By his best arrow with the golden head; Lyf. Keep promife, love: Look, here comes He lena. In that fame place thou haft appointed me, Lyfander does but just propofe her running away from her father at midnight, and ftraight he is at her oaths that the will meet him at the place of rendezvous. Not one doubt or hefitation, not one condition of affurance for Lyfander's conftancy. Either fhe was naufeoufly coming, or fhe had before jilted him, and he could not believe her without a thousand oaths. But Shakspeare obferved nature at another rate. The fpeeches are divided wrong, and must be thus rectified; when Lyfander had proposed her running away with him, the replies: Her. My good Lyjander and is going on, to afk fecurity for his fidelity. This he perceives, and interupts her with the grant of what the demands. Lyf. I wear to thee by Cupid's ftrongest bow, &c. ▬▬▬▬▬▬ Here the interrupts him in her turn; declares herself satisfied, and confents to meet him in the following words: Her. In that fame place thou hast appointed me, This divifion of the lines, befides preserving the character, gives the dialogue infinitely more force and fpirit. WARBURTON. This emendation is judicious, but not neceffary. I have therefore given the note without altering the text. The cenfure of men, as oftener perjured than women, seems to make that line more proper for the lady. JOHNSON. 4 by that fire that burn'd the Carthage queen,] Shakspeare had forgot that Thefeus performed his exploits before the Trojan war, and confequently long before the death of Dido. STEEVENS. Enter Enter Helena. Her. God fpeed, fair Helena! Whither away? Hel. Call you me fair? that fair again unfay. Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's fweet air. More tuneable than lark to fhepherd's ear, 5 The quarto reads--your fair. JOHNSON. The ready of the quarto is the true one, and I have restored it. Fair is ufed again as a fubftantive in the Comedy of Errors. Act. iii. f. 4. See vol. ii. p. 188: "My decayed fair, "A funny look of his would foon repair." STEEVENS. Your eyes are lode-ftars; ] This was a compliment not unfre quent among the old poets. The lode ftar is the leading or guiding ftar, that is, the pole-ftar. The magnet is, for the fame reafon, called the lode-Acne, either because it leads iron, or because it guides the failor. Milton has the fame thought in L'Allegro: "Tow'rs and battlements he fees "Bofom'd high in tufted trees, "Where perhaps fome beauty lies, "The cynofure of neighb'ring eyes." Davies calis Elizabeth, lode-ftone to hearts, and lode-flone to all eyes." JOHNSON. So, in the Spanish Tragedy: "Led by the loadftar of her heav'nly looks." Again, in the Battle of Alcazar, 1594: "The loadftar and the honour of our line." STEEVENS. 7-O, were favour fo!] Favour is feature, countenance So, in Twelfth-Night, act ii. fc. 4: + .. thine eye "Hath ftay'd upon fome favour that it loves." STEEVENS. 8 This emendation is taken from the Oxford edition. The old reading is, Your words Icatch. JOHNSON. The The reft I'll give to be to you tranflated 9. Her. I frown upon him, yet he loves me ftill. Her. I give him curfes, yet he gives me love. Her. The more I hate, the more he follows me. I 2 Her. Take comfort; he no more fhall fee my face; Lyfander and myself will fly this place.Before the time I did Lyfander fee3, Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me i O then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell! Lyf. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold: To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold Her filver vifage in the watry glass, Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grafs, 9-to be to you tranflated.] To tranflate, in our author, fometimes fignifies to change, to transform. So, in Timon: to present flaves and fervants "Tranflates his rivals.". 66 STEEVENS, His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.] The folio and one of the quartos read, His folly, Helena, is none of mine. JOHNSON. 2 None, but your beauty; would that fault were mine!] 1 would point this line thus: None. But your beauty; -Would that fault were mine! HENDERSON. 3 Perhaps every reader may not discover the propriety of these lines. Hermia is willing to comfort Helena, and to avoid all ap pearance of triumph over her. She therefore bids her not to con fider the power of pleafing, as an advantage to be much envied or or inuch defired, fince Hermia, whom the confiders as poffeffing it in the fupreme degree, has found no other effect it than the lofs of happiness. JOHNSON. (A time (A time that lovers, flights doth ftill conceal) Through Athens' gates have we devis'd to fteal. Her. And in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lye, Emptying our bofoms of their counfels fwell'd 3; 3 Emptying our bofoms of their counfels fwell'd; And thence, from Athens, turn away our eyes, This whole scene is strictly in rhyme; and that it deviates in thefe two couplets, I am perfuaded, is owing to the ignorance of the first, and the inaccuracy of the later editors: I have therefore ventured to restore the rhimes, as I make no doubt but the poet first gave them. Saveet was eafily corrupted into fwell'd, becaufe that made an antithefis to emptying: and ftrange companions our editors thought was plain English; but franger companies, a little quaint and unintelligible. Our author very often uses the fubAantive, Stranger adjectively; and companies to fignify companions: as Rich. II. act i: "To tread the stranger paths of banishment." And Hen. V: "His companies unlettered, rude and shallow." THEOBALD. Dr. Warburton retains the old reading, and perhaps justifiably for a bofom fwell'd with fecrets does not appear as an expreffion unlikely to have been used by our author, who speaks of a fluff'd bofom in Macbeth. In Lylly's Midas, 1592, is a fomewhat fimilar expression: “I am one of thofe whofe tongues are fwell'd with filence." Again, in our author's K. Richard II. 66 the unfeen grief "That fivells in filence in the tortur'd foul." In the fcenes of K. Richard II. there is likewife a mixture of rhime and blank verfe. I have therefore restored the old reading, -frange companions. Mr. Tyrwhitt concurs with Theobald. STEEVENS. I think, feet, the reading propofed by Theobald is right. Counfels relates in conftruction to emptying-and not to the last word in the line, as it is now made to do by reading well'd. A fimilar phrafeology is ufed by a writer contemporary with Shakspeare: "So ran the poor girls filling the air with fhrieks, "Emptying of all the colour their pale cheeks." Heywood's Apology for Actors, Sig. B. 4. 1610. The adjective all here added to colour, exactly answers, in conftruction, to fweet in the text, as regulated by Theobald. MALONE. There my Lyfander and myself shall meet : 5 Lyf. I will, my Hermia.-Helena, adieu : As you on him, Demetrius dote on you! [Exit Lyf. Hel. How happy fome, o'er other fome, can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as the. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not fo; He will not know what all but he do know. And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes, So I admiring of his qualities. Things bafe and vile, holding no quantity, Love can tranfpofe to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind; Nor hath love's mind of any judgment tafte; Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy hafte : And therefore is love faid to be a child, Because in choice he is fo oft beguil'd. As waggish boys themselves in game forfwear, So the boy love is perjur'd every where: when Phabe doth behold, &c. } Shakspeare has a little forgotten himfelf. It appears from page 4. that to-morrow night would be within three nights of the new moon, when there is no moonshine at all, much less at deep midnight. The fame overfight occurs in page 59. BLACKSTONE. S no quantity, Quality feems a word more fuitable to the fenfe than quantity, but either may ferve. JOHNSON. 6 in game] Game here fignifies not contentious play, but Sport, jeft. So Spenfer : "'twixt earnest and 'twixt game." JOHNSON. For |