[_Flu._ Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.
_Quin._ That's all one, you shall play it in a masque; and you may
speak as small as you will]
This passage shews how the want of women on the old stage was
supplied. If they had not a young man who could perform the part with
a face that might pass for feminine, the character was acted in a
mask, which was at that time part of a lady's dress so much in use
that it did not give any unusual appearance to the scene: and he that
could modulate his voice in a female tone might play the women very
successfully. It is observed in Downes's Memoirs of the Playhouse,
that one of these counterfeit heroines moved the passions more
strongly than the women that have since been brought upon the stage.
Some of the catastrophes of the old comedies, which make lovers marry
the wrong women, are, by recollection of the common use of masks,
brought nearer to probability.
I.ii.98 (20,8) [_Bot_. I will discharge it in either your straw-coloured
beard, your orange tawny beard, your purple-in grain beard, or your
French crown-coloured beard; your perfect yellow] Here Bottom
again discovers a true genius for the stage by his solicitude for
propriety of dress, and his deliberation which beard to chuse among
many beards, all unnatural.
II.i.2 (21,3) [Over hill, over dale] So Drayton in his Court of Fairy,
_Thorough brake_, _thorough brier_.
_Thorough muck_, _thorough mire_.
_Thorough water_, _thorough fire_.
II.i.9 (22,4) [To dew her orbs upon the green] For _orbs_ Dr. Gray is
inclined to substitute _herbs_. The orbs here mentioned are the
circles supposed to be made by the Fairies on the ground, whose
verdure proceeds from the fairy's care to water them.
_They in their courses make that_ round,
_In meadows and in marshes found_,
_Of then so called the fairy ground_. Drayton.
II.i.10 (22,5) [The cowslips tall her pensioners be] The cowslip was
a favourite among the fairies. There is a hint in Drayton of
their attention to May morning.
--_for the queen a fitting tow'r_,
_Quoth he, is that fair_ cowslip flow'r.--
_In all your train there's not a fay_
_That ever went_ to gather May,
_But she hath made it in her way_,
_The_ tallest _there that groweth_.
II.i.16 (22,7) [lob of spirits] _Lob_, _lubber_, _looby_, _lobcock_,
all denote both inactivity of body and dulness of mind.
II.i.23 (23,8) [changeling] _Changeling_ is commonly used for the
child supposed to be left by the fairies, but here for the child
taken away.
II.i.29 (23,9) [sheen] Shining, bright, gay.
II.i.30 (23,1) [But they do square] [To _square_ here is to quarrel.
_And now you are such fools to_ square _for this_? Gray.]
The French word _contrecarrer_ has the same import.