of hedge-hogs, for which another reason will be offered presently; and yet the word in question is only one out of many used by Shakspeare, which may be best disposed of by concluding that he designed they should be taken in both or either of their senses. In a very rare old collection of songs set to musick by John Bennett, Edward Piers or Peirce, and Thomas Ravenscroft, composers in the time of Shakspeare, and entitled Hunting, hawking, dauncing, drinking, enamoring, 4to, no date, there are, the fairies dance, the elves dance, and the urchins dance. This is the latter: "By the moone we sport and play, Lightly as the little bee, Two by two, and three by three, Sc. 2. p. 40. CAL. It would control my dam's God Setebos. In Dr. Farmer's note it should have been added that the passage from Eden's History of travayle was part of Magellan's Voyage; or in Mr. Tollet's, that Magellan was included in Eden's collection. Sc. 2. p. 42. ARI, Those are pearls, that were his eyes. We had already had this image in King Richard the third, where Clarence, describing his dream, says: in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept MIRA. Sc. 2. p. 44. What is't, a spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, It carries a brave form. The incident of Miranda's surprise at the first sight of Ferdinand, and of her falling in love with him, might have been suggested by some lost translation of the 13th tale in the Cento novelle antiche, and which is in fact the subject of father Philip's geese, so admirably told by Boccaccia and Lafontaine. It seems to have been originally taken from the life of Saint Barlaam in The golden legend. ACT II. Scene 1. Page 54. GoN. How lush and lusty the grass looks! Lush, as Mr. Malone observes, has not yet been rightly interpreted. It is, after all, an old word synonymous with loose. In the Promptuarium parvulorum 1516. 4to, we find "lushe or slacke, laxus." The quotation from Golding, who renders turget by this word, confirms the foregoing definition, and demonstrates that as applied to grass, it means loose or swollen, thereby expressing the state of that vegetable when, the fibres being relaxed, it expands to its fullest growth. Sc. 2. p. 76. CAL. Sometime like apes, that moe and chatter at me Shakspeare, who seems to have been well acquainted with Bishop Harsnet's Declaration of Popish impostures, has here recollected that part of the work where the author, speaking of the supposed possession of young girls, says, "they make anticke faces, girn, mow and mop like an ape, tumble like a hedge-hogge, &c." Another reason for the introduction of urchins or hedge-hogs into this speech is, that on the first discovery of the Bermudas, which, as has been already stated, gave rise in part to this play, they were supposed to be "haunted as all men know with hogs and hobgoblings." See Dekkar's Strange horserace, &c. sign. f. 3. b. and Mr. Steevens's note in p. 28. Sc. 2. p. 77. TRIN. A strange fish! Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this fish painted, not a holiday. fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. This speech happily ridicules the mania that appears to have always existed among our countrymen for beholding strange sights, however trifling. A contemporary writer and professor of divinity has been no less severe. Speaking of the crocodile, he says, "Of late years there hath been brought into England, the cases or skinnes of such crocodiles to be seene, and much money given for the sight thereof; the policy of strangers laugh at our folly, either that we are too wealthy, or else that we know not how to bestow our money." Batman uppon Bartholome, fo. 359 b. Sc. 2. p. 82. STE. This mooncalf. The best account of this fabulous substance may be found in Drayton's poem with that title. Sc. 2. p. 83. STE. I was the man in the moon. This is a very old superstition, founded, as Mr. Ritson has observed, on Numbers xv. 32. See Ancient songs, p. 34. So far the tradition is still preserved among nurses and schoolboys; but how the culprit came to be imprisoned in the moon, has not yet been accounted for. It should seem that he had not merely gathered sticks on the sabbath, but that he had stolen what he gathered, as appears from the following lines in Chaucer's Testament of Creseid, where the poet, describing the moon, informs us that she had "On her brest a chorle painted ful even, Bearing a bush of thorns on his backe, Which for his theft might clime no ner the heven." |