The raging rocks Of prison-gates; And Phibbus' car Shall shine from far, And make and mar The foolish Fates. This was lofty!-Now name the rest of the players. This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein; a lover's is more condoling. Quin. Francis Flute the bellows-mender. Flu. Here, Peter Quince. Quin. You must take Thisbe on you. Flu. What is Thisbe? a wandering knight? Quin. It is the lady that Pyramus must love. Flu. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I have a beard coming. Quin. That's all one: you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will.4 Bot. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe too: I'll speak in a monstrous little voice; Thisne, Thisne, Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisbe dear, and lady dear! Quin. No, no; you must play Pyramus:—and, Flute, you Thisbe. Bot. Well, proceed. players; and the captain says to one of them, "Sirrah, this is you that would rend and tear a cat upon the stage." And in The Roaring Girl, 1611, one of the persons is called Tear-cat. The phrase to make all split is met with repeatedly. So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady, ii. 3: "Two roaring boys of Rome, that made all split." Also in The Widow's Tears, by Chapman, i. 4: "Her wit I must employ upon this business to prepare my next encounter, but in such a fashion as shall make all split." 4 In The Merry Wives, i. 1, Slender says of Anne Page, "She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman." This speech of Peter Quince's shows, what is known from other sources, that the parts of women were used to be played by boys, or, if these could not be had, by men in masks. Quin. Robin Starveling the tailor. Star Here, Peter Quince. Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbe's mother. - Tom Snout the tinker. Snout. Here, Peter Quince. Quin. You, Pyramus' father; myself, Thisbe's father; — Snug the joiner, you, the lion's part: - and, I hope, here is a play fitted. Snug. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. Bot. Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar, that I will make the Duke say, Let him roar again, let him roar again. Quin. An 5 you should do it too terribly, you would fright the Duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all. All. That would hang us, every mother's son. Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an 'twere any nightingale. Quin. You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see in a Summer's day; a most lovely, gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus. Bot. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in? 5 An is an old colloquial equivalent for if. So the Poet uses, indifferently, an, or if, or both together, an if. And so in the common phrase, "without any ifs or ans." • Proper is handsome or fine-looking. Commonly so in Shakespeare. Quin. Why, what you will. Bot. I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.7 Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play barefaced.8. - 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 will we 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, such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not. Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse more obscenely and courageously. Quin. Take pains; be perfect: adieu. At the Duke's oak we meet. Bot. Enough; hold, or cut bow-strings.10 [Exeunt. 7 It seems to have been a custom to stain or dye the beard. So Ben Jonson in The Alchemist: "He has dyed his beard and all." 8 An allusion to the baldness attendant upon a particular stage of what was then termed the French disease. 9 The properties were the furnishings of the stage, and the keeper of them is, I think, still called the property-man. 10 This saying is no doubt rightly explained by Capell: "When a party was made at butts, assurance of meeting was given in the words of that phrase; the sense of the person using them being, that he would hold, or keep, his promise, or they might 'cut his bowstrings,' demolish him for an archer." Enter, from opposite sides, a Fairy, and PUCK. Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you? Thorough bush, thorough brier, Thorough flood, thorough fire, In those freckles live their savours: I must go seek some dewdrops here, 1 Collier informs us that "Coleridge, in his lectures in 1818, was very emphatic in his praise of the beauty of these lines: 'the measure,' he said, 'had been invented and employed by Shakespeare for the sake of its appropriateness to the rapid and airy motion of the Fairy by whom the passage is delivered.'" And in his Literary Remains, after analyzing the measure, he speaks of the "delightful effect on the ear," caused by "the sweet transition" from the amphimacers of the first four lines to the trochaic of the next two. 2 These orbs were the verdant circles which the old superstition here delineated called fairy-rings, supposing them to be made by the night-tripping fairies dancing their merry roundels. As the ground became parched under the feet of the moonlight dancers, Puck's office was to refresh it with sprinklings of dew, thus making it greener than ever. 3 The allusion is to Elizabeth's band of Gentleman Pensioners, who were chosen from among the handsomest and tallest young men of family and fortune; they were dressed in habits richly garnished with gold lace. And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Our Queen and all her elves come here anon. Puck. The King doth keep his revels here to-night: 4 It would seem that Puck, though he could "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," was heavy and sluggish in comparison with the other fairies: he was the lubber of the spirit tribe. Shakespeare's " lob of spirits" is the same as Milton's “lubbar fiend," in L'Allegro: And he, by friar's lantern led, Tells how the drudging goblin swet When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, That ten day-labourers could not end: Then lies him down the lubbar fiend, And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength. 5 A changeling was a child taken or given in exchange; it being a roguish custom of the fairies, if a child of great promise were born, to steal it away, and leave an ugly, or foolish, or ill-conditioned one in its stead. So in The Faerie Queene, i. 10, 65: From thence a Faery thee unweeting reft, Such, men do chaungelings call, so chaung'd by Faeries theft. How much comfort this old belief sometimes gave to parents, may be seen from Drayton's Nymphidia: And when a child haps to be got, Which after proves an idiot, And took away the other. |