beings of the night is evident. Her popular name was Queen Mab, but Shakespeare established her as Titania for all time. The quarrel between Oberon and Titania, and the former's interest in a mortal pair, may possibly have been suggested to Shakespeare by the quarrel in Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale' between the king and queen of the fairies, whom he calls Pluto and Proserpine, over old January and his young wife, May. For ex The exact prototype of Puck is not found in any literary source, but his general characteristics were well known to popular tradition. His name as Robin Goodfellow, and references to his doings, occur frequently in Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft' (1584). ample: And know you this by the waie, that heretofore Robin goodfellow and Hob gobblin were as terrible, and also as credible to the people, as hags and witches be now. . . . And in truth, they that mainteine walking spirits, with their transformation etc.: have no reason to denie Robin goodfellow, upon whom there hath gone as manie and as credible tales, as upon witches.' In 'Newes Out of Purgatorie' (1589), Tarlton describes him as 'famozed in everie old wives chronicle for his mad merrye prankes'; and Nashe, in Terrors of the Night' (1594), remarks that the Robin Goodfellowes, elfes, fairies, hobgoblins of our latter age, did most of their merry pranks in the night: then ground they malt, and had hempen shirts for their labours, daunst in greene meadows, pincht maids in their sleep that swept not their houses cleane, and led poor travellers out of their way notoriously. Until Shakespeare fastened the name of Puck upon Robin Goodfellow it was applied as a generic term to the whole race of fairies. Puck or pouki was an old word for devil. As Dyce points out, the Icelandic puki is the same word, and in Friesland and Jutland the domestic spirit is called puk by the peasantry. In Devonshire, piskey is the name for a fairy, with which we may compare the Cornish pixey. In Worcestershire, too, we read how the peasantry are occasionally 'poake-ledden,' that is, misled by a mischievous spirit called poake. The Irish, again, have their pooka, and the Welsh their pecca - both words, like the 'spook' of present speech, derived from pouke or puck. Hob is a diminutive form of Robert and Robin, so that Hobgoblin is equivalent to Robin the goblin. From a remark in Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' although not published until 1621, it may be conjectured that it had already become customary in Shakespeare's day to give the name Puck to Robin Goodfellow, for he says, referring to hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, and the ambulones that mislead travelers: These have several names in several places; we commonly call them pucks.' (On the fairy lore see Halliwell's 'Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of "Midsummer Night's Dream,' English Shakespeare Society's publications, where will be found reprints of Huon of Bordeaux,'The Life of Robin Goodfellow,' and 'The Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow.' The last two, being subsequent to Shakespeare's play, are interesting, along with other material given by Halliwell, not as sources, but as showing the favor which fairies enjoyed in the literature of the day.) III. The burlesque interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe' may possibly have been suggested to Shakespeare by some lines in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale' as follows: O noble Ovide, soth sayest thou, God wot, By Pyramus and Thisbe may men lere; Though they were kept ful long and strict over all, However this may be, the interlude itself recalls sufficiently the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as told either by Chaucer in The Legend of Good Women or by Ovid (Golding's translation of the 'Metamorphoses,' iv. 55-166) to make it seem at least probable that these versions of the story were in the poet's mind. There is recorded in the 'Stationers' Registers' a license given to 'William greffeth' in 1562 for pryntynge of a boke intituled "Perymus and Thesbye, and in A Handefull of Pleasant Delites,' by Clement Robinson (1584), there is ‘A New Sonnet of Pyramus and Thisbie,' from which it will appear that the story was so well known that Shakespeare might have had any or all of the existing versions in his mind. IV. Of the clowns in general it may be said that it was quite customary at that time for the rude mechanical' to try his hand at acting; and of Bottom in particular that his name is derived from his trade. A ball of thread wound upon any cylindrical body was called 'a bottom of thread.' His Christian name Nicholas was, according to Halliwell, either a favorite name for a weaver or a generic appellation for a person of that trade. DURATION OF THE ACTION THESEUS states in the opening scene that four days are to pass before the marriage, but it will be seen that the action occupies only three days. Upon the next night after the opening of the play, Hermia and Lysander decide to flee from Athens, and the clowns decide to have their rehearsal. On this night occurs all the fairy enchantment, and in the morning Theseus, finding the lovers in the wood, declares this is the day that Hermia is to decide her fate, which in the first act he said was to be decided on his wedding day, and later they all go off with the intention of presently being married in the temple. The same evening the play is given in honor of the nuptials. DATE OF COMPOSITION THE mention of this play by Meres in Palladis Tamia,' in 1598, makes it clear that the play was then known to the public. The latest certain date for it is accordingly furnished by this bit of External Evidence': As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witnesse his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, his Love labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, and his Merchant of Venice,' etc. (Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury; Being the Second Part of Wits Common wealth by Francis Meres, Master of Arts of both Universities'). There is, further than this, a bit of Internal Evidence' that may be relied on with some confidence in assigning the play to a particular date earlier than 1598. This is the use made in the play of the Life of Theseus' as told by Plutarch, which renders it likely that the play was not written before the date of the reissue of North's Plutarch in 1595. The probability, however, that this fresh issue of North's translation was seized upon that same year by the young dramatist as furnishing material for this play does not absolutely preclude an earlier date, since a lingering copy of the first edition, printed in 1579, when Shakespeare was but fifteen, might have fallen into his hands before 1595. Other indications drawn from the play, which have been urged by various theorists as fixing the date, are un |