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Up to the ears.-Come, we burn day-light, ho *1.
ROM. Nay, that's not so.

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* Quarto A, Leave this talk, we burn day-light here. Mercutio may allude when Romeo declines dancing. Taylor, in Nimble-heeled mariners (like so A Navy of Land Ships, says, many dancers) capring in the pumpes and vanities of this sinfull world, sometimes a Morisca or Trenchmore of forty miles long, to the tune of Dusty my Deare, Dirty come Thou to Me, Dun out of the mire, or I Wayle in Woe and Plunge in Paine: all these dances have no other musicke." HOLT WHITE.

These passages serve to prove that Dr. Warburton's explanation is ill founded, without tending to explain the real sense of the phrase, or showing why it should be the constable's own word.

M. MASON. "The cat is grey," a cant phrase, somewhat similar to "Dun's the mouse," occurs in King Lear. But the present application of Mercutio's words will, I fear, remain in hopeless obscurity.

STEEVENS.

We are indebted to Mr. Gifford for a description of the game alluded to. See his note on A Masque of Christmas, Gifford's Jonson, vol. vii. p. 282. Boswell.

3 Or this (save reverence) love,] The folio-Or save your reverence, &c. The word or obscures the sentence; we should read-O! for or love. Mercutio having called the affection with which Romeo was entangled by so disrespectful a word as mire,

cries out :

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"O! save your reverence, love." JOHNSON.
passage

This is not worth a contest; and yet if the conjunction or were retained, the meaning appears to be :-We'll draw thee from the mire (says he) or rather from this love wherein thou stick'st.

Dr. Johnson has imputed a greater share of politeness to Mercutio than he is found to be possessed of in the quarto 1597. Mercutio, as he passes through different editions,

"Works himself clear, and as he runs refines." STEEVENS. I have followed the first quarto, 1597, except that it has surIt was only a different mode reverence, instead of save-reverence. of spelling the same word; which was derived from the Latin, salva reverentia. See Blount's Glossograph. 8vo. 1681, in v. sa

reverence.

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In The Comedy of Errors, the word is written as in the first - such a one copy of this play, and is used in the same sense : as a man may not speak of, without he say sir-reverence.” And in Much Ado About Nothing, it occurs as now printed in the text: "I think you will have me say (save reverence) a husband."

MER.

I mean, sir, in delay

We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day * 5 Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits Five times in that, ere once in our five wits.

5.

* Quarto A, "We burn our lights by night like lamps by day." Folio and the other quartos, "We waste our lights in vain lights, lights by day."

The printer of the quarto 1599, exhibited the line thus unintelligibly:

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Or, save you reverence, love—”

which was followed by the next quarto, of 1609, and by the folio with a slight variation. The editor of the folio, whenever he found an error in a later quarto, seems to have corrected it by caprice, without examining the preceding copy. He reads-Or, save your reverence, &c. MALONE.

4

We BURN DAY-LIGHT, ho.] To burn day-light is a proverbial expression, used when candles, &c. are lighted in the day time. See Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. I.

Chapman has not very intelligibly employed this phrase in his translation of the twentieth Iliad:

“ And all their strength

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no more shall burn in vain the day." STEEVENS. 5- -like LAMPS by day.] Lamps is the reading of the oldest quarto. The folio and subsequent quartos read-lights, lights by day. STEEVENS.

Five times in that, &c.] The quarto 1597, reads: Three times a day;" and right wits, instead of fine wits. STEEVENS. for our judgment sits

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"Five times in that, ere once in our five wits." The quarto 1599, and the folio, have-our fine wits. Shakspeare is on all occasions so fond of antithesis, that I have no doubt he wrote five, not fine. The error has happened so often in these plays, and the emendation is so strongly confirmed by comparing these lines as exhibited in the enlarged copy of this play, with the passage as it stood originally, that I have not hesitated to give the reading which I proposed some time ago, a place in the text.

The same mistake has happened in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, where we find in all the old copies-" of these fine the sense," instead of "-these five." Again, in King Henry VI. P. I. "Deck'd with fine flower-de-luces," instead of—“ five,” &c. In Coriolanus, the only authentick ancient copy has"the five strains of honour," for "the fine strains of honour." Indeed in the writing of Shakspeare's age, the u and n were formed exactly in the same manner; we are not to wonder thereVOL. VI.

E

ROM. And we mean well, in going to this mask; But 'tis no wit to go.

MER.

Why, may one ask?
ROM. I dreamt a dream to-night..
MER.

ROM. Well, what was yours P

MER.

And so did I.

That dreamers often lie.

ROM. In bed asleep, while they do dream things

true.

MER. O, then', I see, queen Mab hath been

with you.

8

She is the fairies' midwife ; and she comes

* Quarto A, inserts Romeo.

In

fore that ignorant transcribers should have confounded them. the modern editions these errors have all been properly amended. Shakspeare has again mentioned the five wits in Much Ado about Nothing, in King Lear, and in one of his Sonnets. Again, in the play before us: Thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits, than, I am sure, I have in my whole five." Mercutio is here also the speaker.

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In the first quarto the line stands thus:

"Three times in that, ere once in our right wits."

When the poet altered "three times" to " five times," he, without doubt, for the sake of the jingle, discarded the word right, and substituted five in its place. The alteration, indeed, seems to have been made merely to obtain the antithesis.

MALONE.

7 O, then, &c.] In the quarto 1597, after the first line of Mercutio's speech, Romeo says, "Queen Mab, what's she?" and the printer, by a blunder, has given all the rest of the speech to the same character. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens is not quite accurate. It is to Benvolio, not Romeo, that this speech is given in the quarto 1597. MALONE. 8 O, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the FAIRIES' midwife;] The fairies' midwife does not mean the midwife to the fairies, but that she was the person among the fairies, whose department it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping men of their dreams, those children of an idle brain. When we say the king's judges, we do not mean persons who are to judge the king, but persons apppointed by him to judge his subjects. STEEVENS

I apprehend, and with no violence of interpretation, that by "the fairies' midwife," the poet means, the midwife among the

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman',
Drawn with a team of little atomies

fairies, because it was her peculiar employment to steal the newborn babe in the night, and to leave another in its place. The poet here uses her general appellation, and character, which yet has so far a proper reference to the present train of fiction, as that her allusions were practised on persons in bed or asleep; for she not only haunted women in childbed, but was likewise the incubus or night-mare. Shakspeare, by employing her here, alludes at large to her midnight pranks performed on sleepers; but denominates her from the most notorions one, of her personating the drowsy midwife, who was insensibly carried away into some distant water, and substituting a new birth in the bed or cradle. It would clear the appellation to read the fairy midwife. The poet avails himself of Mab's appropriate province, by giving her this nocturnal agency. T. WARTON.

Warburton reads the fancy's midwife. BOSWELL.

9 On the fore-finger of an alderman,] The quarto 1597 reads -of a burgo-master. The alteration was probably made by the poet himself, as we find it in the succeeding copy, 1599: but in order to familiarize the idea, he has diminished its propriety. In the pictures of burgo-masters, the ring is generally placed on the fore-finger; and from a passage in The First Part of Henry IV. we may suppose the citizens, in Shakspeare's time, to have worn this ornament on the thumb. So again, Glapthorne, in his comedy of Wit in a Constable, 1639: — and an alderman, as I may say to you, he has no more wit than the rest o' the bench; and that lies in his thumb-ring." STEEVENS.

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of little ATOMIES -] Atomy is no more than an obsolete substitute for atom.

So, in The Two Merry Milkmaids, 1620:

"— I can tear thee

"As small as atomies, and throw thee off

"Like dust before the wind."

Again, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613:

"I'll tear thy limbs into more atomies

"Than in the summer play before the sun."

In Drayton's Nymphidia there is likewise a description of Queen Mab's chariot :

"Four nimble gnats the horses were,
"Their harnesses of gossamere,
"Fly cranion, her charioteer,

"Upon the coach-box getting:
"Her chariot of a snail's fine shell,
"Which for the colours did excell,

Athwart * men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, (of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, () of the moonshine's watry beams:
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film :
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:
(Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.()
And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love: On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight:

(O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on

fees:(

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream; Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweet-meats2 tainted are. Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose §,

* Folio, over.

So quarto A; folio, man.

† Quarto A, The collers. § A lawyer's lap.

"The fair Queen Mab becoming well,

"So lively was the limning:

"The seat, the soft wool of the bee,
"The cover (gallantly to see)

"The wing of a py'd butterflee,

"I trow, 'twas simple trimming:

"The wheels compos'd of cricket's bones,

"And daintily made for the nonce,

"For fear of ratling on the stones,

"With thistle-down they shod it." STEEVENS.

Drayton's Nymphidia was written several years after this tra

gedy. See vol. v. p. 206, n. 8. MALONE.

These

2 with SWEET-MEATS] i. e. kissing-comfits. artificial aids to perfume the breath, are mentioned by Falstaff, in the last Act of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Malone.

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