To live a barren sister all your life,

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage:
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd",
Than that, which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.
HER. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up
Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke"

5 For AYE- -] i. e. for ever. So, in K. Edward II. by Marlowe, 1622:

"And sit for aye enthronized in heaven."

STEEVENS.

6 But EARTHLIER happy is the rose DISTILL D,] Thus all the copies yet earthlier is so harsh a word, and earthlier happy, for happier earthly, a mode of speech so unusual, that I wonder none of the editors have proposed earlier happy. JOHNSON. It has since been observed, that Mr. Pope did propose earlier. We might read-earthly happy. STEEVENS. Mr. Capell proposed to read earthly happier. the rose distill'd." So, in Lyly's Midas, 1592: " You bee all young and faire, endeavour to bee wise and vertuous; that when, like roses, you shall fall from the stalke, you may be gathered, and put to the still."

Boswell.

This image, however, must have been generally obvious, as in Shakspeare's time the distillation of rose water was a common process in all families. STEEvens.

This is a thought in which Shakspeare seems to have much delighted. We meet with it more than once in his Sonnets. As in his fifth Sonnet :

- Flowers distilled, though they with winter meet, "Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet." So, in the fifty-fourth Sonnet:

"The canker buds have full as deep a dye,

"As the perfumed tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,

"When summer's breath their masqued buds discloses :

"But for their virtue only is their show,

They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade:

"Die to themselves; sweet roses do not so;

"Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made."

MALONE.

My soul consents not to give sovereignty.

THE. Take time to pause: and, by the next new

moon,

(The sealing-day betwixt my love and me,
For everlasting bond of fellowship,)
Upon that day either prepare to die,
For disobedience to your father's will;

Or else, to wed Demetrius, as he would:
Or on Diana's altar to protest,

For aye, austerity and single life.

DEM. Relent, sweet Hermia ;-And, Lysander, yield

Thy crazed title to my certain right.

Lrs. You have her father's love, Demetrius ; Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.

7

whose unwished yoke-] Thus both the quartos 1600, and the folio 1623. The second folio reads

66

to whose unwished yoke —.'

STEEVENS.

Dele to, and for unwish'd r. unwished.-Though I have been in general extremely careful not to admit into my text any of the innovations made by the editor of the second folio, from ignorance of our poet's language or metre, my caution was here over-watched; and I printed the above lines as exhibited by that and all the subsequent editors, of which the reader was apprized in a note. The old copies should have been adhered to, in which they appear thus:

66

66

Ere I will yield my virgin patent up

Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke

My soul consents not to give sovereignty."

i. e. to give sovereignty to. See various instances of this kind of phraseology in a note on Cymbeline, scene the last. The change was certainly made by the editor of the second folio, from his ignorance of Shakspeare's phraseology. MALONE.

I have adopted the present elliptical reading, because it not only renders the line smoother, but serves to exclude the disgusting recurrence of the preposition-to; and yet if the authority of the first folio had not been supported by the quartos, &c. I should have preferred the more regular phraseology of the folio 1632. STEEVENS.

8 You have her father's love, Demetrius ;

Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.] I suspect that Shakspeare wrote:

EGE. Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my love;

And what is mine my love shall render him;
And she is mine; and all my right of her
I do estate unto Demetrius.

Lys. I am, my lord, as well deriv'd as he,
As well possess'd; my love is more than his;
My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd,

If not with vantage, as Demetrius';

And, which is more than all these boasts can be,
I am belov'd of beauteous Hermia:

Why should not I then prosecute my right?
Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,
And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,
Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,

Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

THE. I must confess, that I have heard so much, And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof; But, being over-full of self-affairs,

My mind did lose it.-But, Demetrius, come;
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me,

I have some private schooling for you both.—
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up
(Which by no means we may extenuate,)
To death, or to a vow of single life.—
Come, my Hippolyta; What cheer, my love?—
Demetrius, and Egeus, go along :

I must employ you in some business
Against our nuptial; and confer with you

Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.

'Let me have Hermia; do you marry him." TYRWHITT. So, in K. Lear:

"Let pride which she calls plainness marry her."

STEEVENS.

9-spotted] As spotless is innocent, so spotted is wicked.

JOHNSON.

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 love 2 never did run smooth:
But, either it was different in blood;

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

'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 Alter'd. 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.

3

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

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 :

Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years;
HER. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young!
Lys. 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":

* So quartos; first folio, merit.

"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.

3 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." STEEvens. 6 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 :] 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 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.