ACT III.
Scene 1. Page 77.
Quin. When you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake.
It is submitted that brake cannot in this instance signify a large extent of ground, overgrown with furze, but merely the hawthorn bush or tyring-house as Quince had already called it.
Scene 1. Page 83.
Bot. Nay I can gleek upon occasion.
Again, in Romeo and Juliet, Act IV. Scene 5:
"1. Mus. What will you give us?
Pet. No money, on my faith; but the gleek."
On which consult Mr. Steevens's posthumous note in Mr. Reed's last edition.
Mr. Pope had justly remarked that to gleek is to scoff. In some of the notes on this word it has been supposed to be connected with the card game of gleek; but it was not recollected that the Saxon language supplied the term Glɩᵹ, ludibrium, and doubtless a corresponding verb. Thus glee signifies mirth and jocularity; and gleeman or gligman, a minstrel or joculator. Gleek was therefore used to express a stronger sort of joke, a scoffing. It does not appear that the phrase to give the gleek was ever introduced in the above game, which was borrowed by us from the French, and derived from an original of very different import from the word in question.
Scene 1. Page 84.
Tita. And light them at the fiery glow-worms eyes.
Dr. Johnson's objection to the word eyes, has been very skilfully removed by Mr. Monck Mason; but this gentleman appears to have misconceived the meaning of Shakspeare's most appropriate epithet of ineffectual, in the passage from Hamlet. The glow-worm's fire was ineffectual only at the approach of morn, in like manner as the light of a candle would be at mid-day.
Scene 1. Page 88.
Obe. What night-rule now about this haunted grove?
Mr. Steevens has properly explained night-rule. Rule in this word has the same meaning as in the Christmas lord of mis-rule, and is a corruption of revel, formerly written reuel.
Scene 2. Page 89.
Puck. An ass's nowl I fixed on his head.
The receipt for making a man resemble an ass, already given in a former note, must give place to the following in Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft, b. 13. c. xix. "Cutt off the head of a horsse or an asse (before they be dead), otherwise the vertue or strength thereof will be the lesse effectuall, and make an earthern vessell of fit capacitie to conteine the same, and let it be filled with the oile and fat thereof; cover it close, and dawbe it over with lome: let it boile over a soft fier three daies continuallie, that the flesh boiled may run into oile, so as the bare bones may be seene: beate the haire into powder, and mingle the same with the oile; and annoint the heads of the standers by, and they shall seem to have horsses or asses heads."
Scene 2. Page 95.
Obe. All fancy-sick she is, and pale of cheer.
Mr. Steevens deduces this word from the Italian cara; but it is from the old French chere, face. Lydgate finishes the prologue to his Storie of Thebes with these lines:
"And as I coud, with a pale cheare,
My tale I gan anone, as ye shall heare."
Scene 2. Page 103.
Hel. So with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.
It may be doubted whether this passage has been rightly explained, and whether the commentators have not given Shakspeare credit for more skill in heraldry than he really possessed, or at least than he intended to exhibit on the present occasion. Helen says, "we had two seeming bodies, but only one heart." She then exemplifies her position by a simile—"we had two of the first, i. e. bodies, like the double coats in heraldry that belong to man and wife as one person, but which, like our single heart, have but one crest."
Scene 2. Page 112.
Puck. And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger,
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to church-yards.
Aurora's harbinger is Lucifer, the morning star.
"Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East——"[11]
It was the popular belief that ghosts retired at the approach of day. Thus the spirit of Hamlet's father exclaims,
"But soft, methinks I scent the morning air."
In further illustration see a subsequent note on Hamlet, Act I. Scene 1.
Scene 2. Page 117.
Hel. And, sleep, that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye.
Again, in Macbeth:
"Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care."