For everlasting bond of fellowship ;-
Upon that day either prepare to die,
For disobedience to your father's will;
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would;
Or on Diana's altar to protest,

For aye, austerity and single life.

Dem. Relent, sweet Hermia:- And, Lysander yield

Thy crazed title to my certain right.

Lys. You have her father's love, Demetrius ; Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.

Ege. Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my love, And what is mine my love shall render him; And she is mine; and all my right of her I do estate unto Demetrius.

Lys. I am, my lord, as well deriv'd as he, As well possess'd; my love is more than his; My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd,

If not with vantage, as Demetrius';

And, which is more than all these boasts can be,
I am belov'd of beauteous Hermia:

Why should not I, then, prosecute my right?
Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,

Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,
And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,
Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,

4

Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

The. I must confess, that I have heard so much, And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof; But, being over-full of self-affairs,

My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come;

4 Spotted is wicked, the opposite of spotless. So in Cavendish's Metrical Visions: "The spotted queen causer of all this strife;" and again: "Spotted with pride, viciousnes, and cru elty."

And come, Egeus: you shall go with me;
I have some private schooling for you both.-
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up
(Which by no means we may extenuate)
To death, or to a vow of single life. -
Come, my Hippolyta: what cheer, my love?-
Demetrius, and Egeus, go along :

I must employ you in some business
Against our nuptial; and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.
Ege. With duty and desire we follow you.

[Exeunt THE., HIP., EGE., DEM., and Train. Lys. How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale ?

How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

Her. Belike, for want of rain; which I could well Beteem them from the tempest of mine eyes.

Lys. Ah me! for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth:
But, either it was different in blood;

Her. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low!

5 Steevens says beteem is used in the North of England for pour out, and thinks it may have that sense here. But it is more probably used in the sense, not uncommon in the Poet's time, of permit, afford; as in The Faery Queene, B. ii. Can. 8, stan. 19 "So would I, said th' Enchaunter, glad and faine Beteeme to you this sword, you to defeud,

Or ought that els your honour might maintaine." Likewise, in Golding's Ovid :

"Yet could he not beteeme

The shape of anie other bird than egle for to seeme."

The passage in Hamlet is doubtless familiar to all: "So loving to my mother, that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly."

H.

Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years;·
Her. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young!
Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of
friends;

Her. O hell! to choose love by another's eye! Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it; Making it momentany as a sound,

6

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied' night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say,

Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

6 An old form of momentary. Milton seems to have remem bered this passage in his account of the "innumerable disturbances on earth through female snares," Paradise Lost, Book x.:

"For either

He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gain'a
By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld

By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame :
Which infinite calamity shall cause

To human life, and household peace confound."

It did not fall within Milton's purpose to consider that poor wo'nan is a sufferer in these disturbances as well as man he views her as the cause, not as the victim, of these mischiefs; whereas Shakespeare regards both sexes as subject to them by an edict of Des. tiny.

H.

7 A word derived from the collieries, and meaning smutted or black. Shakespeare found few words so far gone but he could regenerate them with his poetical baptism. - Spleen, in the next line, means a fit of passion or violence; as in King John, Act ii sc. 2:

"This union will do more than battery can,
To our fast-closed gates; for at this match,
With swifter spleen than powder can enforce,
The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope
And give you entrance

B

Her. If, then, true lovers have been ever cross'd,

It stands as an edict in destiny :

Then, let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross,

As due to love as thoughts, and dreams, and siglıs,
Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers.

8

Lys. A good persuasion: therefore, hear me, Hermia

I have a widow aunt, a dowager

Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.

There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us: If thou lov'st me, then,
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,9
There will I stay for thee.

The Poet often uses fancy for love. So, afterwards, in this play: "Fair Helena in funcy following me." And again, in the celebrated passage applied to Queen Elizabeth: "In maiden meditation fancy-free."

9 Here again we may perceive that Shakespeare and Chaucer have been together:

"Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day,
Till it felle ones in a morwe of May,
That Emelie, that fayrer was to sene
Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene,
And fressher than the May with floures newe,
(For with the rose colour strof hire hewe;
I n'ot which was the finer of hem two,)
Er it was day, as she was wont to do,
She was arisen, and all redy dight.
For May wol have no slogardic a-night.
The seson priketh every gentil herte,

And maketh him out of his slepe to sterte,

And sayth, arise, and do thin observance."

Touching the rites of this ancient holiday, a time that inspired the seraph-souled Chaucer to sing,

Her.

My good Lysander !

I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow;
By his best arrow with the golden head;
By the simplicity of Venus' doves;

By that which knitteth souls, and prospers loves;
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,
When the false Trojan under sail was seen;
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke;
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.

Lys. Keep promise, love: Look, here comes
Helena.

Enter HELENA.

Her. God speed fair Helena!

Whither away

?

Hel. Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.

Demetrius loves you, fair:

11

10

O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; 11 and your tongue's sweet air

"O Maye, with all thy floures and thy grene,
Right welcome be thou, faire freshe May,

I hope that I some grene here getten may,"Stowe informs us how our ancestors were wont to go out into "the weet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with he beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of oirds praising God in their kind." But Stubbs, the atrabilious Puritan, in his Anatomie of Abuses, speaks very differently: he accounts for the delight others take in the season thus: "And no marvel, for there is a great lord present among them, as superintendent over their pastimes and sports, namely, Sathan, Prince of Hell" The spirit of the olden time, however, seems to have revived in the great Bard who hath lately joined his brethren. See Wordsworth's Odes to May.

H.

10 Fair for fairness, beauty quite common in writers of Shakespeare's age.

star.

11 The lode-star is the leading or guiding star, that is, the polar The magnet is for the same reason called the lode-stoue. The reader will remember Milton's beauty: "The cynosure of neighb'ring eyes"