* Or (save your reverence) love, wherein thou stick'st Up to the ears.-Come, we burn day-light, ho. Rom. Nay, that's not fo. Mer. I mean, fir, in delay We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. Take our good meaning; for our judgement fits Five times in that", ere once in our fine wits. Rom. And we mean well, in going to this mask;" But 'tis no wit to go. Again, in the Tavo Merry Milkmaids, 1620: Mer. "Why then 'tis done, and dun's the mouse, and undone all the courtiers." Of this cant expression I cannot determine the precise meaning. It is used again in Westward Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607, but apparently in a sense different from that which Dr. Warbur ton would affix to it. STEEVENS. 7 Or (fave your reverence) love,-] The word or obfcures the sentence; we should read O! for or love. Mercutio having called the affectation with which Romeo was entangled by so disrespectful a word as mire, cries out, O! fave your reverence, love. JOHNSON. Mercutio's meaning is loft if we dismiss the word or. " We'll draw thee from the mire (says he) or rather from this love wherein thou stick'lst." Dr. Johnfon has imputed a greater share of politeness to Mercutio than he is found to be poffefsed of in the quarto, 1597. Mercutio, as he passes through different editions, "Works himself clear, and as he runs refines." STEEVENS. I have omitted the lines from the 4to as it does not seem material either to quote, explain, or excuse them. EDITOR. 8-we burn day-light, ho.] To burn daylight is a proverbial expreffion, used when candles, &c. are lighted in the day time. See vol. i. p. 285. STEEVENS. 9-like lamps by day.] Lamps is the reading of the oldest quarto. The folio and subsequent quartos read lights, lights by day, STEEVENS. Five times in that.] The quarto 1597, reads: "Three times a day;" and right wits, instead of fine wits. STEEVENS. Shakspeare is on every occafion fo fond of antithesis, that I am perfuaded he wrote: Five times in that ere once in our five wits. We meet in K. Lear: " Bless thy five wits !" D3, So, Mer. Why, may one afk? Rom. I dreamt a dream to-night. Mer. And fo did I. Rom. Well, what was yours? Mer. That dreamers often lye.. Rom. In bed afleep; while they do dream things true. Mer. O, then, I see, queen Mab hath been with you. She So, in a subsequent scene in this play : "Thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits, than I am fure I have in my whole five." The fame mistake happened in The Midsummer Night's Dream, where in all the old copies we meet : "Of all these fine the sense” instead of all these five-" In the first quarto the line stands: "I bree times in that, ere once in our right wits." When the poet altered " three times" to "five times," he probably for the fake of the jingle, discarded the word right, and substituted five in its place. The alteration, indeed, seems to have been made merely to obtain the antithesis. MALONE. Fine wits may be the true reading. So in I be Merry Wives of Windfor: " They would whip me with their fine wits 'till I were as crest fall'n as a dry'd pear. STEEVENS. * In the quarto 1597, after the first line of Mercutio's fpeech, Romeo says, Queen Mab, what's she? and the printer by a blunder, has given all the rest of the speech to the same character. STEEVENS. 3 O, then, I fec, Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the FAIRIES' midwife,] Thus begins that admirable speech upon the effects of the imagination in dreams. But, Queen Mab the fairies' mid-wife? What is the then Queen of? Why, the fairies. What! and their midwife too? but this is not the greatest of the abfurdities. Let us see upon what occafion the is introduced, and under what quality. It is as a being that has great power over human imagination. But then the title given her must have reference to the employment she is put upon: First then, she is called Queen; which is very pertinent, for that designs her power; then she is called the fairies' midwife; but what has that to do with the point in hand? If we would think that Shakspeare wrote fenfe, we must say, he wrote the FANCY's midwife; and this is a proper title, as it introduces all that is faid afterwards of her vagaries. Besides, it exactly quadrates with these lines : -I talk She is the fairies' midwife; and the comes Athwart men's noses as they lie afleep : I talk of dreams, 1 Her Which are the children of an idle brain, These dreams are begot upon fantafie, and Mab is the midwife to bring them forth. And fancy's midwife is a phrase altogether in the manner of our author. WARBURTON. All the copies (three of which were published in our author's life-time) concur in reading fairies' midwife, and Dr. Warburton's alteration appears to be quite unnecessary. The fairies' midwife does not mean the midwife to the fairies, but that she was the perfon among the fairies, whose department it was to deliver the fancies of fleeping men of their dreams, those children of an idle brain. When we say the king's judges, we do not mean persons who are to judge the king, but persons appointed by him to judge his fub. jects. STEEVENS. + On the fore-finger of an alderman,) The quarto. 1597, reads, of a burgo-master. The alteration was probably made by the poet himself, as we find it in the fucceeding copy, 1599: but in order to familiarize the idea, he has diminished its propriety. In the pictures of burgo-mafters, the ring is generally placed on the forefinger; and from a passage in The First Part of Henry IV. we may suppose the citizens in Shakspeare's time to have worn this orna. ment on the thumb. So again, Glapthorne, in his comedy of Wit in a Conftable, 1639: "-and an alderman, "As I may say to you, he has no more "Wit than the rest o' the bench; and that lies in his "thumb-ring" STEEVENS. 5-of atomies] Atomy is no more than an obsolete substitute for atom. So, in the Tawo Merry Milkmaids, 1620 : "I can tear thee "As small as atomies, and throw thee off Again, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613: "I'll tear thy limbs into more atomics " Than in the summer play before the fun." In Drayton's Nimphidia there is likewise a description of Queen Mab's chariot : "Four nimble Gnats the Horses were, "Their Harneffes of Gossamere, D 4 "Fly -Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs; Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, Upon the coach-bax getting : And STEEVENS. "I trouw, 'turas fimple trimming: "The wheel's compos'd of Cricket's Bones, "And daintily made for the nonce, "For Fear of rattling on the Stones, "With Thistle-down they shod it." • Sometime she gallops o'er a LAWYER's nose, And then dreams be of smelling out a fuit:) The old editions have it, COURTIER's nose; and this undoubtedly is the true reading and for these reasons: Firsft, In the present reading there is a vicious repetition in this fine speech; the fame thought having been given in the foregoing line : O'er lawyers fingers, who straight dream on fees : Nor 1 1 And then dreams he of smelling out a fuit: Tick Nor can it be objected that there will be the same fault if we read courtiers', it having been faid before : On courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies strait; because they are shewn in two places under different views: in the first, their foppery; in the fecond, their rapacity is ridiculed. Secondly, in our author's time, a court-folicitation was called, fimply, a fuit, and a process, a fuit at law, to distinguish it from the other. "The King" (says an anonymous cotemporary writer of the life of fir William Cecil) " called him [fir William Cecil] and "after long talk with him, being much delighted with his answers, " willed his father to FIND (i. e. to smell out] A SUIT for him. "Whereupon he became SUITER for the reverfion of the Custos" brevium office in the Common Pleas: which the king willingly " granted, it being the first SUIT he had in his life." Indeed our poet has very rarely turned his fatire against lawyers and law proceedings, the common topic of later writers: for, to observe it to the honour of the English judicatures, they preserved the purity. and fimplicity of their first institution, long after chicane had overrun all the other laws of Europe. WARBURTON. The following passage in The Gul's Hornbook, by T. Decker, 1609, still more strongly supports the old reading: " If you be a courtier, discourse of the obtaining of suits. MALONE. In these lines Dr. Warburton has very justly restored' the old reading courtier's nose, and has explained the paffage with his usual learning; but I do not think he is so happy in his endeavour to justify Shakspeare from the charge of a vicious repetition in introducing the courtier twice. The second folio, I observe, reads : On COUNTRIES knees which has led me to conjecture, that the line ought to be read thus : On COUNTIES knees, that dream on courtfies strait :Counties I understand to fignify noblemen in general. Paris, who, in one place, I think, is called earl, is most commonly styled the countie in this play. And so in Much Ado about Nothing, act iv. we find : "Princes and counties." And in All's Well that Ends Well, act iii : "A ring the County wears." The Countie Egmond is so called more than once in Holinshed, p. 1150, and in the Burleigh papers, vol. i. p. 204. See also p. 7. The Countie Palatine Lowys. However, perhaps, it is as probable that the repetition of the Courtier, which offends us in this passage, may be owing (not to any error of the press, but) to ۱ the |
