Against our nuptial; and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.
EGE. With duty, and desire we follow you.

Exeunt THES. HIP. EGE. DEM. and train. Lys. How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?

How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

HER. Belike, for want of rain; which I could

well

Beteem them' from the tempest of mine eyes.

Lys. Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love2 never did run smooth: But, either it was different in blood;

HER. O cross! too high to be enthrall❜d to low!3

1 Beteem them] Give them, bestow upon them. The word is used by Spenser. JOHNSON.

"So would I, said th' enchanter, glad and fain

"Beteem to you his sword, you to defend." Fairy Queen. Again, in The Case is Altered. How? Ask Dalio and Milo,

1605:

"I could beteeme her a better match."

But I rather think that to beteem, in this place, signifies (as in the northern counties) to pour out; from tommer, Danish. STEEVENS.

2 The course of true love-] This passage seems to have been imitated by Milton. Paradise Lost, B. X.-896. & seqq.

3

MALONE.

too high to be enthrall'd to low!] Love-possesses all the editions, but carries no just meaning in it. Nor was Hermia displeas'd at being in love; but regrets the inconveniences that generally attend the passion; either, the parties are disproportioned, in degree of blood and quality; or unequal, in respect of years; or brought together by the appointment of friends, and not by their own choice. These are the complaints represented by Lysander; and Hermia, to answer to the first, as she has done to the other two, must necessarily say:

O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low!

Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years; HER. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young! Lrs. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends: HER. O hell! to choose love by another's eye! Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it; Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night," That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say,-Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

6

So the antithesis is kept up in the terms; and so she is made to condole the disproportion of blood and quality in lovers.

THEOBALD.

The emendation is fully supported, not only by the tenour of the preceding lines, but by a passage in our author's Venus and Adonis, in which the former predicts that the course of love never shall run smooth:

"Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend,

"Ne'er settled equally, too high, or low," &c.

MALONE.

momentany as a sound,] Thus the quartos. The first folio reads-momentary. Momentany (says Dr. Johnson) is the old and proper word. STEEVENS.

"that short momentany rage," is an expression of Dryden. HENLEY.

5

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,] Collied, i. e. black, smutted with coal, a word still used in the midland counties. So, in Ben Jonson's Poetaster :

66

Thou hast not collied thy face enough.'

to say,

-Behold!

"

STEEVENS.

• That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power The jaws of darkness do devour it up :] Though the word spleen be here employed oddly enough, yet I believe it right. Shakspeare, always hurried on by the grandeur and multitude of his ideas, assumes every now and then, an uncommon licence in the use of his words. Particularly in complex moral modes

So quick bright things come to confusion.

HER. Ifthen true lovers have been ever cross'd, It stands as an edíct in destiny:

Then let us teach our trial patience,

Because it is a customary cross;

As due to love, as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers."

Lys. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia.

I have a widow aunt, a dowager

Of great revenue, and she hath no child:

8

From Athens is her house remote seven leagues; s
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us: If thou lov'st me then,
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.

it is usual with him to employ one, only to express a very few ideas of that number of which it is composed. Thus wanting here to express the ideas-of a sudden, or-in a trice, he uses the word spleen; which, partially considered, signifying a hasty sudden fit, is enough for him, and he never troubles himself about the further or fuller signification of the word. Here, he uses the word spleen for a sudden hasty fit; so just the contrary, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, he uses sudden for splenetic: "sudden quips." And it must be owned this sort of conversation adds a force to the diction. WARBURTON.

7 fancy's followers.] Fancy is love. So afterwards in this play:

"Fair Helena in fancy following me." STEEVENS. • From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;] Remote is the reading of both the quartos; the folio has-remov'd.

STEEVENS.

HER.

My good Lysander!

9

I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow;
By his best arrow with the golden head;
By the simplicity of Venus' doves;
By that which knitteth souls, and
prospers loves
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,
When the false Trojan under sail was seen;
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke ;-
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.

Lrs. Keep promise, love: Look, here comes
Helena.

Enter HELENA.

HER. God speed fair Helena! Whither away?

HEL. Call you me fair? that fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair:2 O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; 3 and your tongue's sweet

air

9 his best arrow with the golden head;] So, in Sidney's Arcadia, Book II:

arrowes two, and tipt with gold or lead: "Some hurt, accuse a third with horny head."

STEEVENS.

1 by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,] Shakspeare had forgot that Theseus performed his exploits before the Trojan war, and consequently long before the death of Dido. STEEVENS.

?Demetrius loves your fair:] Fair is used again as a substantive in The Comedy of Errors, Act III. sc. iv:

My decayed fair,

"A sunny look of his would soon repair."

Again, in The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601: "But what foul hand hath arm'd Matilda's fair?" Again, in A Looking Glass for London and England, 1598: "And fold in me the riches of thy fair."

More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching; O, were favour so!1
Your's would I catch," fair Hermia, ere I go;

7

Again, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599:

"Then tell me, love, shall I have all thy fair?"

Again, in Greene's Never too late, 1616: "Though she were false to Menelaus, yet her fair made him brook her follies." Again:

"Flora in tawny hid up all her flowers,
"And would not diaper the meads with fair."

STEEVENS.

Your eyes are lode-stars ;] This was a compliment not unfrequent among the old poets. The lode-star is the leading or guiding star, that is, the pole-star. The magnet is, for the same reason, called the lode-stone, either because it leads iron, or because it guides the sailor. Milton has the same thought in L'Allegro :

"Towers and battlements it sees
"Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
"Where perhaps some beauty lies,

"The cynosure of neighb'ring eyes."

Davies calls Queen Elizabeth:

"Lode-stone to hearts, and lode-stone to all eyes.”

So, in The Spanish Tragedy:

"Led by the loadstar of her heavenly looks."

Again, in The Battle of Alcazar, 1594:

JOHNSON.

"The loadstar and the honour of our line." STEEVENS. O, were favour so!] Favour is feature, countenance. So, in Twelfth-Night, Act II. sc. iv:

thine eye

"Hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves."

STEEVENS. Your's would I catch,] This emendation is taken from the Oxford edition. The old reading is-Your words I catch.

JOHNSON.

Mr. Malone reads- "Your words I'd catch." STEEVENS. The emendation [I'd catch] was made by the editor of the second folio. Sir T. Hanmer reads " Yours would I catch;" in which he has been followed by the subsequent editors. As the old reading (words) is intelligible, I have adhered to the ancient copies. MALONE.