IV. It is of small moment if they are disjointed. As we are not now concerned

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279
with Greene, but with Shakespeare, I follow Dyce’s text of the play rather than Gro- sart’s, albeit Dyce does not apparently reproduce the original as faithfully as Grosart reproduces it; the latter says, so corrupt is the original that ‘ Dyce must have taken ised here and there, it is all the better for present purposes : _
The Play begins : Music playing within. Enter Aster Oberon, king of fairies, and an Antic, who dance about a tomb placed conveniently on the stage, out of the which suddenly starts up, as they dance, Bohan, a Scot, attired like a ridstall man, from whom the Antic flies. Oberon manet.
Boh. Ay say, what’s thou ?
Ober. Thy friend, Bohan.
Boh. What wot I, or reck I that ? Whay, guid man, I reck no friend, nor ay reck no foe ; als ene to me. Get thee ganging, and trouble not may whayet, or ays gar thee recon me nene of thay friend, by the mary mass sail I.
Ober. Why, angry Scot, I visit thee for love; then what moves thee to wrath ?
Boh. The deil awhit reck I thy love; for I know too well that true love took her flight twenty winter sence to heaven, whither till ay can, weel I wot, ay sail ne’er find love ; an thou lovest me, leave me to myself. But what were those puppets that hop¬ ped and skipped about me year whayle ?
Ober. My subjects.
Boh. Thay subjects ! whay, art thou a king?
Ober. I am.
Boh. The deil thou art 1 whay, thou lookest not so big as the king of clubs, nor so sharp as the king of spades, nor so fain as the king a’ daymonds : be the mass, ay take thee to be the king of false hearts; therefore I rid thee, away or ayse so curry your kingdom, that you’s be glad to run to save your life.
Ober. Why , stoical Scot, do what thou darest to me; here is my breast, strike.
Boh. Thou wilt not threap me, this whinyard has gard many better men to lope than thou. But how now ? Gos sayds, what, wilt not out ? Whay, thou witch, thou deil ! Gads fute, may whinyard !
Ober. Why, pull, man : but what an ’twere out, how then ?
Boh. This, then, thou wear’t best begone first : for ay’l so lop thy limbs, that thou’s go with half a knave’s carcass to the deil.
Ober. Draw it out; now strike, fool, canst thou not ?
Boh. Bread ay gad, what deil is in me ? Whay, tell me, thou skipjack, what art thou ?
Ober. Nay first tell me what thou wast from thy birth, what thou hast past hitherto, why thou dwellest in a tomb, and leavest the world ? and then I will release thee of these bonds ; before, not.
Boh. And not before ! then needs must, needs sail. I was bom a gentleman of the best blood in all Scotland, except the king. When time brought me to age, and death took my parents, I became a courtier, where though ay list not praise myself, ay en¬ graved the memory of Bohan on the skin-coat of some of them, and revelled with the proudest.
Ober. But why living in such reputation, didst thou leave to be a courtier?
Boh. Because my pride was vanity, my expense loss, my reward fair words and large promises, and my hopes spilt, for that after many years’ service one outran me
280
APPENDIX
and what the deil should I then do there ? No, no ; flattering knaves that can cog and prate fastest, speed best in the court.
Ober. To what life didst thou then betake thee ?
Boh. I then changed the court for the country, and the wars for a wife : but I found the craft of swains more wise than the servants, and wives’ tongues worse than the wars itself, and therefore I gave o’er that, and went to the city to dwell : and there I kept a great house with small cheer, but all was ne’er the near.
Ober. And why ?
Boh. Because, in seeking friends, I found table-guests to eat me and my meat, my wife’s gossips to bewray the secrets of my heart, kindred to betray the effect of my life : which when I noted, the court ill, the country worse, and the city worst of all, in good time my wife died, — ay would she had died twenty winter sooner by the mass, — leaving my two sons to the world, and shutting myself into this tomb, where if I die, I am sure I am safe from wild beasts, but whilst I live I cannot be free from ill company. Besides now I am sure gif all my friends fail me, I sail have a grave of mine own providing, this is all. Now, what art thou ?
Ober. Oberon, king of fairies, that loves thee because thou hatest the world ; and to gratulate thee, I brought these Antics to show thee some sport in dancing, which thou hast loved well.
Boh. Ha, ha, ha ! Thinkest thou those puppets can please me ? whay, I have two sons, that with one Scottish jig shall break the necks of thy Antics.
Ober. That I would fain see.
Boh. Why, thou shalt. How, boys !
Enter Slipper and Nano.
Haud your clucks, lads, trattle not for thy life, but gather opp your legs and dance me forthwith a jig worth the sight.
Slip. Why, I must talk, an I die for ’t : wherefore was my tongue made ?
Boh. Prattle, an thou darest, one word more, and ais dab this whinyard in thy womb.
Ober. Be quiet, Bohan. I’ll strike him dumb, and his brother too; their talk shall not hinder our jig. Fall to it, dance, I say, man.
Boh. Dance Heimore, dance, ay rid thee.
[ The two dance a jig devised for the nonst.
Now get you to the wide world with more than my father gave me, that’s learning enough both kinds, knavery and honesty ; and that I gave you, spend at pleasure.
Ober. Nay, for this sport I will give them this gift ; to the dwarf I give a quick wit, pretty of body, and a warrant his preferment to a prince’s service, where by his wisdom he shall gain more love than common ; and to loggerhead your son I give a wandering life, and promise he shall never lack, and avow that, if in all distresses he call upon me, to help him. Now let them go.
[Exeunt Slipper and Nano with courtesies.
Boh. Now, king, if thou be a king, I will shew thee whay I hate the world by demonstration. In the yeur 1520, was in Scotland a king, over-ruled with parasites, misled by lust, and many circumstances too long to trattle on now, much like our court of Scotland this day. That story have I set down. Gang with me to the gal¬ lery and I’ll shew thee the same in action, by guid fellows of our countrymen, and then when thou see’?! that, judge if any wise man would not leave the world if he could.
Ober. That will I see : lead, and I’ll follow thee. [Exeunt.
[The drama of James IV here begins, and at the conclusion of the First Act
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
281
Bohan and Oberon again appear, and speak as follows. Of their interview Dyce says (P- 94). ‘ the whole of what follows, till the beginning of the next act, is a mass of ‘ confusion and corruption. The misprints here defy emendation.’]
Enter Bohan and Oberon the Fairy-king , after the first act; to them a round of Fairies, or some pretty dance.
Boh. Be gad, grammercies, little king, for this ;
This sport is better in my exile life Than ever the deceitful world could yield.
Ober. I tell thee, Bohan, Oberon is king Of quiet, pleasure, profit, and content,
Of wealth, of honour, and of all the world ;
Tied to no place, yet all are tied to me.
Live thou in this life, exil’d from world and men,
And I will shew thee wonders ere we part.
Boh. Then mark my story, and the strange doubts That follow flatterers, lust, and lawless will,
And then say I have reason to forsake The world and all that are within the same.
Go, shrowd us in our harbour where we’ll see
The pride of folly as it ought to be. [ Exeunt.
After the first Act.
Ober. Here see I good fond actions in thy jig,
And means to paint the world’s inconstant ways ;
But turn thine ene, see what I can command.
[Enter two battles, strongly fighting, the one Semiramis, the other Stabrobates : she flies, and her crown is taken, and she hurt. Boh. What gars this din of mirk and baleful harm,
Where every wean is all betaint with blood ?
Ober. This shews thee, Bohan, what is worldly pomp :
Semiramis, the proud Assyrian queen,
When Ninus died, did tene in her wars Three millions of footmen to the fight,
Five hundred thousand horse, of armed cars A hundred thousand more, yet in her pride Was hurt and conquer’d by Stabrobates.
Then what is pomp ?
Boh. I see thou art thine ene,
The bonny king, if princes fall from high :
My fall is past, until I fall to die.
Now mark my talk, and prosecute my jig.
Ober. How should these crafts withdraw thee from the world 1 But look, my Bohan, pomp allureth.
[Enter Cyrus, kings humbling themselves ; hitnself crowned by olive Pat ; at last dying, laid in a marble tomb, with this inscription Whoso thou be that passest by For I know one shall pass, know I I am Cyrus of Persia,
And, I prithee, leave me not thus like a clod of clay Wherewith my body is covered. [All exeunt.
282
APPENDIX
\Enter the king in great pomp, who reads it, and is suet h, crieth vermeum.
Boh. What meaneth this ?
Oder. Cyrus of Persia,
Mighty in life, within a marble grave Was laid to rot, whom Alexander once Beheld entomb’d, and weeping did confess,
Nothing in life could scape from wretchedness :
Why then boast men ?
Boh. What reck I then of life,
Who makes the grave my tomb, the earth my wife ?
Ober. But mark me more.
Boh. I can no more, my patience will not warp To see these flatteries how they scorn and carp.
Ober. Turn but thy head.
[Enter four kings carrying crowns , ladies presenting odours la potentate enthroned, who suddenly is slain by his servants, and thrust out ; and so, they eat. [ Exeunt .
Boh. Sike is the world ; but whilk is he I saw ?
Ober. Sesostris, who was conqueror of the world Slain at the last, and stamp’d on by his slaves.
Boh. How blest are peur men then that know their graves !
Now mark the sequel of my jig;
An he weele meet ends. The mirk and sable night Doth leave the peering morn to pry abroad ;
Thou nill me stay ; hail then, thou pride of kings !
1 ken the world, and wot well worldly things.
Mark thou my jig, in mirkest terms that tells The loath of sins, and where corruption dwells.
Hail me ne mere with shows of guidly sights ;
My grave is mine, that rids me from despights ;
Accept my jig, guid king, and let me rest ;
The grave with guid men is a gay-built nest.
Ober. The rising sun doth call me hence away ;
Thanks for thy jig, I may no longer stay ;
But if my train did wake thee from thy rest,
So shall they sing thy lullaby to nest. [ Exeunt
[At the end of the Second Act]
Enter Bohan with Oberon.
Boh. So, Oberon, now it begins to work in kind.
The ancient lords by leaving him alone,
Disliking of his humours and despite,
Let him run headlong, till his flatterers,
Sweeting his thoughts of luckless lust With vile persuasions and alluring words,
Make him make way by murder to his will.
Judge, fairy king, hast heard a greater ill ?
Ober. Nor seen more virtue in a country maid.
I tell thee, Bohan, it doth make me merry,
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
283
To think the deeds the king means to perform.
Boh. To change that humour, stand and see the rest I trow, my son Slipper will shew’s a jest.
[Enter Slipper with a companion , boy or wench , dancing a hornpipe , and dance
out again.
Boh. Now after this beguiling of our thoughts,
And changing them from sad to better glee,
Let’s to our cell, and sit and see the rest,
For, I believe, this jig will prove no jest. [Exeunt.
[ At the end of the Third Act Bohan appears alone, and from him we learn that the sadness of the act has put Oberon to sleep. At the conclusion of the Fourth Act]
Chorus. Enter Bohan and Oberon.
Ober. Believe me, bonny Scot, these strange events Are passing pleasing, may they end as well.
Boh. Else say that Bohan hath a barren skull,
If better motions yet than any past Do not more glee to make the fairy greet.
But my small son made pretty handsome shift To save the queen, his mistress, by his speed.
Ober. Yea, and yon laddy, for the sport he made,
Shall see, when least he hopes, I’ll stand his friend,
Or else he capers in a halter’s end.
Boh. What, hang my son ! I trow not, Oberon ;
I’ll rather die than see him woe begone.
Enter a round, or some dance at pleasure.
Ober. Bohan, be pleas’d, for do they what they will,
Here is my hand, I’ll save thy son from ill. [Exeunt.
[In fulfillment of this promise Oberon appears towards the close of the Fifth Act, and, accompanied by Antics, silently conveys away Bohan’s son, Slipper, who is in jeopardy of his life.
The foregoing extracts comprise all that Oberon does or says in the play. As far as Ward’s suggestion is concerned, assent or dissent is left to the reader.]
Ward (vol. i, p. 380) says that the ‘ story of the magic potion [sic, evidently a ‘ mere slip of memory] and its effects Shakspeare may have found in Montemayor’s * Diana, though the translation of this book was not published till 1598.’
It is not the ‘ love juice,’ but ‘ some of the fairy story,’ which Fleay ( Life ana Work, p. 186) says ‘may have been suggested by Montemayor’s Diana.' I think Fleay overlooks the fact that if, as he maintains, the date of the Midsummer Night's Dream, in its present shape, be 1595, it is impossible that Shakespeare could have obtained any suggestions from a book published three years later, in 1598.
I have toiled through the four hundred and ninety-six weary, dreary, falsetto, folio pages of Montemayor’s Diana, without finding any conceivable suggestion for * the fairy story,’ other than that of the love-juice to which Ward, I think, alludes ; here the hint is so broad compared with others which have been proclaimed as surely adopted elsewhere by Shakespeare, that I wonder the assertion of direct ‘ convey- ‘ ance ’ has not been made here ; to be sure we are met by the fact that Meres and
APPENDIX
Montemayor both bear the same date; but then have we not the extremely con¬ venient and highly accommodating refuge : that Shakespeare may have read Yong’s translation in manuscript before it was published, most especially since Yong’s trans¬ lation is dedicated to Lady Penelope Rich, who figures, as we are assured, so freely in Shakespeare’s Sonnets ?
The passage from Yong’s translation of the Diana of George of Montemayor , 4598, p. 123, is as follows: (it should be premised, however, that Felicia, a noble lady, ‘ whose course of life and onely exercise, in her stately court, is to cure and ‘ remedie the passions of loue,’ is about to show her art to Felismena, a shepherdess temporarily blighted, and that the objects of Felicia’s skill are — first, Syrenus, a shep¬ herd immeasurably in love with a shepherdess, Diana, who in turn immeasurably loved Syrenus, but in some unaccountable way she forgot him during his temporary absence, and casually married Delius, in consequence whereof Syrenus is called ‘ the forgotten shepherd ’ ; second, Silvanus, who is also in love with Diana, but by her despised, and he is called ‘ the despised Silvanus ’ ; and thirdly, Silvagia, a shep¬ herdess inimitably in love with Alanius, who, subject to his cruel father’s will, cannot marry her.) : —
‘ The Lady Felicia saide to Felismena. Entertaine this company [Syrenus, Sil- ‘ vanus, Silvagia and others] while I come hither againe : and going into a chamber, ‘ it was not long before she came out againe with two cruets of fine cristall in either ‘ hande, the feete of them being beaten golde, and curiously wrought and enameled : ‘ And coming to Syrenus, she saide vnto him. If there were any other remedy for ‘ *y greefe (forgotten Shepherd) but this, I woulde with all possible diligence haue ‘ sought it out, but because thou canst not now enioy her, who loued thee once so ‘ well, without anothers death, which is onely in the handes of God, of necessitie ‘ then thou must embrace another remedie, to auoide the desire of an impossible ‘ thing. And take thou, faire Seluagia, and despised Syluanus, this glasse, wherein ‘ you shall finde a soueraine remedie for all your sorrowes past & present ; and a ‘ beginning of a ioyfull and contented life, whereof you do now so little imagine.
‘ And taking the cristall cruet, which she helde in her left hande, she gaue it to ‘ Syrenus, and badde him drinke ; and Syrenus did so ; and Syluanus and Seluagia ‘ drunke off the other betweene them, and in that instant they fell all downe to the ‘ ground in a deepe sleepe, which made Filismena not a little to woonder, . . . and ‘ standing halfe amazed at the deepe sleepe of the shepherdes, saide to Felicia : If ‘ the ease of these Shepherds (good Ladie) consisteth in sleeping (me thinkes) they ‘ haue it in so ample sort, that they may Hue the most quiet life in the worlde.
‘ Woonder not at this (saide Felicia ) for the water they drunke hath such force, that,
‘ as long as I will, they shall sleepe so strongly, that none may be able to awake ‘ them. And because thou maist see, whether it be so or no, call one of them as ‘ loude as thou canst. Felismena then came to Syluanus, and pulling him by the ‘ arme, began to call him aloud, which did profite her as little, as if she had spoken * a dead body ; and so it was with Syrenus and Seluagia, whereat Felismena mar- ‘ uelled very much. And then Felicia saide vnto her. Nay, thou shalt maruel yet more, after they awake, bicause thou shalt see so strange a thing, as thou didst neuer ‘ imagine the like. And because the water hath by this time wrought those opera- ‘ tions, that it shoulde do, I will awake them, and marke it well, for thou shalt heare and see woonders. Whereupon taking a booke out of her bosome, she came to Syrenus, and smiting him vpon the head with it, the Shepherd rose vp on his feete in his perfect wits and judgement : To whom Felicia saide. Tell me Syrenus, if
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
285
1 th°u mightest now see faire Diana, & her vnworthy husband both togither in all the
* contentment and ioy of the worlde, laughing at thy loue, and making a sport of thy ‘ teares and sighes, what wouldest thou do ? Not greeue me a whit (good Lady) but ‘ rather helPe them to laugh at my follies past. But if she were now a maide againe,
* (saide Felicia) or perhaps a widow, and would be married to Syluanus and not to ‘ thee, what wouldst thou then do ? Myselfe woulde be the man (saide Sjmenus) that
woulde gladly helpe to make such a match for my friende. What thinkest thou of this Felismena (saide Felicia) that water is able to vnloose the knottes that peruerse Loue doth make ? I woulde neuer haue thought (saide Felismena ) that anie humane ‘ ski11 coulde euer attaine to such diuine knowledge as this. And looking on Syrenus, ‘ she saide vnto him. Howe nowe Syrenus, what meanes this ? Are the teares and
* SIghes whereby thou didst manifest thy loue and greefe, so soone ended ? Since my loue is nowe ended (said Syrenus) no maruell then, if the effects proceeding from it be also determined. And is it possible now (said Felismena) that thou wilt loue Diana no more ? I wish her as much good (answered Syrenus) as I doe to your
* owne selfe (faire Lady) or to any other woman that neuer offended me. But
* EeliPa, seeing how Felismena was amazed at the sudden alteration of Syrenus, said.
‘ With this medicine I would also cure thy greefe (faire Felismena) and thine Be lisa ‘ [another blighted shepherdess] if fortune did not deferre them to some greater con- ‘ tent> tken onel7 to enioy your libertee. And bicause thou maist see how diuersly ‘ the medicines haue wrought in Syluanus and Seluagia, it shall not be amisse to ‘ awake them, for now they haue slept ynough : wherefore laying her booke vpon
* Syluanus his head, he rose vp, saying. O faire Seluagia, what a great offence and ‘ folly haue I committed, by imploying my thoughtes vpon another, after that mine ‘ eies did once behold thy rare beautie ? What meanes this Syluanus (said Felicia).
* No woman in the world euen now in thy mouth, but thy Shepherdesse Diana, and ‘ now so suddenly changed to Seluagia ? Syluanus answering her, said. As the
* skiP (discreete Lady) sailes floting vp and downe, and well-ny cast away in the
* vnknowen seas, without hope of a secure hauen : so did my thoughtes (putting my
* in no small hazard) wander in Dianas loue, all the while, that I pursued it.
‘ But now since I am safely arriued into a hauen, of all ioy and happinesse, I onely ‘ wish I may haue harbour and entertainment there, where my irremooueable and ‘ infinite loue is so firmely placed. Felismena was as much astonished at the seconde ‘ kinde of alteration of Syluanus, as at that first of Syrenus, and therefore saide vnto ‘ him laughing. What dost thou Syluanus ? Why dost thou not awake Seluagia ?
‘ f°r iH may a Shepherdesse heare thee, that is so fast asleepe. Syluanus then pull-
* ing her by the arme, began to speake out aloud vnto her, saying. Awake faire Sel-
* uagia, since thou hast awaked my thoughtes out of the drowsie slumber of passed
* ignorance. Thrise happy man, whom fortune hath put in the happiest estate that I ‘ could desire. What dost thou meane faire Shepherdesse, dost thou not heare me,
‘ or wilt thou not answere me ? Behold the impatient passion of the loue I beare ‘ thee, will not suffer me to be vnheard. O my Seluagia, sleepe not so much, and let
* not thy slumber be an occasion to make the sleepe of death put out my vitall lightes.
‘ And seeing how little it auailed him, by calling her, he began to powre foorth such
* abundance of teares, that they, that were present, could not but weepe also for tender ‘ compassion : whereupon Felicia saide vnto him. Trouble not thy selfe Syluanus,
* for as I will make Seluagia answere thee, so shall not her answere be contrarie to
* ihy desire, and taking him by the hand, she led him into a chamber, and said vnto ‘ him Depart not from hence, vntill I call thee ; and then she went againe to the
286
APPENDIX
‘ place where Sehiagia lay, and touching her with her booke, awaked her, as she had
* done the rest and saide vnto her. Me thinks thou hast slept securely Shepherdesse. ‘ O good Lady (said she) where is my Syluanus, was he not with me heere ? O God, ‘ who hath carried him away from hence ? or wil he come hither againe ? Harke to ‘ me Sehiagia, said Felicia, for me thinkes thou art not wel in thy wits. Thy beloued
* Alanius is without, & saith that he hath gone wandring vp and downe in many ‘ places seeking after thee, and hath got his fathers good will to marrie thee : which ‘ shall as little auaile him (said Sehiagia) as the sighes and teares which once in vaine ‘ I powred out, and spent for him, for his memorie is now exiled out of my thoughts. ‘ Syluanus mine onely life and ioy, O Syluanus is he, whom I loue. O what is ‘ become of my Syluanus ? Where is my Syluanus ? Who hearing the Shepherdesse ‘ Seluagia no sooner name him, could stay no longer in the chamber, but came run- ‘ ning into the hall vnto her, where the one beheld the other with such apparaunt ‘ signes of cordiall affection, and so strongly confirmed by the mutual bonds of their ‘ knowen deserts, that nothing but death was able to dissolue it ; whereat Syrenus, ‘ Felismena, and the Shepherdesse were passing ioyfull. And Felicia seeing them all ‘ in this contentment, said vnto them. Now is it time for you Shepherds, and faire ‘ Shepherdesse to goe home to your flocks, which would be glad to heare the wonted ‘ voice of their knowen masters.’
It may be perhaps a relief to sympathetic hearts to know that Lady Felicia, as well as Oberon, possessed an antidote, and that Syrenus did not for ever remain insensible to Diana’s charms. The very instant that he learned that Delius was dead and Diana a widow ‘ his hart began somewhat to alter and change.’ But to screen him from any imputation of fickleness we are told (p. 466) that this change was wrought by supernatural means, and, what is most noteworthy (I marvel it escaped the commentators) among the means is an herb, — beyond all question this herb is
* Dian’s bud.’ Did not the Lady Felicia live at the Goddess Diana’s temple ? Any ‘ herb,’ any ‘ bud ’ whatsoever that she administered would be ‘ Dian’s bud.’ It is comfortable again to catch Shakespeare at his old tricks. The original passage reads thus : ‘ There did the secret power also of sage Felicia worke extraordinary effects, ‘ and though she was not present there, yet with her herbes [Italics, mine.] and ‘ wordes, which were of great virtue, and by many other supematurall meanes, she ‘ brought to passe that Syrenus began now againe to renewe his old loue to Diana.'
K
WARD (i, 380) says : ‘ I cannot quite understand whether Klein ( Gesck. de: ‘ Dramas, iv, 386) considers Shakespeare in any sense indebted to the Italian comedy * of the Intrighi d'Amore, which has been erroneously attributed to Torquato Tasso.’
I doubt if Klein had that idea in his thoughts. I think he merely holds up, in his loyalty to Shakespeare, the Midsummer Night’s Dream as the pattern of all com¬ edies of intrighi d'amore. Klein’s extraordinary command of language and vehe¬ mence of style make his purpose, at times, difficult to comprehend. The following is the passage referred to by Ward, and it is all the more befitting to cite it here, because in a footnote he runs a tilt at Scholl and Ulrici : —
‘With love-tangles, as, for example, in the scene [Klein is speaking of the Italian ‘ Comedy] where both Flamminio and Camillo woo Ersilia at the same time, and she, ‘ out of spite at the vexations she had received from her favorite Camillo, favours ‘ Flamminio, — with similar love-tangles and capricious waverings of heart the play of ‘ chance teases the lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but with what charms,
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
28;
with what poetic magic are the inirighi d'amore here brought into play by delicate fairies, like symbolically personified winks and hints of an elfin world playing among ‘ ^ vei7 forces of nature ; a sportive, fantastic bewitchery of Nature ; like a caprice
* °f spirit °f Nature itself, through whose teasing play there gleams the pathos of
* the comic; an indication that what in the human world is apparent chance, is divine ‘ foresight and providence, which the roguish Puck presents to us as a piece of jug¬ glery. There is but one genuine comedy of the Intrighi d’amore, of love’s caprices ; —the Midsummer Fight' s Dream. Lavinia [in the Italian comedy j is introduced
‘ as a byeplay to vindicate the theme of love-tangles. Lavinia loves the silly fop Gia- ‘ laise, a Neapolitan, who, in turn, is silly for Lavinia’s maid, Pasquina ; who raves for Flavio, the son of Manilio. Flavio, disguised as a Moor, escapes from his father 4 an(f hires out to a Neapolitan in order to be near Lavinia to whom he has lost his 4 heart. Manilio recovers his son, the Moor, like a black meal bug in a meal bag, 4 wherein he was about to be conveyed to Lavinia’s presence. Finally, Lavinia’s and Flavio s souls coalesce in marriage. Thus portrayed, the whims of love and the caprices of the heart are barren imbecilities, the mental abortions of a lunatic. Think for a minute of Puck and his “ Love-in-idleness ” * squeezed on the slumber- ‘ ing eyelids of the lovers !
Must we not believe that the mighty British poet was born, serenely and smil- 4 t0 accomplish, with regard to the stage, that purpose, to which, in regard to its prototype, his own Hamlet succumbed ? — namely, to put right the stage world which ‘ in the Italian comedy was out of joint ?’
Halliwell ( Memoranda , pp. 9-12, 1879) has given many allusions to various scenes and phrases in the Midsummer Night's Dream to be found in the literature of the seventeenth century, but as they are all subsequent to 1600 they belong to Dramatic History, and illustrate no Shakespearian question other than the popularity of the play.
The following extracts from the THE FAERIE QUEENE are the passages to which, it is to be presumed, Dr Johnson referred when he said : ‘ Fairies in [Shake¬ speare s] time were much in fashion ; common tradition had made them familiar, * and Spenser’s poem had made them great.’
In the Second Book, Tenth Canto we are told (line 631) : —
‘ — how first Prometheus did create A man, of many partes from beasts deriued,
And then stole fire from heauen, to animate His worke, for which he was by Ioue deprived Of life him selfe, and hart-strings of an /Egle riued.
‘ That man so made, he called Elfe, to weet Quick, the first authour of all Elfin kind :
Who wandring through the world with wearie feet,
Did in the gardins of Adonis find
* * This flower, the emblem of capricious phantasy, is the key of the whole play, Neither Schdll nor Ulrici has adequately appreciated this.’
78 8
APPENDIX
A goodly creature, whom he deemd in mind To be no earthly wight, but either Spright,
Or Angell, th’ authour of all woman kind ;
Therefore a Fay he her according hight,
Of whom all Faeryes spring, and fetch their lignage right.
* Of these a mightie people shortly grew,
And puissaunt kings, which all the world warrayd,
And to them selues all Nations did subdew :
The first and eldest, which that scepter swayd,
Was Elfm ; him all India obayd,
And all that now America men call :
Next him was noble Elfinan, who layd Cleopolis foundation first of all :
But EIJiline enclosd it with a golden wall.
‘ His sonne was EIJinell, who ouercame The wicked Gobbelines in bloudy field :
But Elfant was of most renowmed fame,
Who all of Christall did Panthea build :
Then Elfar, who two brethren gyants kild,
The one of which had two heads, th’ other three :
Then Elfinor , who was in Magick skild ;
He built by art vpon the glassy See A bridge of bras, whose sound heauens thunder seem’d to bee-
* He left three sonnes, the which in order raynd.
And all their Ofspring, in their dew descents,
Euen seuen hundred Princes, which maintaynd With mightie deedes their sundry gouemments;
That were too long their infinite contents Here to record, ne much materiall :
Yet should they be most famous moniments,
And braue ensample, both of martiall.
And ciuill rule to kings and states imperiall.
* After all these Eljicleos did rayne.
The wise Eljicleos in great Maiestie,
Who mightily that scepter did sustayne,
And with rich spoiles and famous victorie,
Did high aduaunce the crowne of Faery :
He left two sonnes, of which faire Elferon The eldest brother did vntimely dy ;
Whose emptie place the mightie Oberon Doubly supplide, in spousall, and dominion.
' Great was his power and glorie ouer all,
Which him before, that sacred seat did fill.
That yet remaines his wide memoriall :
He dying left the fairest TanaquiU,
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
Him to succeede therein, by his last will :
Fairer and nobler liueth none this howre,
Ne like in grace, ne like in learned skill ;
Therefore they Glorian call that glorious flowre :
Long mayst thou Glorian liue, in glory and great powre.'
Robin Goodfellow
Keightley ( Fairy Myth. 1833, ii, 127) : ‘Shakespeare seems to have attempted
* a blending of the Elves of the village with the Fays of romance. His Fairies agree ‘ with the former in their diminutive stature,— diminished, indeed, to dimensions inap-
* Pitiable by village gossips,— in their fondness for dancing, their love of cleanliness. * 111(1 in thelr child-abstracting propensities. Like the Fays, they form a community,
* raled over by the princely Oberon and the fair Titania. There is a court and chiv- ‘ airy; Oberon, . . . like earthly monarchs, has his jester, “the shrewd and knavish
* “ sprite, called Robin Good-fellow.” ’
‘The name of Robin Goodfellow,’ says Halliwell (In trod. p. 37, 1841), ‘had, it appears, been familiar to the English as early as the thirteenth century, being men-
* boned in a tale preserved in a manuscript of that date in the Bodleian Library at
* Oxford.’
W. A. Wright ( Preface , p. xvii) : ‘Tyndale, in his Obedience of a Christian ‘ Man (Parker, Soc. ed. p. 321), says, “ The pope is kin to Robin Goodfellow, which ‘ “ sweepeth the house, washeth the dishes, and purgeth all, by night; but when day ‘ “ cometh, there is nothing found clean.” And again, in his Exposition of the 1st ‘ Epistle of St. John (Parker Soc. ed. p. 139), « By reason whereof the scripture . . . ‘ “ is become a maze unto them, in which they wander as in a mist, or (as we say) led ‘ “ by Robin Goodfellow, that they cannot come to the right way, no, though they turn ‘ “ their caps.” ’
In Reginald Scot’s The discouerie of witchcraft , &c., 1584, Robin Goodfellow Is many times mentioned by name. ‘ I hope you understand,’ says Scot, speaking of the birth of Merlin (4 Booke, chap. 10, p. 67, ed. Nicholson), ‘ that they affirme and saie, ‘ that Incubus is a spirit; and I trust you know that a spirit hath no flesh nor bones, ‘ &c : and that he neither dooth eate nor drinke. In deede your grandams maides ‘ were woont to set a boll of milke before him and his cousine Robin good-fellow, for ‘ grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight ; and you haue ‘ also heard that he would chafe exceedingly, if the maid or good-wife of the house,
‘ hauing compassion of his nakedness, laid anie clothes for him, beesides his messe of ‘ white bread and milke, which was his standing fee. For in that case he saith ;
‘ What have we here ? Hemton hamten, here will I neuer more tread nor stampen.’
Again, in a passage quoted in this edition to illustrate urchins, in The Tempest, I, ii, 385, Scot says (7 Booke, chap, xv, p. 122, ed. Nicholson) : ‘ It is a common saieng;
‘ A lion feareth no bugs. But in our childhood our mothers maids haue so terrified
* vs with an ouglie divell having homes on his head, fier in his mouth . . . eies like a ‘ bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skin like a Niger, and a voice roring ‘ like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we heare one crie Bough : and they ‘ have so fraied us with bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs,
‘ pans, faunes, svlens, kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps,
19
2QO
APPENDIX
‘ calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changlings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoome, 4 the mare, the man in the oke, the hell waine, the fierdrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, 4 hobgoblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our
* owne shadowes ; in so much as some never feare the divell, but in a darke night ; ‘ and then a polled sheepe is a perillous beast, and manie times is taken for our fathers ‘ soule, speciallie in a churchyard, where a right hardie man heretofore scant durst ‘ passe by night, but his haire would stand upright.’
Again, in a noteworthy passage (7 Booke, chap. 2, p. 105, ed. Nicholson) : * And 4 know you this by the waie, that heretofore Robin goodfellow, and Hob gobblin were 4 as terrible, and also as credible to the people, as hags and witches be now : and in 4 time to come, a witch will be as much derided and contemned, and as plainlie per-
* ceived, as the illusion and knaverie of Robin goodfellow. And in truth, they that 4 mainteine walking spirits, with their transformation, &c : have no reason to denie 4 Robin goodfellow, upon whom there hath gone as manie and as credible tales, as 4 upon witches ; saving that it hath not pleased the translators of the Bible, to call 4 spirits by the name of Robin goodfellow, as they have termed divinors, soothsaiers, 4 poisoners, and couseners by the name of witches.’
Halliwell (Mem. p. 27, 1879) notes that Tarlton, in his ‘Newes out of Purga- 4 torie, 1589, says of Robin Goodfellow that he was “ famozed in everie old wives 4 44 chronicle, for his mad merrye prankes.” ’ And again (p. 27), 4 Nash, in his Ter- 4 rors of the Night, 1594, observes that the Robin Goodfellowes, elfes, fairies, hob- 4 goblins of our latter age, did most of their merry pranks in the night : then ground 4 they malt, and had hempen shirts for their labours, daunst in greene meadows,
4 pincht maids in their sleep that swept not their houses cleane, and led poor travel- 4 lers out of their way notoriously.’
W. A. Wright ( Preface , p. xix) quotes from Harsnet’s Declaration of Popish Imposture (p. 1 34), a passage to the same effect as the former quotation from Scot, in regard to the necessity of 4 duly setting out the bowle of curds and creame for Robin 4 Goodfellow.’ But although it has been assumed that Shakespeare was familiar with Harsnet’s book when he wrote King Lear, its date, 1603, is too late for this present play. The same is true also of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, albeit a pas¬ sage cited by W. A. Wright from Part I, Sec. ii, Mem. I, Subs, ii, contains one noteworthy sentence; speaking of hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, and the Ambulones ’ that mislead travellers, Burton says: ‘These have several names in several places; we commonly call them pucks.'
Collier edited for the Percy Society, 1841, a rare tract, called Robin Goodfellow, his Mad Pranks and Merry Jests, dated 1628. Of it, in his edition, he says, 4 there 4 is little doubt that it originally came out at least forty years earlier,’ and added that 4 a ballad inserted in the Introduction to that Reprint, shows how Shakespeare availed ‘himself of popular superstitions.’ Halliwell (Fairy Myth. p. 120, 1845, ed. Shak. Soc.) agrees with Collier in the probability that this tract is of a much earlier production than 1628, and, ‘although we have no proof of the fact, [it] had most 4 likely been seen by Shakespeare in some form or other.’
R. G. White, among editors and critics, has given the most attention to this claim of precedence, and has, I think, quite demolished it. The task seems scarcely worth
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
291
the pains. The Robin Goodfellow of the ‘ Mad Prankes,’ like the Oberon of romance, has nothing in common, but the name, with' Shakespeare’s Puck. He is merely a low, lying buffoon, whose coarse jokes are calculated to evoke the horse laughter of boors. Nevertheless, as Collier afterwards asserted in a note to The Devil and the Scold, in his Roxburghe Ballads, that the ‘Mad Prankes had been published before ‘ 1588,’ R. G. White’s settlement of the question deserves a place here. He says ( Introd . p. 9) : ‘ Collier’s reasons for this decision, which has not been questioned ‘ hitherto, are to be found only in the following passage in his Introduction to the edi- ‘ tion of the Mad Prankes, published by the Percy Society : “ There is no doubt that ‘ “ Robin Goodfellow, his Mad Prankes and Merry Jests was printed before 1588.
* “ Tarlton, the celebrated comic actor, died late in that year, and just after his decease
* “ (as is abundantly established by internal evidence, though the work has no date)
* “ came out in [«V] a tract called Tarlton' s Nerves out of Purgatorie, &*c., Published
* “ by an old companion of his Robin Goodfellow ; and on sign. A 3 we find it asserted
* “ that Robin Goodfellow was ‘ famozed in every old wives chronicle for his mad
* “ ‘ merrye prankes,’ as if at that time the incidents detailed in the succeeding pages ‘ “ were all known, and had been frequently related. Four years earlier Robin Good ‘ “ fellow had been mentioned by Anthony Munday in his comedy of Two Italian ‘ “ Gentlemen, printed in 1584, and there his other familiar name of Hobgoblin is ‘ “ also assigned to him.”
‘ . . . The assertion in the Newes out of Purgatorie, that Robin Goodfellow and ‘ his tricks were told of in every old wife’s chronicle, certainly does show that the ‘ incidents related in the Merry Pranks were, at least in a measure, “ known, and ‘ “ had been frequently related ” previous to the appearance of the former pubiica- ‘ tion ; but it neither establishes any sort of connection between the two works, nor ‘ has the slightest bearing upon the question of the order in which they were written ; ‘ ... to suppose that the old wives derived their stories of Robin from the author of ‘ Mad Pranks, is just to reverse that order of events which results from the very nature ‘ of things ; it is the author who records and puts into shape the old wives’ stories. . . .
* There is, then, no reason for believing that the Merry Pranks is an older composi- ' tion than the Newes out of Purgatorie, but there are reasons which lead to the con- ‘ elusion that it was written after A Midstimmer Night's Dream. . . . The style of the ‘ Merry Pranks is not that of a time previous to [1594, the date White assigns to cer- ‘ tain passages in A Midsummer Night's Dreani\. Its simplicity and directness, and ‘ its comparative freedom from the multitude of compound prepositions and adverbs ‘ which deform the sentences and obscure the thoughts of earlier writers, point to a
* period not antecedent to that of the translation of our Bible for its production. . . . ‘ To this evidence, afforded by the style of the narrative, the songs embodied in ‘ the book add some of another kind, and perhaps more generally appreciable.
One, for instance, beginning, “ When Virtue was a country maide,” contains these ‘ lines : —
“ She whift her pipe, she drunke her can,
The pot wos nere out of her span,
She married a tobacco man,
A stranger, a stranger.”
‘ But tobacco had never been seen in England until 1586, only two years before the ‘ publication of the Newes out of Purgatorie ; and Aubrey, writing at least after ‘ 1650, says in his Ashmolean MSS. that “ within a period of thirty-five years it was ‘ “ sold for its weight in silver.” But it is not necessary to go to the gossiping anti-
292
APPENDIX
* quary for evidence that before 1594 or 1598 a “ country maide ” could not command 4 the luxury of a pipe, or that rapidly as the noxious weed came into use, she could ‘ not then marry “ a tobacco man.”
‘ In the narrative we are told that Robin sung another of the songs “ to the tune ‘ “ of What care I how faire she be ?" But the writer of the song to which this is a 4 burthen, George Wither, was not bom until 1588, the very year in which the Newes 4 out of Purgatorie was published; and this song, although written a short time (we ‘ know not how long) before, was first published in 1619 in Wither’s Fidelia. ... As ‘ bearing upon the question of date, the following lines, in one of the songs, are also ‘ important : — -
“ O give the poore some bread, cheese, or butter Bacon hempe or flaxe.
Some pudding bring, or other thing :
My need doth make me aske."
4 Here the last word should plainly be, and originally was, axe (the early form 4 of ‘ ask ’), which is demanded by the rhyme, and which would have been given had 4 the edition of 1628 been printed from one much earlier; for axe was in common use 4 in the first years of the seventeenth century. The song, which is clearly many years ‘ older than the volume in which it appears, was written out for the press by some one ‘ who used the new orthography even at the cost of the old rhyme.’ [White over¬ looks the possibility that this change in orthography might apply to all the rest of the volume. The spelling of the ed. of 1628 might have been changed throughout from one forty years older, to make it more saleable. I am entirely of White’s way of thinking, only this last argument, I am afraid, does not help him. — Ed.]
‘ But, perhaps, the most important passage in the Mad Pranks , with regard to its
4 relation to A Midsummer Night's Dream, is the last sentence of the FiTst Part : _
‘ “ The second part shall shew many incredible things done by Robin Goodfellow, or 4 “ otherwise called Hob-goblin, and his companions, by turning himself into diverse ‘ “ sundry shapes.” For the evidence that Robin Goodfellow was not called Hob- 4 goblin until Shakespeare gave him that name, which before had pertained to another 4 spirit, even if not to one of another sort, is both clear and cogent. Scot says [vide 4 supra~] “ Robin Goodfellow and Hobgoblin were as terrible,” &c., and [he enume¬ rates them in another passage, also given above, as two separate ‘ bugs ’]. This was ‘in 1584, only four years before the publication of the Newes out of Purgatorie,
4 which Collier would have refer to the Mad Pranks in which Robin Goodfellow and 4 Hobgoblin are made one. Again, in the passage from Nashe’s Terrors of the Aright,
4 published in 1594, the very year in which a part, at least, of the fairy poetry of this ‘ play was written, Robin Goodfellows, elves, fairies, hobgoblins are enumerated as
* distinct classes of spirits ; and Spenser, just before, had distinguished the Puck from 4 the Hobgoblin in his Epithalamion. . . . Shakespeare was the first to make Robin a 4 Puck aQd a Hobgoblin, when he wrote : “ Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet 4 “ Puck> You do their work, and they shall have good luck,” and since that the
* merry knave has borne the alias.
4 we are thus led to the conclusion not only that this interesting tract, the Mad Prankes , was written after the publication of the Newes out of Purgatorie in 1588, and after the performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but that it was in a measure founded upon this very play. ... It seems that the writer . . . was incited to his task by the popularity of this comedy, ... and that he did his best to gather 4 ad the old wives’ tales about Robin Goodfellow into a clumsily-designed story,
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
293
which he interspersed, . , . with such songs, old or new, as were in vogue at the time. . . .
‘ It seems, then, that [Shakespeare] was indebted only to popular tradition for the more important part of the rude material which he worked into a structure of such fanciful and surpassing beauty. ... The plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has ■no prototype in ancient or modern story.’
Halliwell ( Introd p. 28, 1841) : ‘ Mr. Collier has in his possession an unique black-letter ballad, entitled The Merry Puck, or Rohm Goodfellow, which, from ‘ several passages, may be fairly concluded to have been before the public previously ‘ to the appearance of the Midsummer Night’s Dream.' This ballad Halliwell reprints. W. A. Wright {Preface, p. xix) gives, without comment, the following stanza (p. 36) : —
‘ Sometimes he’d counterfeit a voyce, and travellers call astray,
Sometimes a walking fire he’d be and lead them from their way.’
Halliwell again reprinted it in his Fairy Mythology, p. 155, 1845, but omitted all allusion to it in his folio edition 1856, and in his Memoranda of the Midsummer Night's Dream, 1879.
Percy {Reliques of Ant. Eng. Poet. 1765, iii, 202) : ‘Robin Goodfellow, alias
* PUCKE> abas Hobgoblin, in the creed of ancient superstition, was a kind of merry ‘ sprite, whose character and achievements are recorded in this ballad, and in those ‘ well-known lines of Milton’s L' Allegro, which the antiquarian Peck supposes to be
* owing to it : —
“ Tells how the drudging Goblin swet To earn his cream-bowle duly set ;
When in one night, ere glimpse of morne.
His shadowy flail hath thresh’d the com That ten day-labourers could not end ;
Then lies him down the lubbar fiend,
And stretch’d out all the chimney’s length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings,”
‘ The reader will observe that our simple ancestors had reduced all these whimsies to a kind classic mythology; a proof of the extensive influence and vast antiquity of these superstitions. Mankind, and especially the common people, could not everywhere ‘ have been so unanimously agreed concerning these arbitrary notions, if they had not ' prevailed among them for many ages. Indeed, a learned friend in Wales assures the editor that the existence of Fairies and Goblins is alluded to in the most ancient British Bards, who mention them under various names, one of the most common of which signifies “The spirits of the mountains.”
‘ This song (which Peck attributes to Ben Jonson, tho’ it is not found among his works) is given from an ancient black-letter copy in the British Musceum. It seems to have been originally intended for some Masque.’
From Oberon, in farye land,
The king of ghosts and shadowes there,
294
APPENDIX
Mad Robin I, at his command,
Am sent to viewe the night-sports here.
What revell rout Is kept about,
In every corner where I go,
I will o’ersee,
And merry bee,
And make good sport, with ho, ho, he !
More swift than lightening I can flye About this aery welkin soone,
And, in a minute’s space, descrye
Each thing that’s done belowe the moone.
There’s not a hag Or ghost shall wag,
Cry, ware Goblins ! where I go ;
But Robin I Their feates will spy,
And send them home, with ho, ho, ho !
Whene’er such wanderers I meete,
As from their night-sports they trudge home ;
With counterfeiting voice I greete And call them on, with me to roame Thro’ woods, thro’ lakes,
Thro’ bogs, thro’ brakes;
Or else, unseene, with them I go,
All in the nicke,
To play some tricke,
And frolicke it, with ho, ho, ho !
Sometimes I meete them like a man ;
Sometimes an ox ; sometimes a hound ;
And to a horse I turn me can ;
To trip and trot about them round.
But if, to ride,
My backe they stride,
More swift than wind away I go,
Ore hedge and lands, \_qu. launds ? — Eo ] Thro’ pools and ponds I whirry, laughing, ho, ho, ho !
When lads and lasses merry be,
With possets and with juncates fine;
Unseene of all the company,
I eat their cakes and sip their wine ;
And, to make sport,
I [sneeze] and snort And out the candles I do blow.
The maids I kiss ;
They shrieke — Who’s this ?
I answer nought, but ho, ho, ho !
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
295
Yet now and then, the maids to please,
At midnight I card up their wooll ;
And while they sleepe, and take their ease, With wheel to threads their flax I pull.
I grind at mill Their malt up still ;
I dress their hemp, I spin their tow,
If any ’wake,
And would me take,
I wend me, laughing, ho, ho, ho !
When house or harth doth sluttish lye,
I pinch the maiden black and blue ;
The bed-clothes from the bed pull I,
And lay them naked all to view.
’Twixt sleep and wake,
I do them take,
And on the key-cold floor them throw.
If out they cry,
Then forth I fly,
And loudly laugh out, ho, ho, ho !
When any need to borrowe ought,
We lend them what they do require ;
And for the use demand we nought ;
Our owne is all we do desire.
If to repay,
They do delay,
Abroad amongst them then I go,
And night by night,
I them affright
With pinchings, dreames, and ho, ho, ho 1
When lazie queans have nought to do,
But study how to cog and lye ;
To make debate and mischief too,
’Twixt one another secretlye :
I marke their gloze,
And it disclose,
To them whom they have wronged so ; When I have done,
I get me gone.
And leave tnem scolding, ho, ho, ho !
When men do traps and engins set
In loop-holes, where the vermine creepe, Who from their folds and houses, get
Their ducks, and geese, and lambes asleep :
APPENDIX
296
I spy the gin,
And enter in,
And seeme a vermine taken so.
But when they there Approach me neare,
I leap out laughing, ho, ho, ho !
By wells and rills, in meadowes greene.
We nightly dance our hey-day guise ;
And to our fairye king, and queene,
We chant our moon-light harmonies.
When larks ’gin sing,
Away we fling;
And babes new-borne steal as we go,
An elfe in bed We leave instead,
And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho !
From hag-bred Merlin’s time, have I Thus nightly revell’d to and fro;
And for my pranks men call me by The name of Robin Good-fellow.
Fiends, ghosts, and sprites,
Who haunt the nightes,
The hags and goblins do me know ;
And beldames old My feates have told,
So Vale, Vale ; ho, ho, ho !
[The foregoing song, clearly /^/-Shakespearian, would not have been reprinted here had it not been repeatedly referred to by editors and commentators.
Collier owned a version in a MS of the time ; which was ‘ the more curious,’ says Collier (p. 185), ‘ because it has the initials B. J. at the end. It contains some ‘ variations and an additional stanza.’
In Halliwell’s Fairy Mythology ( Shakespeare Society. 1841) many extracts from poems and dramas may be found, but as they also are ad of a later date than tbe present play, a reference to them is sufficient.]
DURATION OF THE ACTION
29 7
DURATION OF THE ACTION
Halliwell ( Introduction , &c., 1841, p. 3) : The period of the action is four days, concluding with the night of the new moon. But Hermia and Lysander receive the edict of Theseus four days before the new moon ; they fly from Athens ‘ tomorrow ‘ nigbt ’ ; they become the sport of the fairies, along with Helena and Demetrius, during one night only, for Oberon accomplishes all in one night, before ‘ crows,’ and the lovers are discovered by Theseus the morning before that which would have rendered this portion of the plot chronologically consistent.
\V. A. Wright ( Preface , p. xxii) : In the play itself the time is about May-day, but Shakespeare, from haste or inadvertence, has fallen into some confusion in regard to it. Theseus’ opening words point to April 27, four days before the new moon which was to behold the night of his marriage with Hippolyta. . . . The next night, which would be April 28, Lysander appoints for Hermia to escape with him from Athens. . . . The night of the second day is occupied with the adventures in the wood, and in the morning the lovers are discovered by Theseus and his huntsmen, and it is supposed that they have risen early to observe the rite of May. So that the morning of the third day is the 1st of May, and the last two days of April are lost altogether. Titania’s reference to the ‘ middle-summer’s spring ’ must therefore be to the summer of the preceding year. It is a curious fact, on which, however, I would not lay too much stress, that in 1592 there was a new moon on the 1st of May; so that if A Mid¬ summer Nighf s Dream was written so as to be acted on a May day, when the actual age of the moon corresponded with its age in the play, it must have been written for May day, 1592.
P. A. Daniel [Trans. New Shakspere Soc. 1877-9, Part ii, p. 147) : Day 1. _
Act I, Sc. i. Athens. In the first two speeches the proposed duration of the action seems pretty clearly set forth. By [them J I understand that four clear days are to intervene between the time of this scene and the day of the wedding. The night of this day No. 1 would, however, suppose five nights to come between.
Day 2. Act II, Act III, and part of Sc. i, Act IV, are on the morrow night in the wood, and are occupied with the adventures of the lovers; with Oberon, Titania, and Puck ; the Clowns. Daybreak being at hand, the fairies trip after the nights’ shade and leave the lovers and Bottom asleep.
Day 3.— Act IV, Sc. i, continued. Morning. May-day. Theseus, Hippolyta, &c. enter and awake the lovers with their hunting horns.
In Act I. it will be remembered that four days were to elapse before Theseus’s nuptials and Hermia’s resolve ; but here we see the plot is altered, for we are now only in the second day from the opening scene, and only one clear day has intervened between day No. 1 and this, the wedding-day.
Act IV, Sc. ii. Athens. Later in the day.
Act V. In the Palace. Evening.
According to the opening speeches of Theseus and Hippolyta in Act I, we should have expected the dramatic action to have comprised five days exclusive of that Act r*s it is we have only three days inclusive of it.
Day I. — Act I.
“ 2. — Acts II, III, and part of Sc. i, Act IV
“ 3.— Part of Sc. i, Act IV, Sc. ii, Act IV, and Act V.
APPENDIX
298
FURNIVALL ( Introd . Leopold Skakspere, 1877, p. xxvii) : Note in this Dream the first of those inconsistencies as to the time of the action of the play that became so markt a feature in later plays, like The Merchant of Venice, where three months and more are crowded into 39 hours. Here Theseus and Hippolyta say that ‘ four happy ‘ days ’ and ‘ four nights ’ are to pass before ‘ the night of our solemnities but, in the hurry of the action of the play, Shakspere forgets this, and makes only two nights so pass. Theseus speaks to Hippolyta, and gives judgement on Hermia’s case, on April 29. ‘ Tomorrow night,’ April 30, the lovers meet, and sleep in the forest, and
are found there on May-day morning by Theseus. They and he all go to Athens and get married that day, and go to bed at midnight, the fairies stopping with them till the break of the fourth day, May 2.
Fleay ( Robinson's Epit. of Lit. I Apr. 1879) : All editors and commentators, as far as I know, agree that the * four days ’ of I, i cannot be reconciled with the action of the play. I demur. The marriage of Theseus is on the 1st of May ; the play opens on the 27th of April, but at line 137 I take it a new scene must begin [see note ad ■loci] ; and there is no reason why it should not be on the 28th or 29th of April. I would place it on the 28th. On the 29th the lovers go to the wood, and, in IV, i, 1 14, when the fairies leave, it is the morning of the 30th. But at this point Titania’s music has struck ‘ more dead than common sleep’ on the lovers. Yet in a few minutes enter Theseus, the horns sound, and they awake. Why this dead sleep if it has to last but a few minutes? Surely Act III ends with the fairies’ exit, and the lovers sleep through the 30th of April and wake on May morning. ... At the end of Act III there is in the Folio a curious stage-direction, which would come in well after Sleepers lie still, at the division I propose : They sleep all the Act, i. e. while the music is playing. But if this reasoning seems insufficient, let the reader turn to IV, i, 99, where Oberon says he will be at Theseus’s wedding tomorrow mid¬ night. This must be said on the 30th of April. . . . There must therefore be an inter¬ val of 24 hours somewhere, and this is only possible during the dead sleep of the lovers. If any one would ask why make them sleep during this time, I would answer that the 30th of April, 1592, was a Sunday.
Henry A. Clapp ( Atlantic Monthly, March, 1885) : A Alidsummer Night's Dream is the only one of Shakespeare’s plays in which I have discovered an inex¬ plicable variance between the different parts of his scheme of time. ... It is this same ‘ tomorrow night ’ which teems with wonders for all the chief persons of the piece ; the whole of Acts II. and III. is included within it, and in Scene i. of Act IV. day breaks upon the following mom. ... It is a single night, as is said over and over again by the text in diverse ways. . . . Parts of three successive days have therefore been occupied in the action, and a whole day has somehow dropped out. . . . On the whole, I think we must believe that the explanation lies in the nature of the play, whose characters, even when clothed with human flesh and blood, have little solidity or reality. I fancy that Shakespeare would smilingly plead guilty as an accessory after the fact to the blunder, and charge the principal fault upon Puck and his crew, who would doubtless rejoice in the annihilation of a mortal’s day.
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Samuel Pepys, 1662, September 29: — To the King’s Theatre, where we saw Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play, that ever I saw in my life — (Vol. ii, p. 51, ed. Bright, ap. Ingleby).
Hazlitt ( Characters , &c., 1817, p. 128) : Puck is the leader of the fairy band. He is the Ariel of the Midsumtner Night's Dream ; and yet as unlike as can be to the Ariel in The Tempest. No other poet could have made two such different cha¬ racters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with a sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he mis¬ leads — ‘ Lord, what fools these mortals be !’ Ariel cleaves the air, and executes his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger ; Puck is borne along on his fairy errand like the light and glittering gossamer before the breeze. He is, indeed, a most Epi¬ curean little gentleman, dealing in quaint devices, and faring in dainty delights. Prospero and his world of spirits are a set of moralists , but with Oberon and his fairies we are launched at once into the empire of the butterflies. How beautifully is this race of beings contrasted with the men and women actors in the scene, by a single epithet which Titania gives to the latter, ‘ the human mortals ’ ! It is astonish¬ ing that Shakespeare should be considered, not only by foreigners but by many of our own critics, as a gloomy and heavy writer, who painted nothing but ‘ gorgons and ‘ hydras and chimeras dire.’ His subtlety exceeds that of all other dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated person of the present day said he regarded him rather as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sportive gaiety are infinite. In the Midsummer Night's Dream alone we should imagine there is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole range of French poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will produce out of that single play ten passages, to which we do not think any ten passages in the works of the French poets can be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania’s description of her fairy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck’s account of himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen’s exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favorite, Bottom; or Hippolyta’s description of a chase, or Theseus’s answer? The twc last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight; the descriptions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown upon beds of flowers. ... It has been sug¬ gested to us that this play would do admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece. . . . Alas, the experiment has been tried and has failed, . . . from the nature of things. The Midsummer Night's Dream , when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. — Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective ; everything there is in the fore¬ ground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, imme¬ diately becomes an unmanageable reality. Where all is left to the imagination (as is the case in reading) every circumstance, near or remote, has an equal chance of being
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kept in mind, and tells according to the mixed impression of all that has been sug¬ gested. But the imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual impressions of the senses. Any offence given to the eye is not to be got rid of by explanation. Thus, Bottom’s head in the play is a fantastic illusion, produced by magic spells ; on the stage it is an ass’s head, and nothing more ; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall ox Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at midday, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then may the Midsummer Night's Dream be represented without injury at Covent Garden or at Drury Lane. The boards of a theatre and the regions of fancy are not the same thing.
Augustine Skottowe ( Life of Shakespeare, &c., 1824, i, 255) : Few plays con¬ sist of such incongruous materials as A Midsummer Night's Dream. It comprises no less than four histories : that of Theseus and Hippolyta ; of the four Athenian lovers ; the actors ; and the fairies. It is not, indeed, absolutely necessary to separate The¬ seus and Hippolyta from the lovers, nor the actors from the fairies, but the link of connection is extremely slender. Nothing can be more irregularly wild than to bring into contact the Fairy mythology of modern Europe and the early events of Grecian history, or to introduce Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling, ‘ hard-handed ‘ men which never laboured in their minds till now,’ as amateur actors in the classic city of Athens.
Of the characters constituting the serious action of this play Theseus and Hippo¬ lyta are entirely devoid of interest. Lysander and Demetrius, and Hermia and Helena, scarcely merit notice, except on account of the frequent combination of ele¬ gance, delicacy, and vigour, in their complaints, lamentations, and pleadings, and the ingenuity displayed in the management of their cross-purposed love through three several changes. . . . Bottom and his companions are probably highly-drawn carica¬ tures of some of the monarchs of the scene whom Shakespeare found in favour and popularity when he first appeared in London, and in the bickerings, jealousies, and contemptible conceits which he has represented we are furnished with a picture of the green-room politics of the Globe.
[P. 263.] Of all spirits it was peculiar to fairies to be actuated by the feelings and passions of mankind. The loves, jealousies, quarrels, and caprices of the dramatic king give a striking exemplification of this infirmity. Oberon is by no means back¬ ward in the assertion of supremacy over his royal consort, who, to do her justice, is as little disposed as any earthly beauty tacitly to acquiesce in the pretensions of her redoubted lord. But knowledge, we have been gravely told, is power, and the ani¬ mating truth is exemplified by the issue of the contest between Oberon and Titania : his majesty’s acquaintance with the secret virtues of herbs and flowers compels the wayward queen to yield what neither love nor duty could force from her. . . .
[P._ 274.] An air of peculiar lightness distinguishes the poet’s treatment of this extremely fanciful subject from his subsequent and bolder flights into the regions of the spiritual world. He rejected from the drama on which he engrafted it, everything calculated to detract from its playfulness or to encumber it with seriousness, and, giv¬ ing the rein to the brilliancy of youthful imagination, he scattered from his superabun¬ dant wealth, the choicest flowers of fancy over the fairies’ paths ; his fairies move amidst the fragrance of enameled meads, graceful, lovely, and enchanting. It is
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equally to Shakespeare’s praise that A Midsummer Night's Dream is not more highly distinguished by the richness and variety, than for the propriety and harmony which characterises the arrangement of the materials out of which he constructed this vivid and animated picture of fairy mythology.
( Thomas Campbell (. Introductory Notice , 1838) : Addison says, ‘ the tombs of departed greatness every emotion of envy dies within me.’ I have never been so sacrilegious as to envy Shakespeare, in the bad sense of the word, but if there can be such an emotion as sinless envy, I feel it towards him; and if I thought that the sight of his tombstone would kill so pleasant a feeling, I should keep out of the way of it. Of all his works, the Midsummer Night's Dream leaves the strongest impression on my mind that this miserable world must have, for once at least, con¬ tained a happy man. This play is so purely delicious, so little intermixed with the painful passions from which Poetry distils her sterner sweets, so fragrant with hilarity so bland and yet so bold, that I cannot imagine Shakespeare’s mind to have been in any other frame than that of healthful ecstasy when the sparks of inspiration thrilled through his brain in composing it. I have heard, however, an old cold critic object that Shakespeare might have foreseen it would never be a good acting play, for where could you get actors tiny enough to couch in flower blossoms ? Well ! I believe no manager was ever so fortunate as to get recruits from Fairy-land, and yet I am told that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was some twenty years ago revived at Covent Garden, though altered, of course, not much for the better, by Reynolds, and that it had a run of eighteen nights ; a tolerably good reception. But supposing that it never could have been acted, I should only thank Shakespeare the more that he wrote here as a poet and not as a playwright. And as a birth of his imagination, whether it was to suit the stage or not, can we suppose the poet himself to have been insensible of its worth ? Is a mother blind to the beauty of her own child ? No ! nor could Shake¬ speare be unconscious that posterity would dote on this, one of his loveliest children. How he must have chuckled and laughed in the act of placing the ass’s head on Bot¬ tom’s shoulders ! He must have foretasted the mirth of generations unborn at Tita- nia’s floating on the metamorphosed weaver, and on his calling for a repast of sweet peas. His animal spirits must have bounded with the hunter’s joy whilst he wrote Theseus s description of his well-tuned dogs and of the glory of the chase. He must have been as happy as Puck himself whilst he was describing the merry Fairy, and all this time he must have been self-assured that his genius ‘ was to cast a girdle ‘ round the earth’ and that souls, not yet in being, were to enjoy the revelry of his fancy.
But nothing can be more irregular, says a modem critic, Augustine Skottowe, than to bring into contact the fairy mythology of modern Europe and the early events of Grecian history. Now, in the plural number, Shakespeare is not amenable to this charge, for he alludes to only one event in that history, namely, to the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta ; and as to the introduction of fairies, I am not aware that he makes any of the Athenian personages believe in their existence, though they are subject to their influence. Let us be candid on the subject. If there were fairies in modem Europe, which no rational believer in fairy tales will deny, why should those fine creatures not have existed previously in Greece, although the poor blind heathen Greeks, on whom the gospel of Gothic mythology had not yet dawned, had no con¬ ception of them ? If Theseus and Hippolyta had talked believingly about the dap¬ per elves, there would have been some room for critical complaint ; but otherwise the
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fairies have as good a right to be in Greece in the days of These -is, as to play their pranks anywhere else or at any other time.
There are few plays, says the same critic, which consist of such incongruous mate¬ rials as A Midsummer Night's Dream. It comprises four histories— that of Theseus and Hippolyta, that of the four Athenian Lovers, that of the Actors, and that of the Fairies, and the link of connection between them is exceedingly slender. In answer to this, I say that the plot contains nothing about any of the four parties concerned approaching to the pretension of a history. Of Theseus and Hippolyta my critic says that they are uninteresting, but when he wrote that judgement he must have fallen asleep after the hunting scene. Their felicity is seemingly secure, and it throws a tranquil assurance that all will end well. But the bond of sympathy between I he- seus and his four loving subjects is anything but slender. It is, on the contrary, most natural and probable for a newly-married pair to have patronised their amorous lieges during their honeymoon. Then comes the question, What natural connection can a party of fairies have with human beings ? This is indeed a posing interrogation, and I can only reply that fairies are an odd sort of beings, whose connection with mortals can never be set down but as supernatural.
Very soon Mr Augustine Skottowe blames Shakespeare for introducing common mechanics as amateur actors during the reign of Theseus in classic Athens. I dare say Shakespeare troubled himself little about Greek antiquities, but here the poet happens to be right and his critic to be wrong. Athens was not a classical city in the days of Theseus ; and, about seven hundred years later than his reign, the players of Attica roved about in carts, besmearing their faces with the lees of wine. I have little doubt that, long after the time of Theseus, there were many prototypes of Bot¬ tom the weaver and Snug the joiner in the itinerant acting companies of Attica.