C. A. Brown {Shakespeare' s Autobiographical Poems , 1838, p. 268) : How must

Spenser have been enchanted with this poetry ! [i. e. the present play]. But can we believe that the multitude were enchanted ? or, if they were, could poetry compensate, in their eyes, for its inapplicability for the stage ? Before the invention of machinery, an audience must indeed have carried to the theatre more imagination than is requi¬ site at the present day ; yet, still I cannot but think that these ideal beings, in repre¬ sentation, claimed too much of so rare a quality, and that it failed at the first, as when it was last attempted in London. Hazlitt has dwelt on the unmanageable nature of this ‘ dream ’ for the stage ; and was it not equally unmanageable at all times ? . . .
Regarding it as certain that Shakespeare was, at one period, unsuccessful as a dra¬ matic poet, we have the more reason to love his nature, which never led him, through¬ out his works, especially in the Poems to his Friend, where he speaks much of him¬ self, into querulousness at the bad taste of the town, and angry invectives against actors and audiences, so common to the disappointed playwrights of his time.
Collier: There is every reason to believe that [this play] was popular; in 1622, the year before it was reprinted in the first folio, it is thus mentioned by Taylor, the Water-poet, in his Sir Gregory Nonsense : — ‘ I say, as it is applausfully written, and commended to posterity, in the Midsummer Night’s Dream : — if we offend, it is with our good will ; we came with no intent but to offend, and show our simple skill.’
Hallam {Lit. of Europe, 1839, ii, 387): The beautiful play of Midsummer Nights Dream . . . evidently belongs to the earlier period of Shakespeare’s genius ;
ENGLISH CRITICISMS
303
poetical as we account it, more than dramatic, yet rather so, because the indescribable profusion of imaginative poetry in this play overpowers our senses till we can hardly observe anything else, than from any deficiency of dramatic excellence. For in real¬ ity the structure of the fable, consisting as it does of three if not four actions, very distinct in their subjects and personages, yet wrought into each other without effort or confusion, displays the skill, or rather instinctive felicity, of Shakespeare, as much as in any play he has written. No preceding dramatist had attempted to fabricate a complex plot; for low comic scenes, interspersed with a serious action upon which they have no influence, do not merit notice. The Menoechmi of Plautus had been imi¬ tated by others, as well as by Shakespeare ; but we speak here of original invention.
The Midsummer Night's Dream is, I believe, altogether original in one of the most beautiful conceptions that ever visited the mind of a poet, the fairy machinery. A few before him had dealt in a vulgar and clumsy manner with popular superstition; but the sportive, beneficent, invisible population of the air and earth, long since estab¬ lished in the creed of childhood and of those simple as children, had never for a moment been blended with ‘ human mortals ’ among the personages of the drama. . . . The language of Midsummer Night's Dream is equally novel with the machinery. It sparkles in perpetual brightness with all the hues of the rainbow ; yet there is nothing overcharged or affectedly ornamented. Perhaps no play of Shakespeare has fewer blemishes, or is from beginning to end in so perfect keeping; none in which so few lines could be erased, or so few expressions blamed. His own peculiar idiom, the dress of his mind, which began to be discernible in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, is more frequently manifested in the present play. The expression is seldom obscure, but it is never in poetry, and hardly in prose, the expression of other drama¬ tists, and far less of the people. And here, without reviving the debated question of Shakespeare’s learning, I must venture to think that he possessed rather more acquaintance with the Latin language than many believe. The phrases, unintel¬ ligible and improper, except in the sense of their primitive roots, which occur so copiously in his plays, seem to be unaccountable on the supposition of absolute ignor¬ ance. In the Midsummer Night's Dream these are much less frequent than in his later dramas. But here we find several instances. Thus, ‘things base and vile, ‘ holding no quantity ,’ for value ; rivers, that ‘ have overborne their continents ,’ the con¬ tinents ripa of Horace ; ‘ compact of imagination ;’ ‘ something of great constancy ,’ for consistency ; ‘ sweet Pyramus translated there ;’ ‘ the law of Athens, which by no ‘ means we may extenuate.' I have considerable doubts whether any of these expres¬ sions would be found in the contemporary prose of Elizabeth’s reign, which was less overrun by pedantry than that of her successor ; but, could authority be produced for Latinisms so forced, it is still not very likely that one, who did not understand their proper meaning, would have introduced them into poetry. It would be a weak answer that we do not detect in Shakespeare any imitations of the Latin poets. His knowledge of the language may have been chiefly derived, like that of schoolboys, from the Dictionary, and insufficient for the thorough appreciation of their beauties. But, if we should believe him well acquainted with Virgil or Ovid, it would be by no means surprising that his learning does not display itself in imitation. Shakespeare seems, now and then, to have a tinge on his imagination from former passages ; but he never distinctly imitates, though, as we have seen, he has sometimes adopted. The streams of invention flowed too fast from his own mind to leave him time to accommodate the words of a foreign language to our own. He knew that to create would be easier, and pleasanter, and better.
304
APPENDIX
Charles Knight ( Supplementary Notice, 1840, p. 382) : We can conceive that with scarcely what can be called a model before him, Shakespeare’s early dramatic attempts must have been a series of experiments to establish a standard by which he could regulate what he addressed to a mixed audience. The plays of his middle and mature life, with scarcely an exception, are acting plays ; and they are so, not from the absence of the higher poetry, but from the predominance of character and passion in association with it. But even in those plays which call for a considerable exercise of the unassisted imaginative faculty in an audience, such as The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream, where the passions are not powerfully roused and the senses are not held enchained by the interests of the plot, he is still essentially dra¬ matic. What has been called of late years the dramatic poem — that something between the epic and the dramatic, which is held to form an apology for whatever is episodical or incongruous the author may choose to introduce — was unattempted by him. The Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher — a poet who knew how to accommodate himself to the taste of a mixed audience more readily than Shakespeare — was con¬ demned on the first night of its appearance. Seward, one of his editors, calls this the scandal of our nation. And yet it is extremely difficult to understand how the event could have been otherwise ; for The Faithful Shepherdess is essentially undra- matic. Its exquisite poetry was, therefore, thrown away upon an impatient audience — its occasional indelicacy could not propitiate them. Milton’s Comus is, in the same way, essentially undramatic ; and none but such a refined audience as that at Ludlow Castle could have endured its representation. But the Midsummer Night's Dream is composed altogether upon a different principle. It exhibits all that congruity of parts — that natural progression of scenes — that subordination of action and character to one leading design — that ultimate harmony evolved out of seeming confusion — which constitute the dramatic spirit. With ‘ audience fit, though few,’ — with a stage not encumbered with decorations — with actors approaching (if it were so possible) to the idea of grace and archness which belong to the fairy troop — the subtle and evanescent beauties of this drama might not be wholly lost in the representation. But under the most favourable circumstances much would be sacrified. It is in the closet that we must not only suffer our senses to be overpowered by its ‘ indescribable profusion of ‘ imaginative poetry,’ but trace the instinctive felicity of Shakespeare in the ‘ structure ‘ of the fable.’ If the Midsummer Night's Dream could be acted, there can be no doubt how well it would act. Our imagination must amend what is wanting. . . .
\ To offer an analysis of this subtle and ethereal drama would, we believe, be as unsatisfactory as the attempts to associate it with the realities of the stage. With scarcely an exception, the proper understanding of the other plays of Shakespeare may be assisted by connecting the apparently separate parts of the action, and by developing and reconciling what seems obscure and anomalous in the features of the characters. But to follow out the caprices and illusions of the loves of Demetrius and Lysander, of Helena and Hermia; to reduce to prosaic description the conse¬ quence of the jealousies of Oberon and Titania; to trace the Fairy Queen under the most fantastic of deceptions, . . . and, finally, to go along with the scene till the illu¬ sions disappear, . . . such an attempt as this would be worse than unreverential criti¬ cism. No, — the Midsummer Night's Dream must be left to its own influences.
The Edinburgh Review (April, 1848, p. 422) : The play consists of several groups, which at first sight appear to belong not so much to the same landscape as to different compartments of the same canvas. Between them, however, a coherence
ENGLISH CRITICISMS
305
and connection are soon discovered, of which we have rather hints and glimpses and a general impression than full assurance. We do not say that this connection is not cheerfully admitted on all hands, but it is noticed as a kind of paradox, as though it were not the result of obedience to any discernible law. [See Knight, supra. —Ed.] . . .
[P. 425.] Practically, we come to the old division of the characters into three parties, the Heroes (the Lovers being included), the Fairies, and the Artizans. But of these three equivalent, incoherent elements, which is the principal ? Whose action is the main action ? We look for a key to the composition ; on which set of figures are we to fix the eye ? It is worthy of remark that ever since Shakespeare’s own day some difficulty seems to have been felt, perhaps unconsciously, as to the dominant action of the Midsummer Night's Dream. [From the appearance of the piece called The Merry Conceited Humours of Bottom the Weaver and from the incident con¬ nected with the performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1631 (see ‘John Spencer,’ post ) the Reviewer says that] we must come to the strange conclusion that at this time the Artizans were thought to constitute the main action. . . .
[P. 426.] Let us examine the two groups, first presented to our notice. The first of these consists of the Heroes, — Theseus and his very unhistorical court. These are themselves fanciful and unsubstantial; not, indeed, creatures of the elements, yet scarcely the men and women of flesh and blood with whom Shakespeare has else¬ where peopled his living stage. We cannot but suspect there is a meaning in their mythological origin. Shakespeare has neither drawn them from history, his resource when he wished to paint the broader realities of life, nor from the lights and shadows, the gay gallantry and devoted love, of the Italian novel. They are apparently se¬ lected purely for their want of association. Their humanity is of the most delicately refined order ; their perplexities the turbulence of still life. Moreover, the compo¬ nents of the group, the pairs of Athenian lovers, seem only to be so distributed in order to be confused. There are no distinctive features in their members. Lysander differs in nothing from Demetrius, Helena in nothing but height from Hermia. Finally, they speak a great deal of poetry, and poetry more exquisite never dropped from human pen ; but it is purely objective, and not in the slightest degree modified by the character of the particular speaker. Turn we now to the second group. If the first were as far as possible removed from every-day experience, these are types of a class ever ready to our hand. They are of the earth, earthy. Bottom sat at a Stratford loom, Starveling on a Stratford tailoring-board ; between them they perhaps made the doublet which captivated the eyes of Richard Hathaway’s daughter, or the hose that were tom in the park of the Lucys. If the former personages were all of one coinage, the characters of the latter are stamped with curious marks of difference. The ‘rrohvirpayisoovvtj of Bottom, — he would now-a-days be a Chartist celebrity, — the discretion of Snug, the fickleness of Starveling are (as Hazlitt has shown) minutely and fancifully discriminated. And most strongly too is the homely idiomatic prose of their dialogue contrasted with the blinding brilliancy of those rhymed verses which apeak the eternal language of love by the mouths of the Athenian ladies and their lovers. In short, they are the very counterpart of the former group ; and it is this that we wish to establish, an intentional antagonism between the two. They seem to us, in their respective delicacy and coarseness, to mark the two extreme phases of life, the highest and the lowest, as presented to the imaginative faculty ; the lowest, as it may be seen by experience, — the highest, as it may be conceived of in dreams.
We must ask our readers to notice particularly that the first act is nearly equally 20
APPENDIX
J06
divided between these two actions ; one occupying the first half, the other the second. The two parties, without in the smallest degree intermingling, arrange themselves so as to admit of certain complications, the dominant feeling in the one case being refined sentiment ; in the other a ridiculous ambition.
In Act II we are presented for the first time with a new creation, that of the Fairies. Henceforward, the first two actions, so remarkably separated in Act I, are gradually interwoven with the third, though nowhere with each other. In the beings of whom this third group is composed, nothing is so characteristic as the humanity of their motives and passions — humanity modified by the peculiarities of the fairy race — such as might be expected in a duodecimo edition of mankind. We find working in them splenetic jealousy, love, hatred, revenge, all the passions of men, — the littlenesses of soul brought out by each, being, as we think, designedly exaggerated. Their move¬ ments too are eminently significant of a vigorous dramatic action, the story being almost epical in form, — the tale of the / irjvct; ’£2 pe/iorvog; of which, as it gradually and uniformly advances, we are enabled to trace in the play the origin, developement, and consequences. The hypothesis, then, which we wish to put forward is, that the fairies are the primary conception of the piece, and their action the main action ; that Shake¬ speare wished to represent this fanciful creation in contact with two strongly-marked extremes of human nature ; the instruments by which they influence them being, aptly enough, in one case the ass’s head, in the other the ‘ little western flower.’
It is necessary to this idea, that the two actions of the Heroes and the Artizans should be considered completely subordinate, and their separate relations among themselves as not having been created relatively to the whole piece, but principally to the intended action of the Fairies upon them. We shall then have the singular arrangement of the first Act purposely designed to exhibit successively the character¬ istics of the two groups in marked opposition, before exposing them to the influ¬ ence of the Fairies. Finally, the interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe is the ingenious machinery by which, after the stage has ceased to be occupied by the fairy action, these two otherwise independent groups are wrought together and amalgamated.
Some difficulty may yet present itself as to the form of the piece, furnished as it were with a preface and supplement ; but we think this can be satisfactorily accounted for. We are not aware whether the time employed in the Midsummer Night’s Dream has been generally noticed. The Midsummer Night’s Dream is a dream on the night of Midsummer Day ; a night sanctified to the operations of fairies, as Hallow¬ e’en was to those of witches. The play is distributed into three distinguishable por¬ tions, those included in Act I — in Acts II, III and the first scene of Act IV — and in the last scene of Act IV together with Act V. The second, and by far the most important division, comprehends all the transactions of the Midsummer Night; its action is carefully restricted to the duration of these twelve witching hours (Oberon having, as he says, to perform all before ‘ the first cock crow ’), while those of the first and third portions take place at distances of two days and one day respectively. Here then we have a stringent reason for Shakespeare’s arrangement. He could not introduce us to the two subordinate groups, show us their isolated relations, and in the end interweave them by a consistent process, without separating them, when ope¬ rating per se, from the main action. He could, for instance, neither account for the appearance of the lovers in the wood without a previous exposition of their difficul¬ ties, and of the agreement to fly on the ‘ morrow deep midnight,’ nor for that of the stage-struck artizans, without some intimation of the intention to act a play, which made a rehearsal necessary. He could not follow his usual practice of developing
ENGLISH CRITICISMS
30;
together the relations and position of all his characters, because the limitation to twelve hours would not admit it — and out of these twelve hours he could not remove the fairy action. So that the first and last sections of the drama, in which the main action does not proceed and only the subordinate groups appear, have nothing to do with the Midsummer Night’s Dream, but are merely exegetical of it.
There are some minor indications of the truth of our theory. The very title, for instance, solely applicable as it is to that part of the drama in which the fairies appear, seems not a little significant. . . . Nor is the distribution of blank and rhymed verse unobservable. . . . We have occasionally fancied that, where the objectively poetical element prevails, the dialogue is mostly written in rhyme ; where the dramatic, in the ordinary blank verse of Shakespeare. Both Heroes and Fairies speak in blank and rhymed verse, but not indifferently. The relations of the subordinate group are gen¬ erally, though not invariably, conveyed through the imaginative rhymed lines, while the Fairies — the dramatic personages — rarely quit the vigorous versification we are so well accustomed to.
We are desirous that the Fairies should assume in this play a position commensu¬ rate with the influence they must always exercise over English literature. Great as is the direct importance of combined purity and beauty in a national mythology, the indi¬ rect value is even greater. We have escaped much, as well as gained much, if our imagination has conversed with a more delicate creation than the sensuous divinities of Greece, or the vulgar spectres of the Walpurgis-Nacht. But whether the entente cordiale between England and Fairy-land be for good or for evil, we must at any rate acknowledge that the connection virtually began on that very Midsummer Night which witnessed the quarrel between Oberon and Titania.
Hartley Coleridge (Essays, &c., 1851, ii, 138) : I know not any play of Shakespeare’s in which the language is so uniformly unexceptionable as this. It is all poetry, and sweeter poetry was never written. One defect there may be. Per¬ haps the distress of Hermia and Helena, arising from Puck’s blundering application of Love-in-Idleness, is too serious, too real for so fantastic a source. Yet their alter¬ cation is so very, very beautiful, so girlish, so loveable that one cannot wish it away. The characters might be arranged by a chromatic scale, gradually shading from the thick-skinned Bottom and the rude mechanicals, the absolute old father, the proud and princely Theseus and his warrior bride, to the lusty, high-hearted wooers, and so to the sylph-like maidens, till the line melts away in Titania and her fairy train, who seem as they were made of the moonshine wherein they gambol.
Charles Cowden-Clarke (Shakespeare Characters, 1863, p. 97) : What a rich set of fellows those ‘ mechanicals ’ are ! and how individual are their several charac¬ teristics ! Bully Bottom, the epitome of all the conceited donkeys that ever strutted or straddled on this stage of the world. In his own imagination equal to the per¬ formance of anything separately, and of all things collectively; the meddler, the director, the dictator. He is for dictating every movement, and directing everybody, — when he is not helping himself. He is a choice arabesque impersonation of that colouring of conceit, which by the half-malice of the world has been said to tinge the disposition of actors as invariably as the rouge does their cheeks. . . .
The character of Bottom is well worthy of a close analysis, to notice in how extra¬ ordinary a manner Shakespeare has carried out all the concurring qualities to com¬ pound a thoroughly conceited man. Conceited people, moreover, being upon such
APPENDIX
308
amiable terms with themselves, are ordinarily good-natured, if not good-tempered. And so with Bottom ; whether he carry an amendment or not, with his companions he is always placable ; and if foiled, away he starts for some other point, — nothing disturbs his equanimity. His temper and self-possession never desert him. . . . Com¬ bined with his amusing and harmless quality of conceit, the worthy Bottom displays no inconsiderable store of imagination in his intercourse with the little people of the fairy world. How pleasantly he falls in with their several natures and qualities ; dis¬ missing them one by one with a gracious speech, like a prince at his levee. . . .
Then there is Snug, the joiner, who can board and lodge only one idea at a time, and that tardily. . . . To him succeeds Starveling, the tailor, a melancholy man, and who questions the feasibility and the propriety of everything proposed.
If, as some writers have asserted, Shakespeare was a profound practical meta¬ physician, it is scarcely too much to conclude that all this dovetailing of contingencies, requisite to perfectionate these several characters, was all foreseen and provided in his mind, and not the result of mere accident. By an intuitive power, that always confounds us when we examine its effects, I believe that whenever Shakespeare adopted any distinctive class of character, his ‘ mind’s eye ’ took in at a glance all the concomitant minutiae of features requisite to complete its characteristic identity. ‘ As from a watch-tower ’ he comprehended the whole course of human action, — its springs, its motives, its consequences ; and he has laid down for us a trigonometrical chart of it. I believe that he did nothing without anxious premeditation ; and that they who really study, — not simply read him, — must come to the same conclusion. Not only was he not satisfied with preserving the integrity of his characters while they were in speech and action before the audience ; but we constantly find them carrying on their peculiarities, — out of the scene, — by hints of action, and casual remarks from others. Was there no design in all this ? no contrivance ? no foregone conclusion ? nay, does it not manifest consummate intellectual power, with a sleepless assiduity? . . .
As Ariel is the etherialised impersonation of swift obedience, with an attachment perfectly feminine in its character — Puck, Robin Goodfellow, is an abstraction of all the ‘ quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,’ of all the tricks and practical jokes in vogue among ‘human mortals.’ Puck is the patron saint of ‘skylarking.’ . . . The echo of his laugh has reverberated from age to age, striking the promontories and headlands of eternal poetry ; and to those whose spirits are finely touched, it is still heard through the mist of temporal cares and toils, — dimly heard, and at fitful inter¬ vals ; for the old faith is that fairy presence has ceased for ever, and exists only in the record of those other elegant fancies that were the offspring of the young world of imagination.
General E. A. Hitchcock ( Remarks on the Sonnets of Shakespeare. Showing that they belong to the Hermetic Class of Writings, 6% New York, 1866, p. 95) : Here are three, the spirit in man, the dull substance of the flesh, and the over-soul, ‘ and these three are conceived as one,’ but with a disturbing sense of the body inter¬ posed, as it were, between the two spirits, where it stands like a wall of separation, the wall being now conceived of as the man, and then as the vestment of the universe itself — which, we read, is to be rolled up like a scroll, etc., when God shall be all in all. This consummation does not appear in the Sonnets themselves, though, as a doctrine, it is everywhere implied by the Poet’s deep sense of the unity. It is mys¬ tically shown, however, in the ancient fable of Pyramus and Thisbe, as the reader is
ENGLISH CRITICISMS
309
expected to see by the manner in which the poet uses that fable in the Interlude introduced in the closing Act of Midsummer Night's Dream, It may not be amiss to remind the reader of the dramas that it was usual with our poet to express the most profound truths through dramatic characters, and yet partially screen them from common inspection by the circumstances, or the sort of character made the vehicle of them, such as Jaques and others. The reader need not be surprised, therefore, to find the dramatis persona of the ‘ merry and tragical ’ Interlude to be boorish and idiotic, while it is worth remarking that even the wall, as also the other parts, are all represented by men, unconscious of their calling. We now turn to the drama, and remark, that it was designed by the poet that a secret meaning should be inferred by the reader. This appears from several decisive passages, besides the general infer¬ ence to be drawn from the fact, that the Interlude, more than all the rest of the play, if taken literally, is what Hippolyta says of it — the silliest stuff that was ever seen. No reasonable man can imagine that the author of so many beauties as are seen in this drama could have introduced the absurd nonsense of the Interlude without hav¬ ing in his mind a secret purpose, which is to be divined by the aid of the reader’s imagination — according to the answer of Theseus to the remark of Hippolyta, just recited. But the imagination must be here understood as a poetic creative gift or endowment, and not limited to mere ‘ fancy’s images for Hippolyta herself, though here speaking of the play, gives us a clue to something deeper than what appears on the surface. She, in allusion to all the marvels the bridal party had just heard, observes, ‘ But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigured ‘ so together, More witnesseth than fancy's images, And grows to something of great ' constancy.’ This is plainly a hint that these ‘ fables and fairy toys,’ as Theseus calls
them, may be the vehicle of some constant truth or principle. Again : _ ‘ Gentles,
‘ perchance you wonder at this show ; But wonder on, till truth makes all things ‘ plain.’ That is, when the truth, signified in the ‘ show ’ becomes manifest, all won¬ der will cease, for the object of its introduction will be understood. . . . We consider now, that we have no need to dwell upon the points in detail suggested by the closing Act of the drama, which contains the doctrine we have set out as mystically contained in the Sonnets. The curious reader, who desires to exercise his own thought, while following that of the poet, expressed through the imprisoning forms of language, will see, -with the indications we have given, the purpose of the ‘ mirthful tragedy ’ of Pyramus and Thisbe. He will see the signification of the two characters or princi¬ ples, figured in Pyramus and Thisbe, with the wall, * the vile wall which did the ‘ lovers sunder.’ Through this wall (the dull substance of the flesh), the lovers may indeed communicate, but only by a ‘ whisper, very secretly;’ because the intercourse of spirit with spirit is a secret act of the soul in a sense of its unity with the spirit. The student will readily catch the meaning of the ‘ moon-shine,’ or nature- light, in this representation, the moon being always taken as nature in all mystic writings. He will see the symbolism of the ‘ dog ’ — the watch- dog, of course, — representing the moral guard in a nature-life ; as also the bush of thorns, ever ready to illustrate the doctrine that the way of the transgressor is hard. The student will notice the hint that the lovers meet by moonlight and at a tomb — a symbolic indication of the great¬ est mystery in life (to be found in death) ; and he will understand the office of the lion, which tears, not Thisbe herself, but only her ‘ mantle,’ or what the poet calls the ‘ extern ’ of life ; and finally will observe that the two principles both disappear ; for the unity cannot become mystically visible, until the two principles are mystically lost sight of. It should not escape notice that the two principles are co-equal ; that
APPENDIX
310
a mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which Thisbe, is the better ’ — simplj figured as man and woman. The student of Midsummer Night's Dream may observe two very marked features in the play : one where the ‘ juice,’ which induces so many absurdities, cross-purposes, and monstrosities, is described as the juice of (a certain flower called love-in-) idleness : the other where we see that all of the irregularities resulting from idleness are cured by the simple anointment of the eyes by what is called ‘ Dian’s bud,’ — which has such ‘force and blessed power’ as to bring all of the faculties back to nature and truth, — of which Dian is one of the accepted figures in all mystic writings. The readers of this play, who look upon these indications as purely arbitrary and without distinct meaning, may, indeed, per¬ ceive some of the scattered beauties of this fairy drama, but must certainly miss its true import.
A. C. Swinburne (‘ The Three Stages of Shakespeare,’ The Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1876) : But in the final poem which concludes and crowns the first epoch of Shake¬ speare’s work, the special graces and peculiar glories of each that went before are gathered together as in one garland ‘ of every hue and every' scent.’ The young genius of the master of all poets finds its consummation in the Midsummer Night's Dream. The blank verse is as full, sweet, and strong as the best of Biron’s or Romeo’s ; the rhymed verse as clear, pure, and true as the simplest and truest mel¬ ody of Venus and Adonis or the Comedy of Errors. But here each kind of excel¬ lence is equal throughout ; there are here no purple patches on a gown of serge, but one seamless and imperial robe of a single dye. Of the lyric and prosaic part, the counterchange of loves and laughters, of fancy fine as air and imagination high as heaven, what need can there be for any one to shame himself by the helpless attempt to say some word not utterly unworthy ? Let it suffice to accept this poem as a land¬ mark of our first stage, and pause to look back from it on what lies behind us of partial or of perfect work.
F. J. FurnivALL ( Introd . to Leopold Shakespeare, 1877, p. xxvi) : Here at length we have Shakspere’s genius in the full glow of fancy and delightful fun. The play is an enormous advance on what has gone before. But it is a poem, a dream, rather than a play ; its freakish fancy of fairy-land fitting it for the choicest chamber of the stu¬ dent’s brain, while its second part, the broadest farce, is just the thing for the public stage. E. A. Poe writes : ‘ When I am asked for a definition of poetry, I think of ‘ Titania and Oberon of the Midsummer Night’s Dream.' And certainly anything must be possible to the man who could in one work range from the height of Titania to the depth of Bottom. The links with the Errors are, that all the wood scenes are a comedy of errors, with three sets of people, as in the Errors (and four in Love's Labour’s Lost). Then we have the vixen Hermia to match the shrewish Adriana, the quarrel with husband and wife, and Titania’s ‘these are the forgeries of jealousy’ to compare with Adriana’s jealousy in the Errors. Adriana offers herself to An- tipholus of Syracuse, but he refuses her for her sister Luciana, as Helena offers her¬ self to Demetrius, and he refuses her for her friend Hermia. Hermia bids Demet¬ rius love Helena, as Luciana bids Antipholus of Syracuse love his supposed wife Adriana. In the background of the Errors we have the father Aigeon with the sen¬ tence of death or fine pronounced by Duke Solinus. In the Dream we have in the background the father Egeus with the sentence of death or celibacy on Hermia pro¬ nounced by Duke Theseus. In both plays the scene is Eastern ; in the Errors, Ephe-
ENGLISH CRITICISMS
311
sus ; and in the Dream, Athens. We have an interesting connection with Chaucer, in that the Theseus and Hippolyta are taken from his Knight's Tale, and used again in The Two Noble Kinsmen ; also the May-day and St. Valentine, and the wood birds here may be from Chaucer’s Parlement of Tonies. The fairies, too, are in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath's Tale. As links with Love's Labour's Lost we notice the comedy of errors in the earlier play, the forest scene, and the rough country sub-play, while as opposed to the Love's Labour’s Lost’s * Jack hath not Gill,’ the fairies tell us here ‘ Jack shall have Gill.’ The fairies are the centre of the drama ; the human characters are just the sport of their whims and fancies, a fact which is much altered when we come to Shakspere’s use of fairy-land again in his Tempest , where the aerial beings are but ministers of the wise man’s rule for the highest purposes. The finest character here is undoubtedly Theseus. In his noble words about the countrymen’s play, the true gentleman is shown. His wife’s character is but poor beside his. Though the story is Greek, yet the play is full of English life. It is Stratford which has given Shakspere the picture of the sweet country school-girls working at one flower, wTarbling one song, growing together like a double cherry, seeming parted, but yet a union in partition. It is Stratford that has given him the picture of the hounds with * Ears that sweep away the morning dew.’ It is Stratford that has given him his out-door woodland life, his clowns’ play, and the clowns themselves, Bottom, with his inimitable conceit, and his fellows, Snug and Quince, &c. It is Stratford that has given him all Puck’s fairy-lore, the cowslips tall, the red-hipt bumble bee, Oberon’s bank, the pansy love-in-idleness, and all the lovely imagery of the play. But won¬ derful as the mixture of delicate and aerial fancy with the coarsest and broadest com¬ edy is, clearly as it evidences the coming of a new being on this earth to whom any¬ thing is possible, it is yet clear that the play is quite young. The undignified quar¬ reling of the ladies, Hermia with her ‘ painted May-pole,’ her threat to scratch Helena’s eyes, — Helena with her retorts ‘ She was a vixen when she went to school,’ &c., the comical comparison of the moon tumbling through the earth (III, ii, 52) incongruously put into an accusation of murder, the descent to bathos in Shakspere’s passage about his own art, from ‘ the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling ’ to ‘ how easy * is a bush supposed a bear,’ would have been impossible to Shakspere in his later developement. Those who contend for the later date of the play, from the beauty of most of the fancy, and the allusion to the effects of the rains and the floods, which they make those of 1594, must allow, I think, that the framework of the play is con¬ siderably before the date of King John and The Merchant of Venice. Possibly two dates may be allowed for the play, tho’ I don’t think them needful. . . .
With the Dream I propose to close the first Group of Shakspere’s Comedies, those in which the Errors arising from mistaken identity make so much of the fun. And the name of the group may well be ‘ the Comedy of Errors or Mistaken-Identity Group.’
Hudson ( Introduction , 1880, p. 7) : The whole play is indeed a sort of ideal dream ; and it is from the fairy personages that its character as such mainly proceeds. All the materials of the piece are ordered and assimilated to that central and govern¬ ing idea. This it is that explains and justifies the distinctive features of the work, such as the constant preponderance of the lyrical over the dramatic, and the free playing of the action unchecked by the conditions of outward fact and reality. Ac¬ cordingly a sort of lawlessness is, as it ought to be, the very law of the perform¬ ance. ... In keeping with this central dream-idea, the actual order of things every¬ where gives place to the spontaneous issues and capricious turnings of the dreaming
APPENDIX
312
mind ; the lofty and the low, the beautiful and the grotesque, the world of fancy and of fact, all the strange diversities that enter into ‘ such stuff as dreams are made of,’ running and frisking together, and interchanging their functions and properties ; so that the whole seems confused, flitting, shadowy, and indistinct, as fading away in the remoteness and fascination of moonlight. The very scene is laid in a veritable dream-land, called Athens indeed, but only because Athens was the greatest bee-hive of beautiful visions then known ; or rather it is laid in an ideal forest near an ideal Athens, — a forest peopled with sportive elves and sprites and fairies feeding on moon¬ light and music and fragrance ; a place where Nature herself is preternatural ; where everything is idealised even to the sunbeams and the soil ; where the vegetation pro ceeds by enchantment, and there is magic in the germination of the seed and secre¬ tion of the sap. . . .
[Page 9.] In further explication of this peculiar people [the Fairies], it is to be noted that there is nothing of reflection or conscience or even of a spiritualised intel¬ ligence in their proper life ; they have all the attributes of the merely natural and sensitive soul, but no attributes of the properly rational and moral soul. They wor¬ ship the clean, the neat, the pretty, the pleasant, whatever goes to make up the idea of purely sensuous beauty ; this is a sort of religion with them ; whatever of con¬ science they have adheres to this ; so that herein they not unfitly represent the whole¬ some old notion which places cleanliness next to godliness. Everything that is trim, dainty, elegant, graceful, agreeable, and sweet to the senses, they delight in ; flowers, fragrances, dewdrops, and moonbeams, honey-bees, butterflies, and nightingales, dancing, play, and song, — these are their joy ; out of these they weave their highest delectation ; amid these they ‘ fleet the time carelessly,’ without memory or forecast and with no thought or aim beyond the passing pleasure of the moment. On the other hand, they have an instinctive repugnance to whatever is foul, ugly, sluttish, awkward, ungainly, or misshapen; they wage unrelenting war against bats, spiders, hedgehogs, spotted snakes, blindworms, long-legg’d spinners, beetles, and all such disagreeable creatures ; to ‘ kill cankers in the musk-rosebuds ’ and to ‘ keep back the clamorous owl,’ are regular parts of their business. . . . Thus these beings embody the ideal of the mere natural soul, or rather the purely sensuous fancy which shapes and governs the pleasing or the vexing delusions of sleep. They lead a merry, luxurious life, given up entirely to the pleasures of happy sensation, — a happiness that has no moral element, nothing of reason or conscience in it. They are indeed a sort of per¬ sonified dreams ; and so the Poet places them in a kindly or at least harmless rela¬ tion to mortals as the bringers of dreams. Their very kingdom is located in the aro matic, flower-scented Indies, a land where mortals are supposed to live in a half- dreamy state. From thence they come, ‘ following darkness,’ just as dreams naturally do ; or, as Oberon words it, ‘ tripping after the night’s shade, swifter than the wander- ‘ ing Moon.’ It is their nature to shun the daylight, though they do not fear it, and to prefer the dark, as this is their appropriate worktime ; but most of all they love the dusk and twilight, because this is the best dreaming-time, whether the dreamer be asleep or awake. And all the shifting phantom-jugglery of dreams, all the sweet soothing witcheries, and all the teasing and tantalising imagery of dream-land, rightly belong to their province.
[P. 15.] Any very firm or strong delineation of character, any deep passion, earnest purpose, or working of powerful motives, would clearly go at odds with the spirit of such a performance as [the present play]. It has room but for love and beauty and delight, for whatever is most poetical in nature and fancy, and for such
ENGLISH CRITICISMS
313
tranquil stirrings of thought and feeling as may flow out in musical expression. Any such tuggings of mind or heart as would ruffle and discompose the smoothness of lyrical division would be quite out of keeping in a course of dream-life. The cha racters here, accordingly, are drawn with light, delicate, vanishing touches ; some of them being dreamy and sentimental, some gay and frolicsome, and others replete with amusing absurdities, while all are alike dipped in fancy or sprinkled with humour. And for the same reason the tender distresses of unrequited or forsaken love here touch not our moral sense at all, but only at the most our human sympathies ; love itself being represented as but the effect of some visual enchantment, which the King of Fairydom can inspire, suspend, or reverse at pleasure. Even the heroic person¬ ages are fitly shown in an unheroic aspect ; we see them but in their unbendings, when they have daffed their martial robes aside, to lead the train of day-dreamers, and have a nuptial jubilee. In their case, great care and art were required to make the play what it has been blamed for being; that is, to keep the dramatic sufficiently under, and lest the law of a part should override the law of the whole.
So, likewise, in the transformation of Bottom and the dotage of Titania, all the resources of fancy were needed to prevent the unpoetical from getting the upper hand, and thus swamping the genius of the piece. As it is, what words can fitly express the effect with which the extremes of the grotesque and the beautiful are here brought together ? What an inward quiet laughter springs up and lubricates the fancy at Bottom’s droll confusion of his two natures, when he talks now as an ass, now as a man, and anon as a mixture of both ; his thoughts running at the same time on honey-bags and thistles, the charms of music and of good dry oats ! Who but Shake¬ speare or Nature could have so interfused the lyrical spirit, not only with, but into and through, a series or cluster of the most irregular and fantastic drolleries ? But, indeed, this embracing and kissing of the most ludicrous and the most poetical, the enchantment under which they meet, and the airy, dream-like grace that hovers over their union, are altogether inimitable and indescribable. In this singular wedlock the very diversity of the elements seems to link them the closer, while this linking in turn heightens that diversity ; Titania being thereby drawn on to finer issues of soul, and Bottom to larger expressions of stomach. The union is so very improbable as to seem quite natural ; we cannot conceive how anything but a dream could possibly have married things so contrary ; and that they could not have come together save in a dream, is a sort of proof that they were dreamed together.
And so throughout, the execution is in strict accordance with the plan. The play from beginning to end is a perfect festival of whatever dainties and delicacies poetry may command, — a continued revelry and jollification of soul, where the understand¬ ing is lulled asleep, that the fancy may run riot in unrestrained enjoyment. The bringing together of four parts so dissimilar as those of the Duke and his warrior Bride, of the Athenian ladies and their lovers, of the amateur players and their woodland rehearsal, and of the fairy bickerings and overreaching ; and the carrying of them severally to a point where they all meet and blend in lyrical respondence ; all this is done in the same freedom from the laws that govern the drama of character and life. Each group of persons is made to parody itself into concert with the others ; while the frequent intershootings of fairy influence lift the whole into the softest regions of fancy. At last the Interlude comes in as an amusing burlesque on all that has gone before ; as in our troubled dreams we sometimes end with a dream that we have been dreaming, and our perturbations sink to rest in the sweet assur¬ ance that they were but the phantoms and unrealities of a busy sleep. . . .
3H
APPENDIX
[Page 21.] Partly for reasons already stated, and partly for others that I scarce know how to state, A Midsummer Night's Dream is a most effectual poser to criti¬ cism. Besides that its very essence is irregularity, so that it cannot be fairly brought to the test of rules, the play forms properly a class by itself ; literature has nothing else really like it ; nothing therefore with which it may be compared, and its merits adjusted. For so the Poet has here exercised powers apparently differing even in kind, not only from those of any other writer, but from those displayed in any other of his own writings. Elsewhere, if his characters are penetrated with the ideal, their whereabout lies in the actual, and the work may in some measure be judged by that life which it claims to represent ; here the whereabout is as ideal as the charac¬ ters; all is in the land of dreams, — a place for dreamers, not for critics. For who can tell what a dream ought or ought not to be, or when the natural conditions of dream-life are or are not rightly observed ? How can the laws of time and space, as involved in the transpiration of human character, — how can these be applied in a place where the mind is thus absolved from their proper jurisdiction ? Besides, the whole thing swarms with enchantment; all the sweet witchery of Shakespeare’s sweet genius is concentrated in it, yet disposed with so subtle and cunning a hand, that we can as little grasp it as get away from it; its charms, like those of a summer evening, are such as we may see and feel, but cannot locate or define ; cannot say they are here or they are there ; the moment we yield ourselves up to them, they seem to be everywhere ; the moment we go to master them, they seem to be nowhere.
William Winter (Augustin Daly’s Arrangement for Representation, 1888; Pref¬ ace, p. 12) : The student of [this play] as often as he thinks upon this lofty and lovely expression of a most luxuriant and happy poetic fancy, must necessarily find himself impressed with its exquisite purity of spirit, its affluence of invention, its extraordinary wealth of contrasted characters, its absolute symmetry of form, and its great beauty of poetic diction. The essential, wholesome cleanliness and sweetness of Shakespeare’s mind, unaffected by the gross animalism of his times, appear con¬ spicuously in this play. No single trait of the piece impresses the reader more agree¬ ably than its frank display of the spontaneous, natural, and entirely delightful exul¬ tation of Theseus and Hippolyta in their approaching nuptials. They are grand creatures both, and they rejoice in each other and in their perfectly accordant love. Nowhere in Shakespeare is there a more imperial man than Theseus ; nor, despite her feminine impatience of dulness, a woman more beautiful and more essentially woman-like than Hippolyta. It is thought that the immediate impulse of this comedy, in Shakespeare’s mind, was the marriage of his friend and benefactor, the Earl of Southampton, with Elizabeth Vernon. ... In old English literature it is seen that such a theme often proved suggestive of ribaldry ; but Shakespeare could preserve the sanctity, even while he revelled in the passionate ardor, of love, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, while it possesses all the rosy glow, the physical thrill, and the melt¬ ing tenderness of such pieces as Herrick’s Nuptial Song, is likewise fraught with all the moral elevation and unaffected chastity of such pieces as Milton’s Comus. The atmosphere is free and bracing ; the tone honest ; the note true. Then, likewise, the fertility and felicity of the poet’s invention,— intertwining the loves of earthly sove¬ reigns and of their subjects with the dissensions of fairy monarchs, the pranks of mischievous elves, the protective care of attendant sprites, and the comic but kind- hearted and well-meant fealty of boorish peasants, — arouse lively interest and keep it steadily alert. In no other of his works has bhakespeare more brilliantly shown that
CRITICISMS— B O TTOM
315
complete dominance of theme which is manifested in the perfect preservation of pro¬ portion. The strands of action are braided with astonishing grace. The fourfold story is never allowed to lapse into dulness or obscurity. There is caprice, but no distortion. The supernatural machinery is never wrested toward the production of startling or monstrous effects, but it deftly impels each mortal personage in the natu¬ ral line of human development. The dream-spirit is maintained throughout, and perhaps it is for this reason, — that the poet was living and thinking and writing in the free, untrammelled world of his own spacious and airy imagination, and not in any definite sphere of this earth, — that A Midsummer Night's Dreavi is so radically superior to the other comedies written by him at about this period.
[P. 14.] With reference to the question of suitable method in the acting of [this play], it may be observed that too much stress can scarcely be laid upon the fact that this comedy was conceived and written absolutely in the spirit of a dream. It ought not, therefore, to be treated as a rational manifestation of orderly design. It pos¬ sesses, indeed, a coherent and symmetrical plot and a definite purpose ; but, while it moves toward a final result of absolute order, it presupposes intermediary progress through a realm of motley shapes and fantastic vision. Its persons are creatures of fancy, and all effort to make them solidly actual, to set them firmly upon the earth, and to accept them as realities of common life, is labour ill-bestowed. . . .
To body forth the forms of things is, in this case, manifestly, a difficult task ; and yet the true course is obvious. Actors who yield themselves to the spirit of whim, and drift along with it, using a delicate method and avoiding insistence upon prosy realism, will succeed with this piece, — provided, also, that their audience can be fan¬ ciful, and can accept the performance, not as a comedy of ordinary life, but as a vision seen in a dream. The play is full of intimations that this was Shakespeare’s mood.
[In Nodes Shaksperiance, a collection of Papers by the Winchester College Shak- spere Society (London, 1887), is to be found, on p. 208, a paper by O. T. Perkins, ‘ Ghostland and Fairyland.’ It is too long for insertion here, and extracts would but mangle it. It is to be commended to all to whom the charm of Shakespeare’s fairies is ever fresh, and to whom, with the author, there comes no doubt that ‘ as Shake- * speare wrote he felt the breath of the Warwickshire lanes, and heard the babble of ‘ its clear streams, and remembered the country he had known as a boy.’ — Ed.]
Bottom
Hazlitt ( Characters of Shakespeare' s Plays , 1817, p. 126) : Bottom the Weaver is a character that has not had justice done him. He is the most romantic of me¬ chanics. ... It has been observed that Shakespeare’s characters are constructed upon deep physiological principles ; and there is something in this play which looks very like it. Bottom follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly represented as con¬ ceited, serious, and fantastical. He is ready to undertake anything and everything, as if it was as much a matter of course as the motion of his loom and shuttle. He is for playing the tyrant, the lover, the lady, the lion. Snug the Joiner is the moral man of the piece, who proceeds by measurement and discretion in all things. You see him with his rule and compasses in his hand. Starveling the Tailor keeps the peace, and objects to the lion and the drawn sword. Starveling does not start the objections himself, but seconds them when made by others, as if he had not spirit to
APPENDIX
316
express his fears without encouragement. It is too much to suppose, all this inten¬ tional ; but it very luckily falls out so. Nature includes all that is implied in the most subtle analytical distinctions ; and the same distinctions will be found in Shake¬ speare. Bottom, who is not only chief actor, but stage-manager, for the occasion, has a device to obviate the danger of frightening the ladies, . . . and seems to have under¬ stood the subject of dramatic illusion at least as well as any modern essayist. If our holiday mechanic rules the roast among his fellows, he is no less at home in his new character of an ass. He instinctively acquires a most learned taste and grows fas¬ tidious in the choice of dried peas and bottled hay.
Maginn [Shakespeare Papers, i860, p. 121) : One part of Bottom’s character is easily understood, and is often well acted. Among his own companions he is the cock of the walk. His genius is admitted without hesitation. When he is lost in the wood, Quince gives up the play as marred. . . . Flute declares that he has the best wit of any handicraftman in the city. ... It is no wonder that this perpetual flattery fills him with a most inordinate opinion of his own powers. There is not a part in the play which he cannot perform. . . . The wit of the courtiers, or the presence of the Duke, has no effect upon his nerves. He alone speaks to the audience in his own character, not for a moment sinking the personal consequence of Bottom in the as¬ sumed part of Pyramus. He sets Theseus right on a point of the play with cool importance; and replies to a jest of Demetrius (which he does not understand) with the self-command of ignorant indifference. We may be sure that he was abun¬ dantly contented with his appearance, and retired to drink in, with ear well deserving of the promotion it had attained under the patronage of Robin Goodfellow, the applause of his companions. It is true that Oberon designates him as a ‘ hateful fool ’ ; that Puck stigmatises him as the greatest blockhead of the set ; that the audience of wits and courtiers before whom he has performed vote him to be an ass ; but what matter is that ? He mixes not with them ; he hears not their sarcasms ; he could not understand their criticisms ; and, in the congenial company of the crew of patches and base mechanicals who admire him, lives happy in the fame of being the Nicholas Bottom, who, by consent, to him universal and world-encompassing, is voted to be the Pyramus, — the prop of the stage, — the sole support of the drama.
Self-conceit, as great and undisguised as that of poor Bottom, is to be found in all classes and in all circles, and is especially pardonable in what it is considered genteel or learned to call ‘ the histrionic profession.’ The triumphs of the player are evan¬ escent. In no other department of intellect, real or simulated, does the applause bestowed upon the living artist bear so melancholy a disproportion to the repute awaiting him after the generation passes which has witnessed his exertions. Accord¬ ing to the poet himself, the poor player ‘ Struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And ‘ then is heard no more.’ Shakespeare’s own rank as a performer was not high, and his reflections on the business of an actor are in general splenetic and discontented. He might have said, — though indeed it would not have fitted with the mood of mind of the despairing tyrant into whose mouth the reflection is put, — that the well-graced actor, who leaves the scene not merely after strutting and fretting, but after exhibiting power and genius to the utmost degree at which his art can aim, amid the thunder¬ ing applause, — or, what is a deeper tribute, the breathless silence of excited and agi¬ tated thousands, — is destined ere long to an oblivion as undisturbed as that of his humbler fellow-artist, whose prattle is voted, without contradiction, to be tedious. Kemble is fading fast from our view. The gossip connected with everything about
CRITICISMS— B O TTOM
317
Johnson keeps Garrick before us, but the interest concerning him daily becomes less and less. Of Betterton, Booth, Quin, we remember little more than the names. The Lowins and Burbadges of the days of Shakespeare are known only to the dramatic antiquary, or the poring commentator, anxious to preserve every scrap of information that may bear upon the elucidation of a text, or aid towards the history of the author. With the sense of this transitory fame before them, it is only natural that players should grasp at as much as comes within their reach while they have the power of doing so. . . . Pardon therefore the wearers of the sock and buskin for being obnox¬ ious to such criticism as that lavished by Quince on Bottom. ... It would take a long essay on the mixture of legends derived from all ages and countries to account for the production of such a personage as the ‘ Duke ycleped Theseus ’ and his follow¬ ing ; and the fairy mythology of the most authentic superstitions would be ransacked in vain to discover exact authorities for the Shakespearian Oberon and Titania. But no matter whence derived, the author knew well that in his hands the chivalrous and classical, the airy and the imaginative, were safe. It was necessary for his drama to introduce among his fairy party a creature of earth’s mould, and he has so done it as in the midst of his mirth to convey a picturesque satire on the fortune which governs the world, and upon those passions which elsewhere he had with agitating pathos to depict. As Romeo, the gentleman, is the unlucky man of Shakespeare, so here does he exhibit Bottom, the blockhead, as the lucky man, as him on whom Fortune showers her favours beyond measure. This is the part of the character which cannot be per¬ formed. It is here that the greatest talent of the actor must fail in answering the demand made by the author upon our imagination. . . . The mermaid chanting on the back of her dolphin ; the fair vestal throned in the west ; the bank blowing with wild thyme, and decked with oxlip and nodding violet ; the roundelay of the fairies singing their queen to sleep ; and a hundred images beside of aerial grace and mythic beauty, are showered upon us ; and in the midst of these splendours is tumbled in Bottom the weaver, blockhead by original formation, and rendered doubly ridiculous by his partial change into a literal jackass. He, the most unfitted for the scene of all conceivable personages, makes his appearance, not as one to be expelled with loath¬ ing and derision, but to be instantly accepted as the chosen lover of the Queen of the Fairies. The gallant train of Theseus traverse the forest, but they are not the objects of such fortune. The lady, under the oppression of the glamour cast upon her eyes by the juice of love-in-idleness, reserves her rapture for an absurd clown. Such are the tricks of Fortune. . . . Abstracting the poetry, we see the same thing every day in the plain prose of the world. Many is the Titania driven by some unintelligible magic so to waste her love. Some juice, potent as that of Puck, — the true Cupid of such errant passions,— -often converts in the eyes of woman the grossest defects into resistless charms. The lady of youth and beauty will pass by attractions best calcu¬ lated to captivate the opposite sex, to fling herself at the feet of age or ugliness. Another, decked with graces, accomplishments, and the gifts of genius, and full of all the sensibilities of refinement, will squander her affections on some good-for- nothing roul, whose degraded habits and pursuits banish him far away from the pol¬ ished scenes which she adorns. The lady of sixteen quarters will languish for him who has no arms but those which nature has bestowed ; from the midst of the gilded salon a soft sigh may be directed towards the thin-clad tenant of a garret ; and the heiress of millions may wish them sunken in the sea if they form a barrier between her and the penniless lad toiling for his livelihood, ‘ Lord of his presence, and no ‘ land beside.’ . . . Ill-mated loves are generally of short duration on the side of the
APPENDIX
318
nobler party, and she awakes to lament her folly. The fate of those who suffer like Titania is the hardest. . . . Woe to the unhappy lady who is obliged to confess, when the enchantment has passed by, that she was ‘ enamoured of an ass /’ She must indeed ‘ loathe his visage,’ and the memory of all connected with him is destined ever to be attended by a strong sensation of disgust.
But the ass himself of whom she was enamoured has not been the less a favourite of Fortune, less happy and self-complacent, because of her late repentance. He proceeds onward as luckily as ever. Bottom, during the time that he attracts the attentions of Titania, never for a moment thinks there is anything extraordinary in the matter. He takes the love of the Queen of the Fairies as a thing of course, orders about her tiny attendants as if they were so many apprentices at his loom, and dwells in Fairy Land, unobservant of its wonders, as quietly as if he were still in his work¬ shop. Great is the courage and self-possession of an ass-head. Theseus would have bent in reverent awe before Titania. Bottom treats her as carelessly as if she were the wench of the next-door tapster. Even Christopher Sly, when he finds himself transmuted into a lord, shows some signs of astonishment. He does not accommo¬ date himself to surrounding circumstances. ... In the Arabian Nights' Entertain¬ ments a similar trick is played by the Caliph Haroun Alraschid upon Abou Hassan, and he submits, with much reluctance, to believe himself the Commander of the Faithful. But having in vain sought how to explain the enigma, he yields to the belief, and then performs all the parts assigned to him, whether of business or pleas¬ ure, of counsel or gallantry, with the easy self-possession of a practised gentleman. Bottom has none of the scruples of the tinker of Burton-Heath, or the bon vivant of Bagdad. He sits down among the fairies as one of themselves without any astonish¬ ment ; but so far from assuming, like Abou Hassan, the manners of the court where he has been so strangely intruded, he brings the language and bearing of the booth into the glittering circle of Queen Titania. He would have behaved in the same manner on the throne of the caliph, or in the bedizened chamber of the lord ; and the ass-head would have victoriously carried him through. . . .
Adieu, then, Bottom the weaver ! and long may you go onward prospering in your course I But the prayer is needless, for you carry about you the infallible talisman of the ass-head. You will be always sure of finding a Queen of the Fairies to heap her favours upon you, while to brighter eyes and nobler natures she remains invisible or averse. Be you ever the chosen representative of the romantic and the tender before dukes and princesses ; and if the judicious laugh at your efforts, despise them in return, setting down their criticism to envy. This you have a right to do. Have they, with all their wisdom and wit, captivated the heart of a Titania as you have done ? Not they — nor will they ever. Prosper, therefore, with undoubting heart, despising the babble of the wise. Go on your path rejoicing ; assert loudly your claim to fill every character in life ; and may you be quite sure that as long as the noble race of the Bottoms continues to exist, the chances of extraordinary good luck will fall to their lot, while in the ordinary course of life they will never be unattended by the plausive criticism of a Peter Quince.
J. A. Heraud {Shakespeare, His Inner Life, p. 178, 1865) : Here we have Bottom in the part of theatrical reader and manager. He has been pondering the drama, until he conjures up fears for its success, takes exceptions to incidentals, and suggests rem¬ edies. Bottom is not only critical, he is inventive. With a little practice and encour¬ agement we shall see him writing a play himself. Indeed, with a trifling exaggera-
CRITICISMS— B 0 TTOM
319
lion, the scene is only a caricature of what frequently happened in the Green-rooms of theatres in the poet’s own day, and has happened since in that of every other. Here is instinct rashly mistaken for aptitude, and aptitude for knowledge, by the unin¬ structed artisan, who has to substitute shrewdness for experience. And thus it is with the neophyte actor and the ignorant manager, whose sole aim is to thrust aside the author, and reign independent of his control ; altering and supplementing, according to their limited lights, what he has conceived in the fullness of the poetic faculty. . . . Soon, however, the poor players discover that their manager wears the ass’s head, though he never suspects it himself; and even the poor faery queen, the temporarily- demented drama, is fain to place herself under his guardianship. She cannot help it under the circumstances ; and, therefore, she gives him all the pretty pickings, the profits, and the perquisites of the theatre, leaving the author scarcely the gleaning. The fairies have charge of the presumptuous ignoramus, with the fairy queen’s direction.
In a far different fashion Shakespeare conducted matters at his own theatre. There the poet presided, and the world has witnessed the result. The argument needs no other elucidation.