Scene 1. Page 13.
Lys. Making it momentany as a sound.
Momentany and momentary were indiscriminately used in Shakspeare's time. The former corresponds with the French momentaine.
ACT II.
Scene 1. Page 30.
Fai. And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
Mr. Steevens in the happy and elegant remark at the end of his note on the last line, has made a slight mistake in substituting Puck for the fairy. When the damsels of old gathered the May dew on the grass, and which they made use of to improve their complexions, they left undisturbed such of it as they perceived on the fairy-rings; apprehensive that the fairies should in revenge destroy their beauty. Nor was it reckoned safe to put the foot within the rings, lest they should be liable to the fairies' power.
Scene 1. Page 32.
Puck. But they do square.
Dr. Johnson has very justly observed that to square here is to quarrel. In investigating the reason, we must previously take it for granted that our verb to quarrel is from the French quereller, or perhaps both from the common source, the Latin querela. Blackstone has remarked that the glaziers use the words square and quarrel as synonymous terms for a pane of glass, and he might have added for the instrument with which they cut it. This, he says, is somewhat whimsical; but had he been acquainted with the reason, he might have been disposed to waive his opinion, at least on the present occasion. The glazier's instrument is a diamond, usually cut into such a square form as the supposed diamonds on the French and English cards, in the former of which it is still properly called carreau, from its original. This was the square iron head of the arrow used for the cross-bow. In English it was called a quarrel, and hence the glazier's diamond and the pane of glass have received their names of square and quarrel. Now we may suppose without straining the point very violently, that these words being evidently synonymous in one sense, have corruptedly become so in another; and that the verb to square, which correctly and metaphorically, even at this time, signifies to agree or accord, has been carelessly and ignorantly wrested from its true sense, and from frequent use become a legitimate word. The French have avoided this error, and to express a meaning very similar to that of to quarrel or dispute, make use of the word contrecarrer.