In Act V., Scene V., the plot being all arranged, the Fairy rout appears, headed by Sir Hugh, as a Satyr, by ancient Pistol as Hobgoblin, and by Dame Quickly.
Quick. Fairies black, grey, green, and white,
You moonshine revellers and shades of night,
You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,[394]
Attend your office and your quality.
Crier Hob-goblin, make the fairy O-yes.
Pist. Elves, list your names! silence, you airy toys!
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap;
Where fires thou findest unraked, and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:
Our radiant queen, hates sluts and sluttery.
Fals. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die.
I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye.
Pist. Where's Bead?—Go you, and where you find a maid
That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,
Raise up the organs of her fantasy,
Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;
But those as sleep and think not on their sins,
Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.
Quick. About, about,
Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out;
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,
That it may stand till the perpetual doom,
In state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit;
Worthy the owner, and the owner it.
The several chairs of order look you scour
With juice of balm and every precious flower;
Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
With loyal blazon evermore be blest;
And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:
The expressure that it bears green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;
And "Hony soit qui mal y pense" write,
In emerald tufts, flowers, purple, blue, and white;
Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee:
Fairies use flowers for their charactery.
Away—disperse!—but, till 'tis one o'clock,
Our dance of custom, round about the oak
Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.
Eva. Pray you, lock hand in hand, yourselves in order set,
And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be,
To guide our measure round about the tree;
But stay, I smell a man of middle earth.[395]
Fal. Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest
He transform me to a piece of cheese.
Pist. Vile worm! thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth.
Quick. With trial fire touch we his finger-end:
If he be chaste the flame will back descend,
And turn him to no pain; but if he start,
It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.
Pist. A trial, come.
Eva. Come, will this wood take fire?
Fal. Oh, oh, oh!
Quick. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire:
About him, fairies, sing a scornful rime;
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
In Romeo and Juliet the lively and gallant Mercutio mentions a fairy personage, who has since attained to great celebrity, and completely dethroned Titania, we mean Queen Mab,[396] a dame of credit and renown in Faëry.
"I dreamed a dream to-night," says Romeo.
"O then," says Mercutio:—
O then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes,
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Over 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 watery beams:
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film:
Her waggoner, a small gray-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' coachmakers.
This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bode.
This is the hag,[397] when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them.
In an exquisite and well-known passage of the Tempest, higher and more awful powers are ascribed to the Elves: Prospero declares that by their aid he has "bedimmed the noon-tide sun;" called forth the winds and thunder; set roaring war "'twixt the green sea and the azured vault;" shaken promontories, and plucked up pines and cedars. He thus invokes them:—
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;[398]
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him,
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight-mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew.