To undergo such maiden pilgrimage: Her. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord, The. Take time to pause: and, by the next new moon, 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. Lys. You have her father's love, Demetrius; Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.5 Ege. Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my love; And what is mine my love shall render him; ! ! Lys. I am, my lord, as well deriv'd as he, And, which is more than all these boasts can be, Why should not I, then, prosecute my right? Upon this spotted and inconstant man. The. I must confess, that I have heard so much, My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come; [Exeunt THE. 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. - spotted-] As spotless is innocent, so spotted is wicked. Johnson. 7 Beteem them - Give them, bestow upon them. The word is used by Spenser. Johnson. "So would I, said th' enchanter, glad and fain Again, in The Case is Altered. How? Ask Dalio and Milo, 1605: That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, Her. If then 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.4 Lys. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia. There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee: So, in Ben Jonson's Poetaster : - Thou hast not collied thy face enough." Steevens. 3 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. 4 play: Warburton. fancy's followers.] Fancy is love. So, afterwards, in this " Fair Helena in fancy following me." Steevens. |