A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare, the Critical Tradition)

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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, 1775-1920

SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL

TRADITION

GENERAL EDITOR: BRIAN VICKERS

Centre for Renaissance Studies, ETH Zurich

King John Joseph Candido Richard II Charles R. Forker A Midsummer Night's Dream Judith and Richard Kennedy

SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

A Midsummer Night's Dream Edited by JUDITH M. KENNEDY and RICHARD F. KENNEDY

THE ATHLONE PRESS London & New Brunswick, NJ

First published 1999 by The Athlone Press 1 Park Drive, London NW11 7SG and New Brunswick, New Jersey ©Judith M. Kennedy and Bachard F. Kennedy, 1999 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 485 81003 4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A midsummer's night dream / edited by Judith M. Kennedy and Richard F. Kennedy. p. cm. — (Shakespeare, the critical tradition) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-485-81003-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Midsummer night's dream. 2. Comedy. I. Kennedy, Judith M. II. Kennedy, Richard F., 1933-. HI. Series. PR2827.M535 1999 822.3'3-dc21 99-21407 CIP

Distributed in the United States, Canada and South America by Transaction Publishers 390 Campus Drive Somerset, New Jersey 08873 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Bibloset Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cambridge University Press

FOR

OUR CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES

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Contents

GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE

X

PREFACE

XX

INTRODUCTION

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

1

ELIZABETH GRIFFITH, moral conventions and human sympathy, 1775 SAMUEL FELTON, artists' interpretations of dramatic effects, 1787 EDMOND MALONE, commentary on A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1790 CHARLES TAYLOR, Bottom as coxcomb, 1792 GEORGE STEEVENS, response to Malone, 1793 WALTER WHITER, illustrations of some passages, 1794 CHARLES DIBDIN, his fertile and creative fancy, 1800 AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL, on metre, invention, and a unified whole, 1815 NATHAN DRAKE, unity of feeling and of imagery, and the fairies, 1817 WILLIAM HAZLITT, Bottom, Puck, and the incompatibility of poetry and the stage, 1817 JAMES BOSWELL AND EDMOND MALONE, Malone's last words, 1821 AUGUSTINE SKOTTOWE, mainly on the fairies, 1824 GEORGE DANIEL, the fairy world, the clowns, the poetry, 1828 THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, new actors on the mimic scene-the fairies, 1828 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, marginalia and other notes, 1836 WILLIAM MAGINN, Bottom the lucky man, 1837 THOMAS CAMPBELL, critics refuted, 1838 HENRY HALLAM, originality in structure, machinery, and language, 1839 CHARLES KNIGHT, the Pictorial Edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1839 WILLIAM SPALDING, the poet's dream, 1840 JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL, anachronisms, Nick Bottom as Midas, and stage representation, 1841 NICHOLAS JOHN HALPIN, Oberon's Vision allegorized, 1843 BRYAN WALLER PROCTER, fairy drama and human nature, 1843 LEIGH HUNT, Poet of the Fairies, 1844 JOSEPH HUNTER, a comment, with some explanatory notes, 1845 HERMANN ULRICI, the theme of self-parody, 1846

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59 63 66 70 74 76 79 81 84 90 94 97 101 105 108 11 118 121 123 130

132 137 142 145 148 153

SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

27 GULIANCROMMELINVERPLANCK, introductory remarks, 1847 28 HENRY JAMES SUMNER MAINE, the sister arts, and the play's structural balance, 1848 29 HENRY NORMAN HUDSON, a festival of dainties, 1851 30 JOHNRUSKIN, the Dream and Art, 1851, 1872, 1883, 1884 31 HENRY MORLEY, a most charming entertainment of the stage, 1853 32 DOUGLAS WILLIAM JERROLD, Samuel Phelps's Bottom, 1853 33 RICHARD GRANT WHITE, dramatic and poetic art, 1854 34 EDWARD STRACHEY, dialogue with a sceptic, 1854 35 WILLIAM WATKISS LLOYD, critical remarks on the play, 1856 36 ANONYMOUS, Celtic elements, 1859 37 GEORG GOTTFRIED GERVINUS, genre and inner purpose, 1863 38 CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE, intuitive power of characterization, 1863 39 THOMAS KENNY, the play's limitations, 1864 40 JOHN ABRAHAM HERAUD, the sacred mysteries in the play, 1865 41 ETHAN ALLEN HITCHCOCK, the secret meaning of the Interlude, 1865 42 ABNER OTIS KELLOGG, the perfection of imbecilic clowns, 1866 43 MARY PRESTON, not critics, but lowly worshippers of the Beautiful, 1869 44 HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE, the theme is love, 1871 45 DANIEL WILSON, Bottom - an ass, but no fool, 1873 46 KARLELZE, A Midsummer Night's Dream as masque, 1874 47 DENTON JACQUES SNIDER, self-reflexive structure: the Real, the Ideal, and the Representation, 1874 48 GEORGE WILKES, Shakespeare differentiated from Bacon, 1875 49 EDWARD DOWDEN, Theseus as the central figure, 1875 50 ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD, a comedy of incident, 1875 51 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, consummation of Shakespeare's lyrical genius, 1876 52 JOHN WEISS, Bottom, a self-made man, 1876 53 FREDERICK JAMES FURNIVALL, the full glow of fancy and fun, 1877 54 CHARLES EBENEZER MOYSE, the wood is the world, 1879 55 THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES, Titania and Ovid, 1880 56 WILLIAM FRANCIS c. WIGSTON, a Platonic reading, 1884 57 GRACE LATHAM, interpreting the spoken verse, 1885 58 ELIZABETH WORMELEY LATIMER, observations on the lovers and the mechanicals, 1886 59 FRANCIS ALBERT MARSHALL, poet rather than dramatist, 1888 60 GEORGE EDGAR MONTGOMERY, source of the play's popularity, 1888 61 JULIA WEDGWOOD, classical and modern, 1890 62 CHARLES DOWNING, reason and desire in Oberon and Titania, 1890 63 SIDNEY CLOPTON LANIER, the development of morality and art, 1891 64 BARRETT WENDELL, a true work of art, 1894 65 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS, the duration of the action, 1895 66 KATHARINE LEE BATES, life and art, 1895 67 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Mr. Daly and the idea of titivation, 1895

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157 162 168 173 177 181 184 190 197 203 206 214 217 219 225 229 232 235 238 241 245 253 256 259 262 264 267 270 274 277 281 288 292 295 298 303 307 313 317 321 324

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

68 69 70 71 72

ANDREW LANG, remarks on the play and modern education, 1895 FREDERICK SAMUEL BOAS, Theseus, Bottom, and the Interlude, 1896 EDMUND KERCHEVER CHAMBERS, the central idea, 1897 GEORG MORRIS COHEN BRANDES, the airy dream, 1898 MAXBEERBOHM, illusion, realism, and imagination, 1900

328 332 335 339 343

73

CHARLOTTE ENDYMION PORTER and HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE, dream visions, 1903

346

74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

RICHARD GREEN MOULTON, a comedy of situation and enchantment, 1903 ERNEST HOWARD CROSBY, Shakespeare's working classes, 1903 GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON, the atmosphere of the play, 1904 STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE, love, dreamland, and Helena, 1905 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY, the theme of illusion, 1907 FRANK SIDGWICK, the nature and sources of the play, 1908 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, the most beautiful work of man, 1909 ERNEST DE SELINCOURT, Shakespeare's conception of his art, 1911 HARLEYGRANVILLE BARKER, screeds of word-music, 1914 CHARLOTTE CARMICHAEL STOPES, three types of fairies: Puck, Oberon and Titania, 1916 84 BJ0RNSTJERNE BJ0RNSON, the dream's validity, 1917 85 BENEDETTO CROCE, comedy of love, 1920

353 357 360 365 368 370 373 374 378 381 383 386

NOTES SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

389 419

INDEX

436

ix

General Editor's Preface

The aim of this series is to increase our knowledge of how Shakespeare's plays were received and understood by critics, editors, and general readers. His work, with its enormous range of represented situations, characters, styles, and moods, has always been a challenge, both to the capacity of readers and to their critical systems. Two main reactions may be expected: either the system is expanded to match the plays, or the plays are reduced to fit the system. If we study his reception in the neo-classic period, as I have done in my six-volume anthology of primary texts, Shakespeare: the Critical Heritage, 1623-1801 (London and Boston, 1974-81), we see his plays being cropped — literally, cut, drastically adapted — to accommodate the prevailing notions of decorum and propriety. If not hacked about for the stage, they were evaluated by literary-critical criteria which seem to us self-evidently anachronistic and inappropriate, and found wanting. Yet despite this frequent mismatch between system and artefact, the focus of neo-classic critical theory on issues of characterization, structure and style did enable many writers to respond to the experience of reading or seeing his plays in a fresh and personal way. Since most of the eighteenth-century material has been dealt with in the previously-mentioned collection, the main emphasis in this series will be on documenting the period 1790 to 1920. While the major Romantic critics (Coleridge, Hazlitt, Keats) have been often studied, and will need less representation here, there are many interesting and important writers of the early nineteenth century who have seldom attracted attention from modern historians. As one moves on chronologically, into the Victorian period, our knowledge becomes even more thin and patchy. But there was a continuous, indeed constantly increasing stream of publications in England, America, France, and Germany, hardly known today. (See my select bibliography of the 'History of Shakespeare Criticism' in the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Third Edition, Volume 2: 1500-1700, ed. Douglas Sedge, Cambridge University Press; forthcoming.) This period saw the founding of the Shakespeare Society by J. P. Collier in 1840, which produced a huge number of publications by 1853, when it unfortunately collapsed, following Collier's exposure as a forger. In 1873 the New Shakespere Society was founded by F. J. Furnivall, and over the following twenty years produced some eight series of publications, including its Transactions, which contain many important critical and scholarly essays, a group of reprints of early quartos, allusion books, bibliographies, and much else. This was also the period in which the first journals devoted exclusively to Shakespeare appeared, some short-lived, such as Poet-Lore (Philadelphia, 1889-97) and Shakespeariana (Philadelphia, 1883), Noctes Shakspeariana (Winchester College,

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1887), or New Shakespeareana (the organ of the Shakespeare Society of New York), but at least one still with us, thejahrbuch of the Deutsche Shakespeare Gesellschaft, which appeared as such from 1865 to 1963, was divided into separate volumes for West and East Germany in 1964-65, but happily reunited in 1991. Shakespeare's plays were constantly edited and reprinted in this period. Of the complete editions, the two great peaks are the 'third variorum' edition of James Boswell, Jr. in 21 volumes (1821), the apotheosis of the eighteenth-century editions by Johnson, Steevens, and Malone, and the Cambridge edition by William G. Clark, John Glover, and W. Aldis Wright in 9 volumes (1863-66), which in turn provided the text for the enormously long-lived one-volume 'Globe edition' (1864). The Cambridge edition, which presented Shakespeare's text with minimum annotation, broke with the eighteenth-century tradition of reprinting all the important footnotes from every earlier edition, an incremental process which burdened the page but certainly led to a great dissemination of knowledge about Shakespeare's plays. That service was recommenced on a new and more coherent plan in 1871 by Dr H. H. Furness with his Variorum Edition of separate plays, continued by his son H. H. Furness, Jr. (fifteen titles by 1908), and revived in our time as the New Variorum Shakespeare, currently under the aegis of the Modern Language Association of America. But in addition to these well-known scholarly editions, a vast number of competing sets of the plays were issued for and absorbed by an apparently insatiable public. Their popularity can be judged by the remarkable number of reprints and re-editions enjoyed, for instance, by Charles Knight's 'Pictorial edition' (8 vols., 1838-43), followed by his 'Library edition' (12 vols., 1842-44), re-christened in 1850-52 the 'National edition', not easily distinguishable from Knight's own 'Cabinet edition' (16 vols., 1847-48), not to mention his 'Imperial edition', 'Blackfriars edition', all of which being followed by a host of spin-offs of their constituent material; or those by J. P. Collier (8 vols., 1842-44, 6 vols., 1858, 8 vols., 1878, now described as having 'the Purest Text and the Briefest Notes'), or Alexander Dyce (6 vols., 1857; 9 vols., 1846-47; 10 vols., 1880-81, 1895-1901). Other notable editions came from J. O. Halliwell (16 vols., 1853-65); Howard Staunton (3 vols., 1856-60; 8 vols., 1872; 6 vols., 1860, 1873, 1894; 15 vols., 1881); John Dicks, whose 'shilling edition' (1861) had reputedly sold a million copies by 1868, but was undercut by the 'Shakespeare for Sixpence' edition (Cardiff, 1897); Nicolaus Delius (7 vols., 1854-61), the text of which was re-used by F. J. Furnivall for his one-volume 'Leopold edition' (1877, '100th Thousand' by 1910); Edward Dowden (12 vols., 1882-83); F. A. Marshall and Henry Irving in the 'Henry Irving' edition (8 vols., 1888-90); C. H. Herford's 'Eversley edition' (10 vols., 1899); the 'Stratford town edition' by A. H. Bullen and others (10 vols., 1904-07); the 'University Press' edition with notes by Sidney Lee and important introductions to the individual plays by over thirty critics (40 vols., 1906-09); and many, many more, as yet unchronicled by bibliographers. America also launched a vigorous tradition of Shakespeare editing, starting with Gulian C. Verplanck's edition (3 vols., New York, 1844-47), continuing with those by H. N. Hudson (11 vols., Boston, 1851-56 and 20 vols., 1880-81); R.G. White (12 vols., Boston, 1857-66,1888), and the 'Riverside edition' (3 vols., Boston, 1883);J. A.

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Morgan, the 'Bankside' edition (22 vols., New York, 1888-1906), with parallel texts of the plays from the quartos and folio; W. J. Rolfe, a larger edition (40 vols., New York, 1871-96), and a smaller or 'Friendly edition' (20 vols., New York, 1884); and a notable collaboration by two women editors, the 'First Folio edition' by Charlotte E. Porter and Helen A. Clarke (40 vols., New York, 1903-13). These editions often included biographical material, illustrative notes, accounts of Shakespeare's sources, excerpts from contemporary ballads and plays, attempts to ascertain the chronology of his writings, and much else. The fortunate - largely middle-class - purchasers of these sets had access to a surprisingly wide range of material, much of it based on a sound historical knowledge. In addition to the complete works, there were countless editions of the individual plays and poems, many of them of a high scholarly standard (the best-known being the original 'Arden edition', ed. W. J. Craig and R. H. Case in 39 vols., 1899-1924), not to mention numerous facsimiles of the Folios and Quartos. The more we study the Victorian period, the less likely we shall be to indulge such facile dismissals of it as Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918). Where Strachey could follow the common practice of rejecting the values of the preceding age, we now should have sufficient historical distance to place the scholarly and critical output of that period into a coherent perspective. Nineteenth-century scholars produced a number of studies that held their place as authorities for many years, and can still be used with profit. For Shakespeare's language there was E. A. Abbott, A Shakespearian grammar (1869; many editions), Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare-Lexicon (Berlin, 1874-5, 1886), revised and extended by Gregor Sarrazin (2 vols., Berlin, 1902), and Wilhelm Franz, Shakespeare-Grammatik (Halle, 1898-1900,1909; Heidelberg, 1924). It is only very recently that modern works, such as Marvin Spevack, A Shakespeare Thesaurus (Hildesheim, 1993), have added anything new. On the fundamental issue of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, such as his collaboration with John Fletcher in Henry VIII, the division of labour independently proposed for that play by Samuel Hickson and James Spedding in 1847 and 1850 has been largely confirmed by Jonathan Hope in The authorship of Shakespeare's Plays (Cambridge, 1994). In other areas we now have more reliable tools to work with than the Victorians, but it was they who laid the basis for many of our scholarly approaches to Shakespeare. As for their Shakespeare criticism, while a few authors are still known and read - A. C. Bradley for his Shakespeare Tragedy (1904), Walter Pater for his essay on 'Shakespeare's English Kings' in Appreciations (1880) - the majority are simply unknown. Among the English critics who clearly deserve to be revalued are Richard Simpson for his essays on Shakespeare's historical plays, R. G. Moulton, for his Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1885; 3rd ed. 1906), Edward Dowden, and F. S. Boas. As for the many German critics whose work was eagerly translated into English — A. W. Schlegel, Hermann Ulrici, G. G. Gervinus, Karl Elze, Wilhelm Creizenach - who today can give any account of their writings? * **

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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Professors Judith and Richard Kennedy, who are also editing A Midsummer Night's Dream for the New Variorum edition, have mastered the whole range of scholarship and criticism about this play. They include excerpts from the introductions in all the major, and several of the minor editions: Thomas Campbell in 1838 (No. 17), Charles Knight's 'Pictorial Edition' of 1838-43 (No. 19), 'Barry Cornwall' in 1843 (No. 23), W. W. Lloyd, writing for S. W. Singer's 1856 edition (No. 35), the indefatigable F. J. Furnivall in the 1877 Leopold Shakespeare (No. 53), F. A. Marshall for the popular Henry Irving edition of 1888 (No. 59), that great scholar E. K. Chambers for the Warwick Shakespeare in 1897 (No. 70), an introduction subsequently re-cycled, as was that by the Danish critic Georg Brandes in 1898 (No. 71), and G. E. Woodberry's introduction for the 40-volume Renaissance edition of 1907 (No. 78). All the American editions are represented: G. C. Verplanck's 3 volumes of 1844-47 (No. 27), H. N. Hudson's 11 volumes of 1851 (No. 29), H. H. Furness's original Variorum edition of 1895 (No. 65), and the important 'First Folio' edition of 1903 by Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke (No. 73). We also find here a very welcome cross-section of American scholars and critics, many of whom will be unknown to most readers: R. G. White (No. 33), E. A. Hitchcock (No. 41), A. O. Kellogg (No. 42), Mary Preston (No. 43), George Wilkes (No. 48), John Weiss (No. 52), Elizabeth Latimer (No. 58), George Montgomery (No. 60), Sidney Lanier (No. 63), Barrett Wendell (No. 64), Katharine Bates (No. 66), and Ernest Crosby (No. 75). Taken together with those European critics whose writings were translated into English — the Germans Schlegel (No. 8), Ulrici (No. 26), Gervinus (No. 37), Elze (No. 46), solitary representatives from France (Taine: No. 44), Italy (Croce: No. 85), Norway (Bj0rnson: No. 84), and Denmark (Brandes: No. 71) — this collection faithfully represents the extent of Shakespeare's reputation, and the fame of this play. The editors' full and detailed introduction covers the play's fortunes from its first performance up to the present day. Many readers will be surprised at the quantity of contemporary allusions here recorded, far more than have ever been listed, testifying to the play's immediate popularity. It is impossible to make proper comparisons until we have other reception-studies as detailed as this, but my impression is that A Midsummer Night's Dream was for many years Shakespeare's most popular comedy. In the eighteenth century conventional praises of its 'wild, irregular genius' and its fairy world went along with neo-classic criticism of its anachronisms and a growing appreciation of the play's characters, especially Bottom, although there was little sense of the relation of character to plot. As the editors show, critical responses began to flow in the Romantic period, and took on many different forms in the nineteenth century. Like every other Shakespeare play, the Dream can be made to serve a wide range of user interests: re-asserting family morality for Elizabeth Griffith (No. 1: 1775), confirming Hazlitt's belief that Shakespeare could not be acted (No. 10: 1817) - a prejudice that can be partly understood once we realize the huge dimensions of London theatres in Hazlitt's day,1 expressing Celtic nationalism for one anonymous writer (No. 36: 1859), helping Abner Kellogg to study imbeciles (No. 42: 1866), and proving to Ernest Crosby's satisfaction that Shakespeare despised the working classes (No. 75: 1903). In our own time, as Judith and Richard Kennedy show, it has

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supported identifications of Theseus as Christ and as a repressive patriarch, Bottom as an ithyphallic monster, and the wood as a place of nightmare and terror. Every age finds its own image in Shakespeare. The editors reconstruct the play's reception over a period of four hundred years as an evolving dialogue, in which each critic responds to his or her predecessors and tries to strike out a new path. Since this is the first comedy to appear in our series, I would like to pick out some critical trends in the main period documented here which seem to be peculiar to this play, responses which recognize its individuality and achievement. Many critics showed a special affection for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Nathan Drake, writing in 1817, felt it 'to be perfectly without a rival in dramatic literature' (No. 9), while for J. O. Halliwell in 1841 it was 'the most beautiful poetic drama in this or in any other language' (No. 21). Superlatives abound: for G. C. Verplanck, in 1847, it was 'the most remarkable composition of its author' (No. 27); for Swinburne in 1876 (No. 51) and again in 1909 its perfection made it 'the most beautiful work of man' (No. 80). In 1900 Max Beerbohm judged it 'the most impressive of all the plays, and the loveliest, and the most lovable' (No. 72), and four years later G. K. Chesterton agreed that it was 'the greatest of Shakespeare's comedies' and 'also, from a certain point of view, the greatest of his plays' (No. 76). Such remarkably high assessments often go along with another special response to the play, a kind of rhapsodic evocation of its unique qualities, 'a dream over which broods the magical dimness of a summer night, half hiding and half revealing scenes where nature slumbers in her most luxuriant beauty' (No. 20: W. Spalding, 1840); 'a forest peopled with sportive elves, feeding on moonlight, and music, and fragrance' (No. 29: H. N. Hudson, 1851); the play is 'a phantasmagory; a mask of shadows full of marvel, surprises, splendour, and grotesqueness' (No. 49: E. Dowden, 1875); it has the 'enchanting metaphysic of the stage, whose contrasts of shadow and reality are shot, now in threads of gossamer lightness, now in homelier and coarser fibre, into the web and woof of this uniquely hymeneal masque' (No. 69: F. S. Boas, 1896). Any play must have special qualities that can inspire to flights of eloquence such very different critics as Nathan Drake (No. 9), George Daniel (No. 13), William Maginn (No. 16), Thomas Campbell (No. 17), 'Barry Cornwall' (No. 23), Henry Morley (No. 31), Mary Preston (No. 43), H. A. Taine (No. 44), Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke (No. 73), and George Woodberry (No. 78), none of whom could resist the temptation to rhapsodize. The particular quality of the play most often commented on, as the editors point out, was its relation with dreams. In one of his marginalia Coleridge expressed his conviction 'that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of the play in his own mind and worked upon it as a dream throughout' (No. 15), an insight that other critics soon elevated into a thematic emphasis. Hermann Ulrici saw the play conceiving 'human life' itself as a dream, in which 'the remotest regions, the strangest and most motley figures mix with one another', vanishing 'into an uncertain chiaro-scuro' (No. 26: 1846). Another German critic, Georg Gervinus, writing in 1849, argued that the fairies had been deliberately adjusted to the amoral nature of dreams: Shakespeare 'depicts them as beings without delicate feeling and without morality, just as in

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dreams we meet not with the check of tender sensations and are •without moral impulse and responsibility' (No. 37). Two generations later the Anglo-Irish critic Stopford Brooke similarly saw Puck as 'representative of the grotesque, unmoral, unhuman creations (for fancy, without will, has no conscience, no humanity) which so strangely go and come in dreams'. Brooke saw the dream element as a cumulative effect which 'reaches its height when the Queen of Dreamland herself is set dreaming. Even dreams dream that they dream' (No. 70). These pre-echoes of Freudian theory remind us that the unconscious existed long before Freud:2 indeed the terms 'unconscious' and 'subconscious' crop up here. Several critics wrote sensitively about the play's juxtaposition of the two realms, making things acceptable in fancy that would frighten or disgust us in reality (No. 29: H. N. Hudson, 1851); bringing together 'the world of phantasy and the world of reality . . . with an ease and a truthfulness which had previously been unknown in any work of human hands' (No. 39: Thomas Kenny, 1864). The Norwegian poet Bj0rnson wrote that 'The dream gives us reality reversed, but reversed in such a way that there is always the possibility that it may, in an unguarded moment, take veritable shape' (No. 84: 1917). Better still, C. E. Moyse described 'the stage whereon the Dream is played' as 'the outside world of thought and action, diminished but intensified'. The four lovers 'have determined to go out into the world — the poet's wood — and to fight out the battle of life for themselves . . . They all fled into the world and they suffered' (No. 54: 1879). But all of these responses to the interplay of fantasy and reality have a freshness lacking in many modern accounts, burdened by the heavy weight of Freudian theory.3 Seeing the play as the embodiment of dream and fantasy made some critics resentful of the reality in which they lived. In 1854 Edward Strachey, in his original and thought-provoking 'dialogue with a sceptic' (No. 34), referred to 'the whole fairy life which Shakespeare brings before us in the various scenes of this play, and which to our nineteenth century understandings has an entirely foreign, or at least extraneous character', but -without resenting the contrast. To Charles Cowden Clarke, however, writing in 1863, 'the old faith in that fairy presence has ceased forever', and 'we have passed into an age of practicality and demonstrative knowledge', having lost touch -with 'the Sabbath of the Fancy' (No. 38). Mary Preston waxed sarcastic about 'the ultra-practical man' who ignores fairy tales and is only concerned with 'the dry commonplaces of existence' (No. 43: 1869), while Julia Wedgwood speculated that 'Shakespeare was much nearer an actual belief in the fairy mythology he has half created than seems possible to a spectator of the nineteenth century', to whom 'Theseus expresses exactly the denial of the modern world' (No. 61: 1890). A much sharper version of this juxtaposition was made in 1895 by Andrew Lang, himself a great teller of myths and fairy-tales, locating the 'truly English and human thread' of the play in Quince and his company, whose 'bones were made in merry England before the populace found its life not worth living, before we had cheap science and polluted air in place of mirth and a moderate learning' (No. 68). Judging from a more explicitly religious perspective, G. K. Chesterton, in 1904, found in the play 'the last glimpse of Merrie

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England, that distant but shining and quite indubitable country', in which 'unlike the England of to-day', a belief in 'a merry supernaturalism' could flourish, before the Puritans destroyed all 'the fables of Christendom' except witchcraft (No. 76). For other critics A Midsummer Night's Dream represented neither a remote fantasy nor a rebuke to the present age but a play, having a coherent form. Where Malone dismissed 'the fable' as 'meagre and uninteresting' (No. 3: 1790), many writers praised its complex and integrated structure. A. W. Schlegel, in so many respects a pioneer, judged 'the different parts of the plot; the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, Oberon and Titania's quarrel, the flight of the two pairs of lovers, and the theatrical manoeuvres of the mechanics', to be 'so lightly and happily interwoven that they seem necessary to each other for the formation of a whole' (No. 8: 1815). Another influential critic, Henry Hallam, found that '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' to this degree (No. 18: 1839). If Hallam hesitated to ascribe this achievement entirely to Shakespeare's 'skill', other critics had no such qualms. Charles Knight judged it Shakespeare's most 'harmonious' play, for 'All the incidents, all the characters, are in perfect subordination to the will of the poet', serving 'one leading design' (No. 19: 1839), a judgment echoed by William Spalding (No. 20: 1840), G. C. Verplanck: 'one perfectly connected and harmonious whole' (No. 27: 1847), Henry Maine: 'some law of regularity' unites the play's 'several groups' into ' a coherence and connection' (No 28: 1848), R. G. White (No. 33: 1854), Edward Strachey: 'a coherent design and execution' (No. 34: 1854), W. W. Lloyd: 'a lucid and well-ordered web' (No. 35: 1856), D. J. Snider, who tried to define 'the thought which binds together its multifarious and seemingly irreconcilable elements' (No. 47: 1874); Barrett Wendell: 'few works in any literature possess more artistic unity' (No. 64: 1894); Andrew Lang (No. 68: 1895); Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke (No. 73: 1903). Some critics went beyond these general praises of the play's unified structure, trying to pin down its motive forces. Charles Cowden Clarke argued that 'Demetrius and Lysander, Hermia and Helena, with their love-crosses and perplexities, constitute the chief agents in the drama', forming the main plot, with Puck producing an 'important movement in the machinery', Theseus and Hippolyta forming 'as Schlegel happily observes, "a splendid frame to the picture'" (No. 38: 1863). C. E. Moyse disagreed, declaring the fairies 'the instruments by which the mechanism of the play is set in motion', the mortals being affected by their deeds, with Theseus restoring harmony. Moyse perceptibly showed some parallels between the plot levels, the quarrelling lovers generating 'a state of strife . . . similar to that of Titania and Oberon. The emotions of these men and women are wrought up to the highest pitch. Their intense mental strain finds an outlet in quick and violent action. Mark the running, the breathless haste, the impassioned cries

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in which the play abounds. Rapidity is the key' to its inner meaning (No. 54: 1879). The most popular concept to describe the relation between the Dream's various levels was parody, first introduced by August Schlegel, who saw that 'Pyramus and Thisbe is not unmeaningly chosen as the grotesque play within the play; it is exactly like the pathetic part of the piece, a secret meeting of two lovers in the forest, and their separation by an unfortunate accident, and closes the whole with the most amusing parody' (No. 9: 1815). The elevation of parody to a structural principle was made by Hermann Ulrici in 1839 (a book translated in 1846), drawing on Hegel's characterization of comedy in his Aesthetik (1835) as possessing an inbuilt irony.4 Ulrici argued that in the Dream 'the principal spheres of life are made mutually to parody one another in mirthful irony'. Theseus and Hippolyta represent 'the grand, heroic, historical side of human nature', but their marital quarrel is a self-parody; Bottom and the mechanicals represent 'the lowest sphere in the full prose of every-day life', but in their attempt at tragedy parody themselves as well as 'the higher sphere of the tragic and the heroic'; while the lovers, lost 'in the fantastic play of their own selfish love', are also 'a parody on themselves and their station in life' (No. 26: 1846). Ulrici's formulation was too schematic and philosophical for many critics, but some echoed it in part: W. W. Lloyd thought that 'the very incongruity of the heroic Theseus with romantic incidents and accidents, of the classic with the Gothic elements, is parodied and excused in adaptation of a story still more remote, of Pyramus and Thisbe, by journeymen clowns so contemporary to the habits of the groundling audience' (No. 35: 1856). C. C. Clarke praised Shakespeare's 'happy thought' in making the play within the play 'a travesty of the old tragic legend of 'Pyramus and Thisbe', and thereby turning it, as it were, into a farce upon the serious and pathetic scenes that occur between the lovers in the piece — Demetrius and Helena, and Lysander and Hermia' (No. 38: 1863). Towards the end of the century three writers commented independently on the element of parody: F. S. Boas noted Shakespeare's 'dramatic method' of producing 'variations upon a single theme in the different portions of a play', with the 'workmen's play' both raising the serious issue of the relation between life and art ('shadow to substance') and being 'a burlesque upon the dramas of the day, in which classical subjects were handled with utter want of dignity, and with incongruous extravagance of style' (No. 69: 1896). E. K. Chambers related 'Pyramus and Thisbe' to the play's internal themes, 'a burlesque presentment' of the difficulties of love (No. 70: 1897), while GeorgBrandes compared the 'sprightly burlesque' specifically with Thomas Preston's Cambyses, first printed in 1561 (No. 71: 1898). For some modern readers it may come as a surprise to find Victorian critics showing such a sharp awareness of the play's structure and of the inter-relation between its parts, especially since recent fashions in Shakespeare criticism have moved away from language and dramatic form to specifically modern preoccupations with Gender, Psyche, and Power. The best of these analysts of dramatic structure was R. G. Moulton, who used diagrams to define the changing relationships

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between characters in terms of their desires or 'motive agencies' (No. 74: 1903). His account of the play's developing complications and resolutions is still valuable for its clarity, the representation of motive in terms of attraction and repulsion making him a precursor of the structuralist narratology that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, as seen in the work of A. J. Greimas and Gerard Genette.5 Our awareness of nineteenth century critics is so tenuous that we could attribute very few qualities to them, but we would probably not grant them much understanding of Shakespeare's language, since we tend to see the critics of the 1930s — Richards, Empson, Leavis, Spurgeon, Clemen — as having made that break-through. Judith and Richard Kennedy have recovered many critics who will make us revise our opinion. Schlegel, having perhaps learned form his eighteenth-century predecessors, Roderick and Capell,6 noted how the dramatist varied his verse movement according to subject matter and speaker, ranging from 'ease and rapidity' to 'ponderous energy': 'Even the irregularities of Shakespeare's versification are expressive; a verse broken off, or a sudden change of rhythmus, coincides with some pause in the progress of thought, or the entrance of another mental disposition' (No. 8: 1815). Shakespeare's deliberate art in verse-movement and the use of rhyme was celebrated by Coleridge (No. 15: 1836), and by the future legal historian Henry Maine, who saw the interplay between rhyme, blank verse, and lyric as reflecting the play's dramatic structure (No. 28: 1848). Grace Latham, one of the few women to attain recognition in the New Shakespeare Society, made a particularly sensitive analysis of the role of metrical variety and punctuation in expressing a range of thoughts and feeling, and anticipated modern linguistics in her recognition that 'in real life our sentences are rarely complete; our eagerness to get through them making us drop out many of our words', relying on the addressee to complete the sense (No. 57: 1885). As for Shakespeare's vocabulary, the Latin element, only recently given proper scholarly analysis,7 was observed by Henry Hallam, pointing to several phrases which would be 'unintelligible . . . except in the sense of their primitive roots', such as 'quantity' meaning value, 'constancy' meaning consistency, and 'rivers, that "have overborn their continents", the continente ripa of Horace' (No. 18: 1839). Hallam was unsure how much Latin Shakespeare knew, and while several critics observed the presence of Ovid in the play (e. g. J. O. Halliwell, No. 21), it was left to T. S. Baynes to show that he must have known the Metamorphoses in Latin, for the name Titania does not occur in Golding's English translation (No. 55: 1880). These are some of the ways in which, reading these critics of a distant age, we can gain a sharper sense of the unique qualities of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Their response may make us aware of some imbalances in contemporary criticism, and lead us to a fuller appreciation of this remarkable play.

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NOTES 1 2

3 4 5

6

7

Cf. Brian Vickers, Shakespeare. The Critical Heritage. Volume 6: 1774-1801 (London and Boston, 1981), pp. 63-4, 85. See, e. g., L. L. Whyte, The Unconscious Before Freud (New York, 1960); H. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York, 1970); F. J. Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind (London, 1979). See my comments on the otherwise admirable edition by Peter Holland (1995) in Review of English Studies, 49 (1998): 215-22, at p. 220. Cf. Hegel, Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, tr. T. M. Knox, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1975), vol.ii. pp.1163, 1236. See, e. g., A. J. Greimas, Semantique structurale. Recherche de methode (Paris, 1966), and Du Sens. Essais semiotiques (Paris, 1970); G. Genette, Figures III (Paris, 1972); Claude Bremond, Logique du recit (Paris, 1973); Claude Chabrol (ed.), Semiotique narrative et textuelle (Paris, 1973). For earlier critics, such as Richard Roderick, see Brian Vickers, Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, Volume 4: 1753-1765 (London and Boston, 1976), pp. 338-40, and for Edward Capell, ibid., Volume 6: 1774-1801 (London and Boston, 1981), pp. 218-19, 253-72. For systematic modern studies of this topic see M. Tarlinskaja, Shakespeare's Verse. Iambic Pentameter and the Poet's Idiosyncrasies (New York and Bern, 1987); G. T. Wright, Shakespeare's Metrical Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988). Cf. Jiirgen Schafer, Shakespeares Stil. Germanisches und romanisches Vokabular (Frankfurt am Main, 1973).

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Preface

This volume seeks to extend the work begun by Brian Vickers in his six-volume Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, 1623-1801 (London, 1974-81) through a selection of critical responses to A Midsummer Night's Dream from 1775 to 1920. Since the emphasis of the series is on criticism in English, continental critics are represented only by works which in translation became part of the English critical tradition. Commentary related to the performance history of the play is included only when it bears on interpretation or reception of the play itself, rather than when it is concerned primarily with individual actors or particular staging. The introduction explores early responses to the play through assessing references to it and imitations of it, and then traces shifting critical concerns from the earliest commentary at the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present. More detailed examination of critical trends in the mid and later twentieth century can be pursued through the well annotated and indexed Garland bibliography on A Midsummer Night's Dream by D. Allen Carroll and Gary Jay Williams (New York, 1986). The texts in this collection are taken from the first printed edition, unless otherwise noted. The following editorial changes have been made silendy: (1) the spelling of 'Shakespeare' and 'Shakespearean' has been standardized throughout; (2) italicization of characters' names has been ignored; (3) quotation marks in set-off quotations have been eliminated; (4) some set-off quotations have been incorporated into the text. Footnotes in the original documents are retained, except when their only function is the designation of act, scene, or line numbers; such footnotes have been silendy omitted, and the information placed in square brackets in the text. All footnotes, both those taken from the original documents and those provided by the current editors, are designated by a single, consecutive numbering system. They are differentiated as follows: unbracketed footnotes, 1, 3, etc., are those found in the original documents; bracketed footnotes, [2], [4], etc., are those provided by the current editors. Editorial notes in the text, such as summaries of omitted material or provision of act, scene, and line numbers, are placed within square brackets. Omissions in the text are indicated by ellipsis dots (three at the beginning or in the middle of a sentence, four at the end), larger omissions by three asterisks. All Shakespearean act, scene, and line references interpolated in the text are to The Riverside Shakespeare edited by G. Blakemore Evans (Boston, 1974), but passages in the documents themselves are quoted as they appear in the originals, reflecting differences in the textual traditions of the editions used by the individual authors. We are happy to acknowledge our debts to many institutions and individuals.

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Much of the material on which this volume is based has been gathered in the course of preparing the New Variorum edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream. That work was generously subsidized by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and by the administration of St. Thomas University. We are grateful for the assistance of the librarians and staff of the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the New York Public Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Library of Congress, the Huntington Library, the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the libraries of the universities of Edinburgh, Pennsylvania, Yale, Harvard, Duke, and North Carolina at Chapel Hill; special thanks are due to librarians and staff of the Harriet Irving Library in Fredericton, New Brunswick, particularly in Document Delivery, Reference, Microforms, and Circulation. Our co-editor for the New Variorum A Midsummer Night's Dream, Susan May, gave invaluable help by allowing us to use her bibliography and survey of criticism of the play. We have also received support and encouragement from the editors of parallel volumes in this series, Joseph Candido and Charles Forker. Special assistance has been provided by James Kennedy, Elizabeth Klaassen, and Michael Klaassen. Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge our debt to the patience, support, and advice of the general editor, Brian Vickers.

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Introduction

i BEGINNINGS TO 1775 A Midsummer Night's Dream was a popular play from its opening afternoon, as is evidenced in the many borrowings from it and imitations of it in the drama and in the poetry of the age, and in the casual mentions of it in letters, prefaces, and so on. Instances of these allusions are given to the end of the seventeenth century, when critical attention to the play began. On stage the play seems to have split soon into low farce with the mechanicals, or into the high spectacle of opera as it was adapted by Henry Purcell and later by David Garrick. Apart from John Dryden's remarks in 1677, and a handful of statements by literary historians in the late years of the century, critical comment emerged early in the eighteenth century, concentrating to a great extent on Shakespeare's imaginative creation of the fairies. The poetry of the play early received critical acclaim, especially from the collections of its beauties. Some of the great editions of the eighteenth century - especially Samuel Johnson's in 1765 — augmented the growing body of criticism, but for the most part the criticism remained brief and limited until the 1770s. Scholars place the date of composition of A Midsummer Night's Dream about 1595-6: it was printed in quarto in 1600 and 1619, proof of its instant popularity, for among the comedies only three received two printings before the 1623 folio, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. In his Palladis Tamia; Wits Treasury (entered 7 September 1598 and published the same year) Francis Meres stated that 'Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both' Comedy and Tragedy, and he lists Dream with four other comedies.1 While formal criticism of Dream began in the eighteenth century, there are indications of the appreciative reception of it in the contemporary drama, where it was imitated and adapted, in the poetry which borrowed from it, and in other allusions to it. The play was strongly influential in the drama. In Histrio-mastix (1599; printed 1610) John Marston drew on Shakespeare's mechanicals for his portrayal of Belch, Incle, Gutt, and Post-hast, who act an Interlude before Lord Mavortius, and rehearse at the end of Act 4. There are other resemblances.2 Marston's tragedies Antonio's Revenge (1600; printed 1602), The Malcontent (1604), and The Insatiate Countess (1610; printed 1613) all have several echoes of Dream in them, as does the comedy Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600; printed 1601).3 The anonymous Wisdom of Dr. Dodypoll (1600) may have borrowed the line 'Hanging on eury leafe an orient pearle' from the fairy's opening speech (2.1.15).4 Thomas Dekker's The Shoemakers'

i

SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

Holiday (1599; printed 1600) echoes the play in one place, and his later Whore of Babylon (1606-7; printed 1607) has Titania figuring Queen Elizabeth and Oberon Henry VIII, with other borrowings.5 In the anonymous Wily Beguiled (1602; printed 1606) the character of Will Cricket suggests Bottom in some ways, and G. C. Moore Smith gives verbal parallels.6 Narcissus: A Twelfe Night Merriment, an anonymous farce presented at St. John's College, Oxford, 6 January 1603, owes much to the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude. It has a Well as a character, much like Wall, and over a dozen close parallels with Dream.7 Ben Jonson echoes Theseus in Cynthia's Revels (1600-1; printed 1601) when Cynthia declares, 'what sort our sports | Are like to be this night, I not demaund. | Nothing which dutie, and desire to please | Beares written in the forehead, comes amisse' (5.6.77-80), which is a remembrance of the Duke's assertion, 'I will hear that play; | For never any thing can be amiss, | When simpleness and duty tender it' (5,1.81-3). Peter Whalley, who first noted this parallel in 1756, points out that 'Cynthia and Theseus are exactly in the same situation, both preparing to see a dramatic exhibition'.8 The word 'sports', which Cynthia uses, or 'sport', is uttered three times in the same scene in Dream (5.1.42, 79, 90). In his entertainment The Satyr (1603; printed 1616), Jonson included a Puck-like satyr, an Elf, fairies, and Mab the queen of Fairies; and in Bartholomew Fair (1614; printed 1631), he drew on the Interlude in the puppet burlesque of Lantern, in Act 5, scenes 3 and 4.9 His later masque, Love's Welcome at Bolsover (1634; printed in 1641), has 'A Dance of Mechanics' in which Chesil, the Carver; Summer, the Carpenter; Dresser, the Plumber; Quarrel, the Glazier; and Fret, the Plaisterer, among others, imitate the bergomask danced by the mechanicals at the end of the Interlude.10 George Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois (1604; printed 1607) echoes Puck's promise to 'put a girdle round about the earth' (2.1.175) when Bussy speaks of seamen who 'put a girdle round about the world' (1.1.23).11 In the same first scene Bussy's meeting with Maffe (1.1.158-65) uses three sentences from Bottom's first introduction to the fairies (3.1.179-83).12 John Day's The Isle of Gulls (1606) probably took the names Lisander, Demetrius, and Hippolita from Dream, along with a few phrases. Cyril Tourneur, or Thomas Middleton, or whoever wrote The Revenger's Tragedy (1606; printed 1607-8), seems to have remembered Titania's expression 'the third part of a minute' (2.2.2) in the First Officer's speech: 'we'll not delay | The third part of a minute' (3.3.16-17),13 There is a well known reference to a bit of stage business in Edward Sharpham's The Fleire (1606; printed 1607): 'Fie: Faith like Thisbe in the play, a has almost kil'd himselfe with the scabberd', which points to a very early comic portrayal of Thisbe's demise where apparently she stabbed herself with Pyramus's scabbard instead of his sword (5.1.343-7).14 Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters (1606; printed 1608) displays some verbal parallels with Dream, and Paul Yachnin has found other similarities.15 Daniel M. McKeithan finds that John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess (1608; printed 1609?) is 'largely a reworking of material taken from A Midsummer Night's Dream': it is indebted to the play for 'the theme, the method of treating the theme, the woodland setting, a number of important details in the plot, and more than a dozen situations and ideas'.16 A few other echoes are sounded in Fletcher's later plays such as The Pilgrim (1621;

2

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

printed 1647) and Beggars' Bush (1622; printed 1647), and in two plays he wrote with Philip Massinger, The Little French Laivyer (1619; printed 1647) and The Lovers' Progress (1623; printed 1647).17 Cristina Malcolmson's claim that Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling 'should be read as rewriting Shakespeare's play [i. e. Dream]' is rather strong, but there are some remarkable similarities, and one pointed allusion when Franciscus says 'Hail, bright Titania! | Why stand'st thou idle on theseflow'rybanks? | Oberon is dancin . . .' (3.3.48-50).18 Massinger imitated Dream in at least seven of his plays from 1619 to 1633.19 Robin Goodfellow and some fairies appear in the first scene of Thomas Randolph's Aristippus, or the Jovial Philosopher (1626), and John Ford echoes Dream in one place in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1632). But with the closing of the theatres in the 1640's, drama was strangled: the only imitation of Dream in the interregnum was James Shirley's privately performed masque The Triumph of Beauty (1646) where he adapted the Interlude, and modelled his shepherd Bottle on Bottom.20 The Restoration saw the borrowing resume. John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee adapted parts of Titania's seasons speech in the beginning of their Oedipus (1678; printed 1679). Lee used quotations from the hunting speeches of Theseus and Hippolyta in Theodosius (1680). In his Cuckolds-Haven (1685) Nahum Tate quoted a dozen lines from two of Bottom's utterances. The anonymous play The Folly of Priestcraft (1690) has the heroine, Leucasia castigating Politico ('A contriving Intriguing Priest') for his iniquities, particularly 'to see you impos'd upon by such a Person as Turnabout, . . . to see you hugging him in your Bosom for a converted Saint, it seem'd to me as preposterous as to see ... the Woman in Shakespeare, kissing the Fellow with the Asses-head —'.21 Over forty dramas show at least traces of the influence of Shakespeare's fairy play. Like dramatists, poets showed their appreciation of Dream by borrowing from or referring to it. In his poem 'The Perfume', composed around 1596, John Donne has a simile — 'like Faiery Sprights | Oft skipt into our chamber, those sweet nights' — which Helen Gardner thinks 'might have been suggested by the close of A Midsummer Night's Dream'.22 And, indeed, there are some verbal resemblances in 'fairy sprite', 'chamber', and 'sweet' (5.1.393, 417, and 418). Another poem which may owe something to the same play is 'The Exstasie', especially in the first stanza: Where, like a pillow on a bed, A Pregnant banke swel'd up, to rest The violets reclining head, Sat we two, one anothers best; The setting here is similar to the one where Lysander and Hermia decide to bed down for the night in the wood, and, like Donne's lovers, they have a 'conference' (2.2.46). The words 'pillow', 'bed', 'banke', 'rest', and 'head' are all in Dream (2.2.39-42,64), and the conjunction of bank and reclining violet is found in Oberon's speech in the previous scene: 'I know a bank where . . . the nodding violet grows' (2.1.249-50). Donne's idea that 'Love . . . makes both one' (35-6) and that 'soules. . . knit | That subtle knot' (62-3) is akin to Shakespeare's thought: 'my heart unto yours is knit; | So that but one heart we can make of it' (2.2.47-8; consider too 'knitteth

3

SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

souls' at 1.1.172). The love which 'Interinanimates two soules' (42) is somewhat like the 'Two bosoms interchained' (2.2.49). Two other possible remembrances of Dream occur, in one of Donne's Verse Letters and in one of his Divine Poems.23 In 1602 an unidentified author, T. A., used five lines from the hunting verse of the opening of Act 4 in his poem The Massacre of Money.24 William Percy's The Faery Pastorall or Forrest of Elves, completed in 1603 and first published in 1824, includes 'Oberon, King of the Faeryes', and Atys, a 'Faery Page', who relates how he fell into a Bowl 'in forme of a Crab' and 'bobd' against the barber's mouth 'to the pleasure of the whole companye of beholders there'. This passage resembles Puck's description of his identical trick (2.1.47-9, 55).25 George Chapman's translations of Homer's Iliad (1610-11) and Odyssey (1614-16) have a half dozen verbal resemblances.26 Barten Holy day's translation of Persius's Satires (1616) has several lines - '. . . I heare some boistrous rough | Centurion say; Tush, I haue wit enough | To serue mine owne turne' — which are like Bottom's speech to Titania: ' . . . but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine owne turn' (3.1.149-51). Francis Quarles borrowed some phrases for his Feast for Wormes (1621), and later, in his Emblemes (1635) the lines 'we fear, | Each bush we see's a bear' from 'imagining some fear, | How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear' (5.1.21-2).27 John Taylor the Water-Poet named the play and quoted from Quince's prologue at the beginning of the Interlude (5.1.108-10, 114) in his preface to Sir Gregory Nonsence. His Newes from no place (1622).28 Leonard Digges remembered some phrases from the beginning of the Fairies' song 'You spotted snakes' (2.2.12-15) in lines 29-30 of his commendatory verse, 'Upon Master William Shakespeare', prefixed to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's poems.29 Robert Herrick's poem 'Oberons Palace' may owe some inspiration to Shakespeare's fairy king and fairyland, and other poems in his Hesperides (1648) show more definite indebtedness in several places.30 But the greatest early testament of the imaginative impact of the play is in the poetry of John Milton, where one can find over a hundred parallels, over ninety in the early poetry and ten in Paradise Lost, from 'wormie bed' in 'On the Death of a Fair Infant' (1. 31; from 3.2.384), to 'spangled sheen' in Comus (1. 1003; from 2.1.29), to the simile at the end of the first book of his epic: like ... Faery Elves, Whose midnight Revels, by a Forest side Or Fountain some belated Peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while over-head the Moon Sits Arbitress, and nearer to the Earth Wheels her pale course; (I, 780-6)31 Various other allusions attest to the early popularity of the play. William Drummond of Hawthornden listed it among the books he read in 1606.32 In his New Shreds of the old Snare (1624) John Gee refers to 'the Comedie of Piramus and Thisbe, where one comes in with a Lanthorne and Acts Mooneshine'. This reference, together with Charles I's entry of'Piramus and Thisby' in his copy of the second folio of 1632 at Windsor Castle, 'as if it were a second title to Shakespeare's comedy',

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caused Halliwell to wonder if the Interlude had been 'separately performed at a very early period'.33 An obscure mention occurs in a letter of June 3-4, 1639, where Edward Norgate describes 'Mr. Weckherlin, who plays Pyramus and Thisbe and the Lion too'.34 One of the finest early tributes to the play is contained in Josua Poole's English Parnassus (1657, 1677) - a kind of handbook for aspiring poets, the largest section being a 419 page florilegium of English poetry arranged alphabetically by subjects - where Dream is the second most quoted of Shakespeare's plays with forty-five citations, just under Hamlet's forty-eight, and above third place Romeo and Juliet's thirty-five.35 In 1662 Edmund Gayton mentioned 'Pyramus and Thisbe, the Lion and the Moon-shine' as distinct roles, and in 1669 The New Academy of Complements included the fairies' song 'You spotted snakes' (2.2.9ff.) among its many Shakespearean lyrics.36 Andrew Marvell mentioned Pyramus, Moonshine, and Wall in The Rehearsall Transpros'd: the Second Part (1673).37 Most of these casual references indicate that the play was best known for the Interlude: perhaps HalliwelTs guess that this part of the play had early been made an independent production was true. The performance history of the play seems to bear this out. There are records of three actual early performances, the first being on 1 January 1604 before King James, the second in 1630 at Hampton Court, and the third in 1631, probably in the house of the Lord Bishop of Lincoln. Yet another enactment, about 1620, seems indicated by the stage direction first given in the first folio, 'Tawyer with a Trumpet before them' (5.1.126), which is likely from the prompt copy of the second quarto of 1619 on which the text of the folio is based.38 With the closing of the theatres from 1642 to 1660 the play was reduced to a 'droll' of the Pyramus and Thisbe Interlude and presented by strolling players at various fairs. Earlier in the century the same kind of farce was acted by English comedians in Germany and by 1657 was transformed by Andreas Gryphius into a Schimpfspiel called Hen Peter Squenz, featuring Bottom translated into the character of Pickelherring.39 With the Restoration and the revival of the theatres the play as Shakespeare had written it disappeared for the next century and a half, and became either farce or opera, truncated, rewritten, added to, and changed. The droll version continued as a burlesque, and was published in 1661 as The Merry conceited Humors of Bottom The Weaver (probably by Robert Cox) and in 1673 in a collection of drolls by Francis Kirkman, The Wits; Or, Sport upon Sport.40 This tradition continued into the eighteenth century in at least four forms: Richard Leveridge's musical afterpiece, The Comtek Masque of Pyramus and Thisbe (1716); Charles Johnson's non-musical interlude in Love in a Forest, an adaptation of As You Like It (1723); a version of Leveridge's spoof with music by John Frederick Lampe called Pyramus and Thisbe: A Mock-Opera (1745); and Pyramus and Thisbe: a Pantomime (Birmingham, 1798) by W.C. Oulton41. Samuel Pepys saw a version in 1662 which he adjudged 'insipid' and 'ridiculous', but he did enjoy the 'good dancing and some handsome women'.42 Henry Purcell's extravagant amd spectacular opera of 1692, The Fairy-Queen, adapted from Dream by either Thomas Betterton or Elkanah Settle, omitted about half the lines of the play, and rearranged the scenes somewhat, but kept much of the action. As Gary Jay Williams observes, the aim 'was to give the spoken play its due', so that the drama was presented in five acts, each followed by a musical, masque-like spectacle.43 David

5

SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

Garrick's opera The Fairies (1755), with music by John Christopher Smith, told the story of the four lovers and the fairies, but omitted the clowns. In 1763 Garrick and Colman produced a revised and cut version of Dream which ran one night, and failed. That same year Colman concocted a skit called A Fairy Tale which contained only the clowns and the fairies. It was a popular after-piece, and was revived in 1777.44 While in the theatre the play was being adapted and mangled and made a farce or a spectacle, there was gradually developing a critical attitude towards the literary value of the work; this concentrated mainly on the fairies and on the genius that created them. The first significant critical statement was John Dryden's defence of the fairies for a rationalistic age, in his preface to The State of Innocence (1677): Imaging is, in it self, the very heighth and life of Poetry. . . . but how are Poetical Fictions, how are Hippocentaures and Chymaeras, or how are Angels and immaterial Substances to be Imag'd; which some of them are things quite out of Nature: others, such whereof we can have no notion? . . . The answer is easie to the first part of it. The fiction of some Beings •which are not in Nature, (second Notions as the Logicians call them) has been founded on the conjunction of two Natures, which have a real separate Being. So Hippocentaures were imag'd, by joyning the Natures of a Man and a Horse together. . . . The same reason may also be alledg'd for Chymaera's and the rest. And Poets may be allow'd the like liberty, for describing things which really exist not, if they are founded on popular belief: of this nature are Fairies, Pigmies, and the extraordinary effects of Magick: for 'tis still an imitation, though of other mens fancies: and thus are Shakespeare's Tempest, his Midsummer Night's Dream, and Ben. Johnsons Masque of Witches [The Masque of Queens, 1609] to be defended.45 The argument that the creation of'Poetical Fictions' such as the fairies and the magic in Dream is allowable if sustained by 'popular belief was later echoed by Charles Gildon and Elizabeth Montagu. The major critical focus, however, was on the creation of the fairy world which was hailed by many as a triumph of Shakespeare's imagination. This triumph was praised by Nicholas Rowe, first editor of Shakespeare, in the preface to his edition of 1709, where he says, 'But certainly the greatness of this Author's Genius do's no where so much appear, as where he gives his Imagination an entire Loose, and raises his Fancy to a flight above Mankind and the Limits of the visible World. Such are his Attempts in The Tempest, Midsummer-Night's Dream, Macbeth and Hamlet'.46 A little later, quoting Dryden, he approves the decorum of the nature of imaginary beings: . . . But Shakespeare's Magick could not copied be, Within that Circle none durst walk but he . . . Prologue to The Tempest, as it is alter'd by Mr. Dry den [1670]. It is the same Magick that raises the Fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream, the

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Witches in Macbeth, and the Ghost in Hamlet, with Thoughts and Language so proper to the Parts they sustain, and so peculiar to the Talent of this Writer.47 Similar thoughts were expressed by Charles Gildon in his 'Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare' in a seventh volume added to Rowe's Works in 1710, where the first cogent attempt at criticism of Dream appeared.48 Like Rowe and Dryden (whom he quotes) Gildon stresses the power of the fairies and refers to his own comments on The Tempest about the nature of these spirits. There he states that Shakespeare lived in an age when not just the 'Mob, but Men of Figure and true Learning' believed in fairies, and that such 'common Opinion' or belief sanctioned the use of these beings.49 He also links the fairies to the creative imagination of Shakespeare as expressed in Theseus's speech on the poet, which he quotes (5.1.4-17).50 A few years later both Joseph Addison and John Hughes applauded the naturalness and plausibility of the fairies. In 1712 in The Spectator Addison said: Amongst the English Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others [in 'the fairy way of writing']. That noble Extravagance of Fancy which he had in so great Perfection, throughly qualified him to touch this weak superstitious Part of his Reader's Imagination, and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the Strength of his own Genius. There is something so wild and yet so solemn in the speeches of his Ghosts, Fairies, Witches, and the like Imaginary Persons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural tho' we have no Rule by which to judge of them, and must confess, if there are such Beings in the World, it looks highly probable they should talk and act as he has represented them.51 In his edition of Spenser (1715) Hughes censured the poet because 'the Fairies in this Poem are not distinguish'd from other Persons' whereas Shakespeare, 'who has introduc'd them in his Midsummer-Night's Dream, has made them speak and act in a manner perfectly adapted to their suppos'd Characters'.52 By mid-century praise of Shakespeare's imagination as shown in Dream had grown to a loud chorus, which included William Warburton (1747), the anonymous author of An Examen (1747), and Thomas Seward (1750) .53 Joseph Warton (1756) is typical: 'With what wildness of imagination, but yet -with what propriety, are the amusements of the fairies pointed out, . . . amusements proper for none but fairies'! (he quotes 2.2.2-7, 'Fore the third part of a minute . . . queint spirits'). He also admires the uniqueness of the 'gratifications for Titania's lover' (quoting 3.1.164-73, 'Be kind and courteous . . . sleeping eyes').54 Five years later George Colman also lauded the 'imaginary Beings' endued 'with suitable Passions, Affections, Dispositions, allotting them at the same Time proper Employment'. He added, 'to body forth, by the Powers of Imagination, the Forms of Things unknown, and to give to airy Nothing a local Habitation and a Name, surely requires a Genius for the Drama . . ,'.55 More praise came from David Baker in his Companion to the Play-House (1764): 'This Play is one of the wild and irregular Overflowings of this great Author's creative Imagination'. But he adds, '-It is now never acted under its original Form, yet it contains an infinite Number of Beauties, and the different Parts of

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it have been made Use of separately in the Formation of more Pieces than one'.56 Two years later James Barclay put the author of this play above both Homer and Virgil: 'Through the medium of it [Dream] we may contemplate the unbounded imagination of our wonderful bard, which could carry him beyond the limits of the natural world, into regions to which the poetry of Homer and Virgil was an absolute stranger: and experience has shewn, by the bad success of imitators, that he alone could wave the powerful rod, or walk within the magick circle'.57 The last five words are from Dryden as quoted by Rowe above, and are quoted again by Elizabeth Montagu, who perhaps best sums up the romantic neo-classical attitude towards fairies when she says that like the Pagans, the western world too had its sacred fables. While there is any national superstition which credulity has consecrated, any hallowed tradition long revered by vulgar faith; to that sanctuary, that asylum, may the poet resort. - Let him tread the holy ground with reverence; respect the established doctrine; exactly observe the accustomed rites, and the attributes of the object of veneration; then shall he not vainly invoke an inexorable or absent deity. Ghosts, fairies, goblins, elves, were as propitious, were as assistant to Shakespeare, and gave as much of the sublime, and of the marvellous, to his fictions, as nymphs, satyrs, fawns, and even the triple Geryon, to the works of ancient bards. Our poet never carries his praeternatural beings beyond the limits of the popular tradition. It is true, that he boldly exerts his poetic genius and fascinating powers in that magic circle, in which none e'er durst walk but he: but as judicious as bold, he contains himself within it . . . . The fairies are sportive and gay; the innocent artificers of harmless frauds, and mirthful delusions. Puck's enumeration of the feats of a fairy is the most agreeable recital of their supposed gambols. To all these beings our poet has assigned tasks, and appropriated manners adapted to their imputed dispositions and characters; which are continually developing through the whole piece, in a series of operations conducive to the catastrophe. They are not brought in as subordinate or casual agents, but lead the action, and govern the fable; in which respect our countryman has entered more into theatrical propriety that the Greek tragedians.58 Montagu's bold assertion of Shakespeare's 'theatrical propriety' in his having the fairies lead the action is balanced by William DufFs enthusiasm for the wild and the strange which he finds in these creatures. Writing in 1770 he said that the fairies showed the 'exuberance of his [Shakespeare's] creative Genius', and he gives several specific examples, beginning with the Fairy's speech (2.1.Iff.: 'Over hill, over dale . . . .'), which he finds 'distinguished by its vivacity and wildness. The lightness and volatility of these visionary beings seems to be imitated in the quick returns, and (if we may use the expression) brisk boundings of the verse'. He quotes Titania's speech [3.1.164ff. 'Be kind and courteous . . . . ' ] and calls it 'strangely picturesque and original' and concludes that these 'employments, so fanciful and so wild, are however at the same time perfectly apposite to the imagined nature and qualities

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of the fairy species'. In somewhat the same way he describes Puck's speech, 'Now the hungry lion roars. . .' [5.1.371ff.]: 'This description is wild and irregular, but the objects represented in it are perfectly congenial to the occupations, time, and manner of appearance of the Fairy species with which they are connected'.59 The idea of wildness here repeated three times emphasizes the traditional view of Shakespeare as a natural genius 'warbling his native woodnotes wild', as Milton expressed it in L'Allegro. In the Bell edition of Dream (1774), which he prepared, Francis Gentleman continues praising Shakespeare's imagination and fancy, and, like Duff, admires the verse of the fairies. The introduction ends, 'the whole shews a very great master dallying with his own genius and imagination in a wonderful and delightful manner', and later in his commentary he says that 'Shakespeare had an inexhaustible fund of fancy for supernatural Beings; he gave them language peculiarly and happily adapted to themselves'. In a later note commenting on Puck's speech at 3.2.378-87, he states, 'The Fairy descriptions all through this play are abundantly rich, but Puck here surpasses all the rest, being awfully charming; though all departed bodies have wormed beds, yet giving them to the wicked peculiarly is finely conceived'. At the end of the Interlude he notes: 'The Play in reality ends here, but loth to forget his Fairies, Shakespeare has brought them on by way of Epilogue; and what he gives them to say or sing is very poetical. He is most inimitably happy in painting these children of romantic fancy'.60 While critics seemed universally to admire the creation of fairyland, some critics deplored another aspect of Shakespeare's imagination, which they saw as its tendency to overexuberance in poetry. In his Essay on Genius (1774) Alexander Gerard censures the bard because he 'was not always able to keep the richness of his fancy from displaying itself in cases where judgment would have directed him to control it'. As an example he quotes Helena's friendship speech, calling the lines from 'Is all the counsel that we two have shar'd' down to 'incorp'rate' [3.2.198-208] suitable and 'natural', but here the Poet's own imagination takes fire, and he goes on: So we grew together Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; Or with two seeming bodies, but one heart, Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest. [3.2.208ff] And his imagination has crouded together more images than would have been proper though he had been describing infant friendship in his own person, not to mention that some of them are frigid and far-fetched. But the redundance is the more faulty, as the description is put into the mouth of Helena, who was too little at ease, too much distracted with vexation, to be at leisure to search for a multitude of similitudes.61

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Francis Gentleman voiced the same criticism: 'This appeal to former friendship is natural, agreeable, and affecting; being spun out rather too far, we have marked some lines for omission', and he signalled deletion of five lines, 'But yet a union . . . crest' (3.2.210-14). He also found an over-straining of the imagination in the same scene which caused the poetry to be 'unavoidably enervated' and he marked a further forty-two lines for cutting (3.2.232-5 and 247-284),62 For the most part, however, the poetry of the play was greatly prized, especially as it displayed the 'Beauties' of the bard. There were many collections of these 'beautiful Reflections, Descriptions, Similes, and Topics',63 from Shakespeare's plays through the eighteenth century and later, with Dream often being among the most quoted. The recital of Beauties is part of the proof of the natural genius of Shakespeare: his native imagination puts him beyond the rules of the Unities of Aristotle and the French critics. It was also a duty of a critic to point out Beauties to educate the taste of the reader, because, in Gildon's words, 'Shakespeare is indeed stor'd with a great many Beauties, but they are in a heap of Rubbish'.64 Rowe applauded these Beauties in several places, and Pope said 'the better half of Criticism' was 'the pointing out an Author's excellencies'.65 Gildon spends five pages in his 1710 volume citing beauties from Dream, more space than he devotes to any other play except Hamlet.66 Eight years later Gildon published The Complete Art of Poetry, with a section of sixty-five pages on 'Shakespeareana: or Select Moral Reflections, Topicks . . .' which he introduced by saying he might have made this part even larger, because Shakespeare 'abounds in Beauties'.67 The play with the highest number of lines quoted is Dream (163 lines), followed by Measure for Measure (152 lines) and The Merchant of Venice (130 lines).68 Pope continued the practise of distinguishing Shakespeare's beauties in his edition (1723-5) in two ways: first, he marked 'the most shining passages' with 'comma's in the margin; and where the beauty lay not in particulars but in the whole, a star is prefix'd to the scene';69 and, secondly, he provided an extensive index. Both shining passages and starred scenes are scarce in the plays. There is only one passage in Dream set off by commas - Helena's friendship speech to Hermia (3.2.198-210; in Pope, I, 120) - and no starred scene. At the end of the final volume there is a thirty-page 'Index of the Characters, Sentiments, Speeches and Descriptions' which gives reference to significant passages and characters in the plays. It is divided into seven sections, giving, for example, in Section II, an index of'Manners, Passions, and their External Effects' (4G2v-4H2r), where under 'Love' seven of the twenty-eight entries are from Dream, by far the largest number among the fifteen plays listed. This emphasis marks the main theme of the play, and may indicate Pope's critical attitude — as the mention of 'Moon' twice in 'Descriptions of Things' shows some sense of the predominant image of the play. It is interesting to note that thirteen of the fifteen passages highlighted in Gildon are among the thirty in the index from Dream. The index was a key to notable passages, scenes, speeches, similes - in a word, to 'Beauties' - and was reprinted in other major editions such as Theobald's (1733, 1740, etc), and Warburton's (1747), culminating in the famous Beauties of Shakespeare of William Dodd in 1752, where seventy-five per cent of his passages are the same as in Pope's index, and where the similarity of the phrasing of some headings shows a

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clear indebtedness to it. Eighteen of the twenty-one passages from Dream in Dodd are also in the index. Since there were at least fifty-eight editions of Dodd from 1752 to 1903 — along with other collections, like George Kearsley's Beauties of Shakespeare (1783, with seven more editions), and editions, like Hugh Blair's, which proclaimed on their title pages, 'In which the beauties observed by Pope, Warburton and Dodd are pointed out'71 - it is clear that these works helped form a critical attitude of regarding the parts of the play rather than the whole, and of noting particular speeches and moral sentiments rather than such larger concerns as characters, plot, structure, theme, and the like. Dream was well regarded: among twelve comedies it stands second in number of citations to As You Like It in Pope, and fourth in Dodd. While much attention went to imagination, fairies, and the beauties of the poetry, only slight regard was afforded characterization. Gentleman noted that 'there is no character strongly marked',72 anticipating the harsher remarks of Malone (No. 3) and Skottowe (No. 12). Bottom, however, seemed to be an exception: he was an immediate success in the theatre and in the farce, and critics gradually began to recognize his originality. Lewis Theobald, for example, in 1733, seems to have had him in mind when he stated about Shakespeare's clowns in general: 'If other Poets draw more than one Fool or Coxcomb, there is the same Resemblance in them, as in that Painter's Draughts, who was happy only at forming a Rose: you find them all younger Brothers of the same Family, and all of them have a Pretence to give the same Crest: But Shakespeare's Clowns and Fops come all of a different House: they are no farther allied to one another than as Man to Man, Members of the same Species: but as different in Features and Lineaments of Character, as we are from one another in Face or Complexion'.73 Theobald's use of the heraldic trope, 'the same Crest', is similar to Helena's, 'crowned with one crest' (3.2.214) in her friendship speech to Hermia, and shows that he probably had Dream, and Bottom, in mind. Certainly Dr. James Beattie was pointing at Nick Bottom when he praised Shakespeare's powers of creating individual characters. He finds Homer and Shakespeare superior to all poets in the 'Knowledge of the human heart', and says that they have 'that wonderfully penetrating and plastic faculty, which is capable of representing every species of character . . . by hitting off, with a delicate hand, the distinguishing feature. . . . Bottom, and Dogberry, and the grave-diggers are different characters. . ,'.74 Johnson pays more attention to Bottom than to any other character. In the first mechanicals' scene, where he believes Shakespeare is ridiculing 'the prejudices and competitions of the Players' he describes him: 'Bottom, who is generally acknowledged the principal Actor, declares his inclination to be for a tyrant, for a part of fury, tumult, and noise, such as every young man pants to perform when he first steps upon the Stage. The same Bottom, who seems bred in a tiring-room, has another histrionical passion. He is for engrossing every part, and would exclude his inferiors from all possibility of distinction. He is therefore desirous to play Pyramus, Thisbe and the Lyon at the same time'. He also points out his ridiculous behaviour near the end of this scene, and in the second rehearsal scene.75 Theobald and Johnson offered much more than a few comments on Bottom's character: their editions, and the other important editions of the eighteenth century also contributed significantly to help establish the main critical tradition. The earliest

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editions are important textually, and offer some critical insights in their prefaces, but Rowe (1709) has no notes at all, and Pope (1723-5) has only sparse and terse comments, as does Sir Thomas Hanmer's Oxford edition (1743-4). Theobald (1733), while he concentrates on the text, and on individual words, to explain, correct, and emend, is more expansive. Warburton (1747) is even more extensive: he has more notes and sometimes interprets critically, renders judgment, and emends wildly — changing 'here' (2.1.101) to 'heryed' (meaning 'praised'), 'increase' (2.1.114) to 'inchase' ('set off), and 'jewel' (4.1.191) to 'Gemell' ('From Gemellus a Twin'). He sometimes comments interestingly on the action, as when he allegorises Oberon's vision, or when he says as Theseus remarks to Hippolyta 'what cheer, my love?' (1.1.122): 'Hippolita had not said one single word all this while. Had a modern poet had the teaching of her, we should have found her the busiest amongst them; and, without doubt, the Lovers might have expected a more equitable decision. But Shakespeare knew better what he was about; and observed decorum'.76 Samuel Johnson's edition of 1765 quotes Theobald and Warburton and others, suggests some classical sources, emends the text, explains difficulties, and occasionally offers critical observations, as at the beginning of Act IV: 'I see no good reason why the fourth act should begin here when there seems no interruption of the action. In the old quartos of 1600 there is no division of acts, which seems to have been afterwards arbitrarily made in the first folio, and may therefore be altered at pleasure'.77 His general comment is well known: 'Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasure "which the author designed. Fairies in his time were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great'.78 With Johnson's eight volumes begins the series of increasingly heavily and learnedly annotated Variorum editions by Steevens, Reed, and Malone, culminating in 1821 with the Boswell-Malone set of twenty-one volumes. One refreshing and unpedantic edition was the already noted Bell edition (1774) by Francis Gentleman. Many of his comments concentrate on the poetry or on the performance, as in the following: (on 2.2.145-56: 'Help me, Lysander, help me! do thy best / To pluck this crawling serpent . . .'): 'This soliloquy is in favour of an actress, and will employ both flexible powers of features and expression'. He also judges verisimilitude of character, as when he observes of Helena's speech, 'I am your spaniel. . .'(2.1.203-10)): 'There is somewhat very mean, and we hope unnatural, in the open servility of Helena's affection: though some women will bear great slights, yet not one, we think, would wish to rank with a dog, except one of that kind which commands peculiar estimation'.79 Various other aspects of the play received critical attention in other works seeking to elucidate the text. The duration of the action - a problem to which Furness (No. 65) devotes almost a quarter of his preface in his New Variorum edition — posed a difficulty for Gildon, who found only one day and a half instead of the four days promised at the beginning of the play.80 Both Seward and Johnson observed the anachronistic mixture of an Athenian Duke and Duchess with Gothic fairies,81 and another critic mused at Athenian mechanicals with English names speaking of French crowns.82 In an essay on Shakespeare's learning in 1756, Christopher Smart pointed

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to Propertius (II.12.1-8) as an analogue for Helena's love speech (1.1.234-41).83 Most of the criticism was isolated, casual, and unconnected, and came in the form of books like John Upton's Critical Observations on Shakespeare (1746; second edition 1748), most memorable for his misnaming a female character 'Hernia' (p. 308), Zachary Grey's Critical, Historical, and Explanatory notes on Shakespeare (1754), or Thomas Tyrwhitt's Observations and Conjectures upon some Passages of Shakespeare (1766), or in reviews like Benjamin Heath's A Revisal of Shakespeare's Text (1765), which commented on editions by Theobald, Warburton and others, or William Kenrick's volume (1765) on Johnson's edition.84 By 1775 there was a substantial, if scattered, quantity of critical comment on the play.

II 1775-1920

The long stretch of time represented by the selections in this volume shows some chronological patterning in responses to the play. Before 1815 criticism is still scattered and sporadic; with the flowering of the Romantic period it is possible to see greater coherence in attitudes; when Victoria comes to the throne there is some sense of retrospect and reassessment, followed by new directions partly inspired by the introduction of German and American critical responses to the English scene; from the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth, interest in the poet and his plays is compounded by the increasing demands of educational systems, although journalistic, theatrical, and personal responses continue to be important. Certain topics and approaches recur: the nature of the fairies, the play's stageworthiness, its structural and thematic unity, its genre, its style (particularly its lyricism), and its characters and what they represent. The selections from Elizabeth Griffith and Samuel Felton (Nos. 1 and 2) serve as summary of earlier preoccupations and prologue to later interests; they also provide a balance to the view of Malone (No. 3), whose essay on chronology first appeared in the 1778 Variorum edition. Mrs Griffith endorses the established view of the play as demonstrating Shakespeare's sublimity and poetic capacity to transcend nature, but is more interested in natural touches of character. It was perhaps her insistence on looking for moral meaning and sentiment that led to Gervinus's belief that among English critics only she (together with Anna Jameson and Elizabeth Montagu) had addressed 'the task of handling Shakespeare's intellectual side, although this cannot surely be a woman's work',85 but when she examines the dispute between Hermia and Egeus she is troubled by the conflict of authority and nature; conventional morality seems at war with hints of reaction against patriarchy. Francis Gentleman shared her view of this 'harsh peremptory parent' and the 'unnatural principles' upon which Theseus supports Egeus's claims,86 but their opinions are not represented in Furness's 1895 Variorum, and it is not until the twentieth century that these matters begin to receive direct attention. Griffith's use of the play to express social concerns (in the little regard paid to poets) also anticipates later attitudes. The interest she shows in the motives and behaviour of Hermia and Helena had already found some

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expression in earlier commentary, but in the course of the next two centuries it develops into often extreme debate. Samuel Felton represents the interplay between criticism and graphic art. Illustration of Shakespeare's text begins with Rowe's edition, but before Felton only Hanmer's instructions to Hayman for the illustrations to his edition make explicit the critical interpretation governing the visual presentation.87 Felton's assessments of what is appropriate to character and scene, for example in his suggestion of a caricaturist to capture the mechanicals, reveal a lively pictorial imagination and (in his comments on the women and on the landscape) a romantic sensibility. At the time Felton was writing John Boydell was already commissioning pictures for his Shakespeare Gallery, which opened in 1789. The contrasted views of Dream presented by Fuseli and Reynolds have been reproduced in countless editions; the extent to which their interpretations, and those of the many painters and illustrators who followed them, have influenced critical opinion has yet to be fully studied.88 In the early nineteenth century much of the scholarly effort concerning Dream was expended on the origins and nature of the fairies, and on problems of their representation on stage. This preoccupation was mirrored and fostered by artists, going beyond the play itself as it allowed for the sport of fancy and exploration of the subconscious.89 Malone's approach to the play is scholarly, not creative/aesthetic as was that of Griffith the playwright and novelist or Felton the art critic. His purpose in the essay on chronology is to draw attention to the signs of immaturity in Dream that will support his placing it among Shakespeare's earliest plays. Nevertheless, the severity of his strictures on the 'insignificant' characters and 'meagre and uninteresting' fable, together with his denying Shakespeare's originality in the fairy plot, is surprising. Gentleman had commented on the 'puerile' plot and lack of strongly marked characters, but his reservations are countered by higher praise than Malone allows.90 Even Malone's recognition of the glowing colours of Shakespeare's poetry here falls short of the usually ecstatic response it had raised in the preceding century. The ambivalence in Malone's estimate, the conflict between emotional attraction and critical judgment which often recurs in later criticism, is earlier apparent in Walpole's comment on Garrick's operatic adaptation The Fairies: 'To mark the opposition to Italian operas, it is sung by some cast singers, two Italians and a French girl, and the chapel boys; and to regale us with sense, it is Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, which is forty times more nonsensical than the worst translation of any Italian opera-books. - But such sense and such harmony are irresistible!'91 Malone's chief work was as a major contributor to the continuing process of establishing and elucidating Shakespeare's text. Gervinus grudgingly acknowledges the need for the 'laborious works' of the editors, but finds litde useful in them for 'the inner understanding of the Poet', and even that litde 'limited to isolated, psychological, and aesthetic remarks' (Commentaries, 1863, p. 16). Much earlier than Gervinus, and even while Malone was still revising and adding to the edition that Boswell would bring to completion in 1821, their labours had become the target of satirical scoffing, in John Poole's Hamlet Travestie: in three acts, with Annotations by Dr. Johnson and Geo. Steevens, Esq., and other commentators (1810), among the latter Malone

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as well as Pope, Theobald, and Warburton. But the pinpricks of a popular burlesque writer could not deflect the purpose of dedicated scholars: Knight, Collier, Dyce, Halliwell-Phillipps and a host of other editors on both sides of the Atlantic found ways to make distinctive contributions. Families of editions born at the end of the nineteenth century - Furness's New Variorum, the Cambridge, Oxford, and Arden series — are still spawning new generations. Perhaps all are inspired by the vision of Lord Hailes who in reviewing the editions of 1778 and 1785 recognized the 'ingenuity, learning, and industry' they represented, but believed that 'this reflection ought not to bar the hopes of others to make even farther advances in the same arduous but honourable path - That if much has been done, something yet remains to b done; and that it is not impossible for future editors, by judiciously availing themselves of the labours of their predecessors, by the retrenchment of all that is superfluous, the supplement of material omissions and the correction of palpable errors; to present the public with the works of this great poet in a more valuable form than any in which they have yet appeared'.92 Although textual questions dominate what little is printed about Dream at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, some 'psychological, and aesthetic' interest can be found in Dibdin's effort to examine Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic development, though his comments on Dream's wild beauty and its 'labyrinths of enchantment' are still very much in the eighteenth-century vein (No. 7). More unusual approaches are provided by Charles Taylor's character sketch of Bottom and his comments on the social types that Bottom suggests (No. 4), and by Walter Whiter's application to some passages of the play of Locke's doctrine of the association of ideas (No. 6), an approach to imagery that has proved fruitful in the twentieth century.93 However, most would agree that modern English criticism of Dream begins in the Romantic period, especially with Coleridge (No. 15), Hazlitt (No. 10),94 and the translation of Schlegel's lectures (No. 8); less celebrated, but also an important contributor to early criticism of Dream, is Nathan Drake (No. 9). Coleridge's 1811 lecture on Dream has not survived, but his marginalia, printed in 1836, are characteristically acute and memorable. His admiration of its lyricism and polished verse is often echoed, and many subsequent critics seek to explain the ways in which the play is a dream throughout. The extreme distaste Helena arouses in him betrays a certain antifeminism, and belies Malone's suggestion that no passions could be agitated by these characters (see No. 3). John Keats left even less direct comment on the play, but his affinity with it is apparent in his own poetry, and in the many underlinings he made through it in various copies he owned. One characteristic comment survives: There is something exquisitely rich and luxurious in Titania's saying 'since the middle summer's spring' as if Bowers were not exuberant and covert enough for fairy sports untill their second sprouting - which is surely the most bounteous overwhelming of all Nature's goodnesses. She steps forth benignly in the spring and her conduct is so gracious that by degrees all things are becoming happy under her wings and nestle against her bosom: she feels this love and gratitude too much to remain selfsame, and unable to contain

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herself buds forth the overflowings of her heart about the middle summer. O Shakespeare thy ways are but just searchable! The thing is a piece of profound verdure.95 Schlegel provides the first surviving extended view of the play as a whole. His comments on the 'glowing colour' of the verse, and on the 'luxuriant vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention' are familiar, but his praise of the structure of the play goes beyond what had earlier been attempted. His recognition of its 'most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients' in the interweaving of the three strands of the 'wonderful world of spirits', 'the turmoil of human passions', and 'the farcical adventures of folly', all within the 'splendid frame' provided by Theseus and Hippolyta dominates critical attempts to define the play's structure. Other aspects of the play that he opens for exploration include 'the translation of a metaphor' in Bottom's transformation, the parodic function of the mechanicals' play, and the 'profound view' that both Dream and The Tempest offer 'of the inward life of nature and her mysterious springs'. In his anthology of Shakespeare criticism Nathan Drake takes Schlegel to task for his 'systematic eulogy', blaming him for having 'gone rather too far' 'in attempting to gift the poet with undeviating excellence in the mechanism and construction of all his plots',96 yet Drake himself borrows Coleridge's concept of'unity of feeling'97 and the operation of the dream (see No. 15) to argue that this play's 'supposed defects' can be converted into 'positive excellence'. A meteor shower of adjectives (buoyant, aerial, fantastic, odoriferous, evanescent, visionary, grotesque, wild, sportive, romantic, frolic, effervescent, luxurious, phosphorescent — and more) illuminates a conclusion that the play is 'perfectly without a rival in dramatic literature'. He also undertakes a spirited defence of Helena and Hermia against the condemnation of Malone, but his major contribution is in his lengthy exploration of the fairy mythology, which combines learning with appreciation of Shakespeare's 'fancy' and of the 'felicity' with which Fuseli's fairy painting 'has embodied' Shakespeare's 'very thoughts'. His researches into fairy lore were supplemented by those of Thomas Keighdey (No. 14), whose comments on the derivation of the name of Titania are of particular interest.98 The fairies were the major stumbling block to Hazlitt's enjoyment of the play in 1816. Reynolds's 'full-grown, well-fed, substantial, real fairies' affronted his poetic sensibilities ." Dr Drake in his Suffolk retreat apparently did not test his vision of 'beings lighter than the gossamer' against the fact of their stage embodiment, but the experience was clearly beyond the scope of Hazlitt's imaginative powers. His anguished conviction that poetry and the ideal have no place upon the stage, that the theatre is incapable of transporting an audience to 'the regions of fancy', sounds a rallying cry for the negative forces in the debate over Dream's theatrical viability, a debate which survived well into the twentieth century even in the face of the evident popularity of frequent productions. Only Mr Listen's Bottom met with Hazlitt's approval in the 1816 production (though even here he complained that what 'in the play is a fantastic illusion', on the stage 'is an ass's head, and nothing more' (No. 10)), and it is Bottom who is given pride of place when

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he discusses the play's characters. Disappointingly, he does not explain fully why he calls Bottom 'the most romantic of mechanics', but the phrase surely indicates approval. Escaping the 'unmanageable reality' of the theatre, Hazlitt can find again a Puck light as gossamer, 'a most Epicurean little gentleman', and Oberon ruling an 'empire of the butterflies'. However, it must be remembered that what Hazlitt saw was a semi-operatic, spectacular 'alteration' of Shakespeare's play, in the tradition of the musical versions of the eighteenth century. Although Hazlitt's partner in the journalistic enterprise of The Round Table, Leigh Hunt, did not publish his own opinions of Dream until many years later (No. 24), his main concern is the typically Romantic topic of the nature of fancy and imagination. His extracts treat Dream as play, but he shows more interest in Shakespeare's special poetic achievement in the language of the fairies than in the integrity of the drama as a whole. Skottowe (No. 12) and Daniel (No. 13) also give most prominence to the fairies. Each voices familiar attitudes. Skottowe is disinclined to allow unity to the 'incongruous materials' and finds the conjunction of the fairy mythology and Grecian history 'irregularly wild'; Theseus and Hippolyta are 'devoid of interest' and the lovers 'scarcely merit notice'; the subject is 'extremely fanciful' but treated with playfulness, 'youthful imagination', and 'the choicest flowers of fancy'. Daniel finds it 'barren in fable' and lacking the interest of real life, but rates it highly for 'sportive invention and appropriate imagery'; it is a 'fine play for the closet' but the fairies are 'too airy - too impalpable' for the play ever to be successfully embodied on the stage. Each also introduces topics that will continue to interest later critics. Skottowe writes amusingly on the power struggle of Oberon and Titania, and (if only in passing) calls attention to contrasts of darkness and night with starlight and moonshine. Daniel arouses interest in the relationship between supernatural agency and the force of human passion, although he does so in the course of denying Dream anything more than the status of a fairy tale, despite its beauties of thought and expression. In the next decade Campbell (No. 17) takes issue with Skottowe's charge of irregularity and with those who deny Dream's theatrical viability; his insistence that this is a mirthful play is welcome, and his linking of that enjoyment with Shakespeare's own state of mind is in the tradition of increasingly biographical interpretations. William Maginn (No. 16) elaborates Hazlitt's dicta about the incompatibility of poetry and the stage, with specific reference to Bottom, and to his scenes with Titania. He sets out the question in terms of Shakespeare's own comments on the limitations of stage illusion, and the operation of the audience's imagination, anticipating critical engagement with this aspect of the play even through the twentieth century. His character sketch of Bottom is interesting not only for the surprising ingenuity of presenting him as the archetypical lucky man, but also for the parallels drawn with Romeo, Christopher Sly,100 Fielding, and The Arabian Nights; and for the social commentary in the picture of the loves of modern Titanias. Hallam (No. 18) responds more to Malone than to Hazlitt; granting the poetical genius of the play, he insists on the skill of the handling of the multiple action, but does not consider how the 'dramatic excellence' he perceives translates to successful stage presentation. He defends the fairy machinery against Malone's charges of lack

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of originality, and finds the play's language 'equally novel with the machinery'; apart from its sparkling colours and distinctive idiom, the language reveals Shakespeare's acquaintance with Latin, contrary to eighteenth-century accusations of his lack of learning. The next three selections from the late 1830s and early 1840s represent something of a breathing space, a pause to take stock; Knight in introducing his Pictorial edition (No. 19), Spalding in considering the place in Shakespearean criticism of sixteen recently published works (No. 20), and Halliwell in producing the first book-length study devoted entirely to Dream (No. 21), all pass judgment on earlier critics, and attempt to see the way ahead. Knight's desire to provide an attractive illustrated edition of Shakespeare, issued in parts affordable by large numbers of the working classes, did not lead him to compromise scholarly standards. His treatment of textual questions is well-informed and judicious; his annotations and verbal 'illustrations' are copious but not excessive. Commentary in both the Introduction and the Supplementary Notice takes into account major preceding critics, but shows independent judgment.101 He takes strong exception to Malone's dismissiveness, and outlines a plausible defence against accusations of unrealistic passions: 'the exquisite beauty of Shakespeare's conception is, that, under the supernatural influence, "the human mortals" move precisely according to their respective natures and habits' (No. 19). He finds Hallam's views congenial, but does not hesitate to attack even Dr. Johnson,102 finding him hopelessly prosaic and calling his summation of Dream 'a beacon to warn us, and not a "load-star" to guide us'. On the question of the play's actability he seems torn, partly convinced by Hazlitt, yet wishing to agree with Hallam on its 'dramatic excellence', but ultimately he relegates it to the closet. He also voices an oft-repeated reaction when he finds critical analysis of 'this subtle and ethereal' drama as unsatisfactory as attempts to reconcile it with 'the realities of the stage'. The first sentence of Spalding's long article reveals its ambitious scope: 'In no way, perhaps, could one be enabled to comprehend so readily the revolutions of English literature since the end of the sixteenth century, as by examining the amount, and method, and spirit of the study, which, in each of the principal stages of the period, has been bestowed upon the works of Shakespeare' (446).103 For Spalding, the greatest advance that has been made in the appreciation of Shakespeare is in the 'growth of that philosophical spirit, which seeks to gain the proper point of view for contemplating a literary monument as a whole, instead of poring microscopically over the details of parts' (449). He approves of Hazlitt, Coleridge, Hallam, and Mrs Jameson, but dismisses Drake's Shakespeare and His Times as a 'collection of facts' that does not justify its 'pretensions to critical authority . . . by originality or discrimination', and Skottowe's Life of Shakespeare as 'dull but industrious' (459). In accordance with his belief in the larger view, he recommends that rather than niggling over the details of the chronology of Shakespeare's plays, they should be classified in groups, 'indicating in their diversities the progress of the poet's developement and action' (474-5). This approach was given enormous currency by Dowden in his Shakespeare Primer (1877), and long remained popular. Spalding's comment on Dream (No. 20) appropriately tries to encapsulate its essence, finding

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its diversities and incongruities harmonized by the poet's dream; his reading suggests what would today be called a psychological approach, though he would probably call it philosophical. Halliwell's attitude towards his predecessors and towards the task confronting dedicated Shakespeareans differs markedly from Spalding's. He is respectful of the labours of earlier scholars, and convinced that 'even the most minute illustration of the works of our great dramatist' is not to be despised (No. 21). The Times reviewer rather condescendingly called him 'a great grubber in libraries',104 but recognized that some of his findings (for example on the treatment of time in the play) were original. He is the first to connect Bottom with Midas, and to explore the implications of Bottom's given name, Nick. He also ventures to go against the tide of opinion that declared the play 'too etherially poetic for the stage', drawing support for his position from the recent successful Planche/Vestris production, and John Heraud's review of it. After these retrospective assessments, some of the discussions of Dream in the middle decades of the century begin to move in new directions. The argument about Dream's stageworthiness develops into consideration of the nature of dramatic illusion, of the play's unifying idea, of the relationship between performance and interpretation, and of audience reaction. Procter (No. 23) defends the supernatural on stage by pointing out that all theatre is an illusion; White (No. 33) argues that the more truthful characters are, the more nearly they approach the ideal, and if they are to be debarred from the stage on that score, then all plays must be abandoned. White also argues for differences between Elizabethan and modern audiences, since the former were capable of accepting male actors as women (but he does not ask why audiences of his day accepted a woman acting Oberon). Lloyd (No. 35) insists that Dream 'is a drama, not a poem', and frequently appeals to staging to make his interpretive points. Morley (No. 31) considers that Phelps's production overcame problems of actability by managing to convey the central idea and meaning of the play: dreaming. For Jerrold (No. 32), Phelps's own performance in that production as Bottom succeeded in conveying 'the true, breathing notion of Shakespeare', catching its essence in his ability to 'mingle wonderment with struggling reason, reason wrestling with wonder to get the better of the mystery!' The debate over realism and illusion is still lively as the twentieth century begins, in Max Beerbohm's engagement (No. 72) with his own preconceptions, the facts of Tree's production of the play, and Sidney Lee's theories of staging and audiences. Beerbohm thought his half-brother had succeeded in preventing 'the definite and concrete means of the stage' from destroying the 'delicate illusion' 'of a true dream'; but realism can get up and bite you, as Arthur Bourchier (playing Bottom in the 1911 revival of Tree's production) found when he brought a live rabbit back on stage for a curtain call.105 Critics who doubted the play's success on stage sometimes used arguments similar to those put forward by proponents of its viability. Hunter (No. 25) gives great importance to the nature of dreaming in the presentation and unification of the play, but still he considers it unlikely to be successful on stage, comparing it with Comus, and thus relating it to pastoral and masque. At the same time he is sensitive to the fact that the text is meant to be spoken, not just read by 'students in their closets'.

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Hudson (No. 29) is convinced that his own sensibility must represent audience reaction, finding Bottom's transformation 'intolerable to look upon: . . . sense and understanding revolt at it', and Strachey (No. 34), despite his critical engagement with notions of the real and the fantastical, pleads against ever seeing it performed. Gervinus (No. 37) believes that the play could - and should - be performed in the right circumstances, but that those circumstances are far from being fulfilled. On the other hand, Heraud (No. 40) is receptive to a variety of performance interpretation, apparently mocking Gervinus's insistence on a patriarchal 'faery monarch properly bearded'. Attempts to find unity, consistency, and inner meaning in the play take various approaches. Many followed Coleridge in seeking ways in which dreaming explained and unified the action. Hunter sees it as the dream of 'the persons the fairies illuded', and believes that this 'obviated the objection to its incongruities, since it is of the nature of a dream that things heterogeneous are brought together in fantastical confusion' (No. 25); for Strachey we are indeed seeing the dream of the young lovers and the mechanicals (No. 34), and Bj0rnson (No. 84) offers a similar interpretation expressed in more personal and psychological terms; for Lloyd it is 'dream dramatized' (No. 35); Maine defines the structure by seeing the central dream portion as the chief action, with the first and last sections 'merely exegetical of it' (No. 28). Two interesting expansions of the idea of the dream come from the German critics Ulrici (No. 26) and Gervinus (No. 37). Ulrici's main argument is that the unity of heterogeneous elements is achieved through parody, in mirthful irony; love is a mere plaything, a mere illusion. This parodic structure is made plausible by the basic conception of the whole of life being 'a fantastic midsummer night's dream'. Although Gervinus finds the treatment of love in Dream spiritual and poetic by contrast with Troilus and Cressida, when he turns his attention fully to the earlier play he is at first inclined to condemn it for its Italianate frivolities and the prevalence of caprice. However, by focussing on dreams he is able to find the controlling moral idea he believes essential to great drama: this book of Shakespeare's secular Bible provides a condemnation of the life of love and dreams, and by recognizing how the fairies' amorality and pursuit of the beautiful represents the lives of frivolous society ladies we can perceive how Shakespeare roots the fantastical in the real. Gervinus buttresses his conviction of an 'inner kernel' of deep significance in the play by endorsing the historical allegory worked out by Halpin (No. 22). This method of adding weight to the play's meaning had been initiated as early as 1739 by Warburton's proposed interpretation of Oberon's vision; a century later James Boaden turned attention from Mary Queen of Scots to Leicester and Elizabeth, and it is this view that Halpin elaborates in ways still engaging attention in the 1990s.106 The mid-century also sees the entrance onto the stage of Dream criticism of the Americans, represented for this period by Verplanck (No. 27), Hudson (No. 29), and White (No. 33). In their social, educational, and vocational backgrounds, and in their critical opinions, these men are very similar to their British contemporaries; they too are still drawing on Coleridge's insights, but with greater emphasis on his perception of the play as the 'dramatized lyrical' than on the notion of dreaming. There is little specifically transatlantic in their attitudes, although the title-page of

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some of the parts in which Verplanck's edition was issued has a delightful picture of Shakespeare in formal Elizabethan dress holding a lyre - and sitting in the back of a canoe being paddled by an American Indian, while Titania and a triplet of Macbeth witches float overhead. Verplanck makes an interesting effort to define why Dream is a special and irreplaceable manifestation of Shakespeare's genius. Despite his well-expressed appreciation of the intertwining of the various strands of the plot, he is an early exponent of the revision theory, proposing a lost romantic lyrical version, later expanded to include the heroic figures, the dialogues of the fairies, and a revised role for the mechanicals. White's special concern with music criticism leads him to engage with the question of the relationship of words and music in drama. The long tradition of various operatic treatments of Dream had been overtaken by the success of Mendelssohn's overture and incidental music, which became the virtually unchallenged accompaniment to English-speaking productions into the twentieth century.107 J.W. Ebsworth's comments in 1880 are representative: he finds that Mendelssohn's 'loveliest melodies' 'enhance the charm' of the stage effects, and that the composer has made 'melody reveal the mysteries that underlie the twilight gloaming'.108 Although White agrees with Maine (No. 28) in finding the German's music entirely in keeping with the play's spirit, he objects to the settings of words intended to be spoken.109 Lloyd, however, believes that the oft-praised music of the verse importunes yet more musical settings (No. 35). For some, the play's musical quality is in itself operatic (e.g. Strachey [No. 34] and Elze [No. 46]); Coleridge's reference to scene-ending arias (No. 15) evolves into Katharine Bates's perception of Wagnerian leitmotifs identifying the various groups of the play (No. 66). Very recently Maurice Hunt has pursued a similar thread in examining the play's varied voices and complex harmonies.110 These early American critics are anglophile; the anonymous New Exegesis (No. 36), possibly by an Irishman, is spiritedly anglophobic.111 Its repudiation of Teutonic values and elevation of feminine 'Celtic' qualities provides a welcome contrast to Gervinus's heavy assertion of the superiority of everything German and masculine. Race and gender are not again so directly addressed in relation to Dream for more than a century. The author's emphasis on the spiritual and intellectual in the nature of the fairy queen is in line with an increasing interest in the philosophical content of the play, an interest which reflects the rise of the academic study of psychology. As early as 1856, Lloyd appeals to psychology to explain the relationship between supernatural agency and human passions (No. 35); Clarke, despite his softly warm and personal response to the play, still insists on Shakespeare's artistic care and 'intellectual power' in its creation (No. 38). Even while condemning what he sees as the play's weaknesses and denying Shakespeare conscious intellectual effort, Kenny finds evidence of the poet's unique ability to give 'an outward form to the most shadowy and fugitive images of the mind' (No. 39). Heraud (No. 40), Hitchcock (No. 41), Wigston (No. 56), Downing (No. 62), and Snider (No. 47) are among those writing in the 1860s to 1880s who represent in various ways philosophical, intellectual, or psychological approaches. Heraud advances a theory of the working of the imagination, and argues that the

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poet's purpose was to make the 'faery drama' 'the vehicle of doctrines and ideas' of his age; for this reason he objects to Gervinus's view of the fairies as amoral, seeing them instead as the spirits of nature, 'the noumena of all phenomena'. He sees two spirit worlds, that of the human soul, and that of the nature spirits. Among other truths that he sees contained in the play are that the Beautiful is the Sublime; self-knowledge is the root of all other knowledge; and Bottom's transformation and soliloquy carry deliberate religious significance. Like Heraud, Hitchcock finds the mysteries of religion and philosophy in the play; the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude provides the key to the belief that the body is the wall of separation between the spirit in man and the 'over-soul' (the spirit of nature). Wigston's approach is fully Platonic, finding the key to the play in the 'relationship of the Spiritual to the Phenomenal'; later in his career he claimed that Dream 'is the profoundest play ever penned, and is as philosophical as nature itself, and I am convinced that the fairy element has been intended to represent the occult, invisible spiritual powers behind the curtain of nature's theatre, - in short, the magical, or rather the intellectual in nature'.112 Downing, seeking Shakespeare's 'spiritual life' and 'world-personality' in his works, finds in Dream an allegory of God and nature, reason and desire; his attitude is unquestioningly patriarchal (though this is not a word he uses), with Oberon representing God, reason, and law; Titania nature, creative force, and lawless desire; the changeling lawless passion and disordered will. Snider, whose article on Dream first appeared in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, is also interested in real and ideal worlds, and in the fairies as 'symbols of some phase of Spirit'; in his comments on the wood as the place of Nature, unknown in the world of Reason (the State), he conies close to a psychological reading (cf. Moyse (No. 54), for whom the 'wood is the world'). Snider's examination of the structure of the action in its third phase, 'Representation in Art', leads to a conclusion anticipating metadramatic analyses current in the latter twentieth century: 'the first two parts mirror themselves, the action reflects itself, the play plays itself playing, it is its own spectator'. Of the same generation as Snider, though here represented by a later publication, Richard Moulton (No. 74) seeks to combine moral philosophy with 'scientific' principles in examining the structure of the play; his emphasis on the 'intricacy of ironic situations' is reminiscent of Ulrici (No. 26), but his approach belongs more to late nineteenth-century academe. The trend in interpretation of Dream represented by these critics was not universally welcomed, Halliwell tetchily observing in 1879 'What is absurdly termed aesthetic criticism is more out of place on this comedy than perhaps on any other of Shakespeare's plays. It deadens the "native wood-notes wild" that every reader of taste would desire to be left to their own influences. The Midsummer Night's Dream is too exquisite a composition to be dulled by the infliction of philosophical analysis'.113 The attempts to discover the play's governing idea or inner meaning, and to define its structure, were associated with efforts to categorize its type or genre. The label of 'fairy play' or fantasy became increasingly unsatisfactory. Some critics, such as Ward (No. 50) and Furnivall (No. 53) tried to place it in traditions of comedy, Ward seeing it among Shakespeare's distinctively romantic comedies of incident,

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and Furnivall grouping it with comedies of errors or mistaken identity. The most attractive proposition was to ally it with masque, and to a lesser extent with pastoral, impulses encouraged by perceived analogies with Milton's Comus and Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess. As early as 1794 Whiter (No. 6) found masque concepts helpful in advancing his critical views, and by the middle of the nineteenth century Gervinus unhesitatingly calls the play a masque (No. 37), but the most influential statement of the position at this period was Elze's (No. 46). The attraction of the definition is not simply in the way it helps to explain the presence of elements such as song, dance, interlude, allegory and mythology, but because it combines with assertions of historical allegory, and with the idea of Dream as an occasional play for an aristocratic wedding. The description of Dream as masque, or at least as possessing masque-like characteristics, became a critical commonplace in late nineteenth-century student editions, and has persisted in a wide range of criticism throughout the twentieth century, although there have been dissenting or cautionary voices.114 Although Elze seems glancingly to admit the allegorical interpretation of myth as important in the masque, and hence relevant to Dream, he nevertheless believes that Shakespeare in this play uses mythology simply as background. This is a prevailing view; the classical figures and allusions are identified in terms of current archaeological and philological scholarship, but seldom interpreted in ways that have become common since the mid-twentieth century work of Panofsky, Seznec and Wind.115 Maine (No. 28) 'cannot but suspect that there is a meaning in' the 'mythological origin' of Theseus and his court, and Wigston (No. 56) suggests philosophical significance in Theseus's adventures in the labyrinth, but Baynes (No. 55) is an exception in actually attempting to bring out 'the meaning and value' of the associations deriving from the Ovidian source of Titania's name. The most basic question of genre relates to the other question of theatricality, that is whether the piece is a play or a poem. In 1847 Verplanck (No. 27) appeals to the lack of generic description on the titlepages of the 'original editions' to support his contention that 'The Poet and his contemporaries seem to have regarded this piece, as they well might, as in some sort a nondescript in dramatic literature', and finding Coleridge's 'dramatized lyrical' phrase congenial, refers to Dream as a 'beautiful poem'. In 1853 Morley (No. 31), wishing to plead for its success on stage, compromises on 'dramatic poem', although fourteen years earlier Knight (No. 19) had specifically rejected this term as inapplicable to any of Shakespeare's works. Some later critics dodge the issue by using 'poem' or 'play' indiscriminately (e.g. Heraud [No. 40], Snider [No. 47], Dowden [No. 49], Bates [No. 66]), but Furnivall (No. 53) insists that it is 'a poem, a dream, rather than a play', and F.G. Fleay when arguing for Dream being earlier than The Two Gentlemen of Verona refers to it as 'so beautiful a "work." I do not say a "play;" for .. . the Two Gentlemen is superior as an acting piece, however inferior as a poem'.116 Lloyd (No. 35) had vigorously contested this view, but by the end of the century even those who share Lloyd's opinion are inclined to yield ground to the opposition, Wendell (No. 64) arguing defensively that 'the play itself could never have seemed to its writer only the beautiful poem which it chiefly seems to us' because Shakespeare 'made it for living actors, - men and boys'. Such modest voices of reason are drowned out by the enthusiasm of Swinburne,

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whose own lyrical bent responded ecstatically to 'that all-heavenly poem', finding it the 'consummation' of the 'young genius of the master of all poets', 'surely the most beautiful work of man', 'above all possible or imaginable criticism' (No. 51 and headnote; No. 80). Some writers did attempt to exercise their critical faculties in more detailed examination of how Shakespeare achieved his lyrical effects. This was sometimes expressed in recognition of the different styles of verse assigned to each group of characters, so that Verplanck (No. 27) points to the suitability of the 'calm and lofty poetry' of Theseus and Hippolyta, the 'luxuriant profusion of quaint conceits and artificial turns of thought' of the young lovers, and 'the solemn yet free music of the verse, and the elevation and grave elegance of all their thoughts and images' in the speech of Oberon and Titania. In a similar vein, Montgomery (No. 60) calls attention to the contrasts of the diction; Dream represents the whole of life, and 'every element of this life has its own speech': 'the pretentious vaporings of Bottom', 'the eloquent wranglings of Hermia and Helena, the murmurous music of the fairies', 'the wise and glowing utterance of Theseus', the 'doggerel of "Pyramus and Thisbe'". Although not attempting to name the 'tropes and figures' of the rhetoricians' books, Maginn (No. 16) gives examples of the 'brilliantly bejewelled' language, concluding his catalogue by referring to 'a hundred images beside of aerial grace and mythic beauty'. Daniel (No. 13) notes that the characteristic 'sweetness and delicacy' of the language is achieved by the similes being 'taken from flowers, from stars, from dews, from fruits — from all that is brightest and loveliest in nature', and half a century later Grace Latham draws attention to the way that in Dream Shakespeare for the first time uses metaphor 'chiefly drawn from natural objects' to prompt the audience's scenic imagination and 'to fill us with a sense of rich poetic beauty'.117 White (No. 33) shows his appreciation by analyzing specific examples of word-choice and the effects of alliteration. The abundance of the imagery and the ingenuity of the conceits were not always seen as laudable: Gervinus condemns the 'language, picturesque, descriptive, and florid with conceits, the too apparent alliterations, the doggrel passages which extend over the passionate and impressive scenes', but he exempts the fairy poetry, since he feels it reflects the native style before the pernicious influence of the Italians swept England. Gervinus's own influence is strong in student editions even into the twentieth century: for example, Stanley Wood quotes him with approval (and without acknowledgement), and expands his strictures when telling students what they should think of Dream's word-play: 'puns and quibbles . . . are, unless characteristic of the person using them, offences against good taste which the poet himself discarded in his later plays. . . . In this play the puns in which Theseus and the courtiers freely indulge in the Fifth Act tend to degrade these characters to the level of the clowns whom they criticise'. He lists 22 puns from 'fair' in 1.1.181-2 to 'ace/ass' in 5.1.308, 311 and continues: 'Other conceits, such as unnatural, far-fetched imagery, rhetorical speech-making, elaborate and extravagant compliments, excessive use of alliteration will be found in Helena's speech in [3.2.128-33], Demetrius's speech [3.2.137-44] and (purposely used in the manner of a burlesque) in the whole of the play of Pyramus and Thisbe'.118 But new forces

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in the theatre worked against academic objections: in 1914 Barker (No. 82) concedes that Shakespeare's revelling in words often holds up the dramatic action, but then refutes 'all doctrinaire criticism' by arguing that the lengthy lyrical excursions far from offending against dramatic law, 'fulfil the inmost spirit of it, inasmuch as they are dramatic in themselves'. Questions of metre and rhyme were early of intense concern to editors seeking to find guidelines for establishing the text and chronology, whether judgments were made by the personal taste of the poet/editor, as with Pope, or lengthily argued, as in the work of Malone completed by Boswell (No. 11). Technicalities engaged the attention of Fleay and other members of the New Shakespeare Society towards the end of the nineteenth century, and their concerns were reflected into the next century in the student editions and handbooks for the play, which contained detailed sections on style, versification or prosody, grammar, etc.119 Such dutiful efforts are descriptive, but do little to heighten awareness of Shakespeare's skill and achievement, unlike Duffs observation in 1770 of the 'brisk boundings' of the fairy verse,120 or Coleridge's comments on individual passages (No. 15), or even Thomas Smibert's recognition of the beautiful effects of Shakespeare's variations 'in respect of rhythm, accent, and pause' in Oberon's 'I know a bank' speech [2.1.249ff.].121 General reflections on the dramatic effects of the verse often focussed on the frequent use of rhyme; Malone (No. 3) implied that rhyming, as a sign of immaturity, was a weakness, and even when he is not mentioned by name, his opinion often seems to weigh on such defenders of Dream's rhymes as Drake (No. 9), Knight (No. 19), Maine (No. 28), or Marshall (No. 59). Hiram Corson finds rhyme irrelevant to dating Dream because it 'is an inseparable adjunct to the speeches of those persons of the Drama who are in its main current — if adjunct that can be called which, in this play, particularly, is so organic an element of the language-shaping'; he cites the season/reason rhyme as showing Demetrius's feeling in 2.2.117-8 and the repetition of rhymes on 'eyes' in Titania's instructions to her fairies attendant on Bottom (3.1.164-174) in support of his contention that rhyme 'is essential to the poetic pitch of the play'.122 Latham (No. 57) examines the effects of rhyme as well as those of metrical variation in her paper to the New Shakespeare Society on how the structure of the verse helps the actor to determine and convey meaning. Latham may have been a theatrical practitioner; the poet and musician Sidney Lanier (No. 63) is less directly concerned with the actor's task, but is even more comprehensive in his effort to unite appreciation of verse technique with dramatic effectiveness. His detailed analysis of versification is developed in support of his argument about Shakespeare's moral and artistic growth as revealed in the three chronologically grouped periods of his plays, in which A Midsummer Night's Dream represents the first (appropriately named) 'Dream Period'. Similarly, Shaw's concern with acting that does justice to the music of the verse is allied to more general observations about Art and Nature (No. 67). Dream is not hospitable ground for the exercise of character criticism, but critics favouring this approach found some room for commentary on Theseus, Hermia and Helena, the mechanicals, and especially Bottom. Appreciative savouring of Bottom's qualities (manifested early by, for example, Taylor (No. 4) and Hazlitt (No. 10)) is

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frequent: for Kellogg (No. 42) he is 'a perfect human ass', a 'prince of donkeys'; to Wilson (No. 45) he is '"not one, but all mankind's epitome'", and in Shakespeare's own theory of evolution a 'fitting progenitor of man'; to Weiss (No. 52) he represents 'a highly successful deficiency of education'; for Marshall (No. 59) he is 'the gem of this work'; for Lloyd (No. 35) he is 'a versed type of the play'; to Porter and Clarke (No. 73) he is a 'deliciously crass specimen of masculinity'; to Chesterton (No. 76) he 'is greater and more mysterious than Hamlet'. Viewing Bottom with his fellow-mechanicals sometimes leads to class-conscious reactions, which can provoke hostility towards Shakespeare's presentation of them; Kenny (No. 39), for example, objects to 'the unrelieved humiliation of the poor players'. Unsurprisingly, American critics are most sensitive to the implications of class distinctions. Wilkes (No. 48) and Crosby (No. 75) are both indignant at what they perceive as Shakespeare's disdain of the working classes and his servile attitude towards the aristocracy. Latimer (No. 58) seems less devoted to 'our modern spirit of democracy' with which Shakespeare was 'not imbued': her analyses of English, French, and American mobs are hardly flattering or even sympathetic. With a perspective apart from that of England or the American republic, Elze (No. 46) suggests other possibilities in the combination of the lower and upper classes, arguing that the contrasting 'views of love and life in the aristocracy and in the working classes' are intended to make us 'perceive that each party may learn from the other'. Commentary on the nature and behaviour of Hermia and Helena receives fresh impetus in the latter nineteenth century from women writers on Shakespeare. It seems likely that it is Mary Cowden Clarke rather than her husband who praises Hermia's conduct in the first scene in terms going far beyond Elizabeth Griffith's defense nearly a century earlier: It is worth observing, how Shakespeare makes his women express themselves at difficult junctures with combined firmness and gentleness. They are modest, even timid; but when called upon by stress of circumstance for the vindication of a principle, they speak with wonderful effect. In this [1.1.79-82], and Hermia's preceding speech, there is just that composure of utterance and calm self-possession in the announcement of a strong inward conviction, which comes to women in the midst of perturbation from external causes, when they are both noble-minded and gentle-natured. The fine way in which the poet manifests this is well worthy the study of those who sneer at 'strong-mindedness'; ignorantly confounding it with unfeminine boldness.123 Mary Preston (No. 43), not endeavouring 'to say anything very new but to direct the reader's attention 'to very old truths', points to Shakespeare's understanding of how Hermia, used to being considered 'a wit, a beauty, and (what is often the result of neither of these attributes, but of the management of friends or the peculiarities of position) a belle', is particularly sensitive to taunts of being dwarfish.124 Mrs M.L. Elliott (M. Leigh-Noel) views them indulgently as 'merry English school girls' and praises Shakespeare's understanding of their 'school-girl bickerings and jealousy'.125 Elizabeth Latimer (No. 58) is considerably less kindly, condemning Helena's treachery and shrewishness and finding that by the time they both 'have lost

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their tempers and their dignity there is little to choose between them'. Both women and men critics show a tendency to judge the young women by social standards, Katharine Bates (No. 66) seeing them as Warwickshire milkmaids with 'the vigorous limbs and untutored manners of lower-class country-girls' such as Shakespeare 'might sometime have surprised quarrelling with ready nails and fists'; and G.S. Gordon observing (with distaste?) 'that in their peculiar manner of conducting a controversy they are very like real women indeed, but women of a certain class'.126 Lang (No. 68) is something of a throwback to Coleridge in the violence of his dislike - but for Hermia rather than Helena. Theseus begins to step out of the splendid frame to which Schlegel (No. 8) had relegated him and become a guiding presence by the mid-century, when Strachey (No. 34) sees him as 'the representative of commonsense' and Gervinus (No. 37) places him 'in the centre' as 'the intellectual man'; but it is Dowden (No. 49) who in 1875 draws the portrait of him as the 'grand ideal figure' and 'heroic man of action' that dominates critical opinion for nearly a century. Men and women alike rush to hymn the greatness of this 'princely and finished gentleman', (Wedgwood, No. 61), the prototype of Shakespeare's ideal king, Henry V (Chambers, No. 70). He is the 'ideal of the noblest form of Englishman',127 'the incarnation of a happy and generous rationalism' but basically still just 'an English squire' (Chesterton, No. 76). Even recognition of Theseus's early infidelities (Gervinus, No. 37) and 'wayward youth' (Chambers, No. 70) did not tarnish his image for latter nineteenth and earlier twentieth-century critics. Dowden's words seem to have tapped an astonishing vein of patriotism and hero-worship; by 1932 G. Wilson Knight, a major influence in Shakespearean criticism well into the latter part of this century, is calling him 'Christ-like'.128 Dissenting voices were not quite drowned out: Marshall (No. 59) and Granville Barker (No. 82), both practising playwrights, call Theseus 'essentially uninteresting' and 'nothing much' in theatrical terms, and Henry Cuningham, in the first Arden edition (1905), rejects Dowden's ideal figure, and puts him firmly back in the 'frame for the picture in which the fairies are the protagonists' (p. xlix). Katharine Bates (No. 66) even while paying tribute to his grandeur finds him too much the conqueror in his relationship with Hippolyta, and makes a sharp comment on men's need to have their own way. Those who so enthusiastically elaborated the picture of the 'noble master of the world' (Dowden, No. 49) often ignored another aspect of Shakespeare's delineation of the character that Dowden discusses: Theseus's attitude towards art and the imagination, and how far it represents Shakespeare's own ideas. The belief that Theseus's lines on the poet's eye [5.1.2-22] referred to the dramatist himself appears early: 'How exactly has he painted himself in his Midsummer Nights Dream!' exclaims the author of the 1747 Examen,129 and the identification is memorably captured in John Mortimer's famous 1775 portrait, 'Poet';130 many commentators share Macaulay's uncomplicated acceptance that here Shakespeare has defined poetry 'in lines universally admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled'.131 Heraud (No. 40) claims confidently that here 'we find Theseus speaking as the poet's expounder'. Alfred Roffe, in 1851, is one of the earliest writers to take

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issue with the view that the passage puts forward 'Shakespeare's own idea', arguing that since Theseus's sceptical attitude towards the poet as 'the embodier of the unreal' is contradicted by the events of the play, we may be sure that 'Shakespeare himself thought precisely the very reverse'.132 At the turn of the century both Wedgwood (No. 61) and Porter and Clarke (No. 73) explore the effects of the contradiction between Theseus's scepticism and the contemptuous tone of his speech on the one hand and the supernatural events of the play on the other, but some critics of the same period are still using the passage merely as a starting point for discussion of the operation of the imagination, or the illusion of art (e.g. Brandes (No. 71) and Woodberry (No. 78)). Ernest de Selincourt (No. 81) also uses the speech in his exploration of art and realism, but he rejects the notion that Theseus is 'a veiled representation of the personality of Shakespeare', instead condemning him as a 'Philistine', 'quite devoid of artistic sensibility'. This view is more in line with later twentieth-century shifts in reactions to Theseus's character and consequent changes in assessments of what he says, such as Peter Holland's unhesitating assertion that 'Theseus' painfully and comically limited perspectives, the range of vision of rationalist daylight scepticism, are grotesquely inadequate to the experiences the play has shown'.133 The nature of poetry, the operation of the imagination, the place of the supernatural, aspects of dreaming, types of illusion are all topics which in various degrees engage critics of the play through the nineteenth century. The obviously important subject of love, together with the related subject of marriage, while never neglected, increasingly is specified as dominant or central, the theme or identifying characteristic. Hudson (No. 29) finds that the play 'has room but for love, and beauty, and delight'; Gervinus (No. 37) identifies it as the 'subject and the source of poetry' which may mislead men into the 'sensuous life of love'; Ulrici (No. 26) and Downing (No. 62) both see the play as representing love as illusion; Taine (No. 44) expatiates on the assertion that 'C'est d'amour qu'il s'agit encore'134' translated by Henri Van Laun as 'Love is still the theme'. Both Elze (No. 46) and Snider (No. 47) see connections between love as the preoccupation of the court and as the theme of the interlude. In Wigston's Platonic reading of the play (No. 56) love is the source of understanding; in more melancholy vein Wedgwood finds 'The course of true love never did run smooth' [1.1.134] to be the 'bitter theme' of the whole play. For Chambers (No. 70) the 'central idea' is love, and for Croce (No. 85) the play is the quintessential comedy of love. For some critics marriage is an important theme because it supports other aspects of their interpretations, Heraud (No. 40) for example finding that this 'dramatic epithalamium' buttresses his view of Shakespeare's Protestant attitudes, and Elze (No. 46) linking the theme to occasion to explain the masque characteristics of the play. Brooke (No. 77) takes it as given that the play was written for a marriage as the foundation for his exploration of the theme of love, and in the Arden edition of the same year Cuningham states flatly 'Marriage is the theme of the play' (xxx). The conviction of the importance of marriage as a theme is often expressed in conjunction with attempts to establish the play's date by providing it with a specific occasion of first performance at a noble wedding attended by Queen Elizabeth. That question remains unresolved, but continues to engage the attentions of both proponents and sceptics.135

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Patterns of interpretation of Dream are bound up with social and intellectual shifts, particularly in respect of the expansion of educational institutions. Up to the 1870s, writing on the play in Britain and North America was dominated by 'men of letters', (or very occasionally women), either scholars of independent means, or professional men such as clergymen or lawyers who devoted their leisure to scholarly pursuits, or those engaged in the professional world of letters such as journalists, publishers, critics, and playwrights. Writers of this type did not disappear after the 1870s; belles-lettres still had a place, and personal responses to the play were still considered acceptable. In the nineties Julia Wedgwood (No. 61) and Andrew Lang (No. 68) express opinions on life and society as intensely personal as those voiced in the sixties by Mary Preston (No. 43) or Bj0rnstjerne Bjornson (No. 84), to whom Dream appealed 'as much through its intellectual significance as through its noble, humane spirit', and which became for him 'a guiding star', giving him 'a fuller capacity for joy and a greater power to protect my joy and keep it inviolate'. But from the seventies, professional academics are increasingly prominent, as the expansion of compulsory schooling and greater access to higher education, particularly in North America, called for texts that would instruct and guide the student in serious vein, rather than seeking mainly to expand appreciative enjoyment. Lectures formerly directed to the general (educated middle-class) audience, such as those of Coleridge and Clarke, moved to classrooms and college lecture halls. Societies of interested amateurs were overshadowed by learned institutions such as the Early English Text Society and the New Shakespeare Society. Later in the twentieth century the trend continued in the shift of articles from general interest magazines such as Good Words or The Contemporary Review to learned journals aimed at professional academics.

HI 1920 TO THE PRESENT

The broad outlines of major critical attitudes to Dream in the twentieth century are easy to perceive.136 The dominant view for the first half of the century was of a lyrical fairy fantasy; after the second world war critics increasingly insisted that the play deserved more respectful attention, particularly for its exploration of the nature of love and of the imagination; since approximately 1980 many critics have treated the play as a text yielding important material for a variety of theories of 'cultural discourse'. Some critics stand out for the manner in which they have influenced or crystallized changing preoccupations — Spurgeon, Frye, Barber, Kott, Montrose, for example —, and in any period there are those who dissent from the prevailing view, or explore neglected paths. The ever-expanding academic publishing industry has encouraged both a narrowing of focus on detail, and a broadening of interests to include other disciplines such as art history, psychoanalysis, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, political science and so on. This simultaneous increase in inclusiveness and fragmentation can be rapidly traced through guides to Shakespearean criticism.137 H.B. Charlton's Shakespearean Comedy, which in 1938 drew together essays

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originally published between 1930 and 1937, is generally recognized as the most considerable work in its field of the period between the world wars. In 1930, setting out to define what is meant by the label 'romantic comedy', he can ask confidently 'what is a fantasia like A Midsummer Night's Dream but the very ecstasy of romanticism?' (19)138 and when in 1933 he devotes a whole essay to the play he emphasizes the controlling point of view, or idea, that holds the three worlds together: contemporary man's 'response to the quality and the might of love' (103) and comedy's 'natural function' of'glorifying those settled institutions of man's social existence which owe their persistence to mankind's experience that such as these make for his welfare in the substantial problem of living life in the world as the world is' (117). His perception of the play, and even the terms which he uses to describe it, differ little from the view of E.K. Chambers in 1897 (No. 70). His opposition of Theseus's 'cool reason' and 'intellectual temper' against 'the undue ravages of fancy', and Bottom's 'crude native matter of human instinct' (119) is also consonant with nineteenth-century attitudes. Perhaps there is a greater emphasis on man as 'a social being' (117) in Charlton's estimate of the play, and certainly he is of the 1930s in seeing Hermia and Helena as 'Shakespeare's first real flappers, straight from a lady's seminary' (115), but his main contribution is the persuasive charm of his writing, and his presentation of the comedies in the context of romance and of Italian pastoral comedy. Comment on the lyricism of the play takes two main forms: analysis and praise of its imagery, and observations on song, dance, and the play's kinship with masque, opera and other musical forms. Caroline Spurgeon was the most influential exponent of patterns of imagery: in her 1931 British Academy lecture she takes Dream as an example of the way in which 'the imagery in the comedies supplies atmosphere and background',139 dwelling especially on moon and starlight, and woodland images, and in her still-current 1935 book Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us she concludes that Dream 'leaves us, as it has left myriads, over nearly three and a half centuries, amazed and bewitched by beauty and the strange power of the poet's pen' (263). Her emphasis on moon imagery had been anticipated in 1930 by F.C. Kolbe, who concludes that Dream is 'the true Moonlight Sonata of art—not that bright, sunny one so-called of Shakespeare's great rival, Beethoven'.140 J.W. Mackail attempts to define the nature of the play's poetry as 'articulate music', asserting that 'only Mozart could have interpreted into the language of another art its delicacy, its suavity, its certainty'.141 Agnes Mure Mackenzie finds Dream 'more masque than play', and claiming that 'the masque was the Elizabethan musical comedy', amusingly casts the characters by vocal categories and identifies arias and other numbers.142 Enid Welsford sees Dream as masque transmuted, in its 'blending of tones' (326), in being 'musically written' (330), and above all in its structural 'pattern of a dance' (331).143 An influential book of the 1930s, G. Wilson Knight's The Shakespearean Tempest (London, 1932), provides detailed analyses of the imagery and music of the play, and this lead was followed by other popular works such as Mark Van Doren's Shakespeare (New York, 1939). But Van Doren ignored Wilson Knight's perception of the more sinister implications of the play's imagery, finding that even in darkness it 'shines merrily' and that 'the smiling horizon is immeasurably remote' (61), whereas Wilson

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Knight found 'a gnomish, fearsome, Macbeth-like quality about the atmosphere, just touching nightmare' (142), and observed that the play 'continually suggests a nightmare terror' (146). Nevertheless, Wilson Knight's optimistic conclusion that 'Finally, all is love, harmony, music' (161) accords with the general view of the play as 'the purest and most enchanting fantasy', to be acted not in the theatre, nor even in the theatre of the mind, but in 'the moonlit wood of our imaginations',144 a fantasy which is a 'delicate mixture of farce and fancy'.145 Such attitudes can even accommodate the more disparaging summation of Peter Alexander that its 'changeable taffeta, opalescent with incongruities' carries no 'deep significance' or 'profound interpretation of life'.146 Some critics grew restive in the face of so much prettiness, Hazelton Spencer objecting, despite his affection for the play, that it 'is a little too romantic (in the worst sense), too glittering with poetic tinsel'.147 Other critics reacted by finding more meaning rather than less: in 1949 E.G. Pettet, while conceding the many romantic elements, foreshadowed criticism of the latter part of the twentieth century in observing that 'it contains a strong note of criticism and interrogation, which is announced insistently, even monotonously, in the very first scene'.148 Indeed, the mid-century sees something of a breakthrough in Dream criticism, with LJ. Potts finding its main significance in its 'profound revelation of human nature',149 Leonard Dobbs exploring its philosophy of love in relation to Plato's Phaedrus,150 and Donald Stauffer drawing attention to its exemplifying the 'psychological theory that art is play' and demonstrating 'the free play of the imagination on the forms of love'.151 The first half of the twentieth century saw little change in character criticism from earlier periods, although by 1932 Muriel Bradbrook clearly recognized the effects of this critical habit when she noted that in Romantic and nineteenth-century periods 'Judgment by characterisation, and therefore by story as distinct from plot, led to a serious distortion of some of Shakespeare's plays. The Tempest could be no more than a charming phantasy, or a profound allegory; A Midsummer Night's Dream had not even the alternative'.152 Of the play's characters Bottom continued to receive most attention, with substantial studies by J.B. Priestley in 1925 and John Palmer in 1946.153 Priestley's paean is much in the vein of nineteenth- and even eighteenth-century encomia, but provides one memorable image that reflects the early twentieth-century liking for musical analogies: 'to the gods, the spectacle of Bottom, soaring and magnificent, trying to grasp every part, would be no more ridiculous than the spectacle of Wagner perspiring and gesticulating at Bayreuth: they are both artists, children of vanity and vision, and are both ridiculous and sublime' (9). Palmer speaks interestingly of the divided sympathies of spectators of the victims of comic jests (xiii), and feels that 'Bottom is so much the projection of Shakespeare's own imagination into this mimic world that, if we fail to identify ourselves with his immortal weaver, the comedy falls to pieces' (109). Bottom is also put to the service of various theories: for Edith Rickert he is a caricature of King James,154 for Alden Brooks (in the play which Sir Edward Dyer wrote) Bottom is Shakespeare the actor,155 and for Robert Graves he is 'the Wild-Ass Set-Dionysus'.156 Theseus maintains his calm supremacy in the most influential discussions of the play, Peter

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Alexander in 1939 still finding him 'very much Chaucer's complete man of the world, naturally taking first place by a kind of sovereignty of nature'.157 Wilson Knight agrees with Charlton in opposing Theseus's rationality to the lovers' 'frenzied fantasies', but goes much further in hymning his power that like the rising sun dispels 'Christ-like, . . . the tormenting imaginations of fairyland, the pagan terrors of the midnight wood'.158 There are dissenting voices: Murray Bundy points out that Theseus enunciates 'the unimaginative man's view of poetry';159 George Foss paints him as a 'gay sensualist' caught having to extol the cloistered life, and observes that 'Theseus seldom gets played with sufficient humour'.160 Foss also advances the theory that Shakespeare sets the play in Athens with Theseus at the head of affairs because 'the subject he wished to write about was "the Emancipation of Woman'"; he visualizes the Amazon Hippolyta in the first scene coldly restraining Theseus's sensuality, and listening in silence 'to the degradation of her sex in this new country she has come to' (123). Agnes Mure Mackenzie in her study of Shakespeare's women is less taken with the Amazonian queen. Conceding that Dream does not depend for its success on 'the portraiture of character', she sees 'personality' only in Theseus, Puck and Bottom, and finds all of Dream's women, Hippolyta and Titania as well as Hermia and Helena, tainted with 'unintentional vulgarity', the probable effect of 'the bourgeois bluntness of spirit' caused by Shakespeare's 'upbringing as the son of a poor merchant in a country town'.161 Other topics current in earlier times continue to engage attention. Folk and fairy lore are addressed by Minor White Latham, and in general terms Cumberland Clark considers Dream's fairies in Shakespeare and the Supernatural,162 but the fairies, while not neglected, are not in the forefront of critical concern in the first half of the century. The old debate about the play's stageworthiness is not prominent, but despite increasing numbers of successful productions,163 some critics continue to relegate it from the theatre to the closet.164 Technicalities of style, such as the use of rhyme and of prose, are revisited, but with increasing attention to the dramatic effects achieved.165 Questions of genre continue to be debated, with W.J. Lawrence arguing that the play is a 'nocturnal',166 and Enid Welsford's magisterial volume giving authority to the recognition of the play's masque-like elements.167 Views of the play's genre also affected debate over the play's date and occasion, and the question of revision. The most thorough-going revisionist was J. Dover Wilson in the Cambridge edition of 1924, but as a more recent editor notes, Wilson's 'theory has never commanded general assent'.168 In most criticism of the period interest in historical allegory is muted, perhaps because of the lengths to which it had been taken in 1923 by Edith Rickert, who cogently and learnedly argued an extreme view of Dream as political allegory and satire. Her insistence on Shakespeare's understanding of the political efficacy of the drama seems premonitory of late twentieth-century 'new historicist' approaches to the play.169 A voice of the future, not echoed until Elliott Krieger in 1979, is heard in A.A. Smirnov's Shakespeare: A Marxist Interpretation (1936). His view of Shakespeare as 'the humanist ideologist of the bourgeoisie of the time' (25), whose 'basic characteristics of ... point of view and style — his militant, revolutionary protests against feudal forms, conceptions, and institutions - remained unaffected throughout his life' (27), leads to a deterministic summation of Dream:

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'The happy ending of the comedy is not so much the result of Puck's meddling . . . but of the energetic struggle the lovers wage in the name of freedom, against paternal tyranny, the traditional law of Athens, and even the Duke himself, . . . . Destiny, which supersedes human will and understanding, determines everything' (84). The desire to find a central idea in A Midsummer Night's Dream, apparent in (for example) the criticism of Ulrici, Gervinus, Chambers, and Charlton, intensified in the mid-twentieth century. Increasingly it seemed necessary to assert that the comedies were worthy of 'serious' consideration, that they merited earnest academic attention. The most popular approach became thematic criticism, which when applied to Dream resulted in explorations of such topics as the lunacy of love; the place of the irrational in love and life; the operation of the imagination; illusion in life and drama; the relationships of nature and art, appearance and reality; discordia concors, 'the concord of this discord'. In 1951 Ernest Schanzer finds the 'central theme' in the kind of love which he believes is ridiculed throughout the play: 'Lover, lunatic, and poet all live among phantoms of their own creation which are unrelated to reality';170 in the same year for Harold Goddard the 'central theme' is embodied in two speeches of Theseus, on the imagination in Act 5 and on the 'musical confusion' of the hounds in Act 4, which for him lead to a very serious view of the play as 'Vision', 'not just dream, nor play, nor love, nor art' but through 'Imagination' a 'transubstantiation of the world of sense into something beyond itself.171 Nevertheless John Russell Brown still finds it necessary in 1957 to be tentative and apologetic about possibly taking the comedies 'too seriously', while he advances an interpretation of Dream that sees in it a contemplation of 'the relationship between nature and the "art" of lovers and poets', and a triumphant use of 'our wavering acceptance of the illusion of drama' to make us accept the truth of love.172 One effort of thematic criticism is to find unity in the disparate elements of the play. Ernest Schanzer concentrates on the moon and the identification of Titania with Diana to set out how 'the theme of love-madness weaves together apparently unrelated portions' of Dream while 'unity of atmosphere' is achieved 'by flooding the play with moonlight'.173 In a compact article, Peter Fisher traces the 'argument' of the play to show that the 'theme of love' unites the four worlds he discerns in the play, 'of reason and accepted order', 'of passion and desire', 'of common life and activity', and 'of imagination and fantasy'.174 In a more wide-ranging essay, Paul Olson finds in the play 'a sophisticated Renaissance philosophy of the nature of love in both its rational and irrational forms', and details 'the methods by which symbol and masque pattern, structure and theme, work together to make luminous a traditional understanding of marriage'.175 Olson turns to art history, iconography, and sixteenth-century literature to illustrate his perception of the theme. Frank Kermode also calls on iconographical studies as well as invoking J.G. Frazer, Apuleius, Macrobius, and Bruno in the course of arguing that Dream is 'a play of marked intellectual content' and that its 'variety of the plot is a reflection of an elaborate and ingenious thematic development'.176 The attempt to relate the play's 'interwoven action' to 'the thematic treatment of love' struck R.W. Dent as incomplete, because it failed to embrace satisfactorily the fifth act; to remedy this deficiency, he examines the Pyramus and Thisbe play in terms

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of the place of the imagination in both love and art.177 Dent was not of course the first of the new wave of mid-century critics to note the importance of imagination as a theme or topic in Dream,178 but the neatness of his presentation of the play 'as a delightful exposition of the follies produced by excessive imagination in love and the pleasures produced by controlled imagination in art', and indeed as 'Shakespeare's closest approximation to a "Defense of Dramatic Poesy" in general'(128-9) ensured that the topic became prominent in much criticism of the next decade.179 By 1974 Anne Barton seems almost to fear falling into cliche when she says: 'Not surprisingly, a preoccupation with the idea of the imagination, and with some of its products — dreams, the illusions of love, poetry and plays - is central to this comedy'.180 A study submitted as a dissertation in 1979, though not published until 1985, takes up the notion of Dream together with The Tempest being Shakespeare's defense of poetry, but Diane Akers Rhoads181 is moving away from discussion of the imagination to an exploration of the political import of dramatic poetry, a concern which has increasingly engaged critics of the last two decades of this century. Love and the imagination were not the only topics which gave fresh insight into Dream for critics early in the second half of the century. Northrop Frye's broadly comparative and mythic approach was widely popular, and his status lent authority to brief but suggestive comments relating to Dream upon such questions as loss and discovery of identity (particularly sexual identity), self-knowledge, metamorphosis, and the 'green world' as 'a symbol of natural society'.182 Frye's emphasis on the seasons, and his perception of a Freudian erotic pleasure principle as parallelling the shape of comedy (75), are consonant with the equally influential approach of C.L. Barber who studies Shakespeare's earlier comedies in the context of courtly and popular revels and festivities. Barber finds his central argument concerning 'the holiday sequence of release through clarification' first worked out in Dream, a 'more serious play' than Love's Labour's Lost, and 'his first comic masterpiece' (II).183 In his chapter on Dream, entitled 'May games and metamorphoses on a midsummer night', he links loss of identity to metamorphosis, to the 'moment where the perceived structure of the outer world breaks down, where the body and its environment interpenetrate in unaccustomed ways, so that the seeming separateness and stability of identity is lost' (135). Despite (or perhaps because of) the admiration accorded Barber's book, two decades or more passed before many English-speaking critics again turned to central interest in the topic of holiday or carnival,184 but metamorphosis, especially in terms of transformation or change, did evoke sensitive comment, for example from Elizabeth Sewell, and developing her insights, David Young. For Sewell, Dream 'is poetic drama which handles myth in one form after another, full of dreams and shadows from beginning to end, as Ovidian and metamorphic in its action and subject matter as is The Tempest, and, like that play, putting forward sleep and dream as a method of learning'.185 Combined with the influence of Frye, Sewell's emphasis on myth helped to ensure that mythological readings of Dream became plentiful in the 1960s and 1970s. Most closely related to Sewell's Orphic view is Richard Cody's elegant study of 'Pastoralism and Platonic Theory in Tasso's Aminta and Shakespeare's Early Comedies', which finds in Dream 'a familiar

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combination of poetic theology and serio ludere' and explores its episodes in the light of classical, medieval, and Renaissance interpretations of dreams and myths.186 Stephen Fender uses medieval and Renaissance mythographies to explicate aspects of the play in an unusually stimulating student guide to Dream,137 and Noel Purdon interprets the play as a psychomachia.188 D'Orsay W. Pearson draws on classical, medieval and Renaissance legends of Theseus to urge her view that awareness of the many traditions of his perfidy gives an ironic twist to Shakespeare's portrayal of love and marriage in Dream,189 and David Ormerod parallels Shakespeare's Duke, the wood outside Athens and Bottom, with the myth of Theseus, the labyrinth and the Minotaur.190 Sewell had noted L.P. Wilkinson's recognition of the close affinity of Dream with Ovid's epic: he found 'the whole atmosphere' of the fairy world 'extraordinarily reminiscent of the Metamorphoses — the magic and the freedom, the Puckish element, the blend of charm and moral irresponsibility, the sense that nothing that happens is really serious because it is all a dream, the interplay of pathos and humour, cruelty and love, the natural and the supernatural, the grotesque and the beautiful, Bottom with his Midas-ears fondled by the demi-goddess Titania'.191 In 1963 Walter F. Staton, Jr. (apparently unaware of Wilkinson's 1955 book) details more fully 'Ovidian elements' of Dream, especially in the context of Elizabethan Ovidian epyllia, but provides little comment on the implications of the parallels he adduces.192 More ambitious attempts to define the Ovidian nature of the play are not found until the work of Niall Rudd, who considers Dream 'Shakespeare's Metamorphoses — the most magical tribute that Ovid was ever paid' (193),193 and Leonard Barkan, who in a substantial 1980 article relates Titania and Bottom to Diana and Actaeon, and who devotes considerable space to Dream in his wide-ranging 1986 book The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis & the Pursuit of Paganism;194 the 1990s have brought books by Charles and Michelle Martindale, and by Jonathan Bate, which offer good basic surveys of the use of Ovidian myth in Dream.195 Questions of identity and transformation in a context of dream and illusion naturally invite a psychoanalytical approach, which comfortably assimilates mythological reference, but pushes towards specific sexual interpretations, contrary to Sewell who had found that 'Lust has no entry' (113) to Dream. Good examples of the type can be found in Hugh Richmond's Shakespeare's Sexual Comedy, in which he suggests that Shakespeare uses Ovid's Metamorphoses so heavily because it 'is a kind of classical encyclopedia of neurosis and mental disease',196 and in 'Identity Crises in a Midsummer Nightmare: Comedy as Terror in Disguise' by Melvin Goldstein, both a Professor of English and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.197 However, Goldstein's views of what the play says about body identity, sex and gender, and the grotesque are mild and unexceptionable in comparison with the earlier claims of Weston A. Gui (1952)198 and Jan Kott (1964).199 Kott's vision of a world of'erotic madness' (189), where a 'menacing devil Hobgoblin' (172) operates as 'the embodiment . . . of the perfect and unspeakable secret police' (171), where the lush Warwickshire countryside has turned into a landscape by Bosch, and whose 'dark sphere of bestiality' can best be represented by Goya (184), has become an inescapable presence in interpretation of the play, not least because of the translation of his

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ideas to the stage in Peter Brook's memorable 1970 Royal Shakespeare Company production. Gui's much earlier essay has had less obvious influence, but his 'attempt to discover by the means of Freudian psychoanalysis the meaning of this dream and, if possible, the elements in the libidinous life of its creator that gave it origin' (251) is premonitory of the burgeoning of psychoanalytic criticism in the last two decades of this century. Taking Bottom's dream as central, he interprets the whole play as dramatizing Bottom's problems 'of coping with oral trauma at the mother's breast and the achievement of an identification with the father against whom he has been thrust in phallic competition' (292); the concluding section of the essay demonstrates that Bottom is Shakespeare who in this play is acting out a neurosis to do with infantile relationships (the Indian prince being his young brother Gilbert) (295). Gui's article elicited some interest in the 1960s, the most important respondent being Norman Holland,200 but it was not until 1979 that Holland published the article on Hermia's dream which, as Richard Dutton points out, both represents classic psychoanalytic criticism and expresses dissatisfaction with it.201 Not all commentary that drew on psychoanalysis or recognized erotic elements in the play was so extreme. Marjorie Garber uses a Freudian approach to her study of dream in Shakespeare, but her main interest in this play is in illusion and transformation expressed through metaphor.202 Alexander Leggatt finds nothing 'torrid' in the play's eroticism, and believes it 'steers a civilized middle course appropriate to comedy' between 'extreme attitudes to sex' (111). For Leggatt, as for many of the critics of the 1960s and 1970s, 'it is, finally, the harmony of the play's vision that gives us most delight' (114).203 Some critics of the era advanced individual ideas that gained currency. Norman Rabkin chose 'complementarity', to express the double vision he finds in Shakespeare's dramatic treatment of various themes: for Dream he examines this idea in the plot structure, and in the attitude towards love and art, arguing that here Shakespeare first turned 'his complementary vision' 'to a full examination of art itself, 'with characteristic ambivalence'.204 Fascination with Dream's commentary upon itself and its art, particularly as it is concerned with interaction of play and audience, illusion and reality, also informs James Calderwood's theory of'metadrama'.205 Rene Girard's concept of'mimetic desire' also has some perception of the mirroring technique that strikes both Rabkin and Calderwood, but turns more towards psychoanalytical and anthropological theory than was evident in Calderwood's work of the 1960s and 1970s.206 A highly individual work that has perhaps received less attention than it deserves, the poet Louis Zukofsky's Bottom: On Shakespeare,207 draws frequently on Dream (and on Spinoza and Aristotle) in exploring Shakespeare's view of love; in his acute sensibility and sensitivity to words, Zukofsky may be parallelled with the earlier poet-critic, Sidney Lanier (No. 63). A remarkable contribution to a mode of criticism unusual at the time is W. Moelwyn Merchant's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Visual Re-creation',208 which explores the play's theatrical history and its representation by artists, finding in the variety of treatment 'a critical uncertainty about some of its themes', which traced historically provides 'an instructive exercise in the vagaries of critical taste' (166). A survey of the visual record from the seventeenth century to the 1960 production of Britten's opera demonstrates Merchant's conviction that the play contains elements

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'of a life altogether darker than the apparent grace of the fairy world' (165), and that it is 'no decorative confection' but a work of'complex maturity' (166). At the same period, another work on the relations of the arts, Shakespeare in Music, offered important assessments by Winton Dean of operas based on Dream, and by Roger Fiske on Mendelssohn.209 Fiske's analysis of the way in which Mendelssohn's music defined the structure of the play influenced later critics, and has helped to counter the disdain it incurred through overuse.210 Two publications of 1978 and two of 1979 provide perspective on the past and hints of the future directions of Dream criticism. David Bevington re-examines the ambivalent nature of the fairies, and the 'tension between licentiousness and self-mastery' (88) in a response to the excesses of Kott's interpretations;211 in a similarly retrospective achievement, Harold Brooks's long-awaited Arden edition summed up a lifetime of loving engagement with the play established when he first saw Granville Barker's 1914 production at the age of seven.212 The final section of Brooks's introduction, 'The Principal Themes', is firmly in the centre of the tradition of seeing the play as 'about' love and marriage, perception and identity, imagination, illusion and reality. Robert Weimann's book subtitled 'Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function', first translated into English (in revised form) in 1978, has some kinship with Barber's perception of the importance of popular culture, but it is informed with a Marxist sense of'the unity of history and criticism' and the 'social function' of Shakespeare's plays (xiii), so that for example the combination of popular and literary traditions in the formation of Puck 'reflects the broad sociological foundation upon which the plays as a whole were built' (196).213 Social concerns are given more political import in Elliott Krieger's A Marxist Study of Shakespeare's Comedies, which demands recognition of the class distinctions in Dream, and of the way in which the often praised harmony of the play should be seen rather as 'the strategy through which the ruling class maintains its autonomy'.214 What Shakespeare's attitude was towards the levels of society and culture depicted in the play, and towards the social conventions that it appears both to question and confirm, has increasingly engaged critical attention in the last two decades. Louis A. Montrose's '"Shaping Fantasies": Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture' encapsulates several of the period's critical preoccupations.215 For Montrose the Dream is 'a representation of fantasies about the shaping of the family, the polity, and the theatre' which 'dramatizes — or, rather, meta-dramatizes - the relations of power between prince and playwright' (86,87). Queen Elizabeth, as the focus of the erotic dreams of her subjects, is represented in Titania, who in her relationship with Bottom indulges those desires 'that make Bottom's dream into a parodic fantasy of infantile narcissism and dependency' (68); as she manipulates Bottom, the amateur actor, she is herself manipulated by Oberon, the internal dramatist, so that a 'fantasy of male dependency upon woman is expressed and contained within a fantasy of male control over woman' (69). As Montrose reads the play, it is a representation of male insecurities about paternity and authority, and the threat of female fecundity; it is a myth 'recounting the cultural transition from matriarchy to patriarchy' (74). How far and how tyrannically power is asserted

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SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

in the play (by conqueror over conquered, ruler over subject, father over daughter, husband over wife), and how far it is inverted or subverted by carnivalesque elements or by the ambivalence of Shakespeare's dramatic techniques can be treated from various viewpoints, and has prompted much engaged and entertaining writing on Dream.216 Interpretations drawing on anthropological theories of rites of passage, and 'liminality', sometimes combined with feminist perspectives, have also provided insights.217 Psychoanalytical approaches continue to be popular, with some interesting shifts of emphasis from Bottom to the changeling. Daniel Lechay's Freudian reading, which places the changeling at the centre of the play's meaning,218 recurs in Allen Dunn's more widely cited article which argues that the fairy drama is the dream of the Indian Boy who 'is being forced to relinquish his oedipal dependency on the mother, . . . and to submit to the father's law'; this view also encompasses the experiences of Bottom and of the young lovers.219 In Johannes Fabricius's psychoanalytic study of Shakespeare's unconscious, the changeling is the pivot of the whole play, the divine child of rebirth, enclosed in the womb of Sapientia, represented in Dream by the moon goddess.220 With less obviously psychoanalytic emphasis, William Slights in a witty article shows him as representative of 'a prime interpretive challenge' of Dream, which is to understand 'what happens on the psychic boundary between human and fairy kind' and likens the play itself to the changeling boy as a masterwork of 'indeterminacy' ,221 It is through another absent character, Nedar, Helena's parent, that Terence Hawkes finds much virtue in 'or'; the suggestion that Nedar may be Helena's mother 'unseats a number of presuppositions investing the play and demonstrates an indeterminacy, an undecidability, that is a feature of all texts'.222 Two other characters present but sometimes strangely silent, Hermia's undoubted father Egeus and Theseus's (possibly reluctant?) bride Hippolyta, have provided the focus for critical theories concerning the text and performance, particularly in terms of the recognition of the difficulty if not impossibility of determining the play's shape and meaning.223 Treatments of Hippolyta and the changeling illustrate how theories of the nature and transmission of dramatic texts, the realization of the texts in performance, and critical interest in questions of gender and power interlace in contemporary thought. The way in which Hippolyta interacts with Theseus and responds to the lovers in various performance traditions reflects critical attitudes about (for example) whether the play celebrates or questions hierarchical order, and whether it achieves an unshadowed harmony.224 Gary Jay Williams has argued that the Indian boy's part in the spectacle of both the 1692 adaptation The Fairy-Queen and Reynolds's 1816 mounting is politically charged,225 and his shifting shape in modern productions has prompted interesting speculations about what the play may be saying about homoeroticism, and race and empire.226 More generally, the increase in attention to how performance interconnects with critical interpretation, given impetus by J.L. Styan's The Shakespeare Revolution (1977), represents something of a return to nineteenth-century articles stemming

38

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 227

from productions seen. Nineteenth-century interest in interpreting the play through graphic art shows some signs of revival in the inclusion in recent editions of reproductions of paintings by Fuseli and Reynolds, and in excellent general works by Edward Hodnett and Richard D. Altick; it may be further stimulated by the essays and reproductions in Victorian Fairy Painting.223 The increasing popularity of Britten's 1960 opera has elicited analyses of the play's structure, mood, and" diverse styles through comparison with Britten's musical treatment.229 Current criticism has also returned to an interest in the style and verbal techniques of Dream, but not in the vein of earlier praise of his sublime beauties or lyrical ecstasies, nor in pedagogical listings of similes, alliteration, puns, etc.; but in detailed, learned, and wide-ranging studies. Patricia Parker's continuing work on Dream can most recently be seen in Shakespeare from the Margins: Language, Culture, Context, 'a book about the contemporary contexts and historical resonances of Shakespearean wordplay'; her fertile readings of such words as 'preposterous', 'rude', 'mechanical', 'partition' open up the play in a way she characterizes thus: 'One of the methodological presuppositions here . . . is that Shakespearean wordplay - the very feature relegated by the subsequent influence of neoclassicism to the rude and deformed as well as ornamental or trivial — provides a way into networks whose linkages expose the very orthodoxies and ideologies the plays themselves often appear simply to rehearse'.230 Mark Stavig's study of Dream and Romeo and Juliet in terms of patterns of metaphor is in the tradition of 'history of ideas' criticism; his general argument about the relationship of nature and society is not unfamiliar, but it is worked out in the context of contemporary concerns: 'Instead of privileging rulers, fathers, and males in general by identifying them with reason and God, Shakespeare relates the structures of the self, love, the family, society, and the cosmos to both the shifting cycles of nature and the longer lasting but still mutable values of hierarchy'.231 The study of sources and analogues has also undergone changes in approach and theoretical orientation. In the first half of the twentieth century interest in the topic seems to have been largely satisfied by Frank Sidgwick's book (See No. 79), but it revived in the 1950s, particularly because of the work of Geoffrey Bullough and Kenneth Muir, prompting a wide-ranging exploration of the play's indebtedness to many literary texts from the classical era to the sixteenth century, and increasingly sophisticated discussion of the nature and significance of that indebtedness.232 The recognition of Ovidian elements, and of mythological reference garnered from other sources, penetrates many types of criticism of the latter twentieth century. Other classical authors, such as Apuleius and Seneca, have been given new prominence in interpreting the play.233 The long-recognized Chaucerian connections have been freshly studied.234 The perceptible influence of Italian Renaissance literature, which so offended Gervinus (No. 37), has been re-examined from various angles.235 'Sources and analogues' have now become 'intertextuality', a usefully inclusive term that allows critics to explore 'complementary intertexts that participate in a multitext dialogue concerning the similarly patterned values that they have in

39

SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

common 236 Other topics reappear in the most recent two decades of Dream's long critical history, but often with a twist of theory, and sociological concern. Alan Brissenden notes that Shakespeare uses dance more abundantly here than in any other play, in order 'to comment on and affect the major pattern of order and disorder in the action'.237 Skiles Howard denies that Dream's dancing 'evokes a cosmic concord to restore order', arguing that in Shakespeare's theatre 'competing cultural assertions were visually articulated in the diverse traditions of dancing', and in Dream the variety of dances allows the audience to understand 'the social construction of rank and gender', so that the 'new dance for gentles and mechanicals is a commercial contract between the artisan of images and those who seek to mend their lives with dreams'.238 The longstanding interest in folklore, 'popular antiquities', or customs, manners, and superstitions is pressed into service in class-conscious studies of popular culture or assimilated to anthropological theory. The fairies, whose origins continued to inspire scholarly researches into the twentieth century as in the work of Minor White Latham and Katharine Briggs, are psychoanalyzed or, in William Empson's extraordinary posthumous publication, treated in terms of Renaissance neoplatonism, astrology and cosmology.239 Astrology is also prominent in a book-length study of a long-favourite topic, the play's occasion, but David Wiles's240 vocabulary and intentions are very contemporary: he seeks 'to place the text within a context of thought, ritual practice and social relations — and of course conventions of theatrical performance' and he sees what he is doing as 'an exercise in defamiliarization, an attempt to break down the process of assimilation that has allowed A Midsummer Night's Dream to become a cornerstone of British culture in the 1990s' (xiv). He argues that Renaissance ideas of time and the cosmos 'did not provide Elizabethans with a single ideology — they did provide a field of discourse' (181). The insistence on a theorized approach has provoked irritation. As early as 1983 Cedric Watts used Bottom to frame his attack on the obtrusive use of various theories in literary criticism, and Brian Vickers's comprehensive denunciation of ill-informed application of theoretical approaches has more recently delighted those of a similar frame of mind.241 Three recent books discussing Dream together with other Shakespearean comedies show a similar restlessness: Stuart Tave insists that comedy 'is not about psychology, or philosophy, or anthropology, or theology. It is not even interdisciplinary', and draws attention to Dream's symmetry in plot, distinctiveness of characters, and 'happy command of the languages they speak at every level of their varied abilities';242 Gunnar Sorelius considers Dream and the other early comedies in the context of their aesthetic, literary and cultural background without reference to the ways in which these topics have been modified by theories adopted from other disciplines;243 John K. Hale believes that the best way to arrive at the 'constitutive pleasure' of the comedies is 'to be eclectic and doctrinally uncommitted'.244 These reactions are somewhat reminiscent of Halliwell's annoyed dislike of nineteenth-century philosophical analysis of the comedies (see above p. 22). On the verge of the twenty-first century it is possible to be dismayed by an intention of treating Dream 'as a site of convergence of various

40

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

and potentially contradictory cultural discourses', or to fear that some readers may take seriously the assertion that 'Critics have been slow to recognise the influence of the Tzotzil Indians on Shakespeare',245 but ultimately one must be grateful to critics such as Louis Montrose, James Calderwood, and a host of others, for the intense engagement with the play that expresses the joy and wonder they find in it. Playgoers, actors, directors, readers in classroom or closet still find A Midsummer Night's Dream endlessly fascinating, and continue to seek to pluck out the heart of its mystery.

NOTES 1 2

3

4 5

Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury Being the Second Part of Wits Commonwealth (London, 1598; facsimile reprint, New York, 1973), fol. 282 (sig. OO2). See Richard Simpson, The School of Shakespeare, 2 vols (London, 1878), II, 88-9; William J. Lawrence, 'Shakespeare from a New Angle', Studies (Dublin), 8 (1919), 450-3; James P. Bednarz, 'Marston's Subversion of Shakespeare and Jonson: Histriomastix and the War of the Theaters', Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 6 (1993), 103-28. Histrio-mastix is in The Plays of John Marston, edited by H[enry] Harvey Wood, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1934-9), III, 247-302. See G.K. Hunter's edition of Antonio's Revenge (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1965), 4.1.277-82 and note, comparing Balurdo's speech with Bottom's at 5.1.276ff. There are other parallels: Nutriche (1.2.31-9) and Balurdo (1.2.125-6) both echo Bottom's repetition of'Methought' (4.1.207-10); Antonio's speech (2.2.120-1) may be a remembrance of Thisbe's (5.1.324-7); cf. Ant., 3.1.187-92 and Dream, 5.1.371-82 (first noted by Lewis Theobald, The Works of Shakespeare, 7 vols (London, 1733), I, 147); cf. Ant., 3.1.198 and Dream, 5.1.302-3; cf. Ant., 3.2.25-9 and Dream, 3.1.91, 5.1.192-3, and 1.2.108; Balurdo's 'very . . . I'll assure you' (3.2.29)) is the same as Bottom's Very . . . I assure you' (1.2.13). C.A. Herpich compares The Malcontent 1.6.42-3 with Dream 1.1.206-7, in The Shakespeare Allusion-Book: A Collection of Allusions to Shakespeare from 1591 to 1700. . . . Originally Compiled by C.M. Ingleby, edited by John Munro, 2 vols (New York, 1909; re-issued by Sir Edmund Chambers, 1932), I, 132. See The Insatiate Countess, edited by Giorgio Melchiori (London, 1984) and cf. 2.1.201-3 and Dream, 1.1.145-9; 2.2.87-8 and Dream, 2.2.103; and, 2.4.29-31 and Dream, 3.2.50-1. Fotjack Drum's Entertainment see The Plays of John Marston, ed. cit., Ill, 175-241, and cf. 'the grim cheekt night' (p. 198, 1. 5) and Bottom's 'O grim-look'd night' (5.1.170); the stychomythia (p. 199) and Dream, 1.1.132-140; Pasquill's last speech of Act II (p. 206) and Hermia's speech when she awakens to find her lover gone (2.2.145-56); Camelia's speech to Ellis beginning 'Come' (p. 211, 11. 7ff.) and Titania's speech to Bottom (4.1.Iff.); Sir Edward's call for entertainment and his asking 'What Gallants . . . can entertain / This pleasing time . . .' (p. 234), and Theseus's similar lines (5.1.32-41, especially 11. 40-1: 'How shall we beguile / The lazy time . . .'). See Edmond Malone (No. 3) for this borrowing. The Shoemakers' Holiday, 1.2.1-7 (The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, edited by Fredson Bowers, 4 vols, Cambridge, 1953-61, I, 30) is from Dream 4.1.Iff. Edith Rickert, in 'Political Propaganda and Satire in A Midsummer Night's Dream', Modem Philology, 21 (1923), 62 and 64, points out that 1.1.47-8 and 5.2.17-18 of Whore are from Dream 1.1.8-9 and 2.1.128-9.

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SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

6 7

8

9

10 11

12

13

14

15

See The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, I, 29-31, and the Malone Society reprint of Wily Beguiled, edited by W.W. Greg (Oxford, 1912). Narcissus was edited from manuscript by Margaret L. Lee (London, 1893) with an introduction which points out its debt to the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude. E.K. Chambers added two more parallels from Dream in Appendix F (p. 163) of his Warwick edition of the play (1897), and there are others: Narcissus, lines 293-4, from Dream, 5.1.204-5 and 345-7; 299, from 5.1.279; 331, from 3.1.84-5; 410-11, from 5.1.196, 198, 275; 413, from 3.2.48; 493, from 3.1.67-9 and 5.1.131; 638, from 3.2.175; 685, from 5.1.188, 190; and the verse form and tone of 305-16 is from 5.1.275-87, 295-306, and 324-47. See The Works ofBenJonson with Notes . . . by William Giffbrd [and Peter Whalley], edited by Francis Cunningham, 3 vols (London, 1871), I, 197 note. Quotations are from Ben Jonson, edited by C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols (Oxford, 1925-52). See Michael Shapiro, 'The Casting of Flute: Planes of Illusion in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Bartholomew Fair, in The Elizabethan Theatre XIII, edited by A.L. Magnusson and C.E. McGee (Toronto, 1994), pp. 147-72; and John G. Sweeney III, Jonson and the Psychology of Public Theater (Princeton, 1985), chapter six. Another parallel between the two plays is the humorous use of the proverb 'A Flea-bitten horse never tires' (Dream, 3.1.96, and 102; Bartholomew Fair, 4.4.16-17). First observed by Karl Elze (No. 46 below, note 1). Bussy D'Ambois, edited by Maurice Evans (London, 1965). The same expression is used in John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1614; printed 1623), edited by Elizabeth M. Brennan (London, 1965), 3.1.85, and in Massinger's Maid of Honour (1621; printed 1632), 1.1.226, in The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, edited by Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson, 5 vols (Oxford, 1976), I, 128. Pointed out by W. C. Jourdain (fl. 1860) in his manuscript notes in the Variorum edition of 1821 in the Folger Shakespeare Library, copy 2, volume 1. One other possible echo is where Monsieur says 'Stay but awhile here and I'll send to thee' (1.1.118), which is like Bottom's command: 'Stay thou but here a while, | And by and by I will to thee appear' (3.1.86-7). See the notes on pp. 81, 136, and 141 in The Isle of Gulls, edited by Raymond S. Burns (New York, 1980). Reference to The Revenger's Tragedy is to the edition with Cyril Tourneur on the title-page, edited by Lawrence J. Ross (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1966), p. 57; for a discussion of authorship see pp. xiii-xix, especially p. xviii where the editor says he 'can state with some confidence that he does not know who wrote The Revenger's Tragedy'. A strong argument for Middleton's authorship is in David J. Lake's The Canon of Thomas Middleton's Plays (London, 1975), pp. 136-62, 257-69. See The Fleire in W. Bang, Materialien zur Kunde des «lteren Englischen Dramas (Louvain, 1912; reprinted Vaduz, 1963), 2.1.434-5, p. 30, and The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, I, 174. First noted by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Memoranda on the Midsummer Night's Dream (Brighton, 1879), p. 35. Another parallel is at 2.1.7-9 of The Fleire: 'momentarie sportes, which like to lightning appeares, and vanisheth ere one can say tis come:' (pp. 18-19) which echoes Dream at 1.1.143-8. Paul Yachnin, 'The Politics of Theatrical Mirth: A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Mad World, My Masters, and Measure for Measure', Shakespeare Quarterly, 43 (1992), 51-66. Additional parallels may be found in Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters, edited by Standish Henning (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1965), 1.2.26, 2.1.6, 3.2.191-2, 3.2.200, and 5.2.73, and Dream, 2.2.4, 3.1.179, 3.1.42-3, 5.1.290, and 1.1.21.

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16 Daniel M. McKeithan, The Debt To Shakespeare In The Beaumont And Fletcher Plays (Austin, 1938; reprinted New York, 1970), pp. 219, 218: see pp. 86-100 for detailed analysis. 17 See McKeithan, pp. 125-6, 180-1, 170, and 185-6. 18 Cristina Malcolmson, '"As Tame as the Ladies": Politics and Gender in The Changeling'', English Literary Renaissance, 20 (1990), 320-39: the quotation is from p. 338. References to The Changeling are to the edition of N.W. Bawcutt (London, 1958; revised 1961). Compare also 1.1.71-6 with Dream, 1.1.46, 234-7; 3.3.79-81 with 2.1.129, 5.1.384, 2.1.7; 3.3.120-1 with 1.1.233; 3.3.130 with 2.1.159; 3.3.216-17 with 2.1.195-7; 4.3.59-60 with 1.2.75 and 79-80 (this last one observed by Malcolmson, p. 328). 19 The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, ed. cit.: The Fatal Dowry (1619), 2.2.325 (I, 45), from Dream, 3.2.208, 212; The Duke of Milan (1621), 2.1.155-75,183-4, 199 (I, 242-3), from Dream, 3.2.284-326 (noted in The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, I, 296-7); The Maid of Honour (1621), 1.2.19-21 (I, 131) and 1.2.36-9 (I, 131), from Dream, 1.2.40-1 and 2.1.153-4; The Renegado (1624), 2.6.28-9 (II, 47) and 3.3.74 (II, 57), from Dream, 4.2.29-30 and 1.1.80-1; The Parliament of Love (1624), 2.2.86 (II, 122) and 3.2.20-1 (II, 134), from Dream, 1.2.9-10 and 3.2.131-2; The Emperor of the East (1631), 1.11.67-72 (III, 411) and 3.3.21 (III, 448), from Dream, 2.1.161-2, 2.2.2; The Guardian (1633), 1.1.302-8 (IV, 126), 5.2.33-4 and 38-9 (IV, 183), from Dream, 4.1.106-25, 2.1.204-5 and 2.2.64-5. 20 See The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Thomas Randolph, edited by W.C. Hazlitt, 2 vols (London, 1875), I, 11. See The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, I, 379 for Ford, and II, 355-6 for Shirley. 21 Oedipus, 1.1.1-18, from Dream, 2.1.106-14: first noted by E.H. Seymour, Remarks . . . upon the Plays of Shakespeare, 2 vols (London, 1805; reprinted New York,1976), I, 44); Theodosius, 1.1.245-9 from Dream, 4.1.113-22: first noted by Edmond Malone, The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, 10 vols (London, 1790), II, 514-15): see The Works of Nathaniel Lee, edited by Thomas B. Stroup and Arthur L. Cooke, 2 vols (New Brunswick, N. J., 1954), I, 379 and II, 247; for Oedipus in Dryden, see Dryden, Works, 20 vols (Berkeley, California, 1954-94), XIII (1984), edited by M.E. Novak, p. 120. Tate's Cuckolds-Haven: or, An Alderman No Conjurer. A Farce (London, 1685), p. 16, from Dream, 1.2.31-9 and 70-3: first noted byj. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Memoranda on the Midsummer Night's Dream (Brighton, 1879), p. 11; see also The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, II, 316. The Folly of Priestcraft (London, 1690), pp.16-17: first noted by George W. Stone, Jr., 1A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Hands of Garrick and Colman', PMLA 54 (1939), 467. 22 Donne, The Elegies and The Songs and Sonnets, edited by Helen Gardner (Oxford, 1965), p. 7, 11. 27-8, and p. 123 note. See her introduction, pp. xxxi-xxxiii, for the date of composition. 23 Cf. Donne's verse letter 'To the Countess of Bedford': 'we | May in your through-shine front your hearts thoughts see' (The Satires, Epigrams and Verse Letters, edited by W. Milgate, Oxford, 1967, p. 101, 11. 26-7, glossing 'through-shine front' as 'transparent countenance') and Lysander's speech, 'Transparent Helena, nature shows art, | That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart' (2.2.104-5); and 'A Litanie': 'that faire blessed Mother-maid' (The Divine Poems, edited by Helen Gardner, Oxford, 1952, p. 18, 1. 37) and Oberon's description of the sun rising 'with fair blessed beams' (3.2.392). 24 Noted by Alan Brissenden, Notes and Queries, N. S., 35 (1988), 466-7. 25 W[illiam] P[ercy], The Faery Pastorall or Forrest of Elves, edited by J[oseph] Haslewood (London, 1824), p. 170. E.K. Chambers claims that Percy shows 'marked traces' of

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Dream (Warwick edition, 1897, p. 16), but the name of Oberon and the one parallel passage are the only similarities. 26 H.B. Sprague, in his edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Boston, 1896), compares Chapman's 'withring out' (Iliad, 4.528) and Theseus's 'withering out' (1.1.6), and in Notes and Queries, N. S., 5 (1958), p. 524, Charles R. Forker traces 'rude Mechanicals' (Odyssey, 6.422) to 3.2.9; compare also Odyssey 5.251, 5.254, 5.419, and 6.431 with Dream 3.2.3, 2.1.196-7,3.2.393, and 1.1.118: references are to Chapman's Homer, edited by Allardyce Nicoll, 2 vols (New York, 1956). 27 Barten Holyday, Aulus Persius Flaccus his Satires Translated into English (Oxford, 1616), sig. C5v. See A Feastfor Wormes in A.B. Grosart's edition of Quarles's Works, 3 vols (London, 1880-1), II, 10.99 and II, 11.221 and compare Dream 5.1.74 and 2.1.86. J.O. Halliwell was the first to observe the borrowing in the Emblemes in his Works of Shakespeare, 16 vols (London, 1853-65), V, 218.

28

The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, I, 291.

29 The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, I, 458; the entire poem is reprinted, I, 455-7. 30 L.C. Martin's edition of The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick (Oxford, 1956; corrected reprint 1963) compares 156.4.3-4 and 247.4.1-2 with Shakespeare's 3.2.443; compare also 149.1.1-4 with 4.1.139-40; 217.1.1, 7, and 9-10 with 3.1.170, 2.2.12-14, and 5.1.421. 31 Complete Poems and Major Prose, edited by Merritt Y. Hughes (New York, 1957). In the passage there are phrases from 2.1.141, 83-4, and 103-4. Many parallels are noted by Milton's editors from Thomas Warton, Poems upon Several Occasions by John Milton (London, 1785) on: see especially A.W. Verity, The Cambridge Milton for Schools, 10 vols (Cambridge, 1891-6), and also the Appendix 'Milton and A Midsummer-night's Dream1 in his edition of the play (Cambridge, 1893) pp. 145-8, and A.S.P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush, A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton: the Minor English Poems (London, 1972), II, parts 1, 2, and 3, passim. John W. Hales has a note on the play and Milton's 'L'Allegro' and 'II Penseroso' in The Athenaeum, August 18, 1877, pp. 211-12, and see also Alwin Thaler, 'The Shakespearean Element in Milton', PMLA, 40 (1925), 676-91. Paul Stevens, Imagination and the Presence of Shakespeare in Paradise Lost (Madison, Wisconsin, 1985) has much on the subject. 32 The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, I, 164. 33 See J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (Brighton, 1881), 143-4. 34 J.C. Maxwell, Notes and Queries, N.S., 3 (1956), 236, citing C.V. Wedgwood, The King's Peace (London, 1955), p. 270. 35 The English Parnassus: or, A Helpe to English Poesie (London, 1657; facsimile Menston, 1972). There are over 650 citations from Shakespeare. See Pvichard F. Kennedy, 'Milton in Poole's Parnassus', Notes and Queries, N.S., 45 (1998), 52.

36 See The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, II, 127 and 166. 37

See The Rehearsal Transpros'd and The Rehearsal Transpros'd: the Second Part, edited by D.I.B. Smith (Oxford, 1971), p. 150. Three literary historians also noticed Dream in the late seventeenth century. William Winstanley, in his enlarged Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687; first published in 1684) praised Shakespeare's 'Dramatick Poetry, especially in the Comick part' and listed Dream among his plays (pp. 131-2). In An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691), Gerard Langbaine mentions the farce Bottom the Weaver, and points out the indebtedness to Dream of James Shirley's Triumph of Beauty (1646), pp. 460 and 485. Charles Gildon cited approvingly Titania's speech at 3.1.164-74 in his answer to Thomas Rymer's attack on Shakespeare in his Miscellaneous Letters (1694), quoted in Vickers, II, 83.

44

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38

39 40

41

42 43

44

45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52

See E.K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols (Oxford, 1930), I, 362, II, 329 and 348-52; and Jay L. Halio, 'The Staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1595-1895', in Shakespeare's Universe: Renaissance Ideas and Conventions. Essays in Honour of W. R. Elton, edited by John M. Mucciolo (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 158-9. For William Tawyer, see J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (fifth edition, London, 1885), p. 500: this information - that Tawyer was 'Mr. [John] Heminges man' and therefore a member of Shakespeare's company - is not in the earlier editions. Ernest Brennecke gives a detailed introduction and a translation of Peter Squenz in his Shakespeare in Germany 1590-1700 (Chicago, 1964). The 1673 version is of particular interest because the list of characters suggests various possibilities about the doubling of roles: see Gary Jay Williams, Our Moonlight Revels: A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Theatre, (Iowa City, 1997), p. 33. See Halio, 'Staging'; Jack J. Jorgens, 'Studies in the criticism and stage history of A Midsummer Night's Dream' (Ph.d. dissertation, New York University, 1970), pp. 80-278, which covers from 1600 to 1800. Lampe's version with the musical score has been edited by Curtis Price and Stanley Sadie with an introduction by Roger Fiske (London, 1988), and recorded on Hyperion CD A66759 (1995). The Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols (London, 1970-83), III, 208. Williams, Our Moonlight Revels, p. 45; he has a detailed analysis, pp. 41-60. Winton Dean has this apposite comment on Purcell's music: 'Although Purcell set none of Shakespeare's words, he clearly possessed that instinct for the fresh innocence of fairyland that was to be reborn in Mendelssohn and Britten' ('Shakespeare and Opera', in Shakespeare in Music, edited by Phyllis Hartnoll [London, 1964], p. 115). See also Curtis Alexander Price, Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge, 1984), 320-57. Both Williams and Price favour Thomas Betterton as the adapter, rather than Elkanah Settle. Vickers has illustrative excerpts, I, 424-40. See George C.D. Odell, Shakespeare — From Betterton to Irving, 2 vols (New York, 1920; reprinted 1963), I, 358-9, and 376; and George W. Stone, Jr., 'A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Hands of Garrick and Colman', PMLA 54 (1939), 467-82. Peter Holland's essay '"A Midsummer Night's Dream", 1660-1800: Culture and the Canon', in Le Forme del Teatro, edited by Paola Faini and Viola Papetti (Rome, 1994) deals with Garrick and Colman, and also with other authors, adapters, and artists of the period. Dryden, Works, XII (1994), edited by Vinton A. Dearing, pp. 94-5. The Works of Mr. William Shakespeare, 6 vols (London, 1709), I, xxiii. Ibid., I, xxv-xxvi. Gildon (1710), pp. 313-20. Apparently attempting to profit from the popularity of Rowe's six-volume Works of Shakespeare published by Jacob Tonson, which had two editions in 1709, the printers E. Curll and E. Sanger issued a spurious 'Volume the Seventh' of the Works in 1710 containing Shakespeare's poems and two essays by Gildon, one on the 'Progress of the Stage in Greece, Rome and England' (pp. i-lxvii), and 'Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare' (pp. 257-472). These 'Remarks' constituted the first critical assessment of most of Shakespeare's plays in one essay. Gildon (1710), pp. 264-5. Gildon (1710), pp. 319-20. 1 July 1712, No. 419, in Vickers, II, 280. John Hughes, The Works of Mr. Edmund Spenser, 6 vols (London, 1715), 'Remarks on the Fairy Queen', I, Ixiv-lxv.

45

SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

53 Warburton seems to be echoing Rowe (p. 10 above) in his comment on the play (quoted by Elizabeth Griffith, No. 1 below). The author of An Examen of the New Comedy, Call'A The Suspicious Husband (London, 1747) exclaims, ' ... he has leapt their Boundaries, and boldly set his Imagination at Liberty! he has permitted her to soar . . .'. Then he quotes 5.1.12-17, 'The poet's eye ... " (pp. 22-3); also quoted in Vickers, III, 260-1. Seward, in his preface to his edition of The Works of Mr Francis Beaumont and Mr John Fletcher, 10 vols (London, 1750), says Beaumont and Fletcher fell short of Shakespeare in magic and fairy machinery because he had a 'low education' and believed in 'these Dreams of Superstition' so that 'ev'n Theseus is not attended by his own deities, Minerva, Venus, the Fauns, Satyrs, &c. but by Oberon and his Fairies:' (I, li-lii); also quoted in Vickers, III, 386-7). 54 Joseph Warton, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (London, 1756), quoted in Vickers, IV, 264. 55 George Colman, 'Critical Reflections on the Old English Dramatic Writers', in The Dramatic Works of Philip Massinger, edited by Thomas Coxeter, 4 vols (London, 1759; 1761), I, 7-8. 56 The Companion to the Play-House, or an Historical Account of all the Dramatic Writers and their Works . . . , 2 vols (London, 1764), I, sig. O3r. There was another edition in 1812. 57 Barclay, An Examination of Mr. Kenrick's Review of Mr. Johnson's Edition of Shakespeare (London, 1766), pp. 14-15; also quoted in Vickers, V, 234. 58 Elizabeth Robinson Montagu, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare (London, 1769), pp. 137-9; partly quoted in Vickers, V, 335. 59 William DufF, Critical Observations on the Writings of the Most Celebrated Original Geniuses in Poetry (London, 1770), pp. 142-5, 162-3; the first part also quoted in Vickers, V, 368-9. 60 From A Midsummer Night's Dream, a comedy by Shakespeare. An introduction, and notes critical and illustrative, are added, by the authors of the Dramatic Censor [i.e. Francis Gendeman]. London: Printed for John Bell, no date (1774), pp. 137, 150, 179, and 200. 61 Gerard, An Essay on Genius (1774), edited by Bernhard Fabian (Munich, 1966), pp. 78-80; quoted in Vickers, VI, 113-14. 62 Gendeman, ed. cit., pp. 174 and 175. 63 Gildon(1710),p. 316. 64 Gildon (1710), p. 425. It is curious that the phrase 'heap of Rubbish' was used earlier by Dryden (1679) of Troilus and Cressida, and by Edward Ravenscroft (1687) of Titus Andronicus: see Vickers, I, 250 and 239. 65 Rowe, Works (1709), I, xx-xxi, xxiv, and xxxv; Pope, Works (1723-5), I, xxiii. Later Johnson said in his proposal for an edition of Shakespeare (1756) that 'The observation of faults and beauties is one of the duties of an annotator', but he criticises Pope and Warburton and says this observation should be limited to beauties in 'obscure passages' (Vickers, IV, 272-3). Holland comments on Pope's index in the essay cited in note 44 above, pp. 223-5. 66 Gildon (1710), pp. 316-20. 67 The Complete Art of Poetry, 2 vols (London, 1718; reprinted New York, 1970), I, 304-69; the quotations are from pp. 305 and 304. Preceding this work of Gildon was Edward Bysshe's The Art of English Poetry (London, 1702; nine editions by 1762), where, after two sections on writing poetry, he has a 436 page 'Collection' of exemplary excerpts from English poets, mostly from Dryden. He quotes Shakespeare infrequently because his language is 'now become so antiquated and obsolete' (Preface, sigs. F4v-F5, 1705

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68 69 70

71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84

enlarged edition), but he does cite 33 lines from Dream, placing it among the top six most quoted plays. See the facsimile reprint of the 1705 edition (New York, 1971), and the first part of the 1708 edition, 'Rules for Making English Verse,' with a helpful introduction by A. Dwight Culler (Los Angeles, 1953). Gildon, The Complete Art of Poetry, I, 316-22 for Dream, 308-14 for Measure for Measure, and 322-6 for The Merchant of Venice. Pope, Works (1723-5), I, xxiii. William Dodd, The Beauties of Shakespeare, 2 vols (London, 1752; reprinted London, 1971). The distinctive wording of some headings is the same in both Dodd and Pope: for example, from Hamlet, 'Immoderate Grief discommended' (1.2.87-106), and 'Providence directs our Actions' (5.2.9-11), in Dodd, I, 216-17, 257; and in Pope, VI, 4I2v, 4Klv; and from The Merchant of Venice, 'Fruition more languid than Expectation' (2.6.5-19), 'Honour ought to be conferred on Merit only' (2.9.37-49), 'Speculation more easy than Practice' (1.2.12-21), 'Lover, successful, [compared] to a Conqueror' (3.2.141-6), 'his [i.e. a lover's] thoughts, [compared] to the inarticulate Joys of a Crowd' (3.2.177-83), in Dodd, I, 62, 64, 60, 67-8, 68; and in Pope, VI, 4I2v, 4Klr, 4Klv, 4Nlv (two). See William Jaggard, Shakespeare Bibliography (London, 1911; reprinted Folkestone and London, 1971), pp. 562-3 for Kearsley, and pp. 500-1, 503, 506-7 for Blair's editions from 1753 on. Gentleman, ed. tit., p. 137. Theobald, Works, (1733), I, iii. From a letter to R. Arbuthnot dated 29 March 1762, in Sir W. Forbes, An Account of the Life and Writings of Dr. James Beattie, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1807), I, 41. See the commentary on 1.2.1, 1.2.96, and 3.1.1 in The Plays of William Shakespeare, edited by Samuel Johnson, 8 vols (London, 1765), I, 100, 103, and 126. Warburton, The Works of Shakespeare, 8 vols (London, 1747), I, 110; 111; 154; 113-15; 97-8. Johnson, Plays, (London, 1765), I, 149. This comment is in the Appendix, VIII, sig. 2H7v, of 1765, and incorporated in the note at the end of the text in Johnson and Steevens Plays (1773), III, 107, where it is slightly emended, and whence it is here given. One of the most important editions textually was that of Edward Capell, 10 vols (London, 1767-8): his commentary was published separately in three volumes (London, 1779-83) as Notes and Various Readings with material on Dream in II, 99-118. Gentleman, ed.cit., pp. 162 and 156. Gildon (1710), p. 315. Seward, op. tit. in note 53 above, I, Iii, and Johnson, Plays (1765), I, xxi. Anonymous [Edward Taylor], Cursory Remarks on Tragedy, on Shakespeare, etc. (London, 1774), p. 99; on the author's identity see Vickers, VI, 124. For Christopher Smart, see Vickers, IV, 204. John Upton, Critical Observations on Shakespeare (London, 1746; revised 1748); see Vickers III, 290-323, with comments on Dream on pp. 309, 311, 319. Zachary Grey, Critical, Historical and Explanatory Notes on Shakespeare . . ., 2 vols (London, 1754); see Vickers, IV, 147-55, with a note on Dream on pp. 150-1. Thomas Tyrwhitt, Observations and Conjectures upon some Passages of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1766); see Vickers, V, 238-43, who proves that the fifty-page pamphlet was actually published in 1765. Benjamin Heath, A Revisal of Shakespeare's Text, Wherein the Alterations introduced into it by the more modem Editors and Critics, are particularly considered (London, 1765); see Vickers,

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SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL TRADITION

85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93

94

95

96 97

98

IV, 550-64, with notes on Dream on pp. 553-5. William Kenrick, A Review of Doctor Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare: in which the Ignorance, or Inattention, of that Editor is exposed, and the Poet defended from the Persecution of his Commentators (London, 1765); see Vickers, V, 200-11, with a note on Dream on p. 202. Shakespeare Commentaries (London, 1863), p. 23. Gentleman, ed. cit., pp. 140-1. See Marcia Allentuck, 'Sir Thomas Hanmer instructs Francis Hayman: an Editor's Notes to his Illustrator (1744)', Shakespeare Quarterly, 27 (1976), 288-315. Drake (No. 9), Maine (No. 28), and Beerbohm (No. 72) provide some further comment; among modern studies are those by W. Moelwyn Merchant (see p. 59 and note 208); Winifred H. Friedman, Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery (New York, 1976); Michael R. Booth, Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850-1910 (London, 1981), especially pp. 34-9; Kenneth Garlick, 'Illustrations to A Midsummer Night's Dream before 1920', Shakespeare Survey, 37 (1984), 41-53; Barbara Arnett Melchiori, 'Undercurrents in Victorian Illustrations of Shakespeare', Images of Shakespeare: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the International Shakespeare Association, 1986, edited by Werner Habicht et al. (Newark, 1988), pp. 120-8. See Jeremy Maas et al., Victorian Fairy Painting, edited by Jane Martineau (London, 1997). Gentleman, ed. cit., p.137, and see above, pp. 14, 17. 'Letter to Richard Bentley, Feb. 23, 1755', The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford, edited by Mrs Paget Toynbee, 16 vols (Oxford, 1903-5), III, 288. 'Critical Remarks on the Late Editions of Shakespeare's Plays', [subscribed 'Lucius'], The Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany, 4 (1786), 361. Cf. Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (Cambridge, 1935), and John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination (Boston, 1927). Of their associates, Leigh Hunt and Charles Cowden Clarke are represented by selections published after what is commonly considered the Romantic period (see Nos. 24 and 38). Charles and Mary Lamb have only slight comments directly on Dream, apart from the prose tale. Quoted by Caroline Spurgeon, Keats's Shakespeare (London, 1928), p. 52. See also R.S. White, Keats as a Reader of Shakespeare (Norman, Oklahoma, 1987), especially pp. 85-8, 102-8. Memorials of Shakespeare, or, Sketches of his Character and Genius, by Various Writers, now First Collected: with a Prefatory and Concluding Essay, and Notes (London, 1828), p. 92n. Memorials, p. 79; see also p. 86n. T.M. Raysor suggests that Coleridge's sentences on unity are based on Schlegel (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, edited by T.M. Raysor, 2 vols (London, 1960), II, 216n), but Gervinus questions which of Schlegel and Coleridge has priority (Commentaries, 1863, p. 22). For extensive bibliographies on fairy beliefs see Katharine M. Briggs, The Anatomy of Puck (London, 1959) and The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (London, 1967). Among nineteenth-century commentators are: Sir Walter Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 2 vols (Kelso, 1802); J.O. Halliwell, Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of A Midsummer Night's Dream (London, 1845); William Thorns, 'The folk-lore of Shakespeare', The Athenaeum (4 September-11 December, 1847), Nos. 1036-41,1043,1045,1050; William Bell, Shakespeare's Puck and his folkslore, 3 vols (London, 1852-64); T.F. Thiselton Dyer, Folk-lore of Shakespeare (London, 1883); Alfred Nutt, The Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare (London, 1900).

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99 'Theatrical Examiner. No. 223. Covent-Garden', The Examiner, No. 421 (January 21, 1816), 44; reprinted in A View of the English Stage (1818), The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, edited by P.P. Howe, 21 vols (London, 1930-4), V, 274-7. 100 The parallel with Sly is also suggested in an anonymous review of Drake's Memorials of Shakespeare (1828), in The American Quarterly Review, 6 (1829), 48. 101 Knight's Studies of Shakespeare (London, 1849), Book XI 'Shakespeare's Critics', ranges from Milton to Coleridge, the last being the most highly praised. 102 Keats emphatically scribbled out Johnson's comment on Dream: see Spurgeon, Keats's Shakespeare, pp. 29-30. 103 The review deals with fourteen works of Shakespearean scholarship and criticism published between 1823 and 1840; three are in German, not in English translation, including Ulrici (Halle, 1839; see No. 26). 104 The Times, 12 June 1841, p. 8. 105 Chance Newton, Cues and Curtain Calls (London, 1927), pp. 149-50. 106 Printed by Thomas Birch in the life of Shakespeare he contributed to the translation of Pierre Bayle's A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, 10 vols (London, 1734-41), IX, 191, note M; reprinted in Vickers, III, 89-90. Warburton's own statement of his opinion appeared in the notes to the play in Works (1747), I, 113-15; it was repeated in successive variorum editions to 1821. Boaden's alternate interpretation is put forward in On the Sonnets of Shakespeare (London, 1837), pp. 10-15. H.H. Furness lengthily rehearses the argument in his variorum edition (Philadelphia, 1895), pp. 75-91; it is upon his summary that the most recent enquirer into the matter largely depends (David Wiles, Shakespeare's Almanac, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 167-70). 107 See note 5 to White, No. 33 below. 108 Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. The First Quarto, 1600: A Fac-simile in Photo-lithography, by William Griggs, with introduction by J.W. Ebsworth (London, 1880), pp. xvii-xviii; Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. The Second Quarto, 1600: A Fac-simile in Photo-lithography, by William Griggs, with introduction by J.W. Ebsworth (London, 1880), p. xxii. 109 Harley Granville Barker shared White's objections. For his 1914 production he abandoned Mendelssohn, and in his preface to the edition for The Players' Shakespeare (London, 1924) wrote: 'For long, Mendelssohn's music to the play, charming in itself, seemed to have acquired a prescriptive right to be used. But, apart from the question of intrinsic suitability, it involves a quite unallowable treatment of the text; involves, besides, the practical suppression of the lyrics' (vol 4, p. xx; reprinted in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, edited by Edward M. Moore [Princeton, 1974], p. 105.) In 1925 Herbert Farjeon strenuously objected to cutting Shakespeare's lines to make way for Mendelssohn's music ('A Midsummer Night's Dream: Mr Dean's Mendelssohn season (1925)', The Shakespearean Scene: Dramatic Criticisms (London, 1949], pp. 39-42). Later in the century Mendelssohn's music was used for parodic or ironic effect (see J.L. Styan, The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century [Cambridge, 1977], pp. 185,226). 110 The Voices of A Midsummer Night's Dream', Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 34 (1992), 218-38. 111 Susan May lists the work as by '[O'Connell]', on the basis of an ms. notation, possibly made by Furness, in the copy belonging to the University of Pennsylvania's Furness Library ('A Survey of the Criticism of A Midsummer Night's Dream', Ph. D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1974, p. xcv; private correspondence). 112 The Columbus of Literature: or, Bacon's New World of Sciences (Chicago, 1892), p. 13;

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113 114

115

116

117

118

119

120 121

122 123 124 125 126

cf. William Empson's posthumous 'The spirits of the Dream', Essays on Renaissance Literature. Volume Two: The Drama, edited by John Haffenden (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 170-248. Memoranda on the Midsummer Night's Dream, A.D. 1879 and A.D. 1855 (Brighton, 1879), p. 13. For student editions of Dream see, for example, Herbert A. Evans (ed.), The University Shakespeare (London, 1887); K. Deighton (ed.), Macmillan's English Classics (London, 1891); A.W. Verity (ed.), The Pitt Press Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1893). For other references to the masque elements of the play see the index. An early dissenting voice was Dr Finkenbrink, who argues against seeing Dream as a masque or occasional play in his pamphlet An Essay on the Date, Plot, and Sources of Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream:' Part I. On the Date (Miilheim a.d.Ruhr, 1884). Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York, 1939); Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (New York, 1953); Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (London, 1958). 'On Metrical Tests as Applied to Dramatic Poetry: Part I. Shakespeare', The New Shakespeare Society Transactions 1874, Series I, nos. 1-2 (London, 1874; reprinted Vaduz, 1965), p. 11. 'Some of Shakespeare's Metaphors, and his Use of them in the Comedies', The New Shakespeare Society's Transactions 1887-92, Series I, nos. 11-14 (London, 1892; reprinted Vaduz, 1965), p. 403. The Oxford and Cambridge Edition (London, 1902), pp. x-xi, 86; American editions were similar: see for example The New Hudson Shakespeare, edited by Henry Norman Hudson, revised by Ebenezer Charlton Black (Boston, 1908), p. xxxi. See for example Fleay, 'On metrical tests', and in the same volume of The New Shakespeare Society Transactions (pp. 442-64), John K. Ingram, 'On the Weak Endings of Shakespeare, with Some Account of the History of the Verse-tests in General'. The 'General Preface' to The Warwick Shakespeare (edited by E.K. Chambers, London, 1897) claims to emphasize the 'literary aspect' of the plays, rather than treating them 'merely as material for the study of philology or grammar', but the lengthy 'Essay on Metre' (pp. 167-83) is dryly technical, with little effort to explore dramatic effects. For the sixth edition of 1900 of The Pitt Press Shakespeare, A.W. Verity added a similar condensed 'Hints on Metre' (155-65); Stanley Wood's appended sections on grammar and prosody (pp. 88-107) confess their indebtedness to E.A. Abbott (A Shakespearean Grammar, London, 1869) and are also technical. When considerations of versification and diction are moved to the introduction, more effort is devoted to analyzing the effects of the observed facts, as in The New Hudson Shakespeare (1908), pp. xxxiv-xli. See above, p. 8 and note 59. Rhyming Dictionary for the Use of Young Poets: with an Essay on English Versification, and Explanatory Observations on the Selection and the Use of the Rhymes (Edinburgh, [1852]), pp. 20-1. An Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare (Boston, 1889), pp. 69-70. Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare, edited by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, 3 vols (London, [1864-8]), I, 324. See No. 43; the first two phrases are from the Preface to the volume. Shakespeare's Garden of Girls (London, 1885), pp. 316, 313. In his edition Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream As You Like It The Tempest (Oxford, 1910), p. xix.

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127 Elvina Mary Corbould, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream , in Louise Rossi and E. M. Corbould, Side-Lights on Shakespeare (London, 1897), p. 36. 128 The Shakespearean Tempest (London, 1932), p. 161; see also the Introduction above, pp. 30-1. 129 An Examen of the New Comedy, Call'd The Suspicious Husband (London, 1747), p. 22. 130 See William L. Pressly, A Catalogue of Paintings in the Folger Shakespeare Library (New Haven, 1993), Frontispiece and p. 12. 131 Thomas Babington Macaulay, 'Milton', The Edinburgh Review or Critical Journal, 42 (1825), 308. 132 An Essay upon the Ghost-Belief of Shakespeare (London, 1851), p. 29. The whole passage (pp. 27-9) is quoted (not entirely accurately) by Furness in his commentary on Theseus's speech in the Variorum edition (1895), p. 200. 133 In his edition of Dream (Oxford, 1994), p. 55. 134 Histoire de la litterature anglaise, 4 vols (Paris, 1863-4), II, 184. 135 See, for example, Moyse (No. 54); the editions of H.H. Furness (1895), pp. 259-64; Stanley Wells (London, 1967), pp. 12-14; Harold F. Brooks (London, 1979), pp. liii-lvii; R.A. Foakes (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 2-4; Peter Holland (Oxford, 1994), pp. 111-12; Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York, 1997), p. 805. The question is also reviewed by Williams in 'Appendix: Wedding Studies', in Our Moonlight Revels, pp. 263-4. 136 Most useful for tracing the history of criticism of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the twentieth century are: John Russell Brown, 'The Interpretation of Shakespeare's Comedies: 1900-1953', Shakespeare Survey, 8 (1955), 1-13; DJ. Palmer, 'The Early Comedies', in Shakespeare: Select Bibliographical Guides, edited by Stanley Wells (London, 1973), pp. 56-9, 64-6, not substantially altered in the new edition Shakespeare: A Bibliographical Guide (Oxford, 1990), pp. 95-7, 99-102; Antony W. Price (ed.), A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Selection of Critical Essays, Casebook Series (London, 1983); R.S. White, 'Criticism of the Comedies up to The Merchant of Venice: 1953-82', Shakespeare Survey, 37 (1984), 1-11; D. Allen Carroll and Gary Jay Williams, A Midsummer Night's Dream: An Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1986); Clifford Chalmers Huffman (ed.), Love's Labor's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Merchant of Venice: An Annotated Bibliography of Shakespeare Studies 1888-1994 (Binghampton, NY, 1995); Richard Dutton (ed.), A Midsummer Night's Dream: Contemporary Critical Essays, New Casebooks (London, 1996). 137 In A Companion to Shakespeare Studies, edited by Harley Granville Barker and G.B. Harrison (Cambridge, 1934), J. Isaacs devotes five pages to criticism 'From Coleridge to the Present Day' and nineteen to 'Shakespearean Scholarship'; his only hesitation is whether studies of imagery should be classified as scholarship or aesthetics (320). Successive reprintings of his work through 1960 brought no revision in emphasis or attitudes. In the most recent incarnation of this handbook, The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies (edited by Stanley Wells, Cambridge, 1986), five different scholars contribute essays covering nineteenth- and twentieth-century criticism and 'new critical approaches'. A similar pattern of expansion and differentiation is seen in successive editions from 1961 to 1997 of the widely used The Complete Works of Shakespeare published by Scott, Foresman and Co. (Glenview, Illinois; edited by Hardin Craig, then Craig and David Bevington, then Bevington). The process is accelerating: 23 years after the first edition of the respected Riverside edition (Boston, 1974), G. Blakemore Evans is impelled by his belief that 'a sea change has taken place in critical approaches' to add a lengthy 'interpretive essay' on twentieth-century criticism by Heather Dubrow (Second Edition, Boston, 1997, p. vii).

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138 139 140 141 142

143

144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151

152

153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164

All page references are to the volume of collected essays (London, 1938). 'Shakespeare's Iterative Imagery', Proceedings of the British Academy, 17 (1931), 151. Shakespeare's Way: A Psychological Study (London, 1930), p. 80. The Approach to Shakespeare (Oxford, 1930), pp. 60-1. The Women in Shakespeare's Plays: A Critical Study from the Dramatic and the Psychological Points Of View and in Relation to the Development of Shakespeare's Art (Garden City, NY, 1924), pp. 28-30. The Court Masque: A Study in the Relationship between Poetry & the Revels (Cambridge, 1927). See also M.C. Bradbrook, Elizabethan Stage Conditions (Cambridge, 1932; reprinted 1968), p. 42; Donald A. Stauffer, Shakespeare's World of Images (New York, 1949; reprinted Bloomington, 1966), p. 50; C.L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton, 1959), pp. 128-9; G.K. Hunter, Shakespeare: The Later Comedies (London, 1962), p. 8. M.R. Ridley, William Shakespeare: A Commentary (London, 1936), p. 36. G.B. Harrison (ed.), Shakespeare: Major Plays and the Sonnets (New York, 1948), p. 273. Shakespeare's Life and Art (London, 1939), pp. 103, 106. The Art and Life of William Shakespeare (New York, 1940), p. 232. Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition (London, 1949), p. 109. Comedy (New York and London, 1949), p. 24. Shakespeare Revealed, edited by Hugh Kingsmill (London, [1948]), pp. 22-9. Stauffer, Shakespeare's World, p. 50. 1949 also saw the publication of Northrop Frye's 'The Argument of Comedy' with its suggestive comments on the green world (in English Institute Essays 1948, edited by D.A. Robertson [New York, 1949], pp. 58-73), though Frye's views of A Midsummer Night's Dream are not fully set out until A Natural Perspective (New York, 1965). Bradbrook, Elizabethan Stage, pp. 79-80; see also John Russell Brown in 1955 (op. cit. in note 136 above), who comments that 'stress on characters' has resulted in Dream being considered 'sui generis, a "symbolical" or masque-like play' (7). The English Comic Characters (London, 1925); Comic Characters of Shakespeare (London, 1946). 'Political Propaganda and Satire in "A Midsummer Night's Dream'", Modem Philology, 21 (1923), p. 66ff. Will Shakespeare and the Dyer's Hand (New York, 1943), p. 99. The White Goddess (London, 1948), p. 373 (p. 424 in the amended and enlarged third edition, [London, 1952]). Alexander, Shakespeare's Life, p. 109. Knight, Shakespearean Tempest, pp. 142, 161. 'Shakespeare and Elizabethan Psychology', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 23 (1924), 536. What the Author Meant (London, 1932), p. 124. Mackenzie, Women, p. 28. The Elizabethan Fairies: the Fairies of Folkore and the Fairies of Shakespeare (New York, 1930); Shakespeare and the Supernatural (London, 1931). See, for example, Trevor R. Griffiths's introduction to his edition of the play for the series Shakespeare in Production (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 45-61. For example, Thomas Marc Parrott, Shakespearean Comedy (New York, 1949), confidently asserts Dream 'has never enjoyed great success upon the stage, but it is one of the most delightful of Shakespeare's plays for the closet' (131), and see M.R. Ridley p. 50 above, and note 144.

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165 For example, Frederic W. Ness, The Use of Rhyme in Shakespeare's Plays (New Haven, 1941), pp. 50, 53, 60, 81-3, 91-2, 128-30. Ness has some passing comments on the use of prose in Dream, but fuller treatment awaited Brian Vickers, The Artistry of Shakespeare's Prose (London, 1968), pp. 65-71. 166 'A Plummet for Bottom's Dream', The Fortnightly Review, New series 111 (1922), 836; see also his 1919 article cited in note 2 above. 167 Welsford, The Court Masque. 168 Peter Holland (ed.), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Oxford, 1994), p. 113 n.4. 169 'Political Propaganda and Satire in A Midsummer Night's Dream', Modern Philology, 21 (1923), 53-87,133-54. 170 'The Central Theme of A Midsummer Night's Dream', University of Toronto Quarterly, 20 (1951), 237. 171 The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago, 1951), pp. 74-5, 79. 172 Shakespeare and his Comedies (London, 1957), pp. 12, 87, 90. 173 'The Moon and the Fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream', University of Toronto Quarterly, 24 (1955), 238. 174 'The Argument of A Midsummer Night's Dream', Shakespeare Quarterly, 8 (1957), 308, 310. 175 'A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Meaning of Court Marriage', ELH, 24 (1957), 95-6. 176 'The Mature Comedies', in Early Shakespeare, Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies, 3 (London, 1961), p. 214. 177 'Imagination in A Midsummer Night's Dream', Shakespeare Quarterly, 15 (1964), 115. 178 See, for example, Goddard, Meaning, Brown, Shakespeare and his Comedies, Fisher, 'Argument', Barber, Festive Comedy and Hunter, Later Comedies. 179 See, for example, James L. Calderwood, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream: the Illusion of Drama', Modem Language Quarterly, 26 (1965), 506-22; David P. Young, Something of Great Constancy: The Art of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (New Haven, 1966); A.C. Hamilton, The Early Shakespeare (San Marino, California, 1967); Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York, 1967); William J. Martz, Shakespeare's Universe of Comedy (New York, 1971). 180 The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston, 1974), p. 219. 181 Shakespeare's Defense of Poetry (Lanham, Maryland, 1985). 182 A Natural Perspective: the Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance (New York, 1965), pp. 76-8, 81, 106ff, 142. 183 Barber, Festive Comedy. 184 See for example T.M. Evans, 'The Vernacular Labyrinth: Mazes and Amazement in Shakespeare and Peele', Shakespeare Jahrbuch (Heidelberg), (1980), 165-73; Terence Hawkes, 'Comedy, Orality, and Duplicity: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night', in Shakespearean Comedy, edited by Maurice Charney (New York, 1980), pp. 155-63; Michael Bristol, Carnival and Theater: Plebeian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England (New York, 1985); and two translated works: Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function, edited by Robert Schwartz (Baltimore, 1978) and Francois Laroque, Shakespeare's Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage, translated by Janet Lloyd (Cambridge, 1991). 185 The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History (London, 1960), p. 110; Young, Something of Great Constancy. 186 The Landscape of the Mind (Oxford, 1969), p. 127.

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187 Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream (London, 1968). 188 The Words of Mercury: Shakespeare and English Mythography of the Renaissance (Salzburg, 1974). 189 '"Vnkinde" Theseus: A Study in Renaissance Mythography', English Literary Renaissance, 4 (1974), 276-98; this essay comes under heavy fire from Richard Levin in his attack on ironic readings: New Readings vs. Old Plays (Chicago, 1979), pp. 80, 89, 93, 109. 190 'A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Monster in the Labyrinth', Shakespeare Studies, 11 (1978), 39-52. 191 Ovid Recalled (Cambridge, 1955), p. 421. 192 'Ovidian Elements in A Midsummer Night's Dream', Huntington Library Quarterly, 6 (1963), 165-78. 193 'Pyramus and Thisbe in Shakespeare and Ovid: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Metamorphoses 4.1-166', in Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, edited by David West and Tony Woodman (Cambridge, 1979), p. 193. 194 'Diana and Actaeon: The Myth as Synthesis', English Literary Renaissance, 10 (1980), 317-59; Charles Martindale has some important reservations about The Gods Made Flesh (New Haven, 1986) in his review in Comparative Literature, 41 (1989), 177-82. 195 Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity: An Introductory Essay (London, 1990); Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford, 1993). 196 (Indianapolis, 1971), p. 105. 197 Psychoanalytic Review, 60 (1973), 169-204. 198 'Bottom's Dream', American Imago, 9 (1952), 251-305. 199 Shakespeare Our Contemporary (Copyright London, 1964), translated by Boleslaw Taborski, University Paperbacks (London, 1967); as Carroll and Williams point out in the Annotated Bibliography (Item 239, p. 76), the chapter on Dream, 'Titania and the Ass's Head', appeared as a separate essay in various languages in 1964. 200 Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare (New York, 1966); see also Gerald F. Jacobson, 'A Note on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream', American Imago, 19 (1962), 21-6; Morton Kaplan, 'The American Imago in Retrospect', Literature & Psychology, 13 (1963), 112-16; Robert A. Ravich, 'A Psychoanalytic Study of Shakespeare's Early Plays', Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 33 (1964), 388-410. 201 'Hermia's Dream', The Annual of Psychoanalysis, 7 (1979), 369-89. Richard Dutton reprints the essay in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Contemporary Critical Essays, New Casebooks (London, 1996) pp. 61-83, and comments upon it pp. 7-9. 202 Dream in Shakespeare: From Metaphor to Metamorphosis (New Haven, 1974). 203 Shakespeare's Comedy of Love (London, 1974). See also Stanley Wells's New Penguin edition (London, 1967), pp. 35-7; Michael Taylor, 'The Darker Purpose of A Midsummer Night's Dream', Studies in English Literature, 9 (1969), 259; Rose A. Zimbardo, 'Regeneration and Reconciliation in A Midsummer Night's Dream', Shakespeare Studies, 6 (1972), 35-6; John Arthos, Shakespeare's Use of Dream and Vision, (London, 1977), pp. 91-5; Anthony B. Dawson, Indirections: Shakespeare and the Art of Illusion (Toronto, 1978), p. 64; Elliott Krieger, A Marxist Study of Shakespeare's Comedies (London, 1979), p. 65 and pp. 172-3 note 5. 204 Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York, 1967), p. 205. 205 Shakespearean Metadrama (Minneapolis, 1971); the chapter on Dream is a reworking of his 1965 essay cited in note 179 above. 206 'Myth and Ritual in Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream', in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-structuralist criticism, edited by Josue V. Harari (Ithaca, New York, 1979), pp. 189-212; this essay first appeared in Harry F. Camp Memorial Lectures (Stanford

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207 208

209

210

211

212 213

214 215

216

217

University, 1972), pp. 1-17. See also Girard's A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (New York, 1991). Berkeley, California, 1987; first published in 1963 as part of a two-volume set, the second volume being a musical setting of Pericles by Celia Zukofsky. Early Shakespeare, edited by John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies 3 (London, 1961), pp. 165-85; see also his Shakespeare and the Artist (London, 1959). 'Shakespeare and Opera. 3. The Comedies'; 'Shakespeare in the Concert Hall. 1. Mendelssohn and Berlioz', in Shakespeare and Music, edited by Phyllis Hartnoll (London, 1964), pp. 104-41; 178-97. See, for example, Stanley Wells's New Penguin edition of 1967 p. 8 and David Bevington's Bantam edition of 1988 p. xvii. Graham Bradshaw has offered a counter-analysis to Fiske's in Shakespeare's Scepticism (Brighton, 1987), pp. 66-9. '"But We Are Spirits of Another Sort": The Dark Side of Love and Magic in A Midsummer Night's Dream', Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies Summer 1975, edited by Siegfried Wenzel (Chapel Hill, 1978), pp. 80-92. (London, 1979), p. ix. Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition; for a severe critique of Weimann's theories and methods, see Brian Vickers, Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels (New Haven, 1993), pp. 386-93, 405ff. (London, 1979), p. 65. Representations, 1 (1983), 61-94 (previously given at four seminars or conferences between 1980 and 1982); page references here given are to the essay as it appeared in slightly revised form under the title 'A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Shaping Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form' in Reuniting the Renaissance: The Discourse of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, edited by Margaret W. Ferguson et al. (Chicago, 1986), pp. 65-87, 329-34. The essay is reprinted in Representing the English Renaissance, edited by Stephen Jay Greenblatt (Berkeley, California, 1988), and in Dutton, Contemporary Critical Essays. For example, Leonard Tennenhouse, 'Strategies of State and Political Plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIIF, in Political Shakespeare, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester, 1985), pp. 109-28, incorporated into Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres (New York, 1986); James H. Kavanagh, 'Shakespeare in Ideology', Alternative Shakespeares, edited by John Drakakis (London, 1985), pp. 144-65; John Gordon Sweeney III, Jonson and the Psychology of Public Theater (Princeton, 1985); Carol Thomas Neely, Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays (New Haven, 1985); Susan Wells, The Dialectics of Representation (Baltimore, 1985); Terry Eagleton, William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1986); Theodore B. Leinwand, '"I believe we must leave the killing out": Deference and Accommodation in A Midsummer Night's Dream', Renaissance Papers 1986, edited by Dale BJ. Randall and Joseph A. Porter (Durham, North Carolina, 1986), pp. 11-30; Annabel Patterson, 'Bottom's Up: Festive Theory in A Midsummer Night's Dream', in Renaissance Papers 1988, edited by Dale BJ. Randall and Joseph A. Porter (Durham, North Carolina, 1988), pp. 25-39; Barbara Freedman, Staging the Gaze: Postmodernism, Psychoanalysis, and Shakespearean Comedy (Ithaca, NY, 1991); Richard Wilson, 'The Kindly Ones: The Death of the Author in Shakespearean Athens', Essays and Studies 1993, edited by Nigel Smith (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 1-24. For example, Marjorie Garber, Coming of Age in Shakespeare (London, 1981); Shirley

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Nelson Garner, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream: "Jack shall have Jill; / Nought shall go ill'", Women's Studies, 9 (1981), 47-63; Edward Berry, Shakespeare's Comic Rites (Cambridge, 1984); William C. Carroll, The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy (Princeton, 1985); James L. Calderwood, A Midsummer Night's Dream, (New York, 1992). The idea of liminality has been transported to the stage, for example in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Benjamin Britten's operatic version of Dream, where the 'wood' was represented by a series of door frames, through which the lovers crawled and chased; the production, which premiered on 25 November 1996, was directed by Tim Albery, with sets and costumes designed by Antony McDonald. 218 'Instincts and Their Vicissitudes: A Reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream', Gradiva 2 (1981-2), 11-29. 219 'The Indian Boy's Dream Wherein Every Mother's Son Rehearses His Part: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream', Shakespeare Studies, 20 (1988), 21. 220 Shakespeare's Hidden World: A Study of His Unconscious (Copenhagen, 1989), pp. 133, 143-5. 221 'The Changeling in A Dream', SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 28 (1988), 261, 270. 222 Meaning By Shakespeare (London, 1992), p. 39. 223 Cf. Barbara Hodgdon, 'Gaining a Father: The Role of Egeus in the Quarto and the Folio', Review of English Studies, 37 (1986), 534-42; Philip C. McGuire, 'Hippolyta's Silence and the Poet's Pen', Chapter 1 of Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences (Berkeley, California, 1985). 224 See Trevor R. Griffiths's edition (Cambridge, 1996), especially pp. 86-7, 94, 202. 225 Our Moonlight Revels, pp. 47, 54, 86-7; despite the lack of indications in the quarto or folio texts of the Indian boy's onstage presence, Williams believes that he probably appeared even in productions of Shakespeare's time (24). 226 See Charles Marowitz, 'Reconstructing Shakespeare or Harlotry in Bardolatry', Shakespeare Survey, 40 (1988), 8-9 and Gary Jay Williams, Our Moonlight Reveb, pp. 201-2; the homosexual possibilities of the Indian Boy are also commented on by Bruce Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: A Cultural Poetics (Chicago, 1991, reprinted 1994), pp. 199-200, and developed fictionally by Angela Carter in 'Overture and Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream', in Saints and Strangers (New York, 1986), pp. 85-96. Race and empire are explored by Margo Hendricks, '"Obscured by dreams": Race, Empire, and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream', Shakespeare Quarterly, 47 (1996), 37-60, an article prompted by a production by the Shakespeare Santa Cruz repertory company. 227 For example, in this volume: Hazlitt, Morley, Jerrold, Montgomery, Wedgwood, Shaw (Nos.10, 31, 32, 60, 61, 67). Among modern examples see: Barbara Hodgdon, 'Looking for Mr. Shakespeare after "The Revolution'", in Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance, edited by James C. Bulman (London, 1996), pp. 68-91; Gary Jay Williams, Our Moonlight Revels; the editions of R.A. Foakes (Cambridge, 1984) and Peter Holland (Oxford, 1994); Jay L. Halio, A Midsummer Night's Dream: Shakespeare in Performance (Manchester, 1994), which covers television and film as well as stage performance. 228 Image and Text: Studies in the Illustration of English Literature (London, 1982); Paintings from Books: Art and Literature in Britain, 1760-1900 (Columbus, Ohio, 1985). See also notes 88 and 89 above, Holland's 1994 essay cited in note 44 above, and Judith M. Kennedy, 'Bottom Transformed by the Sketching Society', Shakespeare Quarterly, 47 (1996), 306-18. 229 For example, Christina F. Burridge, '"Music, Such as Charmeth Sleep": Benjamin

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Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream', University of Toronto Quarterly, 51 (1981/2), 149-60; Gary Schmidgall, Shakespeare and Opera (Oxford, 1990), especially pp. 287-91; William Godsalve, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream: Making an Opera from Shakespeare's Comedy (London and Toronto, 1995). 230 (Chicago, 1996), pp. 1, 114. 231 The Forms of Things Unknown: Renaissance Metaphor in Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, (Pittsburgh, 1995), p. 3. 232 Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols (London, 1957-75), I, 365-422; Shakespeare's Sources: Comedies and Tragedies (London, 1957). See also the section 'Sources, Background, Date' in Carroll and Williams, A Midsummer Night's Dream: An Annotated Bibliography. 233 See J.J.M. Tobin, Shakespeare's Favorite Novel: A Study of The Golden Asse as Prime Source (Lanham, Maryland, 1984); Harold Brooks, ed. cit., especially pp. lix-lx, bdi-bdii. 234 See Ann Thompson, Shakespeare's Chaucer: A Study in Literary Origins (Liverpool, 1978); E. Talbot Donaldson, The Swan at the Well (New Haven, 1985). 235 See Richard Cody, Landscape; Leo Salingar, Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy (Cambridge, 1974); Louise George Clubb, Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time (New Haven, 1989). 236 Maurice Hunt, 'The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the School of Night: An Intertextual Nexus', Essays in Literature, Macomb, Illinois, 23 (1996), 4; large claims can be made for the method, as Louis Adrian Montrose says: 'My intertextual study of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and symbolic forms shaped by other Elizabethan lunatics, lovers, and poets construes the play as calling attention to itself, not only as an end but also as a source of cultural production', '"Shaping Fantasies'" (1986), p. 69. 237 Shakespeare and the Dance (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1981), p. 41. 238 'Hands, Feet, and Bottoms: Decentering the Cosmic Dance in A Midsummer Night's Dream', Shakespeare Quarterly, 44 (1993), 342, 326, 342. 239 Latham, Elizabethan Fairies; among Briggs's many publications see especially The Anatomy of Puck. William Empson's uncompleted essay 'The spirits of the Dream', an expanded version of his 1979 review of Harold Brooks's edition of Dream, is in Essays on Renaissance Literature. Volume Two: The Drama, edited by John Haffenden (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 170-248, 271-87. 240 Shakespeare's Almanac: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Marriage and the Elizabethan Calendar (Cambridge, 1993). 241 'Bottom's Children: the Fallacies of Structuralist, Post-structuralist and Deconstructionist Literary Theory', in Reconstructing Literature, edited by Laurence Lerner (Totowa, New Jersey, 1983), pp. 20-35; Appropriating Shakespeare (New Haven, 1993). 242 Lovers, Clowns, and Fairies: An Essay on Comedies (Chicago, 1993), p. xii. 243 Shakespeare's Early Comedies: Myth, Metamorphosis, Mannerism (Uppsala, 1993). 244 The Shakespeare of the Comedies: A Multiple Approach (Bern, 1996), p. 9. 245 Louis A. Montrose, The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre (Chicago, 1996), p. xii; James L. Calderwood, A Midsummer Night's Dream (New York, 1992), p. 85.

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1 Elizabeth Griffith, moral conventions and human sympathy 1775

From The Morality of Shakespeare's Drama Illustrated (London, 1775). Mrs. Elizabeth Griffith (1727?-93), novelist, essayist, playwright, actress, speaks of herself in her dedication to the second edition of the popular letters exchanged with her husband during their courtship (A series of genuine letters between Henry and Frances, 6 vols, London, 1786) as 'a woman, who may be suspected of having marched a volunteer into print', a charge she seeks to vindicate herself from. The tension between conventional decorum and the expression of her own impulses is evident in much of her writing, though the moral attitudes of the time prevail. The Morality of Shakespeare's Drama Illustrated is dedicated to Garrick, who had assisted her playwriting career. She died in her native Ireland, at the seat of her son Richard, whom she had laboured to support, and who, in the tradition of novelistic romance, made a fortune in India.

[From the chapter entitled ' The Tempest1} This Play, and the Midsummer Night's Dream, which in all the latter editions immediately follows it, are considered by Dr Warburton, 'as the noblest effort of that sublime and amazing imagination, peculiar to Shakespeare, which soars above the bounds of Nature, without forsaking Sense; or, more properly, carries Nature along with it, beyond her terrestrial limits.'W He has, indeed, in both these exhibitions, created Beings out of all visible existence; or, as he has himself most beautifully expressed it, 'Given to airy Nothing / A local habitation, and a name' [5.1.16ff.]. Yet by the powers of his genius has he contrived to make these chimeras of his brain think, act, and speak, in a manner which appears so suited to the anomalous personages his magic has conjured up, that we readily adopt them into the scale of Nature, from a presumption, that were they really to exist, they would probably resemble the characters which his wand has endowed them with. These two plays are generally supposed to have been the first and second of his writing; though I believe there are no dates remaining, to confirm this opinion; which can therefore be founded only on the idea, that his youthful imagination

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must naturally be thought to have been more sportive and exuberant, than his riper judgment might have permitted the indulgence of. And here, indeed, She wantons, as in her prime, And plays at will her virgin fancies:^ though, if I may be allowed the liberty of a criticism about this matter, I should be rather inclined to suppose this Play [The Tempest] to have been one of his latter performances, as all the unities are so strictly preserved in it. (1-2) [From the chapter entitled 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'] I shall not trouble my readers with the Fable of this piece, as I can see no general moral that can be deduced from the Argument; nor . . . is there much sentiment to be collected even from the Dialogue. But whatever harvest can be gleaned from this unfruitful field, I shall endeavour to pick up, as becomes a faithful steward of the farm.

ACT I. SCENE I. [Quotes 1.1.47-51: 'To you your father should be as a God. . . .'] In this speech, the pious notion of the Antients, with regard to this relation, while genuine Nature was their sole Preceptor, is fully expressed. Here the duty of children to their parents, is indeed carried to the height; and yet, methinks, not at all too far. They are the objects of our earliest affections, of our first deference, of our primary obligations. Even superstition, in this case, as far at least as implicit obedience extends, exceeds not true devotion. The Decalogue was originally written on Two Tables; five in each. The first refers solely to Religion; the second, to Morality, only. To honour our parents, therefore, as falling within the former line of obligations, is, by this distinction, made one of our pious duties; as through them we honour the Creator, who ordained this relation between us. This precept, then, should seem to have a double tie upon us, as partaking both of piety and morals; and therefore, however the latter bond may chance to be cancelled, the first ought never to be dispensed with. In fine, there is something so fond and endearing in the idea and exercise of a child's obedience and deference towards a parent, that how rotten must the root be, or how blighted the branches, if such a tree should fail of producing its natural fruit! Thus far, by way of general reflection, only; for I must, notwithstanding, admit, that the particular instance of the daughter's compliance, exacted by the father, in this piece, of resigning an husband of her own choice, upon equal terms, and accepting another, chosen arbitrarily for her, by caprice merely, was too severe a trial of obedience. Egeus here, like Abraham, would sacrifice his child at the altar, not only without the command of God, but contrary to his express purpose, proclaimed aloud by the voice of Nature, and further confirmed from the deductions of virtuous affection, free will, and rational election.

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When I said that the duty of a child was natural, I did not mean to invest the parent with an authority which was not so; and I cannot blame Hermia, therefore, upon the severe laws of Athens being declared to her, for the chaste and spirited resolution she frames to herself on that occasion. [Quotes 1.1.79-82: 'So will I grow, so live, so die.

SCENE III. In this scene we are charmed with that mildness, modesty, and generous eulogium, with which the fond and unhappy Helena accosts a rival beauty, and woo'd by the man she loves. [Quotes 1.1.180-93: 'Hermia. God speed, fair Helena! Whither away? / Helena. Call you me fair. . . .']. Hermia had used no arts, no coquetry, to allure her lover from her; for, as she expresses it, just after, in the same dialogue, 'His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine' [1.1.200]. She had, indeed, happened to have done her an injury, but no wrong; and therefore the forsaken maid shews her justice in plaining her own ill fortune, only, without expressing the least manner of resentment against her unoffending rival. Hermia, in the same scene, alludes to the magic power of love, which concenters all our ideas in one, making us prefer a cottage to a palace, and a desert to a grove, according to the situation or circumstances of the object of our affections. After having declared the purpose of flying her country with her lover, she adds, [Quotes 1.1.204-7: 'Before the time I did Lysander see . . . . ' ] . And Helena, afterwards, carries on the same idea, . . . [Quotes 1.1.232-9: 'Things base and vile. . . .']. Theseus too . . . accords with the above sentiment: [Quotes 5.1.10-11: 'While [sic] the lover all as frantic. . . .']. And Shakespeare has hinted a moral, on this latter subject, with regard to irregular or ill-placed affection . . . in the last line of the following speech . . . ; the whole of which I shall transcribe here, in order to shew how justly and poetically he has pointed to the different effects of passion upon busy and contemplative minds, as well as on idle and dissipated ones. [Quotes Oberon's description of the genesis of the 'little western flower', 'Love-in-idleness': 2.1.155-68.]

ACT V. SCENE I. . . . Among the brief of sports, as it is called, to be exhibited before Theseus, on his wedding-day, this is the title of one: 'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death / Of Learning, late deceased in beggary' [5.1.52ff.]. Mr. Warton imagines this passage to have alluded to a poem of Spenser's, stiled The Tears of the Muses, on the Neglect and Contempt of Learning, in his timeJ3! Though this was not properly a complaint of that age, only; it has been so much the grievance of all times, that it has, long since, obtained into a proverb, As poor as a poet.W The case of such unfortunate persons, 'Of those whom Phoebus, in his ire, Hath

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blasted with poetic fire,' is certainly very hard. Persons who apply their minds to letters, must unavoidably neglect their temporal concerns; and those who employ their time in the reformation or entertainment of the world, should be supported by it — Not by merely accidental and precarious emoluments, but upon some more permanent foundation; like the Clergy, who have had a provision made for them, for the same reason as above; and the name of Clerk, tho' now appropriated to the latter, was formerly the common appellation of both. The honour of such an establishment would be considerable to a State, and the expence but small — for the numbers are but few. . . .

POSTSCRIPT This Play is perfectly picturesque, and resembles some rich landscape, where palaces and cottages, huntsmen and husbandmen, princes and peasants, appear in the same scene together. (15-21)

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2 Samuel Felton, artists' interpretations of dramatic effects 1787

From Imperfect Hints towards a New Edition of Shakespeare, written chiefly in the year 1782 (London, 1787). Samuel Felton (active 1782-1829) is known only through his publications. Besides the above, they are: An Explanation of Several of Mr. Hogarth's Prints (1785); Testimonies to the Genius and Memory of Sir J. Reynolds (1792); On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening (1828); and Gleanings on Gardens, chiefly respecting those of the Ancient Style in England (1829).

[Felton begins his comments on A Midsummer Night's Dream by quoting 5.1.12-17: 'The poet's eye. . . .']

Vignette. In page 78,^] I have taken the liberty of hinting at one artist designing the portraits of Helena and Hermia. And there could not be a more pleasing Vignette (nor a more sweet portrait of infantine fondness) than what the same artist would form of the same persons, at a different age from what they will appear at, in page 78, viz. at their age of childhood-innocence, or at that early period, when with their needles they created both one flower, both on one sampler, 'sitting on one cushion; / Both warbling of one song, both in one key' [3.2.205ff.]. The same artist is as capable of painting the tender loveliness of innocence, as of producing a sublime and most expressive portrait from the lines of : The poet's eye. —

Head-piece. A Fac-simile of M. de Loutherbourg's Vignette print to Bell's last edition,PI might be given for this department. Should not the airy spirits however, have had less of mortal grossness about them? - Puck is rather too fat to go swifter than the wind [3.1.160-1; 3.2.94].

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Scene-Prints. True love was never better painted than by Shakespeare. . . . Some of the interviews of Hermia and Lysander are tenderly interesting. And it requires an artist of the feeling soul of Cypriani^ to express the tender designs which Shakespeare has left us.4 I will first mention the several pages from which (in my opinion) Hermia might be drawn to most advantage, and I will then recommend such few of them, as strike me, as being most proper to be selected from the rest, for the purpose of ornamenting some of the pages with her portrait. [Quotes 1.1.79-82; 1.1.128-9; 1.1.168-9; 1.1.214-16; 1.1.220; 2.2.41-2; 2.2.45-9; 3.2.198-9] Those pathetic touches of nature which are given in all the above scenes with Hermia, render it impossible to determine, which of them would furnish to an artist the best designs. Were I to select, I would give the following portraits of her: [Cites 1.1.79E: 'So will I grow ']. A portrait from these lines, with somewhat of the same kind of sweet expression which is in the print of Mrs. Barryt5] in Constance, in Bell's first edition of King John. The arms and the attitude will be of course somewhat altered: expressive of her addressing herself to heaven, as well as to the Duke; and there should be imprinted in her face, the marks of that generous love, that prompted her to risk all for Lysander — and of that firm attachment to him, who had bewitched her bosom, and who had stol'n the impression of her fantasy with bracelets of his hair, and other messengers of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth [1.1.32ff.]. . . . [Quotes 1.1.128-9: 'How now my love. . . .']. The above lines will give an opportunity of introducing Lysander with Hermia. They may be drawn at half-length — or their portraits only may be taken. And this page will exhibit Hermia in a very different light from what she appears in, in the last page; and somewhat different from what she will appear in, at p. 52. Her appearance may be somewhat similar to that of Helena, as described in A. 3, Sc. 6 And Helena of Athens see thou find, All fancy sick she is, and pale of cheer, With sighs of love that cost the fresh blood dear. [3.2.95ff] [For p. 52. Felton suggests illustrating 2.2.41: 'One turf shall serve. . . .' or 2.2.47: 'I mean that my heart unto yours is knit'.] If somewhat of the same neat wildness of romantic scenery, and the same kind of engraving were introduced, as appears in the beautiful prints of Celia, by Kaufirnan, and of Marcella by Shelley:^ the above page might be pleasingly ornamented with half-lengths of Lysander and Hermia as met in the wood, a league without the town, where he met her once with Helena to do observance to the morn of May [1.1.167]; and the time they meet (a midsummer's night) is at that time,

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when Phoebe doth behold Her silver visage in the watry glass, Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass. [1.1.209ff.] . . . (97-102)

Page 61. The curious interlude performed by the clowns, will furnish a very comic design. I will select such passages as relate to that wise stage projector Bottom, and to Quince, and the rest of their dramatis personae, and which strike me as offering the best situations to draw them from. [Quotes 1.2.29-30,66-7, 76-8; 3.1.13-15,23-4, 31-2, 98-100,7 118-19; 4.1.214-15; 4.2.3-4, 42-4.] At his injunction against the onions, they might be all drawn as staring at him. If the preference be given to the lines in p. 61 [i.e. 3.1.98-100: 'Ninus' tomb, man. . . .'], it will admit of all the other clowns being drawn (except Bottom); and the figure of Robin Goodfellow may be introduced in the back-ground. Either one of the figures of this merry wanderer of the night [2.1.43] which Dr. Piercyt8! has preserved, may be given; or else some fancy sketch might be drawn. The Queen of the Fairies may be lying asleep near them; and the scene is in a wood, near to an hawthorn brake [3.1.4], and under the Duke's oak [1.2.110]. If it were not for the Fairy Queen being introduced as well as Puck, the characters might have been etched in the manner of some of Mr. Bunbury's prints.!9] And may no artist attempt to design any character from Shakespeare, who does not possess some sparks of Mr. Bunbury's genius.10 I do not know what effect the figure of a Fairy would have; but as they are harmless merry sprites, their looks might exhibit an archness of surprize, or merriment, at the figure of Bottom. (118-20)

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3 Edmond Malone, commentary on A Midsummer Night's Dream 1790

From The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, in Ten Volumes; Collated Verbatim with the Most Authentick Copies, and Revised: with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators; to Which are Added, An Essay on the Chronological Order of His Plays; An Essay Relative to Shakespeare and Jonson; A Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI.; An Historical Account of the English Stage; and Notes; by Edmond Malone (10 vols in 11, London, 1790). Edmond Malone (1741-1812), one of the greatest of Shakespearean editors, was born in Dublin, went to Trinity College there in 1756, then to London to study law in 1763, and returned to Ireland in 1767 to practise law for a few years. His real vocation, however, was the study of literary history, and his first endeavour was his edition of the works of Goldsmith, published in 1777. He then left Ireland for London where he met Dr. Johnson and, through him, George Steevens who encouraged him to concentrate on Shakespeare, and he contributed to the Johnson-Steevens edition of 1778. He supplied a two-volume Supplement to this edition in 1780, and in 1783 an additional volume. For seven years he prepared his own edition of ten volumes, which appeared in November of 1790. Much of the rest of his life he spent on the variorum edition which was edited posthumously by James Boswell the younger in 1821 (see No. 11 below). Along with his Shakespearean studies he helped Boswell revise his life of Johnson through six editions from 1791 to 1811, published Sir Joshua Reynolds's writings with a memoir (1797), exposed the literary forgeries of Thomas Chatterton and Samuel Ireland, and edited the prose of John Dryden (1800).

[From An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays of Shakespeare Were Written1]

4. A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1592.P] The poetry of this piece, glowing with all the warmth of a youthful and lively imagination, the many scenes which it contains of almost continual rhyme,3 the

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poverty of the fable, and want of discrimination among the higher personages, dispose me to believe that it was one of our authour's earliest attempts in comedy.4 It seems to have been written, while the ridiculous competitions, prevalent among the histrionick tribe, were strongly impressed by novelty on his mind. He would naturally copy those manners first, with which he was first acquainted. The ambition of a theatrical candidate for applause he has happily ridiculed in Bottom the weaver. But among the more dignified persons of the drama we look in vain for any traits of character. The manners of Hippolyta, the Amazon, are undistinguished from those of other females. Theseus, the associate of Hercules, is not engaged in any adventure worthy of his rank or reputation, nor is he in reality an agent throughout the play. Like King Henry VIII he goes out a Maying. He meets the lovers in perplexity, and makes no effort to promote their happiness; but when supernatural accidents have reconciled them, he joins their company, and concludes his day's entertainment by uttering some miserable puns at an interlude represented by a troop of clowns. Over the fairy part of the drama he cannot be supposed to have any influence. This part of the fable, indeed, (at least as much of it as relates to the quarrels of Oberon and Titania,) was not of our authour's invention.5 — Through the whole piece, the more exalted characters are subservient to the interests of those beneath them. We laugh with Bottom and his fellows, but is a single passion agitated by the faint and childish solicitudes of Hermia and Demetrius, of Helena and Lysander, those shadows of each other? — That a drama, of which the principal personages are thus insignificant, and the fable thus meagre and uninteresting, was one of our authour's earliest compositions, does not, therefore, seem a very improbable conjecture; nor are the beauties with which it is embellished, inconsistent with this supposition; for the genius of Shakespeare, even in its minority, could embroider the coarsest materials with the brightest and most lasting colours. Oberon and Titania had been introduced in a dramatick entertainment exhibited before Queen Elizabeth in 1591, when she was at Elvetham in Hampshire; as appears from A Description of the Queene's Entertainment in Progress at Lord Hartford's, &c. printed in quarto in 1591. Her majesty, after having been pestered a whole afternoon with speeches in verse from the three Graces, Sylvanus, Wood Nymphs, &c. is at length addressed by the Fairy Queen, who presents her majesty with a chaplet, Given me by Auberon (Oberon) the fairie king-M A Midsummer Night's Dream was not entered at Stationers' hall till Oct. 8, 1600, in which year it was printed; but is mentioned by Meres in 1598. From the comedy of Dr. Dodipoll Mr. Steevens has quoted a line, which the authour seems to have borrowed from Shakespeare: 'Twas I that led you through the painted meads, Where the light fairies danc'd upon the flowers, Hanging in every leaf an orient pearl.\7^ So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream: [Quotes 2.1.15; 4.1.53-6].

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There is no earlier edition of the anonymous play in which the foregoing lines are found, than that in 1600; but Dr. Dodipowle is mentioned by Nashe, in his preface to Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up, printed in 1596. The passage in the fifth act, which has been thought to allude to the death of Spenser,8 is not inconsistent with the early appearance of this comedy; for it might have been inserted between the time of that poet's death, and the year 1600, when the play was published. And indeed, if the allusion was intended, which I do not believe, the passage must have been added in that interval; for A Midsummer Night's Dream was certainly written in, or before, 1598, and Spenser, we are told by Sir James Ware (whose testimony with respect to this controverted point must have great weight) did not die till 1599:. . . .9 The passage in question, however, in my apprehension, has been misunderstood. It relates, I conceive, not to the death of Spenser, but to the nine Muses lamenting the decay of learning, in that authour's poem entitled The Tears of the Muses, which was published in 1591: and hence probably the words, 'late deceas'd in beggary'. This allusion, if I am right in my conjecture, may serve to confirm the date assigned to A Midsummer Night's Dream. (I, part 1, 283-8)

[From] 5. The Comedy of Errors, 1593. The alternate rhymes that are found in this play, as well as in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Romeo and Juliet, are a further proof that these pieces were among our authour's earliest productions. (I, part 1, 289)

[From] 7. Love's Labour's Lost, 1594. In this comedy there is more attempt at delineation of character than in either The Comedy of Errors or A Midsummer Night's Dream; a circumstance which inclines me to think that it was written subsequently to those plays. (I, part 1, 296)

[From] 8. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1595. This comedy . . . bears strong internal marks of an early composition. The comick parts of it are of the same colour with the comick parts of Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors, and A Midsummer Night's Dream; and the serious scenes are eminently distinguished by that elegant and pastoral simplicity which might be expected from the early effusions of such a mind as Shakespeare's, when employed in describing the effects of love. (I, part 1, 297-8)

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[From the commentary notes to A Midsummer Night's Dream] [1] [On 1.1.27: This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child'] This hath bewitch'd—] The old copies read — This man hath bewitch'd —. The emendation was made for the sake of the metre, by the editor of the second folio. It is very probable that the compositor caught the word man from the line above. (II, 443) [2] [On 2.1.249: 'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows'] - where —] is here used as a dissyllable. The modern editors unnecessarily read whereon. (II, 473) [3] [On 3.2.257ff.: 'No, no; he'll / Seem to break loose -'] No, no, he'll — Sir,] This passage, like almost all those in these plays in which there is a sudden transition, or the sense is hastily broken off, is much corrupted in the old copies. The present text is formed from the quarto printed by Fisher and the first folio. The words 'he'lf are not in the folio, and Sir is not in the quarto. Demetrius, I suppose, would say, No, no; he'll not have resolution to disengage himself from Hernia. But turning abruptly to Lysander, he addresses him ironically: - Sir, seem to break loose; &c. (II, 500-1) [4] [On 4.1.104: 'For now our observation is perform'd.' In his 1765 edition Johnson had been puzzled by the discrepancy between the Midsummer's night of the tide, and this reference to May morning. Farmer in a note first appearing in the Appendix to the 1773 variorum edition had pointed out that similarly the tide of The Winter's Tale did not correspond to the time of the action, the season of sheep-shearing.] The same phrase has been used in a former scene: To do observance to a morn of May. [1.1.167] I imagine that the title of this play was suggested by the time it was first introduced on the stage, which was probably at Midsummer. 'A Dream for the entertainment of a Midsummer-night.' Twelfth Night and The Winter's Tale had probably their titles from a similar circumstance. (II, 513-14) [5] [On 4.1.192ff.: 'Are you sure / That we are awake? It seems to me. . . .'] Sure is here used as a dissyllable: so sire, fire, hour, &c. The word now (That we are now awake?) seems to be wanting, to complete the metre of the next line. (II, 518)

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4 Charles Taylor, Bottom as coxcomb 1792

From The Shakespeare Gallery; containing a Select Series of Scenes and Characters, accompanied by Criticisms and Remarks adapted to the Works of that Admired Author: on Fifty Plates. Calculated to form separate Volumes; or to be bound up in Editions of Shakespeare's Works (London: Charles Taylor, 1792). Charles Taylor (1756-1823), engraver, writer on art, literature, morals and religion, published under the name of Francis Fitzgerald. The earlier part of his career was devoted mainly to producing books of engravings, the first being The Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare, Being A Selection of Scenes, from the Works of that great Author (1783), a large elegant quarto of engravings of illustrations by Thomas Stothard and Robert Smirke, each plate accompanied by a brief scene from one of the six plays illustrated, but without critical remarks.

[From Shakespeare Gallery. Plate II. No. XL BOTTOM. Designed by H. Singleton.W Directed and engraved by C. Taylor. (The engraving illustrates 3.1.123ff., and shows ass-headed Bottom with two shadowy figures of frightened mechanicals cowering in the background.)] Success in delineating some kinds of characters, as in some kinds of writing, is more striking to general observation than in others: but this is not always therefore the most meritorious success: some productions also are more highly finished than others; nevertheless there are sketches so exquisitely adjusted, that it is not easy to ascertain the parts where additional finishing would not hazard at least as much injury as advantage: they may be changed and varied, but not thereby improved, they may be corrected, but what they gain in correctness they lose in vigour. Though it be true, that the hand of judgment by passing and repassing over former labours may approximate them more nearly to a supposed standard of excellence; yet many spirited productions have been spoilt by an overweening care in revisal, and on the other hand, the instances are not few, wherein a happy, though rapid, copy of Nature has possessed that kind and degree of merit, which was best left in its original state. These reflections seem applicable to the character before us; in its line it is excellent, but then its line is not very exalted: and in its execution, though it be not highly finished, it is difficult to say in what respects it needs improvement. Not every man can make a coxcomb; yet there are coxcombs in all states and ranks of life: they are most noticed in high life, because every thing is most noticed there,

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but they no less exist in lower stations, where they usually exhibit equal force, and sometimes greater sprightliness. It would be hard indeed to suppose that high life had monopolized the ingredients of coxcombism;[2] a frivolous mind, a conceited disposition, a vain estimate of self, and a handsome person, are to be found, where the bon ton^ is unknown; and they often shew themselves, by a supposed merit, or imagined ability, in things not regularly attached to them, nor connected with their direct path of life, and their allotted circumstances of situation. If a military coxcomb would restrain himself to military affairs, he might be endured by men of sense, as supposed to be in his element: if a law coxcomb, were merely a coxcomb in law, little offence would ensue from his impertinence: but while such (and numerous others equally coxcombs though of different casts) quitting the line of their professions, seek to render themselves conspicuous in other departments, while they wish by vociferation or by obstinacy to lead, or to overbear, the opinions of better judges than themselves, or to display their self-supposed merit, in matters wherein no merit is expected from them, because foreign from their professions, — let them learn a lesson from Bottom the weaver. Bottom the weaver, was a personable man, a sweet singer, and a professed wit: so speak his brother players respecting him, when lamenting his supposed 'transportation.' [Quotes 4.2.7-24]. Thus endowed, he assumes a consequence correspondent to his opinion of himself, and to others' opinion of him: Peter Quince is hardly so much director, as he is, though Peter Quince be the manager in office. In the first act, the vivacity of his opinion outruns his means of judgment, and before he knows the nature of the characters in 'the most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby' [1.2.1 Iff.], he pronounces it — 'a very good piece of work, and a merry' [1.2.13ff.]; with the same alacrity he answers, when called, 'Ready; name what part I am for; and proceed' [1.2.18ff] — the confidence expressed in this single sentence is admirable; and is heightened in its effect by his after enquiry 'what is Pyramus? a lover? or a tyrant?' [1.2.22]. When told he is a lover and kills himself for love, he scruples not to foresee his notable discharge of this lover's character; yet turns "with glee to play 'Ercles; a part to tear a cat in' [1.2.29ff.]: — his conception of the lover's part as 'condoling' [1.2.41] is highly humourous. 'If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms; I will condole in some measure' [1.2.26ff.]. Then, though fixed for Pyramus, he offers himself for Thisby, and the great representative of the great Ercles, wishes to speak in a 'monstrous little voice, Thisne, Thisne, Oh Pyramus, my lover dear!' [1.2.52ff.]. Veering again directly opposite, and desirous of undertaking the Lion, he proposes to 'roar that it would 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 [1.2.70ff.]; afterwards 'I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gentry as any sucking dove; I will roar you an 'twere any nightingale' [1.2.81ff.]. The joke is augmented by his proposing to play these characters at once; 'let me play Thisbe too' [1.2.51ff.]: 'let me play the Lion too' [1.2.70]. Conceited ambition has a thousand ways of shewing itself: Proteus must yield to Bottom; and of this Bottom is proud: the labours of the loom are forgotten, the warp, and the woof, and the shuttle, are erased from memory; and now, whatever be his merit or his diligence as a weaver,

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he looks forward to the applauses bestowed on the dying Pyramus. This part he undertakes: but the Poet has thought proper previously to shew (extremely justly in my opinion) his openness to flattery; though it be gross, no matter, it coincides with his own conceptions of his own sweet self, and thus he maintains his character of a coxcomb. Quince. You can play no part but Pyramus: for Pyramus is a sweet-fac'd 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. [1.2.85ff.] Bottom's wit shews itself in his dextrous obviating of supposed difficulties; he objects to the sword of Pyramus, but removes the objection by a prologue, in answer to the very characteristic fears of Starveling the Taylor; he obviates also the obstacles about the Lion; finds out moonshine, by the calendar; and shews his readiness to forward the business in hand, and to play his part. Had not Shakespeare here a fair opportunity to introduce the Author of this 'tedious brief play; this tragical mirth' [5.1.56ff.]? might he not have shewn ignorant pertness different from Bottom's by such a character? — what withheld him? not consciousness of his own pretensions; those he knew he could justify: was it tenderness to his brethren of the quill? had he experienced the perplexity occasioned by the vanity of the players, but not that arising from ignorant jealousy in authors? I suspect, indeed, that he had already felt the rivalship, if not the envy of his brother playwrights. If this part of his comedy was not the retort courteous upon them, it was probably an attempt to expose their inability. Shakespeare wanted to introduce sense on the stage; to this purpose he was obliged to ridicule that nonsense which was too prevalent. Judicious reasoning had been lost on this subject: an exposure of it in caricatura was more likely to prove effectual. Certain theatrical mishaps he exhibits in Love's Labours Lost; - but there he draws diversion from them; in the present play he exposes them; and in the character of Pistol he renders them a standing object of laughter; this seems to have been all the conflict he condescended to maintain, and seems also to mark the course of his progress in popularity, and the success of his well directed attacks. . . . If ever a trick of Puck's could be vindicated, if ever enchantment and a monster were pleasant - Bottom with the ass's head on is the instance: it has furnished the Poet with an opportunity of mingling with Bottom's former pertness, those asinine ideas which force a smile: these occur during his captivity by the fairy Queen; and his descant on awaking from that condition is admirable. [Quotes 3.1.112-24, the moment of Bottom's return to the rehearsal with his ass's head; 4.1.19-39, Bottom's discussion of food and music with the attendant fairies; 4.1.200-19, Bottom's monologue when he awakes.] One would have thought that Bottom should have repressed his vivacity at any rate, when performing his part before the Duke; but even here his vanity overcomes his prudence, and he corrects the Duke's criticism. [Quotes 5.1.182-7: 'The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again. . . .']. His double dying he may lay to the charge of his author: once dying is usually

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thought sufficient, but that this is unquestionably a great improvement, I appeal to every undertaker of character. W Determined to have the last word, he again corrects the Duke: and after twice dying, re-assumes his former flippancy with his last resurrection. [Quotes 5.1.348-54]. Is Bottom singular in being a coxcomb? in preferring extra-professional applause? in wearing an Ass's head without knowing it? And by perpetual reference to this fact exciting the notice of others to that of which himself was ignorant? Is he singular in the modest estimate he makes of his own abilities, and his modest assurance of his own powers, as able to act any part allotted him? or in his jumping from part to part as the whim of momentary fancy impels him? - A moral somewhat serious might be drawn from his versatility: how few are competent judges of their own powers as adapted to the part allotted them to act in life! they imagine they could gain more applause by changing their characters: they quit the weaver for Pyramus, Pyramus for Thisby, Thisby for the Lion: they commence as ranting fools, and end as roaring brutes. — Steady attention to one thing may expect success; and if that one thing be well chosen, and truly honorable, it will also be more satisfactory both at present, and in future, than all the fancied honours, or 'six-pence a day' emoluments, of 'sweet bully Bottom' [4.2.19ff.] and his 'condoling lover Pyramus' [1.2.40ff.]. F. F. (159-166)

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5 George Steevens, response to Malone 1793

From The Plays of William Shakespeare. In Fifteen Volumes. With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators. To Which are Added, Notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. The Fourth Edition. Revised and Augmented (with a Glossarial Index) by the Editor ofDodsley's Collection of Old Plays [Isaac Reed] (15 vols, London, 1793). George Steevens (1736-1800) studied at Eton and Cambridge, but left the University without a degree in 1756. He settled in London and soon found that his vocation was editing Shakespeare, and in 1766 he published a collection of twenty Shakespearean quartos, with the sonnets, in four volumes. Dr. Johnson admired the meticulously accurate work and agreed to Steevens's proposal for a revision of his edition of 1765. This, which came to be known as the first variorum edition, appeared in 1773 in ten volumes. The additions were mostly by Steevens. He produced the second variorum of 1778, but committed the editing of the third one of 1785 to Isaac Reed. When Malone brought out his 1790 edition, Steevens re-entered the editorial competition in the hope of outdoing his rival, and collaborated with Reed on the 1793 variorum, now augmented from ten to fifteen volumes.

[From the commentary notes to A Midsummer Night's Dream] [1] [On 2.1.249: 'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows'] - whereon -] The old copy reads - where. Mr. Malone supposes where to be used as a disyllabic; but offers no example of such a pronunciation. (V, 61) [2] [On 3.2.257ff.: 'No, no; he'll / Seem to break loose -'] No, no, sir. — he will, &c.] [Quotes Malone's note] No critical remedy is nearer at hand, than a supposition that obscure passages are sentences designedly abrupt and imperfect. — Lysander calls Hermia an '^thiop'. 'No, no, sir:' replies Demetrius; i.e. she is none; and then ironically speaks to her of Lysander, as of one whose struggle to break loose is merely a pretended effort. He next addresses his provocation personally to Lysander. - I have left the text as I found it; only reading (for the sake of metre) he will, instead of he'll. (V, 106)

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[3] [On 4.1.104: 'For now our observation is perform'd'. Steevens offers an alternative to Malone's interpretation of the meaning of the title] In Twelfth Night, Act III. sc.iv. Olivia observes of Malvolio's seeming frenzy, that it 'is a very Midsummer madness.' That time of the year we may therefore suppose was anciently thought productive of mental vagaries resembling the scheme of Shakespeare's Play. To this circumstance it might have owed its title. (V, 127) [4] [On 4.1.192-3: 'Are you sure / That we are awake? It seems to me. . . .'] It seems to me,] Thus the folio. The quartos begin this speech as follows: — Are you sure That we are awake?

I had once injudiciously restored these words; but they add no weight to the sense of the passage, and create such a defect in the measure as is best remedied by their omission. [Quotes Malone's note] I cannot accede to a belief that sure was ever employed as a disyllabic, much less at the end of a verse. Fire (anciently spelt fier) and hour (anciently spelt hower) might be disyllabically used, because the duplicate vowels in each of them were readily separated in pronunciation. Our author might have written— But are you sure That we are now awake?— Having exhibited this passage, however, only in my note on the hemistich that follows it, I have little solicitude for its reformation. ^ (V, 134-5)

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6 Walter Whiter, commentary on some passages 1794

From A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare. Containing I. Notes on As You Like It //. An Attempt to Explain and Illustrate Various Passages, on a New Principle of Criticism, Derived from Mr. Locke's Doctrine of The Association of Ideas (London, 1794). Walter Whiter (1758-1832) attended Clare College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1781, and M.A. in 1784. He was a fellow of his college from 1783 to 1797, when he assumed a country rectory in Norfolk which he held until his death. Most of his life was devoted to the study of philology: in 1800 he published the first part of his Etymologicon Magnum, and in 1822-5 a related work on different principles, the three-volume Etymologicon Universale. Although a few observations from Whiter's study of Shakespeare were cited in commentaries, his book was mostly ignored for over a century, when gradually it became clear that he anticipates modem critical approaches to imagery and language in scholars like Spurgeon, Clemen, Armstrong, and even John Livingston Lowes. (See the introduction to the edition of Whiter by Alan Over and Mary Bell [London, 1967].)

And never since the middle summer's spring Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind But with thy brawls thou hast disturb 'd our sport. [2.1.82ff.] I am firmly persuaded, that in this passage the quarrels of Oberon with Titania were denominated by the word brawls from its affinity in one sense with the sport and the ringlet dances, which these brawls or quarrels had interrupted. Brawl is a species of dance; and what is singular in the present case, it is that particular species (according to Philips^) in which several persons danced together in a ring. (See Old Plays, Vol. IV, p. 72.t2]) — There is another passage in our Author, where brawls and sports are connected as in the instance before us, accompanied even by the same idea of interruption, which the one had received from the other. 'Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls' [The Comedy of Errors, 5.1.77]. Of this dance, our ancient writers afford us no precise or intelligible account. Every

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one recollects that Sir Christopher Hatton was much celebrated for his ability in conducting these dances: The grave Lord Keeper led the brawls.^ I am disposed however to imagine from the principles of our theory, that the excellence of this dance consisted in its intricacy, and that the performers displayed their dexterity by mingling with another company of dancers, and preserving their own figure distinct and separate amidst all the mazes of apparent interruption. A passage in Shelton's Don Quixote may induce us to suppose that the performance was accompanied with some significant actions: 'After this there came in another artificiall dance,of those called Brawles, &c.' (Part II., p. 129.M) Tras esta entro otra danza de artificio y de las que llaman habladas.' (Bowie's Edit.,[5^ III, 153 [lines 25-6].) 'Danza hablada. La compuesta de personages vestidos alproposito de alguna Historia.' (Bowie's Note, V, 56 [sig. Cc3v].) If Brawl be an exact translation of the Hablada; it corresponded in some cases with those Dramatic Dances, which are exhibited with such exquisite effect by the performers of the present days — By a passage in Love's Labour's Lost, we might be led to conjecture that the Brawl was sometimes a burlesque dance, accompanied with ridiculous sounds and gestures. [Quotes Love's Labour's Lost, 3.1.8-25: 'Moth. Master, will you win your love with a French brawt? . . .'] (102-5) My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song; And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea-maid's musick. [2.1.148ff.] When I have considered the singular imagery in this celebrated passage, and the abrupt mode, in which it is apparently introduced, I was ever accustomed to regard it as one of those wild excursions of the fancy, which seem totally independent of any kindred notions to supply or suggest the materials for its existence. I have since, however, discovered that all this is very naturally derived from the Masque and the Pageant, which abounded in the age of Shakespeare; and which (as I have before observed^]) would often quicken and enrich the fancy of the Poet with wild and original combinations. The frolic beings, which were now exercising the invention of our bard — these creatures of a distemper'd Dream in a Midsummer Night; and the preposterous devices in the Interlude of Pyramus (where the absurdities of scenic artifice are burlesqued) would naturally impress upon his mind the various and extraordinary objects of the masque or the pageant. The following narrative will convince us that a representation of the dolphin bearing a singer on his back was not uncommon in these spectacles; and it adds strength to my hypothesis, that the quotation has been produced by our Commentators on another occasion in this very play, though they have not been aware of its application to the instance before us.

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There was a spectacle presented to Queen Elizabeth upon the water, and among others Harry Goldingham was to represent Avion upon the DOLPHIN's BACKE; but finding his voice to be very hoarse and unpleasant, when he came to perform it, he tears off his disguise and swears he was none ofArion, not he, but even honest Harry Goldingham; which blunt discoverie pleased the queen better than if it had gone through in the right way: yet he could order his voice to an instrument exceeding well.7 (Merry Passages andjeasts, MS. Had. 6395.) Mr. Warton has referred to this incident. H[istory\ ofE[nglish] P[oetry] [vol.] 3. [1781] p. 414. In the present example we may perhaps be inclined to suspect that Shakespeare in this whole description of the mermaid, the dolphin, the vestal and Cupid, directly alludes to some actual exhibition, which contained all these particulars and which had been purposely contrived and presented before Elizabeth to compliment that princess at the expence of her unfortunate rival. So favourite a representation does the riding on a dolphin appear to have been in the time of our Poet, that it was sometimes introduced among the quaint devices in the art of cookery. In Jonson's Masque of Neptune's Triumph, the Cook says, I conceive you. I would have had your isle brought floting in now In a brave broth, and of a sprightly green, Just to the colour of the sea; and then Some twenty syrens, singing in the kettel, With an Arion mounted on the back Of a grown conger, but in such a posture, As all the world should take him for a dolphin8. (Page 638. Ed. [London,] 1692.) The same idea occurs nearly in the same words in the Staple of News [(London, 1692), p.] 445. As a further illustration that the sea-maid's musick is to be referred to the source, which I have suggested, we find in another Masque of Jonson [The Masque of Blacknesse] presented before the court on Twelfth Night 1605, 'One of the Tritons with the two SEA-MAIDS began to SING.'Pl (Page 324.) The back of the dolphin is deeply associated in the mind of Shakespeare with the splendid scenery of the pageant or the procession. Would the reader believe that the following idea in Antony and Cleopatra is to be referred to this source? His delights Were DOLPHIN like; they shew'd his BACK above The element they liv'd in. [5.2.88ff] . . . (185-9) [He goes on to comment on Antony and Cleopatra at some length, then ends with two pages on the 'insubstantial pageant' of The Tempest, 4.1.155.]

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7 Charles Dibdin, his fertile and creative fancy 1800

From A Complete History of the English Stage. Introduced by a . . . Review of the Asiatic, the Grecian, the Roman, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the German, the French, and Other Theatres and . . . Biographical Tracts and Anecdotes. . . . The Whole Written, with the Assistance of Interesting Documents, Collected in the Course of Five and Thirty Years, by Mr. Dibdin (5 vols, London, [1800]). Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) began his versatile theatrical career as a boy by singing and playing the organ in churches, then writing ballads at sixteen, acting professionally at seventeen, and composing an operetta for the London stage at nineteen. From 1765 to 1800 he wrote plays, interludes, sketches, entertainments, pantomimes, novels — such as Hannah Hewit; or the Female Crusoe (1796) —, and over nine hundred songs. He had some association with Isaac BickerstafFe, George Colman, and David Garrick, mainly in writing songs for them. Following his History of the Stage in five volumes in 1800, he published his own Professional Life of Mr. Dibdin . . . with the Words of Six Hundred Songs in four volumes in 1803.

[From Book V, chapter III: 'Shakespeare's Plays'] [Dibdin looks at Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, 1, 2, 3 Henry VI, Pericles, Locrine, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Winter's Tale, dating them from 1589 to 1594, then A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1595, following exactly Malone's chronology of 1778. He pauses in the middle of his three paragraphs on The Two Gentlemen of Verona to present the following paragraph on his chronology.] The chronological order, which I pursue right or wrong in this account of Shakespeare's productions, even if it should be deficient in veracity, has certainly the appearance of good sense in its favour, for it seems to lay before the reader that sort of rotation in which a well wisher to his reputation would desire that he had written them. The redundant luxuriance, in which, in the wilds of Shakespeare's abundant and productive imagination, one cannot sometimes see the wood for trees, begins as he goes on to be more and more got under. The underwood is better cleared out and the plants, intended to swell and enlarge, have more room and better air to accelerate their approach to maturity. (Ill, 39)

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[He devotes the next two paragraphs to The Winter's Tale, then considers A Midsummer Night's Dream.] A Midsummer Night's Dream came out in 1595. Shakespeare, having ranged so far through the fields of nature, began now to feel an inclination to explore the regions of fancy; which he did to so good a purpose, that all the critics, even the most sarcastic, have agreed, that in this wild and beautiful play, if the fairies do not speak the language of common nature no one can pronounce that they do not speak their own. Every writer, equal to the task, compliments his country by displaying all the poetic fare of which his genius is capable. Here has Shakespeare in one instance paid his country this compliment. Common tradition had familiarized^ the idea of fairies, and many a ballad and poem had made them the lares of the English. His fertile and creative fancy, therefore could not, to shew its extent and variety, have been better employed. Spenser had trod the ground before him, with prodigious felicity and sterling excellence; but Shakespeare, born to soar above all others, represented what his great predecessor only narrated. We come now to consider Shakespeare every moment in a superior light, for great and admirable as his talents have hitherto appeared, they are yet growing considerably into much more strength and improvement. Romeo and Juliet his next play, which was produced also in 1595, is a wonderful performance; and how we can possibly understand that, so soon after his mind had been entangled in the labyrinths of enchantment, and his fancy frolicking over the imaginary beauties of Fairy land, he could calmly set down exquisitely to describe literal nature, will be difficult, if not impossible. (Ill, 41-2)

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8 August Wilhelm von Schlegel, on metre, invention, and a unified whole 1815

From A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, by Augustus William Schlegel. Translated by John Black [1815]. . . . Revised, According to the last German Edition, by the Reverend A.J.W. Morrison, M.A. (London, 1846). August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845), German poet, translator, and literary critic, and one of the main forces in early Romanticism, studied at the University of Gottingen from 1786 to 1791. Then he wrote some poetry, began his translating of Dante and Shakespeare, and contributed critical essays to journals. From 1797 to 1801 he published his translations of sixteen of Shakespeare's plays into blank verse. He also translated Calderon, wrote on Racine in French, and in later life his translations of two Indian epics began Sanskrit studies in Germany. His most influential work was a greatly expanded version of his 1808 lectures in Vienna, Uber dramatische Kunst und Literatur (1809-11), translated into French and Italian, and into English as A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (1815; revised 1846).

[From Lecture XXIV: 'Criticisms on Shakespeare's Comedies'] Shakespeare's Iambics are sometimes highly harmonious and full sounding; always varied and suitable to the subject, at one time distinguished by ease and rapidity, at another they move along with ponderous energy. They never fall out of the dialogical character, which may always be traced even in the continued discourses of individuals, excepting when the latter run into the lyrical. They are a complete model of the dramatic use of this species of verse, which, in English, since Milton, has been also used in epic poetry; but in the latter it has assumed a quite different turn. Even the irregularities of Shakespeare's versification are expressive; a verse broken off, or a sudden change of rhythmus, coincides with some pause in the progress of the thought, or the entrance of another mental disposition. As a proof that he purposely violated the mechanical rules, from a conviction that too symmetrical a versification does not suit with the drama, and on the stage has in the long run a tendency to lull the spectators asleep, we may observe that his earlier pieces are the most diligently versified, and that in the later works, when through practice he must have acquired a greater facility, we find the strongest deviations from the regular structure of the

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verse. As it served with him merely to make the poetical elevation perceptible, he therefore claimed the utmost possible freedom in the use of it. The views or suggestions of feeling by which he was guided in the use of rhyme may likewise be traced with almost equal certainty. Not unfrequently scenes, or even single speeches, close with a few rhyming lines, for the purpose of more strongly marking the division, and of giving it more rounding. This was injudiciously imitated by the English tragic poets of a later date; they suddenly elevated the tone in the rhymed lines, as if the person began all at once to speak in another language. The practice was welcomed by the actors from its serving as a signal for clapping when they made their exit. In Shakespeare, on the other hand, the transitions are more eas all changes of forms are brought about insensibly, and as if of themselves. Moreover, he is generally fond of heightening a series of ingenious and antithetical sayings by the use of rhyme. We find other passages in continued rhyme, where solemnity and theatrical pomp were suitable, as, for instance, in the mask, as it is called, in The Tempest, and in the play introduced in Hamlet. Of other pieces, for instance, the Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, the rhymes form a considerable part; either because he may have wished to give them a glowing colour, or because the characters appropriately utter in a more musical tone their complaints or suits of love. In these cases he has even introduced rhymed strophes, which approach to the form of the sonnet, then usual in England. W. . . . (376-7) A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, may be in so far compared together that in both the influence of a wonderful world of spirits is interwoven with the turmoil of human passions and with the farcical adventures of folly. A Midsummer Night's Dream is certainly an earlier production; but The Tempest, according to all appearance, was written in Shakespeare's later days: hence most critics, on the supposition that the poet must have continued to improve with increasing maturity of mind, have honoured the last piece with a marked preference. I cannot, however, altogether concur with them: the internal merits of these two works are, in my opinion, pretty nearly balanced, and a predilection for the one or the other can only be governed by personal taste. In profound and original characterization the superiority of The Tempest is obvious: as a whole we must always admire the masterly skill which he has here displayed in the economy of his means, and the dexterity with which he has disguised his preparations, - the scaffoldings for the wonderful aerial structure. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, on the other hand, there flows a luxuriant vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have been brought about without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours are of such clear transparency that we think the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath. The fairy world here described resembles those elegant pieces of arabesque, where little genii with butterfly wings rise, half embodied, above the flower-cups. Twilight, moonshine, dew, and spring perfumes, are the element of these tender spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves, many-coloured flowers, and glittering insects; in the human world they do but make sport childishly and waywardly with their beneficent or noxious influences. Their most violent rage dissolves in good-natured raillery; their passions, stripped of all

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earthly matter, are merely an ideal dream. To correspond with this, the loves of mortals are painted as a poetical enchantment, which, by a contrary enchantment, may be immediately suspended, and then renewed again. The different parts of the plot; the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, Oberon and Titania's quarrel, the flight of the two pair of lovers, and the theatrical manoeuvres of the mechanics, are so lightly and happily interwoven that they seem necessary to each other for the formation of a whole. Oberon is desirous of relieving the lovers from their perplexities, and greatly adds to them through the mistakes of his minister, till he at last comes really to the aid of their fruitless amorous pain, their inconstancy and jealousy, and restores fidelity to its old rights. The extremes of fanciful and vulgar are united when the enchanted Titania awakes and falls in love with a coarse mechanic with an ass's head, who represents, or rather disfigures, the part of a tragical lover. The droll wonder of Bottom's transformation is merely the translation of a metaphor in its literal sense; but in his behaviour during the tender homage of the Fairy Queen we have an amusing proof how much the consciousness of such a head-dress heightens the effect of his usual folly. Theseus and Hippolyta are, as it were, a splendid frame for the picture; they take no part in the action, but surround it with a stately pomp. The discourse of the hero and his Amazon, as they course through the forest with their noisy hunting-train, works upon the imagination like the fresh breath of morning, before which the shapes of night disappear. Pyramus and Thisbe is not unmeaningly chosen as the grotesque play within the play; it is exactly like the pathetic part of the piece, a secret meeting of two lovers in the forest, and their separation by an unfortunate accident, and closes the whole with the most amusing parody. [Two paragraphs describe The Tempest, then he continues.] In the zephyr-like Ariel the image of air is not to be mistaken, his name even bears an allusion to it; as, on the other hand, Caliban signifies the heavy element of earth. Yet they are neither of them simple, allegorical personifications but beings individually determined. In general we find in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in The Tempest, in the magical part of Macbeth, and wherever Shakespeare avails himself of the popular belief in the invisible presence of spirits, and the possibility of coming in contact with them, a profound view of the inward life of nature and her mysterious springs, which, it is true, can never be altogether unknown to the genuine poet, as poetry is altogether incompatible with mechanical physics, but which few have possessed in an equal degree with Dante and himself. (393-6)

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9 Nathan Drake, unity of feeling and of imagery, and the fairies 1817

From Shakespeare and His Times: Including the Biography of the Poet; Criticisms on His Genius and Writings; A New Chronology of His Plays; A Disquisition on the Object of His Sonnets; and a History of the Manners, Customs, and Amusements, Superstitions, Poetry, and Elegant Literature of His Age. By Nathan Drake, M.D. Author of 'Literary Hours,' and of 'Essays on Periodical Literature' (2 vols, London, 1817). Nathan Drake (1766-1836), physician and writer, was an honorary associate of the Royal Society of Literature, but spent most of his life quietly removed from the city, in Suffolk. He published several collections of miscellaneous essays, but his chief labour was expended on these encyclopedic volumes illustrative of Shakespeare, which draw together and present in elegant and readable form the results of the labours of many scholars of the preceding century. A companion volume serves something of the same purpose for Shakespeare's critics: Memorials of Shakespeare; or, sketches of his character and genius by various writers, now first collected with a prefatory and concluding essay, and notes (London, 1828).

[From Part II, Chapter IX] The Midsummer-Night's Dream . . . is the first play which exhibits the imagination of Shakespeare in all its fervid and creative power; for though, as mentioned in Meres's catalogue,!1! as having numerous scenes of continued rhyme, as being barren in fable, and defective in strength of character, it may be pronounced the offspring of youth and inexperience, it will ever in point of fancy be considered as equal to any subsequent drama of the poet. There is, however, a light in which the best plays of Shakespeare should be viewed, which will, in fact, convert the supposed defects of this exquisite sally of sportive invention into positive excellence. A unity of feeling most remarkably pervades and regulates their entire structure, and the MidsummerNight's Dream, a tide in itself declaratory of the poet's object and aim, partakes of this bond, or principle of coalescence, in a very peculiar degree. It is, indeed, a fabric of the most buoyant and aerial texture, floating as it were

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between earth and heaven, and tinted with all the magic colouring of the rainbow, The earth hath bubbles as the water has, And this is of them. [Macbeth 1.3.79ff.] In a piece thus constituted, where the imagery of the most wild and fantastic dream is actually embodied before our eyes, where the principal agency is carried on by beings lighter than the gossamer, and smaller than the cowslip's bell, whose elements are the moon-beams and the odoriferous atmosphere of flowers, and whose sport it is 'To dance in ringlets to the whistling wind' [2.1.86], it was necessary, in order to give a filmy and consistent legerity to every part of the play, that the human agents should partake of the same evanescent and visionary character; accordingly both the higher and lower personages of this drama are the subjects of illusion and enchantment, and love and amusement their sole occupation; the transient perplexities of thwarted passion, and the grotesque adventures of humorous folly, touched as they are with the tenderest or most frolic pencil, blending admirably with the wild, sportive, and romantic tone of the scenes where 'Trip the light fairies and the dapper elves,'t2] and forming together a whole so variously yet so happily interwoven, so racy and effervescent in its composition, of such exquisite levity and transparency, and glowing with such luxurious and phosphorescent splendour, as to be perfectly without a rival in dramatic literature. Nor is this piece, though, from the nature of its fable, unproductive of any strong character, without many pleasing discriminations of passion and feeling. Mr. Malone asks if'a single passion be agitated by the faint and childish solicitudes of Hermia and Demetrius, of Helena and Lysander, those shadows of each other?'3 [No. 3 above]. Now, whatever may be thought of Demetrius and Lysander, the characters of Hermia and Helena are beautifully drawn, and finely contrasted, and in much of the dialogue which occurs between them, the chords both of love and pity are touched with the poet's wonted skill. In their interview in the wood, the contrariety of their dispositions is completely developed; Hermia is represented as 'keen and shrewd: / . . . a vixen, when she went to school, / And, though but little, fierce' [3.2.323ff.], and in her difference with her friend, threatens to scratch her eyes out with her nails, while Helena, meek, humble, and retired, sues for protection, and endeavours in the most gentle manner to deprecate her wrath: [Quotes 3.2.299-303: 'I pray you, though you mock me. . . .' and 306-8, 314-17: 'Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me. . . .']. And in an earlier part of this scene, where Helena first suspects that her friend had conspired with Demetrius and Lysander to mock and deride her, nothing can more exquisitely paint her affectionate temper, and the heartfelt pangs of severing friendship, than the following lines, most touching in their appeal, an echo from the very bosom of nature itself:- [Quotes 3.2.195, 198-212, 215-19: 'Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid ]. (II, 299-302) [Drake proceeds to discuss the Fairy Mythology, finding its origins not in the literature of Spain, Italy, and France, whose ideas about fairies he believes derived

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from Persian and Arabian influences, but in the Gothic mythology of Scandinavia. He finds this mythology treated by Chaucer 'with a pleasant vein of ridicule' (II, 313), but argues that the tradition continued strongly in the North, and especially in Scotland.] [I]n 1593, when the Midsummer Night's Dream was presented to the public, nearly the whole of this Mythology which, as founded on the Scandick superstitions, had been, though with a few modifications, so long prevalent both in England and Scotland, seems to have received such vast additions from the plastic imagination of our bard, as, though rebuilt on the traditions of the 'olden time,' justly to merit, by their novelty and poetic beauty, the title of the English System, in contradistinction to that which still lingers in the wilds of Scotland. The Fairies of Shakespeare have been truly denominated the favourite children of his romanticfancy,^ and, perhaps, in no part of his works has he exhibited a more creative and visionary pencil, or a finer tone of enthusiasm, than in bodying forth 'these airy nothings,' and in giving them, in brighter and ever-durable tints, once more 'A local habitation and a name' [5.1.16fF.]. Of his unlimited sway over this delightful world of ideal forms, no stronger proof can be given, than that he has imparted an entire new cast of character to the beings whom he has evoked from its bosom, purposely omitting the darker shades of their character, and, whilst throwing round them a flood of light, playful, yet exquisitely soft and tender, endowing them with the moral attributes of purity and benevolence. In fact, he not only dismisses altogether the fairies of a malignant nature, but clothes the milder yet mixed tribe of his predecessors with a more fascinating sportiveness, and with a much larger share of unalloyed goodness. The distinction between the two species he has accurately marked where Puck, under some apprehension, observes to Oberon, that the night is waning fast, that Aurora's harbinger appears, and that the 'damned spirits all' are flitting to their beds, adding, that For fear lest day should look their shames upon, They wilfully themselves exile from light, And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night: [3.2.385ff.] to which Oberon immediately replies,- [Quotes 3.2.388-93: 'But we are spirits of another sort. . . .'].5 Of the originality of Shakespeare in the delineation of this tribe of spirits, or Fairies, nothing more is required in proof, than a combination or grouping of the principal features; a picture which, when contrasted with the Scandick system and that which had been built upon it in England and Scotland previous to his own time, will sufficiently show with what grace, amenity, and beauty, and with what an exuberant store of novel imagery, he has decorated these phantoms of the Gothic mythology. The King and Queen of Faiery, who, in Chaucer, are identified with the Pluto and Proserpina of hell,6 are, under the appellations of Oberon and Titania,7 drawn by Shakespeare in a very amiable and pleasing light; for, though jealous of each

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other, they are represented as usually employed in alleviating the distresses of the worthy and unfortunate. Their benign influence, indeed, seems to have extended over the physical powers of nature; for Titania tells her Lord, that, in consequence of their jealous brawls, a strange distemperature had seized the elements:- [Quotes 2.1.107-17: 'The seasons alter. . . .']. It appears even that the fairy-practice of purloining children, which, in every previous system of this mythology, had been carried on from malignant or self-interested motives, was in Titania the result of humanity and compassion: thus, when Oberon begs her 'little changeling boy' to be his henchman [2.1.120ff.], she answers - [Quotes 2.1.121-37, the description of her relationship with the boy's mother, now dead]. [In the next paragraph Drake briefly engages in the dispute over the immortality of the fairies.] Like the Lios-alfar or Bright Elves of the Goths, the Fairies of Shakespeare delighted in conferring blessings, in prospering the household, and in rendering the offspring of virtuous love, fortunate, fair, and free from blemish; thus the first fruit of the re-union of Oberon and Titania, is a benediction on the house of Theseus [Quotes 4.1.87-90]; an intention which is carried into execution at the close of the play, where this kind and gentle race, entering the mansion at midnight — 'Hand in hand, with fairy grace' [5.1.399] — receive the following directions from their benevolent monarch:- [Quotes 5.1.401-6, 409-18]. How different this from the conduct and disposition of their brother elves of Scotland, of whom Kirk tells us, that 'they are ever readiest to go on hurtfull Errands, but seldom will be the Messengers of great Good to Men.'8 [In the next paragraph Drake quotes from The Merry Wives of Windsor 5.5. to show the fairies' 'love of virtue and abhorrence of sin' (340).] If the moral and benevolent character of these children of fancy be, in a great degree, the creation of Shakespeare, the imagery which he has employed in describing their persons, manners, and occupations, will be deemed not less his peculiar offspring, nor inferior in beauty, novelty, and wildness of painting, to that which the magic of his pencil has diffused over every other part of his visionary world. [He then illustrates the diminutive size of the fairies, and their ring-dancing, with references to A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, and Romeo and Juliet.] But the most astonishing display of the sportive and illimitable fancy of our poet on this subject, will be found in the ministration and offices ascribed to those Fairies who are employed about the person, or executing the mandates, of their Queen. It appears to have been the business of one of her retinue to attend to the decoration of her majesty's pensioners, the cowslips tall [2.1.10]; [Quotes 2.1.11-15: 'In their gold coats. . . .']. Another duty, not less important, was to lull their mistress asleep on the bosom of a violet or a musk-rose:— [Quotes 2.1.249-54: 'I know a bank. . . .']. And again, with still greater wildness of imagination, but with the utmost propriety and adaptation of imagery, are they drawn in the performance of similar functions:— [Quotes 2.2.1-8, where Titania disposes her retinue and asks to be sung to sleep]. The song is equally in character, as it forbids, in admirable adherence to poetical

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truth and consistency, the approach of every insect or reptile, that might be deemed likely to annoy the repose of such a delicate and diminutive being, while Philomel is invoked to add her delicious chaunt to the soothing melody of the fairy voices:— [Quotes 2.2.9-26]. This scene, beautiful and appropriate as it is, is yet surpassed, in originality and playfulness of fancy, by the passage in which Titania gives directions to her attendants for their conduct to Bottom, to whom she had previously offered their assistance, promising that they should fetch him 'jewels from the deep' [3.1.158]:— [Quotes 3.1.164-74]. The working of Oberon's enchantment on Titania, who 'straightway lov'd an ass' [3.2.34], and led him to 'her close and consecrated bower' [3.2.7], and the interview between Bottom, her fairy majesty, and her train, though connected with so many supernatural imaginings, have been transferred to the canvas by Fuselit9! with a felicity which has embodied the very thoughts of Shakespeare, and which may on this subject be said to have placed the genius of the painter almost on a level with that of the poet, so wonderfully has he fixed the illusive creations of his great original. [Drake next illustrates the fairies' love of cleanliness by references to A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Romeo and Juliet. He then moves to consider attributes of Puck derived from Gervase of Tilbury, Lavater (in the English translation of 1572), and Reginald Scot, including mention of the trick with the ass's head.] But to these traits of customary character, Shakespeare has added some which greatly modify the picture, and which have united to the 'drudging goblin/t10! and to the demon of mischievous frolic, duties and functions of a very different cast. He is the messenger,11 and trusty servant12 of the fairy king, by whom, in these capacities, he is called gentle13 and good,14 and he combines with all his hereditary attributes, the speed, the legerity, and the intellectual skill of the highest order of the fairy world. Accordingly when Oberon says— 'Fetch me this herb: and be thou here again, / Ere the leviathan can swim a league;' he replies, Til put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes' [2.1.173ff.];15 and again, on receiving commission from the same quarter :Obe. About the wood go swifter than the wind: Puck. I go, I go: look, how I go; Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow. [3.2.94; lOOff.]16 Upon the whole we may be allowed, from the preceding dissertation, to consider the following series of circumstances as entitled to the appellation of facts: namely, that the patria of our popular system of fairy mythology, was the Scandinavian Peninsula; that, on its admission into this country, it gradually underwent various modifications through the influence of Christianity, the introduction of classical associations, and the prevalence of feudal manners; but that, ultimately, two systems became established; one in Scotland, founded on the wild and more terrific parts of the Gothic mythology, and the other in England, built, indeed, on the same system, but from a selection of its milder features, and converted by the genius of

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Shakespeare into one of the most lovely creations of a sportive imagination. Such, in fact, has been the success of our bard in expanding and colouring the germs of Gothic fairyism; in assigning to its tiny agents, new attributes and powers; and in clothing their ministration with the most light and exquisite imagery, that his portraits, in all their essential parts, have descended to us as indissolubly connected with, and indeed nearly, if not altogether, forming, our ideas of the fairy tribe. (II, 337-53)

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10 William Hazlitt, Bottom, Puck, and the incompatibility of poetry and the stage 1817

From Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (London, 1817). William Hazlitt (1778-1830), lecturer, journalist, reporter, critic, essayist, contemplated following his father as a Unitarian minister, but after meeting Coleridge in 1798 turned to thoughts of philosophy and writing. Still unresolved on a profession, he emulated his brother in pursuing, in Paris and England, a career as a painter, including portraits of Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge, and Lamb. In 1812, needing an increased income for his wife and child, he settled in London, making a living by lectures, theatrical criticism, and parliamentary reporting. Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, one of the most influential works of Romantic Shakespearean criticism, was his first major book; it aroused the ire of William Gifford partly by its attack on Samuel Johnson, and partly because of its enthusiastic style (The Quarterly Review, 18 (January 1818), 458-66). Possibly Gifford was also offended by Hazlitt's praise of Schlegel, who is elevated above all English critics of Shakespeare except Pope. The chapter on A Midsummer Night's Dream draws on two earlier publications: a review of Frederick Reynolds's Covent Garden production (The Examiner, January 21, 1816, 44-5); and an essay in The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1817, I, 202-9).

Bottom the Weaver is a character that has not had justice done him. He is the most romantic of mechanics. And what a list of companions he has - Quince the Carpenter, Snug the Joiner, Flute the Bellows-mender, Snout the Tinker, Starveling the Tailor; and then again, what a group of fairy attendants, Puck, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed! 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 the Weaver, who takes the lead of 'This crew of patches, rude mechanicals, / That work for bread upon Athenian stalls' [3.2.9ff], follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly represented as conceited, serious, and fantastical. He is ready to undertake any thing and every thing, 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. 'He will roar that it shall do any man's heart good to

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hear him' [1.2.70ff.]; and this being objected to as improper, he still has a resource in his good opinion of himself and 'will roar you an 'twere any nightingale' [1.2.83ff.]. 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. 'Have you the lion's part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.' — 'You may do it extempore,' says Quince, 'for it is nothing but roaring' [1.2.66fF.]. Starveling the Tailor keeps the peace, and objects to the lion and the drawn sword. 'I believe we must leave the killing out when all's done' [3.1.14fF.]. Starveling, however, does not start the objections himself, but seconds them when made by others, as if he had not spirit to express his fears without encouragement. It is too much to suppose all this intentional: 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 Shakespeare. Bottom, who is not only chief actor, but stage-manager for the occasion, has a device to obviate the danger of frightening the ladies: [Quotes 3.1.17-22: 'Write me a prologue. . . .']. Bottom seems to have understood 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, 'with amiable cheeks, and fair large ears' [4.1.2,4]. He instinctively acquires a most learned taste, and grows fastidious in the choice of dried peas and bottled hay. He is quite familiar with his new attendants, and assigns them their parts with all due gravity. 'Monsieur Cobweb, good Monsieur, get your weapon in your hand, and kill me a red-hipt humble-bee on the top of a thistle, and, good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag' [4.1.1 Off.]. What an exact knowledge is here shewn of natural history! Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of the fairy band. He is the Ariel of the Midsummer 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 characters 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 misleads — 'Lord, what fools these mortals be' [3.2.115]! 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 Epicurean 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' [2.1.101]! It is astonishing 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.'PI His subtlety exceeds that of all other dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated person of the present day said that 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

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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 favourite, Bottom; or Hippolyta's description of a chace, or Theseus's answer? The two 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 from beds of flowers. Titania's exhortation to the fairies to wait upon Bottom, which is remarkable for a certain cloying sweetness in the repetition of the rhymes, is as follows:— [Quotes 3.1.164-74]. The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet are not more distinct than the poetry of the foregoing passage, and of the conversation between Theseus and Hippolyta. [Quotes 4.1.103-27, their discussion of hunting hounds.] Even Titian never made a hunting-piece of a gusto so fresh and lusty, and so near the first ages of the world as this.— It has been suggested to us, that the Midsummer Night's Dream would do admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece; and our prompter proposed that Mr. Kean should play the part of Bottom, as worthy of his great talents. He might, in the discharge of his duty, offer to play the lady like any of our actresses that he pleased, the lover or the tyrant like any of our actors that he pleased, and the lion like 'the most fearful wild-fowl living' [3.1.32]. The carpenter, the tailor, and joiner, it was thought, would hit the galleries. The young ladies in love would interest the side-boxes: and Robin Goodfellow and his companions excite a lively fellow-feeling in the children from school. There would be two courts, an empire within an empire, the Athenian and the Fairy King and Queen, with their attendants, and with all their finery. What an opportunity for processions, for the sound of trumpets and glittering of spears! What a fluttering of urchins' painted wings; what a delightful profusion of gauze clouds and airy spirits floating on them! Alas, the experiment has been tried, and has failed; not through the fault of Mr. Kean, who did not play the part of Bottom, nor of Mr. Listen, who did, and who played it well, but 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: every thing there is in the fore-ground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately 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 kept in mind, and tells according to the mixed impression of all that has been suggested. 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

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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 or 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 mid-day, 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. (126-34)

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11 James Boswell and Edmond Malone, Malone's last words. 1821

From The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators: comprehending A Life of the Poet, and An Enlarged History of the Stage, by the Late Edmond Malone. With a New Glossarial Index (21 vols, London, 1821). James Boswell the younger (1778-1822), son of Samuel Johnson's biographer, was only seven when his father's acquaintance with Edmond Malone developed into the intimacy which lasted until his death in 1795. Malone was one of the elder Boswell's literary executors, and also became a close friend of his son. Young Boswell was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1805; he pursued a career as a lawyer and as commissioner for bankrupts at the same time as contributing to literary and scholarly endeavours for the Roxburghe Club, and assisting Malone in collecting materials for the 21-volume 'third variorum', which he carried to completion in 1821, nine years after Malone's death. Peter Martin, Malone's most recent biographer, has rightly claimed that the influence of this edition 'would extend throughout the nineteenth century and into the era of modern scholarship' (Edmond Malone Shakespearean Scholar [Cambridge, 1995], p. 276).

[From Advertisement to the present edition. By Mr. Boswell\ It was the object of Mr. Malone, from which he never deviated, to furnish the reader, as far as it was possible, with the author's unsophisticated text. In acting upon this principle he had at first the concurrence and even the example of Mr. Steevens to guide him. They both professed to follow the old copies with scrupulous fidelity, except where a clear necessity compelled them to depart from the readings which they supplied. To this plan it will be found Mr. Malone has still steadily adhered, while his rival critick has latterly adopted maxims directly contrary to the opinions which he formerly maintained. Corruptions have been supposed to exist in the phraseology of Shakespeare, which, in some instances, are not altogether obsolete in the present day; and the free versification of the poet has been lengthened or curtailed as suited the commentator's caprice, to bring it within the strict regularity which has been enjoined by the school of Pope. In proposing these corrections, as Mr. Steevens

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endeavours to represent them, and in pointing out the fancied errors of the earlier copies, he has generally had recourse to ridicule, a weapon of which he was as fond, as he was skilful in its use. This mode of discussion gave him great advantages when the passages upon which it arose were scattered throughout a number of volumes, from which a great proportion of readers would be unwilling to take the pains of collecting a system of criticism for themselves; but would rather be content with acquiescing in opinions so pleasantly and humorously conveyed. Mr. Malone, to obviate this effect (in some measure, I believe, at my recommendation), determined to bring these topicks into one connected view, and therefore prepared materials for an express Essay on the Metre and Phraseology of Shakespeare, in which he had made considerable progress, but which, I am sorry to say, he did not live to complete. I have taken some pains upon this subject, and have ventured to add the result of my reading to what my friend has left behind him. (I, vii-xi) [From Essay on the Phraseology and Metre of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries] [1] The liberties which have been taken by Mr. Steevens in re-modelling the diction of Shakespeare, and reducing it to a modern standard, though sufficiently daring, are trivial, compared with those in which he has indulged on the subject of versification. Not a single play has escaped from being 'carved like an apple tart,' with 'snip and nip, and cut and slit, and slish and slash;' so that the poet of Elizabeth's reign, if he were to behold the new garb in which his editor has clothed him, might well exclaim with his own Petruchio, 'Why, what o' devil's name call'st thou this?' [The Taming of the Shrew, 4.3.89ff.] It is impossible, by the utmost stretch of candour, to believe that one who was so thoroughly versed in old English literature, could have been unconscious how unfounded his positions were, or that he was misleading the reader. Mr. Gifford has justly, as well as humorously, designated him the Puck of commentators. (I, 534-5) [2] One class of verses have hitherto been considered as defective, but erroneously in my opinion. In the first scene of Macbeth this passage occurs. See vol. xi. p. 12: 1 Witch. Where the place? 2 Witch. Upon the heath. 3 Witch. There to meet with Macbeth. The second of these having been considered imperfect, the reader will see, at the page referred to, the remedies which have been proposed. In Love's Labour's Lost, vol. iv. p. 371, I have mistakingly printed She for whom even Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiop were. [4.3.115ff.] In the old copies even is omitted, and thus we find it also in the Passionate Pilgrim, see vol. x; and in England's Helicon. I am satisfied that our ancestors had a measure consisting of only six syllables, and that both the lines quoted were perfectly correct as they originally stood. I have come to this conclusion, not only because other instances

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are to be found in Shakespeare's plays, but in many of his contemporaries. Thus, in A Midsummer Night's Dream: [Quotes 2.1.2-7: 'Over hill, over dale. . . .' and 3.2.396-7: 'Up and down, up and down. . . .'J.W (I, 571) [From the commentary notes to A Midsummer Night's Dream] [I] [On 1.1.27: 'This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child'. Boswell retains Malone's reading 'This hath bewitch'd . . .' despite his disagreement.] As the reading, 'This man hath bewitch'd,' is found in all the old copies, and as the two quartos were printed in the same year, abounding in variations, and probably sent forth by persons who were washing to outrun each other at the press, it is surely improbable that they should chance upon the same error, t2! A redundant syllable, at the commencement of a verse, perpetually occurs in our old dramatists. See the Essay upon Shakespeare's Versification. BOSWELL. (V, 177-8) [2] [On 2.1.249: 'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows': answering Steevens's objection to reading where as a disyllabic.] If similar usages are shown in Shakespeare and other writers of his time, it is sufficient without producing express authority in every instance. Mr. Steevens saw no objection to desire as a trisyllable in Cymbeline, Act I. Sc.VII: Should make desire vomit emptiness. [1.6.45] Yet no other example has been given. MALONE. (V, 232) [3] [On 3.2.257ff.: 'No, no; he'll / Seem to break loose —'. Malone replies to Steevens's 1793 objection to Malone's 1790 text and note] My assertion that abrupt sentences not attended to have been the cause of much obscurity, does not rest on conjecture or fancy. Mr. Steevens has adopted my suggestions in many other places; when he says he has left the text as he found it, he cannot mean, as he found it in any of the old copies. MALONE. (V, 274-5)

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12 Augustine Skottowe, mainly on the fairies 1824

From The Life of Shakespeare; Enquiries into the Originality of his Dramatic Plots and Characters; and Essays on the Ancient Theatres and Theatrical Usages. By Augustine Skottowe (2 vols, London, 1824). Augustine Skottowe (1790P-1851) spent forty-three years in the Paymaster General's Office, much of that time in Portsmouth, where he may have been acquainted with the family of Charles Dickens (see Philip F. Skottowe, The Leaf and the Tree: The Story of an English Family, London, 1963, pp.44-5). He is remembered for his book on Shakespeare. In the Prefatory Essay of his Memorials of Shakespeare (1828) Nathan Drake praised Skottowe as having 'the taste and discriminating tact of the elegant and enlightened critic'. His book found favour with editors like Thomas Campbell (No. 17), Bryan Waller Procter (No. 23) - who cites him lengthily four times in the company of such authors as Coleridge, Schlegel, Johnson, and Hazlitt —, and Furness (No. 65). Ulrici (in his preface; No. 26) and Hudson (No. 29) allude to him, and in his History of Shakespearean Criticism (1932) Augustus Ralli devotes more space to him than to Johnson or Hallam. Skottowe's only other book was A Memoir of the Life and Writings of Charles Mills (London, 1828). Mills (1788-1826) was a minor historian and a close friend, to whom he had dedicated his Life of Shakespeare. Adolph Wagner translated the Life of Shakespeare into German — abbreviated — in 1825, and it appeared subsequently in the German version of the Works of Shakespeare by A.W. Schlegel and others (43 vols, Vienna, 1825-7).

[From the chapter entitled 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'] Few plays consist 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 Theseus 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' [5.1.72ff.], as amateur actors in the classic city of Athens.

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Of the characters constituting the serious action of this play Theseus and Hippolyta are entirely devoid of interest. Lysander and Demetrius, and Hermia and Helena, scarcely merit notice except on account of the frequent combination of elegance, 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. In the first place, there is a mutual passion between Lysander and Hermia: Demetrius loves Hermia, he having previously loved Helena, who returned his love. In the second stage, Lysander deserts Hermia, and urges his suit to Helena, \vho remains faithful to Demetrius; and, thirdly, Lysander disclaims his love for Helena, and renews his vows to his first love, Hermia; Demetrius relinquishes Hermia, and renews his affection for Helena. Bottom and his companions are probably highly drawn caricatures 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. . . . [He looks at some possible sources of the Interlude, and, drawing extensively on Drake (No. 9 above), discusses the origin and the lore of fairies.] 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 backward 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,W and the animating 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. Let it not be too hastily inferred from the diminutiveness of these testy beings, that their quarrels are indifferent to the sons of men. Alas! mortals know not how deep is their interest in the domestic harmony of the fairy court! Shakespeare has given an elegant summary of the calamities believed to be attendant on the dissensions of the king and queen of Fairy: 'the winds,' [Quotes 2.1.89-117] [He describes the mischievous doings of fairies, especially pucks, and then the good acts they performed, such as the blessing at the end of the play. He quotes Chaucer's Wife of Bath's tale on fairies.] To a belief in magic, witchcraft, and the agency of spirits, was always superadded that of the power of charms both to create love, and cause infidelity and hatred. The singular tergiversations of the lovers Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena, are all effects of such a power: the love of Titania for Bottom, with his ass's head, is a similar instance, and it was, doubtless, by the same means that the queen had led Theseus [Quotes 2.1.77-80: 'through the glimmering night. . . .']. The whole circle of poetry does not contain a passage richer in poetical beauties and of sweeter versification, than that wherein Shakespeare describes the power

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of the heart's-ease to create love. Elizabeth never received a more graceful compliment. [Quotes 2.1.148-68: 'Thou rememb'rest / Since once I sat upon a promontory. . . .']. Among other mischievous propensities which were attributed to fairies, was that of stealing the unbaptized infants of mortals, and leaving their own progeny in their stead. Before they put a new-born child into the cradle, the Danish women were accustomed to place either there, or over the door, garlick, salt, bread, and also steel, or some cutting instrument made of that metal, as preventives against so great an evil. The child of a pagan was lawful game for every waggish sprite, and, in a pilfering excursion to the East, Titania found no obstructions to her success from precautions similar to those of the northern matron. She had for her attendant 'A lovely boy' [Quotes 2.1.22-7]. The poet has not left it to this exploit of Titania, nor to the return of Oberon 'from farthest steep of India' [2.1.69], to proclaim that celerity of motion by which the fairies were distinguished. The king boasts that they 'the globe can compass soon, / Swifter than the wand'ring moon' [4.1.97ff.]. Puck undertakes to 'Put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes' [2.1.175ff.]; and the following lines seem almost to invest the fairy tribe with the power of ubiquity: [Quotes 2.1.2-7: 'Over hill, over dale ']. The tribe of fairies generally was deemed mischievous, and Puck, RobinGoodfellow, or Hobgoblin, as he was variously called, enjoyed the reputation of being the master-spirit of wickedness among them. Delighted by every combination of the preposterous, his never-wearying pursuit of mischief rendered his name universally terrific. If he met a person returning home at night, his delight was to lead him by a feigned voice out of his way: such is the exploit of Puck when he entangles Lysander and Demetrius in the mazes of a wood, and separates them from each other: [Quotes 3.2.396-9: 'Up and down. . . .']. At other times he assumed the shape of an animal, making his metamorphosis the vehicle of a prank: [Quotes 3.1.108-11: 'Sometime a horse I'll be. ...']. It would be tedious to recapitulate the whole of Robin's gambols, and useless also, as Shakespeare has given an elegant summary of his frolics. [Quotes 2.1.32-57: 'Either I mistake your shape. . . .']. The subject of darkness and night, as connected with the appearance of spirits, will demand so much of our attention in Hamlet, that nothing more is necessary here than to notice the several allusions to the same superstition in the present play. [Quotes 5.1.371-87: 'Now the hungry lion roars. . . .']. It was an indication of the comparative purity of the fairies that they delighted most to celebrate their revels in 'spangled star-light sheen' [2.1.29] or beneath the mild effulgence of the moon. But the slight relation which they bore to demoniacal spirits is more decisively proclaimed, by the superior privilege they enjoyed of protracting their gambols till day-light actually broke upon them. [Quotes 3.2.378-93: 'My fairy lord, this must be done with haste. . . .']. 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, every thing

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calculated to detract from its playfulness, or to encumber it with seriousness, and giving the rein to the brilliancy of youthful imagination, he scattered, from his superabundant 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 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. (I, 255-75)

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13 George Daniel, the fairy world, the clowns, the poetry 1828

From A Midsummer Night's Dream. A Comedy, In five Acts, by William Shakespeare. Printed from the Acting Copy, with Remarks, Biographical and Critical, by D. -G. To which are Added, A Description of the Costume, - Cast of the Characters, Entrances and Exits, — Relative Positions of the Performers on the Stage, and the Whole of the Stage Business. As performed at the Theatres Royal, London. Embellished with a Fine Engraving, By Mr. Bonner, from a Drawing Taken in the Theatre, by Mr. R. Cruikshank (London, 1828). George Daniel (1789-1864) joined a stockbroker's firm as a young man and spent most of his life in commerce, but gave his leisure time to the pursuit of literature. He published his first poem when he was sixteen, a humorous novel at twenty-three, some satirical poetry - such as The Modem Dunciad (1814) -, an operatic interlude, some farces, and, later in life, numerous essays in literary magazines such as Bentley's Miscellany. His major literary task was the writing of prefaces for the almost three hundred plays in Cumberland's British Theatre (1823-31) and it is from volume twenty of this series that the following excerpt comes.

[From the prefatory 'Remarks'] A Midsummer Night's Dream is Shakespeare's first attempt on fairy ground. . . . The characters represented are spirits, exercising their magic influence over the material agents, and producing the delusion of a wild fantastic dream. To look for strong passion and force of character, where the scene passes nature's bounds, and the actors are ethereal essences flitting in the moonbeams, is to expect them where they can never be consistently found — in the regions of enchantment. But, however barren in fable, and deficient in that interest which arises from a well-drawn picture of real life - in sportive invention and appropriate imagery, it yields to none of the most celebrated productions of Shakespeare. The imagination is held captive by scenes of high creative power and exquisite poetry, interspersed with much delicate feeling, and enlivened by humour the most frolic and grotesque. It is strictly a midsummer night's dream - a fairy vision that may be supposed to pass before the mind during that luxuriant and romantic season. A tale of sadness was in ancient times considered

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best adapted to winter; and where shall we find, in any language, two dramas with more appropriate titles than A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale? . . . [He devotes three paragraphs to the fairy mythology, drawing heavily on Drake (No. 9 above).] What a delightful study is this fine play for the closet, or 'the pleached bower, / Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, / Forbid the sun to enter!' [Much Ado About Nothing, 3.1.7ff.] — a play, in which the imagination of the most imaginative of poets seems to have run riot! The brilliant creatures of it burst forth from the rich treasure-house of his fancy; his pencil is dipped in the dews of heaven; and his language, according with the dazzling imagery, falls on the ear in all the silver melody of sound. Great pains have been taken to show from which mythology, the Oriental or the Gothic, Shakespeare borrowed his fairies; but we say from neither. Shakespeare's fairies are his own: his juvenile reading had given him an idea of an airy being between man and angel — a being so far connected with humanity as to hover o'er us in our vocations by day, and our dreams by night; to help us in our need; or, as his humour pleased, to thwart us in our amusements, or more intricately entangle us in our perplexities — 'to haunt, to startle, and waylay.'M But when, in after years, he brought this creature of fancy into action, to animate his dramas, and shed its spells o'er their magic scenes - although glimpses were retained of that which had charmed him in youth, the characters of his fairies, like all that passed through the alembic of his brain, came forth enriched, adorned, exalted; nor can any mythology, whether northern or eastern, produce a being comparable to Ariel. His very Puck, his 'Lob of spirits' [2.1.16], — he who delights in 'things that befall preposterously' [3.2.120ff.], in his hands, is not the 'lubber fiendj't 2 ] he is the 'merry wanderer of the night' [2.1.43], the genius of harmless mirth and mischief. Titania, even in her 'dotage' [4.1.47], breathes nothing that should not fall from lips that feed on dew and honey. Shakespeare's is indeed fairy-land; its spirits flitting about amidst violets, musk-roses, and eglantines; their occupation to hang pearls of dew in the 'tall cowslip' [2.1.15], to keep fresh the magic circle of their dance; their whole existence one course of midnight revelry. How delightful to dream out a summer season in — Some bright little isle of our own, In a blue summer ocean far off and alone; Where a leaf never dies in the still-blooming bowers, And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers! PI And there dwell with such beings as Shakespeare's fairies, to - [Quotes and adapts 3.1.165-8: 'Hop in his walks ', and 3.1.172-4: 'And pluck the wings '] Want of interest has been attributed to this drama W; but has it not all the interest that a fairy tale will bear? The loves and crosses of Hermia and Helena are sufficient for a midsummer night's dream. It is not intended for a history of deep passion. A human being enduring the pangs of such a passion, whether of love, hatred, jealousy, or revenge, would be out of keeping with the 'dapper elves';t5] his presence would be sufficient to blight the flowers that form the couch of the fairy queen. Besides,

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the happiness, as also the mischances, of the lovers are partly due to the intervention of Oberon; and it is one of our most firmly established canons of criticism, that no profound interest can be felt for the victim of any human misery, from -which the author has no means of relieving him but that which is superhuman. The Greek and the French stage are both against us in this respect; but we have a better authority than either in the example of Shakespeare, who has nothing of this kind. Events that are purely human are, with him, left to proceed and end in their natural course. Murder brings its own remorse and punishment. The ghost in Hamlet, and the witches in Macbeth, although giving the mainspring to the action, never interfere with the actual carrying on of the plot. They impel their hero; but they neither assist nor retard his enterprises: the results would be the same without as with them. The underplot or episode of the 'hard-handed men that work in Athens' [5.1.72], is one of those rich pieces of humour in which Shakespeare luxuriates. Can imagination conceive a more whimsical company of comedians than Quince, Starveling, Bottom, and their fellows'? - with their stage-directions and properties, their cast of characters, their tender regard for the feelings of the ladies, as exemplified in the histrionic weaver and his precautionary prologues; in which he informs his audience that he is not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver, and that Snug the joiner is no lion, but a man as other men are! [3.1.20ff. and 42ff.] — This is not the only hit at the heroes of the sock and buskin that is to be found in the writings of Shakespeare; — their ignorance and buffoonery are satirized pretty severely in Hamlet; while their vanity and presumption are admirably illustrated in Bottom, who as top actor would engross every capital part himself, and, though 'a sweet-faced man, a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day — a most lovely gentleman-like man' [1.2.86ff.], would roar in the lion as gently as any sucking dove, rather than Snug the joiner, who is slow of study, should fright the duchess and her ladies into applause by his extemporaneous roaring; and so versatile is his genius, that he volunteers to play Thisby in 'a monstrous little voice' [1.2.52], rather than let Francis Flute the bellows-mender, who has 'a beard coming' [1.2.48], speak small, and 'make the grove harmonious I'M This play has been thrice revived since the year 1763: first, by David Garrick; secondly, by George Colman; and, thirdly, by Mr. Reynolds, the dramatist, at Covent-Garden Theatre. In no instance has the revival been successful. A Midsummer Night's Dream is written not to the eye, but to the imagination; — its aerial beings shrink from mortal touch; and Wall and Moonshine would be represented with more true effect by Bottom and his compeers, than would Oberon and Robin Goodfellow by the most skilful actor that ever trod the stage. There is a charm about the personification of a good acting play, that identifies in our minds the idea of the theatre, and 'the well-graced actor' [Richard II, 5.2.24], with the play itself; and, however delightful it may be to contemplate this drama as the fairy tale of our youth, or, in after-life, as a beautiful dramatic poem, we miss the charm just alluded to. The poet may give 'to airy nothing a local habitation and a name' [5.1.16ff.], and we can accompany him in his wildest flights; but no 'mortal creature of earth's mould' W can ever personify his lovely fairies. They are too true to their own identity — too airy — too impalpable, to be represented by the sons of dull earth; and, however splendid the attempt to revive

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them in our theatres, — whatever histrionic talent may be brought to the task, no art can ever approach an embodying of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The chief characteristics of the language are, as the subject requires, sweetness and delicacy. The similes are taken from flowers, from stars, from dews, from fruits - from all that is brightest and loveliest in nature. Amidst Titania's flowers, which shall we select? They crowd upon us — they dazzle us: — [Quotes 1.1.76-8: 'Earthlier happy. . . .'; 1.1.183-5: 'Your eyes are lode-stars. . . .'; 2.1.107-11: 'The seasons alter. . . .']. But even this midnight fancy Shakespeare makes a vehicle for some of those profound observations on life, men, and manners, that mark all his productions. What a beautiful comment on the master-passion of our youth is the following: — [Quotes 1.1.132-4: 'Ah, me! for aught. ...']. The pathetic lines on female friendship, beginning 'Injurious Hermia' [3.2.195], and Theseus's noble description of his hounds [4.1.119ff.], are full of poetic rapture; but the most celebrated passage, which no poet that ever lived has equalled, and which Shakespeare himself has not surpassed, is, — [Quotes 5.1.7-17: 'The lunatic, the lover. . . .']. The 'fine phrenzy' [5.1.12] here described receives its noblest illustration from the poet's own description; and 'the imagination all compact' [5.1.8] that could produce a piece of such high inspiration, may well claim to soar above every other to the end of time. (5-10)

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14 Thomas Keightley, new actors on the mimic scene — the fairies 1828

From The Fairy Mythology (2 vols, London, [1828]) Thomas Keightley (1789-1872) was born in Ireland and entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1803, but took no degree. In 1824 he went to London where he helped Thomas Croker with his Fairy Legends of South Ireland (1825). His own Fairy Mythology, published anonymously in two volumes in 1828, was reprinted in 1833 with a few additions to the preface, and appeared in the popular Bohn's 'Antiquarian Library', with the author identified, in 1850. He produced a number of handbooks for schools or for popular consumption, such as his histories of Greece (1835), England (1837-9), Rome (1840), and India (1846-7); his Notes on the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil (1846); and his editions of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Milton from 1847 to 1859. His unannotated six-volume Shakespeare (1864) is still considered a notable text, and his Shakespeare-Expositor: an Aid to the Perfect Understanding of Shakespeare's Plays (1867) a useful work.

[From the chapter entitled 'England'] [Before beginning his examination of fairies in English literature, Keightley looks at Robin Goodfellow, the puck.] As the merry spirit, Puck, is so prominent an actor in the scenes forming our next division, this may be deemed no unfitting place for the consideration of his various appellations: these are Puck, Robin Good-fellow, Robin Hood, Hob-goblin. Puck is perhaps the same with the old word Pouke, the original meaning of which would seem to be devil, demon, or evil spirit.l We first meet it in the Vision of Pierce Plowman, where it undoubtedly signifies 'the grand adversary of God and man'.PJ When, in this poem, the Seer beholds Abraham, the personification of Faith, with his 'wyde clothes, within which lay a Lazar,' Wyth patriarkes and prophetes, playinge to gedres, and asks him what was there,

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Loo, quath he, and leet me seo, lord mercy ich seide Hit is precious present, quath he, ac the pouke hit hath attachede, And me ther wyth quath he wye, may no wed ous quite Ne no berne be our borghe, ne bringe ous out of daunger Fro the poukes pondfolde, ne maynpryse may ous fetche Till he come that ich carpe of, Crist is his name, That shall delyvery ous some day oute of the develes powereJ3! Golding must have understood Pooke in the sense of devil, when in his translation of Ovid, he, unauthorised however by the original, applies it to the chimera, The country where Chymaera, that same pooke With goatish body, lion's head and breast, and dragon's tail.W Spenser employs the word, and he clearly distinguishes it from hob-goblin: Ne let housefires nor lightenings helpless harms, Ne let the pouke5 nor other evil sprites, Ne let mischievous witches with their charms, Ne let hob-goblins, names whose sense we see not, Fray us with things that be not. Epithalamion [340-4]. These terms are also distinguished in the Scourge of Venus: And that they may perceive the heavens frown, The poukes and goblins pull the coverings downJ6] The truth perhaps is, that the poets, led by the inviting conciseness of the term, applied it to the house-spirit, or hob-goblin. Shakespeare appears to have been the original offender. . . . 7 The other appellations are all properly those of the house-spirit: Robin Goodfellow answers to the Nisse God-dreng of the Norwegians. He was called Robin Hood, because, like the Nis and the Brownie, he wore a hood. Goblin is the same as the German Kobold and Hob, or Rob, the abbreviation of Robert. The Germans call him Knecht Ruprecht, or Robert (II, 118-21) [Keightley examines Chaucer's allusions to fairies, and finds their size to be indeterminate - they are not of 'a diminutive stature' -, and other details are scant except for the one trait of their love for dance. There was little else about fairies in the literature between Chaucer and Spenser.] But in Elizabeth's days, 'Fairies', as Johnson observes, 'were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great'.M A just remark, though Johnson fell into the common error of identifying Spenser's Fairies -with the popular ones. The three first books of the Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and as Warton remarks, Fairies became a familiar and fashionable machinery with the poets and poetasters, t9] Shakespeare, well acquainted, from the rural habits of his early life, with the notions of the peasantry respecting these beings, and highly gifted with

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the prescient power of genius, saw clearly how capable they were of being applied to the production of a species of the wonderful, as pleasing, or perhaps even more so, than the classic gods; and in the Midsummer Night's Dream he presented them in combination with the heroes and heroines of the mythic age of Greece. But what cannot the magic wand of genius effect? We view with undisturbed delight the Elves of Gothic mythology sporting in the groves of Attica, the legitimate haunts of Pans and Satyrs. Shakespeare having the Faerie Queene before his eyes, 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 inappreciable by village gossips, - in their fondness for dancing, their love of cleanliness, and their child-abstracting propensities. Like the Fays, they form a community, ruled over by the princely Oberon, and the fair Titania.10 There is a court and chivalry: Oberon would have the queen's sweet changeling to be a 'Knight of his train to trace the forest wild' [2.1.25]. Like earthly monarchs, he has his jester, 'the shrewd and knavish sprite, / Called Robin Good-fellow' [2.1.33ff.]. The luxuriant imagination of the poet seemed to exult in pouring forth its wealth in the production of these new actors on the mimic scene, and a profusion of poetic imagery always appears in their train. Such lovely and truly British poetry cannot be too often brought to view; we shall therefore insert in this part of our work several of these gems of our Parnassus, distinguishing by a different character [i.e., italicising] such acts and attributes as appear properly to belong to the Fairy of popular belief. [Quotes 2.1.1-57: 'How now, spirit. . . .', italicising 35-41, and 45-6.] The haunts of the Fairies on earth are the most rural and romantic that can be selected. They meet [Quotes 2.1.83-6: 'on hill, in dale. . . .']. And the place of Titania's repose is [Quotes 2.1.249-56: 'A bank whereon the wild thyme blows. . . .']. The powers of the poet are exerted to the utmost, to convey an idea of their minute dimensions; and time, with them, moves on lazy pinions. 'Come,' cries the queen, [Quotes 2.2.1-5: 'Come, now a roundel. . . .']. And when enamoured of Bottom, she directs her Elves that they should [Quotes 3.1.165-73: 'Hop in his walks. . . .']. Puck goes 'swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow' [3.2.101]; he says, he'll 'put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes' [2.1.175ff.]; and 'We,' says Oberon - [Quotes 4.1.97-8: 'We the globe ']. They are either not mortal, or their date of life is indeterminately long; they are of a nature superior to man, and speak with contempt of human follies. By night they revel beneath the light of the moon and stars, retiring at the approach of 'Aurora's harbinger' [3.2.380], but not compulsively like ghosts and 'damned spirits' [3.2.382]. [Quotes 3.2.388-93: 'But we are spirits of another sort. . . .']. (II, 126-32)

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15 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, marginalia and other notes 1836

From The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Collected and Edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq. M. A. (4 vols, London, 1836-9). Volume 2, 1836. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) lectured on Shakespeare many times in the twelve years from 1808 to 1819, but disappointingly little about A Midsummer Night's Dream has survived. Henry Crabb Robinson stated in his Diary for 19 December 1811 that he attended Coleridge's lecture on Dream, but nothing remains of that talk. There was a lecture on the play announced for the series of 1813-14 at Bristol but this was apparently never given, and, aside from some scant references to the title in outlines of the chronology of the plays and elsewhere, and the few jottings given here, Coleridge left nothing on the comedy for posterity. Critics, however, have seized on the few insights that remain and have repeated them like prophetic verses from the Bible: see, for example, among the selections given here, Knight, Halliwell, Verplanck, Hudson, Gervinus, Latimer, Porter and Clarke, and Woodberry (Nos. 19, 21, 27, 29, 37, 58, 73, and 78). H.N. Coleridge's edition of The Literary Remains constituted the chief source for these various writings of Coleridge until T.M. Raysor rehabilitated the text in 1930 in his two-volume Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Shakespearean Criticism. The definitive edition of the lectures is by R.A. Foakes, Lectures 1808-1819: On Literature, and of the Marginalia by George Whalley, volumes 5 (1987) and 12 (1980, 1984) of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, general editor Kathleen Coburn (Princeton, c.1969-).

[From 'SHAKESPEARE: Recapitulation, and Summary of the Characteristics of Shakespeare's Dramas'] 6. Interfusion of the lyrical — that which in its very essence is poetical — not only with the dramatic, as in the plays of Metastasio^1^ where at the end of the scene comes the aria as the exit speech of the character, — but also in and through the dramatic. Songs in Shakespeare are introduced as songs only, just as songs are in real life, beautifully as some of them are characteristic of the person who has sung or called for them, as

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Desdemona's 'Willow,' and Ophelia's wild snatches, and the sweet carollings in As You like It. But the whole of the Midsummer Night's Dream is one continued specimen of the dramatized lyrical.PI (II, 81-2) [From 'SHAKESPEARE: A Midsummer Night's Dream'M] ACTi. sc. 1. Her. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low — Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years; Her. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young — Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends; Her. O hell! to chuse love by another's eye! (1.1.136fF.) There is no authority for any alteration; — but I never can help feeling how great an improvement it would be, if the two former of Hermia's exclamations were omitted; - the third and only appropriate one would then become a beauty, and most natural. M Ib[id]. Helena's speech: — I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, &c. [1.1.246] I am convinced that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but especially, and, perhaps, unpleasingly, in this broad determination of ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this too after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart, when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more of its outward consequences, as detection, and loss of character than men, — their natures being almost wholly extroitive.t5] Still, however just in itself, the representation of this is not poetical; we shrink from it, and cannot harmonize it with the ideal. Act ii. sc. 1. Theobald's edition. Through bush, through briar — ****** Through flood, through fire — [2.1.3, 5] What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must have had! The eight amphimacers or cretics, —t6] Over hUl, over dale, Thoro' bush, thoro' briar, Over park, over pale, Thoro'flood,thoro' fire - [2.1.2ff.]

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have a delightful effect on the ear in their sweet transition to the trochaic, — I do wander ev'ry where Swifter than the moones sphere, &c. — [2.1.6ff] The last words as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered, as in fact they are, trochees in time. . . . Ib[id]. sc. 2.

Titania's speech: — (Theobald adopting Warburton's reading). Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait Follying (her womb then rich with my young squire) Would imitate, &c. [2.1.130ff.]

Oh! oh! Heaven have mercy on poor Shakespeare, and also on Mr Warburton's mind's eye! Act v. sc. 1. Theseus' Speech: — (Theobald.) And what poor [willing\ duty cannot do, Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.[5.1.90ff.] To my ears it would read far more Shakespearean thus: — And what poor duty cannot do, yet would, Noble respect, &c. Ib[id]. sc. 2. Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores All with weary task foredone, &c.[5.1.371-4] Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far it is Greek; — but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of, English fancy. In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, t?] or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond. (II, 110-14)

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16 William Maginn, Bottom the lucky man 1837

From 'Shakespeare Papers.—No. IV. Midsummer Night's Dream. Bottom, the Weaver', Bentley's Miscellany, 2 (October 1837), 370-80. William Maginn (1794-1842), a youthful prodigy of scholarship, had a brilliant and controversial career as a journalist. After receiving his B.A. from the University of Dublin in 1811, he taught for some years at his father's school in Cork; in 1819 he was the youngest person ever to receive the degree of LL.D. from Dublin. Having contributed pseudonymously for some years to the Literary Gazette and Blackwood's Magazine, he decided to devote himself to journalism, and in 1824 settled in London. His most famous venture was the founding in 1830, with Hugh Fraser, of Fraser's Magazine, which attracted the contributions of such luminaries as Southey, Hogg, Carlyle, Thackeray, and the artist Daniel Maclise. A review in 1836 led to a duel, and to his leaving the staff of Fraser's. His personal habits contributed to his decline and early death, but the Shakespeare papers he contributed to Bentley's Miscellany and to Fraser's Magazine show his continuing brilliance. These were collected by Dr. Shelton Mackenzie as The Shakespeare Papers of the late William Maginn, LL.D. (New York, 1856), and were also published by Richard Bentley in London in 1859 and 1860.

It has often been remarked that it is impossible to play the enchanted scenes of Bottom with any effect. In reading the poem we idealize the ass-head; we can conceive that it represents in some grotesque sort the various passions and emotions of its wearer; that it assumes a character of dull jocosity, or duller sapience, in his conversations with Titania and the fairies; and when calling for the assistance of Messrs Peas-blossom and Mustard-seed to scratch his head, or of the Queen to procure him a peck of provender or a bottle of hay, it expresses some puzzled wonder of the new sensations its wearer must experience in tinglings never felt before, and cravings for food until then unsuited to his appetite. But on the stage this is impossible. As the manager cannot procure for his fairies representatives of such tiny dimensions as to be in danger of being overflown by the bursting of the honey-bag of an humble-bee, so it is impossible that the art of the property-man can furnish Bottom with an ass-head capable of expressing the mixed feelings of humanity and asinity which actuate the metamorphosed weaver. It is but a paste-board head, and that is all. The jest is over the first moment after his appearance; and, having

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laughed at it once, we cannot laugh at it any more. As in the case of a man who, at a masquerade, has chosen a character depending for its attraction merely on costume, - we may admire a Don Quixote, if properly bedecked in Mambrino's helmet and the other habiliments of the Knight of La Mancha, at a first glance, but we think him scarcely worthy of a second. So it is with the Bottom of the stage; the Bottom of the poem is a different person. Shakespeare in many parts of his plays drops hints, 'vocal to the intelligent,' that he feels the difficulty of bringing his ideas adequately before the minds of theatrical spectators. In the opening address of the Chorus of Henry V he asks pardon for having dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or, may we cram Within this wooden O, the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? [Henry V, Prologue lOff.] and requests his audience to piece out the imperfections of the theatre with their thoughts. This is an apology for the ordinary and physical defects of any stage, — especially an ill-furnished one; and it requires no great straining of our imaginary forces to submit to them. Even Ducrow himself, with appliances and means to boot a hundred-fold more magnificent and copious than any that were at the command of Shakespeare, does not deceive us into the belief that his fifty horses, trained and managed with surpassing skill, and mounted by agile and practised riders, dressed in splendid and carefully-considered costumes, are actually fighting the battle of Waterloo, HI but we willingly lend ourselves to the delusion. In like manner, we may be sure that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the audience of the Globe complied with the advice of Chorus, and, 'Minding true things by what their mockeries be,' were contented that 'Four or five most vile and ragged foils / Right ill-disposed, in brawl ridiculous,' [Henry V, 4. Chorus. 53, 50ff] should serve to represent to their imagination the name of Agincourt. We consent to this just as we do to Greeks and Romans speaking English on the stage of London, or French on that of Paris; or to men of any country speaking in verse at all; or to all the other demands made upon our belief in playing. We can dispense with the assistance of such downright matter-of-fact interpreters as those who volunteer their services to assure us that the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe is not a lion in good earnest, but merely Snug the joiner. But there are difficulties of a more subtle and metaphysical kind to be got over, and to these, too, Shakespeare not unfrequently alludes. In the play before us, - Midsummer Night's Dream, - for example, when Hippolyta speaks scornfully of the tragedy in which Bottom holds so conspicuous a part, Theseus answers, that the best of this kind (scenic performances) are but shadows, and the worst no worse if imagination amend them. She answers that it must be your imagination then, not theirs. He retorts with a joke on the vanity of actors, and the conversation is immediately changed. The meaning of the Duke is, that, however we may laugh at the silliness of Bottom and his companions in

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their ridiculous play, the author labours under no more than the common calamity of dramatists. They are all but dealers in shadowy representations of life; and if the worst among them can set the mind of the spectator at work, he is equal to the best. The answer to Theseus is, that none but the best, or, at all events, those who approach to excellence, can call with success upon imagination to invest their shadows with substance. Such playwrights as Quince the carpenter, - and they abound in every literature and every theatre, - draw our attention so much to the absurdity of the performance actually going on before us, that we have no inclination to trouble ourselves with considering what substance in the background their shadows should have represented. Shakespeare intended the remark as a compliment or a consolation to less successful wooers of the comic or the tragic Muse, and touches briefly on the matter; but it was also intended as an excuse for the want of effect upon the stage of some of the finer touches of such dramatists as himself, and an appeal to all true judges of poetry to bring it before the tribunal of their own imagination; making but a matter of secondary inquiry how it appears in a theatre, as delivered by those who, whatever others may think of them, would, if taken at their own estimation, 'pass for excellent men' [5.1.216]. His own magnificent creation of fairy land in the Athenian wood must have been in his mind, and he asks an indulgent play of fancy not more for Oberon and Titania, the glittering rulers of the elements, who meet —on hill, on dale, forest, or mead, By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, Or on the beached margent of the sea, To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind, [2.1.83fF.] than for the shrewd and knavish Robin Goodfellow, the lord of practical jokes, or the dull and conceited Bottom, 'the shallowest thick-skin of the barren sort' [3.2.13], rapt so wondrously from his loom and shuttle, his threads and thrums, to be the favoured lover of the Queen of Faery, fresh from the spiced Indian air, and lulled with dances and delight amid the fragrance of the sweetest flowers, filling with their luscious perfume a moonlighted forest. [Maginn expatiates on Bottom's self-conceit, especially of his prowess as an actor, and after a digression contrasting the transitory fame of the actor with 'the author, neglected in his life, and working for immortal renown' (374), returns to Bottom.] It was necessary for his drama to introduce among his fairy party a creature of earth's mould,PI 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 performed. It is here that the greatest talent of the actor must fail in answering the demand made by the author upon our imagination. The utmost lavish of poetry, not only of high conception, but of the most elaborate working in the musical construction of the verse, and a somewhat recondite searching after all the topics favourable to the display of poetic

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eloquence in the ornamental style, is employed in the description of the fairy scenes and those who dwell therein. Language more brilliantly bejewelled with whatever tropes and figures rhetoricians catalogue in their books is not to be found than what is scattered forth with copious hand in Midsummer Night's Dream. The compliment to Queen Elizabeth, 'In maiden meditation fancy free' [2.1.164], was of necessity sugared with all the sweets that the bon-bon box of the poet could supply; but it is not more ornamented than the passages all around. The pastoral images of Corin 'Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love / To amorous Phillida' [2.1.67ff.]; the homely consequences resulting from the fairy quarrel [Quotes 2.1.93-97, describing the ox and the ploughman]; and so on, are ostentatiously contrasted with misfortunes more metaphorically related: We see The seasons alter; hoary-headed frosts Fall on the fresh lap of the crimson rose; And on old Hyems' chin and icy crown An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds Is, as in mockery, set. [2.1.106ff.]

The mermaid chaunting 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 loathing 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 raptures for an absurd clown. Such are the tricks of Fortune. Oberon himself, angry as he is with the caprices of his queen, does not anticipate any such object for her charmed affections. He is determined that she is to be captivated by 'some vile thing,' but he thinks only of'Ounce, or cat, or bear, / Pard, or boar with bristled hair' [2.2.34, 30ff.], animals suggesting ideas of spite or terror; but he does not dream that, under the superintendence of Puck, spirit of mischief, she is to be enamoured of the head of an ass surmounting the body of a weaver. It is so nevertheless; and the love of the lady is as desperate as the deformity of her choice. He is an angel that wakes her from her flowery bed; a gentle mortal, whose enchanting note wins her ear, while his beauteous shape enthralls her eye; one who is as wise as he is beautiful; one for whom all the magic treasures of the fairy kingdom are to be with surpassing profusion dispensed. For him she gathers whatever wealth and delicacies the Land of Faery can boast. Her most airy spirits are ordered to be kind and courteous to this gentleman, — for into that impossible character has the blindness of her love transmuted the clumsy and conceited clown. Apricocks and dewberries, purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries, are to feed his coarse palate; the thighs of

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bees, kindled at the eyes of fiery glow-worms, are to light him to his flower-decked bed; wings plucked from painted butterflies are to fan the moonbeams from him as he sleeps; and in the very desperation of her intoxicating passion she feels that there is nothing which should not be yielded to the strange idol of her soul. She mourns over the restraints which separate her from the object of her burning affection, and thinks that the moon and the flowers participate in her sorrow. The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye, And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforced chastity. [3.1.198ff.] 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 the attractions best calculated 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 roue, whose degraded habits and pursuits banish him far away from the polished 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' [King John, 1.1.137]. Fielding has told us all this in his own way, in a distich, (put, I believe, into the mouth of Lord Grizzle; but, as I have not the illustrious tragedy in which it appears, before me, I am not certain, and must therefore leave it to my readers to verify this important point). Love 'Lords into cellars bears, / And bids the brawny porter walk up stairs'.t3! Tom Thumb and Midsummer Night's Dream preach the one doctrine. It would be amusing to trace the courses of thought by which the heterogeneous minds of Fielding and Shakespeare came to the same conclusion. Ill-mated loves are generally but of short duration on the side of the nobler party, and she awakes to lament her folly. The fate of those who suffer like Titania is the hardest. The man who is deprived of external graces of appearance may have the power of captivating by those of the mind: wit, polish, fame, may compensate for the want of youth or personal attractions. In poverty or lowly birth may be found all that may worthily inspire devoted affection — 'The rank is but the guinea's stamp, / The man's the gowd for a' that.'M In the very dunghill of dissipation and disgrace will be raked up occasionally a lurking pearl or two of honourable feeling, or kind emotion, or irregular talent, which may be dwelt upon by the fond eye, wilfully averting its gaze from the miserable mass in which they are buried. But woe unto the unhappy lady who, like Titania, is obliged to confess, when the enchantment has passed by, that she was 'enamoured of an ass!' She must indeed 'loathe his visage' [4.1.77, 79], and the memory of all connected with him is destined ever to be attended by a strong sensation of disgust.

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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 workshop. 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,5 when he finds himself transmuted into a lord, shows some signs of astonishment. He does not accommodate himself to surrounding circumstances. The first order he gives is for a pot of small ale; and after all the elegant luxuries of his new situation have been placed ostentatiously before him, — after he has smelt sweet savours, and felt soft things, — after he begins to think he is 'A lord indeed, / And not a tinker nor Christopher(o) Sly' [The Taming of the Shrew, Induction 2.72ff.]; even then nature - or habit, which stands in the place of nature, — recurs invincible, and once more he calls for a pot of the smallest ale. (I may again cite Fielding in illustration of Shakespeare; for do we not read, in the Covent Garden tragedy, of the consolation that 'Cold small beer is to the waking drunkard; '^ and do we not hear the voice of Christopher Sly praying, for God's sake, in the midst of his lordly honours, for a draught of that unlordly but long-accustomed beverage?) In the Arabian Nights' Entertainments a similar trick is played by the Caliph Haroun Al-raschid 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 pleasure, 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 amid the fairies as one of themselves without any astonishment; 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. Shakespeare has not taken the trouble of working out the conclusion of the adventure of Sly; and the manner in which it is finished in the old play where he found him, is trifling and common-place. The Arabian novelist repeats the jest upon his hero, and concludes by placing him as a favourite in the court of the amused caliph. This is the natural ending of such an adventure; but, as Bottom's was supernatural, it was to conclude differently. He is therefore dismissed to his ordinary course of life, unaffected by what has passed. He admits at first that it is wonderful, but soon thinks it is nothing more than a fit subject for a ballad in honour of his own name. He falls at once to his old habit of dictating, boasting, and swaggering, and makes no reference to what has happened to him in the forest. It was no more than an ordinary passage in his daily life. Fortune knew where to bestow her favours.

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Adieu then, Bottom the weaver! and long may you go onward prospering in your course! 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 rabble of the wise. Go on your path rejoicing; assert loudly your claim to fill every character in life; and you may 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.

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17 Thomas Campbell, critics refuted 1838

From The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. With Remarks on His Life and Writings, by Thomas Campbell (London, 1838). Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) won early fame for his poem The Pleasures of Hope (1799), for which, together with Gertrude of Wyoming (1809), he is best remembered. His major critical work was Specimens of the British Poets; with Biographical and Critical Notices, and an Essay on English Poetry (7 vols, London, 1819). His reputation both in Britain and in Europe was high; among his friends and acquaintance were numbered Scott, Byron, Klopstock, the Schlegels, and the Kembles. His Life of Mrs. Siddons (1834) and his edition of Shakespeare's plays (1838) were the products of his later years and were less esteemed than his earlier works; however, his introductory essay on Shakespeare, translated as 'Remarques sur la vie et les ouvrages de William Shakespeare', was prefixed to the 1839 translation of Shakespeare by Francisque Michel (3 vols, Paris), appearing also in later editions of this translation.

[From the prefatory 'Remarks on the Life and Writings of William Shakespeare', Chapter VII] . . . 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, contained 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 ecstacy 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,PI 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

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of its worth? Is a mother blind to the beauty of her own child? No! nor could Shakespeare 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 Bottom's shoulders. He must have foretasted the mirth of generations unborn at Titania's doating 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 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 earth1 [2.1.175], and that souls, not yet in being, were to enjoy the revelry of his fancy. But nothing can be more irregular, says a modern critic, Augustine Skottowe [No. 12 above], 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 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 conception of them? If Theseus and Hippolyta had talked believingly about the dapper elves, there would have been some room for critical complaint; but otherwise the fairies have as good a right to be in Greece in the days of Theseus, as to play their pranks any where else or at any other time. There are few plays, says the same critic, which consist of such incongruous materials 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 connexion 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 judgment, 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 Theseus and his four loving subjects is any thing but slender. It is, on the contrary, most natural and probable for a newly-married pair to have patronized their amorous lieges during their honey-moon. Then comes the question, what natural connexion 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 connexion 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 classical 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

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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 Bottom the weaver and Snug the joiner, in the itinerant acting companies of Attica, (xxxvi-viii)

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18 Henry Hallam, originality in structure, machinery, and language 1839

From Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. By Henry Hallam, F.R..A.S. Corresponding Member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in the French Institute (4 vols, London, 1839-40). Henry Hallam (1777-1859), educated at Eton and Oxford, began his career as a practising barrister, but on his father's death in 1812 had sufficient means to devote himself to the study of history. Besides the Introduction to the Literature of Europe, his major works are the View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (2 vols, London, 1818) and The Constitutional History of England from the accession of Henry VII to the death of George II (2 vols, London, 1827); all three are ambitious in scope and thorough in execution, and were frequently reprinted. The breadth of his learning allied with educated taste gave his views weight. What should have been a peacefully productive long life was marred by personal tragedy: of the four of his eleven children who survived infancy, three predeceased him. The Introduction to the Literature of Europe was completed in some sense as a memorial to his son Arthur Henry (the subject of Tennyson's In Memoriam) who died in 1833, and his daughter Ellen, who died in 1837.

[From Vol. II, Chapter VI] 39. The beautiful play of Midsummer Night's Dream is placed by Malone as early as 1592; its superiority to those we have already mentioned affords some presumption that it was written after them.f1] But it evidently belongs to the earlier period of Shakespeare's genius; 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 any thing else, than from any deficiency of dramatic excellence. For in reality 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

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Menaechmi of Plautus had been imitated by others as well as by Shakespeare; but we speak here of original invention. 40. 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 superstitions; but the sportive, beneficent, invisible population of the air and earth, long since established in the creed of childhood, and of those simple as children, had never for a moment been blended with 'human mortals' [2.1.101] among the personages of the drama. Lily's Maid's Metamorphosis is probably later than this play of Shakespeare, and was not published till 1600.2 It is unnecessary to observe that the fairies of Spenser, as he has dealt with them, are wholly of a different race. 41. 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 dramatists, 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, unintelligible 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 ignorance. 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' [1.1.232], for value; rivers, that 'have overborn their continents' [2.1.92], the continente ripa of Horace^3!; 'compact of imagination' [5.1.8]; 'something of great constancy' [5.1.26], for consistency; 'sweet Pyramus translated there' [3.2.32]; 'the law of Athens, which by no means we may extenuate' [1.1.119ff.]. I have considerable doubts whether any of these expressions 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 designedly 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.4 (II. 387-90)

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19 Charles Knight, the Pictorial Edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream 1839

From The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakespeare (8 vols, London, 1838-43). Comedies. Volume I. Two Gentlemen of Verona; Love's Labour's Lost; The Merry Wives of Windsor; The Comedy of Errors; The Taming of the Shrew; A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Merchant of Venice (1839). Charles Knight (1791-1873), author, editor, and publisher, was self-educated. As a young man he wrote a few literary pieces, then became a journalist, and in 1820 began the Plain Englishman, an attempt to dispense useful knowledge to the masses. When that periodical ended in 1823, he tried various other ventures in the same vein. Almost all his life was dedicated to the education of the working class by the dissemination of knowledge through cheap, attractive, and popular publishing. His most successful venture of this kind was the Penny Magazine (1832-45), an illustrated weekly with an early readership of over two hundred thousand. Realizing the value of illustration he produced the Pictorial Bible (1826), the Pictorial History of England (1837-44), and in 1838 the fulfillment of a young ambition, the first number of his Pictorial Shakespeare, which was issued in parts over five years, and then in eight volumes. It had many subsequent editions. He issued many more popular and cheap educational works such as the Penny Cyclopaedia (1833-44), in weekly, then monthly, parts, and, later, a popular history of England in eight volumes (1862). His unselfish dedication to the education of the labouring class caused his friends to call him 'Good Knight'.

[From the 'Introductory Notice' to A Midsummer Night's Dream: 'State of the Text, and Chronology'] A Midsummer Night's Dream was first printed in 1600. In that year there appeared two editions of the play; - the one published by Thomas Fisher, a bookseller; the other by James Roberts, a printer. The differences between these two editions are very slight. Steevens, in his collection of twenty plays, has reprinted that by Roberts, giving the variations of the edition by Fisher. M It is difficult to say whether both of these were printed with the consent of the author, or whether one was genuine and the other pirated. If the entries at Stationers' Hall may be taken as evidence of a proprietary

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right, the edition by Fisher is the genuine one, 'A booke called A Mydsomer Nyghte Dreame' having been entered by him Oct. 8, 1600. One thing is perfectly clear to us — that the original of these editions, whichever it might be, was printed from a genuine copy, and carefully superintended through the press. The text appears to us as perfect as it is possible to be, considering the state of typography in that day. There is one remarkable evidence of this. The prologue to the interlude of the Clowns, in the fifth act, is purposely made inaccurate in its punctuation throughout. The speaker 'does not stand upon points' [5.1.118]. It was impossible to have effected the object better than by the punctuation of Roberts' edition; and this is precisely one of those matters of nicety in which a printer -would have failed, unless he had followed an extremely clear copy, or his proofs had been corrected by an author or an editor. The play was not reprinted after 1600, till it was collected into the folio of 1623; and the text in that edition differs in very few instances, and those very slight ones, from that of the preceding quartos. Malone has assigned the composition of A Midsummer Night's Dream to the year 1594 [No. 3 above].!2! We are not disposed to object to this, - indeed we are inclined to believe that he has pretty exactly indicated the precise year, as far as it can be proved by one or two allusions which the play contains. But we entirely object to the reasons upon which Malone attempts to show that it was one of our author's 'earliest attempts in comedy.' He derives the proof of this from 'the poetry of this piece, glowing -with all the warmth of a youthful and lively imagination, the many scenes which it contains of almost continual rhyme, the poverty of the fable, and want of discrimination among the higher personages.' Malone would place A Midsummer Night's Dream in the same rank as The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and The Comedy of Errors; and he supposes all of them written within a year or two of each other. We have no objection to believe that our poet wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream when he was thirty years of age, that is in 1594. But it so far exceeds the three other comedies in all the higher attributes of poetry, that we cannot avoid repeating here the opinion which we have so often expressed, that he had written these for the stage before his twenty-fifth year, when he was a considerable share-holder in the Blackfriars' company, some of them, perhaps, as early as 1585, at which period the vulgar tradition assigns to Shakespeare — a husband, a father, and a man conscious of the possession of the very highest order of talent - the dignified office of holding horses at the theatre doorJ3] The year 1594 is, as nearly as possible, the period where we would place A Midsummer Night's Dream, with reference to our strong belief that Shakespeare's earliest plays must be assigned to the commencement of his dramatic career; and that two or three even of his great works had then been given to the world in an unformed shape, subsequently worked up to completeness and perfection. But it appears to us a misapplication of the received meaning of words, to talk of 'the warmth of a youthful and lively imagination' with reference to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Shakespeare of thirty. We can understand these terms to apply to the unpruned luxuriance of the Venus and Adonis; but the poetry of this piece — the almost continual rhyme — and even the poverty of the fable, are to us evidences of the very highest art having obtained a perfect mastery of its materials after years of patient study. Of all the dramas of Shakespeare there is

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none more entirely harmonious than A Midsummer Night's Dream. All the incidents, all the characters, are in perfect subordination to the will of the poet. 'Throughout the whole piece,' says Malone, 'the more exalted characters are subservient to the interests of those beneath them.' Precisely so. An unpractised author — one who had not in command 'a youthful and lively imagination' - when he had got hold of the Theseus and Hippolyta of the heroic ages, would have made them ultra-heroical. They would have commanded events, instead of moving with the supernatural influence around them in perfect harmony and proportion. 'Theseus, the associate of Hercules, is not engaged in any adventure worthy of his rank or reputation, nor is he in reality an agent throughout the play.' Precisely so. An immature poet, again, if the marvellous creation of Oberon and Titania and Puck could have entered into such a mind, would have laboured to make the power of the fairies produce some strange and striking events. But the exquisite beauty of Shakespeare's conception is, that, under the supernatural influence, 'the human mortals' [2.1.101] move precisely according to their respective natures and habits. Demetrius and Lysander are impatient and revengeful; - Helena is dignified and affectionate, with a spice of female error; — Hermia is somewhat vain and shrewish. And then Bottom! Who but the most skilful artist could have given us such a character? Of him Malone says, 'Shakespeare would naturally copy those manners first, with which he was first acquainted. The ambition of a theatrical candidate for applause he has happily ridiculed in Bottom the weaver.' A theatrical candidate for applause! Why, Bottom the weaver is the representative of the whole human race. His confidence in his own power is equally profound, whether he exclaims, 'Let me play the lion too' [1.2.70]; or whether he sings alone, 'that they shall hear I am not afraid' [3.1.123ff.]; or whether, conscious that he is surrounded with spirits, he cries out, with his voice of authority, 'Where's Peas-blossom' [4.1.5]? In every situation Bottom is the same, - the same personification of that self-love which the simple cannot conceal, and the wise can with difficulty suppress. Malone thus concludes his analysis of the internal evidence of the chronology of A Midsummer Night's Dream: — 'That a drama, of which the principal personages are thus insignificant, and the fable thus meagre and uninteresting, was one of our author's earliest compositions, does not, therefore seem a very improbable conjecture; nor are the beauties with which it is embellished inconsistent with this supposition.' The beauties with which it is embellished include, of course, the whole rhythmical structure of the versification. The poet has here put forth all his strength. We venture to offer an opinion that if any single composition were required to exhibit the power of the English language for purposes of poetry, that composition would be the Midsummer Night's Dream. This wonderful model which, at the time it appeared, must have been the commencement of a great poetical revolution, — and which has never ceased to influence our higher poetry, from Fletcher to Shelley - was, according to Malone, the work of'the genius of Shakespeare, even in its minority.' Mr. Hallam has, as might be expected, taken a much more correct view of this question than Malone. He places A Midsummer Night's Dream among the early plays; but having mentioned The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and The Taming of the Shrew, he adds, 'its superiority to those we have

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already mentioned affords some presumption that it was written after them' [No. 18 above]. A Midsummer Night's Dream is mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598. The date of the first publication of the play, therefore, in 1600, does not tend to fix its chronology. Nor is it very material to ascertain whether it preceded 1598 by three, or four, or five years. The state of the weather in 1593 and 1594, when England was visited with peculiarly ungenial seasons, may have suggested Titania's beautiful description in Act II, Scene I [2.1.88-114] The allusion of two lines in Act IV is by no means so clear: — The thrice three muses mourning for the death Of learning, late deceas'd in beggary. [5.1.52ff.] This passage was once thought to allude to the death of Spenser. But the misfortunes and the death of Spenser did not take place till 1599. Even if the allusion were inserted between the first production of the piece, and its publication in 1600, it is difficult to understand how an elegy on the great poet could have been called — 'Some satire keen and critical' [5.1.54]. T. Warton suggested 'that Shakespeare here, perhaps, alluded to Spenser's poem, entitled "The Tears of the Muses, on the Neglect and Contempt of Learning." This piece first appeared in quarto, with others, 1591.'W We greatly doubt the propriety of this conjecture, which Malone has adopted. Spenser's poem is certainly a satire in one sense of the word; for it makes the Muses lament that all the glorious productions of men that proceeded from their influence had vanished from the earth. All that — was wont to work delight Through the divine infusion of their skill, And all that els seemd fair and fresh in sight, So made by nature for to serve their will, Was turned now to dismall heavinesse, Was turned now to dreadful uglinesse. Clio complains that mighty peers 'only boast of arms and ancestry;' Melpomene that 'all man's life me seems a tragedy;' Thalia is 'made the servant of the many;' Euterpe weeps that 'now no pastoral is to be heard;' and so onJ5J These laments do not seem to be identical with the ' — mourning for the death / Of learning, late deceas'd in beggary.' These expressions are too precise and limited to refer to the tears of the Muses for the decay of knowledge and art. We cannot divest ourselves of the belief that some real person, and some real death, was alluded to. May we hazard a conjecture? - Greene, a man of learning, and one whom Shakespeare in the generosity of his nature might wish to point at kindly, died in 1592, in a condition that might truly be called beggary. But how was his death, any more than that of Spenser, to be the occasion of 'some satire keen and critical?' Every student of our literary history will remember the famous controversy of Nashe and Gabriel Harvey, which was begun by Harvey's publication, in 1592, of 'Four Letters, and certain Sonnets, especially touching Robert Greene, and other parties by him abused.' Robert Greene was dead; but Harvey came forward, in revenge of an incautious

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attack of the unhappy poet, to satirize him in his grave — to hold up his vices and his misfortunes to the public scorn — to be 'keen and critical' upon 'learning, late deceas'd in beggary.' The conjecture which we offer may have little weight, and the point is certainly of very small consequence. (I, 331-3) [From the 'Supplementary Notice' to A Midsummer Night's Dream] 'This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard' [5.1.210], says Hippolyta, when Wall has 'discharged' his part. The answer of Theseus is full of instruction: — 'The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them' [5.1.21 Iff.]. It was in this humble spirit that the great poet judged of his own matchless performances. He felt the utter inadequacy of his art, and indeed of any art, to produce its due effect upon the mind unless the imagination, to which it addressed itself, was ready to convert the shadows which it presented into living forms of truth and beauty. 'I am convinced,' says Coleridge, 'that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout' [No. 15 above]. The poet says so, in express words: — [Quotes 5.1.423-9: 'If we shadows have offended. . . .']. But to understand this dream — to have all its gay, and soft, and harmonious colours impressed upon the vision — to hear all the golden cadences of its poesy — to feel the perfect congruity of all its parts, and thus to receive it as a truth — we must not suppose that it will enter the mind amidst the lethargic slumbers of the imagination. We must receive it — 'As youthful poets dream / On summer eves by haunted stream.'M Let no one expect that the beautiful influences of this drama can be truly felt when he is under the subjection of the literal and prosaic parts of our nature; or, if he habitually refuses to believe that there are higher and purer regions of thought than are supplied by the physical realities of the world. In these cases he will have a false standard by which to judge of this, and of all other high poetry — such a standard as that possessed by a critic — acute, learned, in many respects wise — Dr. Johnson, who lived in a prosaic age, and fostered in this particular the real ignorance by which he was surrounded. He sums up the merits of A Midsummer Night's Dream, after this extraordinary fashion: — 'Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasure which the author designed. Fairies, in his time, were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great.'^ It is perfectly useless to attempt to dissect such criticism: let it be a beacon to warn us, and not a 'load-star' to guide us. Mr. Hallam accounts A Midsummer Night's Dream poetical, 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 reality, 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. 18 above]. Yet, certainly, with all its harmony of dramatic arrangement, this play is not for the stage — at least not for the modern stage. It may reasonably be

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doubted whether it was ever eminently successful in performance. The tone of the epilogue is decidedly apologetic, and 'the best of this kind are but shadows'[5.1.211], is in the same spirit. Hazlitt has admirably described its failure as an acting drama in his own day: — [Quotes from No. 10: 'The Midsummer Night's Dream, when acted, is converted . . . to personate Wall or Moonshine'.] And yet, just and philosophical as are these remarks [of Hazlitt], they offer no objection to the opinion of Mr. Hallam, that in this play there is no deficiency of dramatic excellence. 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 should 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 a plot, he is still essentially dramatic. 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 of 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 condemned on the first night of its appearance. Seward, one of his editors, calls this the scandal of our nation.t8] And yet it is extremely difficult to understand how the event should have been otherwise; for The Faithful Shepherdess is essentially undramatic. 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,'t9] -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 sacrificed. 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. Schlegel has happily remarked upon this drama, that 'the most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have arisen without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident; and the colours are of such clear transparency, that we think the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away

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with a breath' [No. 8 above]. It is not till after we have attentively studied this wonderful production that we understand how solidly the foundations of the fabric are laid. Theseus and Hippolyta move with a stately pace as their nuptial hour draws on. Hermia takes time to pause, before she submits — 'To death, or to a vow of single life' [1.1.121], — secretly resolving 'through Athens' gates to steal' [1.1.213]. Helena, in the selfishness of her own love, resolves to betray her friend. Bottom the weaver, and Quince the carpenter, and Snug the joiner, and Flute the bellows-mender, and Snout the tinker, and Starveling the tailor, are 'thought fit through all Athens to play in the interlude before the Duke and Duchess on his wedding-day, at night' [1.2.5ff.]. Here are, indeed, 'dissimilar ingredients.' They appear to have no aptitude for combination. The artists are not yet upon the scene, who are to make a mosaic out of these singular materials. We are only presented in the first act with the extremes of high and low — with the slayer of the Centaurs, and the weaver, who 'will roar you an 'twere any nightingale' [1.2.83ff.], — with the lofty Amazon, who appears elevated above woman's hopes and fears, and the pretty and satirical Hermia, who swears — 'By all the vows that ever men have broke, / In number more than ever woman spoke' [1.1.175ff.]. 'The course of true love' does not at all 'run smooth' [1.1.134] in these opening scenes. We have the love that is crossed, and the love that is unrequited; and worse than all, the unhappiness of Helena makes her treacherous to her friend. We have little doubt that all this will be set straight in the progress of the drama; but what Quince and his company will have to do with the untying of this knot is a mystery. 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 consequence of the jealousies of Oberon and Titania; - to trace the Fairy Queen under the most fantastic of deceptions, where grace and vulgarity blend together like the Cupids and Chimeras of Raphael's Arabesques; and, finally, to go along with the scene till the illusions disappear — till the lovers are happy, and 'sweet bully Bottom' [5.1.19] is reduced to an ass of human dimensions; — such an attempt as this would be worse even than unreverential criticism. No, — the Midsummer Night's Dream must be left to its own influences. . . . (I, 381-3)

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20 William Spalding, the poet's dream 1840

From 'Recent Shakespearean Literature', The Edinburgh Review, 71 (July, 1840), 446-93. William Spalding (1809-1859) was successively professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres in the University of Edinburgh (from 1840) then professor of logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics in the University of St. Andrews (from 1845). His History of English Literature received 14 editions between 1853 and 1883, and two German translations in 1854 (in Halle and Breslau). His three-volume work on Italy and the Italian Islands (Edinburgh, 1830) also went through numerous editions. Apart from essays in the Edinburgh Review, his major contribution to Shakespearean studies was A Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship of the "Two Noble Kinsmen" (Edinburgh, 1833; reprinted by the New Shakespeare Society, London, 1876).

The Midsummer Night's Dream is what its title indicates — a dream over which broods the magical dimness of a summer night, half hiding and half revealing scenes where nature slumbers in her most luxuriant beauty. But it is also the dream of a poet — such a dream as no poet save one ever dreamt. Every thing is visionary, every thing unreal, but unreal and visionary as the shapes are which Sleep brings on its wings from the world of Thought; and visionary and unreal in the sense and manner in which those images are so, which would visit thus the fancy of one, whose waking meditations were equally at home in the turmoil of crowded life and by the solitary edge of the haunted stream. The characters who step forward, the feelings they evince, the acts they do, all partake of the same aerial nature. Four groups of figures, in themselves incongruous, and scarcely by any invention capable of being united in actual life, mingle in the tumult of this witching night of Saint John;M and as we gaze on them through the shadowy moonlight, they become harmonized to the mind's eye as completely as the wildest apparitions are harmonized in the fancy of the sleeper. The fairy band who hover half unseenBy paved fountain, or by rushy brook, Or on the beached margent of the sea;— [2.1.84ff.] the two heroic figures of the vision, heroically and gorgeously coloured, the Grecian hero of a thousand tales and his warrior-love, the buskined Amazon — the Athenian lovers, poetical in their fancy, but real in the weakness and inconstancy of their

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affection — the cluster of ambitious artisans, unconsciously holding up poetry, and dramatic art, and the tragedy of life itself, as a theme of merriment — where did such groups ever encounter, where did such ever act upon each other, except in the young dreamer's brain? And where did such groups ever appear in successful dramatic combination, except in this one work, the most purely poetical of all its author's compositions, and also one of the most highly finished? (479-80)

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21 James Orchard Halliwell, anachronisms, Nick Bottom as Midas, and stage representation 1841

From An Introduction to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (London, 1841). James Orchard Halliwell (1820-1889), a prodigiously industrious scholar and indefatigable collector of manuscripts and books, had already published three books and several essays before he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society in 1839, before his nineteenth birthday. His first three works on Shakespeare all appeared in 1841: this Introduction, an essay on Falstaff, and a catalogue of early editions and commentaries. The chief Shakespearean fruit of his middle years was his copiously annotated and lavishly produced folio edition of Shakespeare's works (16 vols, London, 1853-65). In later years his interest in Shakespeare was biographical: his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare appeared in five ever-enlarged editions between 1881 and 1887. In 1874 he added his wife's name to his, in order to be able to administer her estate, and is now generally known as Halliwell-Phillipps. The three hundred volumes of correspondence that he left to Edinburgh University attest that not even Christmas Day was allowed to interrupt the exchange of letters among Victorian Shakespearean scholars.

[From Chapter I: 'Introduction — Title — Anachronisms'] We shall not here pause to consider those, if any there be, who despise even the most minute illustration of the works of our great dramatist. The merits of those works are beyond the reach of criticism, in the common acceptation of the term, and an unanimous voice has pronounced every thing relating to them and their author, hallowed and sacred. The judgment of time has classed them amongst the noblest productions of human genius, and nothing now remains for us, but to hail them as the immortal progeny of an immortal author. But the high privilege to which such an author may lay claim, by no means descends to his editors or commentators; and we predict, that many years must yet elapse, ere that complete inquiry into Shakespeare's language and allusions, without which the spirit of his writings can never be fully understood or appreciated, can be presented to the view of the general reader by means of a commentary. It is with

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this conviction, that we venture to place the following observations on one of the most remarkable of his plays before the notice of the public. The very name of A Midsummer Night's Dream has furnished a subject for discussion. The time of the action is on the night preceding May-day. Theseus goes out a maying, and when he finds the lovers, he observes:— 'No doubt they rose up early, to observe / The rite of May' [4.1.132ff.]. 'I am convinced,' says Coleridge, 'that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout' [No. 15 above]. Such was no doubt the case, and may we not conclude, that the first idea of the play was conceived on Midsummer Night? . . . The title doubtlessly refers to the whole piece, and not to any particular part of it. The poet himself says:— [Quotes 5.1.423-9: 'If we shadows have offended. . . . ' ] . . . . Malone [No. 3 above] thinks that the title of the play was suggested by the season in which it was introduced on the stage. The misnomer, however, if it is one, does not imply a greater anachronism than several which the play itself presents. For instance, Theseus marries Hippolyta on the night of the new moon; but how does this agree with the discourse of the clowns at the rehearsal? [Quotes 3.1.51-8: 'Doth the moon shine that night. . . .']. Again, the period of 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 'to-morrow night' [1.1.209]; they become the sport of the fairies, along with Helena and Demetrius, during one night only, for, Oberon accomplishes all in one night, before 'the first cock crows' [2.1.267]; and the lovers are discovered by Theseus the morning before that which would have rendered this portion of the plot chronologically consistent. For, although Oberon, addressing his queen, says, Now thou and I are new in amity; And will, to-morrow midnight, solemnly, Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly. [4.1.87-9] yet Theseus, when he discovers the lovers, asks Egeus, 'is not this the day / That Hermia should give answer of her choice' [4.1.135ff.]? and the answer of Egeus, 'It is, my Lord,' coupled with what Theseus says to Hermia in the first Act — [Quotes 1.1.83-90: 'Take time to pause. . . .'] proves that the action of the remaining part of the play is not intended to consist of two days. The preparation and rehearsal of the interlude present similar inconsistencies. In Act i., Sc. 2, Quince is the only one who has any knowledge of the 'most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe' [1.2.1 Iff.], and he selects actors for Thisby's mother, Pyramus's father, and Thisby's father, none of whom appear in the interlude itself. In Act iii., Sc. 1, we have the commencement of the play in rehearsal, none of which appears in the piece itself. Again, the play could have been but partially rehearsed once; for Bottom only returns in time to advise 'every man look o'er his part' [4.2.37ff.]; and immediately before his companions were lamenting the failure of their 'sport' [4.2.17]. How then could the 'merry tears' [5.1.69] of Philostrate be shed at its rehearsal?

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But all these merely tend to prove that Shakespeare wrote with no classical rules before him, and do not in the least detract from the most beautiful poetical drama in this or any other language. Shakespeare was truly the child of nature, and when we find Hermia, contemporary with Theseus, swearing 'by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen, / When the false Trojan under sail was seen' [1.1.173fE], the anachronism is so palpable to any one of classical acquirements, that the evident conclusion is, that we must receive his works as the production of a genius unfettered by the knowledge of more philosophical canons, and of a power which enabled the bard to create, assisted only by the then barren field of his country's literature, that which 'was not of an age, but for all time.'W This, we are convinced, must be the conclusion of all who read the works of Shakespeare in a proper spirit, unbiassed by the prejudices of a prosaic age; and it is only then that they can really hear him, as 'Fancy's child, / Warble his native wood-notes wild.'Pl (1-5) [From Chapter III: ' . . . Midas — Bottom the Weaver'] [He treats some sources, such as Chaucer, and Golding's Ovid, and prints in full a ballad of Ovid's tale of Midas's ass's ears (Metamorphoses, 11.146-92).] We consider this tale of the transformation of the ears of Midas to have furnished Shakespeare with the notion of causing a similar change to take place in the appearance of Bottom the weaver. We would be understood not to refer to any portion of his plot, but merely to the single idea of the transformation; and even if our conjecture be right, we think it possible that Shakespeare might only have been influenced in his choice by a slight recollection of it. The only verbal similarity is in the last line of the ballad — 'Even so I would they had hysfayre long eares.' and Titania's invitation to the WeaverCome, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, And kiss thy^atV large ears, my gentle joy.' [4.1.Iff.] There is perhaps nothing very remarkable in this coincidence; but let us read a little further on:Tita. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love? Bot. I HAVE A REASONABLE GOOD EAR IN MUSIC: let us have the tongs and the bones. [4.1.27fF.] How pointless is Bottom's answer taken separately, and yet how full of rich satire and humour, if the speaker be considered a second Midas! Bottom had not, like Midas, received the asses head, as a punishment for his presumption, ignorance, and self-conceit; but, even in that point of view, the metamorphosis would have been justifiable; and, at the risk of being thought to overstep the bounds of probability, we are glad to convict our poet of one very good joke.3 The tale of Midas is of course to be found in Golding's Ovid, a book with which

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Shakespeare was, beyond all doubt, very intimately acquainted. The ballad we have given, moreover, if it fail to convince our readers of the correctness of the view we have taken, will serve as a striking example of the popular manner in which the mythological tales of the ancients were then made current among all classes. Before we change the subject, we will take the opportunity of saying a few words relative to the character of Bottom the weaver. There is a connexion between this name and the trade, which the obsoleteness of the term has caused to escape the commentators. A ball of thread wound upon any cylindrical body was formerly called A BOTTOM OF THREAD. How appropriate a name then for a weaver! We can furnish our readers with an allusion to this mode of designation. It occurs in a rare little book, called Grange's Garden, 4to. Lond. 1577:A bottome for your silke it seemes, My letters are become, Whiche, with oft winding off and on, Are wasted whole and some. Nick Bottom was the name of our weaver. We suspect, from the following contemporary epigram, that the first name was common for professors of that trade:'Nicke, the weaver's boy, is dead and gone, / Surely his life was but a thrume.'4 Our readers will immediately call to mind the invocation of Bottom, in the part of Pyramus, while reciting his 'last dying speech:' — 'O fates! come, come; / Cut thread and thrum' [5.1.285ff.]. (19-21) [From Chapter V: 'Representation on the Stage'] We agree with Mr. Heraud in his opinion, that the alleged unfltness of the Midsummer Night's Dream for representation on the stage is founded on incorrect dataJ5! In fact, the success that has attended its recent production at Covent Garden Theatre entirely controverts Mr. Knight's assertion, that 'this play, with all its harmony of dramatic arrangement, is not for the stage — at least, for the modern stage' [No. 19 above]. It must, however, be admitted, that for a length of time the revivals of this drama have not been by any means eminently successful; but to attribute this to the play itself being too etherially poetic for the stage, is, we conceive, adopting too hasty a conclusion. 'There is no drama,' observes Mr. Heraud, 'but what is so strictly considered;'^] and does not the poet himself say — 'The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse if our imagination amend them' [5.1.211ff.]. It is most probable, that the extreme difficulty of personating the characters of Oberon and the four lovers with advantage, and of procuring, at the same time, actors fitted by their peculiar talents for those parts, are the principal causes of failure. Even in the present unrivalled cast of the play as performed at Covent Garden Theatre, where Oberon is very charmingly represented by Mrs. Charles Mathews, one of the most distinguished actresses of our time; yet it is no disparagement to say of the four who personate the lovers, and who are all in excellent repute, that only one is really fitted for the complete realization of Shakespeare's ideas.7 [Halliwell touches on performances and adaptations from the seventeenth century to Reynolds in 1816.]

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But all these representations of the Midsummer Night's Dream must give place to its present revival at Covent Garden Theatre. Every thing that fine taste, a most liberal management, and an excellent cast could accomplish, have been called into action; and its success must have equalled the most sanguine expectations of the projectors. The alterations from the original version of the play are few, and made with that good judgment which characterizes every thing that Mr. Planche undertakes. We would, however, suggest that the omission which is made of a portion of Hermia's speech, when she loses Lysander, destroys the climax, and causes the whole to fall languidly on the ear; it is better as it is in the original:— [Quotes 2.2.151-6: 'Lysander! what, remov'd ']& We would also ask how Theseus, unassisted by the Prologue's description of the dumb show, which Mr. Planche has omitted, can recognize the representation of moonshine? We are afraid that few of us possess so penetrating a vision; but perhaps the heroes of old excelled the moderns in this as in other attributes. (45-52)

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22 Nicholasjohn Halpin, Oberon's Vision allegorized 1843

From Oberon's Vision in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, Illustrated by a Comparison with Lylie's Endymion (London, 1843). Nicholasjohn Halpin (1790-1850) received his B. A. from Dublin University in 1815, became a clergyman, and then editor of Dublin's main Protestant newspaper, the Evening Mail. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy. During his life he wrote several essays on religious matters, and, beside his main book on Shakespeare, two papers — one on Juliet's soliloquy, and one on the dramatic unities in the plays. Halpin's interpretation of Oberon's vision was first suggested by James Boaden in On the Sonnets of Shakespeare (London, 1837).

[Halpin interprets Oberon's vision [2.1.148-69] as an allegory, W with the 'fair vestal' as Queen Elizabeth (who is also associated with the Moon, and 'Dian's bud'), Cupid as Leicester, the flower 'love in idleness' as Lettice Knollys -wife of the Earl of Essex, and the event the entertainment at Kenilworth in 1575. He finds a close allegorical parallel in Lyly's Endymion (1591) where he casts Endymion as Leicester, Cynthia (the Moon) as Queen Elizabeth, Tellus as Lady Douglas Countess of Sheffield, and Floscula as Lettice Knollys. After 90 pages he summarizes:] The story is an eventful one. It involves the fate of princes, statesmen, and nobles, and is therefore fitly ushered in with portents, which, in the universal belief of the time, omened the fortunes of the great. The mermaid singing her enchantments — a superstition descended from the ancient fable of the syrens — was the old and apposite type of those female seductions generally so fatal to their objects. The 'stars shooting madly from their spheres' [2.1.153] were, in that stage of the march of intellect, the prodigies which foreboded disasters to the great. The whole literature of that period abounds with allusions to those 'skiey influences' [Measure for Measure, 3.1.9]. On this occasion, the phenomenon seems to have signified a Star — a high and mighty potentate — wildly rushing from the sphere of the bright and lofty Moon — a princess of the highest rank - darting beneath the attractions of the Earth - another lady, but of inferior grade — and falling in a jelly, as falling stars are apt to do, on the lap of Love in idleness, an emblematic flower, signifying, in the typical language of the day, a mistress in concealment. The time and place of such prodigies would properly indicate the time and place of the events which they foreboded. We must recollect that, in this case, the prodigies are poetical - imaginary;

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the artificial portents caught by the Poet's eye from the actual pageantry which accompanied the real transactions. Let us now compare the poetical allegory (in juxtaposition) with a simple paraphrase of the literal meaning which has been assigned to it; and if the result be not a conviction that the parallel is too exact to be the offspring of chance, and the harmony too unconstrained and natural to be the accord of any thing but truth, I shall freely confess that my imagination has very grossly imposed upon my senses. Text. OBERON My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest, When once I sat upon a promontory2, And saw

a mermaid on a dolphin's back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious sounds, That the rude sea grew civil at her song;

And certain stars shot madly

from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid's music. PUCK.

/ remember.

Paraphrase. OBERON Come hither, Puck. You doubtless remember when, once upon a time, sitting together on a rising ground, or bray2, by the side of a piece of water, we saw what to us appeared (though to others it might have worn a different semblance) a mermaid sitting on a dolphin's back, and singing so sweetly to the accompaniment of a band of music placed inside of the artificial dolphin, that one could very well imagine the waves of the mimic sea before us would, had they been ruffled, have calmed and settled themselves down to listen to her melody; and, at the same time, there "was a flight of artificial fireworks resembling stars, which plunged very strangely out of their natural element down into the water, and, after remaining there a while, rose again into the air, as if wishing to hear once more the sea-maid's music. PUCK. I remember such things to have been exhibited amongst the pageantry at Kenilworth Castle, during the Princely Pleasures given on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1575.

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OBERON. That very time I saw —

(but thou couldst not,)

Flying between the cold Moon and the Earth, Cupid (if the reading of Warburton be right) [alarmed]

(or, if the old reading be preferred) all-armed,

A certain aim he took At a fair Vestal throned by the West; And loosed a love-shaft madly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quenched in the chaste beams

ofthewat'ry Moon; And the imperial Votaress passed on,

OBERON. You are right. Well, at that very time and place, I, (and perhaps a few others of the choicer spirits,) could discern a circumstance that was imperceptible to you (and the meaner multitude of guests and visitants): in fact, I saw — wavering in his passion between (Cynthia, or) Queen Elizabeth, and (Tellus, or) the Lady Douglas, Countess of Sheffield, (Endymion, or) the Earl of Leicester,

[either alarmed at the progress of his rival, the Duke of Alencon, with the Queen, or]

all-armed, in the magnificence of his preparations for storming the heart of his Royal Mistress. He made a predetermined and a well-directed effort for the hand of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen of England; and presumptuously made such love to her — rash under all the circumstances — as if he fancied that neither she nor any woman in the world could resist his suit: but it was evident to me, (and to the rest of the initiated,) that the ardent Leicester's desperate venture was lost in the pride, prudery, and jealousy of power, which invariably swayed the tide of Elizabeth's passions; and the Virgin Queen finally departed from Kenil-

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In maiden meditation, fancy-free,

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white;

now purple with Love's wound:

And maidens

call it Love in Idleness3.

Fetch me that flower. (90-5)

worth Castle unshackled with a matrimonial engagement, and as heart-whole as ever. And yet (continues Oberon), curious to observe the collateral issues of this amorous preparation, I watched (whatever others may have done) and discovered the person on whom Leicester's irregular passion was secretly fixed: it was fixed upon Lettice, at that time the wife of Walter Earl of Essex, an Englishwoman of rank inferior to the object of his great ambition; who, previous to this unhappy attachment, was not only pure and innocent in conduct, but unblemished also in reputation; after which she became not only deeply inflamed with a criminal passion, and still more deeply (perhaps) stained with a husband's blood, but the subject, also, of shame and obloquy. Those, however, who pity her weakness, and compassionate her misery, still offer a feeble apology for her conduct, by calling it the result of her husband's voluntary absence, of the waste of affections naturally tender and fond, and of the idleness of a heart that might have been faithful if busied with honest duties, and filled with domestic loves. You cannot mistake, after all I have said — Go - fetch me that flower.

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. . . But I cannot leave the subject without returning to the post from which I started. Whether I have hit the true secret or not, it is indisputable that the whole of the Endymion and that part of the Midsummer Night's Dream distinguished as Oberon's Vision, relate to some romantic adventure, some affair of the heart, in which that coy Princess, Queen Elizabeth, was deeply and personally interested. The objection to personalities cannot reach my side of the question till it has passed throught the ribs of this; for, whatever be the story allegorised, -whether mine or any other, the fact of the poet's having crossed the threshold of domestic life, and presumed in her own presence to depict the character and private circumstances of the reigning sovereign, is beyond dispute. (107)

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23 Bryan Waller Procter, fairy drama and human nature 1843

From The Works of Shakespeare Revised from the best Authorities: with a Memoir, and Essay on his Genius, by Barry Cornwall: also, Annotations and Introductory Remarks on the Plays, by many Distinguished Writers: Illustrated with Engravings on Wood, from Designs by Kenny Meadows (3 vols, London, 1843). Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874), poet, playwright, songwriter, biographer, editor, published under the name of Barry Cornwall (the addition of Peter makes the anagram on his real name complete). From Byron (with whom he attended Harrow), Hunt and Lamb to Dickens, Browning and Swinburne, he was the friend and supporter of many of the eminent writers of the century. His congenial personality perhaps won for him praise beyond the merits of his writings (his daughter Adelaide's poem 'A Lost Chord', especially in its musical setting 'The Lost Chord', remains more famous than any of his). However, his tragedy of Mirandola had a successful run at Covent Garden in 1821 (with Charles Kemble in a leading role), his songs were long admired on both sides of the Atlantic, his biography of Charles Lamb remains valuable, and his very popular edition of Shakespeare was frequently reprinted.

[From 'A Memoir of and Essay on the Genius of Shakespeare'] There is no space here to go through the tragic and comic plays seriatim, and shew their manifold wonders. They are each beyond rivalry in their way: although the tragedy is superior to the comedy, by so much as that which is serious is superior to that which is jocose. This has been already insisted upon by other writers. But let us not forget the fairy dramas. The Tempest and the Midsummer Night's Dream deserve a better defender than I can hope to be. The supernatural machinery which Shakespeare has adopted in these and other plays has been decried, as being little better than that of nursery fables. This, as it appears to me, is mistaking the quality and object of a play. The supernatural is a legitimate portion of the drama. It is as much so as any circumstance which we are apt to call improbable or unnatural, but which in every instance has been outdone by facts. All depends on the mode of introducing the supernatural, and on the use made of it by the poet. Whatever affects the imagination, and excites the sympathies of an audience, may be pronounced fit

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for the stage. It is only when the childish and ignorant are wrought upon, leaving the mature mind unaffected, that the supernatural becomes absurd. It is, in short, the quantity of intellect thrown into fictions of this order, which determines their general fitness to appear before the world. Taking into consideration the mechanism and general exterior of a represented play, all plays commence as improbabilities. No one begins by being deluded. He knows at the outset that a wooden stage is before him, and that actors are about to represent a fiction. But if, with this indispensable disadvantage, the poet succeeds in exciting the sympathy of the spectator, and makes him for awhile forget the humble appliances of his art, then the drama may be said to be triumphant. In reference to this subject, it should not be forgotten that many characters and effects have been brought upon the stage, which certainly never had any existence in the history of human affairs. These are as essentially opposed to fact as the fairies and ghosts of Shakespeare; and yet we do not object to them, because we say that they are 'natural.' But, are not Titania and Oberon natural? Is not Ariel natural? Is not Caliban natural? nay, is he not a thousand times more natural and more impressive than the pompous perfections and inflated heroes of the French stage? (I.xx-xxi) [From 'Introductory Remarks' to A Midsummer Night's Dream] Variegated, light, and splendid as though woven in the woof of Iris, the wondrous texture of this enchanting Dream is yet of stamina to last till doomsday. 'Such tricks hath strong imagination' [5.1.18]! Like gravitation in the substantial world, its influence pervades the whole domain of moral nature, and compels materials apparently the most discordant to revolve in harmony round one bright vivifying centre. Never was this divine impulsive property of intellect more finely exemplified than in the Elysian scene that here presents itself. The stately heroes and heroines of Grecian story move in soft unison with the beautiful creations of the Gothic mythology—quaint, rich, and fantastic as the ornaments of our matchless Gothic fanes; while all are bound up and blended with a plenteous exhibition of the joys and the sorrows, the constancy and the faithfulness,^ the sense and the absurdity, that in every age and every clime have characterized our inconsistent, yet exalted human nature. Theseus and his Amazonian love, although invested, for the most part, with an air of classic coldness, at times give indications of being instinct with Shakespearian fire. There is a fine touch of feminine feeling in Hippolyta's expressed dislike 'to see wretchedness o'ercharged, and duty in his service perishing' [5.1.85ff.]. The answer of Theseus breathes the very spirit of a generous philosophy. Their conversation, too, while preparing for the chace, is animated with a glowing sense of animal enjoyment that rises into strenuous poetry. Altogether, these warlike lovers present a very gratifying specimen of the heroic character in repose. The language of the amorous 'human mortals' [2.1.101], while doomed to illustrate the pathetic adage that 'the course of true love never did run smooth' [1.1.134], is fraught with sweetness gathered from the purest flowers of Parnassus. The pains and pleasures, the exalting and debasing influences of the universal

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passion, are delineated with surpassing truth and beauty. Under its resistless spell, the charming Helena betrays her friend, for the sake of a short-lived interview with her revolted and contemptuous lover. Her subsequent unshaken patience, however, and exquisite expostulation with Hermia, amply atone for the solitary error springing from that intoxication of the heart and brain which deprives its victims of discretion, and too often of their self-respect, at the precise moment when they have most occasion for support and admonition. While basking in the moonlight fairy scenes, the luxurious fancy seems to inhale the very odours of'the spiced Indian air' [2.1.124]; or, sweeter still, to drink the balmy influence of that 'luscious woodbine' [2.1.251] which forms Titania's most appropriate canopy. - Puck, the 'shrewd and knavish sprite' [2.1.33], who finds a sport in lovers' agonising janglings, is beautifully discriminated from Ariel, who pities mortal miseries, and instigates his master to relieve them. Still the 'merry wanderer of the night' [2.1.43] is delightful and exhilarating company: his sportive malice, controlled by the beneficent Oberon, is productive of infinite diversion; we easily forgive his elvish ridicule of pangs and raptures he is alike incapable of feeling, and for the moment heartily subscribe to his satiric dictum, — 'Lord, what fools these mortals be' [3.2.115]! The 'hempen homespuns' [3.1.77] who are so marvellously intermixed with the superior intelligences of the drama, are all admirable workers in their tiny spheres, — from Peter Quince, the business-like manager, who really seems to have half an idea in his head, and contents himself with the humble role of Thisbe's father - up (or down) to ostentatious 'Bully Bottom' [3.1.8], the twinkling cynosure of all his meek competitors. The union of broad humour with poetic fancy was never perhaps so admirably effected as in the scenes in which this 'shallowest thickskin of that barren sort' [3.2.13] receives, as a mere thing of course, the enthusiastic courtship of the Queen of Fairyland. — 'A very good piece of work, and a merry' [1.2.13ff.]. (I. 381)

144

24 Leigh Hunt, Poet of the Fairies 1844

From Imagination and Fancy, or Selections from the English Poets, Illustrative of those First Requisites of their Art; with Markings of the Best Passages, Critical Notices of the Writers, and an Essay in Answer to the Question 'What is Poetry?' (London, 1844). [James Henry] Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), poet, essayist, playwright, critic, journalist, attended Christ's Hospital School in London, as had Coleridge and Lamb before him. The poems he wrote in his schooldays, between the ages of twelve and sixteen, were published by his father as Juvenilia in 1801. He collaborated with Hazlitt in the essays of The Round Table, and with his brother John edited for many years The Examiner. The integrity shown by the brothers in going to prison rather than retracting their criticism of the prince regent won Leigh Hunt the friendship of Shelley, and later of Byron. Hunt was also a friend of Keats, to whom he was introduced by Charles Cowden Clarke. Imagination and Fancy, published after the deaths of most of these famous friends, shows the continuing influence of Hazlitt, and Hunt's admiration for the poetry of Coleridge, Shelley and Keats. He appears to have had a gentle and sweet temperament, which Edmund Gosse finds reflected in his love of Spenser and the Italian poets (see Gosse's introduction to the London, 1907 edition of Imagination and Fancy).

[From the 'Preface'] The object of the book is threefold; - to present the public with some of the finest passages in English poetry, so marked and commented; — to furnish such an account, in an Essay, of the nature and requirements of poetry, as may enable readers in general to give an answer on those points to themselves and others; — and to show, throughout the greater part of the volume, what sort of poetry is to be considered as poetry of the most poetical kind, or such as exhibits the imagination and fancy in a state of predominance, undisputed by interests of another sort. Poetry, therefore, is not here in its compound state, great or otherwise (except incidentally in the Essay), but in its element, like an essence distilled. All the greatest poetry includes that essence, but the essence does not present itself in exclusive combination with the greatest form of poetry. It varies in that respect from the most tremendous to the most playful effusions, and from imagination to fancy through all their degrees; - from Homer and Dante, to

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Coleridge and Keats; from Shakespeare in King Lear, to Shakespeare himself in the Midsummer Night's Dream; from Spenser's Faerie Queene to the Castle of Indolence;^ nay, from Ariel in the Tempest, to his somewhat presumptuous namesake in the Rape of the Lock, (v-vi) [From 'An Answer to the Question "What is Poetry'"] Imagination belongs to Tragedy, or the serious muse; Fancy to the comic. Macbeth, Lear, Paradise Lost, the poem of Dante, are full of imagination: the Midsummer Night's Dream and the Rape of the Lock, of fancy: Romeo and Juliet, the Tempest, the Faerie Queene, and the Orlando Furioso, of both. The terms were formerly identical, or used as such; and neither is the best that might be found. (31) [From 'Shakespeare'] . . . But the critical distinction between Fancy and Imagination was hardly determined till of late. Collins himself, in his Ode on the Poetical Character, uses the word Fancy to imply both, even when speaking of Milton; PI and so did Milton, I conceive, when speaking of Shakespeare. The propriety of the words "native wood-notes wild," is not so clear.PI I take them to have been hastily said by a learned man of an unlearned. But Shakespeare, though he had not a college education, was as learned as any man, in the highest sense of the word, by a scholarly intuition. He had the spirit of learning. He was aware of the education he wanted, and by some means or other supplied it. He could anticipate Milton's own Greek and Latin; Tortive and errant from his course of growth— [Troilus and Cressida, 1.3.9] The multitudinous seas incarnadine— [Macbeth, 2.2.59] A pudency so rosy, &c. [Cymbeline, 2.5.11] In fact, if Shakespeare's poetry has any fault, it is that of being too learned; too over-informed with thought and allusion. His wood-notes wild surpass Haydn and Bach. His wild roses were all twenty times double. He thinks twenty times to another man's once, and makes all his serious characters talk as well as he could himself, - with a superabundance of wit and intellligence. He knew, however, that fairies must have a language of their own; and hence, perhaps, his poetry never runs in a more purely poetical vein than when he is speaking in their persons; - I mean it is less mixed up with those heaps of comments and reflections which, however the wilful or metaphysical critic may think them suitable on all occasions, or succeed in persuading us not to wish them absent, by reason of their stimulancy to one's mental activity, are assuredly neither always proper to dramatic, still less to narrative poetry; nor yet so opposed to all idiosyncrasy on the writer's part as Mr Coleridge would have us believe. . . . If Shakespeare, instead of proving himself the greatest poet in the world, had •written nothing but the fanciful scenes in this volume, he would still have obtained

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a high and singular reputation, — that of Poet of the Fairies. For he may be said to have invented the Fairies; that is to say, he was the first that turned them to poetical account; that bore them from clownish neighbourhoods to the richest soils of fancy and imagination. (150-52) [From 'The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania: A Fairy Drama'] I have ventured to give the extract this title, because it not only contains the whole story of the fairy part of the Midsummer Night's Dream, but by the omission of a few lines, and the transposition of one small passage (for which I beg the reader's indulgence), it actually forms a separate little play.M It is nearly such in the greater play; and its isolation was easily, and not at all injuriously effected, by the separation of the Weaver from his brother mechanicals. (169) [Note to 'But as the fierce vexation of a dream'. 4.1.69] This fine stray verse comes looking in among the rest like a stern face through flowers. (179) [Note to 'Come from the farthest steep of India', 2.1.69] Shakespeare understood the charm of remoteness in poetry, as he did everything else. Oberon has been dancing on the sunny steeps looking towards Cathay, where the Chineses drive Their cany waggons light. ^ (180)

147

25 Joseph Hunter, a comment, with some explanatorynotes 1845

From New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare. Supplementary to All the Editions. By Joseph Hunter, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and an Assistant Keeper of the Public Records (2 vols, London, 1845). Joseph Hunter (1783-1861) became a Presbyterian minister in 1809 and served at Bath for twenty-four years, when, in 1833, he was appointed to a post in the public records office where he spent the rest of his life. A member of the Society of Antiquaries, he published many volumes of local histories, records, and historical documents. He also left behind a large manuscript collection, now at the British Library, the main works of which are his 'Chorus Vatum Anglicanorum', six volumes of notes on English poets through the seventeenth century, and 'Collections concerning Shakespeare and his Works'. His book on Shakespeare was the fruit of many years of historical and textual study.

[From the chapter entitled 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'] At the sight of such a tide we naturally ask — Who is the dreamer? The poet, any of the characters of the drama, or the spectators? The answer seems to be that there is much in this beautiful sport of imagination which was fit only to be regarded as a dream by the persons whom the fairies illuded:^ and that, as a whole, it comes before the spectators under the notion of a dream. [Quotes 5.1.423-9: 'If we, shadows, have offended. . . .']. Shakespeare was then but a young poet, rising into notice, and it was a bold and hazardous undertaking to bring together classical story and the fairy mythology, made still more hazardous by the introduction of the rude attempts in the dramatic art of the hard-handed men of Athens. By calling it a dream he obviated the objection to its incongruities, since it is of the nature of a dream that things heterogeneous are brought together in fantastical confusion. Yet, to a person who by repeated perusals has become familiar with this play, it will not appear so incongruous a composition that it requires such an apology as we find in the Epilogue and in the title. It cannot, however, have been popular, any more than Comus is popular when brought upon the stage. Its great and surpassing beauties would be in themselves a hinderance to its obtaining a vulgar popularity. The finest poetry is heavy in repetition on the

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stage. Only the repeating the long and beautiful passages in recitative gave this play a temporary popularity when it was revived in better times. Many, no doubt, have felt what few besides Pepyst2] would have cared to record. . . . There is no apparent reason why it should be called a dream of Midsummer Night in particular. Midsummer night was of old in England a time of bon-fires and rejoicings, and in London of processions and pageantries. But there is no allusion to anything of this kind in the play. Midsummer night cannot be the time of the action, which is very distinctly fixed to May-morning and a few days before. May-morning, even more than Midsummer night, was a time of delight in those times which, when looked back upon from these days of incessant toil, seem to have been gay, innocent, and paradisaical. See in what sweet language and in what a religious spirit the old topographer of London, Stowe, speaks of the universal custom of the people of the city on May-day morning, 'to walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kinds.'PI We have abundant material for a distinct and complete account of the May-day sports in the happy times of old England; but they would be misplaced in illustration of this play: for though Shakespeare has made the time of his story the time when people went forth 'To do observance to the morn of May' [1.1.167], and has laid the scene of the principal event in one of those half-sylvan, half-pastoral spots which we may conceive to have been the most favourite haunts of the Mayers, he does not introduce any of the May-day sports, or shew us anything of the May-day customs of the time. Yet he might have done so. His subject seemed even to invite him to it, since a party of Mayers with their garlands of sweet flowers would have harmonized well with the lovers and the fairies, and might have made sport for Robin Goodfellow. Shakespeare loved to think of flowers and to write of them, and it may seem that it was a part of his original conception to have made more use than he has done of May-day and Flora's folio wers. To an extravagant commentator this play might open the whole subject of the Fairy Mythology, just as The Tempest might be made to call for whatever can be collected respecting that so-called philosophy in which Prospero was so accomplished an adept. But both these subjects are subjects for distinct treatises, and to say much concerning them in reference to these plays is, to say the least, a misplacing of the curious learning. The following note from a pleasant little work printed in 1828, entitled Fairy Mythology, seems, however, almost essential to the right understanding a material circumstance, and to the justification of the author: The Shakespearean commentators have not thought fit to inform us why the poet designates the fairy queen Titania. It, however, presents no difficulty. It was the belief of those days that the fairies were the same as the classic nymphs, the attendants of Diana, 'That fourth kind of sprites,' says King James, 'quhilk be the gentiles was called Diana and the wandering court, and among us called the Phaeries.' The fairy-queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid frequently styles Titania. Vol. ii. p. 127 [Thomas Keighdey: No. 14]

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We shall be the less surprised to find Diana in such company when we recollect that there is much in the Fairy Mythology which seems but a perpetuation of the beautiful conceptions of primeval ages, of the fields, woods, mountains, rivers, and the margin of the sea being haunted by nymphs, the dryades and hamadryades, oreades, and naiades. It is a little noticed fact, and one which would serve as some defence of the poet for having introduced Theseus and Hippolyta, and Demetrius and the other Athenians into this fairy tale, that the fairies as they are depicted in this play are as well known in the Greek islands (or at least were so two hundred years ago)4 as they are or ever were on the Great or Little Almas Cliff of Yorkshire, or on any hill-side or in any woody dell of Britain, if hill or dell there be where these innocent and amusing superstitions are still lingering. The modern Greeks have also their Puck or Robin Goodfellow, with attributes closely resembling those given to him in this play, and in the popular notions of former England [He now begins his examination of some passages from the play.]

I.l.[132ff.]LYSANDER. AH ME! for aught that ever I could readj5] Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. There is a reading in this passage, presented by the second folio, which has not I think received the slightest notice from any of the editors, and yet it appears to me to have a point and pathos even beyond what the passage, as usually printed, possesses. HERMIA! for aught that ever I could read, &c. A skilful actor might give great effect to the name; and we ought always to remember, what Shakespeare never forgot, that he was writing for spokesmen, not in the first instance for students in their closets.

I.l.[145ff.]LYSANDER. Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That in a SPLEEN unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man has power to say, - Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up. The word spleen is laid under suspicion by Warburton, and is not justified by the later commentators. Nares says, 'We do not find it so used by other writers.'M This is a mistake: and it will be seen that a happier choice could not have been made than the poet has made of this word. Like winter fires that with disdainful heat

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The opposition of the cold defeat; And in an angry spleen do burn more fair The more encountered by the frosty air. Verses by Poole, before his England's Parnassus. Svo., 1657t7].

So in [William] Lithgow's Nineteen Years' Travels, 4to. 1632, p. 61, 'All things below and above being cunningly perfected, and every one ranked in order with his harquebuse and pike, to stand in the centinel of his own defence, we recommend ourselves in the hands of the Almighty, and in the meanwhile attended their fiery salutations. In a furious spleen, the first holla of their courtesies, was the progress of a martial conflict, thundering forth a terrible noise of gaily-roaring pieces,' &c. See further uses of the word in Grim the Collier of Croydon, 3.1.[5];f8l and in Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt, p. 22;P1 and by Shakespeare himself, King John, 2.1.[448],and5.7.[50]

II. 1. [220ff.] HELENA. Your virtue is my privilege for thatJ10] It is not night, when I do see your face, Therefore I think I am not in the night. I cannot pass over this, which is one among the innumerable deteriorations of the old text in the Variorum; and which more recent editors, who have proposed to reconsider the text, and to give it in its virgin purity, have not corrected. The old copies give with one consent — Your virtue is my privilege: for that It is not night when I do see, &c. A reading infinitely superior to that which is palmed upon us

III. 2. [236ff.] HERMIA. — I understand not what you mean by this. HELENA. - AY, DO, persever, counterfeit sad looksj11! Make mouths upon me. This bad reading is found in all modern editions. One of the quartos, namely that printed by Fisher, gives what is the true reading. Hermia says, I understand not what you mean by this; to which Helena replies in a grave and serious tone, / do\

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IV. 1. [32ff.] BOTTOM. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of HAY; Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow. We have here an instance how imperfectly any printing can convey with fulness and precision all that a dramatist has written to be spoken on the stage. Bottom, half man, half ass, is for a bottle of a; hay,or ale, for the actor was no doubt to speak in such a manner that both these words should be suggested. The snatch of an old song that follows is in praise of ale not hay. Bottom sings, stirred to it by the rural music, the rough music,[12] as it is called, which we leam from the folio was introduced when Bottom had said 'Let us have the tongs and the bones' [4.1.28fF.]J13] . . .

V. 1. [423ff.] PUCK. If we shadows have offended Think but this and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here, While these visions did appear. This simple epilogue forms a graceful close to this beautiful drama; but I refer to it for the sake of remarking that in the first line we have a reference back to a sentiment in the play: 'The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them' [5.1.21 Iff.], an apology for the actor and a compliment to the critic. What the poet had put into the mouth of one of the characters in respect of the poor attempts of the Athenian clowns, he now by the repetition of the word 'shadows,' in effect says for himself and his companions. 'Shadows' is a beautiful term by which to express actors, those whose life is a perpetual personation, a semblance but of something real, a shadow only of actual existences. The idea of this resemblance was deeply inwrought in the mind of the poet and actor. When at a later period he looked upon man again as but 'a walking shadow,' his mind immediately passed to the long-cherished thought, and he proceeds A poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. Macbeth, 5.5.[24ff.] (I, 282-98)

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26 Hermann Ulrici, the theme of self-parody 1846

From Shakespeare's Dramatic Art. History and Character of Shakespeare's Plays. By Dr. Hermann Ulrici. Translated from the Third Edition of the German, with Additions and Corrections by the Author. By L. Dora Schmitz (2 vols, London, 1876). Hermann Ulrici (1806-84), German philosopher, was a professor at Halle from 1834 until his death. A Christian thinker, he sought to prove the existence of God from a scientific basis, but his earlier work was in literary criticism. Ueber Shakespeares dramatische Kunst und sein Verhdltnis zu Calderon und Goethe (Halle, 1839) was translated into English in 1846 by A.J.W. Morrison. The second edition was called Shakespeares dramatische Kunst. Geschichte und Charakteristik des Shakespeareschen Dramas (Leipzig, 1847), with a third edition in 1868-9, the source of L. Dora Schmitz's translation of 1876. The general aim of his book is perhaps best summed up in this statement from the preface to the 1846 translation: 'I have therefore confined myself to set forth the profundity and sublimity of his poetical view of life, which was simply on this account sublime and profound, because it was Christian, and Christian also, even because it was profound and sublime. For this reason, my first endeavour has been to point out the organic gravitating centre of each of his dramas, i.e. to discover in each that inmost secret spark of life, that unity of idea, which preeminently constitutes a work of art a living creation in the world of beauty' (I, x-xi).

[From Book III, Chapter VIII: 'Shakespeare's Idea of Tragedy and Comedy'] But even among comedies, in the narrower sense of the word, there is a considerable difference in form, character, and composition, between plays like A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, As You Like It, and those of another species, such as All's Well that Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, etc. But this difference, also, is explained by the general conception of the comic upon which Shakespeare's comedies are founded. If, as has been said,^ Shakespeare's idea of the comic is essentially nothing but the dialectics of irony, which make the represented world of caprice and chance the instrument of its own dissolution, by the contradictions it itself contains, then accordingly it is clear that comedy can comprehend and represent human life in its two principal but different aspects. Either it exhibits human life more in its inner subjective aspect, as born and shaped by the doings and endeavours, the desires and passions, plans and freaks, of the different

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characters, in short, as dependent upon and determined by human wishes and endeavours, which in Comedy is always represented in the many forms of caprice2 — and this species may be called comedy of character or intrigue. (Its usual prosaic form of reality must, in accordance with its nature, remain unchanged; its object being rather to reflect reality as faithfully as possible, and to represent it externally in precisely the same manner as, under the given conditions of time and place, under prevailing circumstances and relations, it must be formed naturally and empirically.) Or, it conceives human life more in an objective manner, so that chance and caprice, as general forces which embrace the kingdom of nature as well as the world of man, govern it like a kind of destiny. Caprice and accident, however, are in themselves thoroughly fantastic; for the fantastic is, in fact, nothing but the caprice of fancy, the groundlessness and incoherency of the images which go beyond the order and laws of nature, and thus injure, confound, and transform them. This results in the fantastic comedy, in which consequently the external, natural form of common reality seems to be done away with, or, at all events, appears permeated by strange, wonderful phenomena, mere creations of the fancy, or beings of an entirely different nature and sphere of life — precisely such as are brought before us in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in The Tempest. Only, the representation must invariably maintain this form, as one actually existing, and treat all fantastic singularities and wonders which it displays before us, exactly like the most ordinary occurrences of everyday life; then it will readily produce the highest comic effect. (I, 369-70) [From Book V, Chapter III: '2. A Midsummer Night's Dream'] . . . At a first glance we are almost more puzzled here than in the case of The Tempest as to what — from an aesthetic point of view — to make of the strange airy creatures which are presented to us in A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is here such a wanton play of fancy and merriment, such a gay succession of pranks, that upon a first impression we might be inclined to deny that the piece possesses any deeper significance, any rational meaning. [He describes the four sets of characters in the play, the Duke and his Queen, the four lovers, the fairies, and the mechanicals, then continues.] . . . In face of these not merely perfectly heterogeneous elements, but elements that are apparently strung together without either order or arrangement, it seems a hopeless undertaking to answer the question, as to what is the centre and gravitating point upon which the drama here turns, and in how far - in accordance with the first requisite of art — does it form a living, harmonious whole. In the first place it is self-evident that the play is based upon the comic view of life, that is to say upon Shakespeare's idea of comedy. This is here expressed without reserve and in the clearest manner possible, in so far as it is not only in particular cases that the maddest freaks of accident come into conflict with human capriciousness, folly and perversity, thus thwarting one another in turn, but that the principal spheres of life are made mutually to parody one another in mirthful irony. This last feature distinguishes A Midsummer Night's Dream from other comedies. Theseus and Hippolyta appear obviously to represent the grand, heroic, historical side of human nature. In place, however, of maintaining their greatness, power and dignity, it is

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exhibited rather as spent in the common every-day occurrence of a marriage, which can claim no greater significance than it possesses for ordinary mortals; their heroic greatness parodies itself, inasmuch as it appears to exist for no other purpose than to be married in a suitable fashion. The band of mechanics - the carpenter, joiner, weaver, bellows-mender and tinker - in contrast to the above higher regions of existence, represent the lowest sphere in the full prose of every-day life. But even they — in place of remaining in their own sphere and station, where they are fully justified, and even somewhat poetical — force themselves up into the domain of the tragic muse, wishing not only to appear more poetical, but to make poetry, and accordingly not merely exhibit themselves in an exceedingly ludicrous light, but are, as it were, a parody on themselves as well as on the higher sphere of the tragic and the heroic. Midway between these two extremes stand the two loving couples, who belong to the middle stratum of human society. But in place of endeavouring to regard life from its inner and central point - in accordance with their position - they also lose themselves in the fantastic play of their own selfish love, and thus they too are a parody on themselves and their station in life. Lastly the king and queen of the fairies and their interference in the action appears to represent that higher power which guides the life of men by invisible threads. But even this over-ruling power is not depicted in its true grandeur, in its highly important significance, and quiet mysterious activity; but, like all the other parts of the piece, is also carried along in the general whirl of humour. It is represented in palpable, bodily forms, and exhibits itself only as the merry bantering play of the personified powers of nature, that is, it parodies itself in so far as it too appears subject to the caprice of accident and to its own waywardness; this is clearly evident in Titania's passion for the ass-headed Bottom. . . . [He describes the complications of the various love tangles.] But the purport of the piece is not to give a comic representation of love — this is not the actual theme of the poem. On the contrary, the action exhibits the serious side of the passion of love only so as to parody this seriousness by representing love itself as a mere plaything, a mere illusion; in short, the action in reality parodies itself. This is why love here does not appear as an inward fascination of the heart, proceeding from the imagination or from the force of the involuntarily changing disposition of the lovers, but that it, at the same time, appears subject to the outward magic interference of higher beings, who carry on their bantering play with them. Oberon's magic herbs cause Lysander and Demetrius suddenly to become madly in love with Helena, and Titania to dote upon Bottom; but the spell is as rapidly dissolved and the right relation restored. The acting mechanics are therefore not without reason woven into the adventures of the magic forest. For, on the one hand, their burlesque comedy is intended to remind us that the seriousness of these adventures is, after all, not meant to be so very serious, and, on the other hand, the representation of Pyramus and Thisbe draws the tragic pathos of love down to the level of the ludicrous, and thereby, at the same time, parodies the apparently tragic significance of love which is depicted in the piece itself. . . . [He quotes Adolf Scholl^ on how the Interlude mocks the two male lovers, as Bottom's actions mock Puck, and says that the play even makes game of the audience.1

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In the first place this tendency of one part parodying the other, and the identity of the theme — which the action carries out with an equal tendency to parody in a variety of ways — brings all the different groups of the dramatic characters into close community, inasmuch as all appear to be animated by the same spirit. The play of the mechanics ridicules, in the gayest manner, not only the contents of the piece itself, but all dramatic art as well; in the end, however, the piece which parodies everything and is again a parody on itself, carries this tendency to a climax, and is thus the means of rounding off the whole, by, as it were, giving the drama its point. Further, there is no want of external connection between the several parts of the action, which connection is certainly slight and loose but has been arranged by a skilful hand. The marriage festival of Theseus and Hippolyta forms, so to say, a splendid golden frame to the whole picture,^] with which all the several scenes stand in some sort of connection. Within it we have the gambols of the elves among one another, which, like a gay ribbon, are woven into the plans of the loving couples and into the doings of the mechanics; hence they represent a kind of relation between these two groups, while the blessings which they at the beginning intended to bestow, and in the end actually do bestow, upon the house and lineage of Theseus make them partakers of the marriage feast, and give them a well-founded place in the drama. The play within the play, lastly, occupies the same position as a part of the wedding festivities. If we look at the whole from these points of view and reflect upon the impression which the piece leaves upon us, it seems to me that there cannot be any doubt as to what was the spirit in which Shakespeare conceived it, and what was the intention and view which guided him in its composition. The title again intimates this. Human life appears conceived as a fantastic midsummer night's dream. As in a dream, the airy picture flits past our minds with the quickness of wit; the remotest regions, the strangest and most motley figures mix with one another, and, in form and composition, make an exceedingly curious medley; as in a dream they thwart, embarrass and disembarrass one another in turn, and - owing to their constant change of character and wavering feelings and passions — vanish, like the figures of a dream, into an uncertain chiaro-scuro; as in a dream, the play within the play holds up its puzzling concave mirror to the whole; and as, doubtless, in real dreams the shadow of reason comments upon the individual images in a state of half doubt, half belief— at one time denying them their apparent reality, at another again, allowing itself to be carried away by them — so this piece, in its tendency to parody, while flitting past our sight is, at the same time, always criticising itself. (II, 71-6)

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27 Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, introductory remarks 1847

From Shakespeare's Plays: With His Life. Illustrated with many Hundred Wood-cuts, Executed by H. W. Hewet, after Designs by Kenny Meadows, Harvey, and Others. Edited by Gulian C. Verplanck, LL.D. with Critical Introductions, Notes, Etc., Original and Selected (3 vols, New York, 1847). Volume II. — Comedies. Gulian Crommelin Verplanck (1786-1870) graduated from Columbia University at fourteen, then became a lawyer. He entered politics, and eventually spent four terms in Congress. He also was engaged in literary pursuits, wrote for Washington Irving's Analectic Magazine, and collaborated with William Cullen Bryant, who later wrote his biography. Among the twenty books he published, his edition of Shakespeare was deemed his greatest accomplishment. This work appeared first in parts, starting probably in May, 1844, but since the plays were issued in haphazard order, and only a few original copies have been located, a certain date of publication for any one play cannot yet be assigned.

[From the 'Introductory Remarks' to A Midsummer Night's Dream]

Peculiar Characteristics, Date of Composition, State of the Text, etc. This is, in several respects, the most remarkable composition of its author, and has probably contributed more to his general fame, as it has given a more peculiar evidence of the variety and brilliancy of his genius, than any other of his dramas. Not that it is in itself the noblest of his works, or even one of the highest order among them; but it is not only exquisite in its kind — it is also original and peculiar in its whole character, and of a class by itself. For, although it be far from rivalling As You Like It, or The Merchant of Venice, in the varied exhibition of human character, or the gravity or the sweetness of ethical poetry — though it stand in no rank of comparison with Othello, or Lear, in the manifestation of lofty intellect or the energy of passion, or in unresisted sway over the reader's deeper emotions — yet Lear or Othello, or any one of Shakespeare's most perfect comedies, might have been lost by the carelessness of early editors, or the accidents of time, without any essential diminution of the general estimate of their author's genius. Possessing Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and the

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Roman tragedies, we could place no assignable limit to the genius which produced them, if exerted on any similar themes of fierce passion or tragic dignity. So, again, As You Like It is but another and most admirable exhibition of the same prolific comic invention, which revels as joyously in Falstaff and Mercutio — of the same meditative poetic spirit, in turns fanciful, passionate, philosophical, which pours forth its austerer teachings in Measure for Measure, or more sweetly comes upon the ear, 'with a dying fall,' [Twelfth Night, 1.1.4] in the intervals of the loud jollity of the Twelfth Night. But the Midsummer Night's Dream stands by itself, without any parallel; for The Tempest, which it resembles in its preternatural personages and machinery of the plot, is in other respects wholly dissimilar, is of quite another mood in feeling and thought, and with, perhaps, higher attributes of genius, wants its peculiar fascination. Thus it is that the loss of this singularly beautiful production would, more than that of any other of his works, have abridged the measure of its author's fame, as it would have left us without the means of forming any estimate of the brilliant lightness of his 'forgetive' [2 Henry IV, 4.3.99] fancy, in its most sportive and luxuriant vein. The Poet and his contemporaries seem to have regarded this piece, as they well might, as in some sort a nondescript in dramatic literature; for it happens that, while the other plays published during their author's life are regularly denominated, in their title-page, as 'the pleasant comedy,' 'the true dramatic history,' or 'the lamentable tragedy,'M this has no designation of the kind beyond its mere title, in either of the original editions. It has, in common with all his comedies, a perpetual intermixture of the essentially poetical with the purely laughable, yet is distinguished from all the rest by being (as Coleridge has happily defined its character) 'one continued specimen of the dramatized lyrical' [No. 15 above]. Its transitions are as rapid, and the images and scenes it presents to the imagination as unexpected and as remote from each other, as those of the boldest lyric; while it has also that highest perfection of the lyric art, the pervading unity of the poetic spirit — that continued glow of excited thought — which blends the whole rich and strange variety in one common effect of gay and dazzling brilliancy. There is the heroic magnificence of the princely loves of Theseus and his Amazon bride, dazzling with the strangely gorgeous mixture of classical allusion and fable with the taste, feelings, and manners of chivalry; and all embodied in a calm and lofty poetry, fitted alike to express the grand simplicity of primeval heroism, and 'the high thoughts in a heart of courtesy,'PI which belong to the best parts of the chivalrous character. This is intertwined with the ingeniously perplexed fancies and errors of the Athenian lovers, wrought up with a luxuriant profusion of quaint conceits and artificial turns of thought, such as the age delighted in. The Fairy King and Queen, equally essential to the plot, are invested with a certain mythological dignity, suited to the solemn yet free music of the verse, and the elevation and grave elegance of all their thoughts and images. Their fairy subjects, again, are the gayest and most fantastic of Fancy's children. All these are relieved and contrasted by the grotesque absurdity of the mock play, and still more by the laughable truth and nature of the amateur 'mechanicals'[3.2.9.] who present it. The critics have, indeed, been disposed to limit the praise of truth and nature, in this part of the play, to the portraiture of green-room jealousies or vanity,PI such as the Poet might have observed in his own

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professional life. But in truth he has here contrasted to the finer idealities of heroic and of playful fancy, a vivid delineation of vulgar human nature — not confined to any one occupation or class in life, but such as often displays itself in the graver employments of real life, and the higher as well as the lower castes of society. Bottom, for instance, may be frequently found in high official or representative stations, among the legislative and municipal bodies of the world; and so near (according to Napoleon's well-known adage)M is the sublime to the ridiculous, that it depends entirely upon external circumstances, with a little more or a little less sense in himself and his hearers, whether the Bottom of the day is doomed to wear the ass's head for life, or becomes the admiration of his companions, and roars 'like a nightingale' [1.2.83fE], in his own conceit, from the high stations of the law or the state. This clustering of the sweetest flowers of fanciful and of heroic poetry around the grotesque yet substantial reality of Bottom and his associates, gives to the whole play that mixed effect of the grotesquely ludicrous with the irregularly beautiful, which the Poet himself has painted in his picture of Titania, 'rounding the hairy temples' of the self-satisfied fool — 'With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers' [4.1.5 Iff.]. All this profusion of pure poetry and droll reality is worked up with the dramatic skill of a practised artist, in embodying these apparently discordant plots and personages into one perfectly connected and harmonious whole, out of which nothing could well be removed without injury to the rest. This artistic skill, though it may not be an excellence of the very highest order, is yet one that results only from practice and experience; and connected, as it is here, with great variety and richness of allusion, and knowledge — as well of life and nature as of books — indicates that the play cannot have been the production of a youth of limited experience of life, and little exercise of his dramatic talent. Yet it has been most commonly classed among the author's more youthful works, and it must be allowed that there is a good deal in the play to support this conjecture. It was first printed in 1600, but Meres mentioned it in his list before 1598; and the remarkable allusion to the ungenial summer and confusion of seasons which occurred in England, in 1594, (see note on act ii. scene 2 — 'Therefore the winds, piping,' etc.,t5J) affords evidence that the play, as it first appeared in print, must belong to a period about 1595, or 1596. This would place it in its author's thirty-first or thirty-second year, when, as his Romeo and Juliet shows, he had acquired a familiar freedom of poetic diction, in its widest range, and a mastery of metrical power and sweetness, far more bold and varied than is seen in his first dramatic efforts; and to this period the Midsummer Night's Dream, as it was printed in 1600, certainly belongs. Yet the comparison of this beautiful poem with those of his other dramas, (which we know, from the collation of the successive old editions of some, or from the title-pages of others, were first written in a comparative immaturity of the author's genius, and afterwards received large alterations and additions) strongly impresses me with the opinion that such was also the history of this drama. Malone [No. 3 above] places the whole of it as contemporary with Love's Labour's Lost, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, etc. Without agreeing to this arbitrary assignment of its date, I yet think that the rhyming dialogue and the peculiarities of much of the versification in those scenes, the elaborate elegance, the quaint conceits,

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and artificial refinements of thought in the whole episode (if it may be termed so) of Helena and Hermia, and their lovers, do certainly partake of the taste and manner of those more juvenile comedies; while, in the other poetic scenes, 'the strain we hear is of a higher mood/M and belongs to a period of fuller and more conscious power. It, therefore, seems to me very probable, (though I do not know that it has appeared so to any one else) that the Midsummer Night's Dream was originally written in a very different form from that in which we now have it, several years before the date of the drama in its present shape - that it was subsequently remoulded, after a long interval, with the addition of the heroic personages, and all the dialogue between Oberon and Titania, perhaps with some alteration of the lower comedy; the rhyming dialogue and the whole perplexity of the Athenian lovers being retained, with slight change, from the more boyish comedy. The completeness and unity of the piece would indeed quite exclude such a conjecture, if we were forced to reason only from the evidence afforded by itself; but, as in Romeo and Juliet (not to speak of other dramas) we have the certain proof of the amalgamation of the products of different periods of the author's progressive intellect and power, the comparison leads to a similar conclusion here. . . .

Source of the Plot, Costume, Manners, etc. This play has all the merit of entire originality of plot and incident - a merit which we know that Shakespeare soon learnt to hold very cheap, regarding such originality, very justly, as the humblest part of dramatic invention. Here, however, where he meant to carry the invention of his characters, with the language and thoughts, beyond the bounds of real life, or of traditional story, novelty of plot became necessary to the higher originality of effect he wished to produce otherwise. The traditions of all Europe, and the East, had given him the leading idea of fairy character, in the legends of puny immortals, whose interference in human affairs had always a mixture of waggish malice and good-nature. But the peculiar poetic colouring of that character is purely his own, as the reader may satisfy himself by comparing the fairy scenes with the materials to which the industry of the commentators has referred, as the sources of his invention: [Quotes two paragraphs on sources from J. P. Collier's introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream, in Works (London, 1842), II, 388-9.] The heroical personages are not original, in name or history, but quite so in the peculiar combination with fairy lore, as well as in their poetical decoration, and more especially in the beautiful spirit of philosophical thought with which Theseus is rilled — to whom the Poet has given a sort of regal family-likeness to Hamlet, both in the kind and thoughtful courtesy of disposition, and in the meditative cast of thought, though not, like Hamlet's, forced by painful inquiries, but employed in cheerful considerations upon man's noblest tastes and faculties. The splendid confusion of the classical and mythological with the tastes and habits of mediaeval chivalry, will strike modern readers as discordant. But such was the traditionary and customary poetical costume of the heroes of Homer and Ovid, when

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they appeared in the songs or tales of romance. This arose at first from the ignorance of the old romancers and historians, and their readers, who conformed the habits and manners of the classical heroes to those of their own days. But afterwards, when these topics were used by more cultivated authors, they from choice continued the same confusion of times and manners. Boccaccio and Chaucer were familiar at least with Latin literature; but (the one in his Teseide, and the other in his Knight's Tale) both introduced Duke Theseus in the same romantic and conventional costume, without any attempt to invest him or his times with a dress more congruous to Grecian tastes and habits. There was then no reason why a dramatist, writing for popular effect, should throw away the manifest advantage of adopting the ideas of his personages which were already familiar to his audience; nor does he betray any ignorance in conforming to them. Thus, the Athens of this play, like that of Chaucer and Boccaccio, is not a city of early Greece, but the capital of a principality which, in every thing but its religion, resembled the Ghent and Bruges of the dukes of Burgundy, or the capitals of any of the princely chiefs of the days of chivalry. If, however, the artist thinks it expedient for the stage, or for pictorial illustration, to resort to a stricter external costume than the Poet thought necessary, he may find materials of the choicest kind, (where Mr. Planchef7! directs him) in the frieze of the Parthenon, the Etruscan vases, and other exquisite relics of classic taste and form. (II, 5-7)

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28 Henry James Sumner Maine, the sister arts, and the play's structural balance 1848

From 'The Midsummer Night's Dream', The Edinburgh Review, 87 (April, 1848), 418-29. Sir Henry James Sumner Maine (1822-88), eminent professor and practitioner of jurisprudence, is best known for his pioneering and influential Ancient Law: its Connection with the Early History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas (London, 1861). He was a brilliant classical scholar at Cambridge, where he knew Henry Hallam's younger son Henry Fitzmaurice, upon whose sadly premature death he published a memoir (1851). Besides his professorial duties at Cambridge, and later Oxford, Maine found time to contribute to London periodicals. This essay, occasioned by the publication of J. O. HalliwelTs An Introduction to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (1841) and Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of a Midsummer Night's Dream (1845), was his only venture into Shakespearean studies; it is indicative of the broad interests of a cultivated man of his time.

. . . Our own attention has been lately drawn to a play, "which we are hardly accustomed to rank among the miracles of genius just alluded to [i.e., Othello and Hamlet]. But there is surely something not a little singular in the influence exercised by the Midsummer Night's Dream. Its external effects, so to speak, are quite out of proportion to the merits, or to what are commonly considered the merits, of its internal structure. No other production of the Master is apparently so fitted to excite the sympathetic chords which unite poetry with its sister arts. The genius of Mendelssohn was first evoked by it. The compositions with which it inspired him, wonderful as they are in their own harmony, are not less so in their correspondence with their original. The spirit of the Midsummer Night's Dream breathes through them. The late Exposition at Westminster Hall charmed us with another instance of its fruitful and suggestive power. Nobody who saw there Mr. Paton's picture of the 'Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania/t1^ can have forgotten it. It will abide by them as a fairy frontispiece to an ideal edition of the Midsummer Night's Dream, — more properly so, perhaps, than Sir Joshua's Puck,PI inasmuch as its canvass introduces us more fully into the nature of the subject, and its vast and bewildering variety. We do not hesitate to avow our fears that the fairy race have of late been in danger

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of losing caste, and falling from the high estate which Shakespeare had assigned them. One conception, rather oriental and very French, has been gradually changing them into the Ladies Bountiful of interesting princes and embarrassed princesses, — into the supernatural machinery of a much materialised literature. Another would seem to be silently metamorphosing them into the nondescript personages, spoken of in various ways in drawing-room ballads. It is fortunate, therefore, that a painter of the genius of Mr. Paton3 should step in to take us back to higher points of view, and seek to re-establish their ancient lineage and ancient faith. The subjects of Oberon, in his hands, retain no mark of a connection either with the drawing-room fairy or with the creatures of Madame d'Anois and the Cabinet des FeesM — with nonsense or stage tinsel. The artist has painted them as belonging entirely neither to the domain of fancy nor to that of reality. We have them half human, half superhuman, bearing with them the indications of their heterogeneous origin, Greek, Romantic, and Teutonic — just such as the veritable 'good people' (to use the timid old euphemism) might be, hanging loosely on the confines of existence, annually recruited from mankind, and annually tythed by Satan. Moreover, as reviewers, we owe a debt to Mr. Paton. His picture has served us as a point d'appui for sundry vagrant speculations in which we have been indulging respecting the Midsummer Night's Dream. He seems to have experienced precisely the same difficulty which is felt by every intelligent reader of that wonderful play a doubt regarding the exact position of the 'elf-king and his jolie compagnie't5^ in relation to the other characters who move in turn over the stage, — the stately figure of the great Athenian legislator, the mythic Amazon, the lovers, the inimitable troup of artizans, nay, even Pyramus, Thisbe, Wall, and Moonshine. We say nothing of the various stature of his fairy groups. We think it quite allowable that some should be small enough to The honey-bags steal from the humble bees, And, for night tapers, crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worms eyes: [3.1.168ff] others large enough to be maids of honour to that queen whom her lord accused of flirting with man born of woman, and whose appearance and advances did somehow or other not astonish honest Bottom. But the human passion — the mockery of human passion, if you will — in their countenances, does certainly bewilder the spectator; it constitutes a standard of comparison, to which we involuntarily refer the mortal and supernatural personages; and the effect is, that the sleeping weaver looks like an overtaken Cyclops, and Helena like a giantess of the old world. . . . Nor does the scenery strike us as equally suited to both - it is either on too large a scale for one group, or too small for the other, since trees and sticks, pools and puddles, have not the same proportions. There is certainly a difficulty somewhere. Taking a regretful leave of Mr. Paton, . . . we propose to devote a few pages to the drama itself. To analyse thoroughly its structure - to determine its purpose to settle the due position and mutual analogies of its elementary groups - those four distinct and incongruous aggregates of figures which, drawn from the four quarters of the circle of imagination, seem to mingle indifferently together in its action, while

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they forward it till its close — each of these would be a worthy achievement for the shaping fantasies (as Theseus calls them [5.1.5]) of Shakespearean critics. . . . . . . [W]e are convinced that there is always a great advantage in attempting to trace the thread of purpose which runs through every play of Shakespeare. As in waters which swarm with life and riches, something, well worth letting down the net for, will be drawn up at every cast, even if it be not exactly that which we are seeking: some admirable unison of thought will be manifested — some latent beauty of connection made plain — some supposed discrepance demonstrated to belong to the higher harmonies. In this point of view, the Midsummer Night's Dream is peculiarly tempting to critical ingenuity: since, it is a play from whose perusal it is hardly possible to rise without an undefmable impression, that there is some law of regularity holding together and reconciling its seeming confusion. [Maine disclaims the ability to determine what design may have been in the mind of the poet. He argues that recent critics have come to this play with predetermined ideas of unity which are not appropriate to its character.] The play consists, as we have said, of several groups, which at first sight appear to belong not so much to the same landscape as to different compartments of the same canvass. Between them, however, a coherence 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. And we are bid to wonder at it, as one of the greatest miracles of Shakespeare's genius, that he has succeeded in uniting several distinct incoherent and equivalent actions into one consistent whole, — and has produced a perspective without subduing any one part of the picture. [Qu _»ces, with a couple of small deletions, Knight: 'With scarcely . . . own influences'. (No. 19 above.)] Is this so? Is the Midsummer Night's Dream a scherzo and not an aria? Surely a definite melody — sometimes, it may be, lost in a variation, or diguised by a florid accompaniment — falls nevertheless most unmistakeably on the ear. [Maine reviews other critics, and considers the possibility of a structure based on four groups, either dividing the young lovers from Theseus and Hippolyta, or seeing the actors of the Interlude as differentiated from the artizans in their own persons. Dismissing these versions, he settles on] 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 set the eye? . . . Let us examine the two groups, first presented to our notice. The first of these consists, according to the arrangement we have adopted, of the Heroes, — Theseus, and his very unhistorical court. These are themselves fanciful and unsubstantial — not, indeed, creatures of the elements, yet still scarcely the men and women of flesh and blood with whom Shakespeare has elsewhere peopled his living stage. We cannot but suspect that 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

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of life, nor from the lights and shadows, the gay gallantry and devoted love, of the Italian novel. They are apparently selected purely for their want of association. Their humanity is of the most delicately refined order; their perplexities the turbulence of still life. Moreover, the components 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 (iii. 2.) 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 torn 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 7CoX,1)7Cp(X'yjJ,O