Mer. I mean, sir, in delay We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. Take our good meaning; for our judgment sits Five times in that, ere once in our five wits. 66 In The Comedy of Errors, the word is written as in the first copy of this play, and is used in the same sense : such a one as a man may not speak of, without he say sir-reverence,”. And in Much Ado about Nothing, it occurs as now printed in the text: "I think you will have me say (save reverence) a husband" printer of the quarto, 1599, exhibited the line thus unintelligibly: Or, save you reverence, love The which was followed by the next quarto, of 1609, and by the folio with a slight variation. The editor of the folio, whenever he found an error in a later quarto, seems to have corrected it by caprice, without examining the preceding copy. He reads-Or, save your reverence, &c. Malone. 1 — we burn day-light, ho] To burn day-light is a proverbial expression, used when candles, &c. are lighted in the day time. See Vol. III, p. 51, n. 1. Chapman has not very intelligibly employed this phrase in his translation of the twentieth Iliad: "And all their strength 66 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ no more shall burn in vain the day." Steevens. 2 Five times in that, &c.] The quarto, 1597, reads: "Three times a day," and right wits, instead of fine wits. Steevens. -for our judgment sits Five times in that, ere once in our five wits.] The quarto, 1599, and the folio, have-our fine wits. Shakspeare is on all occasions so fond of antithesis, that I have no doubt he wrote five, not fine. The error has happened so often in these plays, and the emendation is so strongly confirmed by comparing these lines as exhibited in the enlarged copy of this play, with the passage as it stood originally, that I have not hesitated to give the reading which I proposed some time ago, a place in the text. The same mistake has happened in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Vol. II, p. 341, n. 7, where we find in all the old copies -"of these fine the sense," instead of ". these five." Again, in King Henry VI, P I, Vol. X, p. 22, n. 1: "Deck'd with fine flower-de-luces," instead of-five," &c. In Coriolanus, (see Vol. XIII,) the only authentick ancient copy has-" the five strains of honour," for "the fine strains of honour." Indeed in the writing of Shakspeare's age, the u and n were formed exactly in the same manner; we are not to wonder therefore that ignorant transcribers should have confounded them. In the modern editions these errors have all been properly amended.-See also on the same point, Vol. III, p. 140, n. 5; Vol. VI, p. 318, n. 1; and in Timon of Athens, Vol XV Shakspeare has again mentioned the five wits in Much Ado about Nothing, (see Vol. IV,) in King Lear, and in one of his Son Rom. And we mean well, in going to this mask; But 'tis no wit to go. Rom. In bed, asleep, while they do dream things true. Mer. O, then,3 I see, queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife;4 and she comes nets. Again, in the play before us: "Thou hast more of the wildgoose in one of thy wits, than, I am sure I have in my whole five." Mercutio is here also the speaker. In the first quarto the line stands thus: "Three times in that, ere once in our right wits." When the poet altered "three times" to "five times," he, without doubt, for the sake 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. 30, then, &c.] In the quarto, 1597, after the first line of Mercutio's speech, Romeo says, QQueen Mab, what's she? and the printer, by a blunder, has given all the rest of the speech to the same character. Steevens. 4 O, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife;] The fairies' midwife does not mean the midwife to the fairies, but that she was the person among the fairies, whose department it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping 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 subjects. Steevens. I apprehend, and with no violence of interpretation, that by "the fairies' midwife," the poet means, the midwife among the fairies, because it was her peculiar employment to steal the new. born babe in the night, and to leave another in its place. The poet here uses her general appellation, and character, which yet has so far a proper reference to the present train, of fiction, as that her illusions were practised on persons in bed or asleep; for she not only haunted women in childbed, but was likewise the incubus or night mare: Shakspeare, by employing her here, alludes at large to her midnight pranks performed on sleepers; but denominates her from the most notorious one, of her personating the drowsy midwife, who was insensibly carried away into some distant water, and substituting a new birth in the bed or cradle. It would clear the appellation to read the fairy midwife. The poet avails himself of Mab's appropriate province, by giving her this nocturnal agency. T. Warton. In shape no bigger than an agate-stone Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs; Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, 5 On the fore-finger of an alderman,] The quarto, 1597, readsof a burgo-master. The alteration was probably made by the poet himself, as we find it in the succeeding copy, 1599: but in order to familiarize the idea, he has diminished its propriety. In the pictures of burgo-masters, 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 ornament on the thumb. So again, Glapthorne, in his comedy of Wit in a Constable, 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. 6 of little atomies -] Atomy is no more than an obsolete substitute for atom. In Drayton's Nimphidia there is likewise a description of Queen Mab's chariot: "Four nimble gnats the horses were, "Upon the coach-box getting: "Her chariot of a snail's fine shell, "Which for the colours did excell, "The fair Queen Mab becoming well, "The wing of a py'd butterflee, "I trow, 'twas simple trimming: "The wheels 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." Steevens. Drayton's Nimphidia was written several years after this tra gedy. See Vol. II, p. 266, n. 8. Malone. Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love: 7 with sweet-meats-] i. e. kissing-comfits. These artificial aids to perfume the breath, are mentioned by Falstaff, in the last Act of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Malone. 8 Sometime she gallops d'er a courtier's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit: &c.] Mr. Pope reads lawyer's nose. Steevens. The old editons have it-courtier's nose; and this undoubtedly is the true reading; and for these reasons: First, In the new reading there is a vicious repetition in this fine speech; the same thought having been given in the foregoing line: "O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees:" Nor can it be objected that there will be the same fault if we read courtiers', it having been said before: "On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight:" Because they are shown in two places under different views: in the first, their foppery; in the second, their rapacity is ridiculed. Secondly, in our author's time, a court-solicitation was called, simply, a suit, and a process, a suit at law, to distinguish it from the other. "The King (says an anonymous contemporary writer of the Life of Sir William Cecil) called him [Sir William Ce. cil] 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 sUITOR for the reversion of the Custos-brevium office in the Common Pleas; which the king wil. lingly granted, it being the first SUIT he had in his life." Indeed our poet has very rarely turned his satire against lawyers and law proceedings, the common topick of later writers; for, to observe it to the honour of the English judicatures, they preserved the purity and simplicity of their first institution long after chicane had over-run all the other laws of Europe. Warburton. As almost every book of that age furnishes proofs of what Dr. Warburton has observed, I shall add but one other instance, from Decker's Guls Hornebocke, 1609: "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 passage 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 And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, in introducing the courtier twice. The second folio, I observe, reads: "On countries knees, —." which has lead me to conjecture, that the line ought to be read thus: On counties knees, that dream on court'sies straight:Counties I understand to signify noblemen in general. Paris, who, in one place, I think, is called earl, is most commonly styled the county 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 the players having jumbled together the varieties of several editions, as they certainly have done in other parts of the play. Tyrwhitt. In the present instance, I think, it is more probable that the repetition arose from the cause assigned by Mr. Steevens. Malone. At the first entry of the characters in the history of Orlando Furioso, played before Queen Elizabeth, and published in 1594 and 1599, Sacripant is called the Countie Sacripant. Again, Orlando, speaking of himself: "Surnam'd Orlando, the Countie Palatine." Countie is at least repeated twenty times in the same play. Shakspeare, as I have observed before, did not always attend to the propriety of his own alterations. Steevens. 9 Spanish blades,] A sword is called a toledo, from the excellence of the Toletan steel. So Grotius: Gladius Toletanus. "Unda Tagi non est uno celebranda metallo; The quarto, 1597, instead of Spanish blades, reads countermines. In the passage quoted from Grotius, alio has been constantly printed instead of uno, which makes it nonsense; the whole point of the couplet depending on that word. I have corrected it from the original. Malone. |