To think these spirits? PRO. Spirits which by mine art I have from their confines call'd to enact My present fancies. FER. Let me live here ever; 2 So rare a wonder'd father, and a wife, Make this place Paradife. [Juno and Ceres whisper, and fend IRIS on employment.] PRO. Sweet now, filence: Juno and Ceres whisper serioufly; IRIS. You nymphs, call'd Naiads, of the wan With your fedg'd crowns and ever-harmless looks, Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land Answer your fummons; Juno does command: Come, temperate nymphs and help to celebrate A contract of true love; be not too late. charm of found was added to that of visible grandeur. Both Juno and Ceres are supposed to fing theit parts. STEEVENS. A fimilar inversion occurs in A Midsummer Night's Dream: " But miferable most to live unloved." MALONE. - a wonder'd father,] i. e. a father able to perform or produce fuch wonders. STEEVENS. 3 wandring brooks,] The modern editors read-winding brooks. The old copy-windring. I suppose we should read-wandrig, as it is here printed. STEEVENS. 4 Leave your crisp channels,] Crisp, i. e. curling, winding, Lat. crispus. So Henry IV. Part I. A&. I. fc. iv. Hotspur speaking of the river Severn: " And hid his crisped head in the hollow bank." Crifp, however, may allude to the little wave or curl (as it is commonly called) that the gentleft wind occafions on the furface of waters. STEEVENS. : Enter certain Nymphs. You fun-burn'd ficklemen, of August weary Enter certain Reapers, properly habited; they join with PRO. [afide.] I had forgot that foul conspiracy avoid; no more. FER. This is most strange: 4 your father's in fome paffion That works him ftrongly. MIRA. Never till this day, Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd. PRO. You do look, my fon, in a mov'd fort, As if you were dismay'd; be cheerful, fir: And like the baselefs fabrick of this vifion, 4 This is most strange: 1 have introduced the word-most, on account of the metre, which otherwife is defective. In the first line of Profpero's next speech there is likewife an omiffion, but I have not ventured to fupply it. STEEVENS 5 And, like the baseless fabrick of this vision. &c.] The exact period at which this play was produced is unknown: it was not, The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded," however, published before 1623. In the year 1603, the Tragedy of Darius, by Lord Sterline, made its appearance, and there I find the following paflage: " Let greatness of her glassy scepters vaunt, "Not scepters, no, but reeds, soon bruis'd, soon broken; "And let this worldly pomp our wits enchant, " Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls, " Those stately courts, those sky-encount'ring walls, Lord Sterline's play must have been written before the death of queen Elizabeth, (which happen'd on the 24th of March 1603) as it is dedicated to James VI. King of Scots. Whoever should feek for this passage (as here quoted from the 4to, 1603) in the folio edition, 1637, will be disappointed as Lord Sterline made confiderable changes in all his plays, after their first publication. STEEVENS. 6 -all which it inherit,] i. e. all who possess, who dwell upon it. So, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona: "This, or else nothing, will inherit her." MALONE. 7 And like this infubftantial pageant faded, Faded means here having vanished; from the Latin, vado. So, in Hamlet: " It faded on the crowing of the cock." To feel the juftice of this comparison, and the propriety of the epithet, the nature of these exhibitions should be remembered. The ancient English pageants were shows exhibited on the reception of a prince, or any other folemnity of a fimilar kind. They were presented on occafional stages erected in the streets. Originally they appear to have been nothing more than dumb shows; but before the time of our author, they had been enlivened by the introduction of speaking personages, who were characteristically habited. The speeches were sometimes in verse; and as the pro ceffion moved forward, the speakers, who constantly bore fome allusion to the ceremony, either conversed tegether in the form of a dialogue, or addressed the noble person whose prefence occafioned the celebrity. On these allegorical spectacles very coftly ornaments were bestowed. See Fabian, II. 382. Warton's Hist. of Pect. II. 199. 202. Leave not a rack behind: We are fuch stuff The well-known lines before us may receive some illuftration from Stowe's account of the pageants exhibited in the year 1604, (not very long before this play was written,) on King James, his Queen &c. passing triumphantly from the Tower to Westminster; on which occafion seven Gates or Arches were erected in different places through which the procession passed. Over the first gate " was reprefented the true likeness of all the notable houses, "TOWERS and steeples, within the citie of London."-" The " fixt arche or gate of triumph was erected above the Conduit in " Fleete-Streete, whereon the GLOBE of the world was seen to ८८ move, &c. At Temple-bar a feaventh arche or gate was ered"ed, the forefront whereof was proportioned in every refpe& like ८८ a TEMPLE, being dedicated to Janus, &c. - The citie of West"minster, and dutchy of Lancaster, at the Strand had erected "the invention of a Rainbow the moone, sunne, and starres, "advanced between two Pyramides," &c. ANNALS, p. 1429. edit. 1605. MALONE. 8 Leave not a rack behind:] "The winds (fays lord Bacon) which move the clouds above, which we call the rack, and are not perceived below, pass without noife." I should explain the word rack fomewhat differently, by calling it the last fleeting veftige of the highest clouds, Scarce perceptible on account of their distance and tenuity. What was anciently called the rack, is now termed by failors-the foud. The word is common to many authors contemporary with Shakspeare. So, in the Faithful Shepherdess, by Fletcher: __ shall I ftray In the middle air, and stay "The failing rack." Again, in David and Bethfabe, 1599: "Beating the clouds into their swistest rack." Again, in the prologue to the Three Ladies of London, 1584: "We lift not ride the rolling rack that dims the chrystal skies." Again, in Shakspeare's 33d Sonnet: "Anon permits the baseft clouds to ride Mr. Pennant in his Tour in Scotland observes, there is a fish called a rack-rider, because it appears in winter or bad weather; Rack, in the English of our author's days fignifying the driving of the clouds by tempefts. Sir T. Hanmer instead of rack, reads track, which may be countenanced by the following paflage in the first scene of Timon of Athens: F As dreams are made of, and our little life Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled. Be not disturb'd with my infirmity : If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell, And there repose; a turn or two I'll walk, To still my beating mind. Rack is generally used for a body of clouds, or rather for the course of clouds in motion; fo, in Antony and Cleopatra : " That which is now a horse, even with a thought, But no inftance has yet been produced where it is sused to fignify I am now inclined to think that rack is a mis-spelling for wrack, i. e. wreck, which Fletcher likewife has used for a minute broken fragment. See his Wife for a Month, where we find the word mis-fpelt as it is in The Tempest: He will bulge so fubtilly and fuddenly, You may fnatch him up by parcels, like a fea-rack." It has been urged, that " objets which have only a vifionary and insubstantial existence, can, when the 'vision is faded, leave nothing real, and confequently no wreck behind them." the objection is founded on misapprehenfion. The words But Leave not a rack (or wreck) behind, "relate not to the baseless fabrick of this vifion," but to the final destruction of the world, of which the towers, temples, and palaces, shall (like a vifion, or a pageant,) be diffolved, and leave no vestige behind. MALONE. 9 As dreams are made of, ) The old copy reads - on. But this is a mere colloquial vitiation; of, among the vulgar, being still pronounced-on. STEEVENS. The stanza which immediately precedes the lines quoted by Mr. Steevens from Lord Sterline's Darius, may serve still further to confirm the conjecture that one of these poets imitated the other. Our author was, I believe, the imitator. " And when the eclipse comes of our glory's light, « A meer illufion made to mock the fight, Whose best was but the shadow of a dream... MALONE, VOL. IV. K |