Early work from Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg and Ian Holm.
This clip starts with Act 3, scene 2, line 132 (Pelican edition, Helen's "Your vows to her ad me, put in two scales")
and ends with Helena an...
Early work from Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg and Ian Holm.
This clip starts with Act 3, scene 2, line 132 (Pelican edition, Helen's "Your vows to her ad me, put in two scales")
and ends with Helena and Hermia's exit, line 344 (Hermia's "I am amazed, and know not what to say")
David Warner ... Lysander
Helen Mirren ... Hermia
Diana Rigg ... Helena
Michael Jayston ... Demetrius
William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - 1968 film Directed by Peter Hall
William James Rolfe notes in his edition:
line 172: 'Home returned.'... Cf. Sonn. 109. 5: —
" That is my home of love; if I have rang'd,
Like him that travels I return again."
Johnson quotes Prior: —
"No matter what beauties I saw in my way,
They were but my visits; but thou art my home."
line 188: 'Oes.'... Orbs. S. elsewhere uses O for anything round. See L. L. L. v. 2. 45, Hen. V. prol. 13, and A. and C. v. 2. 8I. Steevens quotes John Davies of Hereford's Microcosmos, 1605:
"Which silver oes and spangles over-ran"; and The Partheneia Sacra, 1633: "the purple canopy of the earth, powdered over and beset with silver oes," etc. Cf. Bacon, Essay 37 : "And Oes, or Spangs, as they are of no great Cost, so they are of most Glory."
line 213: 'Two of the first, like, etc.'.... The allusion is to "the double coats in heraldry that belong to man and wife as one person, but which have but one crest" (Douce).
line 282: 'Canker-blossom'....Some understand this to mean the canker-worm, like cankers in ii. 2. 3 ; but Schmidt and Furness explain it as the blossom of the canker (see Much Ado, i. 3. 28) or wild rose. 5. does not use the compound elsewhere, but he has canker bloom in Sonn. 54. 5, where the scentless flower is contrasted with "sweet roses."
line 329: 'Knot-grass'....The Polygonum avicutlare (Schmidt), which was anciently supposed to hinder the growth of an animal or child. Steevens quotes Beaumont and Fletcher, 'Knight of the Burning Pestle', ii. 2 : "Should they put him into a straight pair of gaskins, 'twere worse than knot-grass, he would never grow after it" ; and The Coxcomb', ii. 2: "a boy . . . kept under for a year with milk and knot-grass." Mr. H. N. Ellacombe (in the London Garden, May 19, 1877) suggests another explanation of hindering. He cites Johnstone, who says that in the north of England, the plant "being difficult to cut in the harvest time, or to pull in the process of weeding, it has obtained the soubriquet of the "Deil's lingels" (lingel — thong). Shakespeare's "hindering" weed cannot be the knot-grass mentioned by Milton, Comus, 542 : —
"the savoury herb
Of knot-grass dew-besprent."
This must be one of the pasture grasses — perhaps Agrostis stolonifera, as it is said to be in Aubrey's 'Natural History of Wilts'.
