Midsummer Night’s Dream
Act I Sc. 1
“And when the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven.”
‘New’ is the correction of Rowe; the 4tos and folio have Now.
“But I will woo thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.”
Collier’s folio gives the right word, ‘revelry.’
“This man hath [be]witch’d the bosom of my child.”
The verse in this play is strictly decasyllabic. The 2nd folio omits ‘man,’ with Mr. Dyce’s approval. In omitting be, I have been preceded by Theobald.
“Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.”
The 2nd folio needlessly reads ‘to whose.’
“To fit your fancie[s] to your father’s will.”
“I have a widow aunt, a dowager,
Of great revenue, and she hath no child,
And she respects me as her only son.
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues.”
Common sense dictates the transposition made here of the last lines. There is no note on this passage in the Cambridge Shakespeare; so none of the known critics can have noticed it. The third line, it is evident, had been an addition made by the poet in the margin.
“By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves.”
Singer transposes these lines. It is, by the way, surprising how many transpositions there are in this play; but it was not necessary to transpose here, and his doing so arose from his misunderstanding the second line; in which the allusion is most probably to the Cestus of Venus.
“Sickness is catching; oh, were favour so!
Your words I catch, fair Hermia; ere I go.”
For ‘your words’ Hanmer read ‘Yours would,’ an excellent emendation, and generally adopted.
“Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,
There my Lysander and myself shall meet;
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,
To seek new friends and stranger companies.”
‘Sweet’ and ‘stranger companies’ are Theobald’s corrections of swelled and strange companions. “More certain emendations,” says Mr. Dyce, “were never made.”
Sc. 2
“To tear a cat in and to make all split.”