Chapter XXXIV: 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." #/