Bottom had entered one of these little inclosures, and Puck came behind him and fixed the ass's nowl on his head. A furze-bush, and the other explanations of brake given by the commentators, are wholly inadmissible. III. 2. HERMIA. I understand not what you mean by this. This bad reading is found in all modern editions. One of the quartos, namely that printed by Fisher, gives what is the true reading. Hermia says, I understand not what you mean by this; to which Helena replies in a grave and serious tone, I do! IV. 1. BOTTOM. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of HAY; We have here an instance how imperfectly any printing can convey with fulness and precision all that a dramatist has written to be spoken on the stage. Bottom, half inan, half ass, is for a bottle of a; hay, or ale, for the actor was no doubt to speak in such a manner that both these words should be suggested. The snatch of an old song that follows is in praise of ale not hay. Bottom sings, stirred to it by the rural music, the rough music, as it is called, which we learn from the folio was introduced when Bottom had said "Let us have the tongs and the bones." IV. 1. TITANIA. So doth the wOODBINE, the sweet HONEYSUCKLE, Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. The passage is usually printed thus. When Johnson was young in Shakespeare criticism he put forth the following words:" Had Shakespeare had a dictionary of this kind he had not made the woodbine entwine the honeysuckle;" but when he published his edition of Shakespeare he wrote more warily, it occurring to him probably that Shakespeare was too accurate an observer of nature, and too careful in what he wrote, to represent the woodbine as entwining the honeysuckle, when in fact woodbine and honeysuckle are but two names for one and the same plant, or, at most, the honeysuckle is but the flower of the woodbine. There are two passages in Shakespeare in which he plainly means by "woodbine" what is more commonly known by the name of honeysuckle. But the identity of the two is put beyond doubt by the following passage in Googe's Book of Husbandry, just quoted :-" The other, the honeysuckle or the woodbine, beginneth to flower in June, and continueth with a pleasing sweet savour till the very latter end of summer." p. 180. All notion, therefore, of the woodbine entwisting the honeysuckle is excluded, and the passage should be so printed that a reader might not inadvertently so understand it. It seems to me that the woodbine and the sweet honeysuckle are here in what the grammarians call the state of apposition. The question then is-What does it entwist? And here is room for two opinions: first, it may be said that the expression is to be taken absolutely,—that it is a plant which naturally clings round anything by which it can be supported; or, secondly, the power of the word "entwist" be carried forward to the elm, in which case the proper may regulation of the would seem to be this :passage So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle, We perceive again in such a passage as this that writing is a less perfect medium of conveying the language of dialogue than speech. V. 1. THESEUS. Say what ABRIDGEMENT have you for this evening? See the remarks on the word abridgement under Hamlet, Act ii. sc. 2, Hamlet. V. 2. PUCK. If we shadows have offended Think but this and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here, This simple epilogue forms a graceful close to this beautiful drama; but I refer to it for the sake of remarking that in the first line we have a reference back to a sentiment in the play: "The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them," an apology for the actor and a compliment to the critic. What the poet had put into the mouth of one of the characters in respect of the poor attempts of the Athenian clowns, he now by the repetition of the word "shadows," in effect says for himself and his companions. وو "Shadows is a beautiful term by which to express actors, those whose life is a perpetual personation, a semblance but of something real, a shadow only of actual existences. The idea of this resemblance was deeply inwrought in the mind of the poet and actor. When at a later period he looked upon man again as but "a walking shadow," his mind immediately passed to the long-cherished thought, and he proceeds A poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, MACBETH, V. 5. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. In perusing this play we should keep constantly in mind the ideas which prevailed in England in the time of Shakespeare of the magnificence of Venice. Now, the name calls up ideas only of glory departed Her long life hath reached its final day; but in the age of the poet, Venice was gazed on with admiration by the people of every country, and by none with more devotion than those of England: Fair Venice, like a spouse in Neptune's arms; Harington's Verses to Lewkenor. Her merchants were princes-her palaces were adorned with the works of Titian, and she was moreover the seat of all pleasant delights The pleasure-place of all festivity, The revel of the world, the masque of Italy. Lewkenor, Moryson, and other English travellers of the age of Shakespeare, have described Venice, including Coryat, whose notices of it, despised name though his be, afford illustrations of this play which might have been used more than they have been by preceding commentators. He speaks of the palazzos of the merchants in the vicinity of the city, of the Rialto, and of the Ghetto, one of the islands on which the Jews lived, who were in number five or six thousand. He describes their dress, those born in Italy wearing red hats, while the Eastern or Levantine Jews wore yellow turbans.* The impression which the magnificence of Venice made upon this simple-minded but observant traveller may be judged of by the following passage, which will at the same time serve to shew how he became himself a butt for the sharp wits of his time, so that his merit as a traveller has been too much overlooked:-" This incomparable city, this most beautiful Queen, this untainted Virgin, this Paradise, this Tempe, this rich diadem and most flourishing garland of Christendom, of which the inhabitants may as proudly vaunt as I have read the Persians have done of their Ormus, who say that if the world were a ring then should Ormus be the gem thereof,the same, I say, may the Venetians speak of their city, and much more truly ;" and he concludes with saying that "if four of the richest manors in Somersetshire, where he was born, should have been bestowed upon him if he never saw Venice, he would say that seeing Venice was worth them all.”† Gosson, a writer likely to be well informed on such a subject, speaks of a play called The Jew, which exhibited both "the greediness of worldly chusers, and the bloody minds of usurers;" that is, it contained both the incidents of the caskets and the bond, between which there is no natural connection. Gosson's book, The School of Abuse, was published as early as 1579, so that there seems no room for doubt that there was a play the plot of which closely resembled that of * This reconciles the apparently discordant accounts of two excellent authorities, Vecellio and Saint Didier, respecting the costume of the Jews at Venice. See Knight's Pictorial Edition, M. of V. p. 398. + Crudities, 1611, ed. 1776, vol. ii. p. 76. Yet in one point Coryat claims a superiority for London.-"The play-house is very beggarly and base in comparison of our stately play-houses in England; neither can their actors compare with us for apparel, shows, and music."-This is a remarkable testimony; but there are many things which tend to exalt the opinion of the state of the theatres in London in Shakespeare's time above the level at which they are usually placed. |