A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1593-94.) INTRODUCTION. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a strange and beautiful web, woven delicately by a youthful poet's fancy. What is perhaps most remarkable about the play is the harmonious blending in it of widely different elements. It is as if threads of silken splendor were run together in its texture with a yarn of hempen homespun, and both these with lines of dewy gossamer and filaments drawn from the moonbeams. In North's Plutarch, or in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Shakespeare may have found the figures of Theseus and his Amazonian bride; from Chaucer also (Wife of Bath's Tale), may have come the figure of the elf-queen (though not her name, Titania), and the story of Pyra mus and Thisbe (see Chaucer's Legend of Good Women); this last, however, was perhaps taken from Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Oberon, the fairy-king, had recently appeared in Greene's play The Scottish History of James IV.; Puck, under his name of Robin Goodfellow, was a roguish sprite, well known in English fairy-lore. Finally, in Montemayor's Diana, which Shakespeare had made acquaintance with before The Two Gentlemen of Verona was written, occur some incidents which may have suggested the magic effects of the flower-juice laid upon the sleeping lovers' lids. Taking a little from this quarter and a little from that, Shakespeare created out of such slight materials his marvellous Dream. The marriage of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta—who are classical in name only, being in reality romantic medieval figures-surrounds the whole, as it were, with a magnificent frame. Theseus is Shakespeare's early ideal of a heroic warrior and man of action. His life is one of splendid achievement and of joy; his love is a kind of happy victory, his marriage a triumph. From early morning, when his hounds-themselves heroic creatures-fill the valley with their "musical confusion," until midnight, when the Athenian clowns end their "very tragical mirth" with a Bergomask dance, Theseus displays his joyous energy and the graciousness of power. In contrast with him and his warrior bride, the figures of the young lovers look slight and grace ful, and their love-perplexities and errors are seen to be among the minor and remediable afflictions of the world. The mirth of the lovers' part of A Midsummer Night's Dream turns chiefly upon the incidents, and therefore, as with the brothers Antipholus,in The Comedy of Errors, differences of char acter are not made prominent. Here, as in the Errors, there are entanglements and cross-purposes. The one play has been named "the mistakes of a day," and the other "the mistakes of a night :" but the difference lies deeper than such names intimate; for in the Errors, the confusion is external to the mind, here it is internal; in the Errors, the feelings of the actors remain constant, but the persons toward whom they are directed take the place, unobserved, one of another; here the persons remain constant, but their feelings of love, indifference, or dislike are at the mercy of mischief-making accident. As the two extremes of exquisite delicacy, of dainty elegance, and, on the other hand, of thick-witted grossness and clumsiness, stand the fairy tribe and the group of Athenian handicraftsmen. The world of the poet's dream includes the two-a Titania, and a Bottom the weaver-and can bring them into grotesque conjunction. No such fairy poetry existed anywhere in English literature before Shakespeare. The tiny elves, to whom a cowslip is tall, for whom the third part of a minute is an important division of time, have a miniature perfection which is charming. They delight in all beautiful and dainty things, and war with things that creep and things that fly, if they be uncomely; their lives are gay with fine frolic and delicate revelry. Puck, the jester of Fairyland, stands apart from the rest, the recognizable "Zob of spirits," a rough, "fawn-faced, shock-pated little fellow, a very Shetlander among the gossamer-winged, dainty-limbed shapes around him." It has been conjectured that A Midsummer Night's Dream was written to grace the wedding of some noble person-Southampton who was married in 1598, or Essex who was married in 1590; but these dates are, the one too late, the other too early. A passage (Act II., Sc. I., L. 88-118) in which Titania describes the recent ill seasons, wintry summers, flood and fog, would very aptly correspond with the disastrous years 1593 and 1594. Perhaps we may incline towards 1594 as the date of the play. It contains a large proportion of rhyming lines; but the character of the play naturally calls for this. It has the gaiety, the fancifulness, and the want of either deep thought or passion which we might expect in an early drama. It was probably acted before Elizabeth. The praise of "single-blessedness" (Act I., Sc. I., L. 74-78) may have been designed to please the ears of the maiden queen; and Oberon's vision (Act II., Sc. I., L. 148-168) contains a splendid piece of poetical homage to her. The "fair vestal throned by the west" is certainly Elizabeth Two quarto editions of the play, of which the second was probably pirated, were issued in the year 1600. (132) Or else the law of Athens yields you up- I must employ you in some business How chance the roses there do fade so fast? Her. Belike for want of rain, which I could well 130 Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes. Lys. Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth, But, either it was different in blood,— Her. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low. 90 Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, Dem. Relent, sweet Hermia: and, Lysander, yield Thy crazed title to my certain right. Lys. You have her father's love, Deme trius; Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him. Ege. Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my love, And what is mine my love shall render him. 101 Lys. I am, my lord, as well derived as he, I am beloved of beauteous Hermia : 110 The. I must confess that I have heard so much, And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof; But, being over-full of self-affairs, My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come; War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' It stands as an edict in destiny: 150 As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs, Wishes and tears, poor fancy's followers. Lys. A good persuasion: therefore, hear me, Hermia. I have a widow aunt, a dowager Of great revenue, and she hath no child: From Athens is her house remote seven leagues; 160 And she respects me as her only son. Her. My good Lysander appear. Sickness is catching: O, were favor so, Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go; My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, The rest I'd give to be to you translated. 191 O, teach me how you look, and with what art You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart. Her. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. Hel. O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill! Her. I give him curses, yet he gives me love. Hel. O that my prayers could such affection move! Her. The more I hate, the more he follows Her. And in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie, From lovers' food till morrow deep midnight. [Exit. Hel. How happy some o'er other some can be! Through Athens am thought as fair as she. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind : SCENE II. Athens. QUINCE's house. Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING. Quin. Is all our company here? Bot. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip. Quin. Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the duke and the duchess, on his wedding-day at night. Bot. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on, then read the names of the actors, and so grow to a point. 10 Quin. Marry, our play is, The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby. Bot. A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now, good Peter Quince Bot. Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed. Quin. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus. Bot. What is Pyramus ? a lover, or a tyrant? Quin. A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love. Bot. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest: yet my chief humor is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split. The raging rocks And shivering shocks Shall break the locks Of prison gates; And Phibbus' car Shall shine from far And make and mar The foolish Fates. 40 Bot. Well, proceed. Quin. Robin Starveling, the tailor. Star. Here, Peter Quince. 60 Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's mother. Tom Snout, the tinker. Snout. Here, Peter Quince. Quin. You, Pyramus' father: myself, Thisby's father. Snug, the joiner; you, the lion's part and, I hope, here is a play fitted. Snug. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. 71 Bot. Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar, that I will make the duke say 'Let him roar again, let him roar again.' Quin, An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all. All. That would hang us, every mother's son. Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an 'twere any nightingale. Quin. You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man therefore you must needs play Pyramus. 91 Bot. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in ? Quin. Why, what you will. Bot. I will discharge it in either your strawcolor beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crowncolor beard, your perfect yellow. Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play barefaced. But, masters, here are your parts: and I an to entreat you, request you and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a inile without the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect adieu. Quin. At the duke's oak we meet. Bot. Enough; hold or cut bow-strings. [Exeunt. ACT II. SCENE I. A wood near Athens. Enter, from opposite sides, a Fairy, and PUCK. Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you? Fai. Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Thorough flood, thorough fire, In those freckles live their savors: 10 |