CRITICAL SYNOPSIS OF SELECTIONS A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: BY WM. SHAKESPEARE. This charming comedy embodies some of the most beautiful and idyllic of the great poet's thoughts. It is, moreover, one of the most delightful of his acting plays. It tells how the Duke of Athens and his Court celebrated his nuptials with Hippolyta by four days of revels; how Quince, and Snug, and Bottom, and other artisans, undertook to enact the play of "Pyramus and Thisbe" for the entertainment of the Court; how Oberon, the king of the fairies, and Puck, his attendant, took part in the revels and played pranks with all the characters, by causing the identity of all to become confused, whereby ensued much mystification until such time as King Oberon caused the scales to fall from their eyes. KONG TOLV: BY DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK. Imagination has peopled the woods, the waters, the earth and the air with superhuman beings, with genii, fairies, water-sprites, nixies, gnomes and kobolds. Invisible to human eyes, they come and go unseen, living their lives in worlds which humanity cannot enter. The legendary lore of all people and tongues is replete with tales of the doings of these unseen folk. The beautiful story of "Undine" tells how a water-sprite dwelt among mankind and partook of its life. The story of King Tolv tells how a mortal maiden was loved by the Elle-King and became his bride, Queen of the Elves of the Hill, and dwelt for years in the shining palace built by the gnomes far underground; how a child, half-human, half-fairy, was born unto her; how she yearned for her old home; how the children of the fairies, born without souls, have no hope of heaven; and how she sought to win a soul for her child at the price of her own life. SONGS OF THE FAIRIES: Under this general title has been brought together a number of tales in verse of the doings of the fairy folk-a favorite theme of legend, song and story. Bishop Percy gathered together in his "Reliques" a great mass of ballads and folk-songs, unwritten, but transmitted verbally from generation to generation of the common people. From these have been gleaned two songs that tell of the doings of "Queen Mab" and "Robin Goodfellow." Mary Howitt's beautiful lyric, "The Isles of the Sea Fairies," is a charming poetic fancy; "The Kelpie of Corrievreckan" is a weird ballad by Charles Mackay that tells the fate that befel a mortal maiden, beloved by the baneful sea-kelpie; William Allingham's dainty poem, "The Fairies," sings of the doings of the little people of mountain and glen; which are likewise the theme of Professor John Wilson's charming little lyric. THE CULPRIT FAY: BY JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. "There are no fairies in America." Words somewhat like these led Joseph Rodman Drake to write the beautiful poem, "The Culprit Fay," one of the most charming of fairy stories. The fay has loved a mortal maid, inexorably forbidden by the law of fairyland. He is doomed to suffer for his offence; banished from fairyland, he may not return until he shall have caught a rainbow drop flashing from the spray of the sturgeon's swift leap and rekindled the spark of his torch by the flaming trail of the shooting star. Deep in a moonlit woodland glade, the fairies swarm to hear the sentence; again they gather to celebrate with gladness the return of their victorious brother fay. I. THE DAISY: BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. Many of the world-renowned fairy stories of Hans Christian Andersen are so simple in structure, so devoid of incident, that synopses of them |