A pretty "turn-out" truly! We may boldly place it side by side with the equipage which Shakespeare[1] provided for her elfin majesty, and find courage to acknowledge that Drayton's fancy is even then right worthy of attention.[2]
"The joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers,"
could not elaborate anything half as elegant from nut-shells as the bright-hued cochleated car the snail provided; the cover of "py'd butterflee" will also bear comparison with that of wings of grasshoppers, and the seat of bee-wool was a thoughtful and dainty addition to fairy comfort which cannot fail to command our approval. Crickets' bones, the very adaptable material that Drayton used for wheelwright's work, were in the original quarto of Romeo and Juliet (1597) made into collars for the "team of little atomy" (sic) which drew the waggon that had spokes of spinners' webs. In current versions of the play, "long spinners' legs" are spokes, and their web is used for traces, which in the earliest conception were of "the moonshine watery beam," an unsubstantial element that was afterwards taken to make the collars. In Nymphidia the harness is, or harnesses are, composed throughout of the smallest spider's web, i.e., of "gossamere"; the horses are gnats instead of atomies, and Shakespeare's waggoner, the small grey-coated gnat (fly, in 1597) is supplanted by Fly Cranion, the charioteer. Who was Fly Cranion? Quarlous[3] says of Master
- ↑ "Mab comes," says Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet, act i. sc. 4), "drawn with a team of little atomies."
"Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces of the smallest spider's web;
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film;
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers." - ↑ "A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees the farther of the two."
- ↑ Bartholomew Fair, act i.
