But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove, or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen7,
But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.

Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Call'd Robin Good-fellow: are you not he,
That fright the maidens of the villagery:
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern 9,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm 10;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work 11; and they shall have good luck :
Are not you he?

Puck.
Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

7 Shining.

8 Quarrel. For the probable cause of the use of square for quarrel, see Mr. Douce's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 182.

9 A quern was a handmill.

10 And if that the bowle of curds and creame were not duly set out for Robin Goodfellow, the frier, and Sisse the dairy-maid, why then either the pottage was burnt next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not curdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat never would have good head. But if a Peeterpenny, or an housle-egg were behind, or a patch of tythe unpaid, -then ware of bull-beggars, spirits,' &c. Harsnet's Declaration, &c. ch. xx. p. 134. So also, Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, 4to. p. 66. Your grandames' maids were wont to set a bowl of milk for him, for his pains in grinding malt and mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight;-this white bread and milk was his standing fee.'

11 Milton refers to these traditions in L'Allegro. And Drayton, in his Nymphidia, gives a like account of Puck. Drayton followed Shakspeare; the Nymphidia was one of his latest poems, and was published for the first time in 1619.

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab 12;

And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither'd dew-lap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her down topples she,
And tailor cries 13, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe;
And yexen 14 in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.-

But room, Faëry, here comes Oberon.

Fai. And here my mistress:-'Would that he were gone!

SCENE II.

Enter OBERON, at one door, with his Train, and TITANIA, at another, with hers.

Obe. Ill met by moon-light, proud Titania.
Tita. What, jealous Oberon? Fairy, skip hence;
I have forsworn his bed and company.

Obe. Tarry, rash wanton: Am not I thy lord?
Tita. Then I must be thy lady: But I know

12 Wild apple.

13 Dr. Johnson thought he remembered to have heard this ludicrous exclamation upon a person's seat slipping from under him. He that slips from his chair falls as a tailor squats upon his board. Hanmer thought the passage corrupt, and proposed to read rails or cries.'

14 The old copy reads: And waxen in their mirth, &c.' Though a glimmering of sense may be extracted from this passage as it stands in the old copy, it seems most probable that we should read, as Dr. Farmer proposed, yexen. To yex is to hiccup, and is so explained in all the old dictionaries. The meaning of the passage will then be, that the objects of Puck's waggery laughed till their laughter ended in a yex or hiccup. Puck is speaking with an affectation of ancient phraseology.

When thou hast stol'n away from fairy land,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn1; and versing love
To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,
Come from the farthest steep of India ?
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskin'd mistress, and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded; and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity.

Obe. How, canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigenia, whom he ravished?

And make him with fair Æglé break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa2?

Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer's spring3,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or on the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land,
Have every pelting river made so proud,

4

1 The shepherd boys of Chaucer's time had

'Many a floite and litling horne

And pipés made of grené corne.'

2 See the Life of Theseus in North's Translation of Plutarch. Æglé, Ariadne, and Antiopa were all at different times mistresses to Theseus. The name of Perigune is translated by North Perigouna.

3 Spring seems to be here used for beginning. The spring of day is used for the dawn of day in K. Henry IV. Part II. 4 A very common epithet with our old writers, to signify paltry, palting appears to have been its original orthography.

That they have overborne their continents 5:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn
Hath rotted, ere his youth attain'd a beard:
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock;
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud;
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are undistinguishable:
The human mortals 7 want 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: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hyems' chin, and icy crown9,
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: The spring, the summer,

5 i. e. borne down the banks which contain them.

6 A rural game, played by making holes in the ground in the angles and sides of a square, and placing stones or other things upon them, according to certain rules. These figures are called nine men's morris, or merrils, because each party playing has nine men; they were generally cut upon turf, and were consequently choked up with mud in rainy seasons.

7 Human mortals is a mere pleonasm; and is neither put in opposition to fairy mortals nor to human immortals, according to Steevens and Ritson. It is simply the language of a fairy speaking of men. See Mr. Douce's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 185.

8 Theobald proposed to read their winter cheer.'

9 This singular image was probably suggested to the poet by Golding's translation of Ovid, B. ii. :

'And lastly quaking for the colde, stoode Winter all forlorne, With rugged head as white as dove, and garments all to-torne, Forladen with the isycles, that dangled up and downe, Upon his gray and hoarie beard, and snowie frozen crowne.' Or, by Virgil's fourth Æneid, through Surrey's Translation :

The childing autumn 10, angry winter, change 11
Their wonted liveries; and the 'mazed world,
By their increase 12, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

Obe. Do you amend it then; it lies in you:
Why should Titania cross her Oberon?

I do but beg a little changeling boy,

To be my henchman 13.

Set your heart at rest,

Tita.
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a vot'ress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side;
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,

tum flumina mento

Precipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba.'

Unless we suppose the passage corrupt, and that we should read thin, i. e. thin-hair'd. So Cordelia, speaking of Lear:

to watch poor perdu!

With this thin helm.'

And again, in Richard II.:

'White beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps.' 10 Autumn producing flowers unseasonably upon those of Sum

mer.

11 The confusion of seasons here described is no more than a poetical account of the weather which happened in England about the time when the Midsummer-Night's Dream was written. The date of the piece may be determined by Churchyard's description of the same kind of weather in his Charitie,' 1595. Shakspeare fancifully ascribes this distemperature of seasons to a quarrel between the playful rulers of the fairy world; Churchyard, broken down by age and misfortunes, is seriously disposed to represent it as a judgment from the Almighty on the offences of mankind.

12 Produce. So in Shakspeare's 97th Sonnet:

'The teeming Autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime.'

13 Page of honour.