INTRODUCTION NOTE. In citations from Shakespeare's plays and nondramatic poems the numbering has reference to the Globe edition, except in the case of this play, where the reference is to this edition. I. SOURCES A Midsummer Night's Dream1 is one of the most original conceptions in poetic literature. This originality lies in the imaginative skill with which a main plot — that of Theseus and the Athenian Lovers and two subplots, that of the Fairies and that of the Clowns with the interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe, - all derived from widely different sources, are compacted into a harmonious and convincing dream drama, of which the scenery, the atmosphere, and the actors are peculiarly English and distinctly Elizabethan. THE DREAM DRAMA The dream form of the medieval romance and the allegory of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries had to a certain extent been suggested for dramatic purposes by Lyly in The Woman in the Moone and in Sapho and Phao, but in A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare goes far beyond Lyly's "Remember all is but a poet's dreame," 2 1 See page xlii, Title of the Play. On the hyphen so often inserted between Midsummer and Night's, see subnote, page 3. 2 From the Prologue to The Woman in the Moone: This but the shadow of our author's dreame, Argues the substance to be neere at hand; |