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 3;
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
Why should Titania cross her Oberon?
I do but beg a little changeling boy,
To be my henchman 13.

you:

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:

'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.

Marking the embarked traders on the flood;
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive,
And grow big-bellied, with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following (her womb, then rich with my young
'squire),

Would imitate; and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,

As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And, for her sake, I do rear up her boy:
And, for her sake, I will not part with him.
Obe. How long within this wood intend you stay?
Tita. Perchance, till after Theseus' wedding-day.
If you will patiently dance in our round,
And see our moon-light revels, go with us;
If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.
Obe. Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.
Tita. Not for thy fairy kingdom.-Fairies, away:
We shall chide down-right, if I longer stay.

[Exeunt TITANIA, and her Train. Obe. Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this

grove,

Till I torment thee for this injury.—

My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's musick.

Puck.

I remember.

Obe. That very time I saw (but thou could'st not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took

VOL. II.

Y

At a fair vestal 14, throned by the west;
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon;
And the imperial vot'ress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free 15.

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,-

--

Before, milk-white; now purple with love's woundAnd maidens call it, love-in-idleness 16.

Fetch me that flower: the herb I show'd thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid,

Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb: and be thou here again,
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

Puck. I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

[Exit PUCK.

Obe.
Having once this juice,
I'll watch Titania when she is asleep,

And drop the liquor of it in her eyes:

The next thing then she waking looks upon (Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,

On meddling monkey, or on busy ape),

14 It is well known that a compliment to Queen Elizabeth was intended in this very beautiful passage. Warburton has attempted to show, that by the mermaid in the preceding lines, Mary Queen of Scots was intended. It is argued with his usual fanciful ingenuity, but will not bear the test of examination, and has been satisfactorily controverted. It appears to have been no uncommon practice to introduce a compliment to Elizabeth in the body of a play.

15 Exempt from the power of love.

16 The tricolored violet, commonly called pansies, or heartsease, is here meant; one or two of its petals are of a purple colour. It has other fanciful and expressive names, such asCuddle me to you; Three faces under a hood; Herb trinity, &c.

She shall pursue it with the soul of love.
And ere I take this charm off from her sight
(As I can take it with another herb),
I'll make her render up her page to me.
But who comes here? I am invisible;
And I will overhear their conference.

3

Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him. Dem. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. Where is Lysander, and fair Hermia? The one I'll slay, the other slayeth me. Thou told'st me they were stol'n into this wood, And here am I, and wood 17 within this wood, Because I cannot meet with Hermia. Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more. Hel. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant 18; But yet you draw not iron, for my heart

Is true as steel; Leave you your power to draw, And I shall have no power to follow you.

Dem. Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth

Tell you-I do not, nor I cannot love you?

Hel. And even for that do I love you the more. I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,

The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love,

17 Mad, raving.

18There is now a dayes a kind of adamant which draweth unto it fleshe, and the same so strongly, that it hath power to knit and tie together two mouthes of contrary persons, and drawe the heart of a man out of his bodie without offending any part of him. Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature, by Edward Fenton, 1569.