS. Mimmick is the reading of the folio. The quarto printed by Fisher has-minnick; that by Roberts, minnock: both evidently corruptions. The line has been explained as if it related to Thife; but it does not relate to her, but to Pyramus. Bottom had just been playing that part, and had retired into a brake; (according to Quince's direction: "When you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake.") "Anon his Thisbe must be answered, And forth my mimick (i. e. my actor) comes." In this there feems no difficulty. Mimick is ufed as fynonymous to actor, by Decker, in his Guls Hornebooke, 1609: "Draw what troop you can from the ftage after you; the mimicks are beholden to you for allowing them elbow room." Again, in his Satiromaftix, 1602: "Thou [B. Jonfon] haft forgot how thou ambled'ft in a leather pilch by a play-waggon in the highway, and took'ft mad Jeronymo's part, to get fervice amongst the mimicks." MALONE. 7 choughs,] The chough is a bird of the daw kind. It is mentioned alfo in Macbeth: By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks," &c. STEEVENS. -fort,] Company. So above: and in Waller: that barren fort;" "A fort of lufty Shepherds ftrive." JOHNSON. So, in Chapman's May-day, 1611: though we neuer lead any other company than a fort of quart-pots.' STEEVENS. 9 And, at our ftamp,] This feems to be a vicious reading. Fairies are never reprefented flamping, or of a fize that fhould give force to a flamp, nor could they have diftinguished the stamps of Puck from those of their own companions. I read: "And at a ftump here o'er and o'er one falls." So Drayton : A pain he in his head-piece feels, Against a ftubbed tree he reels, I Their fenfe, thus weak, loft with their fears, thus ftrong, Made fenfelefs things begin to do them wrong: For briers and thorns at their apparel fnatch; Some, fleeves; fome, hats: 2 from yielders all things catch. 66 Among the briers and brambles." JOHNSON. I adhere to the old reading. The stamp of a fairy might be efficacious though not loud; neither is it neceffary to fuppofe, when fupernatural beings are spoken of, that the fize of the agent determines the force of the a&ion. That fairies did ftamp to fome purpose, may be known from the following paffage in Olaus Magnus de Gentibus Septentrionalibus. · "Vero faltum adeo profundé in terram imprefferant, ut locus infigni ardore orbiculariter perefus, non parit arenti redivivum cefpite gramen. Shakspeare's own authority, however, is moft decifive. See the conclufion of the first scene of the fourth a&t: "Come, my queen, take hand with me, "And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be." STEEVENS. Honeft Reginald Scott, fays, "Our grandams maides were wont to fett a boll of milke before Incubus, and his coufin Robin Good-fellow, for grinding of malt or muftard, and fweeping the houfe at midnight: and-that he would chafe exceedingly, if the maid or good wife of the house, having compaffion of his nakednes, laid anie clothes for him beefides his meffe of white bread and milke, which was his ftanding fee. For in that cafe he faith, here will I never What have we here? Hemton, hamten, more RITSON. Some, fleeves; fome hats:] There is the like image in Drayton, of queen Mab and her fairies flying from Hobgoblin: "Some tore a ruff, and some a gown, |