Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced.-But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night: and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight; there we will rehearse: for if we meet in the city we shall be dogg'd with company, and our devices known. In the mean time I will draw a bill of properties a such as our play wants. I pray you fail me not.

Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse more obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu.

Quin. At the duke's oak we meet.

Bot. Enough. Hold, or cut bow-strings.b [Exeunt.

a Properties. The person who has charge of the wooden swords, and pasteboard shields, and other trumpery required for the business of the stage, is still called the property-man.

b A proverbial expression derived from the days of archery: "When a party was made at butts, assurance of meeting was given in the words of that phrase."

ACT II.

SCENE I.-A Wood near Athens.

Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the other.
Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you?
Fai. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs & upon the green:
The cowslips tall her pensioners b be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,

a

In those freckles live their savours:

I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone;

Our

queen and all her elves come here anon.
Puck. The king doth keep his revels bere to-night;
Take heed the queen come not within his sight.
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,

Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy stol'n from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling :d

Orbs. The fairy rings, as they are popularly called. It was the Fairy's office to dew these orbs, which had been parched under the fairy-feet in the moonlight revels.

Pensioners. These courtiers, whom Mrs. Quickly put above earls (Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Scene 2), were Queen Elizabeth's favourite attendants. They were the handsomest

men of the first families.

Lob-looby, lubber, lubbard.

Changeling-a child procured in exchange.

And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild :
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 starlight sheen,
But they do square;a 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 Goodfellow; are you not he,
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern ;b
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm ;c
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, 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,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And "Tailor" cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe,
a Square-to quarrel.

b Quern-a handmill.

© Barm-yeast.

And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.-

But room, Fairy, here comes Oberon.

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

SCENE II-Enter OBERON, on the side, with his
train, and TITANIA, on the other, with hers.
Obe. Ill met by moonlight, 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
When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn, 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 Antiopa?

Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy:

And never, since the middle summer's spring,a
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,

Middle summer's spring. The spring is the beginning-as the spring of the day, a common expression in our early writers. The middle summer is the midsummer.

Paved fountain-a fountain, or clear stream, rushing over pebbles; certainly not an artificially paved fountain.

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 a river made so proud, That they have overborne their continents:b 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;c And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, are undistinguishable; The human mortalsd want; their winter here, No night is now with hymn or carol bless'd :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 crown,

a Peiting-petty, contemptible.

b Continents-banks. A continent is that which contains.

Upon the green turf of their commons the shepherds and ploughmen of England were wont to cut a rude series of lines, upon which they arranged eighteen stones, divided between two players, who moved them alternately, as at chess or draughts, till the game was finished by one of the players having all-his pieces taken or impounded. This was the nine men's morris. Human mortals. Chapman, in his 'Homer,' has an inversion of the phrase" mortal humans.'

The human mortals want. Their winter is here-is comealthough the season is the latter summer, or autumn; and in consequence the hymns and carols which gladdened the nights of a seasonable winter are wanting to this premature one.