Act IV Sc. 1
“Which straight she gave me and her fairy sent.”
It should be ‘fairies.’ (See on ii. 1.)
“All may to Athens back again repair.”
The reading hitherto has been ‘May all,’ but the transposition restores the grammar.
“Dian’s bud o’er Cupid’s flower.”
The 4to and folio read or. The correction is Thirlby’s.
“Trip we after nightès shade.”
Fisher’s 4to has ‘nights,’ of which I have made a dissylable, as being more Shakespearean than ‘the night’s’ of the folio and Roberts’ 4to, which most feebly and inharmoniously throw the emphasis on ‘the.’ This gen. occurs more than once in our poet’s earlier plays.
“When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear.”
With Hanmer I incline to read boar.
“The woods, the fountains, every region round.”
Here, too, I suspect that the poet wrote ‘mountains.’ ‘Seem’d in next line is the reading of the 2nd folio; the originals have seeme.
“Was to be gone from Athens where we might
Without the peril of the Athenian law....”
This is the reading of Fisher’s 4to; Roberts’ and the folio read ‘might be’; which does not suit the metre of this play. Egeus breaks in and interrupts him.
“Melted, e’en as the snow, seems to me now.”
“It wasted and consum’d even like ice
That by the vehemence of heat dissolveth.”
Green’s Tu Quoque.
The ordinary correction is that of Capell, ’as doth’; an Anon. read ‘All melted.’
“Was I betroth’d ere I saw Hermia;
But, like in sickness, did I loathe this food.”
‘Saw’ is Steevens’ correction of see; in L. L. L. iv. 1, we have “I came, see and overcame.” ‘In sickness’ is Farmer’s correction of ‘a sickness’ of the originals.
“Mine own and not mine own.—But are you sure
That we are yet awake? It seems to me.”
The folio omits ‘are... awake.’ Capell also added But and an Anon. yet. The poet’s words may, however, have been, “Are you sure we are awake? it seems to me.” But that would make the preceding speech terminate in a manner that does not occur in this play.