Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. [Exit. Bot. Why do they run away? this is a knavery of them, to make me afeard!4 Re-enter SNOUT. Snout. O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?5 Bot. What do you see? you see an ass's head of your own; do you? Re-enter QUINCE. Quin. Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art translated. [Exit. Bot. I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can: I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid. [Sings. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. VI, c. viii: "Through hills, through dales, through bushes and through briars, "Long thus she bled," &c. Malone. The alliteration evidently requires some word beginning with ab. We may therefore read: 4 "Through bog, through burn, through bush, through brake, through brier." Ritson. to make me afeard.] Afear is from to fear, by the old form of the language, as an hungered, from to hunger. So adry, for thirsty. Johnson. 5 O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?] It is plain, by Bottom's answer, that Snout mentioned an ass's head. Therefore we should read: Snout. O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee? An ass's head? Johnson. stay till cold weather come, "I'll help thee to an ouzel and a field-fare.” P. Holland, however, in his translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. B. X, c. xxiv, represents the ouzle and the blackbird as different birds. In The Arbor of Amorous Devises, 4to. bl. 1. are the following lines: "The chattering pie, the jay, and eke the quaile, The former leaf and the title-page being torn out of the copy I consulted, I am unable either to give the two preceding lines of the stanza, or to ascertain the date of the book. Steevens. From the following passage in Gwazzo's Civile Conversation, 1586, p. 139, it appears that ousels and blackbirds were the same birds: "She would needs have it that they were two ousels or blackbirds." Reed. The Ousel differs from the Black-bird by having a white crescent upon the breast, and is besides rather larger. See Lewin's English Birds. Douce. 7 The throstle-] So, in the old metrical romance of The Squhr of low degree, bl. 1. no date: "The pee and the popinjaye, "The thrustele, sayinge both nyght and daye." Again, in the first book of Gower De Confessione Amantis, 1554: "The throstel with the nightingale." It appears from the following passage in Thomas Newton's Herball to the Bible, 8vo, 1587, that the throstle is a distinct bird from the thrush: "There is also another sort of myrte or myrtle, which is wild, whose berries the mavises, throssels, owsells, and thrushes delite much to eate." Steevens. 8 What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?] Perhaps à parody on a line in The Spanish Tragedy, often ridiculed by the poets of our author's time: "What outcry calls me from my naked bed?" The Spanish Tragedy was entered on the Stationers' books in 1592. Malone. Dd Whose note full many a man doth mark, for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry, cuckoo, never so? Tita. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again: Bot. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days: The more 9-plain-song cuckoo, &c.] That is, the cuckoo, who, having no variety of strains, sings in plain song, or in plano cantu; by which expression, the uniform modulation or simplicity of the chaunt was anciently distinguished, in opposition to prick-song, or variegated musick, sung by note. Skelton introduces the birds singing the different parts of the service of the funeral of his favourite sparrow: among the rest is the cuckoo. P. 227, edit. Lond. 1736: "But with a large and a long "Our chanters shall be your cuckoue," &c. T. Warton. Again, in The Return from Parnassus: "Our life is a plain song with cunning penn'd." Again, in Hans Beer-pot's Invisible Comedy, &c. "The cuckoo sings not worth a groat, " Because she never changeth note." Steevens. 1 Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note, move me, On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee.] These lines are in one quarto of 1600, the first folio of 1623, the second of 1632, and the third of 1664, &c. ranged in the following order: Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note, And thy fair virtue's force (perforce) doth move me. This reading I have inserted, not that it can suggest any thing better than the order to which the lines have been restored by Mr. Theobald from another quarto, [Fisher's] but to show that some liberty of conjecture must be allowed in the revisal of works so inaccurately printed, and so long neglected. Johnson. Fishes's arrangement is confirmed by 2018. of 1632 |