Love's labour's lost. Midsummer night's dream

both the sense and grammar. But he mistakes the meaning of sad; it signifies only grave, sober; and is opposed to their dances and revels, which were now ended at the singing of the morning lark. -So Winter's Tale, act iv.- "My father and the gentlemen are in SAD talk.” For grave or serious.

WARBURTON.

106. -our observation is perform'd:] The honours due to the morning of May. I know not why Shakspere calls this play a Midsummer Night's Dream, when he so carefully informs us that it happened on the night preceding May-day. JOHNSON. The title of this play seems no more intended to denote the precise time of the action, than that of the Winter's Tale; which we find, was at the season of sheep-shearing. FARMER. 109. Uncouple in the western valley; go:] The folio reads:

Uncouple in the western valley let them go. Shakspere might have written:

Uncoupled in the western valley let them go.

115.

MALONE.

-they bay'd the bear] Thus all the old copies. And thus in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, v. 2020. late edit:

"The hunte ystrangled with the wild beres." Bearbaiting was likewise once a diversion esteemed proper for royal personages, even of the softer sex. While the princess Elizabeth remained at HatfieldHouse, under the custody of Sir Thomas Pope, she

was

was visited by queen Mary. The next morning they were entertained with a grand exhibition of bearbaiting, with which their highnesses were right well conSee Life of Sir Thomas Pope, cited by Warton in his History of English Poetry, Vol. II. p. 391. STEEVENS.

tent.

Holinshed, with whose histories our poet was well acquainted, says "the beare is a beast commonlie hunted in the East countries." See Vol. I. p. 206; and in p. 226, he says, "Alexander at vacant times hunted the tiger, the pard, the bore, and the beare." Pliny, Plutarch, &c. mention bear-hunting. Turberville, in his Book of Hunting, has two chapters on hunting the bear. As the persons mentioned by the poet are foreigners of the heroick strain, he might perhaps think it nobler sport for them to hunt the bear than the boar. Shakspere must have read the Knight's Tale in Chaucer, where are mentioned Theseus's "white alandes [grey-hounds] to huntin "at the lyon, or the wild bere." TOLLET.

117. Such gallant chiding;] Chiding, in this instance, means only sound. So, in Henry VIII.

"As doth a rock against the chiding flood.” Again, in Humour out of Breath, a comedy, by John Day, 1608:

"To hear soft musick, and thy shrill voice chide." Again, in the 22d chapter of Drayton's Polyolbion: "-drums and trumpets chide."- STEEVENS.

121.

121. My hounds are bred, &c.] This passage has been imitated by Lee in his Theodosius:

"Then through the woods we chac'd the foaming
boar,

"With hounds that open'd like Thessalian bulls,
"Like tygers flew'd, and sanded as the shore,
"With ears and chests that dash'd the morning
MALONE.

dew."

122. So flew'd,that flews are the large chaps of a deep-mouth'd hound. Sir Arthur Golding uses this word in his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, finished 1567, a book with which Shakspere appears to have been well acquainted. The poet is describing Acteon's bounds, B. III. p. 33. b. 1603. Two of them, like our author's, were of Spartan kind, bred from a Spartan bitch and a Cretan dog:

-] Sir T. Hanmer justly remarks,

"-with other twaine, that had a sire of Crete, "And dam of Spart: th' one of them called Jollyboy, a grete

"And large-flew'd hound."

Shakspere mentions Cretan hounds (with Spartan) afterwards in this speech of Theseus.

And Ovid's

translator, Golding, in the same description, has them both in one verse, ibid. p. 33. a.

"This latter was a hound of Crete, the other WARTON.

was of a Spart."

122. so sanded,--] Sandy'd means of a sandy colour, which is one of the true denotements of a blood-hound.

STEEVENS.

141. -Saint Valentine is past;] Alluding to the old saying, that birds begin to couple on St. Valentine's day. STEEVENS. 166. Fair Helena in fancy following me.] Fancy is here taken for love or affection, and is opposed to fury as before:

Sighs and tears poor Fancy's followers.

Some now call that which a man takes particular delight in, his fancy. Flower-fancier, for a florist, and bird-fancier, for a lover and feeder of birds, are colloquial words. JOHNSON. So, in Hymen's Triumph, a Masque, by Daniel, 1628:

"With all persuasions sought to win her mind "To fancy him."

Again:

"Do not enforce me to accept a man

"I cannot fancy.”

169.

170.

STEEVENS.

-is- -] Omitted in the early edition.

MALONE.

-an idle gawd,] See before, act i. STEEVENS. 195. And I have found Demetrius like a JEWEL,

line 34.

Mine own, and not mine own.] Helena, I think, means to say, that having found Demetrius unexpectedly, she considered her property in him as insecure as that which a person has in a jewel that he has found by accident, which he knows not whether he shall retain, and which therefore may properly enough be called his own, and not his own.

Helena does not say, as Dr. Warburton represented, that Demetrius was like a jewel, but that she had found him, like a jewel, &c.

A kindred thought occurs in Antony and Cleopatra:

-by starts

"His fretted fortunes give him hope and fear
"Of what he has, and has not.”

The same kind of expression is found also in The
Merchant of Venice:

"Where ev'ry something, being blent together,
"Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy,

"Exprest, and not exprest."

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