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"O dainty duck! O dear!
"Thy mantle good,

"What, ftain'd with blood?
"Approach, ye furies fell!

O fates! come, come;

"Cut thread and thrums;

"Quail, crush, conclude, and quell'!" The. This paffion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look fad.

Hip. Befhrew my heart, but I pity the man. Pyr. "O, wherefore, nature, didft thou lions frame? "Since lion vile hath here deflour'd my dear : "Which is no, no-which was the faireft dame, "That liv'd, that lov'd, that lik'd, that look'd, "with cheer.

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"Come tears, confound;
"Out fword, and wound

"The pap of Pyramus :
"Ay, that left pap,

"Where heart doth hop :-
"Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.

"Now am I dead,

"Now am I fled;

"My foul is in the sky:

-cut thread and thrum ;] Thrum is the end or extremity of a weaver's warp; it is popularly used for very coarse yarn. The maids now call a mop of yarn a thrum mop. WARNER. So, in Hannibal and Scipio, 1637:

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no rough pelt of thrums,

"To fight with weather."

Again, in Chapman's tranflation of the 16th Iliad:

"And tapestries all golden fring'd, and curl'd with thrumbs behind."

So in Howell's Letter to Sir Paul Neale, knt.

"Tranfla

tions are like the wrong fide of a Turkey carpet, which useth to be full of thrums and knots, and nothing fo even as the right fide." STEEVENS.

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and quell!] To quell is to murther, to destroy. So, in the 12th pageant of the Lufus Coventrie, commonly called the Corpus Chrifti Play. MS. Cott. Vefp. D. viii:

"That he the lawe may bere do,

With ftonys her to quell." STEEVENS.

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Tongue,

"Tongue, lofe thy light!
"Moon take thy flight!
"Now die, die, die, die, die.

[Dies. Exit Moonshine. Dem. No die but an ace, for him; for he is but

one.

Lyf. Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.

The. With the help of a furgeon, he might yet recover, and prove an ass'.

Hip. How chance the moonfhine is gone, before Thisbe comes back and finds her lover?

The. She will find him by ftar-light-
Enter Thibe.

Here fhe comes, and her paffion ends the play.
Hip. Methinks, the fhould not use a long one, for
fuch a Pyramus: I hope, fhe will be brief.

Dem. A moth will turn the ballance, which Pyramus, which Thisbe, is the better 2.

Lyf. She hath fpied him already, with thofe fweet eyes.

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Dem. And thus fhe moans, videlicet 3.

Thif. Afleep, my love?
"What, dead, my dove?

"O Pyramus, arife,

and prove an afs.] The character of Thefeus throughout this play is more exalted in its humanity than its greatnefs. Though fome fenfible obfervations on life, and animated defcriptions fall from him, as it is faid of Jago, you shall tafte him more as a foldier than as a wit, which is a distinction he is here striving to deserve, though with little fuccefs; as in fupport of his pretenfions he never rifes higher than a pun, and frequently finks as low as a quibble. STEEVENS.

2 The first quarto makes this fpeech a little longer, but not better. JOHNSON.

The paffage omitted is, —

fhe for a woman, God bless us."

"He for a man, God warn'd us ; STEEVENS.

3 And thus fhe means-] Thus all the editions have it. It should be, thus fhe moans, i. e. laments over the dead Pyramus.

THEOBALD.

Speak

Speak, fpeak. Quite dumb?
"Dead, dead? A tomb
"Muft cover thy fweet eyes.
"Thefe lilly brows 4,
"This cherry nose,
"Thefe yellow cowflip cheeks,

"Are gone, are gone:
"Lovers, make moan!

"His eyes were green as leeks.
O fifters three,

"Come, come, to me,
With hands as pale as milk;
Lay them in gore',

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"Since you have fhore

"With fhears his thread of filk.

"Tongue, not a word

"Come, trufty sword;

4 Thofe lilly lips, this cherry nofe,] All Thisby's lamentation, till now, runs in regular rhime and metre. But both, by fome accident, are in this fingle inftance interrupted. I fufpect the poet wrote:

Thefe lilly brows,

This cherry nefe.

Now black brows being a beauty, lilly brows are as ridiculous as a cherry nofe, green eyes, or cowlip cheeks. THEOBALD.

Lilly lips are changed to lilly brows for the fake of the rhyme, but this cannot be right: Thisbe has before celebrated her Pyramus, as

"Lilly-white of hue."

It should be:

"Thefe lips lilly,

"This nofe cherry."

This mode of pofition adds not a little to the burlesque of the paffage. FARMER.

We meet with fomewhat like this paffage in George Peele's Old Wives Tale, 1595.

"Her corall lippes, her crimson chinne,

"Thou art a flouting knave. Her corall lippes, her crimson chinne!" STEEVENS.

5 Lay them in gore,] Mr. Theobald and Dr. Warburton instead of lay, read lave, but have no note to justify their alteration.

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STEEVENS.
"Come,

"Come, blade, my breaft imbrue :
"And farewel, friends;-

"Thus Thisby ends:

Adieu, adieu, adieu."

[Dies.

The. Moonshine and lion are left to bury the dead.
Dem. Ay, and wall too.

Bot. No, I affure you; the wall is down that parted their fathers. Will it pleafe you to fee the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomafk dance, between two of our company??

The. No cpilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excufe. Never excufe; for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had play'd Pyramus, and hang'd himself in Thifbe's garter, it would have been a fine tragedy: and fo it is, truly; and very notably difcharg'd. But come, your Bergomafk: let your epilogue alone. [Here a dance of Clowns. The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:Lovers, to bed; 'tis almoft fairy time.

I fear, we fhall out-fleep the coming morn,
As much as we this night have overwatch'd.
This palpable-grofs play hath well beguil'd
The heavy gait of night.-Sweet friends, to bed.

All

6 A Bergomask dance,] Sir Thomas Hanmer obferves in his Gloffary, that this is a dance after the manner of the peasants of Bergomaco, a country in Italy, belonging to the Venetians the buffoons in Italy affect to imitate the ridiculous jargon of that people; and from thence it became alfo a custom to imitate their manner of dancing. STEEVENS.

7 our company?] At the conclufion of Beaumont and Fletcher's Beggar's Bufb, there feems to be a fneer at this charac ter of Bottom; but I do not very clearly perceive its drift. The beggars have refolved to embark for England, and exercise their profeffion there. One of them adds:

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"The fpirit of Bottom, is grown bottomlefs:" This may mean,

that either the public grew indifferent to bad actors, to plays in general, or to characters, the humour of which confifted in blunders. STEEVENS.

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gait] i. e. passage, progress. STEEVENS.

A fortnight

A fortnight hold we this folemnity,
In nightly revels, and new jollity.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

Enter Puck.

Puck. Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf beholds the moon";

Whilft

9 In the old copies: And the wolf beholds the moon. As 'tis the defign of these lines to characterize the animals, as they prefent themselves at the hour of midnight; and as the wolf is not justly characterized by faying he beholds the moon, which other beafts of prey, then awake, do: and as the founds thefe animals make at that feafon, feem alfo intended to be reprefented, I make no question but the poet wrote:

And the wolf behowls the moon.

For fo the wolf is exactly characterized, it being his peculiar property to howl at the moon. (Bebowl, as bemoan, befeem, and an hundred others.) WARBURTON.

So, in Marfion's Antonio and Mellida, where the whole paffage feems to be copied from this of our author:

"Now barks the wolfe against the full-cheek'd moon,

Now lyons half-clam'd entrals roar for food, "Now croaks the toad, and night-crows fereech aloud, "Fluttring 'bout cafements of departing fouls;

"Now gape the graves, and thro' their yawns let loofe "Imprifon'd fpirits to revifit carth." THEOBALD. The alteration is better than the original reading; but perhaps the author meant only to say, that the wolf gases at the moon. JOHNSON.

I think, now the wolf bebowls the moon, was the original text. The allufion is frequently met with in the works of our author and his contemporaries. "Tis like the bowling of Irish wolves against the moon," fays he, in his As You Like It; and Maffinger, in his New Way to pay old Debts, makes an ufurer feel only

"As the moon is moved

"When wolves with hunger pin'd, bowl at her brightnefs." FARMER.

The word behold was in the time of Shakspeare frequently written bebould (as I fuppofe it was then pronounced)-which probably occafioned the mistake.

It is obfervable, that in the paffage in Lodge's Rofalynde, 1592, which Shakspeare feems to have had in his thoughts, when he

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Wrote

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