One of my favourite bits in this section of the reading is always this part from Ch. 9

"When Miss Smiths and Mr. Eltons get acquainted -- they do indeed -- and really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so evidently, so palpably desirable -- what courts the pre-arrangement of other people, should so immediately shape itself into the proper form. You and Mr. Elton are by situation called together; you belong to one another by every circumstance of your respective homes. Your marrying will be equal to the match at Randalls. There does seem to be a something in the air of Hartfield which gives love exactly the right direction, and sends it into the very channel where it ought to flow.

The course of true love never did run smooth --

A Hartfield edition of Shakespeare would have a long note on that passage."

I love how it invites comparison between this story and Shakesepare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. But it also shows something about Emma's habit of starting but not finishing her reading, since this quotation is from Act I Scene i!

First of all, it makes you wonder just how far Emma got in her reading of this play? Did she not see how things could go awry when there was interference with matchmaking?

Secondly, the line she quotes is by Lysander as he and Hermia are trying to figure out what to do about the fact that they are being forcibly split up by someone who thinks that the man he has chosen for his daughter is better than the person she would choose for herself. Egeus doesn't really care how either of the two people in the couple feel, only that he knows best.

Egeus objects that Lysander has 'bewitched' his daughter:

Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,
And interchanged love-tokens with my child:
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice verses of feigning love,
And stolen the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats...

Do there not seem to be some similarities between the way that Lysander tried to show his feelings for Hermia, and Harriet's description in Ch. 4 of the way Mr. Martin had behaved toward her?

Harriet was very ready to speak of the share he had had in their moonlight walks and merry evening games; and dwelt a good deal upon his being so very good-humoured and obliging. "He had gone three miles round one day, in order to bring her some walnuts, because she had said how fond she was of them -- and in every thing else he was so very obliging! He had his shepherd's son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond of singing. He could sing a little himself.