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Enter Prologue.

Prol. If we offend, it is with our good will,
That you should think, we come not to offend,
But with good-will. To shew our simple skill,
That is the true beginning of our end.
Consider then, we come but in despite.

We do not come as minding to content you,
All for your delight,

Our true intent is.
We are not here.

That you should here repent you,

The actors are at hand; and, by their show,

You shall know all that you are like to know.

The. This fellow doth not stand upon points.

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Lys. He hath rid his prologue, like a rough colt; he knows not the stop. A good moral, my lord: It is not enough to speak, but to speak true.

Hip. Indeed he hath played on this prologue, like a child on a recorder;3 a sound, but not in government.4 The. His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?

Enter PYRAMUS and THISBE, Wall, Moonshine, and Lion, as in dumb show.5

Prol. "Gentles, perchance, you wonder at this show; "But wonder on, till truth make all things plain. "This man is Pyramus, if you would know; "This beauteous lady Thisby is, certain."

3 on a recorder;] Lord Bacon, in his Natural History, cent. iii, sect. 221, speaks of recorders and flutes at the same instant, and says that the recorder hath a less bore, and a greater, above and below; and elsewhere, cent. ii, sect. 187, he speaks of it as having six holes, in which respect it answers to the Tibia minor, or Flajolet, of Mersennus. From all which particulars it should seem that the flute and the recorder were different instruments, and that the latter, in propriety of speech, was no other than the flagelet. Hawkins's History of Musick, Vol. IV, p. 479. Reed. Shakspeare introduces the same instrument in Hamlet; and Milton says: "To the sound of soft recorders." The recorder is mentioned in many of the old plays. Steevens. · but not in government.] That is, not regularly, according to the tune. Steevens.

4

Hamlet, speaking of a recorder, says:-" Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb; give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music." This explains the meaning of government in this passage. M. Mason.

5 In this place the folio, 1623, exhibits the following prompter's direction: Tawyer with a trumpet before them. Steevens.

"This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present "Wall, that vile wall which did these lovers sunder: "And through wall's chink, poor souls, they are content "To whisper; at the which let no man wonder. "This man, with lantern, dog, and bush of thorn, "Presenteth moon-shine: for, if you will know, "By moon-shine did these lovers think no scorn "To meet at Ninus' tomb," there, there to woo. "This grisly beast, which by name lion hight, "The trusty Thisby, coming first by night, "Did scare away, or rather did affright:

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6 This beauteous lady Thisby is, certáin.] A burlesque was here intended on the frequent recurrence of "certain" as a bungling rhyme in poetry more ancient than the age of Shakspeare.

Thus, in a short poem entitled "A lytell Treatise called the Dysputacyon or the Complaynte of the Herte through perced with the Lokynge of the Eye. Imprynted at Lōdon in Fletestrete at the Sygne of the Sonne by Wynkyn de Worde:"

"And houndes syxescore and mo certayne-
"To whome my thought gan to strayne certayne-
"Whan I had fyrst syght of her certayne-

"In all honoure she hath no pere certayne

"To loke upon a fayre Lady certayne

"As moch as is in me I am contente certayne

"They made there both two theyr promysse certayne→→→→ "All armed with margaretes certayne

"Towardes Venus when they sholde go certayne," &c. Again, in the ancient MS. romance of the Sowdon of Babyloyne: "He saide the xii peres bene alle dede,

"And ye spende your good in vayne,
"And therefore doth nowe by my rede,
"Ye shall see them no more certeyn."

Again, ibid:

"The kinge turned him ageyn,

"And alle his ooste him with,

"Towarde Mountribble certeyne,” &c. Steevens.

7 To meet at Ninus' tomb, &c.] So, in Chaucer's Legend of Thisbe

of Babylon:

Again:

"Thei settin markes ther metingis should be,
"There king Ninus was graven undir a tre.”

"And as she ran her wimple she let fall," &c. Again, Golding in his version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, B. IV, has a similar line:

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"And as she fled away for haste, she let her mantle fall."

Steevens.

which by name lion hight,] As all the other parts of this speech are in alternate rhyme, excepting that it closes with a

"And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall;9
"Which lion vile with bloody mouth did stain:
"Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth, and tall,

"And finds his trusty Thisby's mantle slain:
"Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade,1
"He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast;
"And, Thisby tarrying in mulberry shade,
"His dagger drew, and died.

For all the rest,

couplet; and as no rhyme is left to name, we must conclude, either a verse is slipt out, which cannot now be retrieved; or, by a transposition of the words, as I have placed them, the poet intended a triplet. Theobald.

Hight, in old English, signifies-is called. I think it more probable that a line, following the words—by night, has been lost.

Malone.

9 •her mantle she did fall:] Thus all the old copies. The modern editors read-" she let fall," unnecessarily. To fall in this instance is a verb active..

So, in The Tempest, Act II, sc. i:

"And when I rear my hand, do you the like,
"To fall it on Gonzalo." Steevens.

1 Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,] Mr. Upton rightly observes that Shakspeare, in this line, ridicules the affectation of beginning many words with the same letter. He might have remarked the same of

"The raging rocks

"And shivering shocks."

Gascoigne, contemporary with our poet, remarks and blames the same affectation. Johnson.

It is also ridiculed by Sidney, in his Astrophel and Stella, 15: "You that do Dictionaries' method bring

"Into your rimes, running in rattling rowes."

But this alliteration seems to have reached the height of its fashion in the reign of Henry VIII. The following stanza is quoted from a poem, On the Fall and evil Success of Rebellion, written in 1537, by Wilfride Holme:

"Loe, leprous lurdeins, lubricke in loquacitie,
"Vah, vaporous villeins, with venim vulnerate,
"Proh, prating parenticides, plexious to pinnositie,
"Fie, frantike fabulators, furibund, and fatuate,
"Out, oblatrant, oblict, obstacle, and obsecate.
"Ah addict algoes, in acerbitie acclamant,
66 Magnall in mischief, malicious to mugilate,

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Repriving your Roy so renowned and radiant." In Tusser's Husbandry, p. 104, there is a poem of which every word begins with a T; and in the old play entitled: The Historic of the Two valiant Knights, Syr Clyomon Knight of the Golden Sheeld, Sonne to the King of Denmark; and Clamydes the White Knight, Son

"Let lion, moon-shine, wall, and lovers twain,
"At large discourse, while here they do remain."

[Exeunt Prol. THIS. Lion, and Moon.

The. I wonder, if the lion be to speak.

Dem. No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do.

Wall." In this same interlude, it doth befall, "That I, one Snout by name, present a wall: “And such a wall, as I would have you think, "That had in it a cranny'd hole, or chink, "Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby, "Did whisper often very secretly.

“This loam, this rough-cast, and this stone, doth show "That I am that same wall; the truth is so:

"And this the cranny is,2 right and sinister,

"Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper." The. Would you desire lime and hair to speak better? Dem. It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse, my lord.3

The. Pyramus draws near the wall: silence!

to the King of Suavia, 1599, is another remarkable instance of alliteration:

"Bringing my bark to Denmark here, to bide the bitter

broyle

"And beating blowes of billows high," &c. Steevens.*

2 And this the cranný is,] So, in Golding's Ovid, 1567:

"The wall that parted house from house had riuen therein a

crany

"Which shronke at making of the wall. This fault not markt

of any

"Of many hundred yeares before (what doth not loue espie)
"These louers first of all found out, and made a way thereby
"To talk to gither secretly, and through the same did goe
"Their louing whisperings verie light and safely to and fro.”

Ritson.

3 It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse, my lord.] Demetrius is represented as a punster: I believe the passage should be read: This is the wittiest partition, that ever I heard in discourse. Alluding to the many stupid partitions in the argumentative writings of the time. Shakspeare himself, as well as his contemporaries, uses discourse for reasoning; and he here avails himself of the double sense; as he had done before in the word, partition. Farmer...

Enter PYRAMUS.

Pyr. "O grim-look'd night! O night, with hue so black!

"O night, which ever art, when day is not! "O night, O night, alack, alack, alack,

"I fear my Thisby's promise is forgot!— "And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,

"That stand'st between her father's ground and mine; "Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,

eyne.

"Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine [Wall holds up his fingers. "Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this! "But what see I? No Thisby do I see.

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“ O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss; "Curst be thy stones, for thus deceiving me!"

The. The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.

Pyr. No, in truth, sir, he should not. Deceiving me, is Thisby's cue: she is to enter now, and I am to spy her through the wall. You shall see, it will fall pat as I told you:-Yonder she comes.

Enter THISBE.

This. "O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans, "For parting my fair Pyramus and me:

"My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones;

"Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee."5
Pyr. “ I see a voice: now will I to the chink,
"To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face.

"Thisby !"

This. "My love! thou art my love, I think."

Pyr. "Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover's grace;

"And, like Limander, am I trusty still."

This. “And I like Helen, till the fates me kill."
Pyr. "Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true."
This. “ As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.”

4 O wicked wall, &c.] So, in Chaucer's Legend of Thisbe: "Thus would thei saine, alas! thou wicked wal," &c.

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Steevens.

knit up in thee.] Thus the folio. The quarto reads-knit now again. Steevens.

6 And, like Limander, &c.] Limander and Helen, are spoken by the blundering player, for Leander and Hero. Shafalis and Procrus, for Cephalus and Procris. Johnson.

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