14 SCENE IV.-"We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf," &c.

The masque of ladies, or amazons, in Shakspere's 'Timon,' is preceded by a Cupid, who addresses the company in a speech. This "device" was a practice of courtly life, before and during the time of Shakspere. But here he

says,

"The date is out of such prolixity."

The "Tartar's painted bow of lath" is the bow of the Asiatic nations, with a double curve; and Shakspere employed the epithet to distinguish the bow of Cupid from the old English long bow. The "crow-keeper," who scares the ladies, had also a bow:-he is the shuffle or mawkin-the scarecrow of rags and straw, with a bow and arrow in his hand. "That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper," says Lear. The "without-book prologue faintly spoke after the prompter," is supposed by Warton to allude to the boy-actors that we afterwards find so fully noticed in Hamlet.

15 SCENE IV.-" We'll measure them a measure." The "measure was the courtly dance of the days of Elizabeth; not so solemn as the pavanthe "doleful pavan," as Davenant calls it, in which princes in their mantles, and lawyers in their long robes, and courtly dames with enormous trains, swept the rushes like the tails of peacocks. From this circumstance came its name, the pavan-the dance of the peacock. The "measure" may be best described in Shakspere's own words, in the mouth of the lively Beatrice, in Much Ado about Nothing':"The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not woo'd in good time; if the prince be too important, tell him there is measure in every thing, and so dance out the answer. hear me, Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical: the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave."

For

Burgmair, relating to this subject. A witch enters the stable with a lighted torch; and previously to the operation of entangling the horse's mane, practises her enchantments on the groom, who is lying asleep on his back, and apparently influenced by the nightmare. The belemnites, or elf-stones, were regarded as charms against the last-mentioned disease and against evil spirits of all kinds; but the cerauniæ, or botuli, and all perforated flint stones, were not only used for the same purpose, but more particularly for the protection of horses and other cattle, by suspending them in stables, or tying them round the necks of the animals."

The next line,

"And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs," seems to be unconnected with the preceding, and to mark a superstition, which, as Dr. Warburton has observed, may have originated from the plica Polonica, which was supposed to be the operation of the wicked elves, whence the clotted hair was called elf-locks, and elf-knots. Thus Edgar talks of "elfing all his hair in knots."

21 SCENE IV.

It is desirable to exhibit the first draft of a performance so exquisitely finished as this celebrated description, in which every word is a study. And yet it is curious that in the quarto of 1609, and in the folio (from which we print), in both of which the corrections of the author are apparent, the whole speech is given as if it were in prose. The original quarto of 1597

gives the passage as follows:

"Ah, then I see queen Mab hath been with you,
She is the fairies' midwife, and doth come
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the forefinger of a burgomaster,
Drawn with a team of little atomy,
Athwart men's noses when they lie asleep.
Her waggon-spokes are made of spinners' webs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces are the moonshine watery beams,
The collars cricket bones, the lash of films.
Her waggoner is a small grey-coated fly
Not half so big as is a little worm,
Pick'd from the lazy finger of a maid.
And in this sort she gallops up and down
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers knees, who straight on courtesies dream;
O'er ladies' lips, who dream on kisses straight,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a lawyer's lap,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson's nose that lies asleep,
And then dreams he of another benefice.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a soldier's nose,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, countermines,
Of healths five fathom deep, and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And swears a prayer or two, and sleeps again :
This is that Mab that makes maids lie on their backs,
And makes them women of good carriage.
This is the very Mab,

That plaits the manes of horses in the night,
And plaits the elf-locks in foul sluttish hair,
Which once untangled much misfortune breeds."

22 SCENE V.-" Remove the court cupboard.”

The court cupboard was the ornamental sideboard, set out with salvers and beakers on days of festivity. We have in a play of 1599, "accomplished the court cupboard;" and in another by Chapman, in 1606, "Here shall stand my court cupboard with its furniture of plate." In Italy the art of Benvenuto Cellini was lavished upon the exquisite ornaments of the court cupboard.

23 SCENE I." When king Cophetua lov'd the | beggar-maid."

THE ballad of King Cophetua and the beggarmaid was amongst the most popular of old English ballads, allusions to which were familiar to Shakspere's audience. Upon the authority of learned Master "Moth" in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' it was an ancient ballad in Shakspere's day :

"Armado. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?

Moth. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some

three ages since; but, I think, now 't is not to be found,

or, if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune.

Arm. I will have that subject newly writ o'er." We have two versions of this ballad :-the one published in A Collection of Old Ballads,' quoted by Grey, in 1754; the other in Percy's 'Reliques.' Both of these compositions appear

long before, or perhaps after, Shakspere's time: we subjoin a stanza of each :

FROM PERCY'S 'RELIQUES.'

"I read that once in Africa

A princely wight did reign,
Who had to name Cophetua,
As poets they did feign:

From nature's laws he did decline,
For sure he was not of my mind,
He cared not for womankind,

But did them all disdain.

But mark, what happened on a day,
As he out of his window lay,

He saw a beggar all in grey,

The which did cause him pain.

The blinded boy, that shoots so trim,
From heaven down did hie,

He drew a dart and shot at him,
In place where he did lie."

FROM A COLLECTION OF OLD BALLADS.' "A king once reigned beyond the seas,

As we in ancient stories find,

Whom no fair face could ever please,
He cared not for womankind.

He despis'd the sweetest beauty,

And the greatest fortune too;
At length he married to a beggar;
See what Cupid's dart can do.

The blind boy that shoots so trim,

Did to his closet window steal,

And made him soon his power feel.

He that never cared for women,

But did females ever hate,

At length was smitten, wounded, swooned, For a beggar at his gate."

24 SCENE I.-I'll to my truckle-bed." The original quarto has, "I'll to my trundlebed." It appears somewhat strange that Mercutio should speak of sleeping in a truckle

plain the sort of bed-a running-bed. The furniture of a sleeping-chamber in Shakspere's time consisted of a standing-bed, and a truckle-bed. "There's his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed, and trucklebed," says mine host of the Garter, in the 'Merry Wives of Windsor.' The standing-bed was for the master; the truckle-bed, which ran under it, for the servant. It may seem strange, therefore, that Mercutio should talk of sleeping in the bed of his page; but the next words will solve the difficulty:

"This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep." The field-bed, in this case, was the ground; but the field-bed,' properly so called, was the travelling bed; the lit de champ, called, in old English, the "trussyng-bedde." The bed next beyond the luxury of the trussyng-bed was the truckle-bed; and therefore Shakspere naturally takes that in preference to the standing-bed.

25 SCENE II." Well, do not swear," &c. Coleridge has a beautiful remark on this passage, and on the whole of the scene, which we extract:-" With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the safety of the object, a disinterestedness, by which it is distinguished from the counterfeits of its name. Compare this scene with Act III. Scene 1. of the 'Tempest.' I do not know a more wonderful instance of Shakspere's mastery in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same remembered air, than in the transporting love confessions of Romeo and Juliet, and Ferdinand and Miranda. There seems more passion in the one, and more dignity in the other; yet you feel that the sweet girlish lingering and busy movement of Juliet, and the calmer and more maidenly fondness of Miranda, might easily pass into each other."

26 SCENE II.-" O, for a falconer's voice,

To lure this tassel-gentle back again!" The falconer's voice was the voice which the hawk was constrained by long habit to obey. Gervase Markham, in his 'Country Contentments,' has picturesquely described the process of training hawks to this obedience, "by watching and keeping them from sleep, by a continual carrying them upon your fist, and by a most familiar stroking and playing with them, with the wing of a dead fowl, or such like, and by

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