A Midsummer Night's Dream Appendix

Irregular, Doubtful, and Emended Accidentals in Q1

The following emendations made in the Variorum text correct obvious typographical irregularities in Q1. Mistakes that produce English words are not recorded here, but they are in the historical collation. In each note the lemma is the emended Variorum reading, and the first siglum is that of the source if any from which the emendation is drawn, followed by the rejected Q1 reading.

Unadopted Conjectures

The Text

Authenticity

There has been less resistance to attributing all of MND to Shakespeare than with other plays in the canon. Wilson (ed. 1924, p. 94): The only presumably pre-Shakespearian play, known to us by name, which might conceivably have formed the basis of the Dream, is the mysterious King of the Fairies, scornfully linked by both Nashe and Greene with another drama called Delfrigus . . . , as part of the stock-in-trade of a travelling company. Wilson refers to Nashe’s The Gentlemen Stvdents of Both Vniversities (ed. R. B. McKerrow, 1904–10, 3:324): a company of taffaty fooles . . . might haue antickt it vntill this time vp and downe the Countrey with the King of Fairies, and dined euery day at the pease porredge ordinary with Delfrigus; and to Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit (ed. A. B. Grosart, 1881–6, 12:131), in which a player says to Roberto why, I am as famous for Delphrigus, and the king of Fairies, as euer was any of my time. Wilson continues, We have not, however, been able to trace any clues to the existence of such a play beneath the Shakespearian text, unless it be its curious connexion, or seeming connexion, with old dramas like Damon and Pythias, 1582, and Heywood’s translation of Seneca’s Hercules Furens, 1581. For the alleged allusion to Damon and Pythias, Wilson (p. 148) cites passages beginning at 2083 and at 2124, and (pp. 109–10) for that to Hercules Furens the passage beginning 297. Wilson opines that (p. 110) there seems no reason why Shakespeare should burlesque a translation ten or a dozen years old and therefore thinks perhaps the text here goes back to some pre-Shakespearian version. de la Mare (1935, pp. xxxii–xlviii), attending to the poor quality of some of the verse given the four lovers and to the absence of the vocabulary of some of these lines from the rest of the Sh. canon, concludes (p. xlvii) that the earliest draft of the Dream was not of [Sh.’s] own workmanship but a play . . . written by some more or less artless scribe. Following de la Mare, Wilson then states unequivocally that (1948, p. 29) the original play was not written by Shakespeare at all. Yet, according to the noted disintegrationist Robertson (1924, 1:440), in MND we can catch the true voice of Shakespeare. Chambers (1924, p. 10) is prepared to credit Sh. with commonplace Elizabethan dramatic carpentry, rather than disintegrate plays by attributing parts of them to other playwrights.

Blumenthal, who finds (1961, p. 116) some seven participants in the authorship of the Shakespeare canon, thinks Robertson’s claim to be (p. 30) uncertain. Among the anti-Stratfordians, Bacon (1857, p. lxxxi) attributes MND to Raleigh, Theobald (1901, passim) attributes it to Bacon, Clark (1930, pp. 435–49) and the Ogburns (1952, chs. 44–5) to Oxford, Brooks (1943, pp. 596–7) to Dyer, Titherley (1952, pp. 71–5) and Evans (1956, p. 59) to Derby, Sweet (1965, p. 71) to Queen Elizabeth, and Hoffman (1955, p. 127) to Marlowe. Ross (1939, pp. 16–17) thinks MND among the works of Anne Whateley written in association with Sh.

The First Quarto (1600)

The printing history of Sh.’s MND starts on 8 Oct. 1600 when a book with its title was approved for publication in the Stationers’ Register (Book C, fol. 65v, as transcribed by Greg, BEPD, 1:16): Tho. fyssher Entred for his copie vnder the hand[es] of mr Rodes / and the Wardens. A booke called A mydsõmer night[es] dreame According to Greg (ibid., 3:1485), this was the only copy for a play licensed by Rodes, who, Greg suggests, may have been Thomas Rhodes. Greg (1962, p. 81): A Thomas Rhodes appears in the index to Hennessy’s Reportorium without a reference. A book called Micrologia; Characters or Essays, by M. R., 1629 (STC 17146), was licensed by E. Martin on 22 Dec. 1628 as Rodes charecters.

The play appeared in print in the same year, with the following title-page: [ornament] | A | Midsommer nights | dreame. | As it hath beene sundry times pub- |lickely acted, by the Right honoura- |ble, the Lord Chamberlaine his |seruants. | Written by William Shakespeare. | [device <McKerrow>321] | ¶ Imprinted at London, for Thomas Fisher, and are to | be soulde at his shoppe, at the Signe of the White Hart, | in Fleetestreete. 1600. This first edition is often called the Fisher Quarto to distinguish it from Q2 also dated 1600 on its title page; Q2 was once known as the Roberts Quarto and is now usually called the Pavier Quarto. Chambers (1930, 1:356): The printer may be [Edward] Allde or [Richard] Bradock. Greg (BEPD, 1:276): The printer [of Q1] appears from the ornaments used to have been probably Richard Bradock. The device is Fisher’s. Turner (1962, p. 33): As far as I have been able to determine, nothing is known of Bradock which would be of significant value to us in our examination of MND Q1. He was admitted to the Livery on 1 July 1598 and for a time was actively engaged in the trade. Around the turn of the century, he probably printed several play quartos: in 1598 [Christopher Marlowe’s] Edward II Q2; in 1600 [Ben Jonson’s] Every Man out of his Humor; in 1601 [Anthony Munday’s] The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington; and in 1602 [John Marston’s] Antonio and Mellida [and] Antonio’s Revenge, and [Jonson’s] Poetaster. Bradock seems to have thrived as a printer between 1598 and 1608, but he also printed plays long before and some time after the turn of the century. Greg (BEPD, 3:1497) records that Bradock printed his first extant play, Nathaniel Woodes’s The Conflict of Conscience, in 1581, and did not print his last until 1616 (Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Scornful Lady). However, Pantzer (STC 3:16) identifies the printer of the latter as John Beale. Thus the last of the extant plays that Bradock printed date from 1608, including A Yorkshire Tragedy from the Shakespeare apocrypha.

Berger (ed. 1995, p. viii): Thomas Fisher’s career as a publisher and bookseller was a short one. He was freed as a draper on 8 November 1596 by Richard Smith and transferred to the Stationers’ Company in 1600. Of the three other titles associated with him, Nicholas Breton’s Pasquil’s Mistress was printed in 1600, perhaps by Richard Bradock, and John Marston’s Antonio and Mellida and Antonio’s Revenge were printed in 1602 by Bradock. In these last two Matthew Lownes appears to have had an interest as well, as his shop in St Dunstan’s Churchyard is cited on the title-pages of both volumes.

Bartlett & Pollard (1939, pp. 70–1) identify and locate eight extant copies of Q1. Modern facsimiles include that by William Griggs, ed. J. W. Ebsworth, 1880; that in Shakespeare’s Plays in Quarto, ed. Michael J. B. Allen & Kenneth Muir, 1981; and Vol. 157 of the Malone Society Reprints, ed. Thomas L. Berger, 1995. For a digital facsimile see the Shakespeare Quartos Archive (www.quartos.org).

MND Q1 was one of a number of Shakespeare’s plays to see print in 1600 with the dramatist’s name on the title-page. The others were 2H4 Q1, MV Q1, and Ado Q1. Earlier printings with Shakespeare’s name on their title-pages were LLL Q1 1598, R2 Q2 and Q3 1598, R3 Q2 1598, and 1H4 Q2 1599. Blayney (1997, p. 388): some of these plays sold very well, R2, R3, and 1H4 being in the list of the top ten best-sellers among early modern English plays. However, like Ado and 2H4 (neither of which ever saw a second quarto edition) and LLL (which was not reprinted in quarto until 1631), MV and MND (without second editions until 1619) did not sell very well, even with Shakespeare’s name on their title-pages. Ibid. (p. 385) identifies May 1600–Oct. 1601, the interval within which MND Q1 was entered, printed, and published, as one of two peak periods for the registration of plays between 1585 and 1604, the other coming at Dec. 1593–May 1595. In each peak period twenty-seven plays were registered, although only 80% of the total of fifty-four registrations issued in books. Ibid. (p. 387): MND was one of eight Lord Chamberlain’s plays registered in the second peak period. See also Blayney (2005), and Farmer and Lesser (2005, Popularity and 2005, Structures).

Quality of Printing in Q1

While on the whole positive, editors and critics exhibit a wide range of opinion about Q1’s quality as a witness to what Sh. wrote. Pope (ed. 1725, 1:xv), not attending to the question of the priority of Q1 to Q2: If any were supervised [at the press] by himself [Sh.], I should fancy the two parts of Henry the 4th, and Midsummer-Night’s Dream might have been so; because I find no other printed with any exactness; and (contrary to the rest) there is very little variation in all the subsequent editions of them. Johnson (ed. 1765, 1:176) unable to establish the priority of Q1 to Q2: Neither of the editions approach to exactness. Building on Capell’s (1783, 2.3:115) inference of Shakespearean authority for the punctuation of the mechanicals’ prologue (see n. 1906–15), Knight (ed. 1839, 1:331) writes, The original of these editions, whichever it might be, was . . . 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 [1906–15], is purposely made inaccurate in its punctuation throughout. . . . ; 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. Compare Hudson (ed. 1851, 2:255) and White (ed. 1857, 4:17), as well as the following writing after Q1’s priority had been demonstrated: Chambers (1930, 1:358), Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 131), Greg (1942; 1954, p. 125), Doran (ed. 1959, p. 27), Holland (ed. 1994, p. 112). Clark and Wright (ed. 1863, 2:viii), guessing right about Q1’s priority, nonetheless regard it carelessly printed. Kittredge (ed. 1936, p. 229) echoes this judgment, describing Q1 as not very carefully printed.

Furness (ed. 1895, pp. x–xii), also guessing right about Q1’s priority: the excellence of the text [of Q1] is counterbalanced by the inferiority of the typography. . . . [A]lthough the entrances of the characters are noted, the exits are often omitted, and spelling throughout is [xi] archaic, for instance, shee [241], bedde [228], dogge [589], &c., betraying merely a compositor’s peculiarity. . . . [F]onts are mixed, and the type old and battered. Believing that the Q1 compositor set type by the ear from dictation, Furness finds such errors as Dians bud, or Cupids flower [1588], instead of Dian’s bud o’er Cupid’s flower the consequence. (P. xii): [I]t is assuredly more likely that such blunders as Eagles [454] for AEgle, or Peregenia [453] for Perigouna . . . are due to the deficient hearing of a compositor. However, Furness (p. xii) concedes that compositors . . . are exposed [to such errors] when with a retentive memory they carry long sentences in their minds, not just when they set from dictation. Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xi), in the main closely following Furness: the text . . . has reached us in a state of comparative correctness and purity, [yet] there are passages which are admittedly corrupt. Ibid. (p. xv): the text is superior, and likewise the punctuation.

Wilson (ed. 1924, p. 79): Q1 is superior to many of the other quartos. . . . The misprints are few, and the literals fewer. The compositors seem to have worked slowly, whether through inexperience or because they found the manuscript difficult to read; for the text contains a number of interesting archaic spellings which almost certainly derive from the copy. . . . On the whole the work must be pronounced as moderately competent. Its chief weaknesses are two. First it is evident that the compositors conceived it as their duty to expand most of the contractions they found in the original. Particularly instructive in this connexion is the misprint Bet it [691] in which we catch the compositor red-handed so to speak. [Wilson also compares 35 (bewitcht), 78 (Whether), 895 (of), 1231 (needles), all of which he suspects to be compositorial expansions of copy forms.] And secondly it is clear that the compositors have introduced a large number of full stops into a text which originally contained very few, and that they have also peppered the dialogue with superfluous commas. Furthermore their pointing is careless, as is shown by the numerous instances of transposition in terminal stops. Nevertheless, apart from commas and periods the punctuation of the Quarto is comparatively good on the whole, at times even beautiful. Wilson’s belief that printer’s copy must have contained few commas and periods is skewed by his thinking that the lightly punctuated Hand-D pages in the MS The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore (BL Harl. 7368) are certainly Sh.’s and that they are typical of his punctuation; see Wilson’s What Follows if Some of the Good Quarto Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays Were Printed from His Autograph Manuscripts, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 15, 1917–19, p. 136. Evans (ed. 1974, p. 247), following Wilson, cites the excessively heavy use of phrasal commas in Q1. Differing from Wilson, Ridley (ed. 1934, p. viii): It is true that the Quarto is very heavily punctuated, very much more so, for example, than Hamlet. But it is not on the face of it likely that a compositor, who after all is a busy working man, is going to pepper his pages with commas, or any other mark of punctuation, merely for the fun of the thing. To him the insertion of marks of punctuation is merely so much more labour, and prima facie therefore there seems no reason why we should not pay as much attention to the compositor’s commas as to any of his other marks of punctuation. . . . [T]he punctuation of the Quarto very frequently produces interesting results. In a certain number of cases it makes a real difference to the sense; in more cases it makes a real difference in the emphasis which is thrown upon phrases by their becoming more isolated; and, perhaps most important of all, it greatly diversifies the rhythms. However, according to Joseph Moxon in Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing (1683–4) (ed. Herbert Davis & Harry Carter, 2nd ed., 1962, p. 192), it is the compositor’s duty to discern and amend the bad . . . Pointing of his Copy.

Turner (1962, pp. 33–54): There is nothing very striking about the typography; on cursory examination the book seems to be a run-of-the-mine Elizabethan dramatic quarto. Turner’s primary focus is instances of erroneous line-division of dialogue, some few of which he attributes to the compositor. (P. 48): Mislineation [of verse at 490–1, where the last word of the first line is printed as the first word of the second line] may have resulted from the compositor’s carelessness; but . . . just possibly . . . the MS rather than the workman was at fault. . . . Almost certainly the compositor was juggling the text when he set a short speech of Bottom’s and one of Peter Quince’s in a single line of type at the foot of B2 [319–20, in the inner forme (i.e., B1v, 2, 3v, 4) after, Turner thinks (see here), the outer forme (i.e., B1, 2v, 3, 4v) was already set and the] limits of B1v, B2 . . . had been established. At 413–14, the compositor apparently thought he could squeeze the first complete line of verse into the same line of type with the half-line of verse which begins the speech, a calculation which, as the turn-over shows, was none too accurate. The compositor made analogous interventions at (p. 49) 552–3, 1071–2 and (p. 54) 2063–4, but his responsibility [is] doubtful for the line division of 61–2. He set prose as verse at (p. 49) 911–12 and (p. 54) 1986–90. (Werstine [2012, pp. 144–5, n. 24] suspects the compositor was perhaps responsible for further mislineation [see here].) Turner also tabulates dozens of wrong-font errors (such as roman for italic and small capitals for full capitals) both (pp. 40–5) apparently deliberate—because of shortages of type—and (p. 40, n. 8) accidental.

Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxxiii–iv): In the First Quarto an editor has a text of high authority to follow. . . . [I]t is a gratifyingly clean text. . . . In the present edition, it has been found necessary to depart from Q1 in just over fifty verbal readings, besides nine punctuations affecting the sense, one transposition of a pair of lines, a number of line-divisions, and a very few places where verse was set as prose or prose as verse. Apart from the authorial lapses, and the cruces, [xxxiv] the faults are unsurprising errors of the press, almost all of the kinds that compositors are prone to.

For the supposition that Q1 lacks one or more songs, see n. 2175–2206.

Press Variants and Proof-Correction in Q1

Johnson (ed. 1888, p. 39) records the press variants listed below on sig. F1v. Wright (ed. 1891, 2:295) lists only the first of the two on sig. F1v, as does Furness (ed. 1895, p. 166).

Berger (ed. 1995, pp. vi–viii):

Berger lists no second stage of correction of the inner forme of sheet F; were there such a stage, he presumably would not have stated only of the inner forme of sheet A that it exists in three states.

Ibid. (p. vi, n. 4): Often it is difficult to determine when a press variant exists, and the distinction between deliberate stop-press variants and accidental shifting and bad inking can be vexing to decide. Thus, the h in both at [125] (Sig. A3v) appears to have slipped slightly in the British Library copy, producing bot h, and the space between I and know at [1667] (Sig. F4v) is so loose that the Bodleian, Folger, Huntington, Harvard and Yale Elizabethan Club copies read Iknow. Similarly, O long at [1479] (Sig. F2r) has slipped significantly, producing Ol ong in the British, Huntington, Yale Elizabethan Club, Folger, and Harvard copies. The hyphen in loue-shaft at [536] (Sig. C1r), clear in some copies, is so weakly inked as to appear almost invisible in the British Library, Trinity College Cambridge, and Yale Elizabethan Club copies. At [1159, see above in list of press variants] (Sig. E1v), I agree with W. W. Greg that the Folger copy is variant and reads fwore . . . ; but Richard Kennedy, textual editor of the New Variorum Midsummer Night’s Dream, disagrees. Kennedy and I agree (contra Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford, 1987), p. 287) that what appears to be a comma after melody at [201] (Sig. A4v) in the Bodleian copy is an overinked full stop.

Ibid. (p. vi, n. 7): Much of the bottom half of C3 [in the Bodleian copy] has been torn off. It has been repaired with another piece of paper, and the missing quarto text added in a post seventeenth-century hand. The copyist placed a comma after an extant deere at [695], which the Oxford editors mistook for a press variant (Textual Companion, pp. 281, 287).

Compositor Identification and Order of Printing in Q1

Turner (1962, p. 33): Neither variations in spelling nor typographical abnormalities indicate that [Q1] was set up by more than one compositor.

Turner also (pp. 34–5) provides a partial analysis of the headlines or running-titles, which (p. 34) read on both recto and verso A Midsommer nightes dreame, except on H3v where we find A Midsommer nights dreame. Below his analysis is completed in square brackets, with the roman numerals that Turner assigns to each distinctively identifiable headline and with the pages on which each occurs identified by their signatures:

I	[B2, C3v, D4, E3v, F3v,] G4, H4
II	[B4, C2, D2, E2, F2,] G2, H2, A2v
III	[B1v, C1v, D1v, E1v, F1v,] G1v, H1v, A3
IV	B3, C3, D4v, E4v, F4v, G4v, H3, A4v
V	[B2v,] C1, D2v, [E1, F1,] G3, H4v
VI	[B3v, C4, D3v, E4, F4,] G3v
VII	B4v, C4v, D3, E2v, F3, G2v, H1, A3v
VIII	[B1, C2v, D1, E3, F2v,] G1, H2v, A4
IX	H3v

From this analysis Turner can establish incontrovertibly that (p. 34) the book was worked in two skeleton-formes, one regularly imposing the inner [1v, 2, 3v, 4] and the other the outer forme [1, 2v, 3, 4v] and that sheet A . . . was the last sheet to go through the press. His demonstration of the latter proposition consists of observation of significant changes [that] were made in two [running-]titles during the course of printing: (1) The g appearing in the title used on B3 and C3 (IV in the [chart above]) was replaced at D4v, and the new type appears on E4v, F4v, G4v, H3, and A4v. (2) The title used on B4v and C4v (VII) is characterized by a broken r and a defective e in dreame. At D3 a break in the M also appears, and the three defects are found together on E2v and F3 (where the e’s of dreame were exchanged in position). At G2v the r seems to have been replaced, and the e prints somewhat better than usual. When the title appears on H1, only the break in the M and the new r are evident, and only these two characteristics can be observed in the title as it appears on A3v. It is clear that sheet A was printed after sheet H.

Furthermore, according to Turner, it can be shown that the outer forme of sheet H was the first of its formes to go to press and that it is possible to generalize from this practice with sheet H and to infer that the (p. 35) outer formes of all sheets but A regularly preceded inner formes through the press. The grounds provided for these two conclusions make them far from certain. The alleged priority of presswork on the outer forme of sheet H depends initially for Turner on the pattern of reappearance of headlines from sheet H in sheet A. Both of the headlines (namely VII and VIII) used for the only two pages of the inner forme of sheet A that require headlines (namely A3v and A4, because A1v is blank and A2 bears the head title) come from the outer forme of sheet H. Then a third headline from H outer (IV)—together with two headlines from H inner (II, III)—supply the three pages of A outer needing headlines (excluding the title page, A1). Knowing that H(o) was sent to press before H(i) [and thus was returned to the compositor before H(i) so that its headlines were available for use in A(i), the first forme of sheet A to be set into type] and that earlier in the book all the outer formes were imposed in the same skeleton used for H(o), we can infer that outer formes of all sheets but A regularly preceded inner formes through the press.

This demonstration of Turner’s depends not just on the evidence he presents but also on questionable assumptions that he makes—one explicit, the others not. He implicitly assumes that Bradock printed MND Q1 by itself, rather than concurrently with other books, or (Blayney, 1982, p. 92) that MND was the only work available for composition. However, McKenzie (1969, p. 18), studying the records of Cambridge University Press from the late 17th c., discovers that concurrent printing is frequent, and Blayney (1982, pp. 45, 264 n.) finds evidence of the practice among books printed in London in the decade immediately following Bradock’s work on MND Q1. Turner also implicitly assumes that (Blayney 1982, p. 92) one of Richard Bradock’s two presses was not in use. The explicit assumption underlying Turner’s analysis is that, in terms of the production of the single book Q1 on a single press, (Turner 1962, p. 46) composition and presswork could stay more-or-less in balance. . . . [The compositor planned] to compose two formes, distribute the first, set the third, distribute the second, and so on. . . . Thus the speed of the press, which barring accidents would have remained fairly constant, is established as the rate at which about four type pages could be composed. Examination of the CUP records by McKenzie (1969, pp. 8–10) shows a wide variation in the speed of both composition and presswork not only by different workmen but also by the same workmen at different times and therefore calls into question the likelihood of compositors or pressmen maintaining the balance supposed by Turner. Only by applying these assumptions can it be assumed that the single press was still occupied printing the second forme of Q1’s sheet H as the compositor was setting and then imposing the first forme of Q1’s sheet A and further assumed that the investigator’s task at this juncture is thus simply to determine which forme of sheet H supplied headlines to the first sheet-A forme to be set. With these assumptions in place, Turner concludes H(o) was the first forme of that sheet to be wrought off the press because headlines from it appear in A(i), whereas headlines from both formes of sheet H appear in A(o). If any of Turner’s assumptions fail, then his demonstration becomes inconclusive. There is no evidence that can be adduced for any of the assumptions, which therefore have the status only of hypotheses, two of which are falsified by the evidence against them provided by McKenzie and Blayney.

Proceeding on these assumptions Turner plots the recurrence of distinctively damaged individual pieces of types in Q1, using this evidence to argue that the book was generally set into type by formes and not seriatim (that is, in the order in which pages are to be read). According to Turner, a forme that contains types only from one of the formes of a preceding sheet must have been set into type before a forme that contains type from both formes of that preceding sheet. This judgment is constructed by analogy to the one about headlines already discussed. It yields the following results concerning the order in which the pages of Q1 were set into type:

• Sheet B (p. 41): not necessarily set by formes: It is a safe guess that all of B(o) was set before work began on B(i), but we cannot absolutely rule out such an order as B1–B1v-B2v-B3–B4v-B2[–B3v, B4];
• Sheet C (p. 41): initial seriatim setting gave way to setting by formes: C1 (B[o] was almost certainly distributed by the time C2v was set and possibly before much of C1 was set [on the dubious evidence of the k at C1, 8] [But see also (p. 35): h B3,19–C1,1.]), 1v, 2, 2v, 3, 4v (distribution of B[i]), 3v, 4;
• Sheet D (p. 41): D1 (distribution of C[o]), 2v, 3, 4v, 1v, 2 (distribution of C[i]), 3v, 4;
• Sheet E (p. 42): E1, 2v, 3, 4v (D[o] distributed at line 12 or 13 of E4v), (D[i] distributed) E1v, 2, 3v, 4;
• Sheet F (p. 43): F1, 2v, 3 (E[o] distributed), 4v, 1v, 2, 3v (Perhaps partway through setting F3v the compositor distributed E1v, but the rest of the standing type [in E(i)] seems to have been distributed after F(i) was imposed.), 4;
• Sheet G (p. 44): G1, 2v, 3 (F1 and 3 distributed), 4v (F2v and 4v distributed), Iv, 2 (F1v and 2 distributed), 3v, 4 (F3v and 4 distributed);
• Sheet H (p. 45): H1, 2v, 3, 4v (G[o] distributed), 1v, 2, 3v, 4
• Sheet A (p. 45): A1v (blank) (G[i] distributed), 2, 3v, 4, 1 (title page; H[o] distributed at [i.e., before the setting of] A1 or A2v), 2v, 3, 4v.

Blayney (1982, pp. 92–3), explaining and questioning Turner’s analysis, focuses on the recurrence of individually distinctive types from sheet B in sheet C (question marks indicate types [described by Turner] as doubtful):

	C1r	1v	2r	2v	3r	3v	4r	4v
From B(o)	1+?	4		2	2		?
From B(i)						4	2

It is stated that when type reappears in this manner, composition cannot have been seriatim. The statement (which also applies to the similar evidence in sheet D) is completely untrue. The evidence is perfectly consistent with seriatim setting, with B(o) distributed before or during C1r and B(i) distributed after C3r. And in fact Turner then suggested that most of the sheet was set seriatim, except that C4v preceded C3v. The difficulty is that the evidence shows almost nothing. No matter what order is suggested, the failure to detect B(i) evidence in certain pages has to be trusted to indicate that no such evidence exists, whereas the absence of B(o) evidence has to be ascribed to a failure to detect what is really present. But if types from B(o) can be present but undetected in three (or four) pages, so can types from B(i). Because according to Turner’s assumptions (presented above) it is improbable that type from B(o) could have appeared in C1r, the evidence from that page was rejected. By rejecting different parts, and by filling in the gaps in other ways, the supposed evidence could be made to agree with almost any order of setting.

I do not suggest that Turner’s conclusions are wrong, since they may be right. The point is simply that the setting-order of sheets B-D of A Midsummer Night’s [93] Dream remains unestablished and that not enough evidence has been presented. Typographical evidence which is equally consistent with seriatim setting, setting by formes, and other possible methods; which can be supplemented by guesswork in selected pages from which it is absent; and which can be ignored selectively to suit the needs of an unsupported theory of work-flow, cannot be considered adequate. Nonetheless, Hinman (1965, p. 31) reported that a very general investigation of setting by formes . . . indicate[s] . . . pretty surely . . . MND was set in this manner, but he presented no evidence for his judgment.

In addition to the recurrence of distinctively damaged types, Turner also had recourse to type shortages indicated by the substitution of roman font for italic and small capitals for full capitals. Yet he lacked confidence in type shortages as a guide to establishing setting-order of pages (p. 40): By itself the testimony of shortages is, I believe, less reliable than that of any other bibliographical technique, and explained his reasons at length. He also anticipated Blayney’s criticism: However, the reliability of type shortage evidence can be increased when we evaluate it in the light of type reappearances, but even here we can be forced away from the most desirable position by occasionally having to take into account the evidence of only one or two reappearing types and sometimes having to argue from the non-appearance of type. Both are bad policies because mistakes in individual type identifications are easy to make and reappearances are easy to miss.

Turner used (1962, p. 35 n.) photostats of the Huntington Library copy of MND Q1 to identify distinctively damaged types. Weiss (1988, pp. 239–42) demonstrates the short-comings of this use of such a photostat. Checking Turner’s type identifications against the Folger copy of Q1, Weiss (p. 240) can confirm only 46% of the identifications. Replicating Turner’s analysis (with its questionable assumptions discussed above) using the reliable fraction of his type identifications together with new ones discovered in the examination of the Folger copy, Weiss revises Turner’s account of when during the composition of later formes earlier formes were distributed (pp. 241–2): No contradictions occurred with respect to the distributions of sigs. B and C. The appearance of ligature ft6 from D1:6 at E3.11 is one type-page before the suggested distribution of D(o) after E3. Similarly, k5 from E(o) (E4v:23) appears at F3:2, one page early. More significant differences occur in later sheets[:] the appearance of W4 from the last page of F(i) (F4:33) in the first page of G(o) (G1:8), a full gathering prior to the suggested distribution after the imposition of [242] G(i). . . . With respect to the claims that both formes of sheet G and H(o) were delayed four pages each . . . , r1 from G(o) (G2v:19) appears at H1:9, four pages before the suggested G(o) distribution point at H1v, and the appearance of w4 from G2:19 at H1:25, N2 from G3v:29 at H1:28, d16 from G2:12 at H1:31, ligature sh4 from G2:29 at H1v:1, and d12 from G2:29 at H2:24 indicate that G(i) was distributed before the composition of sig. H rather than after the imposition of H(i). Finally, the implication that sig. A was set in type from G(i) and H(o) without a distribution of H(i) seems incorrect. Appearing in A(o) (the second forme of sig. A to be set) are the following types from H(i): y4 from H2:32 at A2v:20, h7 from H1v:18 at A2v:8, and W4 from H2:32 at A4v:32 (and possibly h8 from H2:20, which may appear in A(i) at A2:19). In short, the evidence suggests a more or less normal sequence of distributions following the completion of each of the later sheets.

Valuable though Weiss’s study is for the quality of its type-identification evidence, it still does not free itself from the assumptions identified in Turner’s work by Blayney and McKenzie. While evidence of type shortages is consistent with the setting-order of the pages suggested to Turner by the type-recurrence, shortages cannot be used to establish setting-order. My inspection of the leaves of the Folger copy of Q1 under raking light fails to reveal any indentations in them such as might have been made by the type metal when the sheets were perfected, and thus fails to establish the order in which formes of sheets were printed. Holland (ed. 1994, p. 113): there is insufficient evidence as yet to establish the setting order.

Revision in Q1

Beginning in the middle of the 19th c., there arises a claim that Sh. revised the text of Q1 one or more times; the narrative of such revision remains somewhat consistent as it is elaborated by successive proponents, with the dialogue associated with the four lovers imagined to survive from Sh.’s earliest version of the play. Verplanck (ed. 1847, 2: Introductory Remarks [to MND], 6 [new pagination for each play and its accessories]): It seems . . . very probable . . . that [MND] 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 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. White (ed. 1857, 4:16–17): It seems that [MND] was produced, in part at least, at an earlier period of Shakespeare’s life than his twenty-ninth year [i.e., 1593]. Although as a whole it . . . abounds in passages worthy even of Shakespeare in his full maturity, it also contains whole Scenes which are hardly worthy of his ’prentice hand . . . [17] and which yet seem to bear the unmistakeable marks of his unmistakeable pen. These scenes are the various interviews between Demetrius and Lysander, Hermia and Helen, in Acts II and III. . . . There seems, therefore, warrant for the opinion that this Dream was one of the very first conceptions of the young poet; . . . perhaps . . . he . . . went from Stratford up to London with it partly written; . . . when there, he found it necessary at first to forego completion of it for labor that would find readier acceptance at the theatre; and . . . afterward, when he had more freedom of choice, he reverted to his early production, and in 1594 worked it up into the form in which it was produced. . . . At least some of the additions might have been made . . . for a performance at Court. . . . Except in the play itself I have no support for this opinion, but I am willing to be alone in it.

Fleay (1878, p. 61): MND probably was recast previously to publication. Idem (1886, pp. 181–6) dates the version for the public stage to (p. 183) the winter of 1592, (p. 181) its present form to 1595. January 26, . . . the date of the marriage of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, and subsequent modifications to produce the court version to (p. 182) the winter of 1594–5. (P. 182): the traces of the play having been altered . . . are numerous. There is a double ending. Robin’s final speech [2207–22] is palpably a stage epilogue, while what precedes from Enter Puck [2153] to [2206] is very appropriate for a marriage entertainment, but scarcely suited to the stage. In Acts iv. and v., again, we find in the speech-prefixes Duke, Duchess, Clown, for Theseus, Hippolita, Bottom: such variations are nearly always marks of alteration, the unnamed characters being anterior in date. In the prose scenes speeches are several times assigned to wrong speakers, another common mark of alteration. (P. 183): wherever Robin occurs in the stage-directions or speech-prefixes scarcely any, if any, alteration has been made; Puck, on the contrary, indicates change. (P. 185): The time-analysis . . . has probably been disturbed by omissions in producing the Court version. [138–265] ought to form, and probably did, in the original play, a separate scene; it certainly does not take place in the palace. To the same cause must be attributed the confusion as to the moon’s age; cf. [222–3] with the opening lines [5–14]: the new moon was an afterthought, and evidently derived from a form of the story in which the first day of the month and the new moon were coincident after the Greek time-reckoning. Idem (1891, 2:194): The play has certainly alternative endings: one a song by Oberon for a marriage, and then Exeunt, with no mark of Puck’s remaining on the stage; the other an Epilogue by Puck, apparently for the Court (cf. gentles in [2213]). It might seem, as the Epilogue is placed last, that the marriage version was the earlier, and so I took it to be when I wrote my Life of Shakespeare [1886, quoted above]; but the compliment to Elizabeth [524–45] was certainly written for the Court; and this passage is essential to the original conduct of the play, which may have been printed from the marriage-version copy, with additions from the Court copy. This would require a date for the marriage subsequent to the Court performance. One version must date 1596, for the weather description [463–92], which can be omitted without in any way affecting the progress of the play, requires that date. I believe this passage was inserted for the Court performance in 1596, that on the public stage having taken place in 1595; but that the marriage presentation, being subsequent to this, was most likely at the union of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon in 1598–9. Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 14–15): There are certain indications which make me think that [MND] was also at some period [after its composition in 1594–5] slightly retouched. Two passages, [1204–1384+1] and [1793–1902], show a markedly larger proportion of feminine endings than the rest of the play. In the earlier passages, this may be due merely to the excited state of the speakers, but I cannot resist the suspicion that the opening of act v. shows some traces of later work. See also Luce (1906, p. 157). Noble (1923, p. 58 n. 1): The Quarto did not use italics for songs. My own belief is that the whole of the fairy part in the final episode is a comparatively late addition. Witness the fact that Oberon can sing and lead a chorus in Act V, a faculty of which he evinces no sign in the rest of the play.

Wilson (ed. 1924, pp. 80–153): The Q1 text emerges from three distinct episodes of Shn. composition in 1592–3, 1594–5, and 1598. What remains in Q1 of the 1592 version are the (p. 91) lovers’ scenes—those featuring Helena, Hermia, Demetrius, and Lysander—wherein the psychology is generally as crude as the verse (p. 92) is stiff and antithetical. Wilson dates these scenes to 1592–3 because they include 1849–50, which he, like Fleay (1886, p. 183) reads as an allusion to [Robert] Greene’s death [on 3 September 1592] (p. 94). To Sh.’s 1594–5 revision belong Q1’s mechanicals and Bottom scenes, most of the passages in which Robin is used in stage directions and speech prefixes to designate the character otherwise called Puck (including the epilogue—2207–22), parts of the fairy scenes (Wilson, ed. 1924, pp. 95–6), and the introduction of Hippolyta into 1.1 and 4.1. This revision includes the mechanicals’ concern over frightening the ladies with too realistic a representation of a lion (838–56), which Wilson, again like Fleay (1886, p. 185), takes to be an allusion to a spectacle from the celebration in the Scottish court of Prince Henry’s baptism (30 August 1594) for which it was prudently decided to substitute a blackamoor (Wilson ed. 1924, p. 95) for the lion that was initially to have drawn a triumphal car (ibid.). The revision also includes a description (463–92) of what Wilson takes to be the wet and chilly summer of 1594 (ibid.). Sh.’s final handling of MND in 1598 gives Q1 its mature Shakespearian verse, in which the masterly diction and vigorous sweep . . . introduce a note of intellectual energy that makes the whole glow with poetic genius (p. 183). Some such verse Wilson imagines to have been added in short passages written in the margin of the 1594–5 version, with other longer passages interpolated on additional leaves. For Wilson, as for Fleay, the use of Puck for Robin in stage directions and speech prefixes is peculiar to the 1598 revision and is the clue to its purpose, namely the introduction of the little western flower. All but two occurrences of Puck (1028 and 2153–4 being the exceptions) are associated with references to the flower, which functions as a compliment and representation of Elizabeth Vernon, daughter of Sir John Vernon of Hodnet Hall, Shropshire (p. 100) on the occasion of her marriage to the Earl of Southampton in 1598—the occasion for which Sh. added the wedding masque at 2153–206. Wilson (1962, p. 206) substitutes the wedding of Thomas Berkeley to Elizabeth Carey at Blackfriars on 19th February 1596 for the Southampton-Vernon wedding as the occasion for the second revision.

According to Wilson, the following derive from the 1592–3 version: most of 1.1 (2–265) including Helena’s entry at 24–5; 566–625 in 2.1; 686–717 and 737–811 in 2.2; 1063–1124 and 1146–1221 in 3.2; 1792–1881 (although with additions from 1598) in 5.1. To the 1594–5 belong 3–23, 131–5, and the splicing together of two 1592–3 scenes at 136–7 in 1.1; 1.2 (266–371); the beginning of 2.1 (373–523); all but one line of 3.1 (813–1020); 1021–62 (although this passage was later revised in part) and 1440–1506 in 3.2; 4.1 (1509–1745) though certain parts look like first draft material recopied (p. 131)—Wilson specifies 1624–48, 1711, and 1722–3 as 1594 additions—and three more additions were made in 1598; 4.2 (1746–89); 1882–1985 (but 1890–1904 were added in 1598), 1986–2152 (with three minor additions from 1598), and 2207–22 in 5.1. The 1598 revision consists of 153–9 in 1.1; 524–65 and 626–49 in 2.1; 650–85 and 718–36 in 2.2; 901 in 3.1; 1125–45 and 1222–1439 (which was partially recopied and revised in 1598 [p. 125]) in 3.2; 1586–90, 1604–10, 1690–2 in 4.1; 1797–1800, 1804–9, 1822–5, 1828–31, 1855–7, 1863–7, 1874–5, 1879–80, 1890–1902, 2015–16, 2138–40, 2143–4, and 2153–206 in 5.1. Craig (1931, p. 335): Revision of some sort is unmistakable in the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (See also Craig 1961, p. 108.)

Wilson’s revision hypothesis is not left to collapse under the burden of its accumulated speculation. Reviewing his ed., Chambers (1925, pp. 342–4) finds the case for revision to contain inconsistencies: Professor Wilson . . . thinks that, while I.1 and IV.1 belong substantially to the [earliest version], certain awkwardnesses in the introduction of Hippolyta suggest that she was an afterthought, connected in some obscure way with the indication in [4–5] of a four-day period for the action, which is not consistent with the time-analysis. I do not suppose that he would lay much stress on this, especially as he accepts Hipployta as part of his [earliest-version] substratum of V.1. Wilson, Chambers notes (p. 344), makes much of the variation in the naming of Robin-Puck, but nothing of that of Bottom-Clown. Yet Chambers does agree that 5.1 was revised and compliments Wilson on (p. 343) a valuable bibliographical contribution in his attention to the persistent mislining by the printer of passages in [1798–1800, 1804–9, 1822–5, 1828–31, 1855–7, 1863–7, 1874–5, 1879–80], which suggests that these passages were taken in from cramped marginal alterations in the copy. However, unlike Wilson, Chambers does not think the alleged marginal alterations can be dated years later than the context into which they have been supposedly interpolated. I agree again that the fairy-mask of V.1 [2153–206] and the epilogue of [2207–22] are probably duplicate endings. Still Chambers refuses to acknowledge that the adaptation issuing in this duplication need date from as late as 1598. (See also Chambers 1930, 1:360–1.)

Greg (1942, pp. 124–5), though, altogether rejects Wilson’s theory of revision, and subsequent editors join Greg both in this rejection and in his substitution of so-called foul papers (see here for Greg’s definition of this term) as the explanation for any discrepancies in Q1. According to Greg, whether or no the two endings were written at the same time, it would not be surprising to find both in the foul papers in their present order. Nonetheless, Greg does preserve, with modifications, Wilson’s conception of revision at the beginning of 5.1 (p. 125): On the whole I think the copy for Q must have been the author’s manuscript. . . . The most important piece of evidence is at the beginning of the last act where eight passages of verse are mislined [1798–1800, 1804–9, 1822–5, 1828–31, 1855–7, 1863–7, 1874–5, 1879–80]. Wilson has pointed out that if these are removed what remains is perfectly regular and consecutive, and he argues that they represent marginal additions in the copy. . . . It seems to me quite possible that Shakespeare, coming back to his work in a fresher mood, found what he had written rather flat and sought to brighten it up. And I cannot believe there was anything like the amount of revision Wilson imagines [elsewhere in Q1]: it would certainly have left other traces of the sort, whereas the text is elsewhere particularly clean. Greg later (1955, p. 243) is even more dismissive of Wilson’s theory, calling it all very ingenious; the difficulty is to believe that this refashioning would not have left plainer bibliographical traces than are now apparent. Nonetheless Greg adheres to Wilson’s theory of alleged marginal alteration. Spencer (1930, pp. 24–5) does not agree that, if the eight mislined passages are removed what remains is perfectly regular and consecutive, as Greg put it. Instead, Spencer notes that what remains does not cohere as well as the whole existing text does with the eight passages in place. He argues that it is hardly conceivable that a reviser, expanding certain speeches, should make the new joints less conspicuous than the old, since the new represent elaboration, while the old represent the flow of his thought as originally conceived. For example (p. 25), the description of the interlude in the schedule read by Theseus [1852–3] specifies four qualities: the piece is tedious, brief, tragical, and merry, all these qualities lying within the original text as segregated by Professor Wilson. But in the next speech, which contains Philostrate’s explanation, only tedious and brief lie within Mr Wilson’s [original text: 1858–61]. For tragical and merry we must subjoin . . . one of the additions [1863–7]. Kirschbaum (1946, p. 48) supports with another example Spencer’s supposition that what Wilson calls the original text and what he calls the additions were written at the same time: it will be noticed that in [1796] the sequence is Louers first, mad men second. Omitting the so-called addition [1797–1800], we see that the sequence in [1801–3] is mad man first, louer second. Why the shift in sequence if Shakespeare wrote [1796–1803] originally without . . . [1797–1800]? But when we look at [1799–1800, a supposed addition] . . . we see that the sequence lunatics first, louer second, Poet third is the sequence followed in [the allegedly original 1801–3] . . . and [the allegedly later addition 1804–9]. . . . In other words, the sequence followed in the supposedly original version in [1801–3] is not the sequence first indicated in the supposedly original version at [1796] but the sequence indicated in the supposed marginal addition at [1799–1800]. Thus, the ensuing hypothesis is that both [alleged original and alleged later addition] were written at one and the same time and that the [allegedly additional 1799–1800] . . . was written before and not after the [the allegedly original 1801–3]. And since the sequence indicated in [1799–1800] is followed in [1801–9], it may be suggested that [1804–9], the lines on the poet [a supposed addition], were not an afterthought but were written immediately after [1801–3]. See also Lull (1998) on these alleged Shn. revisions.

Turner (1962, pp. 49–50) seeks to corroborate Wilson’s revision theory in a number of places in Q1, including where the eight passages of verse are mislined. Noting that sigs. C1–3, which, according to Turner, are unusual in being set seriatim, contain, on Wilson’s theory, passages from all three stages of composition (497–681), Turner thinks it possible that the workman was confronted here with particularly nightmarish copy. Again, on Turner’s analysis, work on F(o) and the first two pages of F(i) went slowly; and this is another part of [50] the text ([1371–1506], ending near the foot of F2v) which Wilson thinks to have been considerably worked over. Problems with Turner’s method (discussed above, here) compromise any possibility of his analysis buttressing Wilson’s theory. Other problems obtrude in Turner’s justification of Wilson’s interpretation of the eight mislined passages in sig. G (5.1) as evidence of revision. Werstine (2012, p. 145) both summarizes and criticizes this justification: Close bibliographical analysis of the quarto by Robert K. Turner, Jr., shows that quire G is peculiar not only for the frequency with which its verse is mislined, but also for containing four pages with fewer lines of type than is normal. Usually each page has 35 lines, but sigs. G1r, 1v, and 2v have only thirty-four lines each, and G2r only thirty-two ([Turner] 1962, 39). In all, then, quire G is short six lines of type. Six is also the number of lines of type that are saved as an apparently accidental consequence of the mislining of five of the eight passages of verse that are erroneously divided; three of the mislined passages occupy the same space as they would if they were properly set. No one, including Turner, has remarked on this coincidence or attempted to account for it. Turner attempts to explain away the four short pages as follows: in casting off copy for quire G, the compositor, who, he assumes, cast off his own copy, evidently counted in some material that he later did not set[;] . . . he may have failed to notice that some lines here and there were supposed to be cancelled ([ibid.], 54). Such an explanation fails to convince because throughout Q Turner can find only two other places where there may have been errors in casting off so that the compositor had to juggle the lineation of the text in order to fit copy to a predetermined space (ibid., 55)—B2r, [319–20] and H2r, [2063–4]. His explanation then forces us to believe that Quire G is the unique site not only of a considerable amount of mislined verse and short pages (which, according to Turner, bear no relation whatsoever to the mislined verse) but also of a considerable number of misleadingly cancelled lines in its copy (for which there can be, in the nature of the case, no surviving evidence). Without any adequate explanation for the short pages of quire G, Wilson’s theory about the source of the mislined verse in the quire must remain shrouded in doubt. It is instead possible that whoever cast off copy for quire G found no difficulty in printer’s copy and counted off the lines with the same meticulous accuracy found in almost all the rest of his work, and then the compositor, who sometimes unaccountably, if only occasionally, mislined the text elsewhere (e.g., . . . H1r-H1v [1986–9] . . . ), made the mistakes in dividing verse that Wilson attributes to printer’s copy. Such an explanation may not be the right one, but at least it relates the bibliographical anomaly of the short pages to the textual anomaly of the frequently mislined verse.

After Greg’s dismissal of Wilson’s revision hypothesis, Smidt (1986, pp. 123, 128, 130–4, 140, 210) is reluctant to develop in any detail a theory of revision on the basis of so-called unconformities in Q1: One might suppose that the little Indian is left as a residue from an early attempt to work out an appropriate fairy plot, before the fairies became involved with Duke Theseus and his bride. He has lost his raison d’être as a cause of the fairies’ quarrel, but he is still useful as a means of providing a solution to it. (P. 128): The variation between the names Robin and Puck may well be a sign of different stages of composition, as some scholars have thought, but there may have been merely an expansion of Puck’s character as the writing of the play advanced, not a substitution of a spirit for a gnome. And this may have occurred during a continuous process of composition, so that the fairy Puck is not necessarily a sign of revision. (P. 130): The most interesting phenomenon as far as unconformities are concerned is the fitful appearance of the moon during the night in the wood. . . . [132] It is darkness . . . , only lightened for a while by the stars, that prevails while the lovers are in the wood. . . . There is no reference to present moonlight in the rehearsal scene [813–936]. Yet (p. 133) there is in fact enough indication of a moon in the fairy scenes to make the mention of a new moon on the wedding night [by Hippolyta at 12] well-nigh impossible, in spite of our expectations. . . . [134] If the inconsistency was accidental, was it brought about by the merging of different plot components, Theseus and Hippolyta on the one hand, the fairies on the other hand, the young lovers and the artisans in between? (P. 140): The contradictions in this comedy were not brought about by changes of mind, and, with one possible exception, not by inadvertence. The exception is the moonlit fairy scenes. Only (p. 210) the repetition of Theseus’s order to Demetrius and Egeus to accompany him [123–5 and 132–5] suggests some kind of textual disturbance. For reengagement with Wilson’s theory of revision, see Hunter (1998 and 2002, pp. 3–6).

Printer’s Copy for Q1

Speculation on this question has given rise to four suggestions, all of them testifying to perceptions of the high authority of the Q1 text: (1) Sh.’s own MS; (2) Sh.’s own MS as marked up by his company for production; (3) a transcript of Sh.’s MS made and used in the playhouse; (4) a non-theatrical transcript. The cautious commentators have found language to avoid or at least to qualify precise identification.

Discussion begins with Capell, who seems to opt for the third alternative. He (ed. 1768, 1:3 ff.) identifies fourteen quarto texts, including MND, that ought to be excluded from Heminge and Condell’s characterization of all the Shakespeare quartos as diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious imposters (p. 10): Let it then be granted, that these quarto’s [sic] are the Poet’s own copies, however they were come by; hastily written at first, and issuing from presses most of them as corrupt and licentious as can any where be produc’d, and not overseen by himself, nor by [11] any of his friends. . . . It may be true, that they were stoln; but stoln from the Author’s copies, by transcribers who found means to get at them: and maim’d they must needs be, in respect of their many alterations after the first performance. . . . [12] The very errors and faults of these quarto’s . . . are, with the editor [Capell], proofs of their genuineness; For from what hand, but that of the Author himself, could come those seemingly-strange repetitions [of passages in LLL and Tro.], . . . those imperfect entries . . . ? Capell’s use of transcribers suggests that he thinks copy to have been scribal transcripts, and his reference to their many alterations after the first performance locates transcription in the playhouse, where copy would be subject to theatrical adaptation.

Similarly Malone (in Boswell, ed. 1821, 1:203) in general recognizes the superiority of the early quartos to counterpart F1 texts, except for Wiv. and H5 (Q1 Ham. was not discovered until 1823), yet does not attempt to specify just what kind of MSS served as printer’s copy: With respect to the other thirteen copies [quartos, including MND] . . . , they in general are preferable to the exhibition of the same plays in the folio; for this plain reason, because, instead of printing these plays from a manuscript, the editors of the folio . . . printed the greater part of them from the very copies which they represented as maimed and imperfect, and frequently from a late, instead of the earliest, edition; in some instances with additions and alterations of their own.

Clark and Wright (ed. 1863, 2:viii), cautiously subjunctive: Fisher’s edition . . . may have been taken from the author’s manuscript. Furness (ed. 1895, p. xii) takes pains to imagine that Heminge and Condell may not have been guilty of a wilful untruth, as alleged by Malone, when they implied that they provided for F1 only his [Sh.’s] papers as printer’s copy, but, in fact, provided quarto copy for such plays as MND if they knew that this [quarto] text was [originally] printed directly from his manuscript. Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 8), leaving open all alternatives for printer’s copy: Q1 has been printed from a clear and authentic manuscript. Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xiii) adds to the alternatives the possible use of actors’ parts in the creation of printer’s copy, an idea apparently borrowed ultimately from Johnson’s 1756 Proposals for Printing . . . the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare (ed. Arthur Sherbo, 1968, 7:52): Q1 was printed in all probability, either from the authentic MS. of Shakespeare himself, or at least from an accurate copy or, perhaps, copies of the actors’ parts, transcribed in the theatre from the original MS.

Furness (ed. 1895, p. xi) misleads a number of his successors with the observation that in both Q1 and Q2 the stage directions are, as in copies used on the stage, in the imperative, such as wind horns, [1622] sleep [1484]. So Cuningham (ed. 1905, xv) notes stage-directions . . . in the imperative, as is customary in stage copies as his ground for suggesting the possible playhouse provenance of printer’s copy. And Pollard (1909, p. 72) declares that The imperative form of the stage directions, Ly doune ([1110]) and Winde hornes ([1622]) may be taken as indicating its origin from a playhouse copy. (See Idem 1920, p. 64.) Greg (1942, p. 37) properly questions the assumption that the prompter can be identified by the use of the imperative: The prompter writes directions for his own use; they are generally terse and to the point. Chambers [1930, 1:118] questions whether they are usually in the imperative. They are not: but being short and curt they tend to imperative and participial constructions. Wilson (1945, p. 67) provides examples of the imperative in Anthony Munday’s hand, not the hands of the theatrical annotator(s), in the theatrical MS of Iohn A kent & Iohn a Cumber; Werstine (2012, p. 229) gives examples of imperative SDD in authorial hands from MSS of Thomas Heywood’s The Captives and the anonymous The Waspe. Greg (1942, p. 125), contradicting himself, follows Pollard in identifying the hand of the prompter in the appearance of imperative SDD: There are however [in Q1] a few directions that suggest the prompter, such as Lie down and Wind horn. In the palpable duplication, Enter Lovers; Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena ([1819–20]), we may see the book-keeper expanding a typically brief direction of the author’s. (Werstine [2012, p. 131] notes that actual theatrical texts rarely show a bookkeeper specifying a group in terms of their proper names, finding only one example, from the annotated quarto of Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene’s A Looking Glasse, for London and England.) Greg differs from Pollard, though, in judging printer’s copy to be, not a playhouse copy, but so-called foul papers (see here for Greg’s definition of this term) containing (1942, p. 125) notes made in preparation for the prompt-book. Greg’s belief in the possibility of such a document once having existed arises from his interpretation of a single extant MS, Thomas Heywood’s transcription of The Captives, as such a document, but as Werstine (2012, pp. 300–9) observes, this interpretation is at odds with features of the MS. Greg rules out (1942, 125) a playhouse transcript to be printer’s copy only because he believes that there could only ever have been one such transcript and that it was used to annotate printer’s copy for F, which differs from Q1 chiefly in terms of such annotations.

Pollard (1920, p. 63), while not setting aside his belief in theatrical annotation of printer’s copy, anticipated Greg in arguing as well for the possibility that such annotated copy could originally have been inscribed by Sh.: Possibly in some cases, if [a dramatist] were familiar with the theatre, he might use the same technical language as a prompter, so that Shakespeare himself, in the scene in the wood in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, may have written the directions, Enter a Faerie at one doore and Robin goodfellow at another, Enter the King of Fairies at one doore, with his traine; and the Queen at another with hers, the doors, of course, being those of the stage, not of the wood. Adams (1923, p. 519) states an opinion that can be interpreted to be identical to Pollard’s but need not necessarily be: MND is printed from authentic playhouse copy; compare Neilson & Hill, ed. 1942, p. 88. Pollard (1923, p. 7): some of the flaws in these Good Quartos [including MND Q1] are the result of imperfections in Shakespeare’s own work, and I have ventured to claim that some of these Good Quartos may actually have been set up from Shakespeare’s autograph manuscripts. Wilson (ed. 1924, p. 80) is of Pollard’s mind: beyond doubt [Q1 is] printed from a theatrical prompt-book, . . . [with] the managerial voice giving real directions to the players; he quotes 1110, 1484, and 1622. Printer’s copy also contains irregularities strongly suggestive of an author’s manuscript, and so it is both Shakespeare’s autograph manuscript and the prompt-book just as Shakespeare left it. Kittredge (ed. 1936, p. 229) and Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 131) follow Wilson. Chambers (1930, 1:358), persuaded to be more specific than in 1897: Q1 may be from the author’s manuscript. Kirschbaum (1955, pp. 172–3) stands out against the idea of theatrical annotation of a Sh. MS: Greg’s evidence for prompter’s additions does not pass muster. The directions could just as well come from the author, and there is no reason why they should not be copied by a scribe. (P. 173): The nomenclature [variation in naming of characters in SPP and SDD] . . . does not show the author in the heat of composition—does not cause the reader to assume foul papers behind the print. . . . There is little evidence of foul papers or playhouse in Q. Nothing in it rules out printing from transcript. . . . There is neither internal nor external evidence to show that the copy came to the publisher from Shakespeare’s fellows.

In 1955 Greg establishes what becomes a virtual consensus among 20th-c. editors that printer’s copy for Q1 is authorial foul papers defined as (1955, pp. 106, 142) a copy representing the play more or less as the author intended it to stand, but not itself clear or tidy enough to serve as a prompt-book, that is, a theatrical MS used to guide performance, because it contained (p. 142) loose ends and false starts and unresolved confusions. Greg presumed that book-keepers necessarily tidied away from prompt-books certain features of foul papers, including seven features still to be found in Q1 (ibid., pp. 240–2):

• (1)multiple designations of the same character (p. 241): Oberon is King of Fairies (or simply King) or Oberon indifferently; Titania is of course named in the text [i.e., dialogue and SPP], but in directions [the proper name] appears only at [650] on her second entry [otherwise she is named Queene in SDD]; Bottom, on his most important appearance [1509] is merely Clowne; Theseus and Hippolyta, after long appearing by name, become as a rule Duke and Duchess after the play begins in Act V; lastly Robin (Goodfellow) and the generic Puck alternate;
• (2)indefinite entrances involving speakers (p. 240): after carefully naming the rude mechanicals in I.ii, the author later contents himself with the description the Clownes (III.i) or the rabble (IV.ii); the young couples, having been named in I.i, become simply Louers at V.i . . . , for here the names [i.e., Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena] are a palpable addition; the fairies are quite indefinite, except for the foure at [980]. Greg also quotes as allegedly bearing the characteristics of the author and thereby implicitly needing the bookkeeper’s attention SDD containing the term traine to refer to speakers attending royalty (p. 240: her [i.e., Titania’s] traine (650); all his [i.e., Theseus’s] traine (1622);
• (3)other indefinite SDD: Greg’s characteristically authorial SDD include (p. 240) Enter Theseus, Hippolita, with others (2), where others refers to supers, rather than speakers, including Philostrate, addressed by name in this scene;
• (4)inclusion of an unnecessary character in a SD (p. 241): Pucke is made to enter with Oberon at [1021], though in fact he only does so three lines later;
• (5)missing entrances and exits;
• (6)descriptive SDD: characteristic of the author, according to Greg, are, for example (p. 240), Enter Egeus and his daughter Hermia . . . and Enter Quince, the Carpenter; and Snugge, the Ioyner . . . ;
• (7)marginal insertions of dialogue (pp. 241–2): Greg fully endorses the theory of J. Dover Wilson’s that some passages of verse at the beginning of the play’s last scene are wrongly divided in Q1 because they were marginal additions to the dialogue, their position in the margins forbidding their writer from dividing them properly as verse and the compositor following his copy in this error (see here).

Greg also mentions the following incidental features of Quarto MND as characteristic of foul papers: erroneous SPP—for Greg, one of Shakespeare’s (ibid., p. 247 Note A) oversights in composition, the author having written consecutive speeches for Flute and Thisbe, forgetting that they were the same; double entrance (p. 240): Helena enters in 1.1 both at 25 and at 191; a dialogue error in naming (ibid., p. 246 Note A): Flute for Snout at 1957; and an erroneous SD (ibid., 240): Enter Quince, Flute, Thisby and the rabble (1746)—in this scene Shakespeare had forgotten that Flute and Thisbe are one.

Werstine (2012, p. 132): The appearance of these features in the earliest printing of A Midsummer Night’s Dream leads Greg to conclude that we can hardly imagine that Q represents a finished prompt-book [1955, p. 241] and therefore, by this process of elimination of what he regards . . . as the only possible alternative, Quarto Dream must represent Shakespeare’s foul papers—in spite of the persistence of the same features in the actual theatrical texts that he calls promptbooks, which destroys his argument. Werstine reviews each of Greg’s features and compares them to what is found in the twenty-one extant texts (both MS and annotated quartos) that bear theatrical annotation and thereby show what book-keepers actually did and did not do to their playbooks (these texts are described in Werstine 2012, pp. 234–57). In these twenty-one Werstine finds (1) multiple designations of the same character (pp. 359–64), (2) indefinite entrances involving speakers, including the very terms cited by Greg to discount a theatrical MS—crewe, trayne, the rest (pp. 375–9), (3) other indefinite SDD, including uses of others identical to those cited from MND by Greg (pp. 379–82), (4) inclusion of an unnecessary character in a SD (p. 384), (5) missing entrances (pp. 374–5) and exits (pp. 386–8), (6) descriptive SDD such as, from the scribal MS Ironside: Enter Edmond and Alfricke the generall vnder the kinge:/ (1.3.332) and Enter Edricke a poore man . . . (2.2.461). (Needlessly explanatory SDD, like those that Greg quotes from the MND quarto, are also frequent in The Second Maidens Tragedy [also called The Lady’s Tragedy], another scribal MS, in further indication that such SDD are by no means peculiar to authorial MSS: Enter the new Vsurping Tirant; The Nobles of his faction, Memphonius, Sophonirus, Heluetius with others, The right heire Gouianus depos’de [1.1.1–3]; Enter L Anselmus the deposde kinges brother, wth | his Frend Votarius [1.2.257–8]; Enter the ladye of Gouianus . . . [2.1.636]; Enter Tirant wondrous discontedly: Nobles afarr of [4.2.1655–6]; Enter Votarius with Anselmus the Husband [5.1.1984]); (7) marginal insertions of dialogue (pp. 388–9). Even the minor features cited by Greg to identify foul papers as printer’s copy are located in theatrical MSS by Werstine: erroneous SPP (pp. 371–2), double entrances (pp. 385–6), a dialogue error in naming (p. 371), and erroneous SDD (p. 385).

Greg himself showed his awareness of the flaw in his reasoning when he wrote (1955, p. 142) It must, however, be recognized that owing to the casual ways of book-keepers these characteristics may persist, to some extent at least, in the prompt-book. In reproducing his argument and conclusions about copy for MND Q1, editors fail to attend to this caveat: Doran (ed. 1959, p. 174); Wells (ed. 1967, p. 165); Evans (ed. 1974, p. 247); Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxii–v); Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 135–6); Wells & Taylor (1987, p. 279); Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 113–14); Berger (ed. 1995, p. ix). Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 10) accepts what would become Greg’s argument and conclusion in the form in which it was first presented in McKerrow (1935)—Greg’s inspiration—with reference only to variation in naming in SPP and SDD. Greg’s definition of foul papers has also been overturned in Werstine (2009, pp. 44–5).

A significant problem with Greg’s use of variation in naming of characters in SPP in MND Q1 and other texts as evidence of so-called foul papers had already been identified by Kennedy (1998, pp. 178–9): There may, however, be another explanation for the variation in SP’s in some of Shakespeare’s early texts. The change may not be authorial at all, but compositorial. It seems to have been a printing-house convention that a compositor did not have to follow copy in the matter of SP’s, but could choose to call characters by their first names or last names, or [179] generic names or personal names, or by their functions or peculiarities. If he needed to, he could vary the SP from Quin. to Pet[er], from The[seus] to Duke, . . . and so on. Most of the time, variant SP’s do not point to authorial foul papers, but signify compositorial change. And most of the time, variant SP’s are not signs of an author’s revising, or of an author in the heat of composition, but are rather indications of a compositor switching SP’s because of type shortage. Kennedy applies this theory in detail to the variation in naming in MND Q1’s SPP (179–90).

To support the view that printer’s copy is in Sh.’s own hand, some recent editors have followed Wilson (ed. 1924, pp. 112, 116, 121, 148) in adducing certain spellings in MND Q1 as the same as or somewhat analogous to spellings in the Hand-D pages of MS The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore (BL Harl. 7368), in the belief that Hand D is Sh.: Evans (ed. 1974, p. 247), Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxv–vi), Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 136), Wells & Taylor (1987, p. 279), Holland (ed. 1994, p. 114); Berger (ed. 1995, p. ix). However, recent review of Hand D’s spelling by Jackson (2007) shows that only a half-dozen are sufficiently rare to constitute acceptable evidence for attribution, and none of these is in MND Q1.

There is no evidence for a rational choice among the following alternatives for MND Q1 printer’s copy: (1) Sh.’s own MS; (2) Sh.’s own MS as marked up by his company for production; (3) a transcript of Sh.’s MS made and used in the playhouse; (4) a non-theatrical transcript. While there is nothing in the way of playhouse notes in the quarto to demonstrate alternatives 2 and 3, Werstine (2012, p. 4) shows that in some actual playhouse MSS there is so little annotation that it is possible that MSS with no annotation could have been used in production.

The Second Quarto (1619)

There is no entry for Q2 in the Stationers’ Register, as is the case with a great many books published in the late 16th and early 17th c. (see Blayney 1997, pp. 400–5). Erne (2003, pp. 255–8) suggests that Heminge and Condell were referring specifically to the whole series of plays among which MND Q2 appeared in 1619 when the two actors wrote of the stolne, and surreptitious copies in their prefatory remarks to the First Folio (1623)—if these remarks were of their composition. However, Heminge and Condell fail to supply any justification for Erne’s specification, and they provide MND Q2 as copy for the Folio printing.

Q2’s title page, as transcribed by Greg (BEPD, 1:169), reads as follows: [ornament] | A | Midsommer nights | dreame. | As it hath beene sundry times pub- |likely acted, by the Right Honoura- |ble, the Lord Chamberlaine his |seruants. | VVritten by VVilliam Shakespeare. | [device <McKerrow>283] | Printed by Iames Roberts, 1600.

Bartlett & Pollard (1939, pp. 71–3) identify and locate thirty extant copies of Q2. Modern facsimiles include that of William Griggs, ed. J. W. Ebsworth, 1880. For a digital facsimile see the Shakespeare Quartos Archive (www.quartos.org).

The Printing of Q2

Except for its slightly different top lace border, its altogether different mid-page printer’s ornament, and its substitution of reference to Roberts for that to Fisher, the wording and even the alternation of roman and italic fonts of Q2’s title page duplicate Q1’s. Thus it falsifies its date of printing and its printer, and thereby created uncertainty (see above here) and gave rise to dispute (see below). Three centuries passed before the discovery that Q2 was in fact printed in 1619 by William Jaggard for Thomas Pavier. Pollard (1909, p. 93): the mid-page printer’s ornament William Jaggard was using . . . in other books both before and after 1619. The resemblance between Q1 and Q2 title pages continues on sig. A2, the first page of the play’s text. In both quartos that page is surmounted by A | MIDSOMMER NIGHTS | DREAME. followed by a centered SD and then by a centered SP.

Because the states of formes in Q1 differ only by typographical errors that are easily noticed and corrected, it is impossible to identify the states of the formes in the copy of Q1 used as printer’s copy for Q2. Pollard (1923, p. 5): Taking each intermediate edition [like this 1619 Pavier quarto of MND] by itself, in no single instance do we find evidence of the sort of care which could lead us to believe that its overseer had obtained access to any authoritative source. . . . As evidence of the words which Shakespeare wrote or of the words which were spoken by the actors engaged in his plays these intermediate editions are absolutely worthless, except where we possess only one or two copies of the First Edition. . . . A Second Edition might . . . be printed from a copy of the First in which a correction had been made which does not appear in any copy of the First now extant. Pollard’s only one or two is optimistic; even when there are eight extant copies of Q1, we may not expect to find among them all the different states of correction of their formes and therefore all the states that may have been present in the copy of Q1 used to print Q2.

The Pavier quarto of 1619 is, for the most part, a page-for-page reprint of Q1. Clark & Wright (ed. 1863, 2:viii): On comparing these two Quartos we find that they correspond page for page, though not line for line, except in the first five pages of sheet G. In Q1 the first four pages of this sheet contain fewer typographical lines than the thirty-five found on the rest of the pages. In Q2 these four pages each contain 35 typographical lines. This regularization is effected sometimes by the transfer of lines from later pages to earlier ones, sometimes by the chopping up of verse into shorter lines, sometimes by the correct division of verse that is mislined in Q1, and sometimes by the addition of white space around SDD. Like Q1, Q2 is divided into neither acts nor scenes. Q2 has a different tailpiece on H4v from Q1’s; Greg (BEPD 1:169): The ornament on H4v [of Q2] is a copy of device 179.

Dyce (ed. 1857, 1:clxiii): Roberts’s [Q2] is the less accurate quarto. Clark & Wright (ed. 1863, 2:viii): The printer’s errors in Fisher’s [Q1] edition are corrected in that issued by Roberts [Q2], and . . . in the Roberts Quarto the Exits are more frequently marked. Ebsworth (ed. Q2 1880, pp. ix–xiii): In Fisher’s [Q1], the business [i.e., the SDD] is given (as usual) in Italic type, with exception of the proper names of the characters; which are in Roman type. But in Roberts’s [Q2], the whole line is in Italic type, names and all. (P. x): Roberts’s page [is] wider than Fisher’s to the extent of about two letters’ breadth [The measure in Q1 is 82 mm; that in Q2 87 mm.]. And it is remarkable that when . . . difference [in line-for-line reproduction] ensued . . . a recurrence has been speedily made to the former agreement. (P. xiii): The spelling of Q2 is more modern than Q1’s: We give a brief sample of these differences in corresponding places; but they are innumerable throughout: — Roberts’s Quarto: tell — Snug — else — home-spuns — perhaps — hue — eke — Iew — Snowt — do — hog — Finch — Sparrow — answer — lye — he, etc. . . . Fisher’s Quarto: tel — Snugge — els — homespunnes — perhappes — hewe — eeke — Iewe — Snowte — doe — hogge — Fynch — Sparrowe — answere — ly — hee etc. [845–952]. Ebsworth also notes some contractions such as trēble, for tremble [852]; lātern, for lantern [871]; chābre, for chamber [873]; vnderstād, for vnderstand [903]; trāslated, for translated [935–6] in Q1 that are expanded in Q2. It is by no means difficult to understand the improved clearness in typography of Roberts over that of Fisher (supposing, as we do, that Roberts had Fisher’s printed book before his eyes). For there was the additional space gained—1. By the excision of redundant letters; 2. By having a wider platform of type in his page; 3. By his gaining an occasional line in prose passages, and thus being able to afford extra leads at entrance of characters. Despite this improvement in typographical clearness, there is a marked deterioration in the minute divisions of the verse by punctuation. Commas are less frequent, either from negligence or from systematic repugnance to the scholarly and grammatical breaking-up of sentences. Furness (ed. 1895, p. xi–xv), comparing Q2 to Q1: The Second Quarto . . . has the fairer page, with type fresh and clear. (P. xv): In . . . Q1 there are about fifty-six stage-directions; in . . . Q2 about seventy-four. Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 168): Q2 is printed from Q1. . . . it is set up with greater attention to typographical details. . . . And where the typographical correspondence of the two editions gets out, the spacing of Q2 is always arranged so as to recover it as soon as possible. The printer is evidently working from a model. Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xi): Q 2 corrects some of the mistakes in Q 1; but, on the other hand, it commits more than it corrects. Rhodes (1923, p. 64): the additions in Roberts’ are of small importance, being commonly the mark of Exit when it is quite clear from what the actor said that he was leaving the stage.

Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxvii–viii) cites further bibliographical evidence of [Q2’s] derivation [from Q1]: reproduction of such peculiarities as the spelling wodde for wood [261; here Brooks appears to be in error; unless there is an unrecorded press variant, Q2 reads wood] and the omission of Enter before Robin and Demetrius [1465]; its printing of The. In himselfe he is [62], Enter Snout [929], Enter Lysander [1440], Enter Thisbie [1989], and Lyon. Oh [2064] just as Q1 has them, tucked in on the same line as the end of the preceding speech; [Q2’s] agreement with Q1 in capitalizations which are not simply those to be expected; and above all its concurrence in thirty-five of the speech-prefixes where Q1 varies the form of the abbreviation. In II.i, for example, where Q1 has Ob. three times, then Oberon, Ob. four times more, then Oberon again; and, also exceptionally, for Demetrius’ sixth speech, Demet. Q2 follows suit. Full collation shows that it repeats all but thirteen of the verbal errors made in Q1. It corrects prose set as verse at [911–12], but not at [1986–9]. A [xxviii] half-hearted attempt is made to rectify some of the misdivided verse in V.i between [1797] and [1880], but most of it, like the misdivided [490–1] in II.I, is reprinted as it stands.

. . . Of [Q2’s] thirteen corrections, four eliminate obvious literal misprints. In the remainder the errors announce themselves: the misreading of waves for wanes [7], and of Cet. for Bot. [867]; the displacement of t from comfor to bet [691], the omission of an o from good [695], and of to before expound [1734] where the sense requires it; a mistake of number in gentleman [1333]; a failure to repeat is after this [1649]; an assimilation of is to knit [699]; and a catching of yet from earlier in the phrase [2104]. They needed nothing beyond the context in Q1 itself either to draw attention to them or to indicate the proper correction. Apart from the accidentals of spelling and the like, Q2 differs from Q1 only through the guesswork which furnished these corrections, and by over sixty new errors of the printing-house. Since it derives from the author only through Q1, its readings have no independent authority.

See the textual notes of this edition for all significant differences between Q1 and Q2, including SPP, SDD, lineation, punctuation, and verbal variants.

Date and Auspices of Q2

Editors struggled to determine the priority of the two editions, both dated 1600 on their title-pages. (See here.) Although most judged correctly that Fisher’s edition was the earlier, disputes arose. Halliwell-Phillipps (ed. 1856, 5:11): Perhaps Fisher’s edition, which on the whole, seems to be more correct than the other, was printed from a corrected copy of that published by Roberts. Fleay (1891, 2:178–9): The consensus of critical opinion is that Roberts pirated his copy from the earlier Fisher edition; but it would be a unique phenomenon had this been allowed to pass without inhibition or, at least, protest. All the evidence lies the other way. Better readings are usually found in later editions, whenever these are produced in the lifetime of the author. Printer’s errors are far more likely to have been introduced than corrected in a second edition. . . . It seems to me far more likely that Roberts printed the play for Fisher, who did not, for some reason unknown to us, care to put his name on the first issue; but finding the edition quickly exhausted, and the play popular, he then appended his name as publisher.

Only in the early 20th c. was Q2 MND correctly dated. Knowles (2020, pp. 1116–18): it was identified as part of a group of plays printed in the same year (1619) though bearing title pages dated from 1600 to 1619. That curious and rather shabby collection (Greg, 1955, p. 12) of plays known or sometimes thought to be by Shakespeare—Parts 1 and 2 of The Whole Contention betweene . . . Lancaster and York (2H6 and 3H6), Per., A Yorkshire Tragedy, MV, Wiv., MND, Lr., H5, and 1 Sir John Oldcastle—had been reprinted in 1619 from earlier quartos or octavos originally issued by a variety of printers and publishers; this new collection, now known as the Pavier Quartos, was printed by William Jaggard (whose shop would soon print F1) for the publisher Thomas Pavier, who was apparently planning to bring out a collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Several bound collections of these ten plays have in fact survived. The brilliant literary sleuthing that revealed the truth behind their several falsified title pages has been recounted by Richard Altick in The Scholar Adventurers (1950, pp. 189–95).

Greg (1908, pp. 113–31, 381–409) first proposed that the ten quartos bound together in a 17th-c. binding were not remainders—three were dated 1600, two 1608, three 1619—but were all actually printed in 1619 despite the differing dates on their title-pages. Eight had a printer’s device and numerals not used until 1610 and a type font not used until 1617, and all were printed on the same papers, bearing the same group of watermarks, which would not have been available over a span of nineteen years. (On rare Pavier watermarks bearing dates of either 1617 or 1619, see Stevenson [1951–2]). In each quarto the printer imitated an original edition. Greg inferred that initially three of these editions were printed in and dated 1619, but that when Pavier for some reason got nervous about his undertaking he issued others under their original dates, possibly seeming to sell off the remainders of editions printed years before by other publishers in order to avoid challenges to copyright. Pollard (1909, pp. 81–104) reports that he and Greg became suspicious of the quartos because they did not specify the printer, publisher, and publisher’s address, but rather the initials T. P. (for Thomas Pavier) on five of the title-pages; because around 1619 William Jaggard was using two of the printer’s devices appearing repeatedly in this group of quartos; because a font of Roman type used in the suspect quartos was a new kind also used in F1 in 1623; and because the spelling in each suspect quarto was generally more modern than in its (older) counterpart, evidently reflecting the habits of Jaggard’s compositors. The clinching proof was provided by Neidig (1910, pp. 145 ff.), who showed by photographic overlays that seven of the nine title-pages were printed in part from the same setting of type, parts of which were transferred from one title-page to another; these therefore were (p. 154) not printed nineteen years apart, but within a few days of each other. The order of printing that he established for these title-pages—WC, YT, Per., MV, Wiv., Lr., H5, and SJO—has been generally accepted as the order of printing of the plays themselves, with the exception that Per. follows WC, with which it shares continuous signatures. On the evidence of watermarks Blayney (1972, pp. 196–7) provisionally places MND before Lr., and Knowles (1982, p. 195) has found the supporting evidence that a number of distinctive types in the last three sheets of MND appear in the first three sheets of Lr. Wiv. is printed in a larger and different font than that used in Lr.

Chambers (1930, 1:134–7): The Contention and Pericles have continuous signatures and were clearly designed for issue together. . . . William Jaggard succeeded to the printing business of James Roberts about 1608, and by 1617 had associated in it his son Isaac Jaggard. . . . The reprinting of 1619 was no doubt done in concert with Pavier, who owned the copyright of five of the plays. . . . Presumably licence was obtained from Johnson for the use of Merry Wives of Windsor, and from Butter for that of King Lear. Of the other three, Midsummer-Night’s Dream was probably derelict, and Merchant of Venice may have been believed to be so. Blount’s registration of Pericles had already been overlooked, and there is nothing to show that Gosson had any copyright. The shortened imprints suggest that the title-pages were originally meant for half-titles in a comprehensive volume, which would naturally begin with a general and more explicit title-page. . . . It was nothing to Pavier and Jaggard that they were reprinting bad texts and ascribing to Shakespeare plays that were not his. Perhaps Shakespeare’s fellows viewed [136] such proceedings with less equanimity. On May 1619 a letter was addressed by the Lord Chamberlain to the Stationers’ Company directing that none of the King’s men’s plays should be printed without some of their consents. Its exact terms are not preserved. But they appear to be recited in a letter of similar import written on 10 June 1637 by Philip Earl of Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain, and brother of William Earl of Pembroke, who was Lord Chamberlain in 1619, asking the Stationers to stay publication of any King’s men plays without their consents. Pavier and Jaggard [137] may have issued all the ten plays. It is perhaps more likely that they had already abandoned the continuous signatures and perhaps the idea of a comprehensive volume, had separately issued those dated 1619, and had the rest ready in print. . . . Whatever the events of 1619, they can have left no enduring malice between the King’s men and the Jaggards, since it was again from their press that the collection . . . the First Folio came. From the facts of Pavier’s life—that he was at the time publishing religious books rather than plays and was just entering the governing councils of the Stationers’ Company—Johnson (1992, pp. 35–40) concludes that Jaggard, not Pavier, was the instigator of a straightforward scheme to put into print a collection of as many plays as were available, not a complete collection, and that Pavier collaborated by lending the copyrights on the plays he owned (WC, YT, SJO, H5, apparently Per.), by negotiating permissions for Lr. and Wiv., and by assuming or appropriating rights to the more-or-less derelict MV and MND. The faked imprints, Johnson suspects, were intended not to deceive the copyright holders but to avoid protest by the acting company or their agents, who ultimately may have concluded that plays being offered as old goods offered no competition to their planned new and improved Folio. Whether Pavier and Jaggard had conceived of their enterprise as a straightforward business venture, exactly why and when and how the players and other publishers may have objected to the project, what effect Pembroke’s letter may have had, and how William Jaggard and his son Isaac were persuaded to transfer their attentions to the larger project of the First Folio of 1623 have been much speculated upon and discussed; see Pollard (1909, pp. 100–4), Greg (1924, pp. 139–44), Greg (1955, pp. 9–17), . . . Greg (BEPD, 1957, 3:1107–8). Blayney (privately): Since Jaggard’s name did not appear on any of the 1619 quartos, there’s no reason to suppose that any of the players ever guessed that the culprit was the printer they knew best (because of his playbill monopoly). So that even if it had been the players who chose Jaggard to print the Folio (as it almost certainly wasn’t), we can’t assume that they’d forgiven him for a known transgression. . . . We shouldn’t credit them with knowing all that we know.

Kirschbaum (1955, 240–1) speculates about Jaggard’s particular circumstances and strategy in printing MND Q2: The play was derelict copy [Fisher, publisher of Q1, having disappeared from the Stationers’ Company without transferring his right to publish the book to any other member]; in order to publish such copy, it was necessary to obtain the Stationers’ Company’s permission. For the stationers’ guild to grant Jaggard the right to print this play in 1619 might be construed by King’s men as an act in direct defiance of their interests. [Greg (1955, p. 24) quotes the Stationers’ Court-Book C: vppon a letter from the right honorable the Lord Chamberleyne It is thought fit & so ordered That no playes that his Maiestyes players do play shalbe printed without consent of somme of them.] (P. 241): Jaggard decided not to try to establish copyright in [MND] at Stationers’ Hall but to print the derelict copy with a false publisher and a false date. This was the only alternative to issuing it with a 1619 date, a procedure which might have led to some kind of trouble. Jaggard’s apprehensions may perhaps be gauged by the supposition that his edition of [MND] purports to be not an edition different from another published in 1600 . . . but a second issue of the edition bearing Fisher’s name. It was not uncommon for a single edition to be sold by two or more publishers, each publisher having his name only on the title page of the issue he sold. How fortunate, therefore, for Jaggard to find in his shop a large stock of unsold copies of [MND] published in 1600 by his predecessor, Roberts! According to Kirschbaum (ibid., p. 250), Jaggard made his MND look like a different issue of the authentic Fisher edition or like an edition closely copying and closely succeeding the Fisher edition. However, Kirschbaum’s speculation, like Johnson’s above, casts Jaggard in the role of Q2’s publisher, rather than, as he was, only its printer, who may therefore have had no concerns about rights in the copy or about the King’s Men.

Massai (2007, pp. 112–19), departing from earlier scholars’ emphasis on Pavier and Jaggard’s deception of their fellow stationers and the King’s Men, instead proposes that publication of the Pavier quartos may have been part of a larger marketing scheme devised by these two stationers for their mutual benefit in selling first these quartos and then, if successful, the 1623 Folio. Massai associates the Pavier quartos with several other 17th-c. nonce collections of plays by single dramatists that brought together previously published editions of plays with editions just published for the collection. For example, (p. 116) the 1607 re-issue of Sir William Alexander’s The Monarchicke Tragedies (STC 344) includes two additional plays, . . . both dated 1607, and two plays originally issued in the 1604 edition of The Monarchick Tragedies (STC 343). While one of these two plays has no individual title page, the other retains the original one and the date in the imprint is unchanged. With some title pages dated 1619 and others earlier, the 1619 Pavier quartos may resemble such collections. Jaggard’s (p. 118) advantage in leading Pavier’s prospective readers to believe that they were [119] offered the scattered remains of a recently deceased playwright whose works had not been published since 1615 can probably best be described as a pre-publicity stunt. . . . Pavier’s marketing strategy was aimed at arousing rather than satisfying a specific demand for a product that was still relatively new to the English book market—a collection in folio of plays by a dramatist writing for the commercial playhouses. Isaac Jaggard may eventually have succeeded in finding an investor for his project [the 1623 Folio] because Pavier had paved the way for it in 1619 by significantly reviving the fortunes of Shakespeare in print. . . . What would Pavier gain from it? . . . Selling his quartos both individually and as a nonce collection would minimize Pavier’s financial risk, [and] . . . Pavier would gain additional revenue from lending the right to reprint his Shakespeare plays to other stationers [namely, those in the syndicate bringing out the Folio].

Compositor Identification and Order of Printing in Q2

Kable (1970, pp. 7–18) identifies Compositor B of the 1623 Folio as the single compositor who set all the Pavier quartos. Andrews (1971, p. 320) identifies the compositor of MND Q2 as the fellow workman of Compositor B on the Pavier quartos: Compositor F alone set up the type for four plays [including] . . . A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Andrews employs the following criteria for discriminating between the two compositors: spelling, capitalization of I will contractions, punctuation of the text, placement and punctuation of marginal stage directions, and consistency in the use of italic type for proper nouns. He attributes the marked changes in punctuation between Q1 and Q2 to Compositor F (pp. 395–6): with Midsummer Night’s Dream . . . Compositor F’s average number of punctuation changes . . . jumps dramatically upward, this time to 17.0 punctuation changes per page (1050 changes in 62 pages). . . . [396] It is difficult to judge the extent to which the dramatic increase in punctuation changes . . . was affected by the nature of the punctuation in the Q1 Midusmmer copy-text. . . . however, it would appear that the increase is largely to be explained as resulting from a new degree of aggressiveness on the part of the compositor. Andrews (1973, Two Compositors, p. 5) subsequently renames his Compositor F Compositor G.

In the course of compositor identification, Andrews (1971, pp. 331–2) provides a headline analysis of MND Q2: the set of running-titles [headlines] that appear on pages B1, B2v, B3, and B4v reappear on pages B2, B1v, B4, and B3v, respectively. They then reappear on the following pages: D1, D2v, D3, D4v and D2, D1v, D4, D3v; E1, E2v, E3, E4v and E2, E1v, E4, E3v; G1, G2v, G3, G4v and G2, G1v, G4, G3v. Another set of running-titles appear in parallel sequence: C1, C2v, C3, C4v and C2, C1v, C4, C3v; F1, F2v, F3, F4v and F2, F1v, F4, F3v; H1, H2v, H3, H4v and H2, H1v, H4, H3v. It is obvious that two different skeleton frames were employed in the printing of Midsummer, one frame being used to print both the outer and inner formes of quires B, D, E, and G and a second frame being used to print both the outer and inner formes of quires A, C, F, and H. (I omitted quire A from the initial part of this discussion because it contains only five pages with running-titles; it should be noted, however, that the running-titles for these pages are identical with, and in the same relationships to each other as, the running-titles for quires C, F, and H.

While Andrews sees no significance in such headline analysis for compositor identification, Blayney (1972, 197–205) does. Andrews (1973, Supplement to Two Compositors, p. 11) summarizes Blayney’s position, while departing from it: Blayney adopts as a working hypothesis the idea that the alternating skeletons reflect alternating compositorial stints. While the idea, according to Andrews, has some application to MV, Blayney’s working hypothesis runs into difficulties when he tries to apply it to the remaining Pavier Quartos, including MND. It is at variance with the most compelling evidence based on spellings, punctuation, and other differentiae. Andrews (1973, Supplement to Unresolved Bibliographical Problems, pp. 1–5) expands these differentiae to include the spacing of medial commas and periods and of periods after SPP.

Andrews and Blayney also differ concerning when in the sequence of Pavier quartos MND Q2 was printed. Andrews (1971, p. 328), noting that MND’s title-page contains no typographical associations with other Pavier quarto title-pages, writes that MND was the very last Pavier quarto to be printed. Blayney (1972, pp. 196–7), relying on watermarks, places MND Q2 just before Lr.

Knowles (1982, pp. 191–206), accepting Blayney’s location of MND Q2, analyzes the recurrence of distinctively damaged types from the last three quires of MND Q2 in Lr. Q2 before focusing on such recurrences within the latter. He discovers that quires at the beginning of Lr. were set by two compositors at two different type cases; (p. 202) he refuses to speculate on the relation of these two Jaggard workmen to the ones who set type for F1. Although Knowles’s primary interest is Lr., he does advance a hypothetical explanation of the typographical relations of Q2 MND and Q2 Lr. Since the last three sheets of MND seem to have been set from two type cases [197], and, as Peter Blayney has shown . . . , with two skeletons used for the most part in the same unusual pattern of alternation as is found in Lr., one may safely suppose that the last three sheets of MND were set by two compositors working more or less concurrently; since the type cases are the same for both plays, one may even think it likely that the same two compositors who set the last sheets of MND continued at their cases to begin setting the early sheets of the next Pavier quarto, Q2 Lr. It looks as if Compositor 1 [at case x], after setting MND G(i), distributes the long-standing type pages from E(i) and begins to set H(o) sometime before his fellow compositor at case y begins to set H(i), the last forme for this play. He finishes while Compositor 2 is distributing types from G(o) in order to set H(i). Apparently Compositor 1 begins work right away on the first forme of the next play, A(o) of Lr., before G(i) has been unlocked. . . . Meanwhile Compositor 2 has finished H(i) and is about to begin Lr. B(o). . . . The precise details of these speculations will have to await further confirmation from the study of types throughout the whole of Q2 MND, but I think that there is already sufficient evidence from types to support Peter Blayney’s assignment of MND just prior to Lr. in the Pavier series.

Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxviii–xxix) notes an abnormal prefix [Peter for Quin 820] . . . on D1r. Bottom’s Peter quince [819] supports Dover Wilson’s diagnosis of the cause [Wilson, ed. 1924, p. 154], a shortage of [italic] capital Q’s; undoubtedly it prompted the resort to Peter, Pet., which continues on D2v. These are two pp. of the outer forme; in between them, D1v, D2r, belonging to the inner forme, have Quin. (eight times). Sheet D, then, was set by formes, D2v [xxix] after D1r, and not seriatim [or in reading order]. So, no doubt, was the whole of Q2; an easy method with a page-for-page reprint.

Annotated Q1 Copy for Q2

Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xv), speculatively: In respect of the superior stage-directions of Q 2, it may not be unlawful to conjecture that Roberts [i.e., Pavier] had taken a copy of Fisher’s Quarto to a theatrical representation, or had otherwise procured a prompter’s copy and improved the stage-directions of his edition accordingly. Massai (2007, 122–9) identifies certain patterns of very occasional editorial attention across the Pavier quartos, including MND Q2.

The First Folio (1623)

On 8 Nov. 1623 the first collection of Sh.’s plays, now known as the First Folio, was entered in the Stationers’ Register (Book D, p. 69), as here transcribed in Greg (BEPD, 1:33; cf. 3:1109–12): Mr. Blounte Isaak Iaggard. Entred for their Copie vnder the hands of Mr. Dor. Worrall and Mr. Cole warden Mr. William Shakspeers Comedyes Histories, & Tragedyes soe manie of the said Copies as are not formerly entred to other men. vizt. [Here follows a list of half the plays]. Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard were co-publishers; Isaac Jaggard had just recently inherited the printing business of his late father William. The Dor. Worrall who granted official license to publish was Thomas Worrall, chaplain to the Bishop of London, and George Cole was then Upper Warden for the Stationers. MND is not explicitly included in the entry because it had already been entred to other men, namely, Thomas Fisher, in 1600. In F1 MND is found on sigs. N1v-O3v, pp. 145–62 of the first section, the comedies. Lee’s (1902) census of extant copies has been replaced by West (2003). All earlier facsimiles, such as those of Lee (1902), Methuen (1910), and Kökeritz-Prouty (Yale, 1954), are surpassed by Hinman’s (1968; 1996) facsimile compiled from the best pages of copies in the Folger Library. For a facsimile of MND alone see West (c. 2008).

Press Variants

Hinman (1963, 1:260–1) identifies sigs. N2, N6v, and O3 as certainly or possibly indicating stop-press corrections. However, his claims that sig. N2 (where in some copies for in 331 is unevenly inked) (p. 261) almost certainly reflects proof correction; that sig. N6v (where in some copies a space prints after day-light, in 1481) thus contains a possible stop-press variant; and that sig. O3 (where a space prints after sent. in 2040) also exhibits stop-press correction have all been silently set aside by Rasmussen & West (2012, p. 875). Sig. O2 is variant (Hinman, p. 261): O2 (page 159, MND)—one non-textual variant only, as in O5v [where the page no. also varies].

1. page no.	165] 1 copy only (Folg. 60)
	159] all others; Lee and Yale [facsimiles].

Compositor Identification and Order of Printing in F

Drawing upon variations in the spelling of frequently occurring words (e.g., do/doe and go/goe), Satchell (1920, p. 352) distinguishes between two compositors setting type in F1 Mac.; Willoughby (1932, pp. 56–8), applying Satchell’s method more widely in F1, concludes that these two compositors, now called Compositor A and Compositor B, must have been assisted by at least another pair, for MND, MV, and Rom. (p. 58) show no evidence . . . of having been composed by either A or B. Hinman (1957, p. 4), announcing his discovery of a new compositor in the F1 Tragedies, designates the newcomer Compositor E because not all of the material before the Tragedies was set by A and B, and C and D may later be required to designate compositors in the Comedies. Then, in his masterly study of the printing of F1, Hinman (1963, 1:193–200) uses evidence of the recurrence of distinctively damaged types as well as spellings to separate Compositors C and D from Compositors A and B. While (ibid., 2:518) Compositor D worked only on the Comedies (MM, Err., Ado, LLL, MND, MV, and AYL), Compositor C worked only most frequently on the Comedies, for Hinman finds it possible that C might be identified as Compositor B’s partner on plays in the Histories and Tragedies, particularly R2 and Ham. Hinman employs typographical evidence, rules, headlines and spellings to determine the order in which the pages of F1, including (ibid., 2:414–26) those in quires N and O (all of MND and the beginning of MV), were set into type and their compositors. Cairncross (1971, pp. 44, 47), in a rather unsystematic study, disputes a number of Hinman’s compositor attributions of particular pages. Howard-Hill (1973, pp. 83, 98) and O’Connor (1975, pp. 93–9, 117), in more thorough and orderly examinations, confirm Cairncross’s reassignment of four quire-O pages from Compositor A, to whom Hinman assigned them, to Compositor D, while disproving Cairncross’s (1971, p. 47; 1972, pp. 379, 406) other reattributions of pages from Compositor C to Compositor B and from the latter to Compositor E. It is the combined work of Hinman, Howard-Hill, and O’Connor that is now widely accepted—see, e.g., Wells & Taylor (1987, p. 149).

Hinman demonstrated that MND, like all the other F plays, was set into type by formes from cast-off copy, or copy marked up to indicate exactly which lines were to fit on each page of the quire, so that the pages could be set out of order. He identified three different compositors, each at a different case—Compositor B at case y, Compositor C at case x, and Compositor D at case z. The order of printing of the formes and the division of work among the compositors discovered by Hinman follows, but the pages marked with an asterisk are those confirmed or reassigned to Compositor D by, in succession, Cairncross, Howard-Hill, and O’Connor:

Cx

Dz

Cx

Dz

By

Dz

Cx

Cx

By

Dz

By

Dz

Dz

By

By

Cx

Cx

Dz

Cx

By

Cx

Cx

Dz

Cx

Dz

Cx

Dz

N3v:

N4

N3:

N4v

N2v:

N5

N2:

N5v

N1v:

N6

N1:

N6va

*N6vb

O3:

(O4va)

(O4vb)

O2v:

(*O5)

O3v:

(O4a1–50)

(O4a51-b)

O2:

(*O5v)

O1v:

(*O6)

O1:

(*O6v)

• Compositor B set lines 1–218, 348–472, 2003–129
• Compositor C set 219–347, 473–727, 1110–1237, 1501–2002, 2130–222
• Compositor D set 728–1109, 1238–1500

Mistakes in casting could force compositors to alter the line division of their copy. All three of the F MND compositors change line division, but few of these changes evidently compensate for faulty casting-off. Werstine (1984, p. 114): Compositor B splits in two Q verse lines at 413–14 (correction of a Q error of running the initial half-line of speech together with the next line), 430–1, and 434–5; Compositor C at 1560–1; and Compositor D at 1441–2. Compositor B may deliberately stretch his copy for sig. N2v when he divides in two the pentameters on each side of a mid-line SD above and below which he creates white space. Both Compositor C and D, though, are simply dividing the first lines of speeches that, combined with SPP, are each too wide for the F column (p. 79). When B twice prints prose as verse on sig. O3 (2068–9, 2108–9) he neither saves nor loses space (p. 116). When he sets verse as prose at 2044–5, he is (pp. 87–8) faced with a verse line too long for his composing stick and therefore runs the end of the line together with the following verse line to set both lines as [88] prose. While the lines appear on sig. O3 in the first half of a quire, where he may need to adjust his copy to available space, his deliberately saving a line of type seems unlikely because elsewhere in the same column he allows for lavish white space around SDD. (P. 92): Compositor D divides off the last sentence of a prose speech at 999–1002 on sig. N5, thereby using an extra line of type, but because he is setting a page in the second half of a quire, space is not a factor. Instead the relineation seems designed to mark a change of address or topic and seems to be associated with other such changes he made in LLL at 128–30 and 800–2.

Most, but not all, the verbal variants between Q2 and F have been recognized and classified as corrections or errors introduced by the three compositors: for Compositor B see Werstine (1978); for Compositors C and D O’Connor (1977).

Features of F

Collier (ed. 1842, 2:cc2): The chief difference between the two quartos and the folio is, that in the latter the Acts, but not the Scenes, are distinguished. (Rhodes [1923, p. 120] addresses the possibility that the divisions [into acts in F] . . . were made in consonance with theatrical practice and connoted pauses [between acts at the Blackfriars or the new Globe]. . . . [T]he division into five acts necessitates two pauses during the game of blind man’s bluff in the woods, which is marked into three acts. Although it shows execrable stage-management, at the end of Actus Tertius is a note They sleepe all that act, meaning that the four lovers would have to lie, feigning sleep, in view of the audience while the act is playing [the act being the music between the acts]. . . . [I]t is indisputable that the division . . . was made by the prompter in consonance with theatrical practice. It cannot be entertained for a moment that They sleepe through the act [sic] was a literary or editorial note, to assist a reader in visualising the action. Foakes [ed. 1984, p. 151] believes that the act in this SD refers to the next act—Act 4.) Furness (ed. 1895, p. xv): In Roberts’s (Q2) [there are] about seventy-four [SDD]; and in the Folio, about ninety-seven.

Q2 Copy For F

Johnson (ed. 1765, 1:176): Roberts [i.e., Q2] was followed, though not without some variations, by Hemings and Condel [i.e., F]. Furness (ed. 1895, pp. xiii–xiv) demonstrates how the failure of the Q2 compositor to follow his copy precisely and set the word and in roman type in Titania’s line 979 in turn led the F compositor to create the redundant SD at 979–80: Enter Pease-blossome, Cobweb, Moth, Mustard-|seede and foure Fairies. Ebsworth (ed. Q2 1880, pp. xx–xxi) cites as proof of F’s use of Q2 as copy common errors at 183, 481, 482, 552, 1199, 213, 532, 557, 1652, 1688. Wilson (ed. 1924, p. 154): In 1619 . . . Jaggard . . . followed [his copy the Fisher Q] with suspicious exactitude. Apparently, however, the constant occurrence of Queene and Quince in dialogue, stage-direction and speech-heading, strained the resources of his compositors’ type. In any event, the italic Q seems to have given out on sig. D1r. and D2v., and accordingly the name Peter had to be resorted to in place of Quince. The fact that the F. also reads Peter in this same section of the text is a proof that it was set up from the Q. of 1619 and not from the Fisher Q. of 1600. Another proof is the reappearance in 1623 of nearly all the sixty to seventy misprints first introduced into the text in 1619. When we observe, moreover, that to these transmitted misprints the F. compositors added another sixty to seventy of their own, it will be evident that the F. version cannot claim much textual authority.

Only Craig (1961, pp. 108–9) appears to dissent from the view that F was printed from a copy of Q2: As a printed version of the same manuscript from which the fair copy had been made, Q1 would resemble the theatrical version very closely, and this may be said of both of the quarto and the folio as they stand. It does not seem necessary therefore, in view of this identity of origin, to imagine that the folio has been set from the quarto. Printing of the folio from the playhouse copy is a simpler and more satisfactory way in which to account for resemblances between these two texts. . . . [109] Although [F] has some features that may be derived from Q2, [it] actually resembles Q1 more closely than it does Q2. There are of course passages in which F differs from both Q1 and Q2. . . . In this perplexity one has to content oneself with a moderate position: the official playbook was in the hands of Jaggard and Blount and served them as copy for the body of the play, although there are in F some minor resemblances to Q2.

Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxviii–xix) cites evidence . . . of several kinds for the use of Q2 as F’s copy: At [1170] both [Q2 and F] have the abbreviation Hell. (Q1 Hel.), unique in each. On fifteen further occasions they have identical abbreviations in speech-prefixes, differing from Q1’s and from some of their own. Hence we can be confident that the tucking-in of Enter Snowt [929], rather than giving it the normal line of its own, and the printing of prose as verse at [1986–8], come in F from Q2, even though they originated in Q1. The Folio has several instances of progressive corruption. At [253] Q1 reads is so oft; Q2 inadvertently omitted so; F, lamely attempting to mend the metre, miscorrects to is often. Q2, at [1703], undoes the Q1 inversion more will hear, reading will hear more; F worsens the corruption with shall hear more. There are less striking instances at [1415, 1420]. Lysander’s sentence at [1677–8] is left incomplete because Egeus interrupts him; not realizing this, Q2 completes it by supplying a verb: be. The Folio repeats this and over fifty of its other corruptions: good examples are Q2’s silly foal for filly foal (misreading long s) [417], . . . and hearken for listen (a compositor’s synonym) [2038].

See the textual notes of this edition for all significant differences between Q2 and F, including SPP, SDD, lineation, punctuation, and verbal variants.

Annotation of Q2 Copy for F

Capell (1783, 2:3:111 ff.) identifies some F-only SDD as playhouse interpolations (see here). White (ed. 1857, 4:17): Printed copy [for F] had been used at the theatre for stage purposes and corrected with some care. Ebsworth (ed. Q2 1880, p. xix) dissents: It is idle to talk of the Folio editors having access to any manuscript authority for [MND]. We hold it indisputable that they used Roberts’s printed Quarto, sometimes increasing the defects, sometimes guessing commonplace variations; but they give absolutely nothing of such improvements as would have been gained from a genuine manuscript, or even from a certified revised and corrected prompt-book. Halliwell-Phillipps (1884, p. 255) confirms the theatrical provenance of the copy of Q2 or the MS used to annotate that copy by identifying Tawyer (1924) as a subordinate actor in the Globe Theatre in the pay of Heminge’s [sic]. For more on Tawyer, see G. E. Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:590. Furness (ed. 1895, pp. xiv–xv) traces the appearance of Egeus for Philostrate in F’s Act 5 to the doubling of their parts and identifies the Asse head (927) as a prompter’s term: (p. xv) the prompter of Shakespeare’s stage, knowing well enough that there was among the scanty properties but one Asse-head, inserted in the text with the Asse head—the only one they had. Brooks (ed. 1979, p. xxxii n. 1), objecting to the possibility of doubling Egeus and Philostrate, points out that there is no time for an actor to re-enter as Egeus just after he has exited as Philostrate in 1.1. See also Greg, 1955, p. 243, imagining Philostrate unavailable for Act 5 because he doubled another role that also needed to be performed then, and Hodgdon, 1986, p. 536. Smidt (1986, pp. 121–2) also disagrees about the doubling: When the Folio substitutes Egeus for Philostrate as master of ceremonies at the wedding feast this could be explained as a way of saving an actor’s part, but there are no great number of men’s parts in [MND], and it is more likely that at some point in the stage history of the play someone objected to the absence of Egeus at the feast and thought he ought to join the party once he had been admitted to the comedy. Brooks seems right. More likely the appearance of Egeus for Philostrate in Act 5 arises from the telescoping of the roles. When bookkeepers subsumed one role under another in actual playhouse MSS, they often failed systematically to record the disappearance of the subsumed role in SDD and SPP; hence perhaps the persistence of Philostrate in Act 1 and once in a SP in Act 5 (1874) in F (see Werstine 2012, pp. 164–72). For the idea that Egeus, rather than Philostrate, appeared in 5.1 in the allegedly earliest (1594) version of the play, see Hunter (1998, pp. 8–9, and 2002, p, 6). For the idea that John Heminge annotated the copy of Q2 with notes in which he recalled a 1594 performance of the play, see Hunter (2002, pp. 7–10). For the application of literary and/or performance criticism to the Q1/F variants, particularly Philostrate/Egeus, see Hodgdon (1986), Wells (1991, MND Revisited, p. 22), Calderwood (1991, p. 428, n. 40), Wiles (1993, p. 174), Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 265–8), McGuire (1988, 1989), Pollack-Pelzner (2009). Taylor (2002, p. 52, n. 31) contends that F’s substitution of Egeus for Philostrate in Act 5 is inexplicable and therefore certainly wrong.

Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xvi): the text of the Folio has its direct origin in a stage copy of Q 2. He cites as evidence ll. 1924, 927, and 2107, alleging in connection with the last that the early entrance of Thisby is an indication that printer’s copy was a stage copy . . . indicating that the actor was to be ready before he has to make his actual appearance on stage. Such an observation about the F SD as a warning direction is fanciful because Flute as Thisby comes onstage fewer than a half-dozen lines later; actual theatrical texts almost always mark warnings much earlier.

By the 1920s confidence that the copy of Q2 used in the playhouse must also have served as printer’s copy for F begins to slip. Adams (1923, pp. 538–9): MND, like R2, 1H4, Tit., and Ado, was printed in F from the actors’ special copies of . . . quartos which had been converted at the theatre into prompt-books or from (p. 539) the most available editions of these quartos [after they had been compared to] . . . the actors’ prompt-books . . . ; these collated quartos [would have been placed] in the hands of the [F] compositors. Wilson (ed. 1924, p. 78), in addition to suggesting an annotated quarto that served as printer’s copy may have served as a playhouse promptbook also allows only that Q2 copy for F could have been corrected for the purpose of publication, by some scribe working with the prompt-book before him. Wilson is led to suggest such an alternative by his belief that a copy of Q1 may have served the acting company in the playhouse; the Q1 punctuation of Theseus’s speech at 1841–57 is the slender reed on which he builds: (p. 157, n. 1) Now each item in the brief [read by Lysander in F] in Q. 1600 is followed by a question-mark, as if it were a query put to some one who replies with the comments [the only parts of the speech given Theseus in F], and it looks very probable that it was these queries which suggested the F. arrangement. If so, then the theatre prompt-book was almost certainly a copy of Q. 1600 seeing that all the queries but two towards the end of the speech, have been eliminated in Q. 1619. Acquainted as he is with playhouse MSS, Wilson also attempts to locate SDD first printed in F in particular places on the pages of the quarto prompt-book, suggesting (p. 156) that shifting places [1460] appeared in the margin of sig. F2, where it governed the action represented on the page as a whole, rather than simply in the line opposite which it is printed in F, to which it is irrelevant. He also imagines (p. 157) that Enter Pucke, printed in F over twenty lines before he needs to enter [865], was in the playhouse quarto a warning SD, noted atop sig. D2. Although Greg (1942, pp. 125–6) accepts the tradition that F’s new directions undoubtedly originated in the playhouse, he denies that the copy of Q2 from which F was printed could have served to guide performance because F is not sufficiently consistent and correct (p. 126): I should have expected to find more of the book-keeper’s notes in the original prompt-book, and therefore in Q; and if Q had itself been used as a prompt-book I should have expected to find certain anomalies removed in F. If the book-keeper found it necessary to specify the Lovers in v.i [see above, here] in the original prompt-book, why did he not the Clowns in III.i [813] either there or in the prompt quarto, especially since in the latter he took the trouble to translate the rabble into Snout and Starveling in IV.ii [1746]? Surely the errors in I.i whereby two half-lines of text appear as stage directions [30, 33] would have been corrected. Why does the entrance of the translated Bottom appear out of place [927]? The duplication in V.i, whereby we have Exit all but Wall [1951] followed three lines later by the exit of Lion, Thisbe, and Moonshine [1955], could hardly have been overlooked in performance. The second is the original direction of Q; the first must have been introduced from a manuscript. No doubt some confusion might have occurred in transferring the prompter’s notes from the copy Q1 to one of Q2; but on the whole the theory that a quarto was used as prompt copy seems to raise more difficulties than it solves. Idem (1955, pp. 244–5) also cites as additional examples of the incompetence and clumsiness of his imagined editor of Q2 copy for F: 865, 888, 1385, 1509, 1541, 1559, 1661–2, 1746, 1819, 2009, as they appear in F. Greg’s idea that Q2 copy for F was not itself annotated and used in the playhouse is followed by Doran (ed. 1959, p. 174), Wells (ed. 1967, p. 165); Evans (ed. 1974, p. 247); Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxix–xxx); Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 147); Wells & Taylor (1987, p. 279); Holland (ed. 1994, p. 115); Berger (ed. 1995, pp. x–xi). Nonetheless, quartos were annotated for playhouse use (see Werstine 2012, pp. 314–17, 335–42) and continued to be throughout the 17th c., and Greg’s expectations of thoroughness, consistency, and correctness of annotation in early modern theatrical texts are denied by the contents of such actual texts (see Werstine 2012, pp. 107–99, 234–391).

Authority and Revision in F

To judge from Capell’s comments on particular variants in F’s dialogue and SDD, he attributes no authority to F, but Malone has somewhat higher regard for F, and by the latter half of the 19th c., a number of editors are prepared to grant Shn. authority to readings in it. The New Bibliographers return to Capell’s positon, but near the end of the 20th c. there is a revival of the 19th-c. belief in F.

Capell (1783, 2:3:111) thinks F’s SD Musicke Tongs, Rurall Musicke (1541) simply wrong: it is certainly an interpolation of the players; as no such direction appears in either quarto, and Titania’s reply is a clear exclusion of it. He denies (2.3:113–14) the authority of F’s cut at 1718+1 of Are you sure / That we are awake? He is equally dismissive of (2.3:115) F’s redistribution of some of 1841–57 to Lysander— this reading and commenting of two persons, alternately, has something aukward in it: and seems a change of the players, calculated for the ease of the actor who presented the latter character—and of the player editors’ error in making Egeus enter in an act [Act 5] he has no concern in . . . (probably) from their laying Philostrate’s character in this act upon the player who had finish’d that of Egeus. It is not clear if Capell is suggesting that the Egeus actor doubled the role of Philostrate throughout the play or only in the last act. (Capell [1783, 2.3:116] thinks Sh.’s own revision can be recovered in small part from F2, in particular in the reading streames at 2076.)

Malone (in Boswell, ed. 1821, 1:203), though, calls for more respect for F: Thus therefore the first folio, as far as respects the plays above enumerated [including MND], labours under the disadvantage of being at least a second, and in some cases a third, edition of these quartos. I do not, however, mean to say, that many valuable corrections of passages undoubtedly corrupt in the quartos are not found in the folio copy; or that a single line of these plays should be printed by a careful editor without a minute examination, and collation of both copies [i.e., Q and F].

For White (ed. 1857, 4:17) though, Neither quarto . . . is to be regarded in any other light than as an assistant in eliminating such corruptions as may have crept into the folio itself; though Fisher’s enables us to correct some errors which were passed over in the copy of the quarto furnished to the printers by Heminge and Condell. The quartos sometimes concur in a reading different from that in the folio; but this is of little moment: it merely shows (unless in the case of a palpable corruption of the press) that in the copy from which the folio was printed, an error is corrected which had appeared in both the previous editions. The presumption is especially in favor of the authorized edition [i.e., F], when we know that it was printed from a copy that had been corrected in Shakespeare’s theatre, and probably under his own eye, if not by his own hand. (In particular White cites the F readings at 700, 1247, 1384+, 1718+1, 1994 [corrected by Shakespeare or someone else in his theatre], and 2010 as authoritative; however, he thinks 1812–13, which are common to Q and F, an interpolation and the substitution of Egeus for Philostrate in Act 5 wrong, both not Sh.’s.) So Furness (ed. 1895, p. xii): It may be that in using a printed text [for F, namely Q2, Heminge and Condell] were virtually using Shakespeare’s manuscript if they knew that this text . . . had been for years used in their theatre as a stage copy, with possible additional stage-business marked on the margin for the use of the prompter, and here and there sundry emendations, noted possibly by the author’s own hand, who, by these changes, theoretically authenticated all the rest of the text. Adams (1923, pp. 539): These printed prompt-copies [such as the copy of Q2 used to print F MND] would receive corrections (from the author, or from the actors), alterations, and additions and such stage-directions as were found necessary.

However, the New Bibliographer Wilson (ed. 1924, p. 159), generalizing about the changes in SDD and SPP introduced into F, returns to Capell’s position: it should not be necessary to argue that Shakespeare himself had nothing whatever to do with them. Even less easy is it to imagine him in any way responsible for the F. corrections in the dialogue. [He lists those unlikely to be due to the compositors: 759, 1247, 1287, 1719, 1829, 1994, 2010.] These variants are almost certainly due to the scribe who gave us the F. stage-directions. Some of them are good, some indifferent, and some definitely bad; but all are assuredly guesses. Greg (1942, p. 125–6) on F’s text: The new directions undoubtedly originated in the playhouse. (P. 126): Such changes in the text as are not either misprints or corrections of misprints seem to be the editor’s and do not imply any independent source.

Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxx–xxxiii), following Greg’s questionable presumption that the copy of Q2 from which F was set could not itself have been the playhouse text used to guide performance: The promptbook consulted in preparing copy for the Folio was clearly not without alterations from the text in the prompt-copy as [xxxi] originally transcribed from Shakespeare’s autograph [assuming without grounds that that Shn. copy could not itself have been used in the playhouse]. Theoretically, some changes may have been authorized by him; but at least the majority were no doubt made without authority, whether in the original prompt-book or in a new one, if a new one was transcribed from it. But whatever unauthentic changes had accumulated in it, the prompt-copy which supplied some Folio readings did derive by a process of transcription from Shakespeare’s autograph. That process was independent of Q1. Accordingly, in respect of readings which the Folio can be presumed to have taken from the prompt-copy, F is an independent witness to what may have stood in the autograph. In the line of descent described it is the earliest extant witness, and in respect of those readings, and of those alone, it is therefore a substantive (that is, an evidential) text—as Q1 is for the play as a whole. Such authority as F therefore has is weakened, however, by the annotator’s demonstrable negligence and clumsiness. He cites the misplaced SD at 927 and the duplicate SDD introduced at 865 and 1951. His neglect of dialogue further limits the possible authority of F. This is significant for F’s readings at [1247 and 1994]: passionate where Q1 has a palpable omission, and knit up in thee where Q1 has the impossible knit now againe. . . . Yet if they are retrievals from prompt-copy, why are there not more? That the annotator’s eye might fall upon dialogue may be suggested by F’s choise of merit for the Quartos’ choise of friends [149]. Brooks (pp. 154–5) makes a case that merit could have been Sh.’s first choice of reading in his initial composition, one that he later replaced with friends but one that nonetheless found its way into the playhouse text from Sh.’s own papers. In spite of his confidence in the authority of this single F-only reading, Brooks thinks that his annotator of Q2 (p. xxxii) was perfectly prepared to guess, even when he could have consulted the prompt-book, and passionate and up in thee may be other guesses of his, though there the contexts offered little hint.

A further subtraction has to be made from the authority of F’s text, even where its source is prompt-copy. The prompt-copy itself is unlikely still to have represented in all respects the kind of performance for which Shakespeare designed the play, or to which he may have adapted it. The substitution of Egeus for Philostrate in Act V, at odds with Theseus’ enquiry for our usual manager of mirth and damaging the metre at [1833] was made apparently to save a speaking part (Philostrate is mute in I.i): it is a change Shakespeare cannot have wished for, though he might acquiesce in it as an expedient. The same may be said of the one or more intervals [at the ends of acts] introduced in a play conceived and originally performed as a continuous action. . . . [xxxiii] If the revival of the Dream matched by the prompt-book was in 1609 or later [the approximate date at which Sh.’s company began to perform at the Blackfriars and observe intervals between acts for the first time], Shakespeare may not have been closely associated with it.

With Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 148), Wells & Taylor (1987, pp. 279–80), and Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 115–17, 257–68) the 19th-c. understanding of F’s authority makes a return. Foakes interprets as Sh.’s revisions the few corrections made to Q2’s dialogue in F: 149, 1041, 1247, 1994, and 2010. He also thinks that Puck’s early entrance in F at 865 in 3.1 records prompt-copy, suggesting that Puck should overhear rather more of the dialogue between Quince and his crew than his entry in the quartos would permit. Wells and Taylor present the F text’s possible censorship as a consequence of the 1606 Acte to Restraine Abuses, shown by the loss of 2113–2113+1 as further evidence of its theatrical provenance. They adopt the following editorial policy: Without strong evidence to the contrary, one must therefore assume that the prompt-book is the authority for all added or substantially altered Folio directions and speech prefixes. Some of these variants might derive from late revivals, over which Shakespeare had no control; but none certainly do [sic], and only the act divisions and Tawyer’s name can be confidently associated with performances later than those in the mid 1590s. Although each direction has been considered on its merits, we have found no reason to doubt that the bulk of the Folio directions represent the play as originally and authoritatively staged. Those directions which clearly envisage a different staging from that implied by Q seem to us to be dramatic improvements for which Shakespeare was probably responsible. Such an editorial policy forces justification of F SDD that were long thought to be erroneous, such as the F entrance of Pucke in 3.1. [at 865] over twenty lines before Q1’s entrance for him (which is also reproduced in F, 888) and twenty lines before, for all one can tell, he has business onstage: (p. 281) an editor committed to entertain possible authorial revision must consider the F alternative. (Pp. 281–2): Following Greg’s unwarranted assumption that F had to have been printed from a copy of Q2 annotated with reference to a playhouse MS (rather than from a copy of Q2 annotated for use in the playhouse), Wells and Taylor also assume that the annotator must have been right to add the F SD from the playhouse MS. They justify this second assumption by imagining that F records accurately a production in which Puck entered silently and unnoticed to supply Quince with the almanac he was requesting at the point of the F SD. (Werstine [2012, pp. 173–6], however, shows that there is no reason to suppose bookkeepers’ additions of entrances necessarily inerrant because in actual theatrical texts some such additions can be shown to be erroneous in context; consequently, playhouse texts, such as the one inferred to lie behind F MND, need not be reliable records of any performance.) Holland (ed. 1994, p. 117) attributes to some other authority than the compositor’s or editor’s ingenuity the five readings adopted by Foakes as Shn. revisions. He writes (pp. 257–68) of Shakespeare’s Revisions of Act 5, accepting Wilson’s account of the mislined verse at 1798–1880 and counting as a second revision the substitution of Egeus for Philostrate and the hiving off of pieces of Theseus’s 1841–57 speech for Lysander. Ioppolo (1991, p. 113) had associated Sh.’s alleged revision of 1824–5 in Q1’s printer’s copy with the transfer of some of Theseus’s lines to Lysander in the F printer’s copy, but Holland (ed. 1994, p. 266) demurred.

The Date of Composition

The current consensus of scholarly opinion is that MND was written around 1595–96, during the same period as LLL, R2, and Rom.

The latest date for the composition and first performance of MND is set by the reference to it in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia (1598, f. 282r), which was entered in the Stationers’ Register 7 Sept. 1598. MND was entered in the Stationers’ Register 8 Oct. 1600, reaching print in the same year, when, according to the title page of Q1, it had been sundry times publickely acted, by the Right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. There are no such clear indications of the earliest date for composition or performance.

Efforts to determine an earliest date are guided by opinions (mostly impressionistic and subjective) of the development of Sh.’s style and artistry, and by attempts to link perceived allusions in the text to other works and to external events. The most popular area in the latter for the exercise of ingenuity is the identification of the wedding for which it is supposed, without evidence, that MND was composed, but various other circumstances have also claimed attention.

Style and Development

Chetwood (1750, pp. 12–13) exercises his best Endeavours to place the Dramatic Works of our Author, in the order of Time they were acted; but he gives no reasons for his order, dating MND 1595, 1600, 1610, and placing it ninth, after Rom. (fourth) and Tmp. (seventh). Griffith (1775, p. 2), while rejecting the notion which she believes prevalent that Tmp. and MND were the first and second of his writing, articulates the most common opinion as to why MND was written early in Sh.’s career, an opinion founded . . . on the idea, that his youthful imagination must naturally be thought to have been more sportive and exuberant, than his riper judgment might have permitted the indulgence of. Malone’s oft reprinted Attempt was influential not only in recognizing the prevalence of rhyme and the embellished style as marks of early work, but also in condemning the meagre and uninteresting fable and insignificance of the chief characters as attributable to Sh.’s genius being in its minority (in Steevens ed. 1778, 1:285–7; see also here, here). In 1778, and in 1785, this opinion led to his placing MND tenth in the canon, with Rom. at eleventh, both in 1595; Tmp. he placed next to last in 1612. However, in his own edition of 1790, believing the mourning muses (1849–50) to refer to Spenser’s poem The Tears of the Muses (1591) rather than to the poet’s death, he moved MND back to fourth, in 1592. The variorum edds. of 1793, 1803, and 1813 followed suit, but after Malone’s death the variorum of 1821 changed the date to 1594. Hurdis (1792, p. 17) finds Malone’s date of 1592 very reasonable but rates the play more highly, thinking it to have been the production of a judgment considerably matured and that there were undoubtedly many plays written before it. Tieck ([1793] 1796; in Bate, 1992, pp. 62, 565), while questioning Malone’s 17-year gap between MND and Tmp. (1595/1612) is nevertheless certain that the latter was written a great deal later than the former, for one might say that The Tempest is a lovelier and more perfect reprise of MND. Dibdin ([1797–1800], 3:29) adopts Malone’s 1778 chronology as generally admitted to be correct; though I cannot help confessing that I have seen no authority by which I am convinced that it is so.

Drake (1817, 2:261, 298–302) objects to Malone’s date of 1592 (in ed. 1790) because he considers it [2:298] a gross violation of probability to place three or four plays in the same year; he therefore dates MND 1593 (together with Rom., after Err. and LLL both in 1591, but before Shr., TGV, R3 and R2 in 1594–6). Though he repeats Malone’s strictures on the play (assigning them to Meres, either mistakenly or writing carelessly), he nevertheless refutes them vigorously in his subsequent analysis; (see, in part, here). Hallam (1839, 2:387, 390): MND’s superiority to [Err., TGV, and LLL] affords some presumption that it was written after them. But it evidently belongs to the earlier period of Shakspeare’s genius; poetical as we account it, more than dramatic, . . . [though not] from any deficiency of dramatic excellence. (2:390) Were I to judge by internal evidence, I should be inclined to date [Rom.] before MND. Knight (ed. 1839, pp. 331–2), presumably using Boswell (ed. 1821), believes that Malone’s date of 1594 has pretty exactly indicated the precise year. . . . 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 considers MND vastly superior to TGV, LLL, and Err. He answers Malone’s strictures point by point, concluding (p. 332): If any single composition were required to exhibit the power of the English language for the purposes of poetry, that composition would be MND. In 1849 (p. 39) he places MND in Sh.’s Second Period, 1594–1600, listed after KJ and before Rom.; in a second list (p. 40) he puts MND last of the Second early period comedies, 1589–93, and finally (p. 208) he repeats the opinion of his ed. 1839. Verplanck (ed. 1845, 2:6) believes the play, as it first appeared in print, must belong to a period about 1595, or 1596. While conceding that some stylistic features associated with the lovers deserve Malone’s strictures, yet in the other poetic scenes, the strain we hear is of a higher mood, and belongs to a period of fuller and more conscious power than the more juvenile comedies LLL and TGV. He therefore believes it 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. Hudson (ed. 1851, 2:257): The best conclusion we can form is, that the play was written somewhere between 1594 and 1598. Yet we have to concur with Mr. Verplanck, that there are some passages which relish strongly of an earlier period; . . . Perhaps, however, what seem the defects of [the part of the Athenian lovers], the far-fetched conceits and artificial elegances, were wisely designed, in order to invest the part with such an air of dreaminess and unreality as would better sort with the scope and spirit of the piece, . . . So that we cannot quite go along with the judicious critic last mentioned, in thinking the part in question to be the remains of a juvenile effort. Lloyd (in Singer (ed. 1856, 2:436): I cannot admit for a moment that this play exhibits the slightest signs of juvenility, as implying inferiority, as compared with [MV and H4]. Comparing it with [Rom.], I think there are some marks of a more perfectly developed taste, and of more free as well as skilful execution. Staunton (ed. 1857, 1:339): MND was written in the full vigour of Shakespeare’s youthful genius, and subsequent, there is every probability, to TGV, LLL, Err., Shr., and Rom. White (ed. 1858, 4:15–17) believes the play (4:16) produced, in part at least, at an earlier period than 1593, thinking such passages as 763–4 and 780–1 unworthy of the author even of LLL, TGV, Err., and Ven. Sh. (4:17) went from Stratford up to London with it partly written; [later] he reverted to his early production, and in 1594 worked it up into the form in which it was produced. It seems to me that, in spite of the silence of the quarto title-page on the subject, this might have been done, or at least that some additions might have been made to the play, for a performance at Court. Ulrici (1868–9; 1876, 1:223, 2:81): 1592 to 1597–98 . . . may . . . be termed the second period, or, so to say, the adolescence of Shakspeare’s genius. If we assume that during this time [R3, AWW, Rom., Shr., KJ, R2, MND, H4, and MV] were all brought to light in the above succession, . . . it seems astounding with what rapid, powerful, and safe steps Shakspeare proceeded through his career. (2:81): From internal evidence I am inclined to assume that 1596–97 was the year in which the piece was composed. For, in spirit and character, it agrees so entirely with the works belonging to the close of the second period of Shakspeare’s career that it would be difficult for any one to separate it from these. The great number of passages in rhyme, . . . as well as the many interspersed poems and songs are naturally explained by the lyrical character of the whole and by the subject of the conversations. Fleay’s (1874, pp. 10–16) attempts to apply scientific tests to versification to determine chronology, which led to his placing MND in 1592, second in the canon following LLL, elicited objections from his Shakspere Society audience as well as ridicule from others (cf. pp. 17–23, and Murphy (2003, pp. 210–11); on the uses and difficulties of metrical tests in determining chronology cf. Chambers, (1930, 1:255–69, 2:397–408). In 1876 (p. 26), echoing Malone’s opinion of poetry, plot and characterization, Fleay adheres to 1592, but in 1877 (p. 20) he lists MND c. 1593, claiming: This play as we have it, is a revised edition made for publication in 1600. It may have been added to, as well as revised; his later shifts to accommodate lunar or wedding theories are recorded below. In 1881 (pp. 50–1, 100), he attacks critics of his metrical tests; he presents his table for MND, describing it as (p. 100) Written 1592: revised as in Q 1, 2, 1600. Ward (1875, 1:380): The general character of the piece allows the supposition that it was written somewhere between 1593 and 1597; the abundance of rhymes and the paucity of feminine endings point to an early date; the construction of the play is likewise slight; yet there is an obvious growth of dramatic power beyond the very earliest period of Shakspere’s dramatic activity. Stokes (1878, pp. 53–4) believes MND contemporary with Rom. and should be dated about 1595. He agrees with Hallam that it is superior to LLL, Err., and TGV. Ebsworth (ed. Q1 1880, p. xi) rejects what are called verse tests, but remarks on the absence of light-ending or weak-ending and run-on lines, and comments: The continuity of rhyme . . . in Titania’s and Oberon’s speeches adds to their musical impressiveness; he dates MND probably 1593–94, at earliest; and not later than 1596. Finkenbrink (1884, pp. 4–20) dates MND about 1594 partly because of its similarities with LLL, Err., and TGV, which he dates 1590–93, and partly through (p. 17) the peculiarities of verse and metre, style and diction, specifying the great progress made over the earlier plays in the latter, defending the use of rhyme and of alliteration as appropriate dramatically, and praising the development in the structure of verse, and even in the use of classical allusion, characterization, and plot design. White (1886, p. 14): MND was written, or at least completed, some three or four years later than [LLL and Err.]. . . . [I]n its execution it shows, both in thought and in structure, and no less in poetical form, a marked mental development. Barnett (1887, p. 10): A critical examination of the play, and a comparison with others proves that M.N.D. is amongst Shakespeare’s earlier plays, and was most probably written between 1591 and 1593. Rolfe (1889, pp. 185–7): (p. 186) The internal evidence of style etc., is in favor of two dates, . . . though . . . I doubt whether the play was revised for a nuptial ceremony. In its present form it must be at least a year or two earlier than [MV] (which can hardly have been written before 1596 or 1597); and portions of it appear to be considerably earlier than the rest. He quotes 763–4 and 780–1 as instances of crudity. Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 8–15): (p. 11) 1594–5 seems to me to suit admirably with the character and style of the play. It clearly belongs to the earliest group of Shakespeare’s comedies. It abounds with rhyme, with strained conceits, with antithesis and other rhetorical devices. The blank verse is far more regular and monotonous than that of any of the later plays; . . . Then, again, the interest of character is very slight. However, he considers MND betrays in many ways a notable advance over LLL, Err., and TGV, suggesting (p. 12) it is the last of that group, and that the chief advantage of dating it 1594–5 is that it brings it into closer neighbourhood to R2 and Rom. Craig (ed. 1903, pp. vi–vii) finds MND stylistically later than Err., LLL, and TGV, but earlier than MV. Ainger (1905, pp. 20–1) places both MND and Rom. in Sh’s first period together with LLL on stylistic grounds, but dates MND 1591–93 and Rom. 1595 or 1596. Brooke (1905, p. 1): MND belongs, probably, to the winter of 1595, . . . About four years before, in 1591, Shakespeare had written Rom. Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xxii): It is noteworthy . . . that the play stands fifth in Meres’s list of comedies, affording some slight indication of Meres’s belief, knowledge, or recollection that it was not amongst the very earliest of Sh.’s plays. He believes the play was composed in the autumn of 1594–95. Furnivall (ed. 1908, p. vii): MND is his (probably) third comedy following LLL and Err. Structurally and metrically the comedy belongs to Shakspere’s early time of mistaken identity and cross purposes, of more than two sets of lovers, of ryme and of doggerel. Black (in Hudson & Black, ed. 1910, pp. xxvi–xxxi): (p. xxvii) The weight of evidence is in favor of 1594–1595. Placing it among the earliest plays (p. xxx) does not allow for the marked growth of dramatic and formative power, the imaginative insight, the spontaneity, and the mastery of expression both sympathetic and creative, which the play shows as compared with [LLL, Err., and TGV]. . . . [xxxi] It is possible that what seem defects and immaturities, the fanciful quirks and far-fetched conceits, and the seeming weakness and juvenility in characterization, were designed to invest the play with such an air of dreaminess and unreality as would better sort with its general scope and spirit; nevertheless the play is marked as early by the puns, etc., the prevalence of rhyme, and the monotonously regular blank verse, though the prose of the dialogue in the comic passages indicates growth and development. Hemingway (1911, pp. 78–80) believes (p. 79) the first version of [Rom.] appeared about 1591 and the first version of the Dream was written soon, perhaps immediately, after Rom., in 1592–3. He suggests that Sh. finds the emotionalism and sentimentalism of his tragedy . . . a trifle exaggerated and ridiculous, . . . and so, shaking himself free of romantic ideals of love, he somewhat quizzically allies lovers, lunatics, and poets; (p. 80) the Queen Mab speech was added to Rom. after MND was written. MacCracken et al. (1912, p. 151): Stylistic features argue an earlier date than students who notice only the skillful plot structure are willing to assign. Perhaps 1593–5 would indicate this variation in authorities. Armstrong (1913, p. 33): MND was probably the first play that followed the sonnets, and its first production is assigned to the winter of 1595. Cunliffe (in Brooke ed. 1914, p. 2) stylistically assigns it to 1594 or 1595: There are curious echoes from [Rom. to MND], as if Shakespeare had both in mind, or was actually engaged in writing both, at the same time. Rickert (1923, pp. 143–6) analyses metrical and other peculiarities reaching the conclusion (p. 144) that the greater part of the first three acts belongs to an early play revised, and the greater part of Act IV and practically all of Act V are later work. Through comparison with TGV and MV, she assigns a date of 1592 to the former and 1595 to the latter part. Therefore MND (p. 147) was begun early, finished hastily for a special purpose several years later, and later still [for public performance before 1598] revised to avoid possible offense. Robertson (1923, p. 13) considers MND’s versification so far developed that it might be doubted whether as it stands it can be even so early as 1594. Noble (1923, p. 52), believing that singing children are necessary in MND, associates the play with Wiv. and AYL: To my mind if it is maintained that [MND], as we have it now, was first produced in a public theatre, then 1595 is an impossibly early date; he prefers 1598. Thorndike (1929, p. 101): It was probably written at nearly the same time as Rom. Kittredge (ed. 1936, p. 229): So far as style and metre testify, the play might be dated anywhere from 1594 to 1596. Muir (1937, p. 77): MND was written immediately after [Rom.], though the New Cambridge editors (as everywhere) see evidence of subsequent revision. Holzknecht & McLure (ed. 1937, p. 197): Scholars generally date the play somewhat uncertainly 1594–8, with the majority leaning to an early date. Whether it preceded or followed [Rom.] is not known, though the parallels between the plays suggest that it came after. de la Mare (1940, pp. 296–305), noting that scholars have suggested dates of composition from 1590 to 1598, provisionally endorses the suggestion that the Dream, as we have it now, was composed at different times . . . ; or that, having been completed, it was redrafted and revised. He argues further from the lovers’ verse, (p. 300) odd little errors, varying speech headings, bad jokes and unusual vocabulary, that the play as we have it is primarily not Sh.’s. (P. 303): Surely, to accept as Shakespeare’s, at any age, what is provably not merely scamped or heedless but poverty-stricken verse . . . is more extravagant than to discredit its being his at [304] all? Brooke (1948, p. 35) believes Rom.’s Queen Mab speech preceded [MND] and contains the germ of that play. Schanzer (Midsummer, 1955, pp. 13–14) as evidence that Rom. preceded MND (both written in 1595), cites the reconciliation of the fathers (2135–6), a feature lacking in most source versions; writing with Rom. in mind, Sh. (p. 14) unwittingly added this touch to the traditional story. Brunner (1957, p. 66) believes MND belongs to the period 1594–6, a possible parody of Rom. in the interlude suggesting a later date for MND (Ger.). Munro (ed. 1957, p. 340) finds the versification, style, [and] plot . . . suited by a tentative date of 1595. Baldwin (1959, pp. 472–92): MND is the last probable representative of early work. (P. 477): The external fifth act parallels the structure of LLL. (P. 492): There are minor touches of staging, etc. which apparently came in later, but there was clearly no fundamental revision. Wells (ed. 1967, pp. 11–12): It is generally thought of as more mature, and therefore probably later, than four other comedies [TGV, Shr., Err., LLL]. . . . [MV] is reasonably thought of as later in date. Certainty would perhaps be most welcome as to whether [MND] came before or after [Rom.]. . . . [12] The richness and complexity of [Rom.] cause it to be more usually regarded as the later work. Waller (1966, pp. 4–6) tabulates selected linguistic features such as frequency of doth/does, hath/has; MND is placed with R2 in 1595–6, after Rom. in 1594–5. Fergusson (1977, p. 122): It is probable that [MND] is the closest in time to [MV]; perhaps it was written directly after it. Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xlii–liii) presents stylistic evidence for dating the Dream c. 1595, in close proximity to plays which in style it resembles. He dates MV, 1 and 2H4, and Wiv. between 1596 and 1598, claiming that only the Belmont scene shows the lyricism characteristic of (pp. xliii–xlv) R2, Rom., and LLL, which he dates c. 1594–5. (P. xliii) I have found more parallels in the Dream with [LLL] and [Rom.] than with any other plays. Whether [Rom.] precedes or follows the Dream cannot be firmly determined, though there are signs that it is the earlier. (P. xlv): Stylistically, the group is linked not only by the lyricism from which the critics have named it . . . but also by its rhetoric, the art of which is not concealed but displayed. He proceeds to give examples of rhetorical figures from MND, with footnotes providing parallels in R2, Rom. and LLL. (P. liii): There is every reason to suppose that the formal rhetoric in the Dream was seen by Shakespeare and those for whom he wrote as the right partner for the lyricism. . . . Together, they characterize his style in the mid-1590s. Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 1–4): The best evidence for dating this play remains . . . its nature and style, for it shares with a group of plays written about 1594–7 the mastery of lyrical drama achieved by Shakespeare in the mid 1590s. He lists LLL 1594–5, R2 1595, Rom. 1595–6, MND 1595–6, MV 1596–7. In all of these plays there is a conscious display of poetic and rhetorical skills and devices. Wells & Taylor (1987, pp. 118–19) date MND 1595. (P. 119): Most scholars would agree that, given the extraordinary parallels between them at every level of style and structure, Dream and Romeo were written at about the same time, though there is no consensus about which came first: . . . More generally, Dream belongs stylistically to a group of plays which includes Rom., LLL, and R2. Knutson (1991, pp. 60, 143, 196) places MND in the Chamberlain’s Men repertory in 1595–6, after Err., LLL and Rom., though also assigning its composition to 1594–5, when there was (p. 143) a flurry of interest in plays using magic. Riess & Williams (1992, pp. 214–18) argue that Rom. predates MND, and that in writing the latter, Sh. used the events and the language of tragedy to increase the mirth of comedy especially in the Interlude. Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 110–12): MND was written and first performed in 1595 or 1596. . . . Stylistically the play fits with other plays of the same date, especially Romeo and Juliet. Though he leans towards believing Rom. the earlier, [i]n the final analysis, all that matters is that the two plays were clearly being worked on at roughly the same moment. Kermode (2000, p. 52): Rom. is a kind of twin to MND; both of them are fairly securely dated 1595. Others pointing to affinities with the lyrical group of plays as best evidence of date include Kittredge & Ribner (ed. 1966, pp. ix–x), Traversi (1968, 1:109, 139), Bevington (ed. 1988, pp. 81–2), Halio (1996, pp. 155–6), and Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 805).

Too delightful to ignore is Bather (1887, pp. 69–75), who divides Sh.’s works into four periods, (p. 72) I, the period of apprenticeship; II, a period of manly vigour; III, a gloom-period; IV, a period of final calm. He orders the plays by percentage of puns, by which measure MND, at 0.53, comes 24th. Neither gloom nor calm seeming entirely suitable, Bather hedges (p. 75): Yet all critics, except Chalmers, give it a very early date, 1592–4. The play is however very different in character from any other play of Shakespeare’s. It is more in the style of a masque; it is a poem, and written in rhyme for the most part. The rhymes can be no argument for a very early date. In any case the play is so anomalous that we need not regard it as upsetting any of our results. Perhaps the eminent biologist should have stuck to fossil echinoderms.

Allusions to Other Writings and to Topical Events

Attempts to determine the play’s date through perceived (or imagined) references in the text to writings of other authors or to current events have been tied to particular lines or speeches, to the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude, or to the general impression of the play as a whole. Of particular lines the most frequently commented are 337–9, 376, 385, 463–489, 841–2, 1849–50 (see nn. 376–7, 384–5, 456–92, 841–2, 1849–50). On possible references to other writings in the interlude, see also here. Most voluminous is the debate arising from the effort to attach the play to a specific occasion, especially that of a noble wedding. As with the supposed unevenness of the style of the play, pursuing links to external references often necessitates positing rewriting, revisions, or additions.

Often taken as an important indicator is the possibility that Titania’s lament on destructive weather refers to actual conditions. Halliwell (1841, pp. 6–10): We suppose this play to have been written in the autumn of [1594], and we believe we can bring better evidence than has yet been adduced. He quotes Simon Forman’s observations on the rain and floods of summer 1594 (Ashm. 384), drawing attention not only to the bad weather, but to Forman’s mention of the plenty of small nuts, which may have suggested Titania’s offer to Bottom of new nuts (1549); in support he quotes Stowe and Churchyard. In 1855 (pp. 17–23; repeated in ed. 1856, 5:4–7) he adds Dr. King’s description of the weather (first noticed by Blakeway in Boswell ed. 1821, 5:342). Cf. n. 456–92. At this later date he slightly modifies his position, believing it first produced either towards the close of . . . 1594, or early in 1595. He also takes into account Greene’s death in 1592 and Nashe’s Greenes Funeralls (1594) probably supporting this date, but dismisses any reference to Spenser’s death (see n. 1849–50). In 1879 (pp. 6–7), influenced by the possible echo at 375–6 of Spenser’s FQ Bk 6 which was entered on the Stationers’ Register January 20, 1596, he suggests that MND must have been composed later that year.

Others taking the reports of 1594 bad weather as evidence to date MND at the end of 1594 or possibly 1595 or early 1596 include Collier (ed. 1842, 2:387–8), Verplanck (ed. 1845, 2:6), Delius (ed. 1859, 5:II [2]), Hudson (ed. 1851, 2:255–6), White (ed. 1858, 4:15–17) but only in the play’s revised form, and Fleay (1886, p. 126) who believes the date should be fixed in the winter of 1594–5 . . . the allusions to the remarkable weather of 1594 being too marked to be put aside contemptuously. Finkenbrink (1884, pp. 14–15) also finds the similarity too remarkable to be accidental, countering Wright’s (ed. 1877, p. vi) objection by claiming that the fair harvest mentioned by Stow refers only to local pockets of favorable weather. Morley (ed. 1886, pp. 5–7) finds the connection (p. 7) quite possible. Boas (1896, p. 182) sees a very probable reference. Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 10) avers the speech primarily suggests a date of 1594. Cuningham (ed. 1905, pp. xxii–xxvi) gives weight to this indicator for 1594–5. For Cunliffe (in Brooke ed. 1914, p. 2) it is a plausible conjecture. Chambers (1930, 1:246): Despite tempests being common phenomena an allusion is fairly plausible . . . to the rather unusual bad weather of 1594–5. Kittredge (ed. 1936, p. 229) calls the weather the only topical allusion that has any probability. Harrison (ed. 1937, p. 12) cites the weather as support for his estimate of composition between the autumn of 1594 and the spring of 1595. Alexander (1939, p. 105) concurs. Neilson & Hill (ed. 1942, p. 88): The speech reflects in all probability the weather of 1594. Thomas (1949, pp. 319–21) argues that the weather in 1596 was worse than 1594, and therefore the play belongs to the later year. Arnold (1955, p. 100; 1977, p. 93) cites Stow on the bad weather of 1594 (Fr.). Halliday (1961, pp. 120–1) suggests Sh. invented the fairy story of MND to cheer everyone up after the summer of 1596 repeated the bad weather of 1594.

Some are unconvinced. Dyce (ed. 1857, 1:clxiii) dismisses the suggestion as ridiculous. Ward (1875, 1:379–80) is dismissive of attempts to fix MND’s date by references to the weather, or to the death of learning. Wright (ed. 1877, pp. iv–vi) after quoting King and Stowe and citing Forman, points out that Stowe declares (p. vi) a faire haruest followed the bad summer weather of 1594, which contradicts Titania’s words and negates efforts to assign MND to 1594. I am even sceptical enough to think that Titania’s speech not only does not describe the events of the year 1594, but that it is purely the product of the poet’s own imagination. Barnett (1887, p. 10) dismisses such claims as suppositious. Craig (ed. 1903, p. vi): To lay much stress on such things as these in a climate like ours is, I think, injudicious. Wells (ed. 1967, p. 12) dismisses topical allusion to weather as a guide to date. Wells & Taylor (1987, p. 19): The allusion to unseasonable weather [456–92] would fit the second half of 1594, 1595, or 1596, and hence is of little value in narrowing the range of composition. Similarly, Bevington (ed. 1988, p. 81–2): The description of unruly weather [463–89] has been related to the bad summer of 1594, but complaints about the weather are perennial. Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 805) concludes that attempts to fix date by royal Progresses or bad weather have been defeated by the frequency of both; similarly Holland (ed. 1994, p. 111).

Meteorological evidence of date is also sought through references to the moon. Apart from a couple of unconvincing and contradictory suggestions by Fleay (1879, pp. 56–7), as reported in Robinson’s Epitome, and Sarrazin (1900, pp. 67–8; see below), the first detailed effort to use astrology to date the play is by Draper (1938, pp. 266–8). Citing 1084 and 1421, he computes that Venus as the morning star was at its brightest on (p. 267) May 2 according to the Julian calendar in 1595, when it was bright and very obvious . . . from the latter part of April into June, the only year between 1592 and 1598 when this was the case. Noting other references in the play to May Day (1653–4), to the new moon (12, 92), and to moonlight, sometimes faint (cf. 222–3, 434–5, 861–73), he calculates (p. 268) that there was an astronomical new moon on April 29, 1595, O. S.; and the thin crescent might be dimly visible on the following evening and more clearly on May first. He concludes that the play was written for an occasion on May 1, 1595. Cambillard (1939, pp. 118–26) is concerned with an esoteric theory of astrological myth rather than date of composition, but an editorial footnote on the first page assures the reader that nothing he argues contradicts Draper’s conclusions (Fr.). (Cf. Richer, 1974.) Wood (1966, pp. 128–30) argues that references to the position of the moon and the planet Venus agree with astrological data only for the year 1595 of the years between 1592 and 1598. Objections to Wood’s interpretations of the play’s references to the moon or moonshine, and to some of his astronomical findings are raised by Stevenson (1968, pp. 131–2) and Taylor (1971, pp. 134–6), leading to an exchange between Wood and Taylor (1971, pp. 464–5); no objection is raised to Wood’s initial speculation about date. The subject is revisited by Brown (1980, pp. 162–5), who feels that the astronomical references support the supposition (p. 164) that the play was written in 1595, probably in the Spring of the year, to be performed on or to celebrate a marriage on 1 May 1595, and designed so that specific reference is made to that date and to astronomical midsummer day of the previous year, 1594. Moreover, Sh.’s use of calendar symbolism may have been suggested by the appearance, early in 1595, of Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion. He concludes that MND’s explicit and numerous astronomical references are intended to point Sh’s audience to associate the midsummer night of the title and the May Day mentioned in the text with specific dates in particular years, 11 June 1594 and 1 May 1595. For Hunter (1983, p. 96) and Honigmann (1985, p. 151) see below, here, here. The title of Wiles’s 1993 book Shakespeare’s Almanac: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Marriage and the Elizabethan Calendar proclaims its main preoccupation, and Ch. 8, Weddings and Popular Astrology examines other poems and plays shaped by association with the almanac; the whole work is dedicated to connecting MND with 19 February 1596, the date of the Carey/Berkeley wedding (see further below). Holland (ed. 1994, p. 111) is dismissive of attempts to fix on the exact date of the first performance by . . . the play’s references to the phases of the moon.

The lines on the mourning muses lamenting the death of learning in beggary (see 1849–50 and n.) have also been taken as a guide to date of composition, which sometimes serves as an earliest date but is seldom considered precise. Warburton’s (ed. 1747) belief that the allusion is to Spenser’s The Teares of the Muses (in Complaints, 1591) was often taken as suggesting a date for MND close to that time, but Wright (ed. 1877, p. viii) represents the position now still held: I am inclined to think that Spenser’s poem may have suggested a title for the piece submitted to Theseus, and that we need not press for any closer parallel between them. Cf. Brooks (ed. 1979, p. 107). who believes Sh. may have had it in mind without necessarily intending a recognizable allusion.

Some have also sought a guide to date in the death of an actual poet (see n. 1849–50). Spenser was an early favorite, but when it was ascertained that he died in 1599, it was conceded that either the reference was not to him, or the lines were inserted between 1599 and 1600 (cf. Malone in Steevens ed. 1778, 1:288). Greene (d. 1592) was an even more popular candidate, but there is disagreement over whether the possible allusion necessarily means a date of composition close to the date of death. The suggestion of Marlowe (d. 1593) has not garnered much support. Tasso (d. 1595) is a late entrant, but his death date corresponds more attractively with the most widely accepted date of composition for MND.

The topical event now considered the most reliable indicator is the baptism of Prince Henry at the Scottish court in 1594 (see n. 841–2). Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. xxxiv–xxxv) relies solely on this incident to determine the terminus a quo, thinking it highly probable that Sh. knew of it. If so, . . . the Dream could not be earlier than the baptismal feast of Prince Henry, 30 August 1594, and probably not than the account of it in A True Reportarie, registered with the Stationers on 24 October. Among those who agree with finding this an acceptable indicator (besides Knight ed. 1839 and Rickert 1923, p. 67) are Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 10–11, and 1930, 1:247), Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xxxi), Black in Hudson & Black (ed. 1910, p. xxviii), Harrison (ed. 1937, p. 12 and ed. 1948, p. 269), Alexander (1939, pp. 105–6), Bednarz (1983, p. 82), Honigmann (1985, p. 153), Wells & Taylor (1987, p. 118); expressing reservations are Neilson & Hill (ed. 1942, p. 88) followed by Munro (ed. 1957, p. 339); entirely unconvinced is Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 125 n.). Furness (ed. 1895, p. 248) does not include this episode in his list of lines and allusions furnishing evidence of date, apparently endorsing Malone’s characterization of it as an odd coincidence.

Similarities between individual lines in MND and other literary works have also been advanced as indicators of date. Unfortunately these suggestions are often rendered dubious either by the commonplace nature of the thought expressed, or by mistaken or doubtful dating of the supposedly earlier work, or a date of publication that is at odds with other indications of MND’s date. Of the first kind are the echo of Spenser’s FQ 6.8.32 (see n. 376–7), and of The Wisdom of Dr. Dodypoll (see n. 384–5). The anonymous play is also misdated by for example Chalmers (1799, pp. 360–7), who calls several other writings in evidence for his preferred date of early 1598: Lodge’s Wits Miserie (see n. 1801), Gale’s Pyramus and Thisbe (see here), and a parliamentary report concerning (p. 367) the stealing away of men’s children without the assent of their parents. Lawrence (1920, p. 826) finds echoes of Dekker’s Hercules plays, of a lost play of Phaeton and of the university play Lingua to suggest a date of late 1597. Acheson (1922, pp. 188–93) argues through references to the bad weather of 1594, and through claimed links to Chapman’s Hymns to the Shadow of Night (1594) and to the second edition of Roydon’s Willobie his Avisa (1594) in 1596, that MND was revised in 1596 to incorporate satire of Roydon as Peter Quince and was published in 1600 to answer Roydon’s attack on him in the third edition of Willobie his Avisa. McCloskey (1931, pp. 389–91), arguing for a lost edition of The Arbour of Amorous Devices in 1594, claims that possible echoes of A poem of a Mayde forsaken (see n. 942–50) support a date of composition in 1595. More plausibly, Stokes (1878, p. 52) speculates that the reissue of North’s Plutarch in 1595 may have directed Sh.’s attention to it; the speculation gains credibility from the fact of the reissue being published by Richard Field, formerly of Stratford-on-Avon (see here).

Weddings Etc.

It would be agreeable to limit this section to the words of Holland (ed. 1994, p. 112): The wedding occasion theory appeals to critics who like the concept of a site-specific play, with fairies running through the noble house to bless the real wedding of members of the audience, and to those who wish to rescue the play from the clutches of the popular theatre audience. I fail to see the need to want either. However, it seems a necessary duty to trace the way conjecture has hardened into dogma.

Some critics have made valiant attempts to dispatch the hydra. Wells (ed. 1967, pp. 12–14): The suggestion has been offered that the play as we have it is a revision made for public performance, and even that Theseus and Hippolyta are stand-ins for the pair whose wedding is supposed to be celebrated. The belief that the wedding blessing of the last Act had [13] some extra-dramatic significance encourages a loose assumption that it is superfluous. . . .

[The play] is, certainly, much concerned with marriage; but so are many comedies. . . . [A]n allusion to [the Queen] does not imply that she was . . . present at the play’s first, or any other performance. . . . If Shakespeare’s company could at any time muster enough boys for public performances, we have no reason to doubt that it could have done so from the start. Thus the suggestion that the roles of the fairies were intended to be taken by children of the hypothetical noble house seems purely whimsical. The stage directions of the first edition . . . show no essential differences from [14] those in his other plays. . . . Furthermore, . . . the first play certainly known to have been written for such an occasion is Samuel Daniel’s Hymen’s Triumph [1614]. Price (1983, pp. 17–18) Many critics . . . assume . . . that it was written for performance at an aristocratic wedding celebration—without, perhaps, fully realising that this notion originated as a tentative conjecture by . . . Tieck, . . . and that it was much disputed in his own country and century. The principal difficulty is that it has never been possible to decide which particular wedding . . . the play was designed to celebrate. Nevertheless, the majority of recent critics concludes that . . . the play certainly owes its genesis to some such courtly occasion. . . .

[This] . . . has been disputed by [18] Stanley Wells, and Alfred Harbage [Harbage 1962, pp. 19–20], on the grounds of the complete lack of evidence that any play was written for a special private performance before 1614, and that the costs, time and effort involved in writing, rehearsing and performing a new play exclusively for such an audience would not have been worth the company’s while. Williams (Moonlight, 1997, pp. 1–18, 263–5) provides an extensive review of The Wedding-play Myth and some of the arguments against it.

Despite such herculean efforts, wedding theories and their proponents keep raising their heads, even to the point that some well-reputed scholars continue to present the theory as undisputed fact; cf., for example, Bloom (1998, pp. 148, 152–3), Duncan-Jones (2001, pp. 10, 87–9.).

Following is a list of the weddings proposed, with a short form, and the name of the first proposer:

• 1.Robert Devereux Earl of Essex and Frances Lady Sidney, April or May 1590; Essex/Sidney; Elze 1868; 1874.
• 2.Robert Carey, later Earl of Monmouth and Elizabeth Trevannion, 1592; Carey/Trevannion; Fleay 1876.
• 3.Sir Thomas Heneage and Mary Countess of Southampton, 2 May 1594; Heneage/Southampton; Sarrazin 1900.
• 4.Henry Percy Earl of Northumberland and Lady Dorothy Devereux, May 1595(?); Percy/Devereux; Draper 1972.
• 5.William Stanley Earl of Derby and Elizabeth Vere, 26(?) January 1595; Stanley/Vere; Fleay 1876.
• 6.Edward Russell Earl of Bedford and Lucy Harrington, 1595; Russell/Harrington; Fleay 1876.
• 7.Thomas Berkeley, Lord Hunsdon-to-be and Elizabeth Carey, 19 February 1596; Berkeley/Carey; Chambers, Occasion, 1916.
• 8.Henry Guildford and William Petre [or Peter, or Petrie] to Lady Elizabeth and Lady Katherine Somerset, daughters of the Earl of Worcester, 8 November 1596; Guildford/Petre/Somerset (Spenser’s Prothalamion.); Martin 1935.
• 9.Henry Wriothesley Earl of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon, February or August 1598; Southampton/Vernon; Tieck (in Schlegel 1830).
• 10.Roger Manners Earl of Rutland and Elizabeth Sidney, 1599; Manners/Sidney; Acheson 1922.
• 11.Henry Herbert and Anne Russell, 16 June 1600; Herbert/Russell; Lawrence 1922, see also Chambers Occasion, 1916.

Tieck (in Schlegel’s Shakespeare’s dramatische Werke, 1830, 3:353; tr. Furness, ed. 1895, pp. 259–60): In 1598, the friend of the poet, the Earl of Southampton, espoused his beloved Mistress Vernon, to whom he had been long betrothed. Perhaps the germ, or the first sketch, of the drama was a felicitation to the newly-married pair, in the shape of a so-called Mask, in which Oberon, Titania, and their fairies wished and prophesied health and happiness to the bridal couple. The comic antistrophe, the scene with the rude mechan-[260]icals, formed what was termed the anti-mask. . . . Thus to this Occasional Poem there were added subsequently the other scenes of the comedy.

Ulrici (1839; 1846, p. 275): Tieck . . . conjectures, I think without reason, that the piece did not receive its present form before 1600, when it was first printed. It is not easy to see how the title of Midsummer Night’s Dream . . . could ever have suited The Mask of Oberon and Titania, with its anti-mask—the play of the artizans—in short, a mere piece composed for a marriage festival. Nevertheless, Tieck’s suggestion is supported by Mézières (1860, pp. 432–3), who believes it plausible given the practices of the nobility that MND was commissioned for wedding festivities, and asks what could be more natural than to attach Sh.’s work to an event [the marriage of the poet’s best friend] which must have touched him so keenly? (Fr.); and Massey (1866, p. 481) who has no doubts, but adds: The play was probably composed some time before the marriage took place, at a period when it may have been thought the Queen’s consent could be obtained, but not so early as the commentators have imagined. I have ventured the date of 1595.

Tieck had opened the door, and the first to respond with a counterproposal is Elze (1868; tr. 1874, pp. 40–60): All indications point to the fact that the Midsummer Night’s Dream was written for and performed at the marriage of the Earl of Essex in the year 1590. . . . [MND] is evidently the production of that happy period of life when fancy is most lively and unrestrained in its creations; everything in it is lyrical effusion, unclouded cheerfulness, exempt from reflection; in a word, all is youth. He traces the interrelationships of the Essex and Sidney families, the connections with Leicester and with Sh., and endorses Halpin’s explication of Oberon’s Vision (see here). Ulrici in his third edition (1868–9; tr. 1876, 2:82–3) takes issue with Elze’s proposal, objecting that the date is unlikely on the grounds of style, and that since both the Southampton and Essex marriages took place clandestinely the queen could not have been present. He rejects Elze’s interpretation of the concluding remarks, and Halpin’s (2:83) frosty and forced allegory, and reasserts that the connection between MND and the so-called masques . . . seems to me . . . to be a very distant one, from which little or nothing can be deduced in favour of the marriage-hypothesis. In 1874 in an addendum to the MND essay as revised for Schmitz’s translation (pp. 61–6), Elze dismisses Ulrici’s recent criticism of his hypothesis (see above) and expands upon the support he has received from Kurz (1869, pp. 268 ff.). Kurz gives as a reason for believing that the festive occasion at which MND was performed must have been before 1591 that the play could not have appeared after Spenser’s FQ which in that year had presented an idealized Queen Elizabeth (p. 278): After that could Shakespeare let his fairy queen, albeit called Titania and the spouse of Oberon, fall in love with an ass? A question not to be lightly tossed aside. This translation of Kurz is from Furness (ed. 1895, pp. 261–2), who warns that a vein of quiet humour running through his Essay . . . makes it difficult to say whether or not he is anywhere really in earnest; Furness summarizes (p. 262): In short, Kurz reaches the positive conclusion (p. 289) that [MND] was performed, for the first time, at a banquet on the occasion of the unheralded festivities accompanying the marriage of Essex, and in conjunction with the observances of May in 1590, as a masque with significant characters, or as a masque-like comedy with a masque especially introduced, and all of it designed to conceal the object for which the festivities were given.

Dowden (1875, p. 67) confidently asserts that MND was written on the occasion of the marriage of some noble couple but offers no new supposition, satisfied with the possibility of either Southampton/Vernon or the earlier date of the Essex/Sidney wedding. In the introduction to MND in Craig (ed. 1911–12, 2:246), the wedding theory (attributed to Dowden) is doubted because no evidence is forthcoming to support any of the weddings proposed. Neil (ed. 1878, p. 34) does not claim a wedding occasion, but promotes the notion that MND was composed as a masque for Court at Christmas 1590, and after a run of a winter or two, it was revised about 1596, and reintroduced to the stage in a more developed form.

Fleay (1886, pp. 18–19, 26, 126, 181–6): MND was produced in its first form c. June 1592; he believes it was produced while Sh. (p. 19) worked as a journeyman or with a coadjutor and was later revised. (P. 26): On 26th January 1594–5, [MND] was, I conjecture, acted at Greenwich at the marriage of W. Stanley, Earl of Derby, and afterwards on the public stage; it was evidently written for a marriage, but . . . had been altered for this special occasion. Its original production was probably in 1592, at the marriage of Robert Carey, afterwards Earl of Monmouth. (P. 181): 1595. January 26 was the date of the marriage of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, . . . . About the same time Edward Russel, Earl of Bedford, married Lucy Harrington. Both marriages may have been enlivened by this performance. . . . [182] The date of the Court performance must be in the winter of 1594–5. But the traces of the play having been altered from a version for the stage are numerous. (1891, 2:194): [T]he weather description [463–93], which can be omitted without in any way affecting the progress of the play, . . . I believe . . . . was inserted for the Court performance in 1596, that on the public stage having taken place in 1595; but . . . the marriage presentation, being subsequent to this, was most likely at the union of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon in 1598–9. See also Krauss (1876, p. 241).

Initial reactions were at best skeptical. Wright (ed. 1877, pp. ix–xi), prefacing his remarks by saying that in seeking a specific occasion we embark upon a wide sea of conjecture, with neither star nor compass to guide us, discusses skeptically the theories of Massey, Elze, and Kurz, concluding (p. xi): In such questions it would be well to remember the maxim of the ancient rabbis, Teach thy tongue to say, I do not know. Brink (1877–9, p. 55) is inclined to believe in a wedding occasion, but without speculating on which. Stokes (1878, p. 48): It has frequently been suggested that [MND] was composed to grace some marriage festivities; and the supposition has been supported by referring to its lyrical and almost operatic tone, to its masque-like form, and to Oberon’s song at the conclusion. But this suggestion may perhaps be answered by noting the difficulty that has been experienced in finding any nuptial event to tally with the supposed date of its composition, by the unlikelihood of so unique an undertaking on Shakespeare’s part being unrecorded, by the inappropriateness of such phrases as Bottom’s statement in [quotes 960–1], and by the promise in Puck’s epilogue that we will make amends ere long. Halliwell (1879, pp. 7–8) endorses Stokes, calling such conjectures (p. 8) gratuitous and silly. Finkenbrink (1884, pp. 4–14) argues forcefully against wedding theorists, (pp. 4–11) engaging particularly with Kreyssig (Vorlesungen über Shakspere, Berlin, 1880, 3:81 ff.), Massey (1866), Elze (1868), and Kurz, (1869). He dismisses the claim that MND is a masque (see here), or occasional play. Wedding conjectures (p. 11) are to be rejected, and withal that by which they are principally suggested, viz. that our comedy is a mask. See also Rolfe (1889, p. 186) above. Gollancz (ed. 1894, pp. v–vii) mentions that the Southampton/Vernon and the Essex/Sidney marriages have been proposed as the occasion of the play; (p. vi) there is, however, absolutely no authority for the statement, and the probabilities are strongly opposed to the supposition. However, in the highly fanciful introduction to the 1895 ed. with illustrations by Robert Anning Bell, Gollancz (p. xxxv) imagines that Sh., circa 1594–5, while working on Rom., was invited to write a new play to grace some grand wedding. From approximately this time acceptance of some form of wedding theory becomes increasingly common, though dissenters are still to be found, such as Craig (ed. 1903, p. vi) who cannot find any evidence . . . of the least value for wedding claims; more dissenting voices are again raised in the later 20th c., especially from Wells’s 1967 ed. (see above) on.

Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 12–14, 179–80) seeks to determine the precise occasion [13] on which it was first presented. He approves Fleay’s suggestion of the Stanley/Vere wedding, 26 January 1595 (p. 14): Lord Derby, like all the Stanleys, was interested in the drama . . . , and it is worth noting that the very company to which Shakespeare belonged had been . . . the servants of his elder brother and predecessor, Ferdinando. He devotes a brief appendix to detailing William Stanley’s career and associations with plays. Lee (1898, p. 161) supports either Russell/Harrington or Stanley/Vere. Sarrazin (1900, pp. 67–71) believes that MND was written for a noble wedding on 2 May 1594 (i.e. the Heneage/Southampton marriage). He engages with the dating through the moon references, concluding that the poet may not have been overly strict with the calendar and that possibly new moon refers to the months rather than the heavenly body. On 2 or 4 May 1594, the actors would have played under a waning moon, which agrees with Theseus’s exclamation 6–7. He thinks it obvious that the scenery and setting refer to a night performance at a great house or castle, at which the Queen was present. He argues against claims for the Stanley/Vere wedding (Ger.).

Cuningham (ed. 1905, pp. xxix–xxxi) It is not improbable that it was, at least eventually, intended for the celebration of the marriage of some nobleman of Elizabeth’s court; but I rather incline to the belief that it was not so in the first instance; and that, marriage or no marriage, we should have had [MND], though, perhaps, not exactly in its present form. He discusses and tentatively approves Fleay’s claim that the play was performed on 26 January 1595 at the Stanley/Vere wedding. So too Rothschild (1906, pp. 82–3). Furnivall (ed. 1908, p. ix) demurs, believing that if the play had been performed at the Stanley/Vere wedding, Stowe (Annales, p. 1279) would have taken note of it.

Among those at this period prepared to accept the idea of a wedding occasion but without believing it can be identified, and so provide a firm date of composition, are Baker (1907, pp. 182–6), Black (in Hudson & Black, ed. 1910, pp. xxix–xxxi), Gordon (ed. 1910, p.xxvii) and Herford (1912, p. 31). Armstrong (1913, p. 33) would fain believe it was written for the Russell/Harrington match.

Chambers (Occasion, 1916, pp. 154–60), though he reviews and expands arguments for the Stanley/Vere wedding, believes the more likely occasion is the Berkeley/Carey wedding of February 1596, an opinion that he is the first to propose and that has gained significant support in recent decades. Nevertheless (1923, 1:214 n. 2, 4:109), he lists the Stanley/Vere wedding as an occasion at which Elizabeth might have been present. Later (1930, 1:358–62) he returns to the wedding question, reviewing six proposed, and again giving his judgment that the Berkeley/Carey wedding is more likely than the Stanley/Vere. Durham (ed. 1918, p. 89): Some have attempted, without conspicuous success, to determine whose wedding MND was written to honor. Lawrence (1920, p. 826) argues against MND having been commissioned for a noble wedding: This idea of the acceptance of a commission outside the playhouse by a workaday actor-dramatist is highly questionable. There was absolutely no precedent for such a course. Nevertheless, later (1922, pp. 836–40), still maintaining late 1597 as the original date of composition, he argues that MND was extensively revised for the Herbert/Russell wedding in 1600. Still later (1927, p. 138) he dismisses arguments for some noble wedding about the year 1595 as contemptible guesswork. Mathew (1922, p. 122) asserts that MND celebrated the Russell/Harrington wedding on 12 Dec. 1594 and was performed for the Queen at Greenwich later that month.

Acheson (1922, pp. 186–97) dismisses (p. 187) arguments for the 1590 Essex/Sidney and Southampton/Vernon matches as mere guesses that show lamentable ignorance of easily ascertainable historical facts. Despite possible later performances at weddings (p. 188) and however it may have been later revised, I am satisfied that it was first produced for the occasion of the marriage of Sir Thomas Heneage to Lady Southampton, mother of Shakespeare’s friend and patron, in the year 1594. He claims that this date not only coincides with the strongest internal evidence advanced by past commentators, but gives us also a bridal couple that match the advanced ages and social dignity of Theseus and Hippolyta. He gives arguments for inferring that (p. 199) the Queen graced this marriage with her presence. He sees further revisions to MND when (as he surmises, p. 195) the services of Shakespeare and his company were retained for the marriage festivities of the Earl of Rutland’s proposed marriage in the spring of [1599] and not long after the death of Spenser. So also Stopes (1922, p. 75).

Wilson (ed. 1924, pp. ix–x, 85–100) and his co-editor Quiller-Couch are convinced that MND at whatever date written, . . . was composed to celebrate a marriage—possibly for private performance at some great house, possibly even at Court, but most certainly for a wedding somewhere. Their suggestions for date(s) and occasion(s) are influenced by their belief that the play underwent several stages of revision. (P. 99): It has, of course, long been recognised that [MND] is a wedding play, while its length—it . . . is the fourth shortest play in the canon—suggests that it was intended primarily for a private rather than a public performance. . . . For instance, the marriage of the Earl of Essex in 1590 . . . was proposed by Elze and supported by Kurz. This date is not now seriously entertained in any quarter, though, if parts of the text go back to some year before 1592, it cannot be dismissed as impossible. Curiously enough, no one, as far as we know, has quoted a wedding from 1592 or 1593 to fall in with the allusion to Robert Greene’s death, and it may be that in his first draft Shakespeare had no particular wedding in view; certainly that draft did not contain the wedding-masque with which the transmitted text concludes. Nevertheless, even without the masque, the fable, as Dr Johnson would say, is so appropriate to a wedding-celebration, that it is hard to believe the play was not originally plotted to that end. And if so the revision of 1594 is likely to have been undertaken for a similar purpose. Now Jan. 26, 1595, the date of the marriage of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, to Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, fits in very well with the 1594 allusions, and since Fleay first put it forward this match has been commonly regarded by critics as the most likely occasion for the composition of the play. We have nothing better to offer for the revision of 1594, but we do not ourselves favour the Stanley [100] wedding, since the Queen is reputed to have been present at it, and we very much doubt whether the Dream, in any form, can have been played before her.

Finally, there is the marriage of the Earl of Southampton in 1598 to Elizabeth Vernon, . . . an occasion which . . . has of late found few supporters. Indeed an apparently insuperable obstacle has hitherto stood in the way of its acceptance, namely the patent absurdity, as it would seem to anyone in the least acquainted with the development of Shakespeare’s powers and style, of supposing that he could be writing this play, as a whole, so late as the year 1598. But this obstacle vanishes directly the fact of revision be admitted. It seems to us, therefore, at least possible that Shakespeare undertook the last revision, to which we owe nearly all the finest poetry of the play, in celebration of his friend and patron’s marriage. Some chronological difficulties attached to this supposition are not regarded as fatal to the possibility. The editors hope to have established a presumption in favour of [MND] having been first handled by Shakespeare in 1592 or before, rehandled in 1594, and rehandled once again in 1598. Empson (1994, pp. 198–201), in a posthumously published essay, is influenced by Wilson’s theories, considering MND first drafted in the period of plague closures in 1592–4 for the entertainment of Southampton, revised after 1594 probably for the Berkeley/Carey wedding, and revised yet again for public performance.

Chambers (Rev., 1925, pp. 341–2) reviewing Wilson (ed. 1924): M. N. D. has generally been regarded in recent years as a play of 1594 or 1595, probably written for some great wedding, which can only be conjecturally identified. He rejects the suggestion of a version revised for the Southampton wedding as not . . . at all plausible. (P. 342): [W]hether in January or August, the marriage was a desperately secret affair, . . . and it is incredible that it should have been advertised by a hymeneal pageant.

Harrison (1927, p. 25): MND is written for private performance for some wedding. This meant . . . there was probably adequate scenery, good music, and . . . a company of young children to act the parts of the fairies; elsewhere (1933, p. 82; ed. 1937, pp. 12–13) he asserts it was for the Stanley/Vere wedding, but later (ed. 1948, p. 270) temporizes, saying this occasion best fits the probable date of writing; but there is no evidence, and the title page of the quarto definitely states that the play was sundry times publicly acted. Constantin-Weyer (1929, p. 39) imagines that at Southampton’s home Sh. had met Lucy Harrington, who asked the poet to write for her wedding to the earl of Bedford a light comedy, something like Lyly’s Endymion, something fantastic, fairy-like, airy! (Fr.) Brandl ([1929], pp. 190–2) believes MND written for the Heneage/Southampton wedding (Ger.). Ridley (ed. 1934, p. x) endorses Wilson’s (ed. 1924) revision theories, including that the final revision of 1598 was perhaps for the Southampton/Vernon wedding. So also Messiaen (1945, p. 502) (Fr.).

Martin, (1935 p. 48): It is strange . . . that no one has suggested the double marriage of Lady Elizabeth and Lady Katherine Somerset to Henry Guildford of Hemstead in Kent and William (later second Baron) Petre, respectively. The date was November 8, 1596. The brides’ father was the Earl of Worcester. . . . For this marriage Spenser wrote his Prothalamion. The ceremony took place at Essex House; Essex, to whom Shakespeare was probably known through Southampton, had returned from Cadiz in August. . . .

It may be objected that since Worcester had a company of players, Shakespeare’s services would not be required. But there seems to be no trace of Worcester’s men in London before January, 1602, although they can be followed through the provinces in the nineties. See also Thomas (1949, pp. 321–2); Dawson (1950, p. 631).

Kittredge (ed. 1936, p. 229) concedes the play may have been specially composed for any of six marriages suggested by ingenious scholars from 1590–1600: The first of these is certainly too early; the last is certainly too late. Even more hesitant is Murry (1936, p. 217), who comments on wedding theories: It may well be so. But there is no telling. He warns against the inclination to say to ourselves that the dewy beauty which pearls [MND] can never have been intended for a popular audience. Holzknecht & McLure (ed. 1937, pp. 196–7) are almost certain that it was written for some court wedding, most likely the Stanley/Vere or the Berkeley/Carey marriage. Parrott (ed. 1938; 1953, p. 131) believes it was written late in 1594 or early in 1595, quite probably [for] a noble wedding. . . . To fix the date of composition about 1595 does not, however, exclude the possibility of revision. . . . The text as it has come down to us preserves the form of presentation at the private performance. Alexander (1939, p. 105) finds the Berkeley/Carey marriage the most likely guess, but there are no details of the ceremony now available to confirm or refute this conjecture; he suggests the singing boys he believes were supplied by the Carey family for the fairies in Wiv. would have been available for MND. See also Idem (1964, pp. 133–4). Neilson & Hill (ed. 1942, p. 88) find the Stanley/Vere wedding the most plausible. Chambrun (1947, tr. 1957, pp. 82–3): This comedy, many times corrected and altered, . . . was often acted at Elizabeth’s court on festive [83] occasions, especially when important marriages were celebrated; she instances the Essex/Sidney, Heneage/Southampton and Stanley/Vere weddings. Boas (1950, p. 21): There is good reason to believe that [MND] was performed in honour of some great noble’s wedding at which the Queen was present; he does not give any reason. Gui (1952, pp. 300–1) argues that MND was commissioned by Sir George Carey for the marriage proposed in 1595 of his daughter to William Lord Herbert, and that the commission persisted for the marriage that actually took place between Elizabeth and Thomas Berkeley in Feb. 1596. He argues that it was at this time that Sh. developed (p. 301) a personal [homosexual] interest in William Herbert. Siegel (1953, p. 139): The manner in which the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta is made the setting of [MND], the music, dancing and spectacle with which it is filled, and the virtual epithalamium at the conclusion testify, it is generally agreed, that the play was written as part of the festivities of some aristocratic wedding; his essay is devoted to reading the play as if a wedding guest at that occasion.

Sisson (ed. 1954, p. 207): It is generally agreed that it was composed to celebrate some marriage among the great, and occasions are offered from 1590 to 1600. For various reasons that of Elizabeth Carey and Thomas Berkeley in 1596 has found most favour. And the lyric quality of the play seems to fit it into the trend of Shakespeare’s work at this time. Yet many feel it to be less mature than other plays of this date, and it is possible that it was originally written earlier, and revised for some such later occasion. Hammerle (Laubenmotiv, 1953, pp. 327–9) argues for the Berkeley/Carey marriage on the basis of Spenserian connections both literary and familial (Ger.). Arnold (1955, p. 100): It is not impossible to hold that the newly composed work was presented for the first time on the 26 January 1595 before the Court at Greenwich, on the occasion of the Stanley/Vere wedding (Fr.). Brunner (1957, p. 66) believes the play is clearly a festivity for a wedding, but makes no attempt to identify or decide among the six or seven suggested between 1591 and 1597 (Ger.). Munro (ed. 1957, pp. 338–9): The theme of the play has led to the view that it was probably composed for the festivities of a particular wedding. Various weddings have been suggested, . . . None can with certainty be associated with the play. Bullough (1957, 1:367): The emphasis on weddings suggests that it was originally written for the marriage of some noble (cf. Chambers W. Sh. 1.358–63). Several names have been proposed inconclusively. Internal evidence, including style, points to composition between [Tit. and MV] . . . It was probably written in 1594 or 1595, though additions may have been made later, possibly for another wedding. . . . In keeping with the hymeneal occasion Shakespeare treats the play as a merry prank. . . . Surely it was written for a summer wedding.

The argument of Olson’s (1957, pp. 95–119) influential essay depends on his belief that it was written for the solemn nuptials of a noble house, perhaps for those of the Earl of Derby or the Earl of Essex. . . . [96] The ceremony for which it was written probably took place about 1595. Its audience would have included, from the intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals of the court, men who knew the recently published enigmatic works of Spenser, Fraunce, and Sidney. In a footnote (p. 95) he cites Chambers, Occasion, 1916, Welsford 1927, Wilson ed. 1924, Siegel 1953: These references might be multiplied. My essay does not propose to deal with the problem of topical allusions in MND. Barber (1959, pp. 87, 119–25, 149–50) asserts there can be no doubt that MND was commissioned for performance at a noble entertainment . . . though just what noble wedding was graced by Shakespeare’s dramatic epithalamium no one has been able to determine. His argument proceeds on that assumption, to the point of claiming that Theseus and Hippolyta are (p. 125) stand-ins for the noble couple whose marriage the play originally honored. More cautiously Doran (ed. 1959, pp. 14–16) finds the ending suggests the play may have been written as an entertainment for a great wedding, . . . the one [15] most favored being Stanley/Vere 1595. Baldwin (1959, pp. 472–92) believes (p. 477) the ending was made for the play, not the play for the ending. That is, it is not at all likely that the play was constructed for such an occasion as is represented in the fifth act, but rather that such an occasion was invented to round out the play; he concludes that MND (p. 492) was constructed about the first half of 1594 and received some addition or change for court performance the Christmas of 1594. Savage (1961, pp. 65–71) declaring almost universal agreement among scholars on MND’s occasional nature, argues for the Berkeley/Carey wedding, mainly on the grounds of the groom’s father’s predilection for hunting. Halliday (1961, pp. 120–1) suggests the play presented at the Berkeley/Carey wedding was LLL, and that possibly Sh. was commissioned to write a play for the Guildford/Petre/Somerset wedding. Wilson (1962, pp. 191–207), aging but combative, presents yet another argument on the nature of the play: No scholar seems to doubt that [MND] is a marriage play and was written to be performed at a grand wedding in some nobleman’s house. There seems no reason why for Shakespeare and his company, it should not have been the marriage play which could be brought out, after a little touching up, whenever they were called upon to provide the evening’s entertainment that normally terminated the festivities on such occasions . . . [192] That the play . . . was originally written or re-written for a wedding at a house with a hall large enough for its proper performance and not for some other occasion at court or elsewhere, needs no arguing. He lists six possible weddings, as in Chambers, 1930, 1:358, and finds arguments in favor of all three of Heneage/Southampton, Stanley/Vere, and Berkeley/Carey, concluding that MND was performed at both the latter two. Harbage (1962, pp. 19–20) seems to be fighting a losing battle against the swelling list of plays for which private auspices of production are hypothesized: . . . The trouble is that there is nothing to support any of these hypotheses except the other hypotheses, now functioning as ghostly precedents. There is no supporting [20] external evidence to prove that any regular play performed by any regular company, juvenile or adult, was originally written for a special occasion during the whole reign of Elizabeth and lifetime of Shakespeare. This total absence of evidence would be rather remarkable if such plays were as common in fact as they have become in theory. Dent (1964, p. 123 n. 16) ripostes to Harbage: [T]he internal evidence that [MND] was either written or adapted for a courtly wedding seems to me, as to most, overwhelming.

Rowse (1963, pp. 204–7) asserts (p. 205): We have no reason to doubt that [MND] was produced to grace the occasion of the Heneage/Southampton wedding in 1594. He argues that references to bad weather, the baptism of Prince Henry of Scotland, and the death of Robert Greene were added later (p. 207) to strengthen what was in essence a private play with the general public. Bullough (1964, p. 124) instances MND as evidence that Sh. wrote for performance in noble houses. Nosworthy (1965, p. 3), while emphatically rejecting the category of nuptial occasional play, believes it reasonably safe to conclude that the surviving texts [of MND, AYL and Tmp.] preserve versions specially adapted for use at weddings, but there is no good reason for supposing [they] were originally anything other than contributions to the company’s general repertory. Campbell (in Campbell, Rothschild, & Vaughan ed. 1965, pp. 1–3) believes the existing text of MND was (p. 3) most likely written for the Stanley/Vere wedding. Kittredge & Ribner (ed. 1966, p. x) consider it fairly certain MND was written for a wedding, most likely Heneage/Souhampton but possibly Stanley/Vere. Akrigg (1968, pp. 240–1): Sh. would hardly have been such a tactless blunderer [241] as to put in a play written for [the Heneage/Southampton wedding] lines which could be taken as a palpable hit at the bride: [quotes 8–9]; more probable is the Stanley/Vere wedding. Draper (1972, p. 67) maintains the play celebrates the Percy/Devereux wedding.

Schoenbaum (1975, pp. 138–9): By virtue of its brevity, special casting requirements, and (in Sir Edmund Chambers’s phrase) the hymeneal character of the theme, [MND] would appear to be well suited to grace a wedding celebration. . . . The text seemingly provides alternative endings . . .

But the suggestion, at first so beguiling, becomes less appealing under rigorous scrutiny. Dr. Stanley Wells puts the negative case most cogently: [139] [quotes Wells ed. 1967, pp. 13–14; see here].

Bradbrook (1978, pp. 112–13): If [MND] were not intended solely for some great wedding, the compliment to the Queen suggests that it was used on one such occasion when she was present—the most probable being the Stanley/Vere or Berkeley/Carey marriages. Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. liii–lvii, lxxxix): Most scholars are agreed that the Dream was designed to grace a wedding in a noble household. The one or two sceptics provide a useful reminder that . . . there is no proof of this. But so long as the distinction between fact and probability is made clear, there is nothing unscholarly in giving proportionable credence to probability. Of the weddings commonly proposed he dismisses some as too early and some too late to fit his arguments concerning topical references and style, concluding (p. lvii): The hypothesis which fits the largest number of facts and probabilities—though it must remain a hypothesis—is that MND was written 1595–6 for the Berkeley/Carey wedding, and later acted on the public stage. In any event, it can be dated with confidence between autumn 1954 and spring 1596, and with certainty before 1598. (P. lxxxix): That [MND] was designed to grace a wedding is a presumption as strong as it can be in default of the direct evidence which would make it certain. Wickham (1980, p. 178): MND is generally acknowledged to have been written to celebrate a wedding. Hunter (1983, pp. 95–101): Apart from a few unromantic dissidents, critics have seen [MND] as originally written to celebrate a wedding; he consults G. Frende’s Almanack (1588) to demonstrate to his own satisfaction that it was for the Berkeley/Carey marriage of 1596. Because of his complicated astronomical calculations, he finds it not (p. 100) clear whether [Sh.] adapted a text already under way or had conceived of the play all along as especially designed for [these festivities] and made a few necessary late changes in some of its details. However, in 1985 (pp. 45–7), Hunter argues that Sh. (p. 47) wrote the play in the expectation that it would actually be performed on May Day 1594 at the Heneage/Southampton wedding, and that it was revived with some changes for the Berkeley/Carey wedding; it seems probable that Dream had not been presented in the public theatres before this date. See also Hunter (1998, pp. 9–10 and 2002, p. 3). Hartman (1983, p. 355), in order to pursue a Freudian analysis of the play, asserts that it was written to honor the Heneage/Southampton wedding. Montrose (1983, p. 62) claims that MND’s affinities with Elizabethan courtly entertainments have long been recognized, and that Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. liii, lv) cautiously endorses the familiar notion that it was written for a wedding at which the Queen was present. Although attractive and plausible, such topical connections must remain wholly conjectural. The perspective of my own analysis of the play’s court connection is dialectical rather than causal, ideological rather than occasional. For, whether or not Queen Elizabeth was physically present at the first performance of [MND], her pervasive cultural presence was a condition of the play’s imaginative possibility. Later (1996, p. 160) he seems more definitely negative: Although attractive, the widely accepted general hypothesis of the play’s occasion is without substantiation.

Bednarz (1983, pp. 81–94) argues from Spenserian connections that the Stanley/Vere match (p. 82) establishes the terminus ad quem of the play’s composition. Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 2–4) is sceptical of wedding theories; of possible occasions he names the Stanley/Vere and Berkeley/Carey weddings, finding the latter (p. 3) more plausible in terms of date, but there is no evidence to connect the play with either ceremony. He cites Wells’s (ed. 1967, p. 14) mention of Daniel’s 1614 wedding play as evidence against MND being so regarded. He finds Ringler’s (1968) conclusions about casting (p. 4) more plausible than to suppose that Shakespeare wrote for a special occasion on the assumption that a private patron would provide several boys to swell the company. At any rate, it is pointless to speculate further about a possible occasion for the play, and it does not affect the dating of its composition in 1595–6. Strong (1985, p. 51): The first night of [MND] must have been a great aristocratic marriage to which Queen Elizabeth the First came. Honigmann (1985, pp. 129, 150–3) claims the Stanley/Vere wedding as the first performance of MND, calling on the date of new moons as determinant (p. 151): [T]here was a new moon on 30 January 1595, exactly four days after Earl William’s wedding; . . . the emphatic statement that a new moon is due in precisely four days [5–11] . . . would alert spectators to expect other topical allusions, and that would be as far as it would be prudent to go. Mahood (1986, p. 136): MND was written . . . for a happy occasion. There is general agreement that it is a wedding play; the most convincing argument so far advanced is that it formed part of the celebration of the Berkeley/Carey wedding.

Colthorpe (1987, pp. 205–7) argues convincingly against the conjecture that Elizabeth was present at the Berkeley/Carey wedding in February 1596, chiefly by citing the negative evidence of the lack of any reference to the presence of Elizabeth, or of any players or great festivities, in the description of the event in The Berkeley Manuscripts (ed. J. McLean, Gloucester, 1883). Wells & Taylor (1987, p. 119): Many scholars have believed that Dream was written to celebrate a particular aristocratic wedding. This hypothesis seems to us unnecessary: see Wells (ed. 1967, pp. 12–14). . . . However, . . . plays were sometimes performed at private houses during the 1590s, and it is not inconceivable that a new play might have been requested for such a performance by a company’s patron. If such an occasion is sought, the only two likely candidates are the Stanley/Vere or Berkeley/Carey weddings. Bevington (ed. 1988, pp. 81–2) dates the play in the mid 1590s: On the assumption that the play celebrates some noble wedding, scholars have come up with a number of suitable marriages. . . . [82] No one has ever proved convincingly, however, that the play was written for any occasion other than commercial public performance; but earlier (1968, p. 10) he had thought it may have been written for a private occasion with public performance also foreseen. Laroque (1989, p. 116) Much has been said of the circumstances which could have led Sh. to write MND for the celebration of an aristocratic marriage, either the Stanley/Vere wedding of 26 January 1595 or the Berkeley/ Carey wedding, 26 February 1596. This hypothesis remains unverifiable because no document has been found to support it (Fr.). Dutton (1989, pp. 45–9): [T]he suggestion is that a play which revolves so conspicuously around a number of weddings may well have been written—or at least adapted—to celebrate a particular wedding. . . . [T]his hypothesis of more exclusive origins has met with such remarkable agreement that the question has become not whether it was so, but whose wedding. (P. 46): The sheer proliferation of theories must, of itself, give us pause. How plausible is it, by verifiable criteria, that any of these covert meanings or special contexts existed? . . . There is no evidence that any professional playwright ever wrote a full-scale stage play during Shakespeare’s career other than with public, commercial performance in mind. Despite the examples of Lyly and Daniel, (p. 48) there is no evidence (apart from the equivocal nature of the plays themselves) to associate Shakespeare with either the kinds of theatre or the kinds of dramatic patronage that these writers exploited. So it remains at every point a matter of interpretation or intuition to determine which weighed the more heavily with him—the interests of wealthy patrons or [49] those of a broad-based public audience. Williams (1990, p. 44) argues that evidence for design for court presentation is weak, and that the urge to find a courtly occasion stems from the politics of the scholarly right in a genteel academic tradition. Hollindale (1992, pp. 18–19): There is in fact no firm evidence of any kind to link [MND] with any courtly wedding, except what can be inferred from the text itself. (P. 19): However, most students of the play continue to believe that this is how it began. But everything is conjecture, nothing is proven fact, and whatever private courtly origins the play may have had, it undeniably made a rapid and successful crossing to the public theatres. Kay (1992, pp. 191–2): Scholars have looked at a range of possible specific occasions for the play, including the Heneage/Southampton, Stanley/Vere, and Berkeley/ Carey weddings. (P. 192): There are two explanations of this scholarly quest. At one level, it is a response to the centrality of the idea of marriage in the play. But on another, it is a reaction to the quite extraordinary density of its literary texture. The argument is essentially that its language is so artful, its allusions so wide-ranging, its potential for opening up areas of philosophical speculation (especially neoplatonic speculation) so inexhaustible, that it cannot have been written primarily for the public stage. Only those steeped in the latest literature, in high culture, and in arcane thought, the argument runs, can possibly have been expected to respond intelligently to it.

Despite increasing academic skepticism, wedding theories continue to be put forward. Tobin (1992, pp. 309–11) argues that the contemporary wedding for which MND was composed is most likely the Berkeley/Carey match because of the dedication to Elizabeth Carey of Nashe’s The Terrors of the Night and the echoes in MND of Nashe’s work, later (2003, pp. 32–5) repeating this theory. Wiles (1993, pp. ix–xvii, 137–75), quoting 2185–93, claims: There is an obvious and literal way to read these lines. This house is not a theatre but a house in which a marriage is about to be consummated. The best bride bed is distinguished from the fictional bride-beds of Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, Theseus and Hippolyta. There is a real bed in a real house that needs to be blessed. The time is really past midnight, and not the afternoon of a public performance. Is this obvious reading legitimate?

This book examines a wealth of historical and literary evidence which supports the idea that [MND] was indeed written for an aristocratic wedding. In its final chapters, it argues that one specific wedding is the obvious candidate, the wedding of the granddaughter of Shakespeare’s patron to the heir to the Berkeley barony, a wedding which took place in February 1596. He attempts to rebut opponents such as Wells (ed. 1967) and Richard L. Levin (New Readings vs. Old Plays, Chicago, 1979, pp. 167–71), and calls for support on Kott (1964), Brooks (ed. 1979), and the production of Peter Brooks. (P. xvii): We shall begin by looking at the genre of the occasional play, . . . We shall then turn to masques, to epithalamia and to festive practices associated with courtship. . . . In the final chapters we will consider the reasons for associating [MND] with one particular marriage. David Lindley (ShS 48, 1995, p. 246) is sympathetic to Wiles’s stance, but demurs: It seems to me that the book is at its strongest in its more general exploration of festive rites . . . that the play echoes and in its demonstration of the significance of astronomy to Elizabethan habits of mind than in identifying a particular occasion. Mark Thornton Burnett (ibid., p. 261), less sympathetically: Wiles’ method is to pursue such allusions relentlessly, and while the breadth of evidence is impressive, eventually it is not clear . . . how many of his connections are coincidental. In his review, Gary Jay Williams (1996, pp. 192–3) makes a similar point: Wiles is learned but relentlessly presses arguments and evidence, sometimes beyond the point where prudent readers will follow; he gives a number of specific examples of dubious interpretations. None of these three critics observes that Wiles’s obvious and literal way of reading sounds remarkably like Quince and company approaching the problems of dramatic presentation.

Gurr (1995, p. 174): None of the wedding celebration theories fits very well, . . . and in any case Shakespeare always wrote his plays as multi-purpose entertainments. Halio (1996, pp. 155–6) reviews wedding theories via Chambers, but concludes (p. 156): There is no compelling reason . . . to believe the Dream was not originally intended for the public stage. See also Idem, 2003, pp. 13–15. Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 805): Scholars have told and retold this story of the aristocratic wedding for which Shakespeare wrote his most enchanting comedy until it has come to seem like an established truth, one of the few things we actually know about the composition of the plays. But while the story is both charming and at least plausible, there is not a shred of actual evidence that [MND] was ever performed at, let alone written expressly for, such a wedding; he places composition around 1594–96. Honan (1998, p. 213) expresses cautious skepticism that the play was written for a wedding. Bloom (1998, p. 148): In the midst of the winter of 1595–96, Shakespeare visualized an ideal summer, and he composed [MND], probably on commission for a noble marriage, where first it was played. Hopkins (1998, p. 10): There were certainly some really spectacular cases of marital breakdown amongst the aristocracy, and it is a telling irony that scholars who suggest particular aristocratic marriages as the probable occasion of [MND] so consistently point out the extent to which the political rather than the personal predominated in the formation of these alliances. She instances the Berkeley/Carey and Percy/Devereux marriages, and cites Draper (1972) and May (1984). Leggatt (1999, p. 46): There is not a shred of evidence, internal or external, to support [the wedding] theory; it is a self-perpetuating tradition with no basis in fact. Prior (Occasion, 2000, pp. 56–64) argues for the Heneage/Southampton wedding on the grounds that Sh. used as a source a MS poem by Thomas Pound celebrating the Countess’s wedding to the second Earl of Southampton in 1566. Barton (2001, p. 126) declares that all attempts to associate MND with a specific noble wedding, at which the queen was present, have so far failed. Dupas (2001, p. 79): Whatever the exact date of the first presentation of MND may be, . . . it is assumed that this piece was played on the occasion of a marriage in a noble family, the text having been composed between the autumn of 1594 and 1596 (Fr.). Duncan-Jones (2001, pp. 10–12, 87–9) suggests that Sh. saw the festivities at Kenilworth 1575 and showed his knowledge of it in MND which was performed at the Berkeley/Carey wedding. She asserts (p. 87): At some time during the Christmas season [of 1595–6] the Chamberlain’s Men, and their leading poet, [88] Shakespeare, were commanded to prepare a festive play for the Carey Berkeley marriage. She draws various parallels between MND and the circumstances of the wedding. She makes no mention of Wiles (1993), who presents similar arguments. Hackett (2003, pp. 338–57), calling the question whether MND was written to celebrate a particular wedding an intriguing idea, examines arguments in favor of the Carey/Berkeley wedding, focusing particularly on Elizabeth Carey’s known tastes.

Burke (Lecture 1972; 2006, p. 301): Probably commissioned as a kind of masque, to celebrate a wedding among persons of nobility. Editor’s note: Burke’s inference that [MND] had its origin in private performance, with later revision for public performance, was at the time arguable, but no longer reflects a consensus of opinion among Shakespeare scholars.

Odds and Ends

Lefranc (1919), Titherley (1952), and Evans (1956) claim MND was written by William Stanley, Earl of Derby for his own 1595 wedding. Clark (1930) claims it was written in 1584 by Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford. Brooks (1943) sees several versions (c. 1587–93) reworked by various hands, that of c. 1593 by Edward Dyer. For Rickert’s (1923) theories of political allegory see Appendix on Criticism; Chambers (1930, 1:362): The notion is worked out with great ingenuity, and is quite incredible.

Sources, Influences, and Analogues

There is no clear main source for MND, as for example Lodge’s Rosalynde is the source for AYL. Attitudes towards the play’s origins range from emphasis on its unique inventiveness, to claims that seem to embrace not only nearly every literary work that might have been known in 16th-c. England, but also a wide range of folk customs and beliefs, and of courtly and popular entertainments. Even works that most commentators accept as partial sources are by others granted but slight influence or none. The question is complicated by multiple possible sources for the same element in the play. So Theseus may come from Chaucer or Plutarch or Ovid, the young lovers from Chaucer or Ovid or Montemayor or Sh.’s own earlier plays, the fairies from medieval romance or folk beliefs or Scot or early English drama or classical mythology, Bottom from Scot or Lyly or Ovid or Apuleius,—and these are only a few of the suggested possibilities. Early comment focused on perceived links to names, verbal echoes, or similar situations, but later expanded, with gathering momentum in recent years, to consider broader connections and affinities, extending even to the ramifications of submerged allusions. This appendix offers representative commentary on the play’s originality, on each of the most usually accepted probable sources, and on possible sources that have garnered significant critical support. The commentary on probable sources is followed in each case by selections from the works discussed as generous as space allows.

Originality

The view of the genesis of MND expressed by Gildon (1710, 7:320): Whence Shakespear took the Hint of it I know not, but believe it to be his own Invention, has persisted through the centuries. So Duff (1770, p. 130): In these inimitable productions [Tmp. and MND] most of the events at least, and especially such as are any way extraordinary, are the invention of the poet. Hippisley (1837, p. 284): In the magic of the Tempest, in the fairy scenes of the Midsummer Night’s Dream, and, generally, in all his comic passages and dialogues, the poet is the creator, not merely of the structure, but of the very materials of which that structure is composed. Keightley (1867, p. 24): Purely and absolutely the whole the poet’s own invention. He was well read in Chaucer, in Golding’s Ovid, and in North’s Plutarch, where he got the names of his characters and some circumstances. Lang (1895. p. 327): There is no play more absolutely Shakespeare’s own, in plot and invention, character and color. Chambers (1930, 1:362): There is no comprehensive source. Bradbrook (1951, p. 154): Shakespeare did not rely either on old stories or old plays. . . . [T]he whole thing is virtually his own.

The emphasis on the play’s essential originality coexisted with acknowledgement of borrowings from other works, and modulated into praise of his unique achievement in blending so many disparate materials. Capell (ed. 1768, 1:64–5): If that pretty fantastical poem of Drayton’s, call’d—Nymphidia, or, The Court of Fairy, be early enough in time, . . . [65] it is not improbable, that Shakespeare took from thence the hint of his fairies: . . . The rest of the play is, doubtless, invention: the names only of Theseus, Hippolita, and Theseus’ former loves, Antiopa and others, being historical; and taken from the translated Plutarch, in the article—Theseus. Halliwell (1841, p. 11): Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale has long been considered as the source whence Shakespeare derived the hint of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We have a few general observations to offer on the sources of this play, at the same time expressing our firm conviction, that the plot as a whole, was one of the heirs of his own invention. Halliwell (ed. 1856, pp. 7–8): As far as is at present known, the plot of the Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the very few invented by Shakespeare himself. It is true that a few slight portions of the ground-work are derived from other sources, but the tale and its construction are believed to be original; he grudgingly admits Golding for the interlude, but allows only minor details to KnT and LGW. Staunton (ed. 1857, 1:340), conceding borrowings from Golding’s Ovid and North’s Plutarch: But that which constitutes the charm and essence of the play, the union of those gross materials with the delicate, benign, and sportive beings of fairy-land, lighter than the gossamer, and smaller than a cowslip’s bell was the pure creation of Shakespeare’s own illimitable and delightful fancy. Hall (1871, p. 249), denying influence of Chaucer and Plutarch: There cannot be a doubt that the source of this comedy, is to be attributed to Shakspere’s great knowledge of folk lore, his complete acquaintance with the superstitions of the day, and from his own luxuriant imagination sprang the conception and the development of this lovely dream, which is a splendid poetic effort of a great poet’s brain. Furness (ed. 1895, p. xxii): The present play is one of the very few whereof no trace of the whole Plot has been found in any preceding play or story; but that there was such a play—and it is more likely to have been a play than a story which Shakespeare touched with his heavenly alchemy—is, I think, more probable than improbable. Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 17): So far as we know, Shakespeare was not indebted to any single model for the plot. . . . It combines situations and motives gathered from widely different sources, and welded together by the incomparable art of the poet. Schelling (1910, p. 157): No source has been found for the major plot, . . . [MND] marks the very acme of the difficult Renaissance art of agglomeration. Cunliffe (ed. 1912, p. ix), listing Chaucer, Plutarch, Ovid, Golding: In all these cases, the debt is slight, for there is no play in which Shakespeare worked with greater originality. Sisson (ed. 1954, p. 207): A great tossing of books, indeed, preceded the rolling of the poet’s eye here. But no play ever smelt less of the lamp, or was more irradiated by the white moonlight of imagination. Barber (1959, p. 88): Shakespeare, [in LLL and MND], and nowhere else, makes up everything himself, because he is making up action on the model of games and pastimes. Black (1965, p. 15): Twentieth-century investigation of Shakespeare’s sources has tended in ever-increasing measure to reveal the scope and variety of his reading, the speed with which he could select what was relevant to his purpose, and the retentiveness of his memory. A play so composite as A Midsummer Night’s Dream provides a striking example of these processes and qualities. The stories which comprise it are not found together in any previous work, so that the play is in a very real sense original. The . . . attempt to examine separately the four stories involved . . . throws into sharp relief the inventiveness with which they have been rounded out and the ingenuity with which they have been interwoven. For the heart of the mystery, the transmutation from commonplace to unforgettable, no analysis is adequate and no praise too high.

Others who share Bradbrook’s (1951, p. 161) conviction that MND is sui generis despite the multitude of literary and other influences adduced as contributing to its parts, or who draw attention to the lack of a main source, include: Daniel (ed. 1828, pp. 6–7), The Clarkes (ed. 1864, 1:323), Hudson (ed. 1880, pp. 4–5), White (1886, pp. 14–15), Verity (ed. 1893, pp. xxi, xxiii), Boas (1896, p. 182), Mabie (1900, p. 204), Rolfe (1904, pp. 189–90), Seccombe & Allen (1904, 2:73), Lathrop (1906, p. 173), Gordon (ed. 1910, p. v), Stopes (1916, pp. 173–4), Semper (1931, p. 85), Ridley (ed. 1934, p. ix), Parrott (ed. 1938; 1953, p. 132), Bonnard (1956, pp. 268–9), Muir (1957, p. 31), Bullough (1957, 1:368), Doran (ed. 1959, pp. 21–3), Bonazza (1966, p. 116), Weiss (1971, p. 25), Wells (1972, p. 58), Evans (ed. 1974, p. 51), Draper (1980, p. 10), Hibbard (1981, p. 144), Nosworthy (1982, p. 102), Daniell (1986, p. 109), Barkan (1986, p. 252), Hollindale (1992, pp. 2 ff.), Brown (ed. 1996, pp. xviii–xix).

Some recent critics address the effect of the multiplicity of sources. Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 4–5, 12): The range of reference underlying [MND] deserves attention . . . because it helps to explain something of the archetypal force of the comedy, showing the dramatist’s instinct for seizing on whatever might articulate and enrich the web of meanings and relationships developed in it.

A play so much concerned with transformation transforms its sources. . . . [12] At the same time it is important to ask continually whether Shakespeare needed to go to a source for what was common property, . . . what was, so to speak, in the air, the common materials of the culture and discourse of his age. Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 806): Shakespeare’s visionary poetic drama appeals to an unusually broad spectrum of spectators. . . . This breadth [of educational background of spectators, and of rhetorical devices] also reflects the very wide range of cultural materials that the playwright has cunningly woven together, from the classical heritage of the educated elite to popular ballads and folk customs, from refined and sophisticated entertainments to the coarser delights of farce. Hackett (2003, p. 339): Any attempt to list the derivations of its various components . . . quickly becomes encyclopedic. . . . Yet the experience of watching or reading the play is very far indeed from suffocation under a heap of erudition or archaic folklore. Quoting Young (1966, p. 33) on the wedding of elements previously considered incompatible, she concludes: In this metaphorical, aesthetic sense the Dream is certainly a marriage-play.

This tension between on the one hand conviction of the play’s originality, and on the other recognition of the multiplicity of materials upon which it draws, is apparent in many commentators. Nevertheless, from the earliest days of critical inquiry some debts have been widely acknowledged, especially to Chaucer, Ovid (both in Latin and in Golding’s translation), and North’s Plutarch; to a lesser extent to Huon of Burdeux, Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Apuleius, and Montemayor; to a wide range of contemporary and earlier writers, including especially Lyly, Greene, Spenser, and Seneca; to festivities both courtly and popular; to the Bible; and to commonly held beliefs and superstitions.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Comments on Shakespeare’s Use of Chaucer

Grey (1754, 1:40–3, 45–7, 53, 57, 60, 62–6, 68, 73–4) is the first to state the most frequently acknowledged Chaucerian debt: Some part of this play was borrow’d probably from the Knight’s Tale, in Chaucer; and the Legende of Thisbe of Babylon. He notes the similar situations at the beginning of KnT and MND, quoting KnT 859–88, and providing a footnote from Plutarch to the title Duke, in the combats of the two pairs of male lovers, and in the Theseus and Hippolyta hunting scene, quoting KnT 1673–1702. He also notes the borrowing of the name Philostrate, quoting KnT 1426–40, the references to May time rituals, and several other details from KnT and other of Chaucer’s works, especially the Legend of Thisbe, quoting LGW 737–51, 784–5, 805–22. Steevens (ed. 1773) notes the KnT link in the title Duke. Tyrwhitt (1775, 4:161) initiates the suggestion that Oberon and Titania derive from Pluto and Proserpina in MerT. Connections with Thop. are early perceived by Thirlby (MS 1725–33; see n. 942–50), and by Steevens (ed. 1778; see n. 436), who also first notes a parallel with WBT. Hippisley (1837, pp. 60–7) further explores connections with KnT, and discusses MerT, WBT and SqT in relation to the fairy scenes. Later critics have pursued the influence of Chaucer’s dream vision poems, and various other of his works, including the first fabliaux in CT, and the Boece.

It is convenient to review critical commentary on Shakespeare’s possible use of Chaucerian material under separate headings for the different works, beginning with the largest debt, to The Knight’s Tale.

a) The Knight’s Tale

Grey (1754, 1:40–1), see above. Hippisley (1837, pp. 61–2): The part which Duke Theseus acts, as an arbiter in the affairs of love, is the same both in the poem [KnT] and the drama [MND]. . . . In both instances . . . he is the husband of Hippolita, and in both he preserves his well-known passion for the chase. Hippisley makes some distinctions in the nature of the parallels: (p. 62) The manners of the Knight’s Tale are strictly feudal; those of the introduction to the Midsummer Night’s Dream in some measure classical. In the latter the old father pleads the ancient law of Athens, as giving him a power of life and death over his child: in the former the disputes are to be settled by combat alone; in both May rituals are observed. The mythology of the poem is altogether classical, while that of the drama is founded on the popular superstitions of the middle ages. Halliwell (1841, p. 11) suggests that the funeral games for Arcite may have furnished Shakespeare with the idea of introducing an interlude at the end of his play. Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:433): MND corresponds with the tale of Palamon and Arcite, the Knight’s Tale of Chaucer, in associating a story of love rivalry with the state and pageantry of the court of Theseus, . . . As regards detail, both play and poem open with the arrival of Theseus at Athens, with Hippolyta his bride; at the crisis in either story, he appears with his ladies in a hunting party in an opening of the forest and surprises the rival lovers, and, lastly, the common conclusion is with solemnity and celebration at his ducal court. Shakespeare further borrowed the name of Philostrate from Chaucer, who also supplies a precedent for making Maying excursions to the forest an Athenian custom.

But it is in the general spirit of the description of Theseus, with all the colour and circumstance of feudality, that the suggestiveness of Chaucer’s work is most apparent. Hugo (ed. 1865, 2:284–5) cites the Chaucerian precedent for turning Theseus from a classical hero to a medieval knight (Fr.). Hales (1873, pp. 248–9), citing Hippisley, adds: (p. 249) In both pieces we have two lovers devoted to one lady. In the play this position is repeated twice. Proescholdt (1878, pp. 7–8, 13, 15, 34), partly anticipated by Walker (1860, 2:32), suggests that the names Demetrius and Lysander may be prompted by the names of the kings Emetrius and Licurge (see also notes on the DP); he notes a parallel in the functions of Mars/Venus/Saturn and Oberon/Puck; he adds (p. 34) The characters of Theseus, Hippolyta, Lysander, Demetrius and Hermia have no doubt been derived from Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, which also suggested to Shakespeare the person of Egeus. Only the character of Helena is due to Shakespeare’s own invention. Brink (1878, pp. 99–103) summarizes KnT, and asks: (p. 101) Did not Chaucer provide the model for the main plot . . . ? Did the narrative not represent the mysterious power of love, and did it not have a comical tint . . . ? . . . In Shakespeare’s eyes, [102] unrequited love is not much more than imagination or a sickness. . . . The tale of Palamon and Arcite appeared too comical to Shakespeare to have him consider it tragic yet simultaneously too serious for a comedy. . . . Two men love the same woman; how can you find a satisfactory solution: So the poet shouted, like his Puck when he found two male Athenians and one female sleeping in the woods: [quotes in German 1485–6]. He created two couples in love; this change provided not only the possibility of a happy ending, but also the possibility of a more complex plot and the representation of the fickleness of love. . . . Shakespeare transferred to these women the motif that Chaucer links to the men: the motif of jealousy undermining love (Ger.). Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 17) notes that the theme of friendship broken across by love is illustrated in Palamon and Arcite, as here, though differently, in Hermia and Helena. Lanier (1891, p. 1402; 1898, pp. 192–3) sets out the strands of each plot by letter to show a similar caprice and criss-cross in both. Vollhardt (1899, p. 3), taking issue with Brink, denies any comic element in the love of Chaucer’s heroes, and objects that their constancy, unlike that of Sh’s young men, is inviolable; he finds it implausible that Sh. would have used this essentially tragic tale in such an irreverent way as to change these characters almost into their opposites (Ger.). Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, pp. 84–5) concede allusions and echoes from KnT, and draw attention to these in their annotations. Sidgwick (1908, pp. 10–25) recapitulates the points made by his predecessors, adding the detail (p. 25) that Sh.’s Theseus refers to his conquest of Thebes, which . . . is described in The Knightes Tale; however, he questions Sh.’s debt to KnT for what he considers (p. 24) the main plot: (p. 25) It is conceivable that the story of Palamon and Arcite affected, but did not supply, the plot of the four lovers in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream; but Shakespeare has added a second woman.

Bethurum (1945, pp. 85–94), partly anticipated by Brink, marks an important shift in the approach to considering the links between Chaucer and Sh.’s MND, moving from cataloguing details to assessing tone: (p. 86) I believe that the story of Palamon and Arcite did supply the only suggestion for the four lovers that Shakespeare needed, and that M N D heightens the irony implicit in Chaucer’s story to produce the lightest and gayest satire on mediaeval romance.

To the list of borrowings which Sidgwick truly and faithfully recorded might be added certain matters of tone less easy to catalogue and more telling in an analysis of the play’s mood. The whole conception of Theseus is Chaucer’s. In both stories he is the benevolent ruler, aware of the duties of kingship, aware also of the follies of love and sympathetic to them. In both he furnishes the common sense norm in a world of amorous aberrations. His kindly sympathy is equally apparent when he undertakes the war against Creon out of pity for the queens whose husbands lie unburied, when he spares the lives of Palamon and Arcite, when he gives the [87] lenient rules for the tournament, and when, in Shakespeare’s play, he views with generous tolerance the Lamentable Brief Comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. In both stories it is against his normal humanity that the frantic lovers play out their passionate roles.

When we come to the story of the lovers, Chaucer’s footprints are not quite so clear, and yet I think they can be traced there. Shakespeare approached the story certainly not in the tradition of Boccaccio and Chaucer. . . . [E]ven Chaucer cannot quite surrender himself to the mediaeval romance without ironic overtones on its extravagance, . . . and Shakespeare needed only to follow out these hints of satire to produce his own burlesque. He describes the situation in KnT 1649–1805 and quotes 1806–14. (P. 88): Who may been a fole but if he love is his summary of it—that is, it takes a lover to reveal what folly really is—words which state quite accurately the theme of M N D and are not far from Puck’s famous judgment on mankind [1139].

What Shakespeare does to the story is to heighten the satire he found in Chaucer. . . . Shakespeare raises the comedy to farce by having them contend, not for one girl, but for two. . . . The merit of the joke lies in his humorous reversal of the situation in the K T. Emily’s neutrality toward Palamon and Arcite is delightfully parodied in Helena’s and Hermia’s unshakable preferences in lovers, her prayer to Diana mocked in their immodest pursuit of the men, and her desired state of single-blessedness turned to the harshest threat Theseus can devise . . . [quotes 98–9, 81–2]. The love-versus-friendship theme is transferred to the women [1228–46], and to them also much of Palamon’s and Arcite’s intense preoccupation in the matter. The tone of [89] Chaucer’s lively pictures of impetuous hot youth in the quarrel scenes (K T, 1128–1186 and 1574–1620; 1649–1652), especially that of Palamon’s outburst to Theseus (ll. 1714–1741), . . . is reproduced in the quarrels of Lysander and Demetrius in the third act of M N D, with the same kind of amused tolerance at this youthful intensity.

The turn in the fortunes of the lovers comes in scenes remarkably similar in tone in both stories, when Theseus comes upon them on his hunting expedition in the wood and in M N D wakens the bewildered lovers from their strange dream. In both cases the human conquers the official Theseus and he forgives Palamon and Arcite in K T and Lysander and Hermia in M N D. In both stories too the resolution is brought about by supernatural aid, by planetary intervention in the K T and by Puck and Oberon in M N D.

In both the play and the romance there is the same effect of a play-within-a-play, illusion within illusion. Chaucer gets it by the contrast of Theseus’ real humanity with the stock figures of the two lovers, Shakespeare by the dream. Donaldson (1985, p. 30) adds: The principal theme the two poets share, the irresponsibility of romantic love, leads them to speculate on and illustrate love’s obsessiveness and its randomness; how quickly lovers surrender themselves to it, and how completely, unable to regard as worthy of consideration any matter not connected with their love; yet how haphazard the process of love is. . . . Also, in these works the lovers are assisted or hindered in their affairs—or [31] simply tampered with—by supernatural powers who are as irresponsible as the mortals they interfere with, of whom, indeed, they are only distorted images. Love’s responsibility thus takes on in both writers cosmic as well as comic dimensions.

Other critics who comment on relationships between KnT and MND include: Ballmann (1902, pp. 5–9); Bonnard (1956, p. 268), sharing Bethurum’s view of the lovers but not of Theseus; Muir (1957, p. 31); Doran (1960, pp. 116–17); Bullough (1957, 1:368–9); Alexander (1964, p. 135); Coghill (Shakespeare’s Reading, 1959, pp. 90–1) challenging Bethurum’s view, but later (1964, p. 53) adopting it; Bush (1959, p. 70) on the atmosphere of the court; Bradbrook (1965, p. 79 n. 11); Fender (1968, pp. 16–20, 25–6) on KnT as providing a notable precedent for th[e] practice of defining rather than developing character; Warren (1969, p. 133); Biswas (1971, pp. 46–8); Farrow (ed. 1972, p. 213); Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. lxxvii–lxxviii); Rudd (1979, pp. 178–9) on certain aspects of Theseus; Roberts (1983, pp. 108–12) on the (p. 109) pagan worlds of both, and (pp. 111–12) on the breaking of the feyr chaine of love by Titania and Oberon’s quarrel; Mowat (1989, pp. 338–41); Brunetti (1991, pp. 82–3) comparing especially Theseus in each (It.); Gearin-Tosh (1991, pp. 52–5) on the exotic richness of the setting in each; Wiles (1993, pp. 75–6) on astrological implications and (p. 78) the reconciliation of Venus and Diana; Holland (1994, p. 139); Hale (1996, pp. 37–8); Scragg (1996, pp. 60, 64–8) on friendship; Hackett (1997, pp. 34–5, 42).

Some critics have commented on parallels in structure: Baldwin (1959, pp. 480–3): Fixing their eyes upon details, many critics have failed to see the significance of Chaucer’s story for the structure of the play. He instances the importance to the plot of May day observances, and of Theseus’s hunting. Chaucer’s mythological machinery is parallelled in the fairies. The rivalry of lovers and the breaking of friendship by love in KnT, combined with the introduction of a second woman, as in TGV, results in (p. 482) a complication into the plot of the Athenian lovers in Midsummer-Night’s Dream. These various pieces of machinery are adapted, therefore, from [483] Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, and in fact give us the over-all framework of the play. Champion (1968, pp. 14–15): Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream was not creating a structural masterpiece by fusing three or four disparate strands of action but was, rather, adapting The Knight’s Tale—the prototype of these narrative lines—to the purposes of romantic comedy. . . . [15] The basic structure and sequence of events in the two stories run parallel from end to end, and these parallels have not been examined in the detail they deserve; he devotes a further four pages to enumerating and commenting on parallel devices. Thompson (1978, p. 90): It is hardly an exaggeration to call A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare’s first dramatization of [KnT] in some respects. Hollindale (1992, p. 9): One can see in Chaucer’s tale a model of interactive content and form, of symmetrical organization, which Shakespeare was able to use and replicate for his own . . . purposes. Others who recognize some structural resemblance include Dowden (1875, p. 67); Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 17); Lanier (1902, 2:298–9); Baldwin (1959, pp. 482–3); Herbert (1962, pp. 33–4); Black (1965, pp. 15–17); Wright (1968, pp. 8–10); Salingar (1974, p. 226); Sorelius (1993, pp. 178, 181); Cooper (1998, pp. 203–4).

Perceived affinities in the development of the plot are used by some critics to further particular theses: Olson (1957, pp. 101, 117) associates what he sees as the play’s movement toward an orderly subordination of the female and her passions to the more reasonable male with Chaucer’s Theseus, . . . [who] had conquered all the regne of Femenye with his wisdom (KnT, 865–66); (p. 117) he sees this movement culminating in the bond of love speech which Theseus gives in . . . the Knight’s Tale [2987–3069] paralleled in the two plots of the play by the appropriate dramatic symbols. The song of the lark, the music, and dance symbolize the fayre cheyne in the fairy plot; in the other plot Theseus appears at dawn to remark the same effects: How comes this gentle concord in the worlde, That hatred is so farre from iealousie To sleepe by hate, and feare no enmitie [1668–70]. Andreas (1980, pp. 20–1): The touch and darkness of Chaucer’s Boethian tale of woe and fortune have been softened in the play. . . . [In] the comedic Dream, . . . Shakespeare limits his presentation of Chaucer’s pre-emptive, disciplinarian Theseus to a demand that Hermia follow her father’s wishes in choosing Demetrius for a mate, either to die the death, or to abjure forever the society of men [74–5]. This is, of course, precisely the [21] fate Emily prays Diana to grant her in the Knight’s Tale. . . .

The plots of both the tale and the play involve the confusions of young lovers who are hardly distinguishable one from the other. Shakespeare adds a second female to complicate the chaos which uncontrolled passion obviously introduces into society. Mebane (1982, pp. 256–8): We may extend the implications of Champion’s insight that the basic structure and sequence of events in the two stories run parallel from end to end by showing that both works are literary microcosms whose form reflects the structure of the cosmos. Each reveals a principle of harmony which lies beneath the apparent discord of earthly history, and both of them thus affirm, on more than one level, the goodness of creation. (P. 257): [T]he two works share numerous structural characteristics, as well as the frequently noted similarities in character and setting. (P. 258): One of the most suggestive similarities between the two works is the significance in each of them of the principle of discordia concors. McAlindon (1991, p. 45) uses discordia concors as a clue to what this most ingenious and ambitious of comic artefacts is all about. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is alone among the comedies in having a comprehensive sense of nature’s unstable, confusing, contrarious order. Andreas (1991, p. 49) argues that there is progressive desacralization of . . . an essentially religious fable from KnT through MND to TNK. Labriola (1992, pp. 67–70), accepting KnT as a principal source of MND, considers Sh. as interpreter rather than debtor, concluding (p. 70) the transforming or translating eye of an artist can make joy out of woe, as Chaucer achieved and Sh. perfected. Wallace (1997, pp. 114–16) compares the treatment of Hippolyta in each to define Thesian polity. Richmond (2000, pp. 101, 111 ff.): Just as Chaucer lived in a Catholic world and tried to understand pagan antiquity as an alternate culture, so Shakespeare tried to understand living in an Elizabethan world in which Catholic identity was challenged. [111] Direct reliance upon Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale is obvious in several ways. She reviews the main parallels with KnT and some other sources, then addresses aspects of parallels that she believes show Sh.’s interest in Catholic elements: the continuation of Chaucer’s transforming a (p. 112) flawed Theseus into a mature chivalric knight who is the voice of order, best symbolized in marriage, a joining of the one and the other and a key subject for both Chaucer and Shakespeare; (p. 113) Sh.’s increasing the number of marriages—Matrimony is the sacrament he shows most frequently, one no longer identified by the Established Church of England; Theseus’s praise of conventual life [83–4], a very Catholic sentiment; see also n. 161–3. Edwards (2003, pp. 31–2) suggests that the presence of seasonal festive rituals in both works indicates a shared vision of England (as expressed by John of Gaunt in R2), and that in recalling Chaucer, Sh. is uniting in poetic kinship with him (Fr.).

A few critics have denied the influence of KnT, or expressed reservations about its extent, but their views have gained little support. Daniel (ed. 1828, p. 7): The mutual use of one term, Duke Theseus . . . is all the obligation that [MND] owes to Palemon and Arcite. Dyce (ed. 1857, 1:clxiii): I can find little resemblance between the tale and the play, except that Theseus and Hippolyta are characters in both, and that Philostrate is Arcite’s assumed name in the tale, while it is the name of the Master of the Revels in the play. Staunton (ed. 1857, 1:339): Commentators’ persistence in assigning the ground-work of the fable to Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, is a remarkable instance of the docility with which succeeding writers will adopt . . . an assertion that has really little or no foundation in fact. There is scarcely any resemblance whatever between Chaucer’s tale and Shakespeare’s play. Staunton is approvingly quoted by Furness (ed. 1895, p. 271–2), but called completely wrong by Baldwin (1959, pp. 481–2). Verity (ed. 1893, p. xxi) dismisses the indebtedness as very slight. Gordon (ed. 1910, p. ix): For anything we can see, he need not have read even KnT. Thomson (1952, p. 77) asserts: There is no evidence that he used the Knight’s Tale.

A complicating factor in assessing the influence of KnT is the lost play by Richard Edwardes, Palamon and Arcite (1566). It is described by Anders (1904, p. 78): This play . . . was acted before the Queen in Oxford in the same year [1566]. Detailed accounts of the play . . . and its performance are preserved to us in contemporary MS. reports of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Oxford, published partly by Nichols (Progresses of Q. Eliz., 2nd ed.) and partly by Plummer (Elizabethan Oxford, 1887). The name Philostrate, . . . which has been claimed as a striking proof for Shakespeare’s use of Chaucer, was in that play. Theseus was the dux Athenarum, according to a Latin account [Plummer, p. 128]. But what is more important, in the said play was acted a cry of hounds in the Quadrant, upon the train of a fox in the hunting of Theseus [Nichols, 1823, 1:212]. This part . . . proved extremely popular and successful. The same scene was repeated in Oxford on another occasion in 1583 [in William Gager’s Dido; see Nichols, 2:409] and again acted or imitated before the Queen in 1572 (cp. Malone, [in Boswell, ed. 1821, 3:369], Hunters [see also Feuillerat, 1908, p. 141]). Thus, I conclude, it came about, owing to theatrical tradition, that Shakespeare introduced into his play . . . the hunting of Theseus and the music of the hounds, which was probably really mimicked behind the scenes. [fn. 3: A cry of hounds, and horns winded in peal is a stage-direction in Titus Andron., [2.2.11 (712, 711)]; Cp., too, [2.3.17–20 (752–6); see Dessen & Thomson, 1999, p. 116]. No doubt Edwardes’s play was performed on the London stage. What relation The Two Noble Kinsmen bears to it and to the Palamon and Arsett, mentioned as a play by Henslowe in 1594, it is impossible to say with certainty. The surviving documents relating to the performances are discussed by Ros King, The Works of Richard Edwards, Manchester, 2001, pp. 63–87. See also Coghill (Shakespeare’s Reading, 1959, pp. 89–90), Conlan (2004, p. 128).

b) The Merchant’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale

The earliest references to MerT and WBT by Tyrwhitt and Steevens connecting Chaucer’s fairies with Sh.’s were somewhat hesitantly developed over the next nearly two centuries.

Hippisley (1837, pp. 65–6): In the Merchant’s Tale, Pluto and Proserpine are introduced as the king and queen of Fairy, and exercise their powers in restoring the sight of January at a very critical moment. But the Tale of Chaucer, most strictly to be called a fairy tale, is that of the Wife of Bathe, in which the offending bachelor is instructed by a fairy (who [66] afterwards becomes his wife) that the love of sway, rather than that of pleasure, is the ruling passion of women; . . . The fairies of Chaucer are of a race entirely distinct from those of Shakspeare: . . . The only characteristic of the popular fairies which is observable in those of Chaucer, is the circumstance of their dancing on the grene (WBT 861, cf. 991–3). Halliwell (1845, p. xiii), quoting WBT 857–80: But the jolie compaignie did not consist of the little dancers on the green. These were a later introduction. Spenser was contented with the fairies of romance; but Shakespeare founded his elfin world on the prettiest of the people’s traditions. Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, pp. 430–2): Next to nature and his own inspired genius, Shakespeare is under obligations for his elfin ideal to Chaucer, in the Canterbury tales, in that of The Merchant, and that of The Wife of Bath. Thus the latter commences in the tone of jovial irony, of which our earliest poet was so great a master: [quotes WBT 859–81; see here]. . . . In The Merchant’s Tale, we have a scene from the Fairy Court still more definite, and combining the agency most fantastically with Christendom on one [431] hand and Heathenesse on the other. . . .

Chaucer . . . furnished precedent and suggestion for Shakespeare, in combining with the sovereignty of faërie high-sounding titles, unlimited pretensions, sententious rhetoric, the true heroic of the capricious, the gigantic of the infinitesimal: [quotes MerT 2219–36; see here].

His Highness lectures right roundly on the lightness of the sex, [432] provoked thereto by the peril of a blind husband, and announcing his intent to give him critical aid by restoration of his sight, does not spare to glance at the application of the lesson, in a tone which finds playful echo in Titania’s allusion to Oberon’s credit with Hippolyta. Proescholdt (1878, pp. 18–22): The relations between Chaucer’s Wife of Bathes Tale and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream . . . are very slight; nor does it appear that Shakespeare followed that tale in his description of fairy life. Sh. possibly derived from MerT the outlines of his Oberon and Titania; (p. 21) Pluto and Proserpine are at variance . . . on conjugal fidelity. The only difference between Shakespeare’s Oberon and Chaucer’s Pluto . . . is that Oberon states in plain terms and full particulars Titania’s misdemeanours in that respect, whilst Pluto speaks about women’s falsehood only in general expressions which Proserpine then interprets as an aspersion upon her own honour. . . . Should it not be more than accident that both Pluto and Oberon have a full power over human sight? Should not Shakespeare, on the contrary, have imitated Chaucer in this respect? Pluto is able to remove blindness; and thus he intends to grant the blind old knight the recovery of his eyesight at the right moment, in order to be able to convict his wife of the breach of her marriage-vow. Oberon, on the other hand, is endowed with the power of fascinating every eye; he knows the quality of the herb Love-in-Idleness, whose juice squeezed out on sleeping eyelids makes both man and woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees [548–9], . . . At the same time it depends upon Oberon to break this charm by another [22] herb, and thus to give back again a sound sight to the enchanted person. Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 153–4) in Appendix A, a lengthy examination of the history and characteristics of fairies, quotes WBT 857–77 to demonstrate that Chaucer identifies elves and fairies, and MerT 2227–9 for the identification of fairies with classical divinities. Chambers (1930, 1:363); A hint for the love-juice might have been taken from Chaucer, Merchant’s Tale, 2258, where the fairies are Pluto and Proserpina, or from Montemayor, Diana. . . . The Merchant’s Tale, 2128, happens also to have one of many allusions to the well-known story of Pyramus and Thisbe. On the latter, see also Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, p. 88). To Chambers’s suggestion that the love-juice may come from MerT, Black (1965, p. 20) objects: Since no actual substance is used [in MerT], . . . the analogy seems farfetched. A few others express reservations. Anders (1904, pp. 78–9): Shakespeare is said to have borrowed the motif of the quarrel among supernatural beings (Pluto vers. Proserpine—Oberon vers. Titania). [79] But Pluto and Proserpine do not quarrel. They debate in perfect friendship. Gordon (ed. 1910, pp. viii–xi) argues against Tyrwhitt’s deriving Oberon and Titania from MerT Pluto and Proserpine, suggesting that although Tyrwhitt may have been struck by the connection between Pluto as King of Shades and the description of Oberon as King of Shadows, the name Titania was chosen because it is an alternate name for Diana, and Sh. (p. x) wished to make play with Diana in her other characters; . . . [xi] [Sh.] reached his finished conception of the fairy world, not by way of Pluto and Proserpine, but by way of Diana, the triple Hecate.

A broader consideration of the affinities between play and tale is suggested by Bethurum (1945, pp. 89–90); she links trenchant satire on the conventions of courtly love in the play with MerT, which provides [Sh.] in Pluto and [90] Perserpina with the closest parallel to Oberon and Titania. . . . Oberon, with the aid of Puck, opened the eyes of the lovers, as Pluto opened January’s eyes [quotes in fn. 1410; MerT 2356], and in both cases a domestic quarrel is going on in the royal household. In both cases the fairies act to reveal mortal folly.

Bullough (1957, 1:370) notes the prominence of the theme of marriage in both play and tale. Andreas (1980, p. 22) suggests that the synthesis of romantic and comic motifs in MerT and other similar stories in CT affords Shakespeare a model for combining rather than juxtaposing serious and parodic materials in most of his comedies. Shakespeare’s fairies not only intervene, but are themselves intertwined in the human affairs they determine. And Titania, a fairy goddess, plays the unfaithful wife, the role of May or even Alison in the Miller’s Tale, although her husband can hardly be considered a cuckold since he himself arranges the whole tawdry but delightful business. Roberts (1983, pp. 108–10) compares the ideal characteristics of a Garden of Love in MerT with the magical, vernal setting of MND to argue that ironic reversals of convention cynically contradict romantic expectations. This approach has been most fully explored by Donaldson (1985, pp. 43–8): The surplus of cynicism in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale has also bequeathed a portion to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. . . . As Tyrwhitt first suggested, Pluto and Proserpina provided Shakespeare with the models for Oberon and Titania. Chaucer demoted the ancient mythic couple to the status of quarrelsome English fairies. . . . [44] Oberon and Titania are a more actively unhappy married couple than their Chaucerian forebears, and are, unlike them, guilty of marital infidelity—at least they accuse each other of amorous dalliance. . . . [45] Oberon’s interference in the love story is not free of the malice he shows to Titania. Though he professes to be moved by pity for Helena when he instructs Puck to put the drops in Demetrius’ eyes, his action remains a by-product of his spitefulness toward another woman. . . . Like Pluto’s pity for January in The Merchant’s Tale, Oberon’s pity for Helena is mixed with a malicious desire to get back at his wife. . . . [47] In blessing (if that is the right word) the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta [Oberon and Titania] are doing a very special favor to a couple that has shared their own promiscuity. It is delightful that immortals should be so thoughtful in regard to their mortal former loves, but the delight is not untinged with cynicism.

From The Merchant’s Tale there comes to the play the shadow of another cynical proposition—an implicit question whether the interference of the supernatural beings in mortal affairs is not, at times, redundant: . . . [Pluto’s] gift [to January] of restored sight instead of curing his real blindness [in love], merely reinforces it: before he did not see what he could not see; now he cannot see what he does see. The gift that May receives from Proserpina may be equally redundant. . . . [48] May needs [no] supernatural assistance. . . .

Something of this cynicism underlies the surface of the action of A Midsummer Night’s Dream when Oberon tampers with the eyesights of Lysander and Demetrius. Demetrius had loved Helena previously; but since it needed no application of Love-in-Idleness to make him abandon Helena and love Hermia, one may properly wonder whether he is not perfectly capable of abandoning Hermia and reverting to Helena without supernatural assistance. And it is possible to take the faithful Lysander’s abandonment of Hermia and pursuit of Helena because of Puck’s mistake as an image of what might happen without Puck’s interference. The magic drops made him love Helena, but the fact that his undying love for Hermia turns into abusive hatred seems to have been his own fault, suggesting that love’s enchantment, whether literal or figurative, causes complete loss of control as well as of discrimination.

Cox (1991, p. 149) believes many of the main features of Shakespearean comedy are prefigured in [WBT]: two settings . . . ; stories within stories . . . ; the importance of self-knowledge . . . ; gentilesse; . . . neatly juxtaposed transformations; and the echoing of the word amend (WBT 1097–8; see here) in Puck’s epilogue.

Others who acknowledge some debt to either MerT or WBT or both include: Douce (1807, 1:183, 204); Delius (ed. 1859 p. II); Verity (ed. 1893, p. xxvi); Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, pp. 87–8); Muir (1957, p. 32); Green (1962, pp. 90–1); Coghill (1964, pp. 54–5); Wright (1968, p. 10); Cole (1973, p. 316); Thompson (1978, pp. 92–3); Brooks (ed. 1979, p. lxi); Muir (1985, pp. 44–5); Wiles (1993, pp. 73–4, 119, 163); Cooper (1998, p. 204); Lynch (1999, p. 104).

c) The Tale of Sir Thopas

Apart from scattered comment on the mention of an elf-queen and of birdsong in both tale and play (see nn. 436, 942–50), no critical attention was paid to Chaucer’s rime of sir Thopas until Bethurum (1945, pp. 90–1): As for the enamourment of Titania for sweet bully Bottom, Sidgwick doubtless does well to cite as parallels famous cases of the love of mortal man and fairy queens—Thomas Rymer, Sir Launfal, and Sir Orfeo—and all of these Shakespeare doubtless knew. But actually the only suggestion he could have got for this amazing mésalliance is from the equally extravagant love of the doughty Sir Thopas for his unknown elf queen. What Harry Bailly would not stay to hear Shakespeare let his imagination play upon, creating a world where the medieval queene of Fairye might hold her court with harpe, and pipe, and symphonie. [91] And here, as in the case of the lovers, the initiative passes to the women in the case, for that is the joke in Shakespeare’s burlesque. Chaucer’s stories were going through his mind when he wrote this play. Coghill (1964, pp. 56–7), acknowledging Bethurum: Bottom’s adventure with Titania, like his impersonation of Pyramus, may also have been prompted by Chaucer; his most preposterous character, Sir Thopas, had just such a dream as Bottom had: [quotes Thop. 787–9; see here] [57] It is thus that Bottom is linked in depth with the fairy world: not simply part of a conjuror’s prank, as Turnop is in John a Kent, but as the chief instrument for the restoration of concord in the world of nature; for that is how the translation of Bottom by an ass-head works upon the story; he is the root of the reconciliation as Oberon perceives: [quotes 1416–18]. Barthel (1977, p. 76): The mechanicals’ interlude is, like Sir Thopas, both a burlesque of an earlier literary form and an ironic self-parody. . . . As the hero of a fairy romance, Bottom, like the bourgeois Thopas, is out of his class. . . . Satisfied with himself, he, unlike Thopas, does not aspire to be Lancelot. Donaldson (1985, pp. 9–18): That the play of Pyramus is the moral equivalent—an inspired re-creation—of Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas has not been generally noticed, though it was hinted at many years ago by G. K. Chesterton. Discussing the irony of Chaucer’s assignment to his own surrogate of the worst tale told on the Canterbury pilgrimage, Chesterton quotes Theseus The best in this kind are but shadows [2015], but then moves away from the Shakespearean connection [Chaucer, 1932, pp. 21–2]. . . . Dorothy Bethurum . . . first pointed out that Shakespeare actually awarded to Bottom the elf-queen that Chaucer’s Sir Thopas only dreamed of possessing. . . . But there are larger connections between the burlesque romance and the burlesque play. In either case, a master of literary form makes fun of old-fashioned and primitive examples of that form while he is him-[10] self engaged in writing in it, and then assigns his parody to the most naive and most naively self-confident of artists. Yet at the same time that each is asserting by example his superiority in the form, he acknowledges that his own art—or all art—may be equally insubstantial, equally absurd. For all art relies as confidently and in a way as naively on certain conventions as Peter Quince and his associates do and as Chaucer the pilgrim does. Donaldson devotes nine pages to detailing parallels between Thop. and MND: see for examples nn. 354–7, 355, 906–7, 908, 942–50, 1929, 2074, 2094–5. See also idem, ed. Chaucer’s Poetry (New York, [1958] 2nd. ed. 1975, p. 1100). Wallace (1997, pp. 119–24, 429), citing Donaldson on the connections between the artisans’ play and Thop., suggests political overtones (p. 120): Such poetic archaism comes coupled with . . . a social archaism: for these Athenian artisans are guildsmen without a guild. . . . The . . . speech, spoken by Thisbe over the body of Pyramus, recalls Sir Thopas not only in its rhyming but also by mixing masculine and feminine canons of physical description: [quotes 2120–7]. [121] Shakespeare, the author of these lines, avoids identification as the poet of Bottom-Pyramus by a suggestive transfer of paternity (through his evocation of Sir Thopas) to Chaucer. . . . Chaucer can be seen as the poet who writes for Bottom; more precisely, he can be seen as Bottom, the poet who wears the ass’s head as he steps forward to speak his self-made doggerel and then acclaim it as the beste rym I kan (928). Wallace connects the influence of Thop. with that of KnT: (p. 122) In refashioning Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale . . . Shakespeare undermines the medieval poet’s pretensions to neoclassical seriousness by associating him with the neoclassical foolishness of Bottomian Pyramus. He pins him to a tale—Sir Thopas—that Wyatt, half a century earlier, had recognized as the very antithesis of the Knight’s noble story. (P. 429): I am not he, Wyatt tells his fellow-courtier John Poyntz, to Praise Sir Thopas for a noble tale / And scorn the story that the Knight told [Myne owne John Poyntz, ll. 43, 50–51, ed. Muir and Thomson, 1969, p. 89]. (P. 123): From the perspective of the Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s play seems politically pusillanimous. . . . Shakespeare slips from the company of artisans—leaving Chaucer and Bottom in his place—to view proceedings from the external perspective of a courtly circle. Leggatt (1999, p. 63) also draws on Donaldson’s perception of the parallel Chaucer/Thop. with Sh./Quince in discussing hints of identification between Quince’s company and Shakespeare’s work . . . There is self-deprecating humour, as when Chaucer the poet shows Chaucer the pilgrim telling the worst of the Canterbury Tales. But there may also be a warning not to be too quick to dismiss the actors’ show as merely feeble, drawing only condescending laughter. We are watching not just Athens’s worst actors, but England’s best, and the latter group may well be up to something.

Taylor (1989, pp. 318–20) takes issue with Donaldson’s claims for Thop.’s influence on the description of Pyramus, pointing instead to Ovid and Elizabethan Ovidian poems.

d) The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of Good Women

Critical interest in the possible influence of Chaucer’s dream vision poems was late developing. Chambers (ed. 1897, at 249) notes the mention of blind Cupid in HF 137–8. Sarrazin (1900, p. 73) suggests that the dreamer’s encounter with Alceste in the Prologue to LGW may have been the inspiration for Bottom’s encounter with the Fairy Queen (Ger.). Bethurum (1945, p. 91 n. 13) connects the mention of Valentine’s Day at 1663 with PF. Doran (1960, pp. 122–3), comparing Sh.’s Theseus with Chaucer’s in KnT, distinguishes both from the false lover of Ariadne in The Legende of Good Women, or the perjurer who [123] takes his place with all the other perjured lovers in The House of Fame [388–426]. Bradbrook (1965, p. 73) compares the narrator in BD: Like Chaucer’s Dreamer, Shakespeare here found his way to an enchanted wood where he was to return again and again, satisfying at once the impulse to retreat and the impulse to explore. Fender (1968, p. 60) suggests MND has an element of parody of medieval dream vision as exemplified by PF; see n. 976. He might also have noted the presence of Pyramus and Thisbe among the lovers supplicating Venus in the temple in the garden (PF 289). Hale (1985, pp. 219–20) draws parallels with BD; see nn. 1732–3, 1740–1.

The first extended discussion of links between MND and Chaucer’s dream vision poems is by Garber (1974, pp. 12, 64–5): In BD, as in Shakespeare, it is precisely through the dreamer’s confusion that a richer understanding of the dream experience is communicated to the audience. . . . [MND] . . . is in its way both of the dream vision tradition and about it, making particular use of such standard elements as the seeking lovers, the May morning, and the mischievous god of love. And the special quality of dream logic, which compresses time and space and seems to make sense of the most improbable circumstances, is accurately and brilliantly portrayed by Chaucer as it is by Shakespeare. Of these elements, to which she adds the enchanted garden, she finds the most important for MND is (p. 64) the traditional figure of the god of love, who acts as intermediary between the lover and the beloved. This role is taken . . . by Oberon . . . [65] structurally complemented by Peter Quince . . . both . . . made parallel to Theseus. Scott (1986–7, pp. 26, 30–1) uses Chaucer’s poems to examine the ambiguity of dream . . . compounded by the ambiguity of fiction, and thence (p. 30) Shakespeare on dreams and thereby on lying and art. . . . [31] Yet although, as far as the characters are concerned, Shakespeare may even outdo Chaucer in the ambiguity of the experience, we as audience seem to have clearer bearings: we know what happened in the woods at night. However, the magical and fairy element of those events as seen by us is even more wondrous than a divinely-prompted dream would have been. The apparent dream is enclosed by a fiction, and the characters’ acceptance of dream wonders is a model for our own acceptance of the fiction. . . . There is a dizzying succession of frames: dream is enclosed by fiction which is enclosed by dream (or perhaps fiction encloses dream which encloses fiction). If there is a closure it must be provided by us; but the experience, founded on a liar or dreamer or fabulist or ironist paradox as it is, does not encourage us to close it. In the fading dream are traces of the medieval vision and the precariously-existent fable; and the actor as presenter of shows and as obvious ironist shows us the magical relics of his art.

The fullest study is by Lynch (1999, pp. 100, 104–21): The tradition of medieval dream visions [was] itself shaped by late antique and medieval theories of the psyche and of the role of the imagination in dreams. . . . Shakespeare was an astute reader of this tradition, especially as it was used in Chaucer’s early poems, and . . . he parodies and revises the medieval dream-vision tradition in his play as surely as he plays with romance. (P. 104): The link between Shakespeare’s and Chaucer’s visionary practice should come as no surprise to readers of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who have frequently noted that it is Shakespeare’s most Chaucerian play . . . [but] Chaucer’s . . . dream visions are not generally cited as major sources for the play’s overall meaning. To suggested local borrowings such as the reference to St. Valentine’s (see Bethurum above) and those put forward by Hale (1985, see above), she adds (p. 105): The conclusion of a hunt and the riding homeward of a king ends the dream in the Book of the Duchess (called by Thynne [ed. 1532] The Dreame of Chaucer), just as Theseus sets aside his purpos’d hunting [1708] in favour of returning home to feast. Indeed, in both poem and play, the sounds of hunting figure thematically, and there may be an echo of Chaucer’s This harte roused and stale away (381) in Egeus’ complaint, They would have stol’n away [1681], reinforced by the fact that both texts are in a sense about heart-hunting. To study Sh.’s larger debt to the structure of the Chaucerian dream vision, she turns to LGW: Not only could this poem have served as the source for Theseus’ reference to St Valentine’s Day (Prologue, Text F, 145) and the association of that holiday with the month of May; it is also generally acknowledged to have furnished several details from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. There can be little doubt that Shakespeare had it in mind, if not before his eyes, while writing the play. . . . Here is a poem that provides precedent for the May dream alfresco (Prologue, Text F, 108–9); the inclusion of the Ovidian story of Pyramus and Thisbe in a part of the poem structurally set off from the dream; the arbitrary and meddling God of Love . . . ; the self-conscious reversal of gender roles; and even for Theseus’ misbehaviour, glancingly alluded to in [MND 452–5]. She does not propose LGW (p. 107) as a source for the literal narrative, but suggests that Sh.’s recasting of the conventional dream narrative permits [him] to manipulate the frame narrative in order to juxtapose perspectives in a way that is more radical than [108] anything Chaucer had attempted, although Chaucer’s dream visions, with their ambiguous authorities, had already moved the form in this direction. She describes the multiple perspectives of the boxed narratives of BD: Sh. (p. 118) seems to be using the layered form of the dream vision in a like way. . . . Like a dream vision, the play, with its multiplication of voyeuristic readers within the text, points outward to the reader—or the audience—outside the poem so that we watch Theseus and Hippolyta watch the lovers, all watched [119] over by the fairies, who in turn watch each other. The arrangement suggests a complex and disorienting series of dramatic ironies. . . . The form becomes both literally and metaphorically labyrinthine. See also Wiles (1993, p. 112).

e) Other

Aspects of CT other than the tales discussed above have caught critics’ attention. Miskimin (1975, pp. 112–13) examines the framework of CT, and especially the Pilgrim narrator, suggesting parallel effects in MND: The invented audience within the fiction provides a deceptive picture of the subordinate poet at the mercy of the facts . . . and of the pilgrims themselves, in constant verbal contest for maistrye, on a sharper and clearer level within the Tales. The Pilgrim suggests a critique of the Tales, but is himself subject in turn to the greater freedom of the audience outside the narrative, which, like the one within, agrees to grant the fiction more than face value. It is left to us, as in all forms of irony, to err or to see, in making ultimately private judgments. . . .

In one of his most Chaucerian comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakspere extends the three-dimensionality of the imagined audience, and burlesques the role of the playwright-maker, in Peter Quince the carpenter’s production of Pyramus’s tragedy. . . . Shakspere’s extended dramatic illusion can enclose the dream world and the satyr play within the real world of Athens by a series of tacit agreements as to the fictionality of all speakers, which the audience in complicity accepts. As in the Canterbury Tales, the complicity of the audience then is the given, and [113] while the poet has the power to fabricate, abbreviate, or distort the illusory reality—be he Peter Quince or Shakspere—he must share control over the meaning of his fiction with the audience.

Andreas (1980, pp. 23–4) notes a structural affinity between the play and Fragment I of CT: The three concluding fabliaux, MilT, ReT, CkT, represent parodies of the action and structure of the Knight’s Tale. . . .

Shakespeare also concludes his entertainment with a grotesque parody of the elitist elements in the play. Once again menials are allowed to disrupt courtly proceedings, and speak their piece. Instead of a Miller, Reeve, and Cook we have a carpenter (recalling, in fact, the Reeve), a joiner, weaver, tinker, and so forth. . . . [24] It is interesting to note that the Host addresses the Miller as Robyn, my leeve brother, thus suggesting that the Miller, consistent with the historical tradition of the lord of misrule, is spontaneously appointed the master of revels, a function Shakespeare assigns the supernatural master of revels, Robin Goodfellow who directs events from the top down, under orders from Oberon. Andreas notes also parallel references to amateur acting, in the Miller crying out in Pilates voys (MilT Pro 3124) and Absolon who pleyeth Herodes upon a scaffold hye (MilT 3384). Economou (1990, p. 248) also notes a Bottom/Absolon connection; see n. 296–7. Steevens (ed. 1793) quotes MilT 3479–85 in illustration of 2200–1, but Douce (1807, 1:204–5) demurs, quoting rather WBT 863–74 (see n. 2199–201). Purdon (1974, pp. 192–3) sees a farfetched connection: A further monstrosity in the kingdom of love ungoverned by reason and chastity now occurs, as the votaress of Diana, Titania herself, is stricken with lust for what Shakespeare suggests is in fact the same as that part which Alison sticks out of the window to be [193] kissed in the Miller’s Tale. Engle (1993, pp. 131, 137–43) approaches the question of influence through a consideration of Chaucer’s reception in Shakespeare’s time, especially in the relation between KnT and MilT, concluding: (p. 142) Shakespeare may well have seen in Chaucer an example of how to treat explosive social materials without being held responsible for them, especially since Chaucer seems to have been invoked by Shakespeare’s contemporaries in order to justify potentially obscene writing. Certainly the comically accidental-looking obscenity of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which generations of critics have filtered out of their descriptions of the play, picks up a pragmatic Chaucerian interest in juxtaposing different social types and playing their vocabularies against one another in a comedy of social groups. Seen in this Chaucerian light, A Midsummer Night’s Dream says as much about how a Renaissance elite would have heard, not heard, and thus (in a Foucauldian vein) regulated sexual discourses as it says about how [143] an imagined group of low-life comics would have naively emulated such discourses. See also Wallace (1997, p. 123), quoted above.

There are a few comments on connections with Troilus and Criseyde. Anders (1904, p. 283) quotes Tr. 3.1230–2 among many parallels to 1555–7. Adolf (1950, pp. 49–54) explores the proverb and fable of the ass and the harp, both as used by Chaucer (Tr. 1.731), and in its implications for an understanding of Bottom’s musical and histrionic tastes. Donaldson (1985, pp. 22–31) connects the near parody of the Pyramus and Thisbe story in Tr. 4.736 ff., 1128 ff. with the excesses and absurdities of the reactions to Juliet’s supposed death (Rom. 4.5 [2576–2721]), and hence with the overwrought lamentations and absurdly prolonged deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe in MND; (p. 29) Troilus and Criseyde and Romeo and Juliet are in danger, as Chaucer and Shakespeare were well aware, of becoming the quick bright things who come to the confusion of Pyramus and Thisbe in Peter Quince’s play. Gertz (2001, p. 200) discusses Sir Orfeo, Chaucer’s Tr., and MND separately, because they offer quite different perspectives on literary love, yet are recognizably Ovidian. Sir Orfeo portrays passionate married love; Troilus and Criseyde portrays what at first appears to be the literary love couple sine qua non; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream [in the Pyramus and Thisbe story] portrays illiterate literary love. All three, then, communicate myriad different strands that lock into different arcs as they tell their stories in a highly conventionalized, highly rhetorical sub-system—love’s literary system—in which communication is so heightened, a poet could convey meanings only through nods and signs.

Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, pp. xxiii–xxv) argue that Dian’s bud and Cupid’s flower are derived from the Chaucerian The Flower and the Leaf, and analyze similarities of theme. Although the sole authority for this poem is Speght’s 1598 edition of Chaucer, Pearsall (The Floure and the Leafe, ed. 1962, p. 3) suggests the probability that the missing quire of MS Longleat 258 contained the poem and was copied and circulated freely.

The Canterbury Tales and The Legend of Good Women (1561)

The edition of Chaucer’s works printed most recently before the probable 1595 date of MND is the 1561 folio. For the choice of this edition as the basis of the following selections see Waith (ed. TNK, 1989, p. 26), apparently relying on Donaldson (1985), who says on p. 141 that quotations from Chaucer in Ch. 1 of his study are from 1561, on p. 75 that Sh. read 1532 or 1542, or 1550, or 1561, or 1598, and on p. 148 n. 2 that quotations in this chapter are from 1598 but since Shakespeare may have had an older copy, I have compared Speght’s text with Stow’s (1561) and Thynne’s (1532), but have found no startling differences. For the relationship of the printed editions of Chaucer’s works 1532–1602, see Walter William Skeat, The Chaucer Canon, 1900, pp. 94–5.

The text below is a modified diplomatic reprint based on STC 5076, UMI Reel 190 Huntington Library copy 84667, checked against the Harmsworth copy of STC 5076 in the Folger Shakespeare Library. The folio’s black letter is reproduced as roman. The beginning of each page in 1561 is indicated by a bracketed signature number in the right margin. Ornamental initials have been replaced by regular capitals, and the capitals that conventionally follow display letters reduced. Long s is printed s. The character for abbreviated quod is expanded. Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Substantive variants in the Clare College, Cambridge copy (ed. D.S. Brewer, Scolar Press Facsimile, 1969) of 1532 (STC 5068), the British Library’s copy of 1542 (STC 5069; UMI I-2) and of ?1550 (STC 5071; UMI I-2), each checked against copies in the Folger Shakespeare Library, are recorded in the notes. Occasional reference is made to Caxton’s editions of 1477 (STC 5082; UMI 1–4) and 1483 (STC 5083; UMI 1–1) and Wynkyn de Worde’s of 1498 (STC 5085; UMI 1–4). Variations in spelling, punctuation, indentation and spacing are not recorded, except where the 1561 spelling may cause misreading: e.g. KnT 913, 2943 where sowned, souned are not recorded in OED as variant spellings of swoon. 1550 is listed only where it disagrees with 1561. Line numberings correspond with those in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 1987; in Sir Thopas this causes some anomalous numbering, since the 1561 edition does not set off tail-rhyme.

The beginnings of passages corresponding with MND are marked by TLNs. The following parallels have been found (MND TLNs are listed, with Chaucer line numbers in parentheses):

KnT: 4 (859–69), 14 (868–70, 2700–2), 15 (1428), 18–19 (893–951), 20 (859–88), 26 (860–1), 55–9 (1785–1818), 74 (1220), 98 (2329–30), 131 (1748–9), 161–3 (1084–6), 164–5 (1918–23), 175 (1478), 177 (1033–45, 1497–1500, 1510–12), 195 (2059), 246–7 (2987–93), 249 (1964–5), 299 (1493), 445 (880–2), 466–7 (2991–3), 538 (1564), 541 (2304–11), 558 (1640), 651 (1529), 749 (2056–9), 758 (1078), 771–2 (1804–5), 1082 (1079), 1087 (941–7), 1139 (1806–14), 1162 (1078, 1101–2), 1200–1 (1128–43), [1225–41 (1011–19)] 1253–4 (1078, 1101–2), 1282 (1115–16), 1368–78 (1128–43, 1845–71), 1395–9 (1663–1865, 2537–64), 1431 (1505, 1688), 1432–3 (1491–6), 1449 (1517), 1463 (1492), 1612 (1491), 1622–7 (1673–95), 1630 (1685), 1632 (1546–7), 1634 (978–800, 1640, 2018, 2150), 1648 (1703), 1653–4 (1042–5, 1500, 1673–5), 1663–4 (1785–6, 1798, 1801), 1665–6 (1781), 1668 (2987–3105), 1679–80 (1706–7, 1744–5), 1702–4 (1772–4, 1818, 3094–5), 1709–10 (2700–2), 1815 (1104–6), 1822–3 (3097), 1831–2 (2959–64), 1848 (1025–8), 2146 (2987 ff.).

MerT: 14 (1709), 57 (1430), 154 (1315), 279–80 (2125–31), 432–6 (2038–40, 2227–9), 439–56 (2237–67), 482–3 (1738, 2042–52), 699 (1391), 700 (1336), 1087 (1438), 1124 (1673), 1239 (1336), 1410 (2356), 1706 (1391), 1710 (1709–10), 1821–31 (1712–3), 1828–32 (1814–17), 1853–4 (2125–31), 2187–8 (1819–20).

WBT and Pro: 432–6 (857–62), 516 (860–1), 1514 (951–76), 2201 (863–74), 2203–4 (869), 2208–22 (1097–9).

Thop.: 354–7 (727, 730–1), 452–6 (788–814), 841 (908), 906–7 (725–7), 908 (769, 778, 796, 850, 852, 855, 859), 942–4 (766–71), 1929 (729), 2074 (879–80), 2094–5 (836), 2120 (725–9).

LGW: 38–41 (1273–5), 39 (1266–7, 1556), 185–7 (1254–66), 259 (1259), 279–80 (706 ff.), 322–6 (900), 455 (2226–7), 607 (2192), 608 (2198), 693–4 (2211–12), 806–9 (2185–92), 897–8 (750–2), 910 (778), 910–11 (784–5), 1930 (765), 1937 (784–5), 1941 (813), 1942 (807, 820), 1959 (740, 744), 1964 (750–1), 1982 (756), 1993, 2003–4 (760–1, 768), 2075–7 (825), 2117–18 (880).

Ovid and Arthur Golding

Comments on Shakespeare’s Use of Ovid

The nature and extent of Sh.’s indebtedness to Ovid in MND is obscured by the ubiquitous popularity of the Roman poet. Even where the source seems obvious, as with the derivation of the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe from Book Four of the Metamorphoses, the various channels through which the story could have reached him and influenced his treatment of it complicate assessments. While most editors and scholars of the late 19th and earlier 20th c. acknowledged some connection at least with Golding’s Ovid, it was not until the second half of the 20th c. that critics began to agree in seeing MND as profoundly Ovidian, and in exploring the ramifications of the affinities between the two poets.

Early comment on the relationship between MND and Ovid focussed on particular passages such as the mention of Cupid’s arrows (180–5) or Titania’s lament over the unseasonable weather (456 ff.), and gave rise to disputes over the extent of Sh.’s classical learning. So Gildon’s (1710, 7:316) claim for Sh.’s acquaintance with Ovid is mocked by Farmer (1767, p. 32), who points out that translations were available, and that the fables of antiquity were easily known without the help of either the originals or the translations, since they were widely disseminated in the works of earlier English poets. Similarly Warton (1781, 3:417) notes possible English intermediaries for the tales of Pyramus and Thisbe, and Procris and Cephalus. Halliwell (1841, pp. 11–20) also acknowledges (p. 20) the popular manner in which the mythological tales of the ancients were then made current among all classes, but is the first to give prominence as a source to Golding’s Ovid, a book with which Shakespeare was, beyond all doubt, very intimately acquainted, and which (p. 11) furnished materials for the basis of this play; he quotes Golding’s translation of the Pyramus and Thisbe story, and discusses the tale of Midas’s ass ears, though not claiming necessarily a direct Ovidian source (but see Forey, 1998, p. 322 for detailed claims of Golding’s influence in Sh.’s use of the tale of Midas).

The first persuasive argument for Sh.’s knowledge of Ovid’s Met. in the original, and the first extended critical assessment of the importance of the relationship for MND, come from Baynes (1880, pp. 101–2). Keightley (1833, 2:127 n.) had observed: The Shakspearean 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: The fourth kind of spritis, says King James, quhilk be the gentilis was called Diana, and her wandering court, and amongs us called the Phairie. The Fairy-queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid frequently styles Titania. (See also Steevens, ed. 1793, 1:195 n.) Baynes, noting that Keightley omitted to bring out (p. 101) the meaning and value of the fact, expatiates: The name occurs . . . several times, not as the designation of a single goddess, but of several female deities, supreme or subordinate, descended from the Titans. On this ground it is applied to Diana, to Latona, to Circe, to Pyrrha, and Hecate. [For example, to Diana at Met. 3.173; to Latona at 6.346; to Circe at 14.382; to Pyrrha at 1.395. Hecate, sister of Latona, is not styled Titania in Met.] As Juno is called by the poets Saturnia, on account of her descent from Saturn, and Minerva, on less obvious or more disputed grounds, is termed Tritonia, so Diana, Latona, and Circe are each styled by Ovid Titania. This designation illustrates, indeed, Ovid’s marked power of so employing names as to increase both the musical flow and imaginative effect of his verse. The name Titania, as thus used, embodies rich and complex associations connected with the silver bow, the magic cup, and the triple crown. It may be said, indeed, to embrace in one comprehensive symbol the whole female empire of mystery and night belonging to classical mythology. Diana, Latona, Hecate are all goddesses of night, queens of the shadowy world, ruling over its mystic elements and spectral powers. The common name thus awakens recollections of gleaming huntresses in dim and dewy woods, of dark rites and potent incantations under moonlit skies, of strange aërial voyages, and ghostly apparitions from the under-world. It was, therefore, of all possible names the one best fitted to designate the queen of the same shadowy empire, with its phantom troops and activities, in the Northern mythology. And since Shakespeare, with prescient inspiration, selected it for this purpose, it has naturally come to represent the whole world of fairy beauty, elfin adventure, and goblin sport connected with lunar influences, with enchanted herbs, and muttered spells. The Titania of Shakespeare’s fairy mythology may thus be regarded as the successor of Diana and other regents of the night belonging to the Greek Pantheon. . . .

The deities of the Greek mythology were instruments of destiny or fate, in other words, of the ultimate powers of the universe. In the [102] current belief of the Middle Ages, still firmly held in Shakespeare’s day, the beings of the Northern mythology were the representatives and successors of the old Greek divinities. Shakespeare indirectly favours this relation not only by the selection of the name Titania for the fairy queen, but in giving to Oberon the designation consecrated by Ovid to Pluto. Umbrarum dominus, umbrarum rex, are Ovid’s phrases for the monarch of the lower world [Met. 10.16], and Oberon is by Shakespeare styled King of Shadows [1388]. . . .

Reverting to the name Titania, however, the important point to be noted is that Shakespeare clearly derived it from his study of Ovid in the original. It must have struck him in reading the text of the Metamorphoses, as it is not to be found in the only translation which existed in his day. Golding, instead of transferring the term Titania, always translates it, in the case of Diana, by the phrase Titan’s daughter, and in the case of Circe by the line—Of Circe, who by long descent of Titans’ stocke am borne [Met. 14.438; Golding 14.430, see here]. Shakespeare could not therefore have been indebted to Golding for the happy selection. On the other hand, in the next translation of the Metamorphoses by Sandys, first published ten years after Shakespeare’s death, Titania is freely used. Sandys not only uniformly transfers the name where it occurs in the original, but sometimes employs it where Ovid does not. In Medea’s grand invocations to the powers of night, for example, he translates Luna by Titania [Met. 7.207; Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologized, and Represented in Figures by George Sandys (1632), edited by Karl Hulley and Stanley T. Vandersall (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1970), p. 311]. But this use of the name is undoubtedly due to Shakespeare’s original choice, and to the fact that through its employment in the Midsummer Night’s Dream it had become a familiar English word. Dekker, indeed, had used it in Shakespeare’s lifetime as an established designation for the queen of the fairies [The Whore of Babylon (1607), Titania the Fairie Queene: under whome is figured our late Queene Elizabeth (Drammatis Personæ)]. It is clear, therefore, I think, that Shakespeare not only studied the Metamorphoses in the original, but that he read the different stories with a quick and open eye for any name, incident, or allusion that might be available for use in his own dramatic labours.

Support for the claim in Baynes’s last sentence is offered in studies detailing parallels, which lead the authors to affirm Sh.’s knowledge of Ovid. Root (1903, pp. 6–7, 122–3): That he was familiar with [Golding’s] excellent version . . . is beyond question: but that he also read the poem in the original is in the highest degree prob-[7]able; among the (p. 122) 37 mythological allusions in MND, there are 5 references to definite Ovidian myth, and in five or six other allusions Ovid’s influence may be discovered. Fripp (1930, pp. 98–9) acknowledges that Sh. knew the clownish translation by Golding, but asserts that Sh. knew his school-book from end to end, and, what is more to the purpose, loved it; he found in it (p. 99) a mine of material for his plays and poems. Fripp lists close to thirty parallels with MND. See also Rick (1919, pp. 37, 40, 47, 52), who concludes (p. 52) less confidently that Ovid’s influence is easier to prove with lesser poets, since talented poets transform the material and add their own imprint and originality (Ger.). Fripp (1938, 1:112–15), treating Ovidian inflence more generally, gives facsimiles of preliminary leaves of the Bodleian’s copy of the 1502 Aldine Metamorphoses, carrying the supposed autograph Wm She and a note from 1682, This little Booke of Ovid was given to me by W Hall who sayd it was once Will Shakesperes; the existence of this book had been noted by W. H. D. Rouse, Shakespeare’s Ovid (1904, p. ii).

It is a scholar of classical rather than English literature who sets the course for the kind of critical exploration of the relationship between Sh. and Ovid that is still current. Wilkinson (1955, pp. 203, 419–21): The world of the Metamorphoses has something of the quality of [MND]. It conveys an impression of freedom and clarity combined with a sense that we are temporarily detached from the realms of ultimate seriousness, of normal logic and moral values: . . . The distresses of the actors, more frequent than their joys, are made less real by the pervading atmosphere of miracle. They are pathetic for the moment, but not tragic. He quotes Meres on the sweet witty soul of Ovid living in Sh.’s poems (p. 419): We may feel rather that it is not so much in these poems as in certain of the plays that the true spirit of Ovid lives on, notably in MND and [420] The Tempest, for both of which there is concrete evidence to support the impression. He instances various parallels, particularly relating to Theseus, and to Pyramus and Thisbe, and continues (p. 421): So much for the activities of the mortals. But what of the uncanny agencies that play tricks on them? Here we can put our finger on nothing tangible that is Ovidian save for the name Titania; and yet the whole atmosphere is 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.

Another classical scholar has provided the most complete analysis of the effects of Sh.’s use of the Pyramus and Thisbe story in MND. Rudd (1979, 173–93, 237–40), whose detailed discussion implies that Sh. was familiar with the Latin as well as Golding’s translation, first considers the Ovidian framework of the Dionysian festival and the stories (p. 173) of youth and beauty mentioned and told by the daughters of Minyas; he emphasizes the reference to Semiramis, wife of Ninus and founder of Thisbe’s (p. 174) city of romance and adventure, Babylon. He next analyzes Ovid’s tale, in structure, type, and style—particularly in terms of romantic love; he notes (p. 176) the marvellous neatness and dexterity of certain phrases, and discusses the question of ironic distance, paying special attention to the conduit image, which Sh. does not use in this comic context, but does in Tit. 2.4.22–30 (1095–103) after having alluded to the death of Pyramus in 2.3.231–2 (985–6). He notes that the wall (p. 175) is the physical extension of the parents’ veto, and of the address to the wall admits that (p. 177) Like all lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe are a little absurd; they live in a private world. But it is precisely their remoteness from ordinary life . . . that is their glory. Ovid knew this very well, and so did Shakespeare. [MND] bears ample testimony to the magic of love—and to its silliness. And if in that play Pyramus and Thisbe are used mainly to illustrate the silliness, we can at least say that Shakespeare was developing a hint provided by Ovid himself. He then details Ovidian references in each of the main structural elements of the play, which (p. 181) help to create a general Ovidian ambience. In the next section of his article he discusses various details of the mechanicals’ production, such as the odorous savours sweet, Ninny’s tomb, (p. 183) the comic possibilities of the wall, the apostrophe to night, the topic of blood (see nn. 895, 910, 1959, 1980, 1972, 1945), and comments (p. 185): Taking these points together we can see that the wall that separated the lovers, the moonlight which shone on their death, the royal tomb, the surrounding forest, and the shedding of blood—all features which helped to make Ovid’s a romantic story—have been fastened on by Shakespeare and turned into farce. . . . And yet, . . . it did not destroy the original. . . . [I]n spite of all the fooling some sense of the pathos of Ovid’s story still comes through. He considers the wider and more subtle implications of the interlude, which for all its buffoonery, . . . gently reminds us of the tragic possibilities of romantic love, especially when it defies parental opposition, demonstrating that beyond its parodic function . . . the influence of Ovid’s story . . . makes itself felt . . . throughout the play. He reviews various parallels and verbal reminiscences, and more broadly considers deception and illusion, both of romantic love and of the theatre. He concludes (p. 193): The thesis of this essay (which does not pretend to deal with more than one aspect of the work) might, therefore, be condensed by saying that the dramatist set out to show how love can transpose [247], how Bottom was translated [935–6], transformed [1579] and transported [1750], and how the minds of all the characters were transfigured [1815]. The result was Shakespeare’s Metamorphoses—the most magical tribute that Ovid was ever paid.

Bate (1993, pp. vii, 8–10, 130–44) examines MND’s debt to Ovid in the context of a wide-ranging study of Sh.’s favourite classical author, probably his favourite author in any language, and of Renaissance Ovidianism; he asserts that Sh. used (p. 8) both the Latin original and the early Elizabethan translation, and claims that allusion (p. 10) does significant aesthetic work which Sh. expected his audience to recognize and appreciate. He argues that in MND Sh. transforms the convention of induction and play-within-a-play. MND (p. 130) replays, but updates and alters, the classical tale of parental resistance to young love and the lovers’ plan to meet outside the city. Instead of the whole play being a play-within-a-play in the manner of [Shr.], the play-within is withheld until the main action has been resolved.

When it comes, it is preceded by another quasi-induction, which offers a choice of Ovidian performances. . . . Everybody in Athens seems to have been rehearsing the matter of the Metamorphoses in preparation for the wedding festivities . . . . [131] And the matter rehearsed serves as a reminder to both on-stage and off-stage audiences that courtship does not always end in the comic resolution of marriage. . . .

[MND] may, then, be described as a displaced dramatization of Ovid. Why did Shakespeare include a parodic staging of Pyramus and Thisbe . . . in a play which as a whole is deeply but not directly Ovidian? The answer . . . may be found in Renaissance conceptions of translatio and imitatio. MND (p. 132) draws a distinction between different kinds of theatrical imitation. By including Quince’s literal and therefore deficient translatio, Shakespeare draws attention to the higher level of his own. It is elsewhere in the play, not in Pyramus and Thisbe, that we find all the marks of true Ovidianism: a philosophy of love and of change, the operation of the gods, animal transformation, and symbolic vegetation. It is the translation of these elements out of the play-within and into the play itself that transforms [MND] into Shakespeare’s most luminous imitatio of Ovid.

(P. 136) Shakespeare’s humanistic amendment of Ovid is primarily achieved by a form of emendation in which the ancient is made modern. Puck stands in for Cupid, Titania and Oberon for others in the classical pantheon. . . . Puck does Cupid’s work throughout the night; . . . . The wood outside Athens thus becomes an English wood peopled by fairies from the vernacular tradition. . . . As Golding does with his rural vocabulary, Shakespeare translates Ovid into the native culture.

A recent editor of Golding’s Ovid examines Sh.’s response to the Puritan translator’s work. Forey (1998, pp. 321–9): Sh. was apparently struck by many phrases in the Englished text, . . . but he was equally alert to Golding’s anxious relationship with the Latin original. In [MND] he made substantial borrowings from Golding’s translation, . . . . He also responded to Golding’s attitude to the Metamorphoses in something of the spirit of Ovid’s musa iocosa, and gained creative impetus from it. This is most clear in Golding’s prefatory material to his translation, its relevance to the mechanicals’ preliminary discussions to their performance (in rehearsal and in prologues), and the pattern of artist-audience relationships set up across the various texts. Forey parallels Golding’s (p. 325) anxious moral observations and his lengthy (p. 326) explanations, . . . [and] insistent repetition . . . of his moral intentions pointing to an anxiety over the nature and reception of what he is doing with the mechanicals’ anxiety that their audience should be helped to interpret correctly. She concludes (p. 329): If Shakespeare is indeed playing with his source, . . . then his parodic irreverence is in keeping with the mood of Ovid’s original; paradoxically it is the presence of the serious-minded intermediary in Golding that gives him scope for this self-conscious and Ovidian irreverence.

Among other substantial discussions of Sh.’s debt to Ovid in MND, Doran (1960, pp. 113–35) considers the richness of the allusive texture in MND, noting (p. 128) Ovidian myth . . . bulks largest among classical allusions, which are not simply an overlay . . . but ornament that is intimately related to the structure; Klose (1968, pp. 81–93) details parallels between various scenes in the play and Ovidian myths (Ger.); Barkan (1986, pp. 251–70) sees MND as Sh.’s (p. 252) fullest attempt to respond to the inspirations afforded by Ovidian materials and to translate them into his own mythic language (for a critique of his arguments see Martindale, 1989, pp. 179–82); Carlsen (1988, pp. 94–107) finds the (p. 99) ironic, Ovidian distance to the question of the constancy and depth of human love to be the very core of MND; Mowat (1989, pp. 339–43) considers Ovid’s Met. among several literary texts which contribute to the make-up of Theseus; C. & M. Martindale (1990, pp. 64–75) emphasize the central importance of Ovid among the sources of MND, distinguishing at least seven Ovidian features which they discuss under the headings Metamorphosis, Art, Pyramus and Thisbe, The Style of the Lovers’ Couplets, Faerie, Aetiology, and Echoes; they conclude (p. 75) the Ovid of the Dream is one largely, though by no means wholly, purged of the elements of cruelty, sadism and perversion which run, with a thread of violence, through the Metamorphoses. We have, in other words, an enchanted version of Ovid; Baruzzo (1993, pp. 77–103) examines MND as exemplifying Ovidian metamorphic verbal play (It.); Idem (1994, pp. 21–31) claims a genetic link between Ovid’s tales and their metamorphosis in MND; Tanner (1995, pp. cxxxi–xl) considers the idea of turning or turning forth, and the implications of the various tales of the daughters of Minyas; Nicklas (1999, pp. 41–56) argues that in both MND and Met. (p. 43) transformation is the central concern . . . and becomes a mirror for poetological self-reflection; Brown (1999, pp. 58–69) pays particular attention to the tragic/comic connections between MND and Golding’s Ovid 4.1–513; M. Taylor (2002, pp. 31, 40–66) also considers the implications of the daughters of Minyas and their tales; A. B. Taylor (2004, Ovid’s Myths, pp. 51–65; see also 2003 Golding, pp. 31–2) examines the contribution of the Ovidian myths of Pyramus and Thisbe, Ino and Athamis, and Salmacis and Hermaphroditus to Sh.’s depiction of the course of love; Carter (2006, paras 1–31) examines MND’s treatment of love in the context of conflicting Ovidian and Neoplatonic registers.

Other works offering briefer or more diffused comment on the general influence of Ovid include: Sandys (1916, p. 262); Baldwin (1944, 2:436–40), claiming that Sh. consulted Ovid’s original in an edition containing the notes of Raphael Regius (see also Doran, 1964, pp. 51–5); Davenport (1949, pp. 524–5); Blythe (1950, p. 214); Venezky (1951, p. 142); Gui (1952, pp. 260–1); Thomson (1952, pp. 77–81); Simpson (1955, pp. 7–8); Olson (1957, passim); Wilson (1957, pp. 21–3); Barber (1959, pp. 120–3, 151–4); Bush (1959, pp. 68–70); Howarth (1961, p. 92); Black (1965, pp. 18–20); Wood (1966, pp. 129–30); Young (1966, pp. 164–5); Cody (1969, pp. 127–8, 132–6); Duffy (1972, pp. 142–4); Goldstein (1973, pp. 173–4); Salingar (1974, pp. 236–8); Purdon (1974, passim); Scragg (1977, p. 134); Brooks (ed. 1979, mainly scattered references in notes); Roberts (1979, pp. 125–6); Hibbard (1981, pp. 144–6); Kott (1981, p. 133); Nosworthy (1982, pp. 97–8); Wyrick (1982, p. 434); Laroque (1984, pp. 23–5, 33); Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 10); Armitage (1987, p. 124); Vance (1988, pp. 221–2); Clubb (1989, pp. 16, 118, 255); Gardette (1989, p. 92); Cox (1991, pp. 73–5, 78); Smith (1991, pp. 199–200); Calderwood (1992, pp. 17–19, 120); Hawkes (1992, pp. 21–3); Hollindale (1992, pp. 6–7); Sorelius (1993, pp. 12, 177–82); Holland (1994, pp. 141, 145–8); Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 32, 70, 76–8, 84–7); Montrose (1996, pp. 158, 166–8); Hackett (1997, pp. 6–10); Höfele (1997, p. 223) considers imitatio as a form of intertextuality; Paster & Howard (1999, pp. 275–9) emphasize Ovidian transformations; Webber (1999, 22 pp.), a public lecture, focussing on the Midas and Tereus myths; Martindale (2000, p. 210), notes that although [MND] is conventionally seen as Ovidian, in leading to harmony and marriage it could be seen as articulating . . . a vision of the world profoundly opposed to Ovid’s; Velz (2000, p. 193), on the weaving daughters of Minyas and Bottom the weaver; Uman (2001, pp. 76–7) argues unconvincingly for Bottom as Philomel (see n. 1019); Lyne (2001, pp. 259–63) sees [MND] as a sustained encounter with Ovid, in which Sh. explores the possibilities of Ovidian, metamorphic stories both as individual units and as part of a larger system; Gillespie (2001, pp. 397–9); Taylor (Hermia’s Dream, 2003, pp. 31–2) relates Hermia’s dream to the myth of Ino; Thomsen (2003, pp. 25–33) considers the influence of Ovid’s Heroides, possibly via Turbervile’s 1567 translation; Blits (2003, passim); James (2004, pp. 66–7) links Hermia with other Ovidian learned heroines.

For further comment on mythological readings, drawn partly from Ovid, see here.

Pyramus and Thisbe: Ovid, Chaucer, and Other Versions

Halliwell (1841, pp. 11–16) claimed Chaucer’s Legende of Thisbe of Babylon . . . and Golding’s Ovid as the basis for the interlude, quoting in full Golding 4.67–201 (see here). Virtually all commentators on sources agree with him, though many claim that Sh. also drew on Ovid’s original, whether in a complete text or, as Rowse (1963, p. 39), following Whitaker (1953, pp. 8, 33, 38), suggests, via a school book such as Aphthonius’s Progymnasmata where Met. 4:55–166 is printed in full as an example of excellence in handling narrative (see e.g. 1572, C3v–5v). Nevertheless, editors and critics have continued to show interest in the possible influence of other versions of the tale in English.

Chief among these, in chronological order, are:

1. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Bk. 3 ll. 1323–1494. The Pyramus and Thisbe tale is reprinted. by Flügel (1889, pp. 16–20), who did not recognize the author, from Balliol MS. 354. Muir (1954, p. 142) notes that Gower told the story to show that Love’s wits are often blind, and that when passion usurps the place of reason the results are apt to be disastrous. Bullough (1966, 6:354) claims Shakespeare knew Gower’s work early in his career. Editions of 1493 [1483], 1532, and 1554 survive in multiple copies.

2. Christine de Pisan, The boke of the cyte of ladyes, tr. B. Anslay, 1521. Part 2 Cap. 57. Of Tysbe the mayden. See STC 7271 for surviving copies. First mentioned by Halliwell (ed. 1856; 1879 [1855], p. 25). Printed by Flügel (1889, pp. 14–16); he notes that the following chapter is of Hero, and suggests that Sh.’s Limander comes from the name Ilander here (see n. 1999–2000). The chapters preceding Tysbe are on Dido and Medea.

3. Anon., La conusaunce damours, 1528?. See STC 5631. First mentioned by Steevens (ed. 1793, at 2083; see also 2027). Noted also by Halliwell (loc. cit.) and by Flügel (1889, p. 20). The story is told as an illustration of the impossibility of parting true lovers, and of the evil consequences of parents’ forcing children to marry against their desire.

4. Cooper’s Thesaurus, 1565 (1573, 1578, 1584). A standard reference work, which it may safely be assumed that Sh. knew; the entry on Pyramus in the appended Dictionarum historicum & poeticum propria locorum & personarum vocabula breuiter complectens is reprinted by Bullough (1957, 1:404–5).

5. The History of Pyramus and Thisbie truely translated, in Thomas Procter, A gorgious Gallery of gallant Inuentions, 1578, N4r-P2v. First listed by Halliwell (loc. cit.). Bush (1931, pp. 144–7) presents its claims persuasively, giving some verbal parallels; more are provided by Muir (1954, pp. 145–6), but he does not seem to have consulted Bush’s article. The poem’s relationship with MND, in the context of the French tradition, is set out by van Emden (1975, pp. 197–204). See nn. 139–41, 188, 190, 327, 349, 906–7, 910, 1162, 1273, 1938, 1941, 1942, 1945–6, 1947, 1976, 1979, 1982, 1983, 2073, 2074, 2079, 2084, 2089–99, 2092, 2094–5, 2129, 2130, 2134–5.

6. A new Sonet of Pyramus and Thisbie. To the, Downe right Squier, in Clement Robinson, A handefull of pleasant delites, 1584, C2r-C3v. First mentioned by Boswell (ed. 1821, at 279–80). Fleay (1886, p. 186) claims the interlude is clearly based on this poem. Reprinted by Furness (ed. 1895, pp. 276–8), by J. Thomson, and by Bullough (1957, 1:409–11).

The contexts of these versions are discussed, and the similarities with and differences from the story in MND are detailed, in Kennedy (2005, pp. 18, 20).

Two other versions suggested as influences are disqualified by chronology if a 1595 date for MND is accepted. They are:

7. Dunstan Gale, Pyramus and Thisbe, 1617. See STC 11527–8 and 12221–2. Listed by Halliwell (loc. cit.). Ritson (1783, p. 47) suggests that Sh. might have been ridiculing this poem in the interlude, and the possibility was entertained by Muir (1954, p. 142), who supposed from the dedication which is dated 25 November 1596 that there had been an earlier edition. Stanivukovic (1994, pp. 35–7) argues against any influence, suggesting that on the contrary Gale is indebted to Shakespeare’s Ven.

8. Thomas Moffett, The silkewormes and their flies, 1599. Listed by Halliwell (loc. cit. p. 26). Farrand (1930, p. 233) claims direct influence upon the Pyramus and Thisbe scenes; her arguments are rebutted by Bush (1931, pp. 144–7). Ignoring both Farrand and Bush, Muir (1954, pp. 147–51) asserts that this is the version from which Shakespeare appears to have borrowed most. His assertion is questioned by Willson (1969, pp. 18–19). Most commentators now agree that Muir’s hopeful proposition that the poem might have been written several years earlier than its publication and therefore seen by Sh. in MS is demolished by Duncan-Jones (1981, pp. 296–301).

Two others existed only in MSS:

9. Muir (1954, p. 142), possibly following a hint in Farmer (loc. cit.): Lydgate’s Reson and Sensuallyte contained a version of the story that was designed to point a moral [ll. 3954–4001].

10. From BL Add.MS 15227, Hammond (1915, pp. 288–300) prints Tragoedia miserrima Pyrami & Thisbes fata enuncians, a brief play in English; she obliquely casts doubt on the attribution to Matthew Roydon and claim of influence on MND made by Arthur Acheson (Mistress Davenant, the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, London, 1913, pp. 148–9, 309 n.). Chambers (1930, 1:363), attributing it to N(athaniel?) R(ichards?), considers it of seventeenth-century origin. Also printed by Bullough (1957, 1:411–21).

Two other versions mentioned in connection with MND seem not to be extant. Warton (1781, 3:417) mentions a 1562 entry in the Stationers’ Register for the licencing of the boke of Perymus and Thesbye, which he suggests may have been copied in MND, and supposes a translation from Ovid. Other scholars mention this entry, but the work has not been identified. It has a curious afterlife in OED (second edition, CD-ROM Version 4.0), where the last quotation for Define v. 1.a.intr. To come to an end. Obs. rare., is 1562 Pyramus & Th., (Alas my loue) and liue ye yet, did not your life define By Lyones rage? This is identical with the passage in The History of Pyramus and Thisbie in A gorgious Gallery (1578, P2r). Hyder E. Rollins in his ed. of the miscellany (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), comments (pp. 203–4): I can find no trace of the existence of any such work; he cites an entry in the Stationers’ Register for 1562–3 to William Griffith (Arber, 1:215) and continues a quarto in black-letter, licensed in 1562 to T. Hacket, is mentioned in Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry, IV (1824), 243, but not, so far as I see, in the Register. If the editor of the N. E. D. actually had [204] seen a 1562 edition and has quoted from it, not from the Gorgeous Gallery, the relations of the two poems obviously need investigating. See also Chambers (1930, 1:362). Ballmann (1902, p. 8) implies a possible influence of an earlier dramatization of the tale, but the suggestion is dismissed by Anders (1904, p. 80); see also Chambers, loc. cit.

Furness (ed. 1895, pp. 272–3) provides a sensible caveat and good advice: It appears . . . almost childish to attempt to fix upon any single source (except possibly Ovid) as the authority to which Shakespeare went for a story, with which, in its every detail, the early literature of Europe abounds. . . . [273] The inquisitive reader is referred to a thorough and exhaustive compilation of the versions of this legend in Latin, in Greek, and in the ancient and modern literature of France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Roumania, Italy, and England, by Dr. Georg Hart: (Die Pyramus & Thisbe-Sage, Passau, 1889, and Part II, 1891). More recently, the dissemination of the tale in art and music as well as literature has been investigated by Franz Schmitt-von Mühlenfels, Pyramus und Thisbe: Rezeptionstypen eines Ovidischen Stoffes in Literatur, Kunst und Musik, Heidelberg, 1972. The title-page border representation of the tale mentioned by Chambers (1930, 1: 363) is further described by Muir (1954, p. 142).

Ovid’s Metamorphosis (1567)

The text below is transcribed from microfilm of the copy of the 1567 edition in the Huntington Library STC 18956 Reel STC/259:04. The passages selected have been collated with the editions of 1575 (Willyam Seres, STC 18957, Huntington Library, Reel STC/330:02), 1584 (Iohn Windet and Thomas Iudson, STC 18958, University of Illinois, Urbana, Reel STC/1525:18), 1587 (Robert Walde-graue, STC 18959, Huntington Library, Reel STC/330:03), 1593 (Iohn Danter, STC 18960, Huntington Library, Reel STC/259:05), and with the 1565 edition of The Fyrst Fovver Bookes (Willyam Seres, STC 18955, Huntington Library, Reel STC/347.07); all the microfilm copies listed above are available through EEBO. Substantive variants are recorded following the text; variations in punctuation, spelling and spacing are not recorded, except where the 1567 reading may be misleading.

Line numbers are taken from Rouse’s ed. (Carbondale, Illinois, 1961); Rouse used the Cambridge University Library copy of 1567, but variants between the Huntington and CUL copies are not here recorded. Turned letters are silently corrected. Black letter is rendered as roman, roman as italic. Ornamental initials are replaced with regular capitals, and the capitals that conventionally follow display letters reduced. Long s is printed s. The character for abbreviated quoth is expanded. The beginning of each page in 1567 is indicated by a bracketed signature in the right margin.

The beginnings of passages corresponding with MND are marked by TLNs. The following parallels have been found (MND TLNs are listed, with Golding line numbers in parentheses): 10–11 (4.112); 14 (7.547); 16–28 (7.572–80); 57–8 (15.188–9); 68 (4.119); 80–2 (2.576–7, 3.220–1); 98 (3.193); 141 (10.163); 174–5 (Epistle 109–10, 4.106, 4.108); 181 (1.565–8); 188 (4.103); 226 (4.106, 4.114); 266–75 (7.549); 279–80 (4.64–5); 284–5 (4.43); 298–9 (2.144–5); 314 (To the reader 18); 327 (4.120); 362 (4.108); 392–4 (10.157–8); 435 (1.470, 3.204); 441–3 (2.526–41); 442 (1.842); 446 (3.197); 456–92 (1.323–64, 5.591–2, 7.678–9); 466 (6.663, 8.805); 475 (8.231–7); 482–8 (2.32–3, 11.476–7); 484 (2.38–9); 497 (14.432); 499 (2.512–613); 511 (3.387); 541 (1.577–80); 542–44 (4.147–8); 543–50 (7.243–89, 14.318, 14.337–8, 14.346); 544 (10.221–5, 10.858–60); 545 (Epistle 113–14); 558 (2.591–2); 593–8 (4.106); 609–10 (1.607–10); 611–12 (1.611–12); 651 (11.171); 654 (4.513); 664 (6.832); 682 (14.318, 14.323); 693–4 (4.133, 4.192–3, 4.201); 749 (2.611); 800–5 (4.610–1); 820 (8.225–6); 859–60 (4.123); 874–5 (4.83); 897–8 (4.89–90); 908 (4.72); 910 (4.104, 4.108); 914–5 (3.229–30); 924 (cf. 8.475); 939 (11.165); 955 (11.181–2); 969–1020 (4.347–8); 982–92 (13.953–63); 984–6 (8.852–5); 1039 (11.202); 1117 (13.950); 1124 (10.687); 1128 (4.85); 1166 (2.274, 2.282); 1286 (2.299–301); 1388 (7.325, 10.15); 1398 (5.671); 1420 (5.791, 7.287, 7.309, 7.498, 7.505); 1421 (2.153); 1432 (2.151–2); 1472 (14.438); 1488 (1.550); 1491–4 (1.614–16); 1512 (7.161, 7.290); 1533 (11.204); 1556 (4.453); 1567 (2.33); 1633–4 (3.3–5); 1640–7 (3.247, 3.267–9) 1641 (3.269); 1643 (7.161); 1732–3 (15.162–3); 1806–7 (1.1–9); 1807 (Epistle 11–14); 1841–4 (12.246–7, 12.597–9); 1842 (11.5, 11.53–7); 1845–6 (11.1–2); 1853–4 (Epistle 301); 1856–7 (1.517–18); 1907 (Epistle 557); 1910–12 (Epistle 561); 1922–3 (To the reader 205); 1931 (4.91); 1933 (Epistle 310); 1937 (4.108–20); 1941 (4.125); 1942 (4.121, 4.129); 1946 (4.146, 8.478); 1947 (4.109–10); 1959 (4.83); 1964–5 (4.83); 1972 (4.101); 1976 (4.91); 1980 (4.96); 1991 (4.104); 2003–4 (4.99); 2005–7 (4.108); 2027 (4.120); 2070 (4.129); 2071–2 (4.127); 2074 (7.259–60); 2078–9 (4.133); 2082 (6.550); 2093–4 (4.133); 2116–7 (4.172–3); 2118 (4.108); 2159 (5.682, 6.553); 2167 (7.136, 7.242, 7.261).

References to Ovid’s works not covered in the following selections: 57–8 (Met. 10.283–6; Golding 10.308–12); 115 (Golding 13.380); 298 (Golding 6.93); 300 (Met. 8.452–3, 15.780–1, 15.807–9; Golding 8.594–5, 15.876–7, 15.907–13); 312 (Golding 2.465); 392 (Met. 3.259–315, 2.542–7, 2.596–630; Golding 3.314–396, 2.677–83, 2.751–93); 410 (Golding 9.766); 455 (Heroides 10); 497 (Golding 8.100); 502 (Met. 2.865, 9.36, 11.355; Golding 2.1082, 9.46–7, 11.410); 504–5 (Fasti 5.195–202); 526–31 (Fasti 2.79–118); 543–50 (Met. 6.139–45, Golding 6.174–81); 545 (Remedia amoris 139); 607 (Heroides 4.116); 608 (Heroides 10.1); 630 (Fasti 5.271–2, Met. 15.80; Golding 15.87–8); 681–2 (Georgics 3.242–68, Met. 3.669, Golding 3.847); 768 (Ars Amatoria 2.699); 867–9 (Ex Ponto 3.3.5); 897–8 (Ars amatoria 1.521); 1230 (Met. 6.1–145; Golding 6.1–181); 1405 (Amores 2.9B.41); 1430 (Met. 7.663–862, Golding 7.853–1117); 1999–2000 (Heroides 18, 19); 2001–2 (Met. 7.663–862, Golding 7.853–1117); 2129 (Golding 12.118).

Plutarch and Thomas North

Comments on Shakespeare’s Use of Plutarch

Theobald (ed. 1733) first refers to Plutarch’s Life of Theseus for the story of Perigenia, and later editors add references for the other women mentioned in 453–5. Grey (1754, 1:41–2) is the first to note Plutarch’s comments on Theseus’s political stance, and his parentage; see 20–6 and nn. Capell (1783, 2.3:100): Sh., though he appears to have prepar’d himself slightly by a reading of Plutarch’s Theseus, is indebted for little else to him (properly) but his Greek names, and the action of Theseus’ marriage. Various commentators point out that Sh. for the general notion of the Greek hero and his spouse, is just as likely to have been indebted to Chaucer’s KnT (Hazlitt 1875 1:1.xii).

Furness (ed. 1895, pp. 268–9) prints brief extracts of passages which, as is alleged, supplied Shakespeare with allusions, calling them (p. 269) weeds from which Sh. gathered honey. Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 171–3) provides a similar list, saying without further comment that the extracts serve to illustrate several passages of the play. Sidgwick (1908, pp. 9–10) refers his readers to Chambers, but enlarges on the passage concerning Theseus going with Hercules against the Amazons (see below here); (p. 10): At this point we should interpolate the reason why Hercules went against the Amazons. The ninth (as usually enumerated) of the twelve labours of Hercules was to fetch away the girdle of the queen of the Amazons, a gift from her father Ares, the god of fighting. Admete, the daughter of Eurystheus (at whose bidding the twelve labours were performed) desired this girdle, and Hercules was sent by her father to carry it off by force. The queen of the Amazons was Hippolyta, and she had a sister named Antiopa. One story says that Hercules slew Hippolyta; another that Hippolyta was enticed on board his ship by Theseus; a third, as we have seen, that Theseus married Antiopa. It is not easy to choose incidents from these conflicting accounts so as to make a reasonable sequence; but, as North says, we are not to marvel, if the history of things so ancient, be found so diversely written. Shakespeare simply states that Theseus woo’d Hippolyta with his sword. Later in the play we learn that the fairy King and Queen not only are acquainted with court-scandal, but are each involved with the past histories of Theseus and Hippolyta.

Bullough (1957, 1:368–9): Plutarch’s Life of Theseus probably helped Shakespeare, since it gives stability and poise to its portrait of Theseus by historical verisimiltude and archaeological details. Moreover its ethical material coloured Shakespeare’s attitude. In Plutarch Theseus was a lawgiver, who gave order and social hierarchy to the [369] state and founded the Isthmian Games. Also he did what Shakespeare admired Henry V for doing; he moved freely among the people to ascertain their needs and qualities. His kindness and tolerance towards the craftsmen in our play is noteworthy: [quotes 1879–80]. If Shakespeare intended a compliment to someone at court he did it very pleasantly. But Theseus, a man of many love-affairs, married again after Hippolyta had brought him a son, Hippolytus, and his next wife Phaedra was the cause of hideous woe. This would never do; so Shakespeare attributed to Theseus staid and steadfast qualities taken from Plutarch’s parallel picture of Romulus, a monogamous character. Thus North’s translation is used to expand the sketch in Chaucer, where Theseus and his wife live in joye and honour. See also Coghill (1964, pp. 53–4).

Doran (1960, pp. 120–2): [T]he Plutarchan Theseus has greatly qualified the Chaucerian one. . . . [Plutarch’s] emphasis . . . is on Theseus as a historical and political figure—the unifier of the Attic communities into one state. His strengths and weaknesses . . . [121] are analyzed after the fashion of the later, fuller portraits. Thus there is throughout, explicit or implicit, a moral and political point of view. The phrasing in North’s translation gives a Renaissance coloring to the virtues for which Theseus is praised: . . . By way of Plutarch and North, Shakespeare has converted Theseus into a Renaissance prince. . . . To this conception of a prince keeping court, Shakespeare has subordinated other important aspects of the legend—Theseus as hero, a second Hercules, and Theseus as false lover, the abandoner of women. These traditional aspects of Theseus are not neglected in the play, but they are included only to enrich the background and supply verisimilitude. As is appropriate, the heroic Theseus is more prominent in the play than the philandering Theseus. (P. 122): The most famous . . . [exploit] . . . the killing of the Minotaur . . . is omitted from the play. Why? I think because it is not appropriate to the Theseus who does not believe in antic fables and in fairy toys. See also Black (1965, p. 16), Pearson (1974, pp. 289–91).

Ormerod (1978, p. 40) and Lamb (1979, p. 478) both refer to Plutarch in arguing that the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur enriches readings of MND. Nosworthy (1982, pp. 104–5), noting Bottom’s partial rather than complete translation, suggests that the germ of the idea came from Plutarch, who . . . tells both of the battle with the Centaurs, which is referred to in the play, and of the Minotaur. . . . Though it is probable that the first promptings for A Midsummer Night’s Dream came from The Knight’s Tale, . . . there is a good deal of supplementation from Plutarch. It was The Life of Theseus which furnished the relationship with Hercules, corroborated the names of Egeus and Hippolyta and supplied those other names which Oberon uses as ammunition: [quotes 452–5]. The mention of Hermes, Hermus and the city of Hermione affords as good an explanation as any for the name of Hermia, while that of Helena must surely have been drawn from Plutarch’s extended account of the rape of the nine-year-old Helen of Troy which Theseus was alleged to have committed. Helena’s beauty is emphasized in the play and if we admit the identification it adds something richly comical to the fact that she of the face that launched a thousand ships should persuade herself: [quotes 749–50]. Perigouna conceals herself in a place overgrown with shrubs and rushes called Stœbe, and wild sparage, which she simply like a childe intreated to hide her, as if they had heard, and had sense to vnderstande her [see here]. Here we have precedent both for Titania’s over-canopied retreat and for the human qualities which, according to Puck, the rude mechanicals attribute to briers and thorns. Titania’s Indian votaress died in childbirth. So did Ariadne, and both deaths are associated with sea, ships, and the wanton wind. Nosworthy also discusses the life of Demetrius Poliorcetes, extending what Spencer in 1954 suggests about the meaning of vile name. See n. 761–2.

Holland (1994, p. 144): 449–55 summon into being and cannot then eliminate that other Theseus so substantially different from the one seen in the play, the vicious ravisher who balances in Plutarch the heroic warrior and ruler, someone, says North, whose faults touching women and ravishements . . . had the lesse shadowe and culler of honestie. Bicause Theseus dyd attempt it very often (p. 43). The very frequency of the rapes and seductions is part of the indictment: what is more they are not the product of warlike conquest, as with Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, won with his sword, but of something creeping, deceitful and thief-like, dark and vicious deeds of the night, so unlike the moonlit night of the play’s wood: [quotes 449–55]. Above all, the passage evokes not the ravishing itself but the aftermath, the creeping away, from Perigouna, not towards her, breaking faith not promising it, fracturing supposedly everlasting bonds of fellowship. Titania is not accused of helping the rape but aiding and abetting the abandonment, helping Theseus add to that long series of abandoned women that led Plutarch to say that it dyd geve men occasion to suspect that his womannishenes was rather to satisfie lust, then of any great love (p. 43). Chaucer suppresses this Theseus in the Knight’s Tale; Shakespeare includes him in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. See also Montrose (1983, p. 75; 1986, p. 77; 1996, p. 146), who more sensationally claims (1986, p. 77) that the text of Shakespeare’s play is permeated by echoes not only of Plutarch’s Life of Theseus but also of Seneca’s Hippolitus and his Medea . . . .Thus, sedimented within the verbal texture of [MND] are traces of those recurrent acts of bestiality and incest, of parricide, uxoricide, filicide, and suicide, that the ethos of romantic comedy would evade. Shakespeare’s sources weave the chronicle of Theseus’s rapes and disastrous marriages, his habitual victimization of women, into the lurid history of female depravity that includes Pasiphae, Medea, and Phaedra.

See also: Cox (1982, p. 169) believes the treatment of Theseus in Plutarch and Plato’s Republic serves to throw into sharper relief the strangeness of Shakespeare’s comic treatment, a prime element of which is the prominence and the hilarity of the deeds and speeches of the artisans. Lowenthal (1996, pp. 77–8), acknowledging Cox, draws on Plutarch to consider how themes of democracy and philosophy associated with Athens are present in MND. Mowat (1989, pp. 336–8) draws attention to Plutarch’s comments concerning the problems of finding historical truth in ancient or poetic texts. Moisan (1998, pp. 286–7) considers that Theseus’s equation of poets and lunatics echoes the intermittent irritation and petulance about the historical reliability of poetic sources to be found in . . . Thomas North’s Plutarch. He quotes Plutarch on how the tragicall Poets and their stages where all the tragedies were played were successful in disgracing Minos, despite the testimonie of Hesiodus and the prayse of Homer. (P. 287): The destructive power of theater Plutarch so decries is the power inherent in poetry to create ex nihilo, the power to give shapes to things unknown that Theseus simultaneously disparages and exploits as he distances himself from the very materials from which he fetches his identity. Langley (1991, pp. 125–7) quotes from the Life of Solon to show how he modified the extreme cruelty of Draco’s laws, rewriting them deliberately obscurely to allow for interpretation; he also draws on the Life of Solon, on Plutarch’s Moralia, and on several English Renaissance texts to illustrate the connection of marriage and quinces. He explicates the relevance of this material to MND thus (p. 127): The sharp Athenian law is fulfilled—at Theseus’s discretion. In the draconian beginning he could by no meanes . . . extenuate it. But A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play of the Ene caì néa (Solon, according to Plutarch, was the first that called the chaunge of the moone, Ene caì néa, as much as to saye, as olde and newe moone, North, 1579, p. 101). Silently and overnight, Draco’s strict law becomes a Solonian dispensation. A quickening spirit revives the dead letter. Egeus is overruled, grateful cordial concocted out of raw Quince, and sweete, pleasant, and agreeable entertainment from the rude mechanicals’ play. Law, which at first had erected apparently insuperable barriers against true love, at the last authenticates it. Sigismund (1883, pp. 170–2) gives parallels between Plutarch’s Moralia and MND: he discusses the proximity of love and madness, and love as a form of god-given enthusiasm, which entails madness or frenzy, wanting the absent person near and fleeing when s/he is near, wanting to die for the loved one and to kill him/her, wanting to dominate yet being a slave; he also points out that the timid becomes courageous through love (Ger.).

The Liues of the Noble Grecians and Romanes (1595)

The edition of North’s Plutarch used by Sh. in MND is probably that of 1579, though the notion advanced by Anders (1904, p. 41) that he may have seen the first sheets of the new edition [1595], which came from the press of Richard Field, the friend of Sh. is attractive. Law (Text, 1943, p. 203) on the basis of a study of the four lives reprinted by Tucker Brooke (Shakespeare’s Plutarch, 1909; Theseus not included), believes that the texts themselves can hardly settle the problem. . . . But, if the list of ladies given by Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes, as it seems to do, straight from the life of Theseus in North, Shakespeare’s debt must in this case be to the 1579 edition; the 1595 version was almost certainly too late for use in that early play. Brooks (ed. 1979, p. xxxv), discussing date: No debt to North has so far been found in Shakespeare earlier than the date-range of the Dream; the new edition [1595] was published by his friend Field and may have been the one Shakespeare used: but we cannot show it was. See also Stokes (1878, p. 52), Furness (ed. 1895, p. 267); Alexander (1939, p. 105).

The text below is a modified diplomatic reprint of excerpts from the copy of the 1595 edition in the British Library (STC 20067.5), as republished in Early English Books Online. Typographical ornaments have been removed, and typographical errors silently corrected. Capitalization beginning paragraphs has been adjusted to modem practice. Long s is printed s. The character for abbreviated quoth is expanded. The prose is relined, and the beginning of each page in 1595 is indicated by bracketed italic numbers. Following the selections from the 1595 text, substantive variants from the 1579 edition are recorded.

Passages corresponding with MND are preceded by bracketed TLNs. The following parallels have been found (numbers without parentheses are MND TLNs; numbers in parentheses are Plutarch page numbers in this edition): 6–9 (here), 20–3 (here), 79 (here), 266–8 (here), 439–55 (here), 441–55 (here), 452–5 (here), 453 (here), 454 (here), 455 (here, here, here), 474–5 (here), 761–2 (here), 1633 (here), 1634 (here), 1794–1809 (here), 1794–1813 (here), 1841 (here, here, here), 1844 (here), 1848 (here), 1869–70 (here), 2054–5 (here).

Huon of Bordeaux (ca. 1534)

Comments on Shakespeare’s Use of Huon

Bullough (1957, 1:370–1): Oberon comes from the romance Huon of Bordeaux, translated by Lord Berners before 1533, and maybe from Greene’s James IV. . . . According to [371] Philip Henslowe’s Diary [ed. 1964, p. 20] a play hewen of burdoche was performed by Sussex’s men three times during the Christmas season of 1593–4, probably at the Rose Theatre. In Shakespeare, as in Huon, Oberon is an Eastern fairy from the farthest steep of India [444 etc.]; he has power over nature and haunts a wood where he works enchantments. The claim that Shakespeare knew the romance is supported by the references in MND [611] to the griffin and at [842–3] to the fearful wild fowl, which, as H. Cuningham asserted [ed. 1905, p. xxxix], allude to Huon, ch. xxx.

The assertion that Huon’s Oberon, like Sh.’s, is from India is often supported by quotation of Lee’s ([1883] 1975, 1:l) statement that his dwelling of Momur is in the far-reaching district that was known to mediaeval writers under the generic name of India, reinforced by Spenser’s references in FQ 2.72–5; Lee’s claim can be illustrated by passages such as Gerames’s offer to bring Huon to Babylon, and when ye be come thether ye shall se there a damesell . . . the most fayrest creature in all Inde (1:64).

The link with Huon was first noted by Steevens (ed. 1778, 3:126), and repeated by most subsequent editors. See DP n. 18. Halliwell (1845, pp. 91–119) prints an extract. Hugo (ed. 1865, 2:291–302) provides a lengthy synopsis of the French romance (Fr.). Lee (ed. Huon [1883] 1975, 1:xlvi–li) surveys the popularity of Lord Berners’s translation as indicated by references in 16th-c. literature and by the lost play, and discusses Sh.’s probable knowledge and use of the romance. Coghill (1964, p. 55) believes that the three foot height and angel-face of Huon’s Oberon suggests child actors for Sh.’s fairies: All that is certain, however, is the name, and the power over the forces of nature associated with the Fairy King. Brooks (ed. 1979, p. lix): Like Sh.’s, the fairy king in Huon is an Oberon who distinguishes himself from evil creatures of the supernatural world, . . . and whose assistance (as he tells Huon) is indispensable to a happy outcome. Smidt (1986, p. 124) finds the character in both works similarly ambiguous in terms of appearing to portend good or ill. Witte (1996, p. 60): Huon’s Oberon is like Sh.’s a king of shadows, a sort of Plutonian figure and, the same as Ariel and Prospero, a benevolent spirit (Fr.). Hendricks (1996, pp. 45–52) emphasizes the Indian connections in Huon as contributing to the handling of imaginative geographical space in MND. Vial (2002, pp. 203–22) compares and contrasts the fairy worlds of the prose epic and the poetic play; (p. 216) the heroic fairy king functions according to chivalric moral codes, and the fairy operations are traditional and predictable. . . . On the contrary, the Shakespearean fairies draw their essential charm from the fact that they are elusive, tantalizingly insubstantial (insaisissables) (Fr)].

The Boke of Duke Huon of Bordeaux

The sole extant copy of the first edition of Berners’ Huon is still according to NSTC in private hands, and is not in University Microfilms. Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. 145–6) uses S. L. Lee’s EETS text (1882–7) for which Lee was given access by a loan from the Earl of Crawford and Bacarres. Lee attributes this edition to Wynkyn de Worde, c. 1534. A reference in the third edition of 1601 indicates that there was a second edition c. 1570, probably by Copland. The third edition was printed by Thomas Purfoot, and is semi-modernized. Lee is scathing about it (1:lvi–lvii), but because it shows changes in the language between the beginning and end of the 16th c., he has collated it and gives variants at the foot of the page of the text. Bullough (1957, 1:389) uses 1601 because he finds the first edition less readable.

The selections following are transcribed from Lee’s EETS text, and follow his practice in italicizing letters in expanded abbreviations. Superscript numbers refer to variants recorded by Lee, which are here grouped at the end of the selections. Ornamental letters are ignored, and the capitals that conventionally follow display capitals are reduced. The prose is re-lined, and the beginning of each page in Lee’s edition is indicated by bracketed italic numbers. In the selections below, bracketed TLN numbers refer to commentary notes on the passages indicated: 476, 624–5, 687–8, 854, 969–70, 1020, 1350–1, 1396–8, 1429–36, 1498, 2193–8.

The following commentary notes refer to passages not in the selections below: 392, 444, 574, 611, 842–3.

Reginald Scot

Comments on Shakespeare’s Use of Scot

Scot is early recognized as a probable source for Robin Goodfellow’s nature and behavior, and for the transformation of Bottom. See e.g. Steevens (ed. 1773 at 404), Ritson (1783), Douce (1807), Halliwell (ed. 1856), Nicholson (1881) and (1886) at nn. 406–8, 914–16, 1047, 1544–6, 2173.

Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 160–3): The conception of Robin Goodfellow may be taken either directly from popular belief, or from popular belief as reported in Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (1584); he quotes various passages from Scot. Unfortunately he is using Brinsley Nicholson’s edition of 1886, which prints not only the full text of 1584, but also the spurious second book of the Discourse, and Chambers appears not to have noticed the distinction. (P. 162): Scot’s book was primarily written as an attack on the belief in witchcraft. Incidentally it affords much information as to all the superstitions of the day. Two other points in it serve to illustrate A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (1) He mentions the belief in the power of witches to transform men into asses, &c. . . . , and discusses at length a story of such a transformation . . . . [163] Scot tells another story of an appearance of Pope Benedict IX., a century after his death, with an ass’s head on . . . , and prints a charm to put a horse’s or ass’s head on a man [see here, here, here below]. (2) He speaks of the fairies as the supposed companions of the witches in their nocturnal flights and especially the lady of the fairies, called Sibylla, Minerva, or Diana [Bk. 2.2 (E5v)]. Elsewhere he quotes the statement of a council that witches ride abroad with Diana, the goddess of the Pagans, or else with Herodias, . . . and do whatsoever these fairies or ladies command [Bk. 3.16 (G1v)].

See also Sidgwick (1908, pp. 29–30, 36, 39).

Bullough (1957, 1:371–3): Sh. would need no books to define Robin Goodfellow’s qualities, which were well known in the countryside, but he had certainly read Reginald Scot’s The discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) which described belief in Robin Goodfellow as declining, and gave much information about witches, fairies and transformations while denying most of the stories about them in a tone of stern protestant reproof for the popish beliefs of Bodin and other writers. Shakespeare must have been amused at the earnestness of both parties, and though it might be argued that he sided more with Bodin since he actually shows fairies, Robin, and spells as operating in the greenwood, he makes them ridiculous and charming, not bugbears or demoniac creatures. The very human passions of the fairy King and Queen are the more amusing because Scot denied that spirits could have lusts like ours ([Bk. 4.10; see here]). For the ass’s head, (p. 372) nearer still to Shakespeare [than the Midas story or Apuleius] is a version of [the] story of witches’ spells found in Scot [Bk. 5.3–5; see here], who disbelieves [373] it, but also refers to Pope Benedict IX, condemned after death to walk the earth in a bear skin and an ass’s head in such sort as he lived [Discourse xxvij; see here]. Later Scot gives a recipe to make people smeared with a certain ointment look as if they had asses’ or horses’ heads [Bk. 13.19; see here]. Such solemn nonsense must have amused the poet, who laughingly answers Scot by showing transformations happening. As Scot declares ([Bk. 7.2; see here]) Robin Goodfellow was no longer as terrible and credible as he used to be. Shakespeare presents a somewhat obsolescent bugbear and shows him as more genial than tradition made him.

Henning (1969, pp. 484–5) argues that Scot’s Bk. 1 Ch. 4 (see below) provides a suggestion for the diminutive size of fairies; (p. 485) it combines in a striking fashion several elements used in the description of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Scot, speaking of certain hurtful witches, says of their extremely small size, They can go in and out of awger holes, & saile in an egge shell . . . (C5V). They can also raise haile, tempests, and hurtfull weather . . . (C5), reminding us of the damaging weather produced by the marital discord of Titania and Oberon. Like Puck with his misapplied love juice, these same witches can make themselves invisible and alter mens minds to inordinate loue or hate (C5v) or again like him but with less sinister effect, also bring to passe, that chearne as long as you list, your butter will not come, . . . (C5), . . . Now no doubt the powers ascribed to these witches were commonplace in folklore, especially the maleficent treatment of the cream, but more important is the fact that these powers are all gathered together in one place in conjunction with a description of exceedingly tiny witches, capable no doubt of stealing honey bags from the humble bee.

Mowat (1989, pp. 344–6): Scot’s discourse seems especially implicated in Theseus’s relating of imagination to seething brains and shaping fantasies, for Scot, like Theseus, speaks of the relationship between the disordered brain, gross imaginations, and the visual and auditory illusions caused by such imaginations. Scot describes the effect of melancholy humors nourishing and feeding those places from whence proceed feares [and] cogitations (3.11), triggering the imagining of many strange, incredible, and impossible things (3.9) so that those so afflicted beleeve they see, heare, and doo that, which never was nor shall be (3.17). Those in the grip of such imaginations, he writes, think they have seen and talked with divells (3.10); they are subject to phantasticall illusions (3.17); their fansie is occupied with that which is both false and impossible (3.9), that which is phantastically imagined and which could never be donne . . . corporallie (3.17). . . .

[345] Scot is also importantly implicated in Theseus’s I never may believe these antique fables, nor these fairy toys. In Scot’s attempt to prove that witches are only self-deluded old women, he again and again puts himself in opposition to poets—especially to Ovid and Apuleius—and their fond fables. . . . [W]hether the poets believe such tales or not, the tales themselves, according to Scot, are both impossible and damaging, . . . He therefore sets out to show the absurdities and impossibilities of Ovids Metamorphosis (5.1) and to demonstrate that stories told about a man turned into an asse (5.3) offend the laws of nature, scripture, and common sense. . . . Throughout, Scot cites as his chosen example of foolish fables the stories once told (and believed) about Robin good-fellow and his knaveries. . . . [346] The tales that poets tell of men transformed into asses, writes Scot, are as foolish as the old stories of Robin.

Arnold (1955, pp. 36–7, 101–3, 111, 115) argues that Sh. openly takes a stand for folkloric and papist beliefs against the skepticism of Scot and the puritans (Fr.). Baldwin (1959, pp. 483–5) cites Scot’s equation of witches and fairies, and Diana. Quennell (1963, pp. 169–71) illustrates Scot’s (p. 170) vast quantity of illuminating information on witches, Robin Goodfellow, and the fairy kingdom. Black (1965, pp. 18–19) usefully summarizes the main points of comparison. Ormerod (1978, pp. 45–6) links Scot’s recipe for an ass’s head with his emphasis on illusion, with the Minotaur, and with Ripa on Obstinacy, concluding (p. 46): The ass’s head is therefore an image of the dominant motif in Shakespeare’s comic world—moral mischoice. Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 7), with a skepticism equalling Scot’s own: Certainly Scot summarises the traditional characteristics of Robin, though I doubt whether Shakespeare needed to consult him to learn what was common knowledge. Barkan (1986, pp. 254–6): Scot rehearses all the patristic conflicts concerning the possibility of metamorphosis. (P. 256): Rising to the challenge of Scot’s skepticism and the Minyades’ [Ovid] distrust of the powers of passion, Shakespeare creates a world of metamorphic love that translates Augustine’s imaginative demonology to domestic fairy lore and fuses that with the great pagan anthology of transformation. Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 22, 35, 73–4) discusses Scot’s contibution to the fairies, Robin, and Bottom. Paster and Howard (1999, pp. 279–81, 287–95): (p. 280) The big questions that Scot asks of his material are also crucial for the multiple transformations of [MND]: is the idea of transformation more than a literary fiction and, if it occurs at all, does it take place through change in the body or change in the mind?

The Discouerie of Witchcraft (1584)

The following diplomatic transcript of excerpts from the 1584 edition is based on the copy in the Huntington Library, as republished in Early English Books Online. Black letter is reproduced as roman, and roman as italic. Turned letters are silently corrected. Long s is printed as s. Ornamental capitals are replaced by regular capitals, and the capitals that conventionally follow display letters reduced. The prose is relined, with the beginning of each page in the quarto indicated by italicized signatures in square brackets.

Passages corresponding with MND are preceded by TLNs in square brackets. The following parallels have been found (MND TLNs are listed, with parenthetical page references to Scot in this edition): 378 (here), 406–7 (here), 406–8 (here, here), 414–28 (here), 463–89 (here), 463–91 (here), 480–92 (here), 489 (here), 516–17 (here), 546–9 (here), 552–3 (here), 564 (here), 889–90 (here), 917–1602 (here), 921–8 (here), 930–3 (here), 932–3 (here), 977–8 (here), 979–1015 (here), 1047 (here), 1401–3 (here), 1422–3 (here, here), 1544–5 (here), 1579–80 (here), 1614–17 (here), 1712–15 (here), 1794–8 (here), 1797–1800 (here, here), 1797–1809 (here), 1812–13 (here), 2154–65 (here), 2159 (here), 2172–3 (here, here).

See also nn. 6–14, 1315.

Apuleius

Comments on Shakespeare’s Use of Apuleius

Reich (1904, pp. 125–6): Love scenes in Apuleius’s Golden Ass (Bk. 10, ch. 20 ff.) focusing on the ass-man Lucius are highly reminiscent of Bottom with his ass head and his love idyll with Titania. Apuleius underlines that the lady was of noble birth and loved an ass. Like Titania, she expresses her ardent love repeatedly and kisses and embraces the ass. Apuleius’s ass-man can become human again through magical roses. Oberon too uses a flower to free Titania from the charm. Four eunuchs prepare the love bed in Apuleius’s story; four fairies accompany the ass-man and Titania to the love bed. The number of similarities allows the conclusion that Sh. must have known Apuleius’s Golden Ass. It was one of the most widely read books in the Middle Ages (Ger.). Anders (1926, p. 161) sees Apuleius as a primary source for MND (Ger.). Moore (1926, p. 45) and Haight (1927, p. 140) demur, but after Chambers (1930, 1:362) endorses the presence of Apuleius, some connection is generally acknowledged. Parallels most often discussed relate to the transformation and affairs of Bottom, to the Cupid and Psyche story in relation to Titania and Bottom as well as the young lovers, and to possible allegorical or philosophical interpretations.

Generosa (1945, pp. 198–204), believing that Sh. read Apuleius either in Latin or in Adlington’s translation, does not postulate verbal echoes, but a paralleling of ideas. This is primarily illustrated in the transformation theme. . . . [199] [There is] no likeness in the method of transforming, There is, however, the transformation of the man into the ass: Lucius into a brute beast with the sense and understanding of a man; Bottom into a monster with the head of an ass. Apuleius . . . emphasizes the fact that the head of the man suffers most, for he retains the faculties and the appetites of a human being. Shakespeare . . . makes Bottom call for hay to eat. He is not just a human being with an ass’s head but an ass that must be nourished.

The reaction of friends and associates is similar in both stories: Lucius is kicked away by his own horse and the ass he is stabled with, and Bottom’s companion’s desert him.

The story of Cupid and Psyche illustrates how Sh. handles borrowed material. (P. 200): Venus, jealous because people are paying homage to Psyche, a very beautiful earth-born creature, calls her son Cupid . . . to make Psyche fall in love with the most miserablest creature living. This idea is paralleled by the jealous vengefulness of Oberon instructing Robin to aid him in making Titania fall in love with a monster. (P. 201): Though Shakespeare’s Robin has many traits that are similar to Apuleius’ Cupid, in MND Cupid and Robin are two separate people, for Robin is directed to get the love-juice that Cupid has shot into a flower so that Oberon can use it on Titania’s eyes. Venus sends Cupid directly to Psyche to work the love spell. In both . . . the command is the same: the victim is to fall in love with a very degraded creature.

Generosa compares the behaviour of the rich and noble lady, the Matron of Corinth, with Titania (p. 203) falling in love with an ass and giving him all the soft comforts she can conceive to show her love. As Titania says (p. 204) she will have her fairy gather the new nuts for the ass’ food, so when the ass is fleeing from the robbers’ cave with the girl Charitie on his back, he tries so hard to take her to safety that she . . . whispers kind words to him, promising she will gather for him kernels of nuts in her silken apron [1566, S1v]. See also Starnes (1945, pp. 1030–2).

Independently of Generosa or Starnes, Wilson (1948, pp. 38–42) notes that Charitie also promises her little ass that she will comb thy mane and dress the hair of thy forehead, and he lists nine parallels between the story of Cupid and Psyche, and the fairy plot of MND. In addition to those indicated by Generosa, he notes that the deepe valley where Psyche was sweetely couched emongst the softe and tender hearbes, as in a bedde of soote and fragrant flowers (1566, N3r) (p. 40) looks like a direct suggestion for Titania’s bower, and that as Titania is sung to by tiny attendant sprites, who feed her love with delicate fruits, so Psyche is waited upon by invisible spirits who bring her al sortes of diuine meates and wines (1566, N3v) and entertained with beautiful music. Less convincingly, he parallels the disorder brought about by Venus’s jealousy (1566, P3v) with that caused by Titania and Oberon’s strife, and the picture of Venus returning to the sea (1566, N1v) with Oberon’s description of the mermaid.

Kermode (1961, pp. 218–19): It is scarcely conceivable, though the point is disputed, that the love-affair between Titania and Bottom is not an allusion to The Golden Ass. He instances first the parallels with the story of Cupid and Psyche, upon which were founded many rich allegories; out of the wanton plot came truth in unexpected guise. And in the second place, Apuleius, relieved by the hand of Isis from his ass’s shape, has a vision of the goddess, and proceeds to initiation in her mysteries. On this narrative of Apuleius, for the Renaissance half-hidden in the enveloping commentary of Beroaldus, great superstructures of platonic and Christian structures have been raised; and there is every reason to suppose that these mysteries are part of the flesh and bone of MND. He compares Bottom’s words and St Paul’s with Apuleius’s description of his vision (p. 219): What they have in common is transformation, and an experience of divine love. See also Idem (2000, pp. 62–3).

McPeek (1972, pp. 70–79): The reshaping of the Psyche myth in the play is dreamlike and strange in its new arrangements, but yet essentially true to the original story. The tale itself in its telling is associated with dreams. Before the story begins, the captive Charites has been distressed by a shocking dream-vision [1566, K3v]. The trifling old woman set to guard her counsels her not to be afraid of strange visions and dreams, and then to revive her spirits tells her the tale of Psyche.

The Psyche image itself, the concept of the devoted woman patient in adversity and unfailingly true to her love, becomes an important construct in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, involving both mortals and fairies. He considers first Helena and Hermia. The two are contrasted without prejudice. . . . For all their external differences they are two lovely berries on one stem, and they are manifest Psyches in their unfailing constancy to their lovers. He develops the similarities in detail. Sh.’s (p. 71) fairies, who preside over the fortunes of these mortals both in fickle love and in true love . . . exhibit action, themes, and imagery that are also paralleled in the myth. He develops at greater length parallels noted by Generosa and Wilson (the latter not cited).

(P. 74) :The Indian boy, son of a votaress of Titania, seems almost a fulfillment in the play of Venus’ threat to replace Cupid with the son of one of her retainers [1566, P4r]. He concludes by suggesting that Adlington’s preface To the Reader gave Sh. (p. 78) sentiments and a pattern for some of his reflections on the fundamental meaning of his drama in the exchange between Theseus and Hippolyta [TLN 1793–1819], and (p. 79) he compares Hippolyta’s summation with the response of the people to Lucius’s re-metamorphosis: The people began to meruell, and the religious honored the Goddesse for so euident a miracle, they wondred at the visions which they sawe in the night, and the facilitie of my reformation (1566, 2I1r).

Ormerod (1978, pp. 43–5) quotes Lucius’s encounter with the matron of Corinth, commenting that if in this context MND seems (p. 44) a grosser play than many of its admirers will find palatable, it must be contended that it also becomes a more elegantly articulated play. Titania in the copulatory embrace of Bottom, impelled by the ocular misjudgment occasioned by Puck’s love-juice splashed upon her eyes, becomes a perfect icon for the Shakespearian commonplace . . . of the degradation which ensues when passionate love, induced by the arrow of morally blind Cupid, judges by appearance and not by inner reality. To judge by appearance is the ultimate absurdity (How I dote . . . ); it is also the ultimate state of being towards which carnality impels—physical lust devoid of the animating human principle.

From this point of view, Apuleius’ novella was ideal for Shakespeare’s design, for it contains at least two elements suggestive of the Shakespearian love-ethic. In Robert Graves’ view [The Golden Ass, Penguin ed. 1950, p. 12], Lucius earns his transformation because he has lowered himself to the exclusively physical sexual appetite of Fotis. . . . Within The Golden Ass, however, are two episodes which, for the Elizabethan mind, indicate the approved contrary. One is the story of Cupid and Psyche, which necessarily implies the eventual progress of love towards the higher intellectual principle by means of arduous pilgrimage. The other, more important, is the final resolution of the sufferings of Lucius—the appear-[45]ance to him, in a blaze of light, of the goddess Isis, who vanquishes his bestial form and initiates him into her divine worship. . . . The entire novel is, in a real sense, the story of an initiation.

Nuttall (2000, p. 56), in an essay subtly exploring the twists of mythological meaning, emphasizes Lucius’s anxieties in the encounter with the Matron of Corinth with its mention of the Minotaur, and comments: With Bottom, as with Theseus, if we read backwards into prior myth, we are led into the world of [Racine’s] Phèdre. Bottom is a happily averted Minotaur, or Bull, Titania Pasiphae. . . . It will be said, There is nothing in Shakespeare about a huge penis. True. But this thought must lie behind the physiological anxiety, the physiological comic incongruity. . . . We laugh and we are happy. But the horror is there, to be averted, and in some degree survive the act of aversion.

Barkan (1980, p. 352) claims that Apuleius’s novel . . . the locus classicus for the notion of a worldly travail that begins in concupiscence, moves through bestiality, and culminates in a vision of the divine is essential for understanding Bottom’s experience and his transformation. Kott (1981, pp. 119–26; 1987, pp. 32–40) sees Bottom’s metamorphosis in the context of Lucius’s adventures and the tale of Cupid and Psyche, particularly as interpreted by Beroaldus, and illuminated by other Neoplatonists. Mielle de Prinsac (1981, p. 66) develops the idea of Titania as Isis, goddess of the moon and triple deity, as well as being a Psyche figure (Fr.). Nosworthy (1982, pp. 98, 102–3) revisits the Bottom-Titania relationship. Wyrick (1982, p. 444) places Apuleius in the context of other literary instances of the ass-motif. Tobin (1984, pp. 32–40) reviews and comments upon earlier critics, as does Gillespie (2001, pp. 22–3). Davies (1986, pp. 22–4, 120) sees the Isis cult as expounded by Apuleius (and Plutarch in De Iside et Osiride) casting white light over the world of MND. Little (1990, pp. 226–32) and Bouchard (2000, pp. 231–4) discuss Apuleius as prime source for MND and Rimbaud’s Bottom (Fr.). Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 69–73) pays attention to Adlington’s translation, and to the ways in which MND differs from Apuleius’s tale. Clarke (1995, pp. 44, 131) sees in MND some of the mordant comedy of Apuleius, and believes that (p. 131) in this comedy Shakespeare has worked an Apuleian parody against a Christian/Neoplatonic line of patriarchal allegory.

Holloway (2000, pp. 123–7) sets out to look at Shakespeare’s use of intertextual material in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, at its rich tapestry of anxiety and outrageousness, in the manner of both Freud’s and Foucault’s Interpretation of Dreams, and of Empson’s discussions of political censorship and encoding in the Elizabethan theatre. After summarizing The Golden Ass, she avers Sh. (p. 127) playfully . . . makes use of the intertextuality of the Golden Ass of Lucius/Apuleius, becoming himself Bottom courted by Titania while guised as an ass, while making an ass of himself. Lemercier-Goddard (2003, pp. 99–103) considers that the influence of The Golden Ass on MND in three areas—the metamorphosis of Bottom, the structure of the play, and the general theme of metamorphosis—reveals profound affinities between the two works (Fr.). Carter (2006, esp. paras. 6–7, 9, 11–18, 21–2, 26–30) considers aspects of Neoplatonic philosophy in MND as conveyed through The Golden Ass, and illuminated by comparisons with Thomas Heywood’s Love’s Mistress, a dramatization of the Cupid and Psyche story, as explained by Apuleius to Midas.

Some major differences between Lucius and Bottom should be emphasized: Lucius seeks his transformation. He himself applies the agent of transformation. He is totally transformed, and is aware of all the changes to his body. He is unable to speak. He eats hay only reluctantly, and prefers human food.

The following comment on Apuleius’s novel points to the general similarity with MND felt by many readers: If in the final analysis the reader is left wondering what The Golden Ass is really about, what exactly Apuleius is getting at, that may be just what its author intended. What he promises in the Prologue is enjoyment and wonder. The Latin word for wonder, miror, can connote bewilderment as well as admiration. Like all great works of art, The Golden Ass stoutly resists simplification. (E. J. Kenney, Introduction, Apuleius, The Golden Ass, Penguin Classics rev. ed. 2004, p. xxxi.)

The Golden Asse (1566)

The following diplomatic transcript of excerpts from the 1566 edition is based on the copy in the Huntington Library, collated with the 1582 and 1596 copies in the same library, and the 1571 copy in the British Library, all as republished in Early English Books Online. Black letter is reproduced as roman. Turned letters are silently corrected. Long s is printed s. The character for abbreviated quoth is expanded. Ornamental capitals are replaced by regular capitals, and the capitals that conventionally follow display letters reduced. The prose is relined, with the beginning of each page in the quarto indicated by italicized signatures in square brackets. In the collation with 1571, 1582, 1596, variant spellings are ignored. 1571 appears to be accurately reprinted from 1566. 1582 introduces a considerable number of variants, usually not affecting the sense, and 1596 is even more cavalier.

Passages corresponding with MND are preceded by TLNs in square brackets. The following parallels have been found (MND TLNs are listed, with parenthetical page references to Apuleius in this edition): 371 (here), 492 (here, here), 533–7 (here), 534 (here), 630–3 (here), 659–76 (here), 678–85 (here), 794–9 (here), 914–16 (here), 918–37 (here), 930–6 (here), 937 (here), 954–8 (here), 974–92 (here), 979–80 (here) 1162 (here), 1398–1405 (here), 1509–58 (here), 1511–14 (here), 1513 (here), 1544–6 (here), 1548–9 (here), 1585–9 (here), 1710 (here), 1718+1–43 (here), 1731–45 (here), 1793–1818 (here), 1821–31 (here).

George of Montemayor and his Continuators

Comments on Shakespeare’s Use of Montemayor

Recent opinion of Montemayor and Gil Polo’s importance as source for MND may be represented by Holland (ed. 1994, p. 60): Sh.’s possible use of Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana (1559) and Gil Polo’s continuation and re-examination of the romance in Diana Enamorada (1564) is somewhat problematic because Bartholomew Yong’s translation was not published until 1598 although it had probably been completed by 1582. Shakespeare made use of Montemayor for The Two Gentlemen of Verona, either reading the Spanish original or relying on the French translation of Nicolas Collin (1578, 1587) or possibly through reading a manuscript copy of Yong’s version. A number of features of the two romances seem to be echoed [in MND]: the dominance of the goddess Diana who is seen as devoted not primarily to chastity, but to finding a happy solution to lovers’ problems, the use of a love-juice to restore the lovers to their rightful pairs, the recurrent tension between reason and love and the lovers’ sense of their experiences after they wake up. Cumulatively the arguments for Shakespeare’s use of the romances are strong. Collin’s translation of Montemayor was printed together with the continuations of Alonso Perez and Gabriel Chapuis in 1582; there were numerous reprints by 1592. Leech (Arden ed. TGV, 1969, pp. xli–ii), discussing the problem of Sh.’s access to the Spanish romances, concludes (p. xlii): The many verbal echoes of Yong’s version noted in the commentary to this edition [of TGV] make it almost certain that this was Shakespeare’s immediate source.

There are also more detailed examinations of the correspondences between Diana and MND. Tobler (1898, pp. 358–66) emphasizes particularly the parallels with the contrasting operations of love-in-idleness and Dian’s bud, and with the tangled loves of the quartet in Selvagia’s story (see below). He concludes that the main theme of MND is the story of the four lovers, and it is based on Montemayor’s Diana (Ger.). Harrison (1926, pp. 94–103) painstakingly details the similarities and differences between the Diana’s and Sh.’s (p. 96) conception of confused lovers and the use of magic in both. Parrott (1949, pp. 126–7): For MND, Diana once more served him as a starting point, this time not for isolated scenes [as in TGV], but for the main plot of the play he was planning. Kennedy (1968, pp. xlvi–l) notes inter alia similarities of comic tone. Brooks (ed. 1979) and Holland (ed. 1994) also note many parallel passages in their commentaries.

Other critics make brief acknowledgement of possible connections between Diana and MND. Dunlop (1814, 3:137–8), in his account of Montemayor’s Diana, observes: Some of the most entertaining scenes in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream appear to have been suggested by the [3:138] transference of love occasioned by the potion of the priestess [Felicia]. Ward (1875, 1:380) concedes the possibility, but notes that Yong’s translation was not published until 1598. Krauss (1876, p. 241), adopting Massey’s (1866, pp. 473–7) theory that the love affairs of Southampton, Elizabeth Vernon, and Lady Rich are dramatized in MND, claims that Southampton’s love story was the actual occasion for the drama, the story taken from Diana may have given him the basic conception, the idea to make the re-entry of the lovers into the realm of reason contingent upon the magic by a higher power, which makes it possible to also ascribe the initial magic transformation to a higher power. Finally the whole foolish loving, magic and teasing is caused by mysterious powers of the fairy folk. Sh. transposes the magic into the midsummer night and allows it with humorous pleasure to extend in all directions: The ethereal tissue woven from actual occurrences and fantasy becomes a dream (Ger.). Unfortunately Krauss (p. 231), unquestioningly followed by Brink (1878, p. 103), gives a very inaccurate summary of the loves of Sylvanus and Selvagia, which invalidates his attempted equation of Montemayor’s characters with Shakespeare’s. Fleay (1886, p. 186) concedes some of the fairy story may have been suggested by Montemayor’s Diana. Baugust (ed. 1894, p. 7) is the first to suggest that Sh. may have read the French translation (unspecified). Anders (1904, p. 73), citing Tobler, adds: The resemblances are perhaps still greater between this play and Alvise Pasqualigo’s Gl’ Intricati (1581) in which incidents of the Diana are dramatized; cf. Clubb (1989, p. 172). Bullough (1957, 1:211, 368) claims that with TGV: Montemayor’s Diana became [Sh.’s] text-book of amorous entanglements and sentiment, and that in MND’s Hippolyta Sh. (p. 368) would recall the warrior-heroine in Montemayor’s Diana whose heroism he diminished to make Julia in TGV. He also (1964, p. 129) sees the in-set play [as] a dramatic equivalent . . . of the story-within-a-story which he had read in Sidney, Montemayor, and Greek romances.

There are dissenting voices, particularly from those who dislike the genre of pastoral romance. Furness (ed. 1895, pp. 283–6) includes a passage from Montemayor in his Sources appendix, resentfully claiming I have toiled through the four hundred and ninety-six weary, dreary, falsetto, folio pages of Montemayor’s Diana, without finding any conceivable suggestion for the fairy story [see Fleay above], other than that of the love-juice to which Ward [see above], I think, alludes. Following the passage reprinted from Montemayor’s Book 5 (see below), he sarcastically comments (p. 286): It may be perhaps a relief to sympathetic hearts to know that Lady Felicia, as well as Oberon, possessed an antidote, and that Syrenus did not forever remain insensible to Diana’s charms. . . . But to screen him from any imputation of fickleness we are told that this change was wrought by supernatural means, and, what is most noteworthy (I marvel it escaped the commentators) among the means is an herb,—beyond all question this herb is Dian’s bud. Did not the Lady Felicia live at the Goddess Diana’s temple? Any herb, any bud whatsoever that she administered would be Dian’s bud. Schelling (1908, 2:152) is unwilling to grant any connection: We must deny any real pastoral element to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, much more that this comedy owes anything to the Diana of Montemayor. But these negative opinions have not prevailed.

Diana (1598)

The text of the selections below is taken from the copy belonging to the present editor, formerly in the library of the Duke of Sussex. For fuller description of this and other copies, see ed. 1968, pp. lxxiii–lxxx. In the following selections, the capitals beginning the song Foolish loue (here) are normalized. Long s is printed as s. Bracketed TLN numbers refer to commentary notes on the passages indicated: 248–55, 547–9, 556, 766–7, 770–7, 1195, 1588, 1597–8, 1700–1. Additionally, inserted TLN numbers 113–19, 743–68, 1138–9 refer to passages not discussed in the commentary.

The following commentary notes refer to passages in Montemayor or Gil Polo not in the selections below: 264–5, 399, 593–8, 759, 925–6, 1024, 1166–8, 1214–15, 1569–71, 1709–10, 1720, 1759, 2076, 2084.

English Drama

Various types of English drama are seen as contributing to the make-up of MND, sometimes as providing material for parody, and sometimes more profoundly as contributing to the play’s nature.

Miracle or Cycle Plays, Moralities and Interludes, Folk and Mummers’ Plays

Hales (1873, p. 227), believing that in Chaucer’s day dramatic form had scarcely yet advanced beyond the rude dialogue and grotesque portraiture of the Miracle-play, claims (p. 227 n.) that Sh. laughs at the rough amateurs of the old stage in the by-play of MND. Cf. Staunton (ed. 1857) and Furness (ed. 1895), at n. 266–371. See also Lefranc (1919, 2:104 ff.), who makes the point (2:108) that the mechanicals are given occupations that put them in guilds responsible for various plays in the cycle (Fr.); Blanc (2002, p. 13), who points to analogous details in the Herod figure (see n. 296–7); and by Cooper (2006, pp. 22, 35–6) who notes that in the Chester cycle Balaam play there is an angel who can only be seen by the ass and not by Balaam, just as the assified Bottom is the only human character who ever sees those invisible fairies.

The cycle at Coventry continued to be played until 1579, and may well have been attended by Sh., since Stratford is less than 20 miles away. Coincidentally, one of the two plays surviving is the Weavers’. Even after the suppression of the Corpus Christi cycle, dramatic entertainments of various kinds continued to be staged by Coventry’s citizens, often in association with Midsummer Eve. As the cycle plays formed part of the welcome for earlier sovereigns, so civic celebrations were held for Elizabeth in 1566, and Coventry men took their Hock Tuesday play to Kenilworth for the famous 1575 entertainment. Davidson (1987, pp. 87–99) examines the ways in which the Coventry records illuminate the play-within-the-play in MND; see also R. W. Ingram, Records of Early English Drama: Coventry (Toronto, 1981).

Commentators also look to moralities and interludes for analogues to Bottom’s transformation, and the use of masks or property heads. See e.g. Mathew (1922, p. 124), Moore (1926, pp. 45–50), Debax (1989, pp. 30–3), Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 78–9). For the often-cited description of the lost play The Cradle of Security see Wilson & Hunter (1969, pp. 76–7). Righter (1962, p. 97) specifies traits that the mechanicals share as dramatists with their medieval counterparts; see here.

The ways in which MND draws on folk dramatic presentations such as morris dances and mummers’ play, and on seasonal festivities, have been notably explored by Barber (1959) and by Laroque (1988, 1991).

Entertainments and Pageants

Whiter (1794, pp. 186–8) first points to the ways in which MND bears significant resemblances to the civic pageants and country estate festivities which accompanied Elizabeth’s summer progresses (see n. 524–45). Thorndike (1899, p. 230), discussing the development of pastoralism in Elizabethan drama, notes of such entertainments their artistic quality varies widely. Some of them, doubtless, suggested Shakspere’s burlesque in the pageants of Holofernes and Bottom, the weaver; and, on the other hand, some of them with their songs and fairies may possibly have suggested the beautiful conception of MND. Venezky (1951, p. 142), in her important study of the general subject, points out that MND like the progress shows . . . incorporates elements from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Yoch (1985, pp. 196, 203–4) relates Sh.’s experiments with landscape description as part of characterization in AYL and MND to the way in which pageant designers developed visual images for the landscape and gave its elements voices. . . . Scenery is one of the most important contributions of the pageant to the regular theater. (P. 203): The pictures often begin in vastly mythological realms and end in local, individual elements: . . . After noting that Oberon’s great speech [532–45] comes to rest on something small and familiar, the pansy, Young suggests that the panoramas in the play offer escape from confinement [1966, pp. 78, 80]. But the final close-ups of these passages also illustrate the important role Shakespeare gave to emblematic figures [204] in his Elizabethan pastoral designs, which resemble the pageant extension from political tracts to immediate occasion.

The entertainments for Elizabeth occasioning most comment in relation to MND are those given by the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth in 1575 and by the Earl of Hertford at Elvetham in 1591. Both featured spectacular water shows and fireworks displays, and plentiful mythological references. Kenilworth had Arion and Proteus on dolphins, together with a mermaid. Elvetham introduces the fairy king Auberon and fairy queen Aureola. The Kenilworth festivities are described in Laneham’s A Letter and Gascoigne’s The Princely Pleasures, both reprinted in Nichols (1823, 1:420–523); see also the edition of A Letter by Rutger Kuin (Amsterdam, 1973), and Gascoigne’s Complete Works (ed. J. W. Cunliffe, 1910, 2:91–131). For the Elvetham festivities see Nichols (1823, 3:101–21), Bond (1902, 1:431–52, 522–6), and Wilson (1980, pp. 96–118).

Laroque (1989, pp. 122–6) introduces a detailed comparison of Kenilworth and MND with a general assessment: In the course of three weeks of sumptuous feasts . . . are found tableaux vivants inspired by pagan mythology . . . but also medieval romance and folklore. . . . The combination of all these (p. 123) elements had a marvelous effect and also a strong symbolic resonance in so far as it allowed the uniting of celtic traditions, local customs, rustic deities and grand mythological themes, all in the finest spirit of the late Renaissance . . . A similar spirit of fusion and syncretism, mixing levels of the learned and the popular, of mythology and folklore, is in line with the technique of makeshift assembly [de montage et de bricolage] (in the sense that archaic survivals are mingled with more modern elements) in which Shakespeare engages in MND. . . . (P. 126) It is possible that Sh. [in 524–45] superimposed the memory of the entertainment in 1591 at Elvetham, where the queen was present at a naval combat staged on a body of water shaped like a crescent moon (Fr).

For further comment on correspondences with and critical interpretations of these two occasions, see nn. 74–87, 266–371, 441–3, 495, 500–10, 524–45, 841–2, 1138, 1627–46, 1745. See also Criticism: Drame à Clef, here.

A prime example of civic entertainment is found in the welcome given the Queen by the city of Norwich in 1578. Bernard Garter in The iofull Receyuing of the Queenes most excellent Maiestie (1578) gives at length both Latin and translation of the orations and verses either given or intended, with some description of the Queen’s encouragement and reception of these (including the nervous schoolmaster’s effusions; see n. 1890–1902), and relatively brief description of pageants, decorations, and processions. Thomas Churchyard in A Discourse of The Queenes Maiesties entertainment (1578) concentrates on the devises he prepared, with varying success, for the several days of her stay. Both are reprinted in David Galloway, Records of Early English Drama: Norwich (Toronto, 1984, pp. 243–330), and, incompletely, in Nichols (1823, 2:134–213). Richard Topcliffe, in a letter of August 30th, praises the exceedinge great entertainment offered by the meaner sort at Norwich (Nichols, 1823, 2:216). Wikander (1993, pp. 29–43): Churchyard’s (p. 32) account of the queen’s progress to Norwich—that city of weavers—offered to Shakespeare’s view a panorama of poorly executed royal entertainment that his professional company could happily spoof, and that his creative imagination could apprehend and comprehend. The correspondences noted include (p. 30) the clumsy attempts at courtly disclaimer and the way in which the combination of embarrassment and noble condescension that Shakespeare splits into the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta infuses the character of Queen Elizabeth that Churchyard’s narrative evokes; (p. 32) Chastitie presented the bow of Cupid to the queen: its possession, she says, is more fitte for . . . one . . . that bears a heart of stone / That none can wounde; (p. 33) An excellent Boy with a scarf folded on the Turkish fashion about his browes who welcomes the queen; (p. 36) With Quince-like earnestness, Churchyard beseeches his readers to piece out the imperfections of his pageant with their imaginations; (p. 40) Churchyard believes he made the queen smyle and laugh withal at the spectacular effect of his waternymphs-turned-fairies’ sudden emergence from the corner of a field, . . . defenced with high and thicke bushes (as Sh.’s audiences laugh at Bottom’s sudden emergence from the hawthorn brake, which like Churchyard’s corner, served as a tiring-house); as Sh. concludes his play with his fairies, so too Churchyard’s fairies dance to knit up all. See also Venezky (1951, pp. 69–70 at nn. 538–41, 1890–1902).

Holland (ed. 1994, p. 39): Churchyard’s recurrent interest in fairies as a useful device for royal entertainments led him to include mention of Robin Goodfellow in verses for the entertainment of the queen at Woodstock in 1592; other parallels deserve quotation: Old thin faste wiues That rosted crabs by night Did tell of monsters in their liues That now proue shadowes light. . . . Of old Hobgoblings guise That walkt like ghost in sheetes With maides that would not early rise For feare of Bugs and spreets. Some say the fayr[i]es faire Did dance on bednall greene, And fine familiars of the aire Did talke with men vnseene. And oft in moone shine nights When each thing draws to rest Was seene dum shoes and vggly sights That feared evry guest; Rude Robin good fellow is introduced To make the greater sport in teasing foule sluts by breaking crockery, skimming milk, and spoiling cream pots (A handeful of gladsome verses, 1592, B3v–4r).

David M. Bergeron’s English Civic Pageants (1971) serves (p. 4) to enlarge our undestanding of the dramatic tradition that was Shakespeare’s. Halpin’s (1843, p. 99) note that MND has all the air and character of a mask is developed by Elze (1868; 1874, pp. 30–7). The subject is fully explored by Welsford’s (1927) study of the court masque and its links to various types of royal entertainment; she devotes a chapter to MND and Tmp., (p. 324) two masque-like plays which are particularly happy examples of the transformation of the masque by the creative imagination of the poet. Kennan (1991, pp. 87–97) sees MND developing an Elizabethan aesthetic illustrated by the Kenilworth festivities and Sidney’s Defence of Poetry (It.). Montrose (1996, pp. 154 ff., 183–90) draws on Kenilworth, Norwich and other progresses and pageants in discussing the cult of Elizabeth and the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude. Prior (Gascoigne’s Posies, 2000, pp. 446–8) claims Gascoignes deuise of a maske for the right honorable Viscount Mountacute (Works, 1:75–86) as (p. 448) an important source for both MND and Rom.; despite the many verbal and structural parallels he adduces his argument is not fully persuasive.

Anti-Stratfordians Edward G. Harman (Edmund Spenser and the Impersonations of Francis Bacon, 1914) and Titherley (1952, pp. 71–5) offer comment on further connections between MND and Kenilworth and Elvetham respectively. Following Titherley, Evans (1956) elaborates on parallels between Elvetham and MND (pp. 58–61). Brooks (1943, p. 92 ff.) argues that the first version of MND was a play for courtly entertainment based on (94) Churchyard’s fairy spectacle.

Others who see possible indebtedness of MND to such entertainments (besides those mentioned in the notes listed above) include: Cunliffe (in Brooke ed. 1914, pp. 35–6), Arnold (1955, p. 113 (Fr.)), Purdon (1974, passim), Cole (1973, pp. 404–6), Brooks (ed. 1979, p. lxviii), Kott (1981, pp. 134–6; rpt. 1987, pp. 48–52), Hollindale (1992, pp. 2–3), Wiles (1993, pp. 167–70), Williams (1995, pp. 59–60).

For Richard Edwards’ Palamon and Arcite, performed during the Queen’s visit to Oxford in 1566, see Ros King, The Works of Richard Edwards: Politics, Poetry and Performance in Sixteenth Century England (Manchester, 2001).

Earlier Romantic Comedy

Although many early secular plays are lost, enough remains for critics to point to ways in which earlier romantic comedy influences the development of MND. Baskervill (1916–17, pp. 483–5, 500), discussing Elizabethan mythological plays: The particular combination of material in these plays suggests dramatic tradition. Like love allegory of the Middle Ages, they show divergences from classical story toward the conventions of mediaeval pageantry and festival play; but the [484] presence of clowns, pages, fairies, and shepherds is suggestive of the melting pot of earlier romantic drama rather than of the somewhat more harmonious court of love poems. Some such mingling of elements must have appeared in the pastoral presented before Elizabeth by Italian actors in 1574, features of which were a scythe for Saturn, shepherds, a wild man, arrows for nymphs, and garlands [see Feuillerat (1908), pp. 227, 228, 458], the last possibly for festival dances and games. . . . [485] Both simple romantic stories and mythological stories from the classics seem to have been popular in dramatic form among the folk of Elizabethan England. [quotes TGV 4.4.158–60 (1977–9), 4.4166–9 (1985–8)] Shakspere uses a part of the story [of Theseus and Ariadne] for [MND], his own play idealizing the midsummer silvan sports. In the play itself he satirizes the folk presentation of Pyramus and Thisbe, a story with a long record of popularity in mediaeval poetry and drama. (P. 500): The long ballad couplet with inner rhyme for the second and fourth feet was used . . . sporadically in Cambises and in the oldest Elizabethan heroic plays, Common Conditions (ll. 33–44, etc.) and Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes. A point is very obviously made of it in Shakspere’s satire on folk productions in the interlude of MND.

Others commenting on links between MND and earlier romantic drama: Nicoll (1925, p. 51) sees in Calisto and Melebea and Fulgens and Lucrece the basis on which was reared later the pure romantic comedy of Greene and Lyly and Shakespeare. Bradbrook (1955, pp. 24, 222): Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, Common Conditions and The Cobblers Prophecy indicate the kind of plays upon knights and monsters, fairy adventures and magic wonders, wishing wells, princesses and dragons . . . which the mechanicals of [MND] think of. (P. 222): The thrice three Muses . . . appear in [Damon and Pithias] mourning for the imminent death of Pithias. Chute (1951, p. 50): The old plays that were still being acted had a stiff elegance and an impassioned melancholy that made them a little ridiculous even when they were properly presented. A play like Appius and Virginia was advertised as a tragical comedy and its long lines wailed like a defective bagpipe. Young (1966, pp. 38–40): The scenes of grief and death in Pyramus and Thisby are . . . a systematic mockery of similar moments in older plays, as we can see from two which have survived, Damon and Pythias [39] and the anonymous Appius and Virginia; he quotes various examples from each play. Hibbard (1981, p. 145): In works such as Damon, Appius, and Cambyses, Sh. found the models—and the target—for the drumming alliterative invocations to the Fates and the Furies that Pyramus and Thisbe utter as a prelude to their self-inflicted deaths. Blanc (2002, pp. 11–25) draws on such plays to illustrate ways in which their conventions of poetic style, characterization and other dramatic devices are parodied and exploited in MND.

As many note, few early dramatic texts survive. The tantalisingly entitled Delphrigus, and the King of Fairies is mentioned by Nashe in the preface to Greene’s Menaphon (1589, A2v) and in Greenes, groats-worth of wit (1592, E1r); cf. Wilson (ed. 1924, p. 94). There may also have been an earlier version of Wily Beguiled (1602), which has some parallels with MND.

For a survey of minor Tudor and Elizabethan plays seen as analogous in some details to MND see Talbert (1963, esp. pp. 337–8).

The dramatists considered most important to the development of MND are listed below, in approximate chronological order.

John Lyly (1554–1606)

Apart from a brief reference to the fairy scenes of The Maid’s Metamorphosis by Malone (1780, 1:117), which he mistakenly attributes to Lyly, and Halpin’s (1843) argument for a parallel topical allegory with Endimion (see here), critics before the late 19th c. showed little interest in exploring Sh.’s debt in MND to his elder contemporary.

Goodlet (1882, pp. 362–3): I believe that Lilly’s style had no influence on Shakspere’s prose, but that he had evidently studied him lovingly, had taken up and developed his love of song, his pages and servants with their banter and jollity, and had benefited by the example of the dramatic fusing of the serious and comic elements in Lilly’s [363] dramas. Finally this influence is to be seen in a multitude of minute details of character, situation and expression, and is to be sought for principally in Shakspere’s early plays, such as LLL, TN, AYL, and MND. Brandes (1898, p. 41): When Bottom appears with an ass’s head . . . we may doubtless trace the incident back to the metamorphosis of Midas in Ovid, but through the medium of Lyly’s Mydas.

Bond’s authoritative edition of Lyly’s complete works (3 vols., 1902), in which the introductions and notes draw many parallels with Sh., ensured that later Shn. commentators acknowledged Lyly’s importance, and increasing interest bore fruit in G. K. Hunter’s magisterial study (John Lyly, 1962). Bond’s observations include the parallel between Titania and the fairy queen Aureola in the Entertainment at Elvetham (1591), (2:254) the introduction of a fairy-ballet in Gallathea and Endimion, the appeal to folklore in The Woman in the Moone and Loves Metamorphosis, and the magic powers introduced in Endimion in the slumbrous spell, all of which Sh. used in MND; (2:295) the metrical sweetness and poetic fancy of The Woman in the Moone which may have suggested more to Shakespeare than the description of his own exquisite fairy-tale as a dream. Lyly and Peele are at any rate his only models for idyllic grace, and that power of fusing lyric feeling with dramatic work which he shows in MND, Rom., and AYL; (2:297–8) The allegory of [Endimion] suggests that of Oberon’s speech [524–45]; and in some smaller points Shakespeare’s Dream recalls Endimion or The Woman. An ass-head is fitted on Bottom’s asinine self-conceit as asses’ ears are on the arrogant Midas: in the Dream, as in Endimion, fairies make sport of rude simplicity, and lovers sleeping under enchantment are aroused by the entry of a courtly train: Puck the clown is dispatched for a flower, Gunophilus the clown for herbs; [298] the flower is misused, the herbs ignored; later Dian’s bud is called in to counteract the effects of Cupid’s flower, just as lunary is suggested as a cure for the harms into which Corsites’ passion has brought him (iv. 3. 131); the fable of the Man in the Moon, appearing in The Woman (v. 311–9) and in the title of Endimion, is introduced again by Moonshine; and Puck’s apology for the play as a dream is borrowed from Lyly’s prologue to his own pastoral.

Wilson (1905, pp. 123, 127–8): The intricate mechanism of [MND] . . . was far beyond Lyly’s powers, but it was only possible even for Shakespeare after a thorough study of Lyly’s methods. MND (p. 127) is from beginning to end full of reminiscences from the plays of the earlier dramatist, transmuted, vitalized, and beautified by the genius of our greatest poet. It is as if he had witnessed in one [128] day a representation of all of Lyly’s dramatic work, and wearied by the effort of attention had fallen asleep and dreamt this Dream.

Hunter (John Lyly, 1962, pp. 318–30): MND very obviously constructs its plots in the manner of Lyly, by balancing a number of self-contained groups, one against the other. As in Sapho and Phao we have court ladies, gods, pages and the Sybil, who never talk together; as in Midas we have shepherds, nymphs, counsellors, pages and gods maintained in separation [319] from one another; so in A Midsummer Night’s Dream we have fairies, mechanicals, royal lovers (in the manner of the Heroides) and young lovers seeking to outwit their fathers, all kept far more distinct from one another than has been the case in the Shakespeare comedies so far discussed.

Not only so, but the groups are introduced to us in the manner of which Lyly was the great exemplar: one by one the groups are presented, and we hear from each in turn what is to be its intention and outlook for the rest of the play. It would almost seem as if Shakespeare were consciously seeking to rival the virtuousity [sic] of his master, for the entries of the various groups can be seen to be based on a single theme of love versus authority, which in two entries (the royal lovers, and the fairies) appears in the relationship of husband and wife, and in two (the young lovers, and Pyramus and Thisbe) in that of children and fathers. . . .

As if this were not Lylian enough, Shakespeare further bases his comedy on a clearly exposed debate subject of moonlight versus daylight or imagination versus reason, which all the groups sound out in turn. . . . By putting together the debate methods of the earlier Lylian comedies and what I have called the fugal methods of the later plays Shakespeare’s play acquires a density of meaning which Lyly never achieved and probably never aimed at. . . . We may see how Shakespeare imitates Lyly and yet remains true to himself by looking again at the fugal structure of the play. For if we look at the pattern of the entries from a slightly different angle, we can see a design in which a frame-plot enfolds a contrasting [320] intrigue, just as in The Comedy of Errors or The Taming of the Shrew. The fable of Theseus and Hippolyta is essential to the others, but . . . it is easy to regard it simply as a device for introducing and then completing . . . what from this angle must be treated as the main business of the play—the intrigue of the four lovers. . . . The mechanicals must remain, of course, at the level of a sub-plot.

This view of the play . . . ignores the planes of reality on which the various stories operate. The lovers’ plot is the longest, but it is also that which is most remote from the idea of rational normality . . . If we feel that the artificial verse of the lovers’ plot is the central support of the play’s reality then we must suppose that reality is badly supported here. . . .

[But this view is interesting in] the evidence it provides of Shakespeare’s evasiveness in handling the Lylian structure. . . . [I]n form, [MND] combines some of the aspects of a Lylian court entertainment with [321] features which can be read in the more purely narrative way of Shakespeare’s earlier plays. This ambiguity in the structure can be pushed still further. The system of fugal entries is handled in such a way as to accommodate Shakespeare’s other favourite device of a play within a play, seen at large in The Taming of the Shrew and appearing again and again in his tendency to cross and complicate his actions. . . . The short breathless scenes of Demetrius and Lysander, each pursuing the other . . . may serve as an image of Shakespeare’s art in this plot, the dizzy skill with which the episodes are kept revolving round one another, but only touching where the author decides they should. The feelings of Lyly’s gods are never confused or interlaced with those of his mortals, and their omniscience is never shown in free comparison with the seeming knowledge of men. Shakespeare, on the other hand, shows us gods and men enjoying comparable states of consciousness; Oberon and the Puck are able to change the loves of human beings, but in them-[322]selves they are hardly capable (Puck not at all) of these same feelings. This raises naturally the question of the comparative value of these kinds of consciousness, and of their comparative reality. Neither Lyly’s gods nor his wise women . . . give us any assurance about their feelings; . . . though the feelings of Phillida and Gallathea are more developed, they do not provide any hint of a scale of emotions which we in the audience are required to sort out for ourselves. And it is just this question of the comparative value or reality of different emotional states that links Shakespeare’s episodes most closely and leaves them reverberating in our minds. . . .

[Sh.] . . . gives his plot, laid out in episodes though it may be, a continuity and a momentum by arranging that all the actions should all point towards a single event at the end of the play. Lyly’s different episodes may illustrate one theme: but this is a static relationship, and gives no drive to the action. . . .

[323] [In MND] marriage is . . . not only the convenient stopping-place which Lyly uses (for example) in Gallathea and Love’s Metamorphosis, but a human goal of such attractive power that all the plots are given direction and relationship by the impulse and social pressure that it involves . . . [T]he episodic construction undoubtedly derived from Lyly is so handled that the advantages of variousness do not impede the sense of direction and narrative speed.

The debate theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though it may imitate similar devices in Lyly, is likewise used in a way which is thoroughly Shakespearian, and obviously carries on [324] from the similar though more rudimentary form in Two Gentlemen. . . .

[327] [In MND] Shakespeare, in the manner of, and presumably following the lead of Lyly, makes the plot carry a much larger share of the meaning. It is the whole world of Theseus and Hippolyta, rather than the feelings of either of them, that actualizes the idea of Reason or Daylight—the daylight to which their horns and dogs must awake the dreamers before the latter can find themselves. It is still more difficult to make any single character or group of characters stand for Imagination or Moonlight . . .

[328] [T]his debate theme of reason against imagination, daylight against moonlight touches on the larger Shakespearian distinction of appearance against reality, play against truth, and so, inside its Lylian form, carried on the dominant interests of his pre-Lylian Comedy. . . . [329] In Act III . . . we see Shakespeare placing the levels of appearance and reality one behind the other: Helena supposes [the men’s wooing] to be a game (though a bitter one); Demetrius and Lysander think it is real; Puck and Oberon see it as a fond pageant, and we in the audience know that it is all a play. Shakespeare has altered the Lylian effects to something more true to his own vision—a vision of dream and reality so intermingled that we cannot tell where play ends and reality begins, and where the debate itself is lost in the uncertainty of knowledge.

The confusion of dream and reality in this play (indicated by the title) has sometimes been associated with Lyly’s court prologue to Sapho and Phao: Whatsoever we present, whether it be tedious (which we fear) or toyish (which we doubt), sweet or sour, absolute or imperfect, or whatsoever, in all humbleness we all, and I on knee for all, entreat that your Highness imagine yourself to be in a deep dream, that staying the conclusion, in your rising your Majesty but vouchsafe to say, And so you awaked. The contrast here of reality (the court) against dream (the play) might seem to run counter to the assumption . . . [330] that the theme of appearance and reality is a dominant interest in Shakespeare but not in Lyly. But . . . there is an essential difference. Theseus is inside Shakespeare’s play, and whether we accept his views or reject them we are working in terms of the reality/unreality of the play itself, not setting the unreality of the play against the reality of the audience.

Scragg (1977, pp. 125–34) argues that beyond generalized influence of Lyly, Gallathea should be considered the single play which is a source for MND. Repeating the claim, she summarizes (1982, pp. 76–7): Sh.’s imagination, playing over the dualities and oppositions, the metamorphoses and hypotheses of Lyly’s dramatic universe, has translated them to a fresh context and given substance to their alternatives. The bi-sexual figures of Gallathea and Phillida have been divided into their male and female elements, with Demetrius and Lysander, Helena and Hermia acting out the cross-affections that are a potentiality of their predecessors’ masculine and feminine personalities. Rafe has become Bottom, and the hypothetical encounters of the mundane and the supernatural are acted out in an embrace which enacts the union of polarities fundamental to both works. Gallathea, whose transformation is symbolic of the mutability of her world, has become the changeling-boy, with the antithetical nature of the experience in which she participates reflected in his movement from Titania, who vows never to part with him at the outset, to Oberon, to whom he is yielded at the [77] close.

Beaurline (1978, p. 86): Sh. reified the comedy that Lyly fashioned, lending it greater dignity and power, for Shakespeare dared to present a more robust experience than Lyly’s delicate playthings could suggest. . . . In a play such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare boldly seized Lyly’s comic situations—a conquering monarch subdued by love (Campaspe), the intervention of rival gods in human affairs (Love’s Metamorphosis and Gallathea), sudden transformations (Gallathea and The Woman in the Moon), and crossed lovers tyrannized by unpredictable passion (Sapho and Phao). Into the fabric of these he wove his coarser characters of Athenian artisans. . . . He increased the audience’s sense of wonder because he was willing to call upon his dramatic resources to realize more fully men’s feelings in the very action of the play.

Since 1900 most general source studies and editions of MND acknowledge Lyly’s influence. Others examining MND’s indebtedness to Lylyan structure, themes, genre, or tone include: Courthope (1903, 4:91–4), Brooke (1911, pp. 178–80), Baker (1903, p. 275), Baskervill (1916–17, pp. 483–4), Spens (1922, pp. 50–1), Rickert (1923, p. 154), Adams (1923, p. 118), Cowling (1925, pp. 84–5), Parrott & Ball (1943, p. 67), Law (Pattern, 1943, pp. 8–10), Reyher (1947, pp. 54, 138), Venezky (1951, pp. 140–2, 155), Rowse (1954, pp. 183–4), Mincoff (1961, pp. 20–2), Ferrara (1964, p. 191), Bradbrook (1965, pp. 71–5), Young (1966, pp. 49–56), Vickers (1968, p. 65), Ure (1971, pp. 214–15), Purdon (1974, passim), Crewe (1986, pp. 142–3), Smidt (1986, p. 127), Levi (1988, p. 138), Clubb (1989, pp. 102, 162–3), Bate (1993, pp. 37–8), Sorelius (1993, pp. 33–6), Wiles (1993, pp. 5–6), Montrose (1996, pp. 162–76), Bowen (1997, p. 42–58), Hunter (1997, pp. 153, 389–93), Conlan (2004, pp. 118–26). Finally, Gerrard (1928, pp. 183–4), who claims MND was written by Peele and Lyly for the Children of the Queen’s Chapel, deserves mention for inspired lunacy.

See also nn. 85–7; 98; 117, 118; 146; 180; 181; 206, 209, 211; 275; 279–80; 309–10; 348–9; 375–431; 422; 456–92; 524–45; 529; 545; 547–9; 574; 582–3; 602–5; 630–3; 659–76; 678–85; 770–7; 914–16; 942–50; 960–1; 986; 996–1015; 1064; 1222–46; 1627–46; 1737–40; 1743; 1794; 1809; 2049–50; 2120–5; 2155; 2208–12.

George Peele (1556–1596)

The contribution of Peele’s writings, especially The Arraignment of Paris and The Old Wives’ Tale, to the development of MND is often noted.

Brooke (1911, p. 180): The type of mythological pastoral, to which Shakespeare offered partial homage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, had attained full development . . . in the charming work . . . Arraignment of Paris (1581?). Spens (1922, pp. 53–4): The Old Wives’ Tale looks like a conscious attempt to blend folk tale, drama like Lyly’s, and the sports of [54] festivals together in the cloudy fabric of a dream. It will be observed that the scenes in the poor cottage in the forest form an Induction, the best of its kind in Elizabethan drama. The art of it should be compared with that of the Midsummer Night’s Dream. There we start in the august region of Theseus’ court, and after being introduced to the fairy world come plump on Bottom and his companions. But in Peele’s work, as later in Beaumont and Fletcher’s imitation of it, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, the simple folk who are very much alive are kept outside the Dream framework. Cox (1978, p. 331) parallels The Old Wives Tale with MND: Both plays deal with popular folk material; both apologize disingenuously for themselves in their titles; both have been slow to win serious critical consideration, thus demonstrating that modern critics are sometimes more naive than Elizabethan dramatists. Evans (1980, pp. 169–70): The Old Wives’ Tale . . . not only resembles A Midsummer Night’s Dream closely on points of detail, but [in its use of the image of maze or labyrinth] may also be seen to lay down a thematic matrix for a large part of the play. . . . [170] The echoes . . . range from the use of setting—lost in a wood at night—to bad puns on the secondary sense of wood as mad, . . . the exploitation for comic effect of the popular iconography of the Man in the Moon, with his dog and lantern, and the equation of a perplexing series of events with dream. The image of the maze, the amazing journey ending in illumination and integration, is also central to both.

Others referring to such links include Baskervill (1916–17, pp. 483–5), Herbert (1962, p. 32), Knight (1962, pp. 59–60), Price (1962, pp. 47–8), Ferrara (1964, p. 193 and n.), Bradbrook (1965, pp. 69–70).

Robert Greene (1558–1592)

Together with Lyly and Peele, Greene is seen as important in the development of Sh.’s romantic comedies. Brown (1877, pp. 100, 115–16): Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay preceded Shakespere’s use of the supernatural; the fairy framework of James IV is followed by MND. James IV (p. 115) is still more remarkable for its being amongst the first [116] to have an acted prologue and interplay. Shakespere followed Greene’s example in [Shr. and MND]. Storojenko (1881 [1878], 1:242–4) sees MND as one of a group of Sh.’s plays whose distinguishing features are an intricacy of plot, often branching off into independent little bye-plots; an irregular development and movement of actions, attended by admirably drawn characters; an abundance of all sorts of unexpected occurrences, disguises, mysterious disappearances, elopements; and, as the necessary consequence of all this, much of fantastique. . . . [243] This original type of drama Greene inherited, as it were, from his predecessors, and as Greene was the principal representative of this type, as he was the first to endow this type with some amount of artistic organization, Shakspeare’s obligations to Greene, in this respect, are beyond dispute. Sanders (1961, p. 36): Words like debt and influence with their usual connotations in literary scholarship are unsuitable and inaccurate for describing the relationship which exists between Greene’s comedies and Shakespeare’s. The similar elements which have given rise to the use of such words are only the externals of a fundamental kinship or sympathy in comic view which the two dramatists shared. Young (1966, pp. 51–6) analyzes Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and Lyly’s Campaspe to illustrate the differences between coterie and popular comedy, concluding that in MND Sh. (p. 56) achieved a successful combination of elements from the two veins of popular and coterie entertainment. The remarkable variety of sources for the play can and should be viewed as evidence of a careful blending of the divergent comic styles and their conventions.

Lavin (1969, pp. xxii–xxvii) credits Greene with using the method of balancing twin plots successfully to [xxiii] dramatise the metaphor the power of love is like the power of magic several years before Shakespeare did so in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. . . . This method allows Greene to draw parallels and contrasts . . . between the world of learning and the world of love, in much the same way that Shakespeare contrasts the worlds of the court and the forest in both A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It. Friar Bacon, of course, presents a much less complex view of love than the many-faceted one we find in Shakespeare’s plays, where ideal love is depicted as merely one variety of an emotion which can also be ridiculous, pathetic, coarse, misplaced, agonising, and transitory. . . .

[xxvii] Just as in James IV Dorothea’s constancy makes possible her reconciliation with the king in the last scene, which halts a war, restores the natural order, and ensures the happiness and prosperity of Scotland, so in Friar Bacon Margaret’s virtue successfully withstands several tests, and, recognized by Edward, leads him to his proper destiny, marriage to the Spanish princess. [Friar] Bacon’s political prophecy (xvi, 42–62) is therefore not merely the conventional flattery of Elizabeth with which Tudor plays frequently conclude, but a logical extension of the point insisted on by all of Greene’s plays, that human love is a necessary prerequisite for individual happiness, political stability, and the preservation of the natural order. The obstacles to true love which must be overcome before Jack can have Jill, as enumerated by Hermia and Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream ([144–59]), are therefore necessary, at least in the plays of Greene and Shakespeare, not only to provide the plot of Romantic Comedy, but also to establish the value of that love which such plays celebrate as a rejuvenating force.

Hunter (1997, pp. 392–3): It was probably from Greene’s romances and plays (and their novella sources) that Shakespeare . . . learnt how to mix comedy with anguished romance, female innocence and royal inconstancy, poignant domestic emotions and a high poetic eloquence. But Shakespeare was not content to express these themes only in the form of sprawling Greenian romance, where narrative supplies meaning. Lyly offered him an alternative (analytic) model of comedy in which the action is held together by a formal antithetical structure so that the poignant and eloquent Greenian moments can be perceived with ironic detachment as parts of a self-conscious and neatly organized total pattern. . . .

The creation of meaning by antithetical structuring is a technique found everywhere in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies . . . and is used everywhere to give shape and continuity to the process of perpetual change that a comic plot demands. Like Lyly, he makes the self-conscious artfulness of such structures part of the [393] effect; but he always leaves space for a complementary (Greenian) sense that it is the free drift of the story that creates the spontaneous eruption of feeling. Thus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the lovers run away from Theseus’ power to enforce marriage, only to fall under the enforcement of the parallel power of Oberon. But Theseus and Oberon are not simply Lylian doubles, Tweedledum and Tweedledee (even when played by the same actor). They are differentiated enough for the symmetry to seem natural, dynamic, not static. The uncontrollable mutability of the lovers’ adolescent emotions proves inadequate to cope with real life; their problems are translated to another plane (into the mode of a dream or a play, we might say) so that the doubleness of their vision [cites 1714–18] allows translation back from the highly organized system of the plot into the uncertainty of emotion, and so the discovery of a stable place somewhere between these two: [quotes 1720 Do not you . . . –1725 awake.].

Others commenting on ties between Greene’s plays and MND include: Brooke (1911, pp. 269–71), Nicoll (1925, pp. 89–90), Thorndike (1929, pp. 102–3), Law (Pattern, 1943, pp. 11–13), Price (1962, pp. 46–7), Mortenson (1972, p. 196), Rose (1984, p. 24), Chaudhuri (1989, pp. 354–5), Zander (1992, pp. 14–24), Dillon (2002, p. 57).

Thomas Kyd (1558–1594)

Malone (ed. 1790) comments on the parody of Hieronimo’s famous line from The Spanish Tragedy (see n. 946), though Young (1966, pp. 14, 41) believes only an inveterate playgoer . . . would have caught the reference. Young does, however, quote Hieronimo’s exclamations at 2.5.531–4 (p. 41) to indicate the kind of conventions [Sh.] was satirizing. Brown (1960, p. 37) draws attention to the use of the play within a play in The Spanish Tragedy, calling it already a well-developed device, though he finds no trace of it in English drama before Kyd. Hawkins (1970, pp. 52–4) sees The Spanish Tragedy as an interesting precedent (though not necessarily a direct source) for the dramatic organization and emphasis which are characteristic of [MND and Tmp.]. In Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, supernatural overseers predict the outcome of the action and tell us what to think about the characters; multiple audiences watch a play within the play; and the action itself reflects cosmic, human, and theatrical levels of truth. . . . The comparatively crude Spanish Tragedy may have bequeathed to the English stage . . . the multiple levels of dramatic action, and the multiple perspectives on dramatic action, which Shakespeare explores throughout his career, perhaps most delightfully in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (P. 54): Sh.’s comedy takes for granted all the theatrical elements . . . in The Spanish Tragedy, and blithely proceeds to analyze the essentially absurd, though simultaneously meaningful, nature of all dramatic form, including its own.

Anthony Munday (1560–1633)

Chronological uncertainty clouds the question of the influence on or indebtedness to MND of Anthony Munday’s John a Kent and John a Cumber. Bayne (1910, p. 317) calls the play a humble variation of the dramatic type of MND. Venezky (1951, pp. 156–8), assigning the presentation of John a Kent to 1594 and of MND to 1595, sums up (p. 157): MND is compounded of similar ingredients: four crossed lovers, the love-chase, magic, and one subplot en-[158]tirely devoted to the preparation and presentation of a show to celebrate a wedding. Shapiro (1955, pp. 100–5) argues that the date on the torn last page of the MS (the only surviving record of the text) is 1590, not 1595 or 1596, and that the play was in existence by 1589. (P. 103): The antics and malapropisms of Turnop and his companions in John a Kent resemble those of Bottom and his fellow-mechanicals, . . . the malicious humour of Shrimp seems to reflect that of Puck, and . . . both plays are primarily concerned with the difficulties and misadventures of two pairs of lovers.

Coghill (1964, pp. 42–53) lists (p. 52) the lively notions in Munday’s play that reappear in MND:

• Lovers in flight from parental opposition to their love.
• Moonlit woods through which they flee to join their lovers.
• A mischievous fairy imp in service to a master of magic.
• A crew of clowns who organize buffoonish entertainments, in honour of their territorial overlord, on the occasion of a double wedding. Contention for the leading part. Malapropisms.
• Young men led by an invisible voice until they fall exhausted.
• A happy ending with True Lovers properly paired and wedded.

All these notions in combination make a dramatic vehicle, a schema; they supply a main shape or formula for a stage-action that does not need a contention of conjurers to keep it moving, since the lovers themselves will supply conflict enough on the way to their concluding nuptials. The magical element . . . can exist [53] in its own right. . . . So can characters like Turnop.

It was love that Mundy’s play lacked; he had two pairs of lovers, but nothing to say of their condition.

Wiles (1993, pp. 114–15): Almost certainly, [Munday’s] play was a major source for Shakespeare’s plot structure. . . . It is easy to see how Munday could have inspired Shakespeare through the way he juggles levels of reality. In Munday’s play we find a nocturnal elopement and a double wedding. A Puck-like figure serving a magician leads lovers astray by night, and makes them fall asleep. A group of clowns prepare a dramatic entertainment to mark the wedding. The Puck-figure intercalates himself in a performance. I suggested in the last chapter that the transformation of Bottom must be indebted to the scene in Munday where the magician is turned into a fool. For all the simi-[115]larities, Munday’s play is no epithalamium. It concludes not at the bedding but at the church door. The plot represents a power struggle for possession, and it is the tying of the legal knot that is at issue. . . . The whole play is concerned with the public side of marriage rituals, and no heed is given to the private, carnal dimension. See also n. 813. Holland (ed. 1994, p. 40): It is the similarity of Shrimp to Robin that is most intriguing. Shrimp shares four significant characteristics with Shakespeare’s Robin: he is always rushing off the stage at high speed (I fly Sir, and am there already [l. 989]); he crows at his success (Why, now is Shrimp in the height of his bravery, | That he may execute some part of his master’s knavery [ll. 577–8]); he is most often invisible to the other characters on-stage as he leads them up and down false trails; he frequently comments in asides about what he intends to do (Nay pause awhile, I’ll fetch ye company [l. 589]). . . . He also enters in a way characteristic of Shakespeare’s fairies, Enter Shrimp skipping (l. 1012). Moisan (1998, pp. 280–1): Puck demonstrates the way MND translates its sources. Sh. changes the sorcerous competition [of] white magician John a Kent against black magician and nemesis John a Cumber . . . [281] by making Puck the proximate cause of both kinds of magic and principal instrument in both the doing and undoing of mischief. Ashton (1934, p. 758) believes it more likely that Munday is indebted to Sh.

Others note similarities but express reservations about chronology and influence. Reed (1965, p. 109) finds Shrimp more relevant to Ariel than to Puck. Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. lxiv–vi): (p. lxvi) Could we be certain . . . that Greg is correct in his reasonable guess that John a Kent is The Wise Man of West Chester, produced by the Admiral’s Men on 3 December 1594, . . . we could be all but sure that it is a source of MND. Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 145) finds the connection between MND and John a Kent tenuous.

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

Farmer (1767, p. 32), in casting doubt on Sh.’s classical learning, notes that the reference to Dido [184–5] might well have been culled from English sources, including Marlowe (and Nashe)’s play, The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage. Fripp (1928, p. 593) goes further, claiming MND is strewn with reminiscences of Marlowe’s play: Here are some:—Venus puts Ascanius to sleep amongst green brakes and strews him with sweet-smelling violets, blushing roses, purple hyacinth (Dido [2.1.317–19; 1:25]; cf. Titania’s bower [631–3]); she bids Cupid touch Dido in the breast with his arrow, that she may dote upon Aeneas’s love ([2.1.326–7; 1:25]; cf. Dream [543–49, 758, 1125 f.]), whereupon she finds Iarbas loathsome ([3.1.57; 1:27]; cf. Dream [1286, 1290–2, 1294–5]); she has many suitors but is free from all ([3.1.153; 1:30]; cf. the Imperial Votaress fancy-free, Dream [540 f.; see n. 541]). Juno claims thanks for watching Ascanius asleep and saving him from snakes and serpents’ stings that would have killed him sleeping as he lay ([3.2.37–40; 1:32]; cf. Hermia, Dream [801–6; n. 800–5]). Dido’s sister Anna loves Iarbas as madly as Iarbas loves Dido, and pursues him as Helena pursues Demetrius [see n. 738], and Demetrius Hermia, and Hermia Lysander and Lysander Helena:—

Hardhearted, wilt not deign to hear me speak?

I’ll follow thee with outcries ne’ertheless (4.2.52, 54–5; 1:40–1).

The nurse’s invitation to Ascanius (4.5.4–8; 1:47–8):—

I have an orchard that hath store of plums,

Brown almonds, services, ripe figs and dates,

Dewberries, apples, yellow oranges,

A garden where are bee-hives full of honey,

Musk-roses and a thousand sort of flowers—

prepares for Titania’s entertainment of Bottom (Dream [984–6 and n.; cf. also 633]). Ascanius is stolen by fairies (5.1.214–15; 1:55), as Titania’s attendant boy from an Indian king (Dream [392; see n. 392]); and Dido, deserted by Aeneas, cries (5.1.248–50; 1:56):—

fetch Arion’s harp

That I may tice a dolphin to the shore

And ride upon his back unto my love:

lines in Shakespeare’s head when he wrote Oberon’s immortal speech . . . [523–30]. Cf. n. 184–5.

Dobbs (1948, p. 161) believes the hunting scenes in Tit. and MND influenced by Dido. Harrison (1956, pp. 57–8) repeats Fripp’s findings approvingly, but Muir (1957, p. 31) believes the resemblances may be accidental, and (1977, p. 68) calls them dubious parallels.

Brown (1877, p. 100) notes that Marlowe’s Faustus preceded Shakspere’s use of the supernatural, but he and Mortenson (1972, p. 196) find Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay a more helpful parallel for MND. The prose Historie of Dr. Faustus is more frequently cited; see n. 914–16.

Commentators frequently hear echoes of Marlowe, particularly of Hero and Leander, in MND; see e.g. nn. 181, 348, 409, 502, 504–5, 526–30, 895, 1396–8, 1420, 2096–9. Lerner (1988, p. 135) links Marlowe’s epyllion, Nashe’s prose version of Hero and Leander’s story (Nashes Lenten Stuffe, 1599, G1v-G4v), and MND’s interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe as examples of various degrees of mockery in the retelling of myth.

Thomas Nashe (1567–1601)

Nashe’s court comedy or masque or pageant, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, is seen by Barber (1959, pp. 58–86) as presenting a variety of roles, gestures, and ways of talking which were current in pageantry and game, precisely the traditional materials Shakespeare used in developing festive comedy. Baskervill (1916–17, pp. 250–1, 483–5) had earlier placed Nashe’s drama in the context of May games and celebrations of the seasons, and sees MND as drawing on this tradition as well as that of folk representations of mythological stories. Bradbrook (1951, pp. 159–61) unkindly finds Nashe’s play (p. 160) a faint light beside the full splendour of MND, and merely (p. 161) an artless piece of revelry.

More frequently attention has been paid to possible links between MND and some of Nashe’s pamphlets. A striking passage in The Terrors of the Night (1594) concerning fairies’ behavior is quoted by Halliwell (1845, p. xvi), prompted by Anon (1844, pp. 69–70): The Robin Goodfellowes, elfes, fairies, hobgoblins of our latter age, which idolatrous former daies, and the fantasticall world of Greece, ycleped fawnes, satyres, dryades, and hamadryades, did most of their merry prankes 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 (1594, B2v). Tobin (1992, pp. 309–12) adduces this passage, the dedication to Elizabeth Carey, and 15 other parallels in names, words, and phrases as support for his claim that (p. 312) the great number of [Sh.’s] borrowings from Terrors suggests that this work had a special attraction for him during the composition of MND. Not all of Tobin’s parallels are convincing evidence of borrowing; still less so are the verbal coincidences of MND with Have with You to Saffron Walden that he sets out in a later article (2003, pp. 32–5). Brooks (ed. 1979) suggests an explanation of the falling stars of Oberon’s vision by comparison with a passage in Pierce Penilesse; see n. 529. Most ambitiously, Lanier (1891, p. 1402; 1898, pp. 191–2) asserts: The action which proceeds from Bottom and his fellow clowns, culminating in the play-within-the-play, or anti-masque of Pyramus and Thisbe . . . comes, I think, from the Greene-Harvey-Nash quarrel, and can be distinctly traced, along a number of catch-words and clew-ideas which becomes so large as to make belief the direction of much the least resistance—to Greene’s Menaphon, Harvey’s Four Letters, Nash’s Pierce’s Supererogation, and Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit.

Nondramatic English Literature

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

Hunt (1996, pp. 3–20): A late section of the 1593 version of Sidney’s masterpiece [The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia], specifically Book III, Chapter 36 through Book IV, Chapter 2, helps us to appreciate better the dramatic method and values of the night scenes of MND. . . .

[4] In a pastoral setting of seemingly endless night, both Sidney and Shakespeare create a complex of values involving moonshine, disordered imagination, and discord among lovers. In both CoPA and MND, the afflicted lovers by eloping attempt against patriarchal mandate to forge a natural marriage. Both Sidney and Shakespeare use the stories of Philomela and Tereus and Pyramus and Thisbe to suggest the potential tragedy of this disorder and flight. Nevertheless each author implies that the rays of the Heavenly Venus can dispel the mad effects of moonshine and create romantic harmony. In this context, Sidney calls attention to the relevance of Renaissance Neoplatonism for Oberon’s nocturnal vision of Cupid armed and for the progression of lunar and stellar imagery in act III of Shakespeare’s play. In both CoPA and MND, the medium of night, despite its association with foolishness and discord, eventually fosters supernatural vision and spiritual wisdom that either compensates for or rectifies the chaos wrought in the world of the lovers. More so than Sidney does, Shakespeare links the epistemological virtues of Neoplatonic night with the Heavenly Venus; in his play, it becomes the agent, the enabler, of the Heavenly Venus’s benign influence.

[15] Thus far we have been assuming that Shakespeare was to some degree aware of Sidney’s agency in his own playwrighting. But that may not have been the case. . . . The study of associated intertexts establishes the latent clusters of values which a society considers central to its self-understanding or self-esteem. . . .

In the cases of Sidney and Shakespeare, the allegorical burden of nocturnal wisdom suggests that Heavenly Love supersedes and dispels the noxious interference of the moon in lovers’ and courtiers’ affairs. It is this cultural benefit that may have made the paradigm [16] an intertextual (that is to say, artistically popular) phenomenon.

The episode in Arcadia which Hunt analyzes at length is suggested as an analogue by Ribner (1948, pp. 207–8) and, glancingly, by Pettet (1949, p. 80).

Kalander’s hunt in the first book of Arcadia is the individual passage most frequently cited in illustration of MND; e.g. Elton (1904, p. 173), Poirier (1947, pp. 484–6), Brooks (ed. 1979). See n. 1624–48.

West (1865) offers many parallelisms, and editors from Steevens (ed. 1793) on note many verbal parallels or similarities of thought: see nn. 85–7; 119; 181; 195; 223; 297; 378; 497; 574; 690; 746; 775; 776–7; 925–6; 930–3; 957; 1209; 1483; 1624–48; 1627–46; 1628; 1639; 1794–1813; 1814–18; 1856–7; 1993; 2010; 2039.

Poirier’s (1947, p. 488) claim for Sidney’s influence on the poet’s eye speech is hyperbolic, but others also recognize affinities: see n. 1794–1813. See also Kennan (1991, pp. 89–96).

Edmund Spenser (?1552–1599)

Johnson (ed. 1765, 8:2h7v) makes the inevitable connection between Sh.’s fairy drama and the chief work of the Prince of Poets of his tyme, although his assimilation was vigorously contested: Fairies in his time were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser’s poem had made them great. Mason (1798, p. 19) denies any analogy or resemblance whatever between Sh.’s and Spenser’s fairies.

Moyse (1879, p. 13): The centerpiece of the mechanism of [MND] is a wood. . . . That wood is the world. The poet’s metaphor is a very old one . . . [He compares Dante, and Chaucer] . . . [FQ] opens with Una and the Red Cross Knight wandering in the shadie grove whose diversity of trees shows the metaphor, . . . There Spenser’s two adventurers were destined to meet with such mischances as the hero who bears the symbol of the Christian—the Red Cross—must expect to encounter on earth. So in Shakespeare, he avers, the wood is the scene of high points of the action, and every character appears there. See also here. Brandl (1929, p. 188): All those who enter the forest labyrinth (in the Fairy Queen such a labyrinth is symbolical of human life as such) end up confused. This magical world is the essence of poetry (Ger.).

Scott (ed. 1898, p. cxxii) after summarizing and quoting Spenser’s genealogy of Oberon (FQ 2.10.70–76): Although Spenser’s Romance and Shakespeare’s Dream belong to different regions of literature, it is allowable to believe that the latter derived from the former something of the allegorical, ethical and imaginative elements that lie embedded beneath its surface. Kranendonk (1932, pp. 211–16) suggests Sh. (p. 212) smiles at certain foibles in the work of his great contemporary, parodying in the mechanicals’ dialogue and in the interlude Spenser’s stylistic quirks such as (p. 211) facile circumlocution and artificial phrase-making; (p. 212) archaisms; (p. 213) excessive use of alliteration; (p. 214) particular stress on the marvellous, omission of the article and post-position of the adjective; (p. 215) use of a stop-gap or figures of style such as auxiliaries, repetitions or inversions dictated by the requirements of the metre. See also nn. 299, 315–16, 910, 1849, 1942 (bis), 1945–6, 2096–9.

Hammerle (Laubenmotiv, 1953, pp. 310–30) elaborates Kranendonk’s stylistic similarities, and also claims MND and FQ share the same ethical thesis concerning constancy in love. When this is broken, disorder ensues. The Shn. wood with its fairies, lovers, craftsmen and ducal retinue resembles the Netherworld . . . through which Spenser’s fairy knights travel on their quest for adventure, and where they meet love, monsters, witches, mythological beings and louts. There are parallel motifs, such as inundations, singing mermaids and dolphins, creatures with animal heads, beds of flowers, changelings, and last but not least wooded bowers. He compares Titania’s bower with various Spenserian examples, such as Phaedria’s island, the Bower of Bliss, and the Garden of Adonis (FQ 2.6.12–17; 2.5.27–34, 2.12.42–76; 3.6.43–6). He identifies Sh.’s love-in-idleness [545] with Spenser’s Amaranthus [FQ 3.7.45]; on this shaky ground he builds an implausible allegorical interpretation wherein Bottom and Quince represent Spenser, and the little western flower is Elizabeth Carey, for whose wedding MND was written (Ger.). See also Idem (1954, pp. 279–84) on the locus amoenus in MND and FQ, (1955, pp. 67–71) emphasizing Platonic themes in both works, and (1958, pp. 54–63) rehearsing possible parody in MND of FQ’s stylistic habits (Ger.). Also seeking topical allegory in MND by invoking FQ, Duffy (1972, pp. 139–57) identifies Oberon as Essex, suggests Harington or Essex or some other putative heir as the changeling, Puck as Southampton, Titania’s wandering servant spirit as Burleigh, both Titania and Hippolyta as Elizabeth, Hermia and Helena as Penelope Devereux and Frances Walsingham, Bottom (despite [p. 146] elements of Sir Tophas, Don Armado and Braggadoccio) as her number one suspect, Raleigh.

Bednarz (1983, pp. 79–102), in the most extensive examination of connections between Spenser’s works and MND, also grounds several of his arguments in topical allusion. Sh.’s. allusion [1849–52] to The Teares of the Muses is humorous because of (p. 84) its inappropriateness to both the fictional world of [MND] and the historical context of the Stanley-Vere wedding; furthermore Sh. reacts to the poem’s attack on dramatists for the public theater by satiric parody both here and in the way Theseus’s poet’s eye speech derides both (p. 87) attempts to secure transcendent knowledge, and incredible antique fables [1795]. In the latter, which echoes Spenser’s defense of his famous antique history [FQ 2.Proem.1], Sh. exploited the linguistic instability of Spenser’s phrase to emphasize the antic quality of his enterprise. Sh.’s (p. 88) parodies of Spenser exhibit that quality of mind which C. L. Barber [1959, pp. 73–86] has designated as the spirit of festive abuse. This abusive freedom . . . expresses itself in [MND] through Spenser’s narrative matrix—in a work that fuses the domain of Fairyland with the precincts of the antique world. . . . Indeed, Shakespeare absorbs so much of his predecessor’s material that his parodies appear to be calculated attempts to exorcise a powerful influence, to assert independence. . . . More than at any other time in his career, Shakespeare in this play takes the works of Spenser as models for his own creation. He compares 534–41 with FQ 2.3.23–6 (p. 89): Both treatments of Elizabeth’s immunity to Cupid’s arrows exalt in the denial of sexuality, the quenching of desire, in works that are, to a large extent, celebrations of matrimony.

He discusses Sh.’s (p. 90) wide-ranging familiarity with Spenser’s work, drawing particularly on Brooks (ed. 1979) to illustrate verbal echoes in The Shepheardes Calender and Epithalmion, and argues for connections between the two poets through patronage and through the printer Richard Field.

He claims Sh. (p. 98) was both deeply impressed by Spenser’s achievement and critical of it. . . . Parody paradoxically coincided with acceptance of a deeper sort, and it is the existence of these two strands—of ridicule and reverence—that fully expresses the contradictory attitudes of Sh. to Spenser. As an example he argues Bottom is simultaneously a parody of and an analogue to Spenser’s Prince Arthur and that Arthur’s role in FQ is given to Bottom in MND.

Sh. (p. 102) may parody Spenser, but he also mythically imagines a society in which competition is transcended, where each poet and each lover may enjoy his own unique desire and focus on objects that are inherently different, no matter how similar Helena and Hermia may strike us, no matter how similar The Faerie Queene and A Midsummer Night’s Dream actually are.

Others comment on Spenserian parallels. Quiller-Couch (in Wilson, ed. 1924, pp. x–xi), comparing Epith. 338–52 with MND 2158–73, 2187–8, 2201–2, believes Sh. (p. xi) had Spenser’s very words in mind as he wrote. Barber (1959, p. 132) finds Epith. like MND in the way it uses a complex literary heritage to express native English customs. Vyvyan (1961, pp. 83–6) discusses the young lovers in terms of Neoplatonic (p. 86) Spenserian love-sight. Young (1966, pp. 30–1) finds FQ and SC providing a precedent for Sh.’s mixture of myth and folk-lore. Brooks (ed. 1979, pp. lxi–ii, lxxxii, lxxxiv–vi, commentary passim) provides many parallels of phrasing and idea, particularly from SC and Epith. Yates (1979, p. 150) claims the Spenserian vision of Elizabeth at 534–41 relates MND to the Spenserian dream-world, the Spenserian magical cult of the Imperial Virgin, with its undercurrent of Christian Cabala. Brown (1980, p. 164) believes Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595) may have inflluenced MND’s calendar symbolism; see here.

See also Morris (1985, pp. 238–9) on Epith.; Montrose (1986, pp. 77–87) on FQ’s Radigund, Britomart, and Belphoebe as context for the Amazon Hippolyta and the place of women in MND; Berry (1989, p. 146) on the cult of Elizabeth; Cheney (1989, pp. 141–2) on Hippolytus, Bottom, SC, and FQ; McAlindon (1991, pp. 43–7) on the mediation of the Chaucerian legacy through Spenser; Reid (1993, pp. 17–27) on MND as a (p. 19) rejoinder to (p. 18) the looming shadow of Spenser; Wiles (1993, pp. 67–82, 115–25) on Epith. and the Calendar; Witte (2002, pp. 119–21) on Epith. and astronomical references (Fr.).

From the 18th c. commentators have drawn on Spenser to illustrate Elizabethan usage, as well as to illuminate Sh.’s meaning: see nn. 10, 12–13, 39, 141, 177, 195, 197, 251, 256, 299, 315–16, 345–6, 355, 376–7, 378, 392, 393, 399, 429, 436, 439–43, 444, 463, 476, 482–8, 483, 485, 547–9, 630–3, 632, 636, 895, 922, 925–6, 942–50, 960–1, 985, 1429–36, 1556, 1567, 1569–71, 1604, 1613, 1614, 1794–1813, 1795, 1837–8, 1839–73, 1849–50, 1849, 1937, 1938, 1942, 1945–6, 2010, 2082, 2096–9, 2154–73, 2155, 2159.

The Fairies and Robin Goodfellow

See also under DP n. 16, Chaucer (here), Ovid (here), Scot (here), Huon (here).

Briggs (1959, pp. 44–8): Oberon derives through Huon of Bordeaux from Alberich, the German dwarf, Titania inherits the rites of Diana, by the late classical tradition of the gods descended into fairies, the Celtic Pouk shares a character with the English Robin Goodfellow, and shows the traits of the Bogy Beast, the Brag and the Grant; yet the fairies, like Queen Elizabeth, are mere English.

The character of the fairies seems so natural a growth . . . that it is only when we examine them that we see from how many strands they are woven. Critics are often and justly struck by their exquisite [45] delicacy, but rarely seem to notice that this delicacy never degenerates into mere prettinesses. The fairies may be small, but they are formidable. They are elementals, they control the weather and seasons, and when they quarrel all Nature goes awry. Titania has still votaresses; she is so much a goddess as to have a cult. Oberon is the King of Shadows, some Plutonian dominion still clings to him. Their power of motion is almost unlimited; Oberon has come from India, Puck travels to England from Athens and back in a few minutes. . . . Like the medieval fairies they have their ridings; Oberon covets the changeling as a knight of his train to trace the forest wild [395]; Titania has her court ladies and her bodyguard. Like the classic gods and the heroic fairies both Oberon and Titania are amorous of mortals. They have a power over the unborn issue of human marriages, standing like the Fates at the gates of birth. . . .

Most of these traits had been used in the romances before Shakespeare’s days; but he drew straight from his native folk-lore some elements that had hardly appeared in literature before his time. The innovation that strikes us most is the fairy smallness, not new to folk-lore, but nearly new in literature.

Besides Briggs, Latham (1930) is a major influence on opinion of Sh.’s fairies. He differs from Briggs in greater emphasis on Sh.’s originality in presenting miniature beings. He believes that (p. 176) to the influence of the race of fairies created [in MND] . . . can be traced the change in reputation and appearance which the fairies of tradition and folk belief sustained, and the subsidence of the race from the [177] position of real and fearful spirits to the present acceptance of them by lettered folk as pleasant myths and fanciful heroines of children’s stories. Holland (1989, pp. 24–7): The emphasis on the fairies’ benevolence does seem to have been Shakespeare’s invention—one effectively ignored in the scholarly arguments over the originality of microscopic fairies. He is notably concerned to separate his fairies from the groups with which they were conventionally associated. . . . [25] Shakespeare’s sources for the massive transformation of tradition were remarkably eclectic. It does, of course, owe something to the specifically literary fairyland of Spenser, but it is the combination of the literary and the popular imagination in the creation of this benign otherworld that is so extraordinary. His fairy world has two literary and mythological rulers, Oberon from Huon of Bordeaux and Titania from Ovid via Golding, and before that the whole complex of beliefs in the power of the pagan goddess Diana. . . . Titiania, particularly as she is represented in the play, suggests not only her literary ancestry but the full power of her folklore roots. . . . [26] The fairy world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is more than an adjunct and parallel reality with its own rules and activities. . . . How we choose to cope with that other world of fairy is up to us. The Puck’s epilogue suggests one way out: [quotes 2207–13]. . . . What the Puck makes available in these lines is the choice between the product of a dream and the world of vision, between the non-significant results of enhypnion dreams in Artemidorus’s terms, . . . and the tremendous import of the oneiric dream, the somniun. . . . The obligation of the audience, if it takes the originality, power and reassurance of Shakespeare’s version of fairyland with the seriousness it demands, is to treat the play as a benevolent oneiros. See also here, Setting and Atmosphere.

Others comment on the origin of the fairies. Seward (1750, 1:lii): Sh. can scarcely be said to create a new World in his Magic; he went but back to his native Country, and only dress’d their Goblins in poetic Weeds. Drake (1817, 2:302–55), distinguishing between Nordic and Oriental fairies, traces the history of the former, to which family Sh.’s fairies belong, but believes (2:337) this Mythology . . . seems to have received such vast additions from the plastic imagination of our bard, as . . . justly to merit . . . the title of the English System, in contradistinction to that which still lingers in the wilds of Scotland. Skottowe (1824, 1:257–75): The oriental genii in general, and the Dews and Peries of Persia in particular, are the remote prototypes of modern fairies. . . . [258] The Peries and Dews of the orientals were paralleled by the Scandinavian division of their genii, or diminutive supernatural beings. Daniel (ed. 1828, p. 6) claims Sh. took his fairies from neither the Gothic nor the Oriental; they are his own. Keightley (1833, 2:104–58): Sh. (2:127) seems to have attempted a blending of the Elves of the village with the Fays of romance. Ritson (1831) surveys fairy beliefs from Homer on, drawing on Sh. and esp. MND (pp. 28 ff.); he provides selections from medieval romance and lay to the 17th c. illustrating his essay. Halliwell (1841, 23–6) dismisses claims of derivation from Welsh or Greek literature, and provides illustrative quotations from 16th- and 17th-c. English literature. Idem (1845) prints [ix] the principal early documents concerning the fairy mythology of England, as far as they can be considered in any way illustrative of Sh. Thoms (1847, pp. 937 ff.), who a year earlier had coined the term folk-lore (see OED), sees Sh.’s fairy mythology as formed by the interweaving of the Celtic with the Teutonic modified by the introduction of Christianity; he gives Teutonic analogues of small fairies ranging from child-sized down to two spans, and further analogues for their inordinate love of music and dancing; (pp. 981–3) he analyzes how Sh. in Puck incorporated . . . all the characteristics of the elfin race as they were preserved in the Folk-Lore of his day. . . . Puck . . . was originally [982] a name applied to the whole race of fairies, and not to any individual sprite; he discusses etymology of names for various types of fairies, and different names for Puck; see also DP n. 16. Bell (1852–64) undertaking to illustrate Shakespeare’s Puck, and his Folkslore from the superstitions of all nations offers (2:9) considerations to prove that Sh. must have passed a long time abroad to gain such intimate and personal knowledge of words and things so different from those at home, amongst which his resuscitation of Puck out of Robin Goodfellow, and the practices he attributes to the sprightly, sportive elf, will be a prominent feature. Anon (1859, pp. 369–74): Sh. drew upon his Celtic sympathies and reminiscences for the fairies; the title is (p. 370) a token of the genuine or Celtic source of his fairies, since St. John’s Eve is a festival of fairy and fire worship with the Irish. Dyer (1883; 1966, pp. 1–23) provides a survey of scholarship and opinion to date. Herford (1886, pp. 304–8) discusses relationships of the legends of Friar Rush, Ulenspiegel, and Robin Goodfellow. Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 149–67) Appendix A is devoted to The fairy world; it treats derivation of the word, the connection between fays and elves, the fairy lore of Chaucer and Spenser, classical mythology (mentioning Sir Orfeo), other literary sources such as Malory and Huon (but dismissing Drayton’s Nymphidia and the prose tract Robin Goodfellow, his Mad Pranks and Merry Jests), fairies on stage and in tradition, the characteristics of Shakespeare’s fairies, Oberon and Titania, Puck, and folk-lore. He gives selections from Scot (see here), Tarlton’s News out of Purgatory (1590), Churchyard (see here), and Nashe (see here). He discusses the names of Puck, the size of and the classical element in Shakespeare’s fairies. Nutt (1900, pp. 4–12) argues that in his fairy mythology Sh. brings together peasant beliefs and Arthurian legend. Sidgwick (1908, pp. 4–5, 35–66, 81–187) believes the fairy plot to derive from (p. 5) oral tradition, but still presents an anthology of literary texts, mostly post-dating MND, but including the medieval Thomas of Erceldoune. Littledale (1916, 1:536–40): Fairies are essentially the little people. (P. 539): Classical demonology and myth contaminated fairy-lore. Dian and her nymphs modified the Celtic and Teutonic notions about wild huntresses, while their spectral hounds, . . . yelled with the Gabriel hounds and the Celtic Cwn Annwn. Harries (1919, pp. 195–201) suggests Sh.’s fairies derive from his personal knowledge of the Welsh Tylwyth Teg, or fairy family. Chambers (1930, 1:362): Sh. was presumably familiar with fairies and with Robin Goodfellow in Warwickshire folk-lore. Lindsay (1948, pp. 121–5): Sh. derives his tiny fairies from the folk-theme of Tom Thumb. Barber (1959, pp. 142–7): (p. 144) There is much less popular lore in these fairies than is generally assumed in talking about them. . . . [145] His fairies are creatures of pastoral, varied by adapting folk superstitions so as to make a new sort of arcadia. Green (1962, pp. 89–103) attempts to defend the statement that Sh. invented the fairies. Staton (1963, pp. 165–78) explores the Ovidian character of Shakespeare’s fairies, interpreting the (p. 176) similarities in two ways, as part of the Ovidian imitation of the 1590’s and as parody of that imitation. Garber (1974, p. 9) connects Elizabethan interest in dream theory with the development of Sh.’s fairy world. Weimann (1978, pp. 193–5) surveys opinions of the origins of Robin Goodfellow; he claims that Sh.’s Puck is differentiated from the Robin of folk culture. Hankins (1978, p. 45) draws on Neoplatonic theories of elemental spirits (see here). Shulman (1981, p. 391) advances the pamphlet Tell-Trothes New-Yeares Gift (1593) as a possible source for Shakespeare’s integration of romantic comedy and fairy belief, in which Robin Goodfellow functions as a sort of fairy praeceptor amoris. Blount (1984, pp. 1–17) argues that Sh. (p. 6) consciously modified certain occult elements in folklore, because (p. 7) comedy required a different kind of fairy. Muir (1985, pp. 43–6) emphasizes the different sizes and types of fairies in MND. Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 21–49) draws particular attention to (p. 23) trooping fairies who shared with their Celtic ancestors certain characteristics similar to the fairies of MND; (p. 35) Robin Goodfellow, hobgoblins and pucks all belonged to the same group of fairies, a class of rough, hairy domestic spirits characterized by their mischievousness. Scot lists all three as distinct and separate types of bugs. . . . Shakespeare alone combines the three into a single spirit, Robin Goodfellow the puck, also known as hobgoblin [410]. Assmann (2003, pp. 53–67) argues that Sh.’s spirits, including those of MND, (p. 67) mediate between the worlds of the dead and that of the living, between the animated pagan cosmos and the disenchanted modern world, between the explicit and hidden layers of cultural memory, between the conscious and unconscious realms of the human mind.

Italian Literature

The kinship of MND with Italian pastoral drama and commedia dell’arte, as well as with the related material of romances and novelle, has often been recognized. It is explored most thoroughly by Louise George Clubb, who in an early article (1973, pp. 45–72) examines twenty Italian dramas, showing how their conventions can be seen at work in English plays. She begins by quoting from Pasqualigo’s Gl’intricati, where both the proemio and some dialogue of the clowns indicate parallels with MND. In a later article (1980, p. 136) she summarizes her view of MND as an English version of the Ovidian favola pastorale, minus its Arcadian decor. Similar to the pastoral mixture of Luigi Pasqualigo’s Gli intricati, it contains magic potions, physical metamorphoses, dreams, otherworldly spirits, joined with a comedy intreccio of misdirected passions and parental opposition, linked to the celebration of a noble wedding, and ending with the acquisition of self-knowledge, multiple happy loves, and hints of hermetic neoplatonism. Her book of 1989, incorporating the 1973 article, sets out her arguments in full, with frequent reference to MND.

Clubb (1989, pp. 19–20, 93–97, 106 n., 113, 116–17, 171–5): The scenarios of Arcadia unearthed by Ferdinando Neri [Scenari delle maschere in Arcadia (Città di Castello, 1913; rpt. Turin, 1961)] and Flaminio Scala’s Arbore incantato, together with related pastoral elements in other giornate of his Favole rappresentative [Il teatro delle favole rappresentative (1611), ed. Ferruccio Marotti, 2 vols. (Milan, 1976)], document a preference among Italian professional players for the same ingredients of the magical pastoral that Shakespeare chose for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. As usual, Shakespeare pitched his variations at new [20] frequencies and went so far as to leave out the shepherds, but the familiar features identify the genre. The magician with rod and book, the spirits, the urban refugees, wandering lost and hallucinated, the transformations into animal, vegetable, or mineral forms, the boisterousness of self-infatuated clowns with their minds on drink and license jarring with the arcane or spiritually rarefied ethos of the wood or island to which they wander—these are repertorial features of literary favole pastorali . . . that the comici dell’arte and Shakespeare took up for some of their excursions from the city and court.

(P. 93) [Proemio to Gl’intricati]: A wise sorceress with liquors will put all to sleep, and the shades of night will cause dreams of false spectres; and three animals will become three beasts: midst which four unhappy shepherds and four nymphs will show you how ill-sorted are the desires of the unfortunate, for all are lovers, but no two in requited love; and [94] how, discoursing, they are filled with hope by sorrowing Echo; how they perform a sacrifice, and what answer they have from Love in the sacred temple: in all, at first you will hear long histories of laments and sufferings, strange transformations, various cases, great inconstancy of men and women, and from beginning to end you will see very new and pleasing tricks: and I believe that it will not displease you to have spent the time in listening to this tangled wood of Love.

(P. 95) [Dialogue from Gl’intricati]:

(P. 97): Cody has understood that the effects of Italian pastoral drama may exist independent of Italy or of pastori. A clearer picture of the original genre would show that even the members of Shakespeare’s audience with no head for esoteric neoplatonism could have recognized the pastoral inspiration of MND.

(P. 106 n. 14): Images of asses and hallucinations are common in clown scenes, although only Pasqualigo amalgamates and expands them into a transformation like Bottom’s. . . . [M]ispronunciation of difficult words by the unlettered servo had by mid-century been used nearly to the point of exhaustion in commedia erudita and passed on to improvised comedy.

(P. 113): The dark wood confirmed by Dante as a landscape for human error had also for the late Cinquecento poet the specific aspect of labyrinth of love, reminiscent of Horace and Petrarch but primarily identified with Orlando furioso, in which it is fictional fact, principle of plotting, and, continually simile. Mario Praz’s intuition of a spiritual affinity between Orlando furioso and A Midsummer Night’s Dream merely omits the middle term in the process of transmission, the pastoral play in which the woods, and the love errantry and its amazing effects, take on the solidity of stage place, stage persons, and stage action.

(P. 116): Sometimes, as in Gl’intricati, sleep is induced by magicians in order to pierce through illusion to reality, truth, and self-knowledge. Lyly’s Endymion, as well as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, suggest the range of variations this pastoral convention could support. . . . [117] Like stage sleeping and dreaming, stage metamorphosis can lead to and express perceptions of illusion, including love, and perceptions of truth, also including love.

(P. 171): A full-blown example of the magic favola boscherecchia is offered by Gl’intricati, pastorale, written by the mysterious Count Luigi or Alvise Pasqualigo for performance at the Dalmatian court of Zara during the 1570s while [172] he was the Venetian commander there. In his fashionable play appear not only an early version of some structures and generic units that Lyly later used in Love’s Metamorphosis and Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but also a demonstration of Italian interest in making fantasy embody states of mind and abstract perceptions of being. Beginning with a love tangle borrowed from Montemayor’s Diana, Pasqualigo sets up at the outset a basic pastoral complex of plot, topic, and image. The nymph Selvaggia announces: . . . I die for love of Alanio, he for Ismenia, who used to love him and now adores Montano. After setting forth other complications, she concludes: . . . Oh, inconstancy of human things, oh erring designs and hopes, oh how weak, infirm and blind our minds. . . .

[173] The metaphor of blindness, and that contained in the later prayer addressed to Venus, . . . (IV.i. Oh, show us the way out of this dark labyrinth), state recurrent concepts—of sensory insufficiency, optical illusion, and the maze of error. . . .

The underside of love’s spectacle is represented by the three buffoonish visitors to Arcadia, a villano from the Maremma and two raucous commedia dell’arte masks from the city. Unlike their opposite numbers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, . . . [they] are on a Saturnalian vacation, but they too take part in a theatrical venture, defining their low place in a neoplatonic plan of love by performing a kind of vaudeville turn. . . .

[174] The Maga who untangles the plot of Gl’intricati with aid from silent nocturnal spirits functions like Oberon in similar circumstances and is also accompanied by a talkative familiar, the puckish Lucifero. He fetches magic liquid from the distant fount of oblivion to make the lovers forget their misdirected desires, while the nightshades bring healing dreams from which all awake with truer knowledge of their own hearts. It is to provide an analogous experience for the three clowns . . . that the sorceress temporarily transforms their heads into those of beasts: a bull, a ram, and an ass. With a multiple wedding and general rejoicing at hand, the spokesman for all the Arcadians thanks Venus and Diana at the end, while the others join him in a ritual expressing the idea of reconciliation between the opposed concepts of love and chastity. The finale is a platonic emblem of discordia concors, that fundamental theme of regular pastoral dramas, of wedding feasts at which they were performed, and of course of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which Diana is continually evoked by the imagery, the moonlight, and finally Starveling’s lanthorn. . . .

Pasqualigo’s play points to the range of the Italian pastoral and to that phase of its dramatization that Shakespeare repeats in his favola boscherecchia without shepherds, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He uses an amalgam of magic, metamorphosis, dream, supernatural spirits, incorporeal voices, and unearthly music as theatrical means to express [175] movement toward knowledge of the heart and to represent such abstract topics of debate as the power of the imagination and of art, the inexpressibility of truth, the blindness of the mortal mind, and the wise madness of love.

Others comment on MND and Italian drama and poetry. Ward (1875, 1:493–9) discusses Italian commedia dell’arte, to derive his theory of a comedy of incident, culminating in an analysis of MND showing that it is (p. 499) essentially a romantic comedy of incident. Vollhardt (1899, pp. 1–17) anticipates Clubb in arguing (pp. 5–6) for the importance of Italian pastoral drama for the comedies of Lyly and Sh., dwelling particularly (pp. 9–14) on the many parallels between MND and Pasqualigo’s Gl’intricati: the shepherds’ tangled loves and their mutual complaints and reproaches; the occurrence of the sorceress with her ministering spirit Lucifer, who fetches water from the underworld to obliterate the memory of the agonies of love; the night creatures who bend the sleepers’ love into the right direction; the doubts expressed at their awakening; . . . the comical louts with their ridiculous versifying, and the transformation of one of them into an ass . . . No other source has comparable similarities (Ger.). Woodberry (in Lee ed. 1907, 6:xix) sees in MND much that is characteristic of the great Italian mood of Europe, . . . painting the frieze of the world with mingled loveliness and grotesqueness.

See also Baskervill (1916–17, pp. 483–4) above.

Croce (1920, pp. 172–3) sees in the mistakes Puck makes in carrying out Oberon’s commands a resemblance to the rapid passage into opposite states and the strange complications that arose in Italian knightly romances, as the result of drinking the water from one of two [173] opposite fountains whereof one filled the heart with amorous desires, the other turned first ardours to ice. Baldwin (1959 [1939], pp. 146–54) discusses the influence of Italian pastoral and mythological plays, claiming Sh. (p. 153) found the dramatic solution of myth and pastoral, folklore and rustics, for court show in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, . . . [which] is a complete fusion, not only of style as Tasso’s Aminta, but also in dramatic movement.

Praz (1958, pp. 301–5) sees a spiritual affinity between MND and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. The mainspring of this drama is, as in the Orlando, love, capricious and despotic love, which changes allegiance, maddens the heroes and the heroines, making them dote on a base object. (P. 305): It is possible that Shakespeare had read [Harington’s version of the Orlando Furioso (1591)], and derived inspiration from it for the most fantastic of his plays; but even without speaking of an actual source, one cannot help noticing a deeper affinity than with any other work of the period in English literature.

Herrick (1960, p. 224): A parallel to Bottom’s metamorphosis . . . may be found in the pastoral scenario of Il Pantaloncino, wherein Pantalone is changed into an ass. The mix-up of lovers in the same play is a routine situation in Italian comedy. Lievsay (1962, p. 324 n.): Cesare Simonetti’s Amaranta (Padova, 1588), 3.3, provides a curious parallel to the enamorment of Titania and Bottom. Amaranta, scornful of love, and the conventional devotee of Diana, is by way of penalty made to become infatuated with Sbardella, a lumpish clown who searches the woods for his lost donkey.

Cody (1969, passim), arguing that (p. 19) a certain Platonic and pastoral mode of poetry is . . . common to Tasso and Shakespeare, claims of MND (pp. 127–8): In the light of the Aminta this most mature of the early comedies displays a familiar combination of poetic theology and serio ludere: the love fables of an Ovid or a Chaucer accommodated to the ludic [128] genius of Tasso’s later English contemporary. Salingar (1974, pp. 226–8, 237–8): The multiple plot of the Dream is a triumph in the adaptation of Italian techniques. . . . [227] As in the Menaechmi and Italian comedies, [the lovers’] entanglement is made worse by an accidental meeting with characters from another part of the action, accompanied by a mistake of identities; and the resolution comes for them from the same external source. He refers particularly to the anonymous Gl’Ingannati and the related story told by Barnabe Riche in Apolonius and Silla.

Richmond (1991, pp. 184–9) claims that MND’s complex blend of sources is governed by the same sense of exploring contemporary issues that motivated the novelle collections of Marguerite de Navarre and [Giraldi] Cinthio; he quotes the summary headnote of the ninth novella of the second decade of Cinthio’s Hecatommithi concerning the tangled affairs of four lovers, then analyzes the tale pointing out similarities with MND, concluding that MND shares with the novella the (p. 187) underlying theme of the superseding of an archaic, patriarchal approach to marriage. This evolution involves both supernatural and magisterial sanctions to override the parents’ traditional authority in each text. Both works display an unsatisfactory society set in a disrupted natural order to which a new decorum is restored by a superior model for behaviour. Stressing the arbitrary and involuntary nature of the amatory outcomes, he argues (p. 189): If love is heightened by opposition, obstacles, and inaccessibility, it is given social meaning of a positive kind only by institutional regulation, which exhaustion from the excesses of passion is likely to permit, in the end. In its acceptance of the broad principles of Cinthio’s tale—that love though irrational is the least unsatisfactory basis for necessary marriage—A Midsummer Night’s Dream nevertheless associates the central story line of the young lovers with more complex negative factors than Cinthio, in ways worked out explicitly in such amatory dramas as Rom., Oth. and Ant.

See also Carroll (1985, pp. 247–53),Appendix: Commedia dell’Arte Transformations; Leslie (1995–6, pp. 454–65) examines correspondences between MND and Guarini’s Il pastor fido; on Guarini see also Baldwin (1959 [1939], pp. 148–50); Lievsay (1962, pp. 317–26); Clubb (1973, pp. 47–8 ff.; 1989, pp. 95–123, 128–40, 156–87 etc.); Kirkpatrick (1995, pp. 266–7); Leslie (1996–7, p. 547) draws parallels between Hermia and the heroine Erminia of Oddi’s Prigione d’amore; Fauré (2002, pp. 72–84) discussing the melancholy aspects of pastoral, engages with the arguments of Leslie and Cody (Fr.).

Critics have also found Italian treatises on dramatic poetry, and on Neoplatonism, in the works of Guarini, Tasso, Ficino, Pico and others, influential upon or helpful for the understanding of MND. Cope (1973, pp. 213–25) rehearses the dispute over dream and poetry conducted in relation to Dante by Mazzoni and Bulgarini, and analyses MND in this context: MND is (p. 220) a mythic play which both suggests and blurs its relation to folk ritual by presenting a play-within-a-play which interacts with dreams-within-a-dream. The relations of play and dream are discussed in terms of the aesthetics of the imagination, terms which follow so closely the curve of the Italian critics’ discussion of dream, drama, and imagination that the entire play constitutes a dramatic re-enactment of that crucial moment in the history of criticism.

See also Ferrara (1964), Cody (1969), Beaurline (1978), Hankins (1978), Rhoads (1985) and Chaudhuri (1990). See also Plato and Neoplatonism here.

Emblem books, such as those of Alciati, Ripa and Natale Conti, and other visual imagery, such as illustrated editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses have also provided critical insights into the formation of MND. See for example Green (1870), Olson (1957), Ormerod (1978), Rosenblum (1981), Wyrick (1982), Truax (1992; copiously illustrated), Parker (Peter, 2003).

Critics have discerned visual, literary, and philosophical links between MND and Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), partially translated by R. D[allington] in 1592. Ben Jonson owned a copy of the Aldine edition of 1545. Quoting the 1592 translation, Davies (1986, p. 121) claims MND similarly deals in a singular woorkemanship of sundrie representations [sic: 1592 representments] and counterfeits [H3v] and invites us to lose ourselves in the intricate Labyrinth [H4r] of a world whose marvellous forms are shared both by art and dream. Patey (2000, pp. 477–9): In the labyrinths of MND, as in that which Polifilo explores, Theseus not surprisingly presides. Cupid plays a part in complicating the tortuous and uncertain paths of the protagonists, omnipresent in both texts, to such an extent that the Shakespearean characters and verse seem to dialogue with the Colonnian images. [Quotes TLN 532–44.] (P. 478): The scene described by Oberon seems like a gloss on an analogous moment in Colonna and the accompanying illustration [ed. 1980, 1:160–1; ed. 1999, pp. 168–9] where Cupid’s golden arrow draws drops of gold from the sky. The pantheon of the Athenian wood seems for that matter like an avatar of the empyrean of Colonna. The illustration in Colonna of the sleeping nymph watched by satyrs, one holding a wine vessel [ed. 1980, 1:65; ed. 1999, p. 73; ed. 1592, K3v], illustrates precisely the moment of the enchantment perpetrated on Titania [quotes 554–6]. The nymphs’ song of the metamorphosis of one who expecting to be transmuted into an a bird, is mistakenly transformed into a rough ass [ed. 1980, 1:78; ed. 1999, p. 86; ed. 1592, M4r; a reference to Apuleius], recalls the stupefaction of Bottom’s friends when he is translated (935–6). (P. 479) [quoting Colonna’s description of the fearful landscape, ed. 1980, 1:8–9; ed. 1999, pp. 16–17; ed. 1592, B3v-4r]: Similar natural calamities afflict the Athenian forest [quotes 463–7, 478–80]. But in Titania’s bower, a sort of enclosed garden miraculously protected from intemperate weather, Bottom enjoys sweet music and is soothed by butterfly wings [970–91]. Analogously, Polifilo comes to a flowery and isolated locus amoenus, led by a beautiful nymph [ed. 1981, 1:133–41; ed. 1999, pp. 141–9; ed. 1592, X1v–2r] (It.). See also Fender at n. 976.

Plato and Platonism

Shorey (1938, p. 179) provides a helpful overview of Sh.’s possible debt to Plato: There are many coincidences in thought or imagery between Shakespeare and Plato. Some of them may be mere coincidences. Others may be derived from secondary sources, such as Cicero, Plutarch, Montaigne, Erasmus, Elyot’s Governour, Mulcaster, Ascham, the conversation of Ben Jonson, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the first seven books of Chapman’s Iliad, etc. For others we need look no further than the general atmosphere of the Renaissance in which Shakespeare lived and moved and had his being. Lastly, in a few cases there is a possibility that Shakespeare did look into some reprint of a part of Ficino or into some French version. Other conduits of Platonic ideas, of particular interest for MND, are Sidney’s Apology for Poetry, and among foreign works readily available to Sh. in English, Boethius, Apuleius, and Castiglione.

Of Plato’s dialogues the most often cited in commentary on MND are the Symposium, Phaedrus, Ion, Theatetus, and the Republic, in relation to Sh.’s treatment of love, imagination, poetry, dreaming, the fairies, and statesmanship. These topics are often viewed through the prism of Neoplatonic texts from antiquity to the Renaissance.

Simpson (1868, pp. 6, 27–8, 34): Shakespeare is always a philosopher, but in his sonnets he is a philosopher of love. All the great sonnet writers affected one particular philosophy, which was derived originally from the Banquet of Plato. Socrates was supposed to be the first founder of this school of thought, and Shakespeare’s adherence to it was so notorious that he was called in his epitaph Socrates ingenio, a Socrates in his turn of mind. I declare, says Socrates in the Theages, that I know nothing whatever, except one small matter—what belongs to love. In that I surpass every one else, past as well as present. In the Platonic philosophy this small matter enlarged itself into the great sustaining force of the universe, and he who knew love knew the kernel of all that could be known. From the Platonic schools and books this science passed to Dante and Petrarch, and became a distinguishing characteristic of the Italian revival of the sixteenth century. From Italy it radiated through Europe, and was taken up by Surrey and Spenser. But it was treated by none with such depth and variety as by Shakespeare, who has devoted all his sonnets and poems, and perhaps half his plays, to the subject. (P. 27): Love is the spirit whose incubation infuses the [28] first vivific motion into the inert soul. . . . It stirs up the first mania in the soul. This mania or phrenzy was divided by Plato into four kinds [Phaedrus 244–5]—the prophetic furor inspired by Apollo, the mystic orgiastic mania of Bacchus, the poetic enthusiasm inspired by the Muses, and the supreme and mightiest mania of love communicated by Aphrodite or Eros. . . . [Sh.] recognizes three of these phrenzies—those of the lunatic, of the lover, and of the poet. (P. 34): For love is by nature and by necessity progressive. It must ever be loving higher objects, or loving the same objects in a higher manner. First, it is born in the eyes, and enthralled to the outward show. Then it grows independent of the eyes; for absence proves that love ranges where the eyes see not, and that the image of the absent supplies for his presence. Then the lover comes to see that the real object of love is not exactly the unknown reality, the secret of which the beloved object carries in his own breast—for eyes draw but what they see, paint not the heart—but the image which exists in the lover’s imagination. This stage of love is appropriately called fancy. It is the activity of the feeling for its own sake—love enamoured of itself, and not yet solidly grounded—a Proteus—a wandering ship ready to anchor in any bay. It is naturally inconstant, for it bears its ideal within; and, in the phrenzied glow of its imagination, it can fit this ideal first to one real person and then to another—to a Hermia, and then to a Helena, and back again to Hermia.

Anders (1926, p. 159) quotes TLN 1799–1807, noting a debt to the Symposium, and paralleling quotations from Phaedrus 245 and Ion 534 (Ger.). Brandl (1929, pp. 186, 189) connects the fairies with Plato’s elemental spirits that encircle the earth [Symposium 203], and the comments of Theseus and Hippolyta on imagination and the wonderful with Sidney’s Apology for Poetry and Plato and the Italian Neoplatonists (Ger.). Dobbs ([1948], pp. 22–30) contends that upon the Phaedrus, wherein the philosopher propounds his doctrines on love, is based the main conception of the lovers’ dream. He quotes passages of the Phaedrus describing the location of the conversation, detailing the parallels with MND in ambience and mood. Phaedrus leads Socrates to the woods outside Athens, to a place suited to be haunted by nymphs, where they rest on a grassy bank shaded by a lofty plane tree, and a blossoming agnus castus, which makes the spot fragrant. The Phaedrus does not indicate the plot of MND (p. 24) but of the spirit of preposterous juxtaposition of incongruities, and of those ruling ideas that we feel dimly to underlie the whole play and to draw it together into a fantastic harmony, I propose to show there is a great deal. He describes Socrates’s theory of love as (p. 24) not something to be argued about and turned inside out, or accepted unilaterally, for the sake of selfish pleasure, but a real force which outlives transient aberrations and makes for mutual advantage. After quoting various passages from Phaedrus about love and lovers, he concludes (p. 28) both the scene and the whole tenor of ideas of [MND] is as near to the Athens of Plato’s time, as to Shakespeare’s Stratford. Turning more generally to Socratic dialogues, he compares Bottom to Socrates: (p. 29) 1. Socrates was a stonemason, and therefore a base mechanical; 2. both have ineffable conceit, which on account of its harmlessness has an engaging and conciliatory quality, both are on familiar terms with all and sundry, and ready to discuss anything; 3. both have a quality of complete imperturbability in the face of all vicissitudes; 4. both address all and sundry with exquisite courteousness; 5. both have the same idea that women have delicate sensibilities; 6. the account of Socrates’s death in Phaedo is parodied in TLN 1531–36.

Hammerle (Poet’s Eye, 1953, pp. 101, 105–7) quotes LLL 5.2.760 (2718), 5.2.762–5 (2720–3) and MND 1804–9 and examines the ideas of the poet as shaper of forms, and of the rolling eye. He believes Cassius’s discourse in Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Brutus (see here) helped frame Shakespeare’s concept of the essential nature of the poet. He considers the idea of the poet as shaper of the forms of the imagination to derive from the image of the imagination as a waxen tablet, as discussed in Theatetus 191–7. The rolling eye evokes Phaedrus 244–7: When Sh.’s poet’s eye rolls due to the beautiful frenzy and encompasses the sky and the earth while it gazes at the forms (or ideas) of unheard of things in order to channel them to his creative imagination, he does what Socrates’s charioteers do, when the best of them, among them the soul of the friends of wisdom, beauty, of the Muses and love, soar high on their voyages up to the celestial sphere where they can enjoy a fleeting glimpse of the essence of the place beyond the sky.

[T]he strikingly concise formulation of the eye doth roll in his glance from the speech of Berowne and again in the speech of the duke Theseus, for which North’s Plutarch offers no parallel, gives the impression that it wants to express more than words can say; it becomes evident that Plato’s world of ideas is behind it, and that both Plutarch and Plato shape Sh.’s conceptualization of the nature of the poet. Friends of Sh. recognized his affinity with the platonic-socratic spirit; in the words above his bust in the church of Stratford-on-Avon his wisdom is compared to Nestor’s, his art with Virgil’s, his inspiration with Socrates’s (Ger.). See also Hammerle (1955, pp. 69–71), and Kermode (1961, p. 218) above.

Vyvyan (1961, pp. 7–9): The Theseus-and-Hippolyta theme . . . [shows that] out of chaos has come a birth of beauty. . . . This miracle—the bringing of order out of confusion [8]—is performed by love. . . .

Considered philosophically, love and beauty were invented by Plato. . . . Even during the centuries when these dialogues were lost, their influence was felt through intermediaries; and when the Platonic revival came in the Renaissance, they pervaded the thinking of the age. . . .

In the first speech of the Symposium, love is said to be the unbegotten power that arose from Chaos in the beginning to create an ordered world; and in the Phaedrus it is a longing that will not rest until man has discovered and become united with immortal beauty. . . . [T]he most notable minds linking Plato with Shakespeare are Plotinus, Ficino and Spenser. . . . But what must never be forgotten, in spite of all the newness of the Renaissance, is the background power of medieval thought. . . .

[9] Socrates speaks of the ascent of love, and Dante of its pilgrimage. Shakespeare uses both metaphors, but he prefers the more dramatic idea of love’s testing. . . . But incomparably the most important and striking bequest of the Middle Ages is the heroine. . . .

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, besides everything else that it has to offer, presents a parable. The parable is based on Platonist ideas, but it is erected in a romantic shape that Socrates would have found trivial. Romance was not trivial to Shakespeare. Long before his time, a poetic and mystical tradition had so raised its status that it had become a serviceable vehicle for philosophy.

Ferrara (1964, p. 202): Theseus in explaining the power of imagination to Hippolyta comes close to formulating a succinct but significant philosophy of poetic creation which is also a theory of the subjectivity of truth. [Quotes 1799–1800, 1804–11.] The combination of folly, amorous passion and poetic inspiration and the definition of this faculty as an enthusiastic frenzy which obliterates everything else evidently bears the imprint of a platonic conception—with a reminiscence, certainly indirect, of Phaedrus and Ion (without however the ironic implications which in the latter dialogue are attributed to Socrates)—but above all with the characteristic connotations of the platonic tradition of the Florentine Academy (It.).

Cody (1969, pp. 16–17, 141–3) For the reader who knows something of these related esoteric traditions—the Platonic, the Orphic, and the pastoral—a certain quality in his comic language [17] comes to light which would otherwise remain obscure. . . .

What Shakespeare brings to pastoral tradition is not a combination of formality and passion, as in the Aminta, but a rich and unique variation on the Platonic sense of humour. . . . [In MND] there emerges a poetic language which has its ideal and sceptical elements integrated in a single humorous mode of perception: a pastoralism so freely modified as to cease being evidently pastoral at all. Yet it still follows the pastoral rhythm of dramatic action, still echoes, if mockingly, the theology of the Platonists, and still seeks a reconciliation of divisions in the courtly mind through the ceremony of the living word.

(P. 141): What is celebrated in [MND] is finally the poet’s art itself—a certain aesthetic perception of love and language, Platonically conceived, as the agents of a courtly culture. The title word dream accordingly serves as a metaphor for the poetic fiction, the play itself, as in Puck’s epilogue: [quotes 2207–13]. [142] Right to the last line serio ludere is maintained. . . .

Serio ludere determines his stagecraft when he lays the young lovers asleep . . . and again when he lays Bottom asleep. . . . Whether or not what transpires are dreams, they are evidently images of concord, Bacchus and Apollo reconciled. . . .

[A]ccording to Platonic theory [raptio and remeatio] can occur in any of six other forms of vacatio than sleep—including swoon, solitude, and philosophic or poetic inspiration. And while not all such inner experiences are of divine origin, any decline in the life of the body and the reason, says Ficino, favours an intellectual union with the divine. . . .

With this sort of lore in mind, one can see Shakespeare humorously turning round the riddle of his raptio and remeatio, folly and wisdom. A divinely inspired dream is given only to those who rise above their human limitations while awake, so who is finally to say whose dreaming is the truest form of waking?

[143] As if to ensure this ambiguity he gives the young lovers, awakened by Theseus and his hunting party, a delightful Platonizing quartet, reminiscent in its sceptic mysticism of the Theatetus (158D): [quotes 1718+1–1720].

White (1970, pp. 12, 43–64) claims Sh. is a Platonic political philosopher, and that MND shows the origins of a regime. In MND Sh. (p. 46) presents a mythical hero, the mythical founder of Athens, Theseus. . . . Shakespeare shows Theseus, unable to cross the ancient patriarchal rules, and then made able to do so by the power of magic. He shows various forms of rule, like that of the father, the old, the ancestral, discarded in favor of rule by a mixture of conquest and consent. He shows the foundation of a democracy so broad that it includes the men who work upon Athenian stalls. He shows the regime united by the trans-human Oberon, and united with the sub-human Bottom. . . . [H]e presents the situation which political philosophers from Plato on have considered as of critical importance, the foundation of a regime. White then analyzes the play with reference to Platonic ideas of law and the republic.

Cope (1973, pp. 13–28, 211–25) studies the several ways in which Florentine Platonism directly informed Renaissance criticism and practice of the drama. He illustrates his argument by describing (p. 25) Michelangelo’s little drawing of the dream of life, Il sogno. . . . The striking aspect of the piece . . . is the explicit parallel it draws between life as a dream and as theater, a parallel which in this instance leaves unanswered the further question it engenders: is life a dream-like play conceived by man, or a dream likened to a play by the sleeper’s imagination? This ambiguity clouding the the relationships among life, drama, and sleep is, according to Panofsky [Studies in Iconology, 1939, rpt. 1962, pp. 224–5], Michelangelo’s most abstract and yet direct tribute to Ficino’s influence because, if the ambiguity persists from one point of view, from another it is resolved. The youth has slept in this world of illusion, but now he awakens, and the movement is towards the divine realm which alone is real, as Ficino never tired of insisting. In MND (p. 211) dream becomes an anti-structure which envelops the world wherein man’s operations assume the validity of the theatrical metaphor for life. (P. 225): The idea that life is a dream has been transformed by Shakespeare . . . into the idea that drama is a dream; . . . [the] action suggests that the dream-drama opens upon visions of truth that transcend reason. To do so, it develops a double dream world, reminiscent of that articulated by Ficino, in which the dreamer, like the lovers in the Athenian forest, is a somnambulist who awakens into a transcendent dream of truth.

Hankins (1978, pp. 42–5): Since Plato describes the confusion of the seasons in terms of disordered love among the elements and their qualities and since Shakespeare assigns the confusion of the seasons to the disordered love of Titania and Oberon, it follows that these two may be elemental spirits. Spirits were popularly believed to inhabit each of the four elements. Ficino explains that the nine heavenly circles, including the primum mobile, were inhabited by heavenly spirits and that these were identified by Dionysius the Areopagite as nine hierarchies of angels. The region above the moon has only one element, that of fire. But below the moon, in descending order, are four levels of elements: fire, air, water, and earth. It is reasonable to suppose that these levels are also inhabited by spirits who share the qualities of their particular elements. The rational creatures that inhabit the earth are human beings. In the upper levels below the moon are daemons of ethereal fire, of pure air, and of moist air—akin to water; and these experience pain, emotions, and passions. They also love good men and hate bad men. . . . [44] Ficino writes that under the moon daemons of pure air are the rulers of generation and will live until the end of time. . . .

Oberon and his fellow spirits have the duty of leading human souls into generation. They will supervise the bridal beds . . . [quotes 2187–98]. . . .

[45] The spirits in A Midsummer Night’s Dream combine the theories concerning elemental spirits with the traditions of popular fairy lore.

Ormerod (1978, pp. 39, 48–9) gives a reading which brings together Renaissance attitudes to the revivification of classical mythology in the context of Christian neo-platonic doctrine. (P. 48): In this way we can see the wanderings of the young lovers through the [49] labyrinthine woods outside Athens as an ongoing image of great richness. It is an icon of blinded wrong choice, exemplified by Cupid’s incarnation in the guise of Puck and the volatility and mutability presented by the ubiquitous moonlight, and it is also the process by which this moral confusion is transcended as the spiralling movements of the conventional emblematic labyrinth yield to the harmonious circles of the conventional concluding dance. The irruption of the Herculean hounds of Theseus and Hippolyta introduces the play’s counter-thesis through the discordia concors of their so musical a discord, such sweet thunder [1639]. Moonlight and Blind Cupid are transposed into sunlight and a greater degree of amorous insight conventionally associated with Anteros, a deity of clearer moral vision whom we may juxtapose with Plato’s Aphrodite Urania rather than with the Aphrodite Pandemos who is the natural corollary of Blind Cupid. Oberon, the king of shadows, presides over the Platonic cave of The Republic, the dream world of the play’s title, and in this half light the lovers wander, fallen . . . in dark uneven way [1461]. It is from this opaque world that the young lovers eventually stumble in a dawn which parallels the rising sun which concludes Castiglione’s The Courtier, emerging to confront a new world which is, however, only the first step upward in the Platonic ladder of enlightenment, a phase where they still see these things with parted eye, / When everything seems double [1714–15].

Beaurline (1978, pp. 86–7): Sh.’s fairies . . . are distinctly aerial spirits, . . . [87] those intermediate spirits between heaven and earth so important to common folk and magicians. . . . Like Ficino’s good daemons, they guard certain select persons, as Titania watches over Theseus and Oberon maintains high credit for Hippolyta. See also here.

Kott (1981, pp. 117–44; rev. 1987, pp. 29–61) explores why both Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians and Apuleius’s Golden Ass (p. 120) were evoked and involved in the dramatic nexus of Bottom’s metamorphosis. . . . From the early sixteenth century until the late seventeenth century, both texts were read in two distinctly separate intellectual traditions having two discrete circuits, and interpreted in two codes which were complementary but contradictory. The first of these codes, which is simultaneously a tradition, a system of interpretation, and a language, can be called Neoplatonic or hermetic. The second is the code of the carnival, or, more precisely, in Mikhail Bakhtin’s terms, the tradition of serio ludere: the carnivalesque literature. [For a comment on the tradition of serio ludere placing it more clearly in the context of Renaissance neoplatonism, see Wind (1958, pp. 189–91).] Kott’s ensuing discussion ranges widely through classical and late classical texts, biblical interpreters, Florentine neoplatonists, and modern psychologists and literary theorists. Some examples of his approach:

(P. 121): At times the method of the Neoplatonists resembles strangely the belief of poststructuralism and the new hermeneutics—that the permutation of signs, the inversion of their value and exchanges performed according to the rules of symbolic logic will, like the philosopher’s stone, uncover the deep structure of Being and of the mind.

The blind Cupid of desire, the emblem of Elizabethan brothels, unveiled divine mysteries to Ficino and Mirandola. The things base and vile signify in this new Platonic code the bottome of Goddes secretes. Man, wrote Ficino, ascends to the higher realms without discarding the lower world, and can descend to the lower world without forsaking the higher. . . . Love is said by Orpheus, wrote Mirandola, to be without eyes, because he is above the intellect. Above and at the same time below. For the Neoplatonists the descent to the bottom is also an ascent into heaven. Darkness is only another lighting. Blindness is only another seeing. . . . To the cave prisoners of Plato’s parable everything seen is but a shadow. . . . Shadow, a word frequently used by Shakespeare, has many meanings, including [122] double and actor. . . . Theater is a shadow, that is, a double. Revelry means also revelation. In the Neoplatonic code the revels and plays performed by the actor-shadows are, like dreams, texts with a latent content.

(P. 124): In the Platonic translation, where the above logos outside the cave is the sole truth and the [125] below is merely its murky shadow, the signs of the top are the ultimate verification of the signs of the bottom. Venus vulgaris is but a reflection and a present[i]ment of the Celestial Venus. In serio ludere the top is only mythos: the bottom is the human condition.

(P. 144): Intellectual and dramatic richness of this most striking of Shakespeare’s comedies consists in its evocation of the tradition of serio ludere. Only within this tradition of coincindentia oppositorum, of the concord of this discord, does blind Cupid meet the golden ass and the spiritual transforms into the physical.

Rhoads (1985, pp. 61–89): When Shakespeare playfully includes disclaimers of any reality in his work, he writes in the Platonic tradition of a Socrates always pleading ignorance. In the tradition the dream appears in two senses. A man who is dreaming is one who does not see clearly what is true. Or a man who is dreaming is one who has left his body behind so that the soul is free to view truth unhampered. The first sort of dreamer appears in Plato’s Republic, where those who do not know how to employ dialectic can at most know only right opinion, the phantom of the good produced by dreams and sleeping through one’s present life (543c, see also 520c). The second sort of dreamer occurs in the Symposium, where Socrates says that his knowledge is only a dream, but at the end of the banquet Socrates is the only one who has resisted the call of the body and is still awake. The two views of dreams appear in Castiglione’s Renaissance version of the ladder of love [The Book of the Courtier, Everyman ed., 1928, pp. 318–19]. Rhoads examines Theseus’s poet speech in the context of Renaissance literary theory, with particular reference to Sidney.

Sh.’s (p. 67) poetry is playful. He, like Socrates, will never be explicit about what he knows, but . . . he allows for the possibility that the poet is truly awake while the rest of us are dreaming. . . . [quotes 1814–18]. She explores the idea of wonder in the Aristotelian strand of Renaissance literary theory, then returns to Platonism (p. 72): By relating the lover to the poet Theseus calls to mind the notion that love is an impulse to poetry which can lead to understanding of the human, the universal, and the divine. The Elizabethan view is based on the connection of the lover and the poet in Plato’s Phaedrus. She traces the Platonic association of love and poetry through Ficino, the Symposium, Phaedrus, Ion, and Castiglione. As a gloss on 1805, she suggests (p. 75): From the Symposium the Renaissance derived the idea that love was a bond between men and the gods. Castiglione echoes Diotima’s definition by describing love as [the sweete] bond of the world, a meane betwixt heavenly and earthly thinges [ed. cit. p. 321]. She proceeds to draw further parallels between the speeches of Eryximachus and Diotima and MND, in the disorder of the seasons, and in the relationships of the young lovers, and in the last pages of the chapter rehearses the arguments earlier laid out. She concludes (p. 91): Puck’s epilogue gives the audience the godlike powers exhibited by the poet. Paradoxically, the challenge which Puck issues to the audience to demonstrate godlike forgiveness of a bad play requires acceptance of a vision of the heavenly that A Midsummer Night’s Dream has attempted to impart. Taking this part, it would be difficult for the audience to deny that what may seem foolish contains a vision of the highest truth.

Barkan (1986, pp. 262–4), comparing Bottom with Actaeon: [T]hat the animal is not a stag but a jackass tends to polarize the opposing elements and, in proper Apuleian fashion, to identify the most earthly with the most sublime. Such an identification points toward a Platonic account of visionary experience, as Titania herself suggests in her love-making: [quotes 954–958(956)], 974–8]. [263] Both characters, according to this account, are playing roles in a traditional Platonic love story. Titania moves from the enchantment of her senses . . . to a state of rapture in recognition of his virtue. Bottom meanwhile is to attain a sublime state pulled upward by his love of the divine. . . . [264] Bottom is the antithesis of the princes of this world; by placing him in the path of mystery and vision, Shakespeare makes of him the complete comic hero, the holy fool, the exemplar of docta ignorantia. Only through multiple metamorphoses can these paradoxes come to life. In a few minutes—taken up with a mock lamentation and resurrection (even transfiguration) scene for Bottom, in which he appears to his disciples but like a true Platonic initiate refuses to tell the visionary secrets—one of the princes of this world will take center stage. See also Barkan (1980, pp. 342, 352–9).

Among others, Cox (1982, pp. 167–90) examines the treatment of Theseus, Athens, the craftsmen, and Bottom in the context of Plato’s Republic; Brown (1987, pp. 20–41) attempts to explore the connection between love and mental activity in the play and locate it in the popular Neoplatonist doctrine of love described by Edgar Wind; Clarke (1995, passim) studies (p. xi) metamorphic allegory and interlocking topics through the relations among four texts—Plato’s Phaedrus, Apuleius’s Golden Ass, Shakepeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Keats’s Lamia. Taylor (2004, Plato’s, pp. 276–8) argues that Titania’s seasons speech shows Sh.’s direct familiarity with Eryximachus’s speech in the Symposium; Carter (2006, 1–31) explores the relationship between divine, Platonic love and Ovidian bestial love in MND; Ackerman (2008, 110–25), discussing generosity in MND, takes the Symposium as the foundation of his argument (p. 113) because it presents us, and perhaps presented Shakespeare, with an enduring configuration of terms and thematic concerns. These include relations of old and young, of parents and offspring both biological and philosophical, of love and knowledge, of passion and reason, of homogeneity and distinction, of the commensurable and the infinite, of pedagogy and generosity.

See also nn. 5, 248–55, 248, 456–92, 532–49, 550, 759, 944, 954–8, 1222–46, 1712–46, 1794–1813, 1814–18.

Classical Literature

Commentators find reminiscences in MND of classical authors other than Ovid and Plutarch, especially Seneca.

Thomas Newton’s Seneca His Tenne Tragedies (1581), an anthology of translations by various hands, most originally published between 1559 and 1566, was probably known to Sh. Although Warton (1781, 3:393) believes that Sh. has borrowed nothing from the English Seneca, Halliwell’s inclination (1841, p. 22) to think that Studley’s translation of Hercules Œtæus may be the original of Bottom’s bombast at 298–300 is followed by most commentators. Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:83): The whole collection . . . has indisputably exercised an influence too lightly esteemed. Idem (1880, p. 66): Sh. was thoroughly acquainted with the works of Seneca. But Sandys (1916, pp. 260, 262): There is no proof that Shakespeare had ever read Seneca; he drew his mythology directly or indirectly from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Attention to Seneca’s possible influence on MND has increased since Brooks’s (ed. 1979, p. lxii–iii) assertion that his plays are a major neglected source, the principal debts [being] to Medea’s invocation to Hecate (Medea), and extensively to the Hippolytus. He provides supporting quotations in Latin at pp. lxiii–iv, nn. 1–4, and in Latin and translation at pp. 139–45. He draws detailed parallels at 81; 298–300 and 299 (both anticipated by Halliwell, 1841); 409; 456–92 (anticipated by Dodd, 1752, 1:79); 478–9; 490–2; 525–30 (disputed by Holland, ed. 1994); 526–30; 574–7; 582–9; 606; 622–3; 1166; 1624–88; 1635; 1643; 2083–4 (partly anticipated by Doran, ed. 1959).

Miola (1992, pp. 175–88): Seneca is an important presence in Renaissance comedies like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which features tragicomic movement as well as parody of the high tragic style. . . . [176] The thematic and imagistic links between A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Il pastor fido bespeak, not the direct influence of Guarini on Shakespeare, but larger generic affinities that include common origins in and use of Seneca. . . . [177] In addition to the inscribed tragicomic movement, A Midsummer Night’s Dream features verbal echoes of Seneca and dramatic parody. [Cites Brooks, ed. 1979.] Even if we dismiss out of hand Senecan details available in Ovid and the dubious connection of Phaedra 406–17 with scattered phrases in Shakespeare’s play, there remains some reminiscence of three plays in translation—Phaedra, Oedipus, and Medea. He examines in further detail parallels noted by Brooks concerning MND 1624 ff., 524 ff., 463 ff., noting in each that there are reminiscences of other sources besides Seneca. Noting various sources for the interlude, he analyzes insufficiently appreciated connections with Senecan drama. (P. 187): Shakespeare’s appropriation of Seneca in A Midsummer Night’s Dream then, is complex. Phaedra and Hippolytus enlarge Helena and Demetrius; passages from Phaedra, Oedipus, and Medea suggest the dark power of eros and the tragic possibilities of passion. Seneca serves to deepen and darken the musical score, to supply a profound bass line to the lighter comedic harmonies. Thematically such presence enriches the portrayal of love, making all the more precious and satisfying the final unions. Simultaneously, Shakespeare parodies Senecan rhetoric and the Senecan style of selfhood in Bottom’s impromptu revision of Studley’s Hercules Oetaeus and in the elaborately Senecanized Pyramus and Thisbe. The parody works to exorcize the tragic potencies of Senecan subtexts by laughter. Both of Bottom’s impersonations—Ercles and Pyramus—focus ridicule on Senecan self-dramatization, on the habit of taking one’s self too seriously. This is precisely what the play itself achieves, as we watch the lovers lose themselves furiously and ludicrously in the enchanted forest. . . . The fairies’ artifice turns potential tragedy to comedy; Oberon’s magic effects the changes of heart necessary for happy resolution.

Believing that Brooks has conclusively demonstrated the influence of Seneca, Montrose (1983, p. 75; cf. 1986, p. 77) extravagantly claims: Sedimented within the verbal texture of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are traces of those forms of sexual and familial violence which the play would suppress: acts of bestiality and incest, of parricide, uxoricide, filicide, and suicide; sexual fears and urges erupting in cycles of violent desire—from Pasiphae and the Minotaur to Phaedra and Hippolytus. A similar dubious argument, lacking Montrose’s panache, is canvassed by Langford (1984, pp. 37–51). Less heavy-handedly, Suzuki (1990, p. 105), comparing the presence of Seneca’s Hippolytus in Tit. and MND, claims that in the latter the literary procedure of suppression and displacement, the translatio of anterior texts, parallels the political process of suppressing and displacing violence and passion for the sake of civic order. She expands her argument in discussions of the hunting scene, Helena as Phaedra in her soliloquy on the irrationality of love and her self-abasement before Demetrius, Bottom with Titania as Pasiphae, and the references to Orpheus’s fate and Thisbe’s lament over Pyramus as echoes of the dismemberment of Hippolytus. Bate (1993, p. 138 n.), though believing Brooks’s claims overplayed, allows some possibility of a fusion of Ovid with Seneca’s Hippolytus in 524–34. Moisan (1998, pp. 277–80, 289–90), taking a similar approach to Suzuki to background texts in MND, considers connections with Hippolytus in Helena’s role and in the hunting scene. (P. 280): It is Transparent Helena’s singularly bad fortune to embody the elision of two Senecan figures simultaneously; . . . if at first we encounter her in the forest playing Phaedra to Demetrius’s Hippolytus, she soon . . . mimicks Hippolytus shunning Lysander’s ventriloquized Phaedra.

Bradley (1904; 1951, p. 390) notes the parallel between Hippolytus 30 ff. and MND 1640 ff.: It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare read some Seneca at school. Koeppel (1911, pp. 190–1) sees Sh. parodying the excessive alliteration of Studley’s Senecan translation (Ger.). Boughner (1954, p. 142) finds Bottom’s ranting style at 296–303 points . . . directly to the more than Senecan ranters in Newton’s volume, especially Studley. Doran (ed. 1959, p. 20): The language of the interlude is only a slightly exaggerated parody of the horrendous vocabulary and excessive alliteration to be found in early translations of Seneca’s tragedies. Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 144–5), on parallels identified by Brooks and others (p. 145): All of these echoes are plausible, and perhaps reflect again Shakespeare’s absorption of images and motifs into his capacious memory and transforming imagination, rather than a conscious use of Seneca as a source. Holland (1994, pp. 140–3, 151) scrutinizes Brooks’s claims of parallels, citing also Langford and Foakes, and concluding (p. 143): If there are echoes of Seneca, the variations and transformations are operative only as a residue of possibility; instead, (p. 151) the Theseus myth, . . . much more than Seneca, constitutes a major source for MND. Uman (2001, pp. 71–80) discusses Senecan strands in Tit. and MND. Hopkins (2003, pp. 193–203): MND (p. 203) endorses matriarchy no more than it does patriarchy, and this may be one reason why Medea and Hippolytus—plays centring on a monstrous mother and a monstrous stepmother respectively—are among the classical texts which this play most insistently remembers.

Senecan parallels have also been adduced at 534, 538, 758, 1047, 2076, 2118–23.

Claims for the influence of Plautus, and to a lesser extent Terence, are mostly more general. Brooke (1911, p. 152) says the critic must heed the delicate affinities which show the example of Plautus-Terence to have been a necessary preparation even for the romantic plays MV and MND. Frye (1957, p. 167) suggests Demetrius and Lysander may be parodies of the adulescentes of Plautus and Terence who are all alike and hard to tell apart in the dark. Riehle (1990, pp. 24, 79–80, 120, 221) refers to the distinctly metatheatrical quality of such plays as Bacchides and Pseudolus where the characters are aware of playing roles and being part of a drama and in which is found the motif of the implied stage director manipulating the play from within as does Oberon in MND. Menaechmi uses a (p. 79) kind of spatial opposition and the contrasting of localities, an important dramaturgic device which Sh. elaborates . . . in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where we find a comparable [80] narrowing of space in the woods of Athens, while the poetical and mythological descriptions . . . briefly open up a liberating vista into the world outside the woods. As (p. 120) Menaechmi contains a witty parody of tragic madness scenes so too MND draws great parodic effects from . . . the brilliant and highly original Pyramus and Thisbe scenes. Citing Salingar (1974, p. 128), Riehle continues (p. 221): MND has often been praised for the most brilliant way in which four different strands of action are conjoined together in a work of exceptional artistic unity. . . . Yet it does not diminish Shakespeare’s achievement if we realize . . . that the unifying structural principle is the concept of deceit of the New Comedy tradition, and that behind the outward deception there is the far more profound idea of error as deception about the nature of one’s own emotions.

Bruster (1990–1, pp. 218–25) claims Sh. based his conception of the controlling playwright figure not only on the Vice/Machiavel but also on a powerful prototype from Roman New Comedy, the Plautine poeta; but whereas the Latin character is a wily slave (servus), Sh. has given the role to the aristocratic figures, in MND those being Theseus and Oberon. (See also Idem, 2000, pp. 103–9). Leggatt (1999, pp. 6–8) sees both Err. and MND as Plautine stories of confusion, but the magic feared in Err. is literal in MND. In the latter, Sh. (p. 8) exploits the extravagance of romance and the tight plotting of New Comedy, mixing courtly, urban and country settings and characters in [a] display of different modes of living and different ways of experiencing love. Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 808): Puck resembles the crafty slave in comedies by . . . Plautus and Terence; see also here. Miola (2000, pp. 88–90): (p. 90) Like Plautus and Terence, Shakespeare uses the classical conflict between fathers and young lovers to motivate the plot.

For Plautus and Terence, see also nn. 6–9, 1506, 1794–1813, 1875, 2134–5, 2221.

A few commentators see parallels with Greek dramatists. Hopkins (2003, pp. 198–9) considers possible links with Euripides’s Helen. Knight (1962, p. 12) compares Sh.’s Theseus with Sophocles’s Theseus in Oedipus at Colonus. Barber (1959, p. 11): In MND Sh. found his way back to a native festival tradition remarkably similar to that behind Aristophanes at the start of the literary tradition of comedy. Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 808): In MND release from punitive power is achieved through the plot device: the escape from the court or city to the green world of the forest. This theatrical structure . . . somewhat resembles the Saturnalian rhythms of the Old Comedy of Aristophanes.

For other suggested parallels with Greek drama see nn. 248; 456–92; 1640–7; 1972–8; 1976; 2074–85, 2089–99, 2116–31; 2167.

The Roman poet other than Ovid most frequently cited is Vergil. Gildon (1710, 7:316–17) overstates the case when he claims that which speaks of Dido he has from Virgil himself, since he does not (317) know of any Translation of [Vergil and Ovid] so ancient as Shakespear’s Time. Steevens (ed. 1793, 1:195) carries more conviction when he defends Sh. against Johnson’s strictures of his violations of chronology by pointing out that Sh. found the Gothick mythology of Fairies already incorporated with Greek and Roman story, by our early translators. Phaer and Golding, who first gave us Virgil and Ovid in an English dress, introduce Fairies almost as often as Nymphs are mentioned in these classick authors. Thomson (1952, pp. 50, 55) also points out that Sh. could have used the Phaer/Twyne translation of the Aeneid (1558–1573). Besides what Sh. probably read in school of the Aeneid or the Eclogues, many complete or partial translations were available to him (e.g. Caxton, Surrey, Douglas, Stanyhurst, Fleming). Although Root (1903, p. 122) believes that in MND of Vergil there is but slight trace, the frequent reference to him by commentators on this play attests to the pervasiveness of his presence in early modern literary culture. See nn. 12–13, 26, 142, 184–5, 226, 441–3, 442, 456–92, 474–5, 484–6, 526–30, 532–41, 611–12, 636, 656, 681–2, 923–4, 982–92, 1156–8, 1182–4, 1396–8, 1616, 1637, 1999–2000, 2083–4, 2095, 2096, 2154–5, 2167.

Other classical authors are sometimes cited in illustration of MND, e.g. Ausonius, Lucan, Claudian, Propertius, Callimachus, Hymnus Homeri, Musaeus, Theocritus, Xenophon (see index), but it is not necessary to argue that Sh. was a widely read classical scholar. As Doran (1960, p. 116) points out: Allusions which cannot be pinned down to Ovid, Plutarch, or Chaucer may come from any one of a number of unidentifiable common sources of Renaissance classical literary knowledge, such as Virgil, Erasmus, Renaissance mythographies, classical dictionaries, and indeed just the schoolroom; the bibliography in her note (pp. 132–3) is still helpful.

The Bible and Erasmus

Shaheen (1993, p. 93): The number of biblical and liturgical references in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is small, but all of them seem to have originated with Shakespeare himself [rather than in the usually accepted main sources and analogues]. The outstanding reference in the play is Bottom’s misquotation of 1 Cor. 2.9 at [1737–40]. That is a clear and conscious paraphrase of Scripture, but many of the other items . . . are less certain references. Some of them are common expressions that may have originated with Scripture, but by Shakespeare’s time were no longer thought of as biblical references.

Discussion of Bottom’s Pauline reference naturally extends to consideration of Paul’s exploration of Christian folly, especially in 1 Cor. 1–3, and thence to Erasmus’s Praise of Folly. Greenfield (1968, pp. 236–44): (p. 244) Folly quotes the same passage from Corinthians. Thus in both The Praise of Folly and A Midsummer Night’s Dream there appears a kind of vision in the face of which the limits imposed by everyday rationality are themselves only illusory. Both works within a comic context offer ironic but sublime hints of fleeting, nonrational modes of perception which give the fool, after all, his valid moment of triumph. Maleski (1998, p. 325): A full history of response to Pauline folly . . . would yield readings ranging from the expected sobriety of Thomas Aquinas, . . . to Erasmus’s multidimensional, wildly ironic Folly in his Encomium Moriae. . . . The Christian idea of the fool becomes commonplace after Paul, and so while his text seeks to breed sacred wisdom, it begs our attention for more secular interpretative purposes as well. . . . Shakespeare’s Bottom . . . falls far short of the Pauline pattern for human perfection manifested in the folly of the cross. A weaver (of visions?), Bottom has entertained countless audiences by unwittingly mixing the senses in his famous epiphany speech. . . . [quotes 1735–40] These mangled, misquoted lines . . . reveal more than the humor of this pathetic fellow’s mismatched faculties, though; they resonate with the Pauline defense of self, with his mystical visions and revelation, with every person’s need for humility. (Would Paul use aphron or moria were he to translate the text to Greek?) In any case, Paul added a theological dimension to our understanding of the fool that allows and invites profundity.

For other comments on biblical and Erasmian echoes in relation to Bottom, see nn. 1728–45, 1737–40, and Criticism, here. Wyrick (1982, p. 433) associates Bottom with Balaam’s ass (Numbers 22).

A few critics see parallels with the biblical story of the Fall of Man. Garber (1974, pp. 70–2) compares Titania’s speech about the consequences of the fairy monarchs’ quarrel with the loss of Eden (see n. 456–92), and the description of Titania’s bower (630–7) with the prelapsarian garden, about to be invaded by Oberon’s magic to bring about her fall: (p. 72) a fortunate fall, as it turns out, since the fantasy experience in the wood helps to reunite her with Oberon and to restore order to the fairy world.

Criticism

General Assessments

Girard (1979, p. 211) argues that Theseus and Hippolyta engage in the first critical discussion of the play. MND has always had detractors as well as enthusiasts, and a detractor sounding like Hippolyta watching Pyramus and Thisbe leads the procession of critics. Pepys abruptly dismisses the play in his diary entry of 29 Sept. 1662: To the King’s Theatre, where we saw Midsummers nights dreame, which I have never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life (1970, 3:208). (Dawson [1888, p. 66] responded: Perhaps that play was never looked upon by a more ridiculous person than Mr Pepys; Richardson [ed. 1957, p. vii] thinks Pepys’ dislike . . . one of the oddest curiosities of literature.) The play Pepys saw is almost certainly not the play as Shakespeare wrote it, and later criticism of the play in the theater is likewise often based on adapted versions. (See Williams [1997, pp. 38, 40–1]). The Companion to the Play-house (1764, 1:xxxii) says plainly It is now never acted under its original Form; some of its parts have been made Use of separately in the Formation of more Pieces than one.

Early critics are uncomfortable with violations of the rules of art in a play which boldly mingles kings and clowns, the natural and the supernatural. Wild and fantastical are Johnson’s words for it (in Steevens, ed. 1773, 3:107); he complains (ed. 1765, 1:xx–xxi) that Sh. had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of another, at the expense not only of likelihood, but of possibility. These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to transfer to his imagined interpolators. We need not wonder to find Hector [xxi] quoting Aristotle, when we see the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the Gothick mythology of fairies. (Müller [1817, in Bate, 1992, p. 84] calls Johnson a grumpy old schoolmaster.) Gentleman (ed. 1774, 8:137) renders a mixed judgment: The . . . piece has great poetical and dramatic merit, considered in general; but a puerile plot, an odd mixture of incidents, and a forced connexion of various stiles, throw a kind of shade over that blaze of merit many passages would otherwise have possessed. There is no character strongly marked, yet the whole shows a very great master dallying with his own genius and imagination in a wonderful and delightful manner. But Gray (1751, 3:448) has no reservations; I do not admit that the excellencies of the French writers are measured by the verisimilitude, or the regularities of their Dramas only. Nothing in them or in our own, even Shakespeare himself, ever touches us unless rendered verisimile, which by good management may be accomplished even in such absurd stories as [Tmp.], the Witches in [Mac.], or the Fairies in the [MND]: and I know not of any writer that has pleased chiefly in proportion to his regularity. Other beauties may indeed be heightened and set off by its means, but of itself it hardly pleases at all.

Even in the 18th c. the play earns some unqualified praise, particularly for Sh.’s imaginative invention and poetic fire. Barclay (1766, pp. 14–15) extols this piece through which we may contemplate the unbounded imagination of our won-[15]derful 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. Felton (1787, pp. 102–3) praises Sh.’s visionary fancy and wild imagination. It was no doubt the production of those years in which imagination is on the wing, and it is indeed the fine enthusiasm of [103] a genuine child of fancy and of genius. The magic of his muse has bodied forth things unknown, and he has transfused a portion of that divine spirit which nature gave him, to airy nothings—to whom he has given a charm that will never fade. Plumptre (1797, p. 64) doubts whether it is fair to judge Shakspeare by the rigid laws of learned criticism: especially a play, which abounds, like the Midsummer Night’s Dream, with scenes of the boldest and most beautiful fiction. Later critics follow suit: Symmons (in Singer, ed. 1826, 1:80) insists that the great Milton’s imagination alone can be placed in competition with that of Shakespeare; and even Milton’s must yield the palm to that which is displayed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and in the almost divine Tempest. Gregory (1808, 2:255) thinks the rules inapplicable, the play extraordinary. Hart (ed. 1886, 2:i) summarizes: The comedy . . . is the most extravagant, yet the most artistic, the most amusing, and withal the most thoughtful, the most poetical, and nevertheless the liveliest, which the phantasy of a poet ever created for the glorification of phantasy itself. The greatness of the author’s genius revels nowhere so much as here, where he gives his imagination full play, and raises his fancy to a flight above mankind, and beyond the limits of the visible world. For similar praise see Matson (1853, p. 26), Carruthers & Chambers (ed. 1861, 3:1), Calvert (1879, pp. 60–1), Finkenbrink (1884, p. 3), Darmesteter (1889, p. 57), Parrott & Ball (1934, p. 67), Tanner (ed. 1995, 1:clvi–clvii).

19th-c. critics admire various strengths and beauties in the play but fault shortcomings ranging from failures in characterization (including the viability of the fairies on stage, see below, here) through lack of plot coherence, or interest, or moral seriousness. Maine (1848, pp. 419, 421), considering MND a play, which we are hardly accustomed to rank among the miracles of genius, nevertheless grants that (p. 421) it is a play from whose perusal it is hardly possible to rise without an undefinable impression, that there is some law of regularity holding together and reconciling its seeming confusion. Although Kenny (1864, pp. 174, 178–80) admires the unconfined ease and grace of MND and its (p. 178) wide, careless humour; (p. 179) there are manifest, and perhaps to some extent inevitable, limitations to the success with which he has accomplished this wonderful task, shortcomings in versification, characterization, and plot. The incidents . . . [180] seem occasionally, as in the case of Bottom for instance, unnecessary and trivial. We are unprepared, too, to feel any magical interest in the unrelieved humiliation of the poor players amidst scenes so generally playful. . . . At the same time, . . . the wonderful ease and freedom with which this incident is managed has given to it an enduring place in the world’s comedy. Snider (1874, p. 184) and Spencer (1940, p. 233) also have mixed reactions to the play.

The most frequent reservation entered by the critics is that the play is undramatic or that its dramatic tension is lower than that of the other comedies. For those who see the play as poem rather than drama see Genre, here. Drake (1817, 2:299) is untroubled, however, because it is the first play which exhibits the imagination of Shakspeare in all its fervid and creative power; for though, as mentioned in Meres’s catalogue, 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. . . . It is, indeed, a fabric of the most buoyant and aërial texture, floating as it were between earth and heaven, and tinted with all the magic colouring of the rainbow. See also Daniel (ed. 1828, pp. 5–7, 10), White (1854, p. 199). Hallam (1839; 1873, 2:181–2) comments that the indescribable profusion of imaginative poetry in this play overpowers our senses till we can hardly observe anything else. But he adds that (p. 182) perhaps no play of Shakspeare 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 [TGV], 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.

Another reason for looking askance at the play is its lack of high seriousness, or of even as much seriousness as that of later comedies. It is a toy, a bagatelle, a dream. Griffith (1775, pp. 15, 21) is distressed by the lack of a general moral that can be deduced from the Argument; nor . . . is there much sentiment to be collected even from the Dialogue. But being a faithful steward of the farm, she concludes: (p. 21) 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. Fleay (1878, pp. 26, 229–30), less generous, thinks the poetry youthful, the characterization almost nil, the plot poor. Moreover, (p. 229) the sorrows of . . . [MND] [230] . . . are unreal, and excite no deep feeling in us. Marshall (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1888, 2:325–6) claims that of poetical language there is much . . . ; but of his higher qualities we may say . . . there is little to be found, and the play is dramatically ineffective. Villemain (1827; 1828, p. 245) thinks the comedies inculcate neither morals nor manners, but because of its grace he ranks MND with Molière’s Amphitryon. See also Stokes (1878, p. 52), Birch (1848, pp. 28–9)—this fairy toy. Ruskin (Fors Clavigera 1876, Works 28:734), talking of Carpaccio and Shakespeare, says that both these artists . . . set themselves to paint, the one fairies, the other angels and saints, for popular—entertainment (say your modern sages), or popular—instruction, it may yet appear. But take it your own way; and let it be for popular amusement. This play, this picture . . . , were, both of them we will say, toys, for the English and Venetian people. To Alden (1922, p. 203) it is what Armado would call a delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic [LLL, 5.1.111–12 (1844–5)], rather than a normal drama. Others finding it without depth or intellectual weight include Dowden (1877, p. 73); Baildon (1904, p. lxix); Herford (1921, p. 36); de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. vii); Spencer (1940, pp. 232–3), who sees no high artistic purpose and belief; Traversi (1956, p. 17); David (1960, p. 84); Howarth (1970, p. 146); Walch (1983, p. 31). To Bilton (1974, pp. 83–4) MND seems . . . to be perfect comedy . . . with regard to audience relations and reactions. There is contrast, but no fundamental conflict of attitudes in the play, nor, accordingly, any need for the manipulation of audience sympathies. . . . No real fears worry us. None of the characters entangle us in serious problems or invite us to look into troubled minds. . . . We know despite Puck’s carelessness that they, and we, are in the safe hands of Oberon and Theseus. The control which the real and the fairy prince exercise prevents us from getting too close to the perplexed lovers for comic comfort, since [84] they are seldom quite in the foreground. Somebody else is usually watching as well as us, so that the lovers’ fond pageant [1138] is slightly upstaged. We are invited to let ourselves go more completely with Bully Bottom, at the risk of growing long ears in his delightful, and comically insulated, company. But he, too, shares Shakespeare’s concern that we should not be too carried away by illusion.

Enjoying the nonsense are Beerbohm (1899; 1969, p. 114), for whom it is a spontaneous masterpiece in tomfoolery, a triumph in the art of unbending; Boardman (1908, p. 12), who accords the play the honor of acquiring a permanent reputation through nonsense; de Chambrun (1927, pp. 53–4), who considers the play’s principal quality . . . the audacity of its conception; it is nonsense and anachronism from start to finish, but what exquisite non-[54]sense.

Despite those who regard the play as lightweight, there are commentators who find wisdom and understanding in the Dream. Shelley, in defending Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, calls it a (p. vii) work of fancy which (p. viii) affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield. Among such works which preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature he lists the Illiad, the tragic poetry of Greece,—Shakespeare in the Tempest and Mid-[ix]summer Night’s Dream,—and most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost. Procter (ed. 1843, 1:381, 416) claims that the wondrous texture of this enchanting Dream is . . . of stamina to last till doomsday because it offers 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 characterised our inconsistent, yet exalted human nature, and because of (p. 416) Shakespeare’s spirit of sympathy with all that is great, genial, and beautiful, in the sister worlds of fancy and of fact. The play is described by Bjørnson (1865; tr. 1953, p. 294) as the richest in fantasy and most innocent work written by Shakespeare. It is fascinating because of its profound play of understanding as well as because of its lofty and humane spirit that speaks and arranges things in their proper order. Ruud (1917, p. 66), summarizing a review of Bjørnson’s production, quotes Bjørnson as saying: Of all the poetry I have ever read, Shakespeare’s [MND] has, unquestionably, had the greatest influence upon me. It is his most delicate and most imaginative work, appealing quite as much through its intellectual significance as through its noble, humane spirit. Winter (in Daly ed., 1888, p. 13) deems it fraught with all the moral elevation and unaffected chastity of Milton’s Comus. Human nature is shown in it as feeling no shame in its elemental and rightful passions, and as having no reason to feel ashamed of them. The atmosphere is free and bracing; the tone honest; the note true.

The Dream of course has attracted more enthusiasts than detractors, and some of them have given it very high praise indeed. Halliwell (1849, p. 131) exclaims, We are somewhat in Miranda’s position when she first saw Ferdinand, and cannot believe in the existence of a lovelier object. But the hand that wrought that fairy picture, and introduced into it a company of illiterate workmen, without shocking the ideal—what would he not have accomplished had he further isolated his enchantments from the external world? Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:428, 436) marvels that the harshness which might be expected to result from the contrast of such dissimilar elements . . . , is obviated and resolved with wonderful art; the play throughout is amusing, imaginative, musical, fantastic, moving with the vagaries of caprice or fitful infatuation, rather than steady purpose or passion. But there are strongly marked lines which are necessary to relieve and combine the flitting shadows. Lloyd applauds the (p. 436) free as well as skilful execution. The genius of the poet is at full and open range throughout, and not more absolute in the certainty with which it ever reaches, than in the self-control of never overpassing the limits of the proprieties, the requirements, and the capabilities of the theme. The command of language, of rhythm, of versification, is perfect, multifarious, musical throughout. Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, 1:76–7, 81, 84, 92) considers it idle to dwell upon the slightness of the character-drawing, for the poet’s effort is not after characterization; and, whatever its weak points, the poem as a whole is one of the [77] tenderest, most original, and most perfect Shakespeare ever produced.

It is Spenser’s fairy-poetry developed and condensed; it is Shelley’s spirit-poetry anticipated by more than two centuries. And the airy dream is shot with whimsical parody. Considering this (p. 81) the first consummate and immortal masterpiece which Shakespeare produced and the mechanicals’ scenes full of (p. 84) sparkling and genial humour, he finds the play (p. 92) delicately, . . . absolutely harmonious. Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, p. xix) claim that Sh. so delicately drowses the workaday wits of his audience and readers that they all as one man, barring some Pepys or Orford, have consented with him to set time at naught, to mingle mythic demigods and Amazons with men, and fairies from farthest India and from nearest Warwickshire with contemporary familiar English artisans, the classic lore of Greece with the homely folk-lore of his own time—all agreeing, moreover, to find in this Dream the convincing lifelikeness readily accepted in dreams, wherein the unexpected and impossible befall without a jar in the very midst of the logical and credible of what seems to be ordinary living and thinking. Quiller-Couch (1917, p. 75) praises a really careless grace—the best grace of the Graces. By taking fairyland for granted, he comes into his inheritance; by assuming that we take it for granted, he achieves just that easy probability he missed in several plays before he came to trust his imagination and ours. The harmony of the play is praised by Knight (ed. 1839, 1:331–2, 381); Creighton (1904, p. 221); Kolbe (1930, p. 80)—it is the true Moonlight Sonata of art; Reid (1941, p. 76); Alexander (ed. 1951, p. xviii); Clemen (1955, p. 288); Doran (ed. 1959, p. 129); Wilson (1969, p. 94). Wilson (1973, pp. 67, 73) adds that MND harmonizes the comic and its kin, the romantic, and the poetic with unique delicacy and grace; moreover, the supernatural, a realm that does not usually invite comic treatment, is enfolded within the comic compass; and the song and dance happily crown all. (P. 73): The farcical and the humorous dominate a play devoid of the correctively comic and the satiric. If Theseus focuses the humorous quality, Puck incarnates the farcical. . . . [But] now and then there is a flash of depth and power that suggests the tragic realm that lies beyond the comic. Nevo (Transformations, 1980, pp. 17, 96) writes that the early comedies culminate in the brilliant achievement of [MND]. Twinships, rivalries, ambivalences, tamings and matings, the sameness and difference that hides under the notion of identity, all coalesce in the harmonies of [MND]. (P. 96): This is a highly intellectual, highly speculative comedy, like [LLL] not the refashioning of a previously-treated story or play but an original invention. Through his basic comic structure of initial privation or perversity, comic device both deceptive and remedial, knots of errors and final recognitions, Shakespeare has achieved not only a benign resolution to the dialectic of folly and wisdom, but a complex and witty exploration of the infirmities and frailties and deficiencies and possibilities of the imaginative faculty itself.

Swinburne (1876, p. 25) praises the play’s verse and adds that each kind of excellence is equal throughout; there are here no purple patches on a gown of serge, but one seamless and imperial robe of a single dye. Of the lyric and the prosaic part, the counterchange of loves and laughters, of fancy fine as air and imagination high as heaven, what need can there be for any one to shame himself by the helpless attempt to say some word not utterly unworthy? The play’s poetry and finish receive high marks from Spalding (1840, p. 480), Brooke (1877, p. 83), Wendell (1894, p. 105), Gundolf (1928, 1:216–17). Richman (1990, p. 97) comments that Sh.’s attempts to weave wonder into comedy reach their first complete success in [MND]. The play is remarkable for many qualities, not the least of which is verse that gives full expression to the marvels the dramatist represents. The king and queen of fairyland astonish the spectators with their language as well as their power. Winter (in Daly, ed. 1888, p. 12) admires the play’s exquisite purity of spirit, its affluence of invention, its extraordinary wealth of contrasted characters, its absolute symmetry of form, and its great beauty of diction. See also Montgomery (1888, pp. 91–104), MacCracken et al. (1912, p. 150), Losey (ed. 1926, p. 196). Swinburne (1909, p. 33) calls it the most beautiful work of man, Chesterton (1904, 45:621) the greatest of Shakespeare’s comedies and so, from a certain point of view, the greatest of his plays. According to Hamilton (1967, pp. 216–217) the play is among the best loved, and most deeply satisfying, of all his plays and has found general acceptance as a minor masterpiece, without qualification. (P. 217): It accommodates all responses, from the romantic to the realistic and from the most imaginative to the most literal. Others thinking MND the best of its kind are Finkenbrink (1884, p. 3), Kermode (1961, p. 214), Matthews (1913, p. 79), Croce ([1920], tr. Ainslie, p. 171).

MND has often been linked with Tmp. As in Tmp., Warburton (ed. 1747, 1:3 n.) points out, in MND Sh. soars above the Bounds of Nature without forsaking Sense; or, more properly, carries Nature along with him beyond her established Limits. In comparing them, Schlegel (1809–11; tr. 1815, 2:176) finds the internal worth of these two works . . . pretty equally balanced, and a predilection for the one or the other can only be governed by personal taste. The superiority of [Tmp.], in regard to profound and original characterisation, is obvious. . . . In [MND] again there flows a luxuriant vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; 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 with a breath. See also Skottowe (1824, 1:60)—MND rivals Tmp.; Hippisley, 1837, pp. 283–4); Fripp (1938, 1:394); Davies (1963, pp. 96, 100). The Dream is Sh.’s most remarkable composition, if not his greatest or most intellectual or passionate play, according to Verplanck (ed. 1845, 2:5); Lear or Othello, or any one of Shakespeare’s most perfect comedies, might have been lost . . . without any essential diminution of the general estimate of their author’s genius. . . . 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 particular 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 fancy, in its most sportive and luxuriant vein. In the composition of these two plays Hudson (1848, 2:1) supposes Sh.’s understanding and imagination to have changed places with each other, to the end that the former might employ its energies and resources in building up a local habitation and a name [1808–9] for the airy sportive creations of the latter. Both plays exemplify throughout the triumph of essential truth over circumstantial falsehood; the real world undergoing a temporary suspension of its laws as if to celebrate the advent of the ideal, and the understanding cheerfully acquiescing in a sweet contradiction to give freer scope for the beautiful and the pure. Purity is the quality Vehse (1851, 1:330) attributes to both plays (Ger.). Heraud (1865, p. 188) attributes beauty to MND, sublimity to Tmp. and explains that the Beautiful has more variety in the expression, but the idea is the same. Of this play of surpassing beauty Beerbohm (1930, 1:82) writes: In the heat of his creative power, he cared not at all—could not pause to bother—how he expressed himself. Everything came out anyhow, shot by blind and irresistible impulse. Consider that debauch of uncontrolled fancy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With it The Tempest is often bracketed, by reason of the supernatural element in either play. But the two are at opposite poles. The one is a debauch, the other a work of art. True lovers of Shakespeare must needs prefer the debauch. The Tempest seems by comparison, cold and calculating. One misses the headiness, the mad magic, of the youthful work. The divinely-overdone poetry has been chastened and straightened into something akin with prose. We have been transported from Thebes to Athens. Or say, we have passed from the rose of dawn into the twilight of evening. Yes, The Tempest is essentially the work of an elder.

To isolate the Dream’s essence or to show its position in the canon, critics have sometimes compared it to plays other than Tmp. Hunter (1839, p. 65) sees no fuller maturity in Tmp. than in earlier plays. Of the general merit of its dramatic structure, I am fully sensible; of the skill with which the characters are grouped, of the clearness with which the story is developed, and the profusion with which some of the choicest flowers of poesy are scattered every where in the reader’s path. But then I ask if this is not the case with [MV], with [Rom.], with [MND], all early plays. . . . I ask where we are to look for evidence of greater maturity of moral taste, of dramatic art, or poetic power in [Tmp.], than may be discovered in the plays I have just named? Montégut (ed. 1867, 1:279) puts MND on a par with grander works for its grace and charm which are as perfect as the energy is complete in Mac., the passion in Oth., the pathetic power in Lr. or Ham. To determine the true range of MND, it is a question of deciding not whether this piece is inferior to Mac. or to Oth., but whether the grace itself is inferior to the energy or the passion (Fr.) Ross ([1867], p. 20) groups the play with Ham., Rom., and 1H4, plays in which the first-fruits of his glorious intellect were poured forth with boundless prodigality,—that exhibit some of the leading characteristics of his genius—his delicious fancy, his pathos, his buoyancy of spirit, and his rich humanity, overflowing with generosity and wisdom.

Many group and compare MND with the early comedies. Fleay (1877, p. 113) lists similarities to LLL and sees little advance in dramatic power. White (1886, pp. 14–15) demurs; Like [its chronological neighbors], indeed, it is fantastical and impossible; but unlike them, it has a real human in-[15]terest, while its satire is that of a man who has had opportunities of studying his fellow-men widely as well as closely, and its poetry is very far beyond theirs in beauty both of form and of spirit. Thaler (1927, pp. 742, 750) likens the play to LLL and TGV because all three primarily exploit a special theme or occasion rather than characterization, to AYL because both are fantasies (p. 750) which are not subject in beginning, middle, or end, to the ordinary laws of cause and effect, [and which] are more precious than whole libraries of well-meant criticism. Evans (1952, pp. 49–50) contrasts the use of language in LLL and MND; (p. 50) in the earlier play the employment of a witty and decorative language was the major occupation upon which plot and characters depended, while here, in one of the most original and balanced plays in all Shakespeare’s work, plot, characters, atmosphere, mood and language are brought into a single dramatic purpose. It may be that this very unity of creative intention makes the use of language far less self-conscious than in [LLL]. Much of it is simple, as if no mental entanglement stood between Shakespeare and the presentation of the theme, as it did, much later, in the opening scenes of [WT]. Baxter (1965, p. 71) speaks of the play as that most complex and moving of Shakespeare’s early group of comedies.

The play is sometimes ranked with the comedies generally designated as mature. Wilson (1833, p. 155) considers it and WT, Cym., AYL, and Tmp. the Planetary Five, whom all eyes may worship. Baynes (1896, p. 130) finds it along with AWW, MV, Ado, and TN marked by a rare harmony of reflective and imaginative insight, perfection of creative art, and completeness of dramatic effect, and Ker (1916, p. 160) considers the play perfect in design. . . . Twelfth Night is nearest to it, in this respect; and Twelfth Night of course has much more substance of imagination in it; but it has not the same variety and intricacy of figure. According to Knight (1932, p. 141), all the best of Shakespeare’s earlier poetry is woven into so comprehensive and exquisite a design that it is hard not to feel that this play alone is worth all the other romances; to Bryant (ed. 1888, 1:xxiii) it is one of the transcendent specimens of his genius.

The play is in a class by itself in the judgment of a number of critics. Hudson (ed. 1880, pp. 21–2) calls it a most effectual poser to criticism since its very essence is irregularity. Sh. (p. 22) has here exercised powers apparently differing even in kind, not only from those of any other writer, but from those displayed in any other of his own writings. Elsewhere, if his characters are penetrated with the ideal, their whereabout lies in the actual, and the work may in some measure be judged by that life which it claims to represent: here the whereabout is as ideal as the characters. Lang (1895, pp. 327–8) contends that there is no play more absolutely Shakespeare’s own, in plot and invention, character and color, than the [MND]. Here he is untrammelled by an earlier canvas. . . . Here he dwells free in a fairy world, and only copies men where grace is most courtly, [328] . . . or where nature is most frankly humorous. See also Seccombe (1903, p. 14), Mabie (1900; 1904, p. 160), Neilson (ed. 1910, p. 10), Saintsbury (1910, 5:205), Hudson (ed. 1910, p. xi), Ward (ed. 1964, p. lviii). Its originality is stressed by Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xxxiv), who finds in MND the earliest, purest, and most original effort of his own genius, finding its own high level, and unswayed by the influence of any dramatic predecessor. It is the dramatic complement of the poetic efforts of 1593, 1594. So Barkan (1980, p. 353). Bradbrook (1951, p. 161) declares that Sh.’s first completely individual comedy was to remain, sui generis, a species of which only one specimen was found in nature, and Howarth (1970, p. 25) says that both MND and Rom. do the most potent work of which literature is capable: introduce new figures into the world’s imagination, figures which represent obscure reaches of the psyche. . . . [Both] are myth-making plays. For Barnet (ed. 1972, p. 36) it is the first great romantic comedy, as amusing as Err., but MND goes further and deeper by adding to the story of lovers’ mistaken identities the actions of the royal classical lovers, Theseus and Hippolyta; the fairy lovers of folklore, Oberon and Titania; and the lovers in the craftsmen’s play, Pyramus and Thisby. This rich collaboration makes [MND] an unexcelled comedy, a finely plotted and beautifully lyrical exploration of the nature of love, the nature of imagination (fantasy), the nature of reality or truth, almost, in short, the nature of life. It is, Swinden (1973, p. 50) says, a masterpiece for all time.

To some a happy play implies a happy or confident author. Campbell (1846, pp. 56) says: 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 Shakspeare’s mind to have been in any other frame than that of healthful ecstasy when the sparks of inspiration thrilled through his brain in composing it. See also the Clarkes (ed. 1864, 1:323), Massey (1866, p. 473), Elze (1868; tr. 1874, p. 40), Moberly (ed. 1881, pp. viii–ix), Guthrie (ed. 1954, p. 15). Postell (1907, p. 527) come[s] to the Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, not to cavil, not to study, not to understand, but to revel, to enjoy. It is a poet’s holiday fancy when his genius lies stretched in lawlessness on summer clouds. Quiller-Couch (in Wilson, ed. 1924, p. xix) quotes Max Beerbohm: Here we have the Master, confident in his art, at ease with it as a man in his dressing-gown, kicking up a loose slipper and catching it on his toe; Beerbohm (1900; 1969, p. 230) calls the play perfect, a reflection of Shakespeare relaxed and laughing. It is when Shakespeare doffs his mantle that we see the giant’s limbs, the giant rejoicing in his strength, and performing prodigious feats because he cannot help performing them. Yes! The [MND] is the most impressive of all Shakespeare’s works, because it was idly done, because it was a mere overflow of genius, a paragon thrown off by Shakespeare as lightly as a modern author would write an article on International Copyright for an American magazine. It is the most impressive of all the plays, and the loveliest, and the most lovable. Wilson (1962, pp. 184, 186) remarks: If not the loveliest, it is certainly the happiest of all the Happy Comedies—which a wedding play should be. (P. 186): None of his comic consummations is neater or happier than this. In fact, Clemen (1972, p. 200) claims, [MND] is one of the greatest plays in the whole of literature. Webster (1942, p. 158) writes: This is a lighthearted, irresponsible piece of mischief and magic; let us lend our best ears to its melodies and warm our hearts at its humanity. The moonlit Shakespearean heavens will not often be so beautifully cloudless, nor his lyric gift of song so purely melodious. Evans (1969, p. 88) detects a patina of happy optimism which informs the communication of the play. In the long run [MND] is Shakespeare’s happiest play, and it is tempting to believe that it is so partly because it was written at a time when his career was beginning to glow with success.

Genre

Critics’ evaluations frequently hinge on the kind of play they think they are dealing with and its conformity to generic expectations. Meres (1598) lists MND with the comedies, and Archer (1656), Kirkman (1661–71), Langbaine (1691), and Winstanley (1687, p. 132) followed suit. But many early critics are puzzled by a play which belongs to no familiar genre. The trouble began in 1710 with Gildon’s comment (in Rowe ed. 1710, 7:316): Tho this cannot be call’d either Tragedy or Comedy as wanting the Fable requir’d to either; yet it contains abundance of beautiful Reflections, Descriptions, Similes, and Topics. Hippisley (1837, p. 281) among others finds the conventional genres altogether inapplicable because of those unearthly scenes—that land of fairies and magicians, to which, himself a magician, he conducts us. Abel (1963, p. 66) argues that [AYL, MND, TN, AWW] are not really comedies, for we cannot account for the pleasure we take in them in terms of their humor, which is often labored, sometimes gross. These are all works of the imagination; but saying this does not define their character or indicate the perfection of form they prefigure. Although there is, of course, considerable overlap, the categories to which the critics assign the play are roughly poem, masque, fantasy, court play, burlesque or farce, romantic comedy, or a fusion of these.

Poem

A few critics have flatly called the play a poem, and many more have judged that the lyrical predominates over the dramatic in its composition. Coleridge (1817; 1930, 1: 227) described MND as one continued specimen of the lyrical dramatized, and Verplanck (ed. 1845, 2:5), although he thinks it combines the purely laughable with the poetic, agrees with Coleridge because 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. See also Robinson (ed. 1941, p. v). Hudson (1848, 2:43) explains that the nature of the subject . . . obviously required less of the dramatic and more of the poetic element than any other the poet has given us; and its comparative want of the former is amply made up by a profusion of the latter. Like As You Like It, it is rather a poem than a play, Tyrrell thinks (ed. 1850, 1:383); it reads like a strain of sweet, though distant music. Clarke (1864, p. 33) considers MND and Rom. so purely poetical as to be almost lyrics. Others linking the two as lyric are Brown (1949, pp. 133–4), Acheson (1922, p. 46), Chambers (1930, 1:335), Rowse (1963, p. 202). Also calling it essentially a poem are Fleay (1878, p. 130), Phelps & Forbes-Robertson (1886, p. 128), Dowden (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890, 8:xliv), Morley (1891, p. 56), Egan (1906, p. 119), Robertson (1916, p. 144), Purdom (ed. 1930, p. xxxiii), Horne (1945, p. 42), Pattison (in Sisson, ed. [1954], p. 207). It is lyrical comedy, according to Cecil (1957, p. 52) and Halio (2005, p. 400), poetic extravaganza, according to Kantak (1963, p. 158).

On the other side of the question are commentators like Hense (1872, p. 279) who, while recognizing the extraordinary poetic qualities of the play, insist that the poetry is subordinate to the drama (Ger.). Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:423) asserts, Still it is a drama, and not a poem—it was written for representation, and unhesitatingly the writer allowed himself all the advantages which good representation placed at his command, without consideration how readers might fare who should lack the aid and comment of living personification. Grindon (1883, p. 97) and Ainger (1905, 1:31) choose the term poetical (or poetic) drama. See also Hardman (1938, p. 67), and Ward (ed. 1964, p. lix), who adds that MND belongs to the realm of dreams rather than to reality.

Masque or Court Play

Numerous critics call the play a masque, or if they stop short of applying the term, they at least attribute some of the play’s characteristics to that genre’s direct influence. The play lends itself to the spectacular. Whiter (1794, p. 186) notes Sh.’s debt to the form; the play is very naturally derived from the Masque and the Pageant, which abounded in the age of Shakspeare; and which . . . would often quicken and enrich the fancy of the Poet with wild and original combinations. Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:260) says that MND is a masque which proceeds from the occasion of its origin, from its prescribed reference to it, and from the allegorical elements which are here introduced. These latter . . . have given quite a peculiar stamp to the Midsummer-Night’s Dream among the rest of Shakespeare’s works. [See here and here.] Heraud (1865, p. 170) repeats Gervinus, adding that Theseus and Hippolyta represent the noble couple honored by the masque and that MND is superior to the masques of Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher. Elze (1868; tr. 1874, pp. 30–45) first enumerates in detail the masquelike features of MND. Their origin, he thinks, was in dumb shows, their emphasis on spectacle, allegory, myth, and compliment; characterization was secondary. Jonson perfected the structure of the masque and anti-masque, inspired perhaps by the Dream, in which the anti-masque semi-choruses of fairies and clowns are inserted into the masque or frame of love stories. The (p. 33) operatic stamp, external motivation, (p. 34) living picture[s] rather than . . . plot, and slight characterization are typical of the masque as are (p. 35) the mythological background and the fabulous world of spirits. Theseus and Hippolyta represent the couple whose wedding the masque would have graced in appropriate allegorical fashion. See also Kurz (1869, p. 279), who finds the tone masquelike; Wright (ed. 1877, p. xxii); Verity (ed. 1893, pp. xi, xviii, xxxiii), who is, however, cautious and aware of the skimpiness of evidence; Bates (ed. 1895, p. 2); Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, 1:76); Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 13); Beerbohm (1899, p. 113); De Rothschild (1906, pp. 82–3); Neilson (ed. 1906, p. 75), who thinks it not primarily for the public stage because of its masque-like lyric, dance, and spectacle, and the virtual epithalamium with which it closes; Chambers (1916, p. 156); Smith ([1940], pp. 7, 13); Desai (1952, pp. 76, 173); McKenzie (1964, p. 42), who argues that on one side it is borne up by the symbolical and allegorical force of The Faerie Queene and on the other by the philosophical complexities of Renaissance concepts of love. Others characterizing MND as masquelike are Bather (1887, p. 75); Boas (1896, pp. 182, 190); Vollhardt (1899, p. 5); Hastings (1902, p. 185); Mabie (1900; 1904, p. 159)—who sees it as masque expanded into drama; Browne (ed. 1922, p. 7); Mackenzie (1924, p. 28); Thaler (1927, p. 742); Gray (1928, pp. 13–14); Richter (1930, p. 72); Green (1933, p. 10); Dent (1934, p. 159); Gregor (1935, p. 322); Smirnov (1936, p. 33); Clark (1937, p. 176); Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 16); Craig (ed. 1951, p. 8); Pattison (in Sisson, ed. [1954], p. 207); Brown (1955, p. 7); Long (1955, pp. 82, 85), who calls it a blend . . . of the masque form and the dramatic form with a (p. 85) fairy masque ending; Richardson (ed. 1957, p. v); Monck (1959, pp. 73–4); Rothe (1961, p. 231); Atherton (1962, p. 3); Purdom (1963, p. 45), who sees MND as an entertainment; Wright & LaMar (ed. 1958, p. viii); Calderwood (1965, pp. 509–10), who sees the final dance as the taking out of members of the audience which (p. 510) serves the comic theme of social inclusiveness, . . . the world of comedy expanding across the borders of fiction to embrace and absorb the social world beyond; Hamilton (1967, p. 219); Mason (1968, pp. 78–9); Fergusson (1970, p. 121); Fuhrich-Leisler & Prossnitz (1976, p. 77); Langley (1991, pp. 118, 127–8, 136). Those regretting the influence of the masque are St. John (1908, pp. 16–17), Sidgwick (1908, pp. 2–3).

Others find qualities of the masque in parts of the play—de la Mare (ed. 1935, pp. 88, 99) in the song, the dance, and Act V, (p. 99) a sort of masque-epilogue to the whole play, Bradbrook (1951, p. 160) in the fairy characters and the whole flowery natural world—Natura Naturans—blossoming, ripening, decaying and renewing, Wiles (1993, pp. 48, 114) in the parody in Pyr. of the emblematic tradition of performance which the masque inherited . . . from the medieval world and in (p. 114) the ending of the play which he sees as a wedding masque.

The disparities between the play and a masque were first pointed out in detail by Finkenbrink (1884, pp. 11–14), although Knight (ed. 1839, 1:382) had noticed that whereas Comus is in a sense undramatic, MND exhibits all that congruity of parts and that subordination of action and character to one leading design . . . which constitute the dramatic spirit. Finkenbrink lists seven arguments against calling the play a masque: 1. Sh. did not indicate it as such in title, text, prologue, or epilogue. 2. There is no record of its performance at court or in a noble household. 3. Meres lists it as a comedy. 4. Contemporary editors and commentators considered it a comedy. 5. Masques are shorter than the play. 6. A masque’s allusions are not hidden. 7. A masque is different internally. There is little action, much music, dance, and decoration, no real-life characters. MND (p. 13) has a well continued action, depending most on the characters, and not only on external incidents, a plot and its solution, in short all that is necessary for a comedy. It is (p. 14) a genuine comedy, where the most various and particoloured threads combine in one beautiful web, a true comedy of five acts, and not a one-acted occasional play. Cunliffe (1910, 71–2, 78–9) arrives at a similar conclusion from different premises. In 1594, a masque meant a dance in costume, to which dialogue was . . . incidental and extraneous; (p. 72) moreover, it was Pope, not Sh., who called Tmp. a masque. And Sh. himself in MND uses the word [1826] to designate music and dancing as opposed to the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude. He never used the masque as it was known to the Jacobeans, merely (p. 79) contenting himself with the employment of some of the devices the masque made popular. Halliwell-Phillipps (1879, p. 26) thinks the proceedings of the clowns help the play escape the character of a masque, and Luce (1907, p. 157) finds it pleasanter to think that such a supreme work of art, though akin to the masque, has some higher motive. Welsford (1927, pp. 324, 330–4, 347) considers the play a romantic comedy but analyzes in some detail Sh.’s debt to the masque for MND and Tmp., in which (p. 347) he immortalised . . . much of the grace and beauty of a Court function. They are not masques (p. 324) because there are no masquers, because they are independent of their occasion, because their plots are not mere inductions leading up to masque dances, because there is nothing in them corresponding to the sudden failure of detachment. The plays have the spirit of the genre; (p. 330) the real soul of the masque . . . was the rhythmic movement of living bodies. It is owing to this fact that [MND] is more nearly related to the genuine masque than is Comus. . . . In [MND] most—not all—of the dances are vitally connected with plot. The difference is between (p. 331) thought turned to poetry and sound and movement turned to poetry. The play owes its structure to the dance and in fact is a dance since the plot is a pattern . . . rather than a series of events occasioned by human character and passion [see Phillips (ed. 1969, p. 15), who cites Welsford and attributes the thin characterization to the masque-like qualities]. Welsford explains that in his use of antimasque, Sh. knew that (p. 333) the greatest beauty is gained through contrast when the difference is obvious and striking, but rises out of a deep though unobtrusive resemblance. This could not be better illustrated than by the picture of Titania winding the ass-headed Bottom in her arms. Finally, through the fairies Sh. achieves (p. 334) an expression of the harmony and concord which was the keynote of most Elizabethan revels. See Holzknecht & McClure (ed. 1937, 2:271), who comment on the masque-like combination of grotesquerie and daintiness of the Bergomask and the fairy dance.

Commentators who argue that MND bears the marks of a court play generally found their opinions on the apparent influence of Lyly, or the play’s occasional nature, or the sophistication of its appeal. Gollancz (ed. 1894, p. ix) seems to be the first to say that Sh. was writing a court drama but keeping in mind his own ideas of Romantic Comedy. As in Endymion, though, MND has the spectacular machinery, the mythological agencies, the love-story, the comical interlude, the complimentary allusions to the Queen, direct or allegorical. He adds to the list of court elements (ed. 1895, p. xxxv) tone, songs and dances, foolery about love, and splendor of scene. See also Eichler (1925, pp. 39, 43, 50). Chambers (ed. 1905, p. 7) calls it primarily a court revel, and Schelling (1908, 1:391) considers it Sh.’s last return to the ideals of the old court drama which he has transformed [from] a drama of occasional and passing interest into an exquisite dramatic poem of permanent artistic worth. See also Coleman (1890, p. 200), Hoppin (1906, pp. 117–18), Neilson (ed. 1910, pp. 9, 37), Gordon (ed. 1910, p. xxviii), Thorndike (1916, pp. 135, 371), Neilson & Thorndike (1920, p. 96), Spens (1922, p. 32), Cowling (1925, p. 84), Isaacs (1927; 1936, pp. 317–18), Stoll (1927, p. 158), Harrison (1933, pp. 82–3), Campbell (ed. 1949, p. 21), Holmes (1960, pp. 38, 148), Wiles (1993, pp. 17–18).

Commentators frequently attribute the courtly elements of the play to its composition or performance to grace a wedding. See here. Such critics include Chambers (1925, p. 79), who hypothesizes that Elizabeth was present, and Olson (1957, p. 95), who finds the sophisticated Renaissance philosophy of the nature of love appropriate to a wedding. Mincoff (1961, p. 20) contends that the presence of the supernatural and a classical background . . . are due to its having been planned as a wedding entertainment for an audience accustomed to Lylian comedy. But see Hunter (John Lyly, 1962, pp. 318–19), who finds in MND and LLL (p. 319) a density of meaning which Lyly never achieved and probably never aimed at; Wiles (1993, pp. 89, 114–15).

Pastoral

Few critics call the play a pastoral, but several detect pastoral chords. Marshall (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1888, 2:326) points out that although this play cannot be called a pastoral drama, yet it is impossible to help comparing it with The Sad Shepherdess of Beaumont and Fletcher, which shares with A Midsummer Night’s Dream the honour of having suggested to Milton the most delightful of all his poems, Comus. Shakespeare has the advantage of his rivals in that dramatic insight, which taught him to blend with the Fairy story the humorous underplot in which Bottom and his companions are involved. His observation is carried a step further by Smith (1897, pp. 5–7, 24 n., 68), whose list of pastoral elements includes the use of the supernatural for ornament or plot development, (p. 6) the love of nature, and a love theme. He concludes that parts of two scenes of MND (1.1 and 2.2) (p. 24) are unmistakably pastoral and that Helena and Demetrius . . . are borrowed from pastoral tradition. The pastoral, Smith adds, has little dramatic power. See also Seccombe (1903, p. 14), Woodberry (in Lee ed. 1907, 3:xix), Brooke (1911, p. 279), Masson (1914, p. 96), Neilson & Thorndike (1920, p. 97), Wells (1939, p. 171), Fluchère (1948, p. 93), Farjeon (1949, p. 48), Smith, (1952 pp. 17–18), Conn (1964, p. 120), Holland (1964, p. 109), Ribner (in Kittredge & Ribner, ed. 1966, p. xi), Clubb (2002, p. 45), Armistead (2002, p. 57), who argues that MND gives a nod to the pastoral tradition. Cody (1961, p. 11), however, argues that most of the deeply original works of pastoral poetry (or drama) in English literature, such as L’Allegro and Il Penseroso (or [MND]), are not properly speaking pastoral at all.

Fantasy

Another classification that preserves the remoteness from reality that so many commentators associate with MND is fantasy. Hülsmann (1856, p. 131) thinks the term applies to the whole play (Ger.), and Mézières (1860; 1865, pp. 430–2) assigns it to the category Drames Fantastiques; it differs from the comedies essentially because it is more fantastic than comic and must be classed with Tmp. (Fr.). To Taine (1863; tr. 1890, 2:139) it is fantasy because it is a slight tissue of bold inventions, of ardent passions, melancholy mockery, dazzling poetry, such as one of Titania’s elves would have made. According to White (1886, p. 16) the fantastic-impossible is the groundwork of the action, and the depths of man’s nature are left unsounded. Also detecting elements of fantasy are Ulrici (1868–9; tr. 1876, 2:70), Darmesteter (1889, p. 57), Woodbridge (1898, p. 160), Lee (1904, p. 271), Herford (1912, p. 31), Gray (1913, p. 123), Mais (1928, p. 25), Nicoll (1928, p. 261), Constantin-Weyer (1929, p. 39), Charlton (1930, p. 340), Ridley (1936, pp. 36, 47), Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 16), Parrott (1934; 1955, p. 139), Imam (1959, p. 72), Seiden (1959, p. 89), Alexander (1964, pp. 135–6), Choe (1965, p. 60), Davies (1968, p. 180).

Comedy

In 1747 Winchop (p. 142) listed MND with Wiv., Err., and Shr. as the only Shakespearian plays that are all pure Comedy. A few 20th-c. commentators, Matthews (1910, p. 123), for example, treat the play as farce or, as Herford (1921, p. 36) would have it, burlesque. Herford explains that Sh.’s comedy of love outside the norm for the most part resembles burlesque. . . . The ways of love which he treats as comic material are not plausible or subtle approximations to romantic passion, but ludicrously absurd counterfeits of it. He has in mind the Bottom-Titania episode, which provokes the loud laugh. In Alden’s judgment (1922, p. 203), MND is like the preceding comedies in its regal indifference to probability and detailed characterization,—in being a kind of glorious romantic farce; but since it is a midsummer night’s dream, with a setting and associations which withdraw it from the normal tests of plausibility, there is an effect of consistency and causation quite wanting in the others. Talbert (1963, pp. 252–4) detects signs that make Sh.’s farcical intent obvious; for example, an audience is prepared for the mechanical tripping of a predetermined situation caused by Puck’s mistake as Helena finds the sleepers in 2.2, and the lines of Lysander [in response to Hermia, 714–16] underline the anticipatory irony of any situational farce. . . . The effect is then repeated and intensified in the next comparable situation when Lysander’s line releases the catch so that Demetrius in turn can emerge as the jack-in-the-box [1161–4]. . . . Love rhetoric is obviously subordinate to the lustiness of this transported lover [1164–9]. . . . [253] The preceding situations must have been contrived to develop quickly, forcefully, and probably noisily as well, in accordance with the boisterousness that might appear fairly constantly in the theaters of the era. [P. 254]: At the play’s end the reappearance of the fairies turns the emphasis from farce to marriage. Herendeen (1972, p. 26) sees in the comedy a crossing of fantasy with reality. . . . It is farce because the great is made small (themes of romantic love or great characters) in larger proportions than the small is made great (the enlargement of the rude mechanicals). There is some burlesque for this latter reason, especially in the scenes involving Bottom, who in this literary form balances the fantasy of the play, as, in multi-layered speech, he says, it shall be called Bottomes Dreame, because it hath no bottome . . . [1741–2]. See also Walter (ed. 1964, p. 14); Harbage (1963, p. 100), who would call it . . . a farce were it not so beautifully written.

Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, pp. xii–xiii) lists four stories and four kinds of comedy: the world of courtly and chivalric life presents the comedy of the ceremony and ritual of love . . . submitted to the order and pattern of a social pageant; the mechanicals and their interlude are farcical and parodic; the lovers are in a comedy of [xiii] situation combined with a gentle satire on the foibles of lovers who love at first sight; and in the story of Oberon and Titania we have a kind of composite comedy that presents both the reductio ad absurdum of the other main love themes and situations (a travesty of marriage and a parody of love-in-idleness) and an allegory that depicts the catastrophic effects of instability in marriage. It is a comedy sui generis according to Walch (1983, p. 33) (Ger.).

Festive comedy

Proescholdt (1879, p. 517) suggested that the play was a glorification of Mayday festivities (Ger.). Engelen (1926, p. 80) suggested that MND was a holiday play (Ger.). Barber (1959, pp. 119–122, 132) has illuminated the implications of the suggestion. To grace an occasion, Shakespeare gathered up in a play the sort of pageantry which was usually presented piece-meal at aristocratic entertainments, in park and court as well as in hall. And the May game, everybody’s pastime, gave the pattern for his whole action, which moves from the town to the grove and back again, bringing in summer to the bridal. Oberon’s vision is typical of such festivities, of (p. 122) just such a joyous overflow of pleasure into music and make-believe as is happening in Shakespeare’s own play. Sh.’s elaboration of the May game, which (p. 132) express[es] the will in nature that is consummated in marriage, brings out underlying magical meanings of the ritual while keeping always a sense of what it is humanly, as an experience. See also Kéry (1964, p. 252); Sougné (1964, p. 515); Bradbrook (1969, p. 67), who calls it ceremonious drama; Nelson (1988, pp. 94, 96). Patterson (1988, pp. 26, 28–29, 32–4, 37–9) locates the play within what is now known as festive theory, which includes the courtly occasion’s revelry, the popular folk ritual which by subsuming the saturnalian upholds (p. 29) the hierarchical structure of society, and the subversive folk festival rituals. Sh., she says, recognized, used, and in his own way synthesized these conflicting theories. Within the occasional revelry occurs the bawdiness of the mechanicals’ interlude (not an uncommon juxtaposition in (p. 32) aristocratic Renaissance weddings). She finds inadequate and at odds with the facts Barber’s explanation of the May games of the young lovers as one of those archaic fertility rituals absorbed and contained by the transforming imagination. (P. 33): And then there is the third festive plot, the one which goes deeper into the anthropological origins of Maying and Midsummer holidays, while at the same time making a more radical suggestion about contemporary Elizabethan culture than any of the modern theorists has posited—the fairy quarrel over the changeling and the resulting chaos in nature, resolved only by the most extreme example of status inversion and misrule that Shakespeare’s canon contains, the Bottom-Titania incident which issues in the restoration of (p. 34) male authority. Comic butt Bottom may be, but his comment on his own dream [1733–42] adds a spiritual dimension; Patterson quotes 1 Cor. 12:17–25 (Geneva) (p. 38) where the metaphor of the body is developed . . . in terms of a Christian communitas. In MND, the vncomely partes of the social body are invested with greater honor by their momentary affinity with a utopian vision that Bottom wisely decides he is incapable of putting into words, at least into words in their normal order. Shakespeare clearly urges a revaluation of those unpresentable members of society, normally mocked as fools and burdened like asses, whose energies the social system relies on. And if laughter is necessary to mediate social tensions, Shakespeare’s [39] festive theory seems to argue, then let it be a laughter as far removed as possible from social condescension. In summary, the Dream imagines an ancient festive spirit deeper and more generous than the courtly revelling that seems to have appropriated the popular drama for its own purposes; an idea of play and playing that could register social criticism, . . . yet hold off the phantom of violent social protest . . . ; and a reconciliatory agenda for the national theater that, before the turn of the century, was still, for Shakespeare, imaginable: making the social body whole.

Romantic Comedy

As romantic comedy is the conventional label for almost all of Sh.’s plays that are not historical or tragical, it is not very distinctive. Several writers use the term without much effort to define it, e.g. Ward (1899, 2:281), Nicoll (1923, p. 177), Black et al. (1930, p. 108), Semper (1931, p. 85), Macintosh (1957, p. 90), Daiches (1960, 1:250–51, 254), Quennell (1963, p. 168). Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 54) judges it Sh.’s first complete success in the genre, and Charlton (1938, p. 18) a satisfying compromise between romance and comedy. Spencer (1940, p. 233) describes MND as the best of the lowest order of romantic comedy, clearly exceeded by Portia in MV, Act 4 of Ado, and TN because the pulse of humanity is missing.

There are several whose emphasis is clearly on the first half of the term, romantic. The term is used without specificity by Guizot (ed. 1868, 1:65); Symonds (1884, p. 532); Smeaton (1911, p. 186); Baker (1923, p. 39), who sees MND as a forerunner of WT and Tmp.; Charlton (1930, p. 340), who exclaims And what is a fantasia like [MND] but the very ecstacy of romanticism? See also Von Haast (1943, p. 6). Pettet (1949, p. 109) specifies what is meant by romantic elements in [MND]: its courtly love adventures in the enchanted wood near Athens, its tissue of romantic love-sentiment, its idealisation of marriage, its fairies, hunting-scene and delicate evocation of the dewy May morning, so rich with old romantic associations. The play is, though in a different way, as pure a specimen of romance as [TGV]. He bears in mind, however, what those who emphasize the second half of the term romantic comedy will stress: the play contains a strong note of criticism and interrogation. Meaning by the word romantic that life is to be grasped, (Coghill (1950, pp. 3, 13) says that Sh. wrote (p. 13) comedy of the golden world as it has been called, [and] [MND] is its first full expression, and perhaps the most delicate. It is a picture of a world with no ill-will.

Although other critics do not deny the play romantic facets, they stress its comic implications. de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. xxviii) describes the play as a comedy, radiant with imagination, gaping with rustic farce. Wickham (1954, p. 218) points out that Sh.’s comedies follow Lydgate’s prescription for comedy since they start in sorrow . . . (or are swiftly plunged into it) and end in gladness [Troy Book 2.847–9] with reconciliation achieved through a love match. Zitner (1960, pp. 399, 403) distinguishes MND from other Shn. comedies. There is none of the brutal edge of farce as in [Err.] or [Shr.], nor of the mission of high comedy as in [Ado]. [MND] is the purest of comedies because, rather than unravelling serious complications, it simply refuses to tie knots. Zitner calls it (p. 403) the drama of avoidance and contends that the play recalls values and a way of life close to the hearts of Sh.’s contemporaries. It made for a moment flesh what the Privy Council could only hope for: the revival of a housekeeping gentry, artisans at leisure, traditional loyalties, and traditional pleasures.

In dealing with the play as romantic comedy, several commentators provide valuable insight into Sh.’s use of multiple perspectives to provide a corrective or a standard of measurement, a technique that reappears in other plays in the genre. Frye (1949, pp. 70–3) begins his argument by telling us what the play is not: it is not Aristotelian and realistic like Menander’s, nor Platonic and dialectic like Aristophanes’, nor Thomist and sacramental like Dante’s, but a fourth kind. Frye calls it an Elizabethan kind, and if (p. 72) this world of fairies, dreams, disembodied souls, and pastoral lovers may not be a real world, . . . there is something equally illusory in the stumbling and blinded follies of the normal world of Theseus. Sh. makes each world seem unreal when seen by the light of the other. He uses freely both the heroic triumph of New Comedy and the ritual resurrection of its predecessor, but his distinctive comic resolution is different from either: it is a de-[73]tachment of the spirit born of this reciprocal reflection of two illusory realities. According to Phialas (1966, pp. xiii–xiv, 106), in outline [romantic comedy] follows the form of Menandrine comedy. It is non-satiric although . . . satire as a device is indispensable to it. . . . That structure deals with a love story which, though for a time frustrated, is in the end brought to a happy conclusion. And it nearly always includes a secondary action of strife and conflict which impinges upon and obstructs the love story but which is likewise happily resolved before the end of the play. . . . Only in the romantic comedies is the love story at the center of the action. One particular distinction of these plays is the (p. xiv) interior conflict, a frustration or opposition coming from the lovers themselves which causes in the resolution an adjustment of attitudes to love. Central to romantic comedy (p. 106) is the rational or judicious, we might call it the ideal, attitude towards love in a world at once of dreams and diurnal drudgery. MND has such traits.

Shaaber (1970, pp. 166–7, 171–2) deplores the use of romantic comedy as an omnibus term. MND is one of just five plays which are truly comic (with LLL, Ado, AYL, TN). The point is that these plays are romantic comedies in a different sense of the term from that in which [TGV] and [AWW] are romantic comedies, that romantic comedy is so far a misleading term for them that anti-romantic comedy would be no worse, that these plays involve a comic view of life. The plays concern the quest of love, but (p. 167) even at the level of plot, the love story is not seen exclusively in the bright hues of romance. For example, in [MND] the lovers are confused, baffled, set at loggerheads until a moment before the end, when they are satisfactorily re-sorted in a fashion almost perfunctory. Love is inflicted on Titania as a punishment. Pointing out that (p. 171) in the sixteenth century, romantic love was still chiefly a literary convention, he suggests that the emphasis on romance is ours. (P. 172): In other words, when we call these plays romantic comedies, the stress is on the noun rather than the adjective. And in fact—what should be no surprise at all—the comic view of life in these plays is largely a comic view of love, which comes in for a great amount of disparagement.

Other

There are always deviations from the well-trod paths, some far-fetched, some at least interesting. Wölffel (1852, p. 153) calls the play a picture since he can hardly call it a plot (Ger.), Sherman (1902, p. 287) an incident play, Moulton (1903, p. 342) a Comedy of Situation and Enchantment, Snider (1922, p. 377) a comedy of intrigue, Champion (1970, p. 47) a situation comedy. Granville-Barker (1922; 1969, p. 225) comments: This is less a play, in the sense that we call Rosmersholm a play, than a musical symphony. The characterization will not repay very prolonged analysis. It can best be vivified and elaborated by the contrasting to eye and ear of individual with individual and group with group. Then the passing and repassing from the lyric to the dramatic mood has to be carefully judged and provided for. To hold an audience to the end entranced with the play’s beauty one depends much upon the right changing of tune and time, and the shifting of key from scene to scene and from speech to speech. From the time, for instance, when Puck’s and Oberon’s bungling with the love juice begins to take effect the action quickens and becomes more and more confused, the changes of tune and time come more frequently, more and more suddenly. But the greater the effect of speed that you want the less haste you must make over it, the more the effect of confusion the clearer cut must your changes be. And all the time it must all be delightful to listen to, musical, with each change in a definite and purposeful relation to what went before, to what will come after. Hugo (1864; tr. 1937, p. 383) writes of fancy,—arabesque work. The arabesque in art is the same phenomenon as vegetation in nature. The arabesque grows, increases, knots, exfoliates, multiplies, becomes green, blooms, branches, and creeps around every dream. . . . [I]t has a strange power of extension and aggrandizement; . . . and if you mix the human figure with these entangled branches, the ensemble makes you giddy; it is striking. Behind the arabesque, and through its openings, all philosophy can be seen; vegetation lives; man becomes pantheist; a combination of infinite takes place in the finite; and before such work, in which are found the impossible and the true, the human soul trembles with an emotion obscure yet supreme.

For all this, the edifice ought not to be overrun by vegetation, nor the drama by arabesque. Fränkel (1897, p. 374) thinks of MND as a folk play (Ger.), Matthews (1913, p. 79), Hearn (1928, p. 86), and Cecil (1957, p. 52) as a fairy tale or fairy drama. Sen Gupta (1950, pp. 60–2) contends that Sh. has evolved something new; (p. 62) romance merges into symbolist drama portraying (p. 61) attitude[s] to love and life.

There are numerous other brief descriptions of the play’s nature. It has been called dream drama by Hudson (ed. 1910, p. xi), escape literature by Stevenson (1946, p. 6), an allegory of romantic love as viewed by a Renaissance playwright by Hunt (1954, p. 45), an epithalamium for one of two contemporary weddings by Bridges-Adams (1957, p. 177), a magnificent charade for a wedding night by Harwood (1964, p. 31), and a comedy of manners commenting realistically on contemporary life by Draper (1961, pp. 9–10). To Campbell (in Campbell, Rothschild, & Vaughan, ed. 1965, p. 2) it is a perfunctory treatment of the errors motif of Latin farce. Guthrie (ed. 1954, p. 15) and Styan (1967, p. 159) think of it as Artificial Comedy with, Guthrie adds, the intention not of telling the truth but of drawing attention to its own artificial and symmetrical design. Robinson (1968, pp. 380, 383) considers the play comedy as ritual because of its magical context, and as argument, . . . as rhetoric in its dissection of love. Thus it combines the faith of ritual with the understanding of rhetoric. In 1919 Lawrence (1919, p. 450) proposed the theory that MND, a parody of Histriomastix, was designed primarily as a nocturnal, a genre he defines in 1927: the nocturnal is a (p. 133) species of comedy, either rustic or urban, presenting an unbroken sequence of more or less complicated night scenes, and monopolising . . . at least one entire act of the play [sic]. He points out (1927, p. 138) that we have no records of court wedding plays until 1614, but that in the late 1590s there was a vogue of nocturnals. The nocturnal was evolved by the Admiral’s Men according to Reese (1953, p. 219), and the Chamberlain’s answered with MND and the Merry Devil of Edmonton.

Fusion of Types

Other critics describe MND as a fusion of genres. Bonazza (1966, p. 11) tells us that for the first time Sh. adds richness of atmosphere to ingredients with which he had experimented earlier—the changes of identity of Plautine comedy, the elegance and beauty of language of court comedy, the parodying subplot of Lyly, and the complicated romantic plot of the Sidney-Greene school of romance rendered acceptable on the stage by an agreeable dramatic climate of his own devising. Doran (1966, p. 75) says that the materials of the play are blended into a mixture of high comedy and low, romance and farce, fun and fantasy, dream and reality, poetry and prose, and Weil (1966, pp. 3–4) finds all the elements of Shn. comedy here in their [4] most extreme form: the farce is more farcical, the fantasy more fantastic, the relation to ordinary life even slighter and more tenuous than in the others. Evans (ed. 1973, p. 50), pointing out Sh.’s fondness for mixing genres, concludes that the play is a rare composite of farce (the lovers in the woods), fantasy (the fairies), romantic comedy (the multiple love themes), classical romance (Theseus and Hippolyta), burlesque (the tragical mirth of Bottom’s play), and masque (the play as a whole, [MND], staged within the frame of a wedding celebration). Calderwood (1992, p. xxv): the play is a blend of Graeco-Roman New Comedy and native English festive forms filtered through Lyly and seasoned with Ovid. Peterson (1995, pp. 37–9) claims that MND’s compositional schema is one Sh. will use throughout his career. The play opens and closes with the threat/suggestion of death. The threats frame an action which is (p. 38) playful and even farcical in a setting where the laws of verisimilitude and probability, along with clocktime itself, have been set aside. The frame action involving Theseus and Hippolyta presents problems . . . of the kind that touch our own lives, whereas the enframed fictions are ludic,; they are games of make-believe which the audience is invited to join as a way of escaping temporarily from the very kinds of problems with which the enframing fictions invite the audience to identify. . . . [39] The result . . . is a play which really consists of two plays in one: one which is mimetic, involving dangers to life and inviting audience identification and empathy; and another which is ludic, devoted to the improbable and offering the audience an interval of fun in which to escape for a time the problems that engage us all.

Themes and Significance

General Comments

Fender (1968, p. 61) warns us that the real meaning of [MND] is that no one meaning can be extracted from the puzzles with which a fiction presents its audience. Bilton (1974, p. 102): The question of whether commentary states the theme or central idea in a play seems fruitless in relation to the comedies. They unfold and establish whole comprehensive sets of values, genial outlooks on life, in the assertion of which we feel content. Speeches may seem to point to central concepts: Theseus on art and illusion. . . . But these never illuminate more than corners of the whole. Scragg (1982, p. 75), however, detects multiple themes, and in the Bottom-Titania episode the themes of the play coalesce. There is a concern with the nature of love, and other strands which are drawn together . . . [include] role playing, mutation, and the relationship between the human and the divine.

Some commentators are content with considering the play’s observations on human nature. Schelling (1927, p. 15), for example, pictures Sh. laughing at you over his little pigmies, the fairies, and wondering if we human pigmies are any bigger, any wiser, any less hopelessly self-centered. Potts (1949; 1960, p. 26) finds a profound revelation of human nature: of the paradox [exemplified by Bottom and Titania] by which extreme fastidious refinement exists in us side by side with the vulgarest fleshly processes and propensities. Slights (1988, pp. 262, 268) argues that what makes asses of us all, including the characters in A Dream, is announcing that we possess the sole, uncontestable truth, particularly about an area of experience as unstable as the one Shakespeare dramatizes in this play. . . . [268] Shakespeare poses as a problem for his fictional persons as well as his would-be understanders outside the play, the proposition that any attempt to make something firmly one’s own, whether it be a changeling boy, an eligible bachelor, or a unique interpretation of a text, is to expose the vaguely ridiculous limitations of the human condition. Hollindale (1992, pp. 28–9): The play is deeply concerned with opposites and polarities. Many of these are not mere accidents of plot, or formal contrasts of ideas, but opposites and contradictions which exist in human nature, and which humanity seeks to resolve most particularly [29] through the institution of marriage. Greenfield (1968, pp. 236, 238) links MND and its world with The Praise of Folly. Folly is (p. 238) inherent in various human experiences in both works as indicated by references to revels, the stage, and the moon, and emblematically figured forth in the ancient motif of the ass’s ears. Similarly Dusinberre (1975, p. 154). Hassel (1980, pp. 52, 54): Passages from St. Paul’s Epistles and Erasmus’s The Praise of Folie further intensify our understanding of the Christian dimensions of Shakespeare’s comic vision. In vastly different ways, Bottom, the lovers, and Theseus all invite the audience . . . to connect Pauline and Erasmian paradoxes about the divine madness of religious faith to the analogous follies of romantic faith and the imaginative experience. . . . A celebration of human limitation becomes the necessary precursor to comic happiness. (P. 54): He cites also 1 Cor. 2:9, 2 Cor. 12:1–6.

Human limitations are the focus of Phialas (1966, p. 122), who says of the fairies: Their natures and their actions can have meaning only if they remain just beyond human understanding: one of their chief functions is to point to the limitations of that understanding. Similarly Allen (1967, p. 109). Sanders (ed. 1971, p. 20) describes what much of the play has been suggesting: the fragility of the dividing-line between the illusory and the real, the partial knowledge of the truth that any human being can hope to possess, the necessity for constant readjustment by all members of a society, the closeness of sleep and waking, the dangers of imaginative excess, the limitations of rational comprehension, the precariousness of human happiness, and the need for charity in all men.

Natural forces, sometimes associated with the fairies, interest some critics. Lanier (1902, pp. 262–3) contends that in MND clearly man is the sport of vague, unseen powers, of the powers of Nature. . . . There is a sense of the word Nature in which it means exactly the supernatural, . . . and here . . . the powers of [263] Nature are playing with man as the supernatural, sometimes crossing him, sometimes blessing him, but with no reason or order in either cross or blessing. The logical outcome of it, here, is simply chance in the form of Oberon, Puck, and Titania. For support of this view see McDonald (ed. 2000, p. xxxviii). Matthäi (1965, p. 108), Siegel (1968, p. 188), and Robinson (1968, p. 388) contend that nature has a healing power through the fairies which restores order. Phillips (ed. 1969, p. 22): An important theme of the play is the natural world of seasons and weather and growth. . . . We are very close in this play to the countryside and to nature in all its aspects—personified, almost, in Oberon and Titania, the weather-makers whose symbolic disagreement disrupts crops and seasons. Vlasopolos (1978, p. 21): The play, like the ritual which informs its structure, maintains a dual frame of reference, Christian and pagan. . . . The lovers’ progression from the night of misrule to the light of the holy day parallels the pagan nature of the Midsummer festival and its Christian conclusion. The fertility rite of Midsummer Eve draws the lovers at last into harmony with each other and with the natural world. The dawn of Saint John’s Day brings about the lovers’ integration into society and into the community of religion which sanctifies their union, assuring them and their issue a permanence beyond that of generation. Wiles (1998, pp. 76–7) links those forces with the three festivals of Saint Valentine’s day, May Day and Midsummer. . . . [77] They reflect symbolically three phases in the life cycle of a young person: mate selection, courtship and marriage. . . . Calendar festivals provided Shakespeare and his audience(s) with a symbolic vocabulary which allowed them to relate the phases of an individual life to laws of nature inscribed in the cosmos. Also commenting on the forces of nature in the play are Thompson (2001, p. 22), Leggatt (1974, pp. 106–7, 110), Bush (1956, p. 26).

Friendship

A few people single out friendship for comment. Preston (1869, p. 166) notices how much higher friendship stands in Shakespeare’s estimation than love. The former feeling is always dwelt upon in terms of respect and admiration. The latter feeling is ushered in as if regarded half-contemptuously, half-tenderly. The language of friendship is constant. See also König (1873, p. 205) and Brink (1878, p. 102). Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 20) sees a link with TGV because both deal with the conflict . . . of the rival claims of love and friendship. Similarly Hamilton (1967, pp. 218–19), Kellner (1900, p. 40), Baldwin (1959, p. 482), Sorelius (1993, p. 172), and Beiner (1993, p. 277 n. 44). Holland (ed. 1994, p. 64) calls the bond between Helena and Hermia a strength of friendship that the men have never had, other than in clubbability in Act 5. Similarly Halio (2003, p. 62). Leggatt (1999, pp. 56–7) finds the friendship of Titania and her votaress moving and deep. For Titania the votaress is something rich and strange, not just a repetition of herself. . . . What Helena describes is not so much affection or relationship as cloning. The Helena-Hermia friendship is schoolgirl friendship which Helena uses (p. 57) as a way of making Hermia feel guilty. . . . The mutual accusations of the forest are already latent in Athens; and Helena herself is already guilty of betraying friendship for the sake of love. DiGangi (2003, pp. 96–7) talks about the destructive rivalry between Hermia and Helena over Lysander and Demetrius. If the formation of new conjugal households sunders the friendship of Hermia and Helena and renders them silent throughout the last scene of the play, it solders the friendship of Demetrius and Lysander and reconciles them to Theseus.

Power and Authority, Familial and Political

Among those who focus on the father-daughter conflict, majority opinion favors Hermia. Craig (ed. 1951, p. 183) mentions the theme . . . of the willful and disobedient daughter who would choose her own husband, but he thinks Sh. sympathized with true love. Toliver (1971, p. 85): Egeus would not countenance nonfilial love which threatens authority. Yet the ancient privilege [49] that he defends offers no genuine social bond, only protection for vested interest. . . . But the fathers’ claims to original, definitive power as creators of social form is [sic] undermined by prior claims, and love proves in time to be more profoundly formative. Agreeing are Zimbardo (1972, p. 44); Pickering (1985, p. 37); Richmond (1985, p. 54); Sagar (1995, p. 38); Calderwood (1991, p. 426); Treadwell (1991, pp. 25–6), who thinks all is reversed at the end, (p. 26) suggest[ing] that Athens itself is now a different kind of place, its ruler no longer at the service of a repressive older order identified with sterility and death, but now the champion of youth, festivity and love. Dreher (1986, p. 62): The very difficulties the father presents strengthen the love of the young couple. The father’s possessive love for his daughter forces the couple to undergo a trial by ordeal, which builds a relationship out of initial infatuation. Bassnett (1993, pp. 70–1) concludes that the fathers (p. 71) are personifications of authority in decay and the younger generation, in rebelling against their parents, does not seek anarchy, but rather seeks to assert a new system of values, firmly rooted in a wider, more humanitarian vision of the world. Pask (2003, p. 180): Shakespeare’s elevation of love over the authority of the father evokes the wish-fulfilment which characterized, according to Andrew Gurr [Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1996, pp. 151–8], the early popularity of Shakespeare’s company, especially with the Inns of Court students—but also, presumably, with the young ladies increasingly present in the West End. DiGangi (2003, pp. 95–6): Against the power of . . . masculinist ideology, Hermia’s assertion of autonomy is all the more shocking. Instructed that she must marry Demetrius, be executed, or live cloistered . . . , Hermia translates this enforced decision into an exertion of self-mastery. [Quotes 88–91.] Evoking the notion of consent, Shakespeare engages on Hermia’s behalf the contemporary debate over spousal choice. . . . [96] The marriage with the greatest chance of success combined the child’s submission to the parents’ judgment with the parents’ acknowledgment of the child’s emotional needs.

Hermia challenges the orthodox Protestant discourse on marriage not only by denying her father’s foresight in approving a partner, but also by rejecting Theseus’ punitive construction of life-long virginity as a state equivalent to death. . . . That Hermia could prefer such an anemic existence to married life makes available the subversive knowledge that the institution of marriage, not simply enforced marriage, places an unwishèd yoke [90] upon women. Of course, what Hermia demands is not the right to remain a virgin but the right to choose the husband to whom she will grant sovereignty [91] over her body.

Kavanagh (1985, p. 153) is not sympathetic, citing Theseus’s warning to Hermia about obedience to the father. With her escape to the forest, we see the consequences of a world in which everyone follows their own desires. Kavanagh contrasts Hippolyta’s submission to Titania’s resistance and the ensuing battle for phallic and political power. The image of Titania chasing an ass [is] an all too apt image of a world in which, no longer ruled by the voice of the Father/King, one is all the more capriciously ruled by the power of one’s passions. Others looking at the conflict include Ravich (1964, p. 405); Díaz García (1983, pp. 51–80), who argues that the play endorses the patriarchal system (Sp.); McGuire (1988, pp. 178–80; 1989, pp. 104–5); Bate (1993, pp. 130, 133); Rutter (2003, pp. 1–2), who compares MND to Tit.; Sinfield (2003, pp. 68–75), who compares it to TNK.

Related to the father-daughter conflict is the theme of the unruly woman tamed. Weld (1975, p. 193): Hippolyta as queen of the Amazons was the archetype of all women uncontrolled by men, in the common allegory, the passionate will uncontrolled by reason. Theseus’s conquest was a psychomachia. She is tamed now, like Katherine. The mind’s order is restored. Montrose (1983, pp. 67–8, 75): The diachronic structure of [MND] eventually restores the inverted Amazonian system of gender and nurture to a patriarchal norm. First, though, comes unruly Hermia. Theseus would assume power over her body, but (p. 68) her own words suggest that the female body is a supreme form of property and a locus for the contestation of authority. The self-possession of single blessedness is a form of power against which are opposed the marriage doctrines of Shakespeare’s culture and the very form of his comedy. (P. 75): It is in its intermittent ironies, dissonances, and contradictions that the text of [MND] discloses—perhaps, in a sense, despite itself—that patriarchal norms are compensatory for the vulnerability of men to the powers of women. See also the question of sovereignty in marriage, here.

Some critics highlight a conflict between the individual and/or nature and society and its norms—as Fisher (1957, p. 308) puts it, the conflict between natural desire and social custom. See also Godshalk (1973) below, here, Wells (1985, p. 54). Robinson (1968, pp. 384–5) emphasizes Theseus’s dual role not only in relating and assimilating the two contexts of nature and society but in reconciling the dual condition of the social world—the holiday mood and the obligation to observe the standards of custom and law.

Engle (1993, p. 227) sees ongoing development of the conflict between official power and the individual. Arnold (1998, pp. 6, 8, 10, 14–16) focuses on the impediment to individual happiness in the law. Theseus’s stance as ruler grows out of contemporary tensions since Sh. emplots the conflict between a sovereign ruler and a sovereign legal code. Elizabeth had asked whether her authority derived from law, consent of the governed, or God, and Bacon, in 1601, (p. 10) remind[ed] his fellow MPs that Elizabeth’s prerogative allowed her to set at liberty things which be restrained by statute law or otherwise and to restrain things which be at liberty (D’Ewes [, Simonds. The Journal of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth . . . . Ln., 1682; rpt. facsimile ed., Shannon, 1973], 644). Egeus’s (p. 14) ancient privilege [49] impinges on Theseus’s political hegemony in Athens. At the crucial moment in the woods (p. 15) the Duke suddenly asserts transcendent authority over those rights and the law that guarantees them. . . . Unable even to extenuate the law in the normal world of Athens, Theseus finds that he can utterly ignore it in the green world of the woods. But the play (p. 16) figure[s] the ruler’s assertion of unimpaired power as a comic fantasy. Kernan (1975, p. 317): The flight to the woods was necessary to break the over-restrictive control of laws grown cruel and unnatural, . . . but it is only in Athens, where they duly return to be married . . . that the needs for orderliness can be adjusted to natural impulses to provide a satisfactory human life. To achieve this order and rule of law requires, however, the blanking out of the world perceived by the imagination of lover and poet in favour of a world almost exclusively rational.

According to Dash (1997, pp. 67, 106) this play reveals how power, particularly political power, impinges on and shapes women’s lives. (P. 106): Shakespeare’s portraits of women here raise questions about the validity of the political and social structures that limit women’s actions. Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. xxvii) advise vividly set[ting] up the male dominance theme, . . . the core of this play. . . . It’s important . . . that there is some kind of a . . . context which is set up visually and theatrically to indicate that these Amazons serve Diana, the moon goddess, and they are dealing with a highly patriarchal, macho society which has no room for any of the feminine virtues, the humane qualities. Arguing that the old order must change is White (1970, pp. 49–50, 52, 61).

Some recent critics think the status quo prevails in the play. Hackett (1997, pp. 15–16, 25, 28) sees the play as endorsing male supremacy, and Findlay (1997, p. 15) laments that the significant threat to patriarchal authority . . . represented by Hippolyta and Titania, and behind them Queen Elizabeth I . . . is finally suppressed in the fantasy world of the play.

Others disagree. Lowenthal (1996, pp. 79–80, 82–3): The duke supplants the ancient regime based on the power of fathers, from which the law to which Egeus appeals is derived, with a regime based on voluntary love and individual consent. The coming of the new principle is foreshadowed by the atmosphere of equality already present in Theseus’s court, his manner toward the common [80] people, and the equality between the sexes already prevailing among the lovers. (P. 82): The rule of fathers . . . gives authority to fathers as such rather than to wise fathers, thus deriving it from the loins rather than the mind. Since (p. 83) it denies any place to a love between the sexes that is independent of paternal command, [it] lay[s] an infirm basis for marriage. Desmet (1998, p. 314–25): As characters inscribed within a patriarchal history, Hermia and Helena are figures of prosopopoeia. They speak in order to further a [315] masterplot that ends with multiple marriages and the social regulation of aberrant individuals. . . . Their voices combine in a different musical confusion [1631] to revise the rationalist ethics of Theseus. (P. 317): Titania functions as the voice of ethical commitment in [MND]. . . . The dispute between Oberon and Titania mirrors in reverse that between Hermia and Egeus. . . . The two plots merge to offer a unified defense of female sexual sovereignty, the woman’s rights over her own body and soul.

Stavig (1995, pp. 10, 15) does not see a clear outcome. Sh. hunts ironies and ambiguities that encourage diversity of analysis and response. . . . His analogical approach helps redefine the relationships of marriage and the family and of social and political structures. From a modern perspective he helps deconstruct the forms of an excessively patriarchal society, but attention to the patterns of metaphor in the plays suggests that what Shakespeare actually does is valorize the feminine polarity of an older gender system based ultimately on the natural world. (P. 15): His balanced approach may suggest a point of view but allows considerable diversity of response. Mangan (1996, pp. 175–6) contends that the play’s ending is inconclusive about whether the lovers return from the woods (p. 176) reconciled with their own newly harmonious society or whether the play is a collaboration with ruling-class power, in which the subconscious patterns of the wood merely reiterate and endorse the patriarchal patterns of the civic world, and the Athenian artisans who dare to emulate high culture are mocked out of court by the insensitive male courtiers whose new brides sit dumbly by. Kim (2004, p. 124): What are remarkable in this scenario of Jack having Jill . . . are the facts that Hermia herself picks her man against all odds and that Helena pursues her love, Demitrius [sic], despite his patent misogyny. With Jill having her Jack, the play at once endorses and undermines the system of patriarchy.

Some commentators notice a revision or tempering of authority. Tennenhouse (1985, pp. 111–12): Authority has grown archaic and a more inclusive order is needed for a comic resolution, an alternative to patriarchal law. Theseus, (p. 112) by situating them within the framework of festival and art, condones the inversions of power relations. When Theseus overrules the angry father, juridical power can no longer be identified with patriarchal power. A new set of political conditions appears where competing bases for authority are held in equipoise by the Duke. At the same time disorder ultimately authorizes political authority, albeit an authority distinct from patriarchal or punitive authority. Walch (1988, p. 92): Theseus sees himself through Egeus confronted with a problem of power. In the course of the entire comedy there are inversions of gender, age, even species, which threaten and question the Elizabethan order. When he comes upon the lovers in the forest, he shows the ability not to use power ignorantly or in his own paternalistic interest but flexibly in the interest of an expanded aristocratic society. He can react productively to the existing social-historical power constellation and the changes in it and at the same time insure his influence upon it (Ger.).

A few commentators find the problem and the solution within the lovers. Fender (1968, p. 33): Inexorably the characters in the wood are forced to come to terms with forces within themselves which they never knew existed and in the process to disregard old social, verbal and fictional formulae which are no longer adequate to deal with their new insights. Wells (1985, pp. 54, 57–8): The play is concerned with the contradiction between social power and the contingent, unmanageable force of passion. The lovers express their individuality in choosing a beloved. (P. 57): The second disturbance to the play’s initial equilibrium concerns the relations between power and passion. The play begins . . . [58] by presenting love as a relatively unproblematic relation thwarted by the external violence of state and patriarchy. . . . But the lovers soon face difficulties more intimate than differences of blood or years, family opposition, or the chances of war, death, and sickness. Their wanderings in the wood demonstrate that violence is not simply an external threat: it was always a possibility in their relations with each other. See also the question of sovereignty in marriage, below, here.

Love, Marriage, Procreation

Although Bryant (1986, p. 63) announces that there is no suggestion anywhere in the play that love can be differentiated into kinds, critics do identify varieties of love. Iyengar (1964, p. 166) points out that Sh. presents all love’s manifestations—all love’s vagaries, love’s little ironies, love as poetry and dreaming and lunacy, love as prose and practicality and as the mere business of wiving—all are recapitulated and bodied forth in a variety of lovers ranging from the diminutive creatures of the upper air . . . to the down-to-earth realists like Bully Bottom. Pickering (1985, p. 5) adds that MND deals with a number of very adult issues which are as central to our experience and as relevant to the moment as they were when the play was first written. Questions concerning sexual attraction and love, the interference of parents in love affairs and the nature of marriage dominate much of the action.

The range of kinds and effects is wide. Gordon (ed. 1910, pp. v, xvii) mentions the contrast between the theme of Love, Youth, and Fantasy and the (p. xvii) stately pomp of love at the palace, Halio (2003, pp. x, 51–2) between romantic and mature love, Comtois (1985, p. 16) between those who master and those who are mastered by love. Maginn (1856, p. 100) focuses on Titania and the folly of mismatched love. Weiss (1876, p. 109) finds in the mechanicals’ good faith . . . a claim that humble love may have its fortunes too, as well as that of the proud and over-conscious dames who have been roaming through the woods, sick with fancies. Smith (1940, p. 11) adds the ephemeral love of the fairies with their petty quarrels and reconciliations, Crouch (1974, p. 423) the self-love, the great comic vice of vanity, . . . always lurking in the royal breast of an Oberon or in the puffed chest of a Bottom. Scragg (1988, pp. 95–7): On the most superficial level, [MND] presents an anatomy (or analysis of the nature) of love. Theseus and Hippolyta are a sexually experienced couple, while the young lovers form a contrast, in every respect, with the royal couple. They are young, sexually inexperienced, passionate, and wholly opposed to the sovereignty of reason in amatory affairs. . . . The lack of rationality implicit in the relationship between Bottom and Titania represents a [96] heightened version of the repudiation of the sovereignty of reason in love by Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander, while the conduct of both groups is linked with that of the youthful Theseus by Oberon’s account of Titania’s role in the Duke’s previous amorous adventures. [Quotes 452–5] . . . Rape constitutes the ultimate rejection of reason in love, and it is a potentiality of all the play’s amatory relationships. Theseus declares that he woo’d Hippolyta with his sword and won her love by doing her injuries [20–1]; Demetrius suggests he might rape Helena in the wood [593–8]; while Titania has her lover’s tongue tied up, and comments upon enforced chastity [1019–20]. The play thus represents the entire spectrum of love from affection to ungoverned appetite, and presents a diversity of lovers ranging from immortals to bestial human beings. . . . [97] Viewed with sufficient detachment, human passions are ridiculous in the extreme, and the play-within-the-play allows the audience to see love from this perspective. Belsey (1993, pp. 182, 186): Possibly Bottom is right, the play suggests, not to pin down anything so multiple, not to encapsulate love in a neat definition that would encourage us to measure our own and other people’s experience and find it normal or abnormal, mature or immature, wise or foolish. The play’s device, on the contrary, is to dramatize the plurality of love by characterizing it differently in a range of distinct voices. (P. 186): None of the distinct voices in the play—romantic, lyrical, or urgent—seems to exhaust the character of love; none of them can be identified with true love as opposed to false. Nor does any of them summarize the nature of love.

Ulrici (1868–9; tr. 1876, p. 73) first mentions as the main theme the illusion into which men are thrown by love, the poetry of life, which here holds captive the senses of the dramatic personages as if by some irresistable charm. Montégut (ed. 1867, 1:277): although Sh. knew the errors of love and called them by their true name, illusions and untruths, he cherished them and was enchanted by their poetry (Fr.). Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, p. 77): It is only the romantic and imaginative side of love that is here displayed, the magic whereby longing transmutes and idealises its object, the element of folly, infatuation, and illusion in desire, with its consequent variability and transitoriness. Similarly Simpson (1868, pp. 28–9); Schanzer (1951, p. 234), who differentiates between romantic love, to which Sh. is sympathetic, and love engendered in the imagination. The soliloquy on love’s blindness [246–55] becomes a formal prologue to the play, according to Hamilton (1967, p. 222), and agreeing are Richer (1974, p. 8); Brownlow (1977, p. 210); Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:268, 300); Hense (1851, pp. 44–6, 81); and Fender (1968, p. 24), who qualifies condemnation of the blindness since the fact that love can change the ugly into the beautiful, while absurd, . . . can be seen as an act of almost divine creativity, the means by which fallen nature can be redeemed, however incompletely and for however short a time, which is analagous to the art of poetry.

Girardin (1855, 3:294) considers the theme fickle and light love (Fr.), as do Furnivall (ed. 1877, p. xxvii) and Brewer (1975, p. 124). Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:425) remarks that the characters are motivated by caprice (similarly Horwood [ed. 1939, pp. 17, 19]), and Mézières (1860; 1865, p. 437) chooses Puck’s Lord, what fools these mortals be! (1139), calling Puck Sh.’s mouthpiece who utters, in regard to love, the shrewd and mild irony of his youth (Fr.). Holzknecht & McClure (ed. 1937, 2:192): Rom. and MND are contrasting treatments of similar themes. The comic view is something like the point of view of Mercutio, to whom love is not an integral part of life, but an amusing disturbance and a kind of lunacy in the brain. In both plays, lovers are beings of strange caprices, at odds with the established order of things, rebellious against parental control, disregardful of the claims of friendship, and inconstant even to their own vows. But whereas in the tragedy violent delights have violent ends [Rom. (2.6.9 [1401])], in the comedy love is at once lawless and laughable, and the best commentary upon its perplexities is the Puck’s [1139]. Also choosing Puck’s words are Walter (ed. 1964, p. 13), Robinson (1968, p. 386), Dusinberre (1975, p. 154). Shaaber (1970, pp. 172–3) argues that in the comedies from first to last, love is treated to a steady shower of badinage which points up not its ecstasy but its folly. Love leads to happiness, but only through a series of freakish mischances. And the happiness is not heaped up full and overflowing after the common fashion of romantic story; its complexion is a little mottled. He cites MND in which we hear that the course of true love never did run smooth [144] . . . together with much other complaint about love’s capriciousness. Similarly Rudd (1979, p. 189).

Love in MND is often seen as irrational and unpredictable. In a comment on 1796 ff. Sievers (1866, p. 274) concludes that in placing such words in the mouth of the character of highest standing, Sh. suggests that love is fantasy and a kind of lunacy, like poetry, unconcerned with morality and obligation (Ger.). Brown (1957, p. 90): The play suggests that lovers . . . have their own truth . . . , and that they are confident in this truth for, although it seems the silliest stuff [2014] to an outsider, to them it is quite reasonable. Richmond (1966, pp. 151–2): Love of a conventional kind often appears in Shakespeare as pathological: almost a kind of sinister and even perverse mental disease, rotting the personalities of its victims. . . . [152] On every level, until the final happy conclusion, love pursues an object incompatible with the facts of life and repulses that which is easy and accessible. . . . It appears that Oberon’s elixir is only the symbol of love’s arbitrariness and Puck the epitome of its willful, not to say mischievous, operation. Bierwirth (1974, p. 71), commenting on the comedies’ chief theme, says that fancy and love . . . are identical insofar as both are able to bring forth something unheard of, as both can give it a shape. But: Both are at the same time equally close to madness and destruction. He cites 1796–1809 in support of his statement. Others seeing love as irrational or unpredictable or illogical include Hirsch (1896, p. 32), Krauss (1876, pp. 228–30), Furnivall (ed. 1877, p. xxvii), Tobler (1898, p. 159), Bowden (1899, p. 259), Eichhoff (1903, p. 106), Herford (ed. 1899, 1:307), Raleigh (1907, p. 160), Wolff (1907; 1926, 1:337 ff.), Bradley (1909, pp. 325–6), Gaehde (1931, p. 240), Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 132), Reyher (1947, pp. 58 ff.), Castelain (ed. 1943, pp. 26–7), Croce (1919; 1948, p. 44), Pettet (1949. pp. 110, 113–14), Stauffer (1949; 1966, pp. 50–1), Pogson (1950, pp. 2, 75–6), Sen Gupta (1950, p. 62), Nicoll (1952, p. 104), Schanzer (Moon, 1955, pp. 238, 241), Bonnard (1956, p. 274), Bullough (1957, pp. 367, 370), Hammerle (Laubenmotiv, 1953, p. 312), Doran (ed. 1959, pp. 15, 22), Quennell (1963, p. 169), Rowse (1963, p. 211), Talbert (1963, p. 260), Campbell (in Campbell, Rothschild, & Vaughan, ed. 1965, p. 1), Muir (1965, p. 5), Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. xiv), Wells (ed. 1967, p. 22), Lyons (1971, p. 107), Berry (1972, p. 107), Turner (1974, p. 171), Ansari (1978, p. 45), Goldstein (1981, p. 321), Warren (1983, p. 12), White (1985, p. 44), Weller (1985, p. 73), Berryman (1987, p. 53), Flint (1991, p. 11), Hyland (1996, p. 148), Honan (1998, pp. 213–14), McDonald (ed. 2000, p. xxxix). Subscribing specifically to Bottom’s Reason and love keep little company together now-a-days [960–1] are Lawton (1953, p. 204), Eckhoff (1954, pp. 7, 9), Olson (1957, p. 114), Stockton (1964, p. 170), Robinson (1968, p. 386), Neubauer (1970, p. 47), Ormerod (1978, p. 42), Lamb (1979, p. 481), Black (1982, p. 54).

The folly of youthful love is subjected to laughter according to Brooke (1905, p. 9). It is an episode, a growing pain which cannot be avoided, but which will be outgrown with the ending of the salad days, according to Charlton (1933, p. 57). The target is the irresponsibility of young love—Daiches (1960, 1:254), the absurdities of adolescent sexual desire—Muir (1979, p. 9), an inevitable stage in adolescent development, a necessary ritual action youth must perform—Comtois (1985, p. 20). Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 21): love, as interpreted by the comic spirit, is a certain fine lunacy in the brain of youth. . . . The lover . . . is at odds for the time with all the established order of things, a rebel against the authority of parents, a rebel against friendship, a rebel against his own vows. This is love as it figures in comedy, and in the presentation and analysis of this lies the point of [MND]. Richmond (1993, p. 257): if the lovers’ plot is acted alone [138–265, 567–623, 687–717, 738–811, 1064–1110, 1147–1384, 1441–2, 1447–9, 1457–64, 1472–84, 1491–96, 1712–20], the resulting effect is one of total naturalism, devoid of any fairy intervention to provide an explanation for the willful gyrations and unstable affections of the adolescents other than the volatility of the characters themselves. Also detailing the vagaries of young love are Cunliffe (ed. 1912, p. xvi), Muir (1972, p. 49), White (1985, p. 43), Barkan (1986, p. 258), Christopher (1996, pp. 10–14).

A few critics comment on the affectations of young lovers, both real and fictional. Reese (ed. 1970, p. 9): Sh. found comedy in the contemporary attitude to love. . . . It naturally led to a good deal of affectation, and it is this artificial amorousness that Shakespeare gently satirizes. . . . He examines the true condition of people who make these extravagant protestations and amiably reveals them for the fools they are. . . . The lovers awake to a more sensible attitude to life, convinced that they have merely experienced a transforming dream. Toliver (1971, p. 88): By introducing Bottom, Quince, Snug, Flute, Snout, and Starveling into the forest and the court, Shakespeare . . . allows humorous or rustic pastoral to jostle the romantic business of love and dreams and thus offers a perspective from outside on courtly style—so full of posturing and melodrama. Girard (1987, p. 110): Sh. portrays what happens to adolescents who read too many romances and choose to live in a world of literary imitation. Charney (2000, p. 9): Petrarchan conventions and assumptions such as love at first sight are mockingly explored in [MND].

Critics frequently focus on love’s power over its victims. Bjørnson (1865; tr. 1953, p. 288) issues a warning: Guard your thoughts, guard your passions, you who go so confidently alongside of your loved one. These thoughts can produce a flower called love in idleness [545] that transforms you before you are aware of it! Charlton (1933, pp. 48, 57): MND is the first play in which he showed contemporary man buffetted [sic] by the power felt then to be the primary factor of his existence, his response to the quality and the might of love. (P. 57): Men must love; and their love is power and charter to break all opposing ancient privileges. And love refuses to go hand in hand with reason. Its moods and whims are exempt from all constraint but destiny. Barber (1959, pp. 129–30): The characters experience a drastic helplessness of will and mind and seem tossed about by a force which puts them beside themselves to take them beyond themselves. The change that happens is presented simply, with little suggestion that it involves growth in insight. (P. 130): The comedy’s irony about love’s motives and choices expresses love’s power not as an attribute of special personality but as an impersonal force beyond the persons concerned. Similarly Traversi (1968, 1:142), Barnet (ed. 1972, pp. 37), Huston (1973, p. 218), Mowat & Werstine (ed. 1993, p. xiii), Charney (2000, p. 12). Brinkmann (1964, p. 53) equates the powers of nature with the power of love, which is stronger than human laws (Ger.). Garrison (1994, p. 160): Sexual passion and love drive all the plots of the play and link them together. The love/passion theme . . . unifies the play.

Love’s alternation between misery and ecstasy or the ridiculous and the sublime is frequently emphasized. Shaaber (1964, pp. 118–19) contends that Sh. alone saw, or at least exploited dramatically, the irony in the two [119] aspects of romantic love which is both bliss and madness. Similarly Kott (1964; 1966, p. 236), Rabkin (1966, p. 25), Foster (1975, p. 199), Barbour (1975, p. 528), Lamb (1979, p. 487), Swander (1990, p. 92). Hill (1975, p. 76): The locus classicus for the comic and painful manifestations of love is [MND]. Hermia and Lysander lament such trials as arise from social status, difference of age, enforced and love-less marriage [142–50]. . . . The harmony and blessings which conclude the play cannot erase what it has postulated about love in the inconstancy of Demetrius, the jealous squabblings of Titania and Oberon, and the picture of the ethereal Titania enamoured of the ass-headed Bottom. Lewis (1969, p. 257): The cruel madness, illogical agony, dehumanization, and selfishness of sex is counteracted by the joy of experience, by the gaiety of knowing and overcoming the pitfalls. Love is free and wild in the forest, controlled in the court. We live in the forest only part time, and in society or the court most of the time. The release has taken place but the resolution, never complete, need not be cynicism, but love as lived. But Roberts (1983, p. 115) does detect cynicism; Although the final effect of the play is not so grimly suggestive as the end of the Merchant’s Tale, yet it is not hopeful about honesty and simplicity in love. At best love is momentary as a sound, short as a dream [sic] [153–4], at worst it is perjur’d everywhere [255]. Others seeing the dark or selfish side of love include Hill (1975, p. 78), Bevington (1978, p. 81).

McPeek (1972, p. 78) dwells on sensuality and finds an apt description of the pattern Sh. follows in Adlington’s Preface to his translation of The Golden Ass, in which he concludes that when as we suffer our mindes so to be drowned in the sensuall lusts of the fleshe . . . we leese wholy the use of reason and vertue (which properly should be in a man) & play the partes of bruite and savage beastes (Aii-Aiii). Ormerod (1978, pp. 42, 43): Titania’s precipitate love is explicitly sensuous and sensual. (P. 43): He expands this comment by comparing her blinded passion with that of the Matron of Corinth in The Golden Ass. See Sources, here. Marowitz (1991, pp. 13–14) considers MND a play about forbidden fruits, Boehrer (2002, pp. 48, and passim) about bestiality. The play is a strange amalgam of the moralistic and the salacious since part of the focus is on defining what makes human beings different from animals, what it means to be human. Rosslyn (2004, p. 4) claims that love is . . . what links us with the animal realm. Garber (2004, pp. 228–9): Both on the level of carnality and of social inappropriateness this high/low pairing, queen and donkey, ought to send out danger signals in addition to producing smiles of amusement. And Bottom’s hybrid status—he is not an ass but an ass-headed man—links him with the kind of monstrous creature that fascinated and horrified Elizabethans, a sign . . . of the human capacity to degenerate into an animal state.

On one end of the scale, then, is Titania’s lust for the animal/man Bottom. And on the other side, equally of concern, is the resistance to sexuality and sexual love exhibited by Hermia in the wood. Also, Demetrius has warned Helena not to follow him into the wood, which he explicitly describes to her as a place of wildness and sexual risk.

Taken together, the stories of Titania and Bottom, Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius—and Thisbe and Pyramus—tell a complicated tale about sexual desire. It is a tale that is complicated even further by the list of women, briefly mentioned by Oberon, who were seduced and abandoned by Theseus long ago. . . . [229] The play . . . strikes a careful, though also a playful, balance between cool reason and the dangers of the irrational. And those dangers are everywhere. Wickham (1980, pp. 178–9): Rashly handled . . . sex can lead to those feelings of guilt and revulsion experienced by Titania on awakening to the bestial lasciviousness of her affair with Bottom, (p. 179) or to the disasters that overtook Pyramus and Thisbe. Rationally handled . . . , as the young lovers after their adventures in the wood will come to appreciate, love finds its fulfilment in marriage and children.

Jarfe (2000, p. 75) warns that whoever interprets the nocturnal wondering, the confusions and disagreements arising from the inconstancy of the men, as a sex-orgy is projecting our world of illustrated magazines and media, in which sex assumes a central place, into the world of Shakespearean comedy, and is turning the meaning established in the progress of the play upside down. By no means does that mean that the love existing between the four young persons should be desexualized (Ger.). Walter (ed. 1964, p. 11) takes Oberon’s vision of the triumph of chastity over hot love . . . as a metaphor of the whole play. French (1981, p. 330): In [MND], constancy is a cosmic virtue, a larger purpose containing all human purposes, and triumphant over folly and delusion. . . . It has this semi-divine nature only in women because it symbolizes feminine qualities of harmony, community, tolerance, moral flexibility (within limits), pity, compassion, forgiveness, and loving nutritiveness. Liston (1988, p. 46): Chastity in [MND] is one of the essential values. It is not virginity, but the proper exercise of sexuality within the confines of middle-class marriage. The imagery of the play consistently represents virginity as barren, leading to unhappiness, whereas it always represents chaste sexuality—i.e., married sensuality—as fruitful and a fulfillment of the natural human state, leading to growth and happiness. Similarly Murphy (1988, pp. 28, 33). Bowen (1997, p. 49): The norm within the play is not the maiden coldness associated with Elizabeth, nor is it the libidinous madness associated with Titania and the young Athenians. Rather, the ideal within the play seems to be conjugal chastity, the mean between the two extremes. Liston (1991, pp. 153, 159): Lechery is hardly an issue, but Shakespeare establishes chastity as one of the major issues in the first scene, and certainly it is of central importance to the action in the forest scenes. . . .

C. S. Lewis pointed out some years ago that celibacy and the praise of virginity are Catholic: the honour of the marriage bed is Puritan [Tasso. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge, 1966, p. 117.]. My point is not to assert that Shakespeare was a Puritan, but that chastity is not virginity, and that the Protestant vigorous idealization of marriage is one of the themes of [MND]. (P. 159): For the young lovers, the chaste experiences they have undergone during their night in the forest prefigure something of great constancy [1817] in their marriages; the mature demeanor of both Theseus and Hippolyta implies the same for them.

Milward (1964; 1968, p. 59) says the theme is romantic love (similarly Shaaber [1964, p. 119], Bergeron [1977, p. 167]) and that the play is a comic treatment of Rom. Taylor (1969, p. 269) suggests that romantic love, however mature the lovers, always seems to be excitingly precarious. The term itself suggests passion, which, in turn, suggests fragility and impermanency. While it may lead to the stability of marriage, it may also lead to the lovers’ destruction. Sorelius (1993, p. 171): [MND] like its near-contemporary [Rom.] at the same time celebrates romantic, self-engrossed love and points to its dangers for family and state. Thompson (2001, pp. 19, 23): Thematically, [MND] is primarily a play about romantic love and its progress to the state of marriage. (P. 23): It is the special genius of [MND] to provide audiences the vicarious experience of the confusion, wonder, and mystery that all lovers eventually feel in the dream of romantic love. Similarly Fender (1968, p. 43), Oppen (1999, p. 51). For a history of the concept of romantic love see Snodgrass (1982, pp. 169–71).

The achievement of self-knowledge and maturity, critics argue, must precede true love and lasting marriage. A number of commentators detail a process of self-discovery or ripening and maturing in the characters, especially in the young lovers. Reason eventually prevails, according to some. Charlton (1933, p. 57): Young love’s irrationality passes as the fierce vexation of a dream. [1584] The wise man lets his trial teach him patience; and the doting madness of unhardened youth gone by, he tunes his wedding to another key from that wherein he wooed, changing the feverish intoxication of amorous idolatry for the lasting bond of fellowship in marriage. Similarly Weilgart (1952, p. 34), Lever (ed. 1961, pp. xiv–xv). Cody (1969, p. 131) mentions the blind love theme . . . with Shakespeare inviting his audience to sit . . . . in conscious aesthetic delight at the turning of it into wisdom. Wickham (1969, pp. 182, 189) sees as central . . . a discussion of adolescent attitudes to sex . . . emblematically presented in terms of a forest that is at once hospitable and frightening . . . yet . . . something through which all of us must pass. [Similarly Carroll (1985, p. 143).] He suggests as (p. 189) moral . . . for this gossamer vision of adolescent love, its trials, heart-aches and rewards, . . . the final song in Comus. Similarly Pyle (1998, pp. 200–203 and passim). Beiner (1985, p. 92): In the movement from adolescence to maturity . . . the old loyalties are broken up. . . . This change is permanent in a fundamental sense. . . . New unions, identities, and loyalties emerge. On the realignment of loyalties, see Hunt (1986, pp. 4–5), who also emphasizes full individuation, Pagnini (1976; tr. 1999, p. 33), Snyder (1988, p. 75). Summers (1984, p. 17) chooses the example of Demetrius who recognizes the powerful change that has taken place within him as the achievement or recovery of health, maturity, and natural joy, and he commits himself firmly to it as to something that will last his life. Also emphasizing character growth are Falk (1980, pp. 263–4, 272), Berry (1984, p. 158), Comtois (1985, p. 15), Baruzzo (1994, p. 22).

Vyvyan (1961, p. 80) is among those calling attention to the achievement of self-knowledge. Since love-sight is supposed to pierce the disguise and reveal true identity, there is a necessary link between self-knowledge and love, and so we may readily understand the Shakespearean proposition that the way to the one is perfect constancy to the other. Hirsch (1968, p. 178): The play is an examination of the relationship between the eye (the senses), the mind (the imagination) and their unification in physical love. Helena’s line: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind [248] is central. . . . The lovers emerge from their forest dream with greater self-knowledge: the eyes and the mind, the senses and imagination have been reconciled. See also Warren (1969, p. 134) at n. 1815. Dunn (1972, p. 133): Reasonable love grows out of genuine self-awareness, ending in reconciliation. Similarly Billington (1991, p. 181).

Phialas (1966, pp. 110, 115) stresses both the immediate theme of the play, that is, inconstancy in love and also the larger, all-encompassing idea of the comedies: the proper attitude, shorn of extremes, to love and life generally. The interlude is (p. 115) a playlet of love and constancy. . . . The golden mean to which the placing together of these extremes points is represented by the love of Theseus and Hippolyta, whose attitude towards romance is the norm, the ideal, to which men may be admitted in this world. It is to this attitude that the extravagance of the four lovers is reduced at the conclusion of the play. Elze (1868; tr. 1874, pp. 56–7), deeming the play a mirror of the love affairs of the aristocracy, points out that they make love partly a frivolous amusement in idleness, partly a sensual caprice, whereas the lower classes . . . regard it from its tragic side. . . . With them love is bitter earnest; they know its pathos only. . . . [57] The poet refers the one party to the other, and though he is no lecturer on morals, he yet makes us perceive that each party may learn from the other. Both their views are wrong in their one-sidedness, their mutual penetration alone results in what is right. Brown (1987, pp. 22–4, 29): In the tension between Theseus and Hippolyta at the play’s opening (p. 23) their attitudes immediately define the topic of the play as the opposition between sensual and [24] chaste love. . . . This opposition will be resolved in their marriage, for Hippolyta’s chastity is not the absolute virginity of the nun, but the chastity of faithful married love. (P. 29): The play moves to order or harmony, but harmony in the plot—in the love relationships, for example—is not stable peace; it is, rather, the paradoxical coincidentia oppositorum, the discordia concors of the Neoplatonists. Hinely (1987, p. 127): Through role exchange and the purging of excess, [the] nightmare/dream in the woods has managed to move all the lovers closer to the standard of mature reciprocal sexuality that Shakespeare treats as the necessary prerequisite for festive comedy marriage. Similarly Shulman (1987, p. 10).

True love as personified in Helena and Hermia, according to Wölffel (1852, pp. 140–1), is Sh.’s subject, love that does not bend to external constraints (Ger.). Bryant (1964, p. 8): MND is a play about the generation of love—specifically that kind of love which involves surrender and giving and forgiving. Allen (1967, pp. 116–17): Chastity, in the sense of purity of love and faith, is . . . essential to . . . matrimonial harmony. (P. 117): Allegiance to a sovereign, like allegiance to one’s art, one’s beloved, or to the Spirit, demands a surrender of self to a larger whole, and calls for the humility with which good subjects serve their nation, artists serve the Muse, and faithful husbands and wives serve each other and imperious nature. Holleran (1967, p. 24) alone considers the Pyramus and Thisbe relationship the culmination of Shakespeare’s observations on the subject of love. . . . Beneath the surface ridiculousness of the mechanicals’ production, a profound love exists between Pyramus and Thisbe which is far deeper than [the stage audience is] capable of understanding. Pyramus and Thisbe offer the ultimate proof of the most sincere kind of love. They willingly die for it. Summers (1984, p. 18) comments on Helena’s phrase mine own, and not mine own [1718]: Lovers do and do not belong to each other. True lovers seem to recognize and affirm the life of the other as existing apart from the perceiving self, and delight that the loved one should be other, as well as be miraculously capable of returning a similar affirmation and affection. Beyond dreams of possession of body and soul, as Milton’s Samson remarked, love seeks to have love [837]. That search is essential to the intelligible flame not in Paradise to be resisted [The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, para. 900]. And once firmly fixed, love seeks primarily the good of the other. In an extreme situation, one far from the thoughts or experience of these lovers joyfully approaching marriage, a lover might truly be willing to die in order that his loved one might live. Similarly B. Parker (1987, p. 201), Heuscher (1989, p. 325).

Eichhoff (1903, p. 108) considers Theseus the exemplar of true love which because it is unselfish demands constant struggle with oneself. His love has grown gradually but constantly and will endure (Ger.). Others include Hippolyta. Vyvyan (1961, p. 7): Theseus and Hippolyta have achieved the thing of constancy toward which the wavering characters are shown to grow, having turn[ed] a war into a wedding, a sword into a ring. In the same vein are Atherton (1962, p. 6), Phialas (1966, p. 213), Miranda (1981/2, p. 174), Wells (ed. 1967, p. 20), Garber (1974, p. 70), Marcus (1981, p. 271), Lowenthal (1996, p. 79). Stansbury (1982, pp. 57–8): Theseus and Hippolyta show the power of true love: for Hippolyta’s love triumphs over the injuries done to her people by Theseus’s conquest [20–1], while Theseus’s experience of love finally moves him to overturn the Athenian law, which by no means we may extenuate [129], and order the marriage that Egeus wished to prevent [1704–6]. Theseus and Hippolyta stress two qualities of love: firstly physical desires [58] and their fulfilment in the solemnities of married love [4–14]. . . . Secondly, Theseus stresses the permanence of true love, an everlasting bond of fellowship [94] in which married lovers shall eternally be knit [1706]. Similarly Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, p. xxii), Wolff (1907; 1926, 1:339) (Ger.), Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 21), Schanzer (1955, p. 241).

Smith (1979, pp. 16, 18, 21) demurs: The play is structured around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta, whose relationship we might logically expect to be representative in some way of the action as a whole. But (p. 18) Theseus, . . . rather than being an external force for law, order, and daylight sanity, is representative of his subjects, and prone to the same weaknesses that they play out in the middle of the play. When at the end of Act 4 he preside[s] over a reunification, . . . he is more amazed than anyone. . . . We don’t see personal development in Theseus toward this end but rather a miraculous change. And the same is true for the characters in the middle of the play. . . . The play—as love story—works basically by showing a certain potential for true love in what are actually hopeless parodies of it, and then magically transforming the potential, or the parody, into the real thing. Clearly there has been a (p. 21) miracle. . . . The miracle is that the parody or lesser type is suddenly and collectively transubstantiated into the real thing. Not that any individual now loves divinely, but that divine love is shown in the harmony that is achieved out of discord.

Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xxx) announces marriage as the theme of the play, and Craig (ed. 1931, p. 98) echoes him. Coghill (1964, p. 60): The play’s images show [love] to be the holy bond of things, as Chaucer calls it. So, at the heart’s core of the play there is a moral vision of the fantasy, mystery and constancy of things hymeneal, of an epithalamy, in which all things concur and are interlocked in our human society in the bond of love under the fantastic hand of nature. Atherton (1962, p. 2) and Knight (1967, p. 268) contend that the play was occasional, the theme, appropriately, love and marriage. Some of those dealing with the theme of marriage point out potential conflicts, others evolving ideas about marriage. Some emphasize societal benefits and concerns, others the reconciliation of passion and reason, and still others fertility and posterity.

Holleran (1967, pp. 21, 24–5) sees some dangers in marriage, reflected by the fairy couple’s family fight over the possession of a child . . . who comically has become a momma’s boy. (P. 24): What Shakespeare says . . . about love and marriage . . . emerges as a profound observation on marriage and a mild satire on romantic love. For in the play he deals with the various kinds of love and the stages of matrimony. . . . Oberon and Titania, . . . reveal the petty jealousies [25] and misunderstandings which may be expected to occur in the married state. . . . Finally, the lowest kind of love is that between . . . Theseus and Hippolyta. . . . [Their] love is pure stagecraft, a political negotiation, a treaty between countries rather than a vow between lovers.

Another potential source of conflict is the question of sovereignty. Foss (1932, pp. 122–3) claims that the [123] subject [Sh.] wished to write about was the Emancipation of Woman, therefore his choice of the philandering Theseus and the Queen of a legendary nation where men are the inferior and trampled-on sex. Garner (1988, p. 117) argues that for marriage to be hopeful in Shakespeare, women’s power must be contained or channeled to serve and nurture men. When it is—in [AYL], [TN], or [MND]—the comic ending is celebratory. See also Iginla (1978, passim), who comments on the subservience of the women in the play; Gohlke (1980, p. 151); Yoshioka (1999, p. 122), who thinks that male supremacy, evinced in the centralization of authority in Theseus, is positively ensconced over the ruins of the thwarted challenge of matriarchy. Others are less sure. Pearson (1987, pp. 25–6, 34): MND approaches the question of male sovereignty ironically, developing, at different levels of perspective, both conventional and unconventional statements about masculine sovereignty and harmony. . . . Shakespeare’s play . . . shows us . . . the chaos which results when female subservience is foresworn and masculine sovereignty ignored. . . . In terms of movement and plot resolution, [MND] seems to assert that harmony follows automatically upon the establishment of male dominance and wifely obedience. Working against this simplistic position, however, are [26] individual male-female relationships which ironically show that concord is achieved by magic and policie; by fiat; by achievement of feminine will; by mutual recognition of the value of intent. (P. 34): The playwright’s final technique for achieving harmony, and structurally his ultimate one, owes little either to sovereignty or obedience and everything to tolerance and mutually reciprocal acceptance of imperfection and intent. This binds two into not just one flesh but into fellowship as well. Hopkins (1998, p. 29): Although [the play] has been careful to present itself as an ostensible celebration of marriage, . . . it ultimately acknowledges that the meaning-making audience is equally free to construct out of it as potentially subversive a critique as it wishes of contemporary marriage, and, above all, of the role of women within it. As Christopher Brooke, in his history of marriage, observes of the idea that [MND] was an occasional play feting an actual wedding, I am glad it was not my wedding it celebrated, for it proceeds by showing us the lowest view of human marriage we have so far encountered (Brooke [1989, p. 231]). Nostbakken (2003, pp. 30–1): Views of marriage were changing in Sh.’s day, and this (p. 31) gave Shakespeare scope to explore the nature of male and female relationships in [MND]. Two of the most fruitful questions to consider are to what extent Shakespeare’s play reflects traditional patriarchal attitudes toward love and marriage and to what extent it challenges them. These questions require examination of the marital relationship between Oberon and Titania and the premarital relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta, in the authority and power exercised by the men and the submission or independence demonstrated by the women. The similar issues of male authority and female independence arise in Hermia’s relationship to her father and in the four young Athenians’ attachments to one another in love and in jealousy. If there is a battle of the sexes as well as an attraction between them, how does that affect the portrayal of gender relations? To love by doing injury [21] and to make peace by acknowledging authority are all part of the dynamics that define the tension and resolution of the play. Another discussion of the question can be found in Henderson (1995, pp. 219, 222–3, 246).

Recent critics sometimes discuss marriage in economic terms. Marshall (1982, pp. 557, 568) is dubious about the play’s suitability as a celebration of marriage. . . . On more than one level it meditates on the terms of marriage by considering the conditions of being sundered and being joined, by examining (p. 568) the expenses of loss and possession. . . . Throughout the play, characters are figured as merchandise or stolen goods. (Hermia, Lysander, Helena, Demetrius, Egeus, Oberon, and Titania each steal or are stolen from or are stolen in the course of the play.) The figure for these character-commodities is the child [the changeling] who rivals Hermia as the most contested property in the play. Pask (2003, pp. 182–5): (P. 183): What structures the topsy-turvy experiences of the lovers in the wood . . . is a mythological rendition of a battle of the sexes in terms of the transformation of the sources of aristocratic wealth, both from the land and from investment [the changeling represents (p. 182) maternal wealth and forms the figurative basis for the wealth of the traders]. The result is a thoroughly unpleasant picture of aristocratic marriage shadowing the future marriages of the lovers. (P. 185): However ironically, the play fulfils the maiden’s desire and tames the married woman, a combination that points toward the Protestant reformation of love and marriage. Neither Hippolyta nor Titania fits the new Protestant model of wifeliness, . . . suggesting a complicated relationship between older and newer forms of marriage.

A union of passion and reason in marriage interests several critics. Godshalk (1973, pp. 16–17): [MND] sets up a functional polarity. . . . There is a natural conflict between human desire and social custom, but Theseus and his future duchess resolve to act according to the dictates of reason and order. In contrast . . . the pole of the forest is associated with passion, unreason, unrestraint, destruction, and, as the play goes on, with fantasy. The resolution is accomplished by the court, represented by Theseus and Hippolyta, visiting the forest. Immediately before the visit, Oberon takes Titania’s hand, saying: Now thou and I are new in amity. . . . [1605–7] [17] Led by Oberon and Titania, the return visit paid to the court by the denizens of the forest suggests the complete union of the opposing poles. Passion and reason have been united, and the mutual coming together is symbolized by marriage. Purdon (1974, pp. 184, 195): The Venus-Diana psychomachia, the ritual battle between lust and chastity . . . will be resolved in terms of love within marriage. (P. 195): Symbolically, the psychomachia receives the resolution in a final confrontation of the forces of Cupid and the forces of Diana, and Love must yield to a new flower which is characterized by strength and religious sanction.

Hath such force and blessed power [1588–9].

Similarly Wickham (1980, pp. 178–9), Willson (1981, p. 90), Pickering (1985, p. 36), Van den Berg (1985, p. 148).

Marriage as societal integration is a common concern. Wright (1968, p. 6): Titania’s long speech [456–492] affirms that there is a public as well as an individual significance in marriage. Thus too the marriages that conclude the play . . . offer a renewed sense of integration and reunion: between the characters themselves, between the characters and the forces of their world, and . . . between the characters and ourselves, the members of the audience, for we too witness and to that extent share in their new harmony. Traversi (1968, 1:142–3, 156) describes a conclusion which is set finally in the framework of a rational and social attitude to marriage represented by Theseus and Hippolyta, and Theseus’s task (p. 143) is to direct the impulses of passion into their established and indispensable social channels. At the end of the play (p. 156) the social and civilizing vision of love begins to impose itself. Greer (1981, pp. 35, 42–5) looks at the conflict between . . . sexual passion which makes you see with a lover’s eyes . . . and . . . the hard work which is marriage—the chastity, the endurance, the childbirth, the commitment which has got nothing to do with the vagaries of sexual passion. Her conclusion, since (p. 42) sexual passion is anti-social and destructive yet necessary to the survival of marriage, is that (p. 43) what you have to do is make that love take solid form and make it last. . . . [Sh.] is making a statement, which is not a starry-eyed statement about living happily ever after. (P. 45): [MND] expresses the great conundrum of how to civilize love which is in itself lawless, and make it the basic motive-power and support of the state, and in a marvelously intricate and encyclopedic way, at that. And in 1986 (p. 119): For Shakespeare marriage was not simply a cliché for ending the action. . . . He was profoundly interested in the paradox of creating a durable social institution out of the volatile material of lovers’ fantasies. Coullie (1992, p. 66): It is the gender system which is foregrounded in the world of the play as that organisational structure which is most important in the maintenance of social stability. Love functions as the motivating force which induces members of the upper classes to accept their roles as wives and husbands, as bearers of a patriarchal line. The ideology of love in MND, then, serves to perpetuate the rather extreme form of gender system which operated in the upper classes; it valorises the closed circuit of class within which power is seen to reside ultimately in blood or kinship. Love and its attendant sexuality are shown in MND to respond to the cultural imperative of resolution in marriage and procreation which, in effect, control the distribution of power. Stavig (1995, p. 284): While [MND] reveals the folly and illusion of people in the grip of love’s madness, it also promotes continuity through its celebration of marriage as a personal, social, and political institution. Similarly Bristol (1985, pp. 172–3). Schwartz (1990, pp. 74–5): The problems of love are inseparable from the workings of the community. And it is not surprising that harmony in one sphere is an integral part of harmony in another. . . .

(P. 75): The social ending is a practical ending, for it must serve the needs of the community in spite of the individual problems of knowing and shifting values that grow out of the private shaping imagination.

Lyons (1971, pp. 121–2, 124), though, argues that at no point . . . is the value of love as a source of personal and social integration realized by the lovers. In fact, the deliberate primitive quality of Puck’s blessing of the lovers at the moment he mends the situation with the last application of the juice from love-in-idleness, seems to count more than Demetrius’ promise of fidelity and Theseus’ vow that the lovers shall be wed [122] for eternity. Quotes 1501–6. The obvious simplicity of the country proverb suggests a lack of profundity in the unions achieved in which every Jack gains a proper Jill. His conclusion is reinforced by the epilogue which (p. 124) establishes the sense that the infinite happiness of this romantic world is an illusion divorced from the real world into which the spectator will soon return. Langford (1984, pp. 38, 41–4) studies the influence of Seneca on MND and underlines the different tragic potentialities in the play, attributing them to the various sexual motivations of the characters, particularly sexual possession and dominance. (P. 41): To regard the play as being about who will marry whom and live happily ever after is to sanitize it. (P. 44): With the entrance of Theseus into the forest, the sexual chaos of the previous night is brought back under control. . . . Hunting becomes a metaphor for the sublimation of sexual desire. But however effective any strategy of sublimation may be there is always the danger that the sexual drive could reassert itself with unexpected forcefulness. . . . Shakespeare has not banished sex from his play, he has redirected it back into the institution of marriage where society can monitor and control it. Others choosing marriage as the main theme and concern of the play include Olson (1957, pp. 95 ff.), who discusses court marriage and the concept of order; Fergusson (1970, p. 121); Weiner (1971, pp. 344–5, 348); Guest (1994, p. 199). Willson (1975, p. 37) discusses the question of dominance and authority in marriage. P. Parker (1987, pp. 113 ff.) explores the linkage of order in language, marriage, and society.

Several commentators place the emphasis on the theme of procreation. Phillips (ed. 1969, p. 24): As is not surprising in a play bound up with crops and seasons, marriage is an important element here: it is seen throughout as the natural end of love, and its own natural end is seen to be fertility. . . . The idea of fertility blends happily with the creativity underlying the dream. The impression from Titania’s weather speech, Garber (1974, pp. 71, 75) argues, is one of sterility. (P. 75): With the wedding night comes the promise of fertility . . . and the consequent restoration of fertility and change to the landscape. Puck’s last speech is appropriately concerned with progeny, since here at the play’s close the fertility theme intersects with the theme of creativity and imagination. Wilders (1994, p. 160) concurs: The emphasis with which the play concludes is not so much on marriage as on the birth of children. The irresistible driving force which makes the lovers so passionate and energetic during the course of the play is not so much love as the desire to procreate. As Benedick says, The world must be peopled! [Ado 2.3.242 (1063–4)] It is that which fuels the action of [MND]. Similarly Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 39), Wiles (1993, p. 179).

Class Issues

Class issues are a frequent concern; some simply observe how class reflects actual behavior and attitudes, while others contend that the play either endorses or condemns a class-determined social structure reflecting contemporary England. Gordon (ed. 1910, p. xviii): Bottom’s position of momentary superiority to the company of Cobwebs and Peaseblossoms is employed by Shakespeare to point a moral peculiarly congenial to his mind: the comic effect of social distinctions upon the minds of common men. He treats his fairy attendants with the same mixture of familiarity and hauteur as he would have expected from his own superiors in human society. Turner (1974, p. 176): Comic characterization . . . entails not only the attributes that differentiate one character from another, but the class, role, or place to which the character belongs, and we must add the standard of decorum which we implicitly associate with that class. Jameson (1967, p. 142) has an uneasy thought or two about the certainty of finding either developed taste or developed feeling in company with high social position and considers it an uneasiness not unwarranted when the times were those of a newly created Tudor aristocracy. Montrose (1995, pp. 83–4) discusses the (p. 84) inverse relationship between the temporal hierarchy of wealth and power and the spiritual hierarchy of wisdom and virtue. Visser (1996, pp. 70–1): Aristocratic behaviour and attitudes, for all the apparent grace and social poise that accompany them, are dubious; thus (p. 71) there is a consistent and pervasive satirical current to the play. Snodgrass (1975, p. 228): Theseus and Bottom stand for diametrically opposed ways of life, not only in their social stance but in the whole bases of their natures. Theseus, the phallic male, always of the elite, holds his position simply because he has more (more anything) than others have. Bottom is the Common Man; he has what we all have. Montrose (1995, pp. 69–70): When Bottom and his company are introduced into the newly concordant courtly milieu in the final scene, social rank and social calling displace gender and generation as the play’s most conspicuous markers of difference. The dramatic emphasis is now upon a contrast between the socially and stylistically refined mixed-sex communities of court and forest, and the crew of patches, rude mechancals [1031], who have toiled their unbreathed memories [1871] in order to honour and entertain their betters. . . . Socio-political realities and theatrical realities converge. Implicated in this particular dramatic dénouement are several larger historical developments: the policies and attitudes abetting Elizabethan state formation; the enormous growth of London as an administrative, economic and cultural centre; and the institutionalisation of a professional, secular and commercial theatre with a complex relationship to [70] the dynastic state and the royal court on the one hand, and to the urban oligarchy and the public market on the other. (See also his Purpose of Playing, 1996, pp. 179, 188–9).

The mechanicals invite a considerable amount of comment. Stirling (1949, p. 55) sees in 1901–2 great charity in Shakespeare for the humble and oppressed, as well as hatred for snobs of all varieties. Leinwand (1986, p. 13) talks about their negotiation, arbitration, and accommodation in order to please their superiors and avoid offense and the considerable anxiety caused by their assumptions about their superiors’ attitude toward them. Grafton (1985, p. 55) reminds us that these commoners could read and write and were literate enough to use their skills for recreation as well as for practical ends. But it also shows powerfully that merely knowing about mythological characters—or performing in plays—could not make one a learned man. The smallest details of vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation could betray one’s lack of real cultivation. Similarly Paster (1999, p. 179). Greenfield (1985, p. 173): The artisans offer their play as a gift to Theseus, in recognition of their dependence on his power and protection, and in hopes . . . of being rewarded for their display of loyalty and affection. Theseus, in turn, recognizes that the artisans perform in order to do him service. . . . He thus confirms his social bond with the artisans by allowing them to play and giving the expected reward. Furthermore, the performance confirms the social bond between Theseus and the family, friends, and dependents who make up his court. The play functions as a gift of entertainment from Theseus to them, while at the same time it demonstrates to them the strength of the duke’s relationship with his lesser subjects. Thus the interlude acts as an instrument of social cohesion.

The alliance of a Queen and a commoner elicits comment on the possibility of class and political motivation at work in the play. Paster (1993, pp. 127–8) claims that the play dares to imagine the dissolution of social boundaries in the forbidden mating of a queen with the grotesque body of the populace, represented by Bottom. . . . Bottom’s relation to Titania parodies not only a transgressive social fantasy but a dangerous famil-[128]ial one as well. In 1999 (p. 295) with Howard: The image, with its fairy gloss removed, is that of a ruling-class woman aggressively wooing a passive, bewildered lower-class man and finding him surpassingly beautiful. It is a love that manipulates not only customary hierarchies of gender and class but customary notions of bodily grace and beauty, the dignity of human form. . . .

But the really scandalous nature of their imaginary liaison is suggested by the powerful sexual and religious taboos manipulated for the sake of comic delight. Insofar as Titania was played by a boy actor and Bottom was played by an adult male (probably the famous comedian Will Kempe), envisioning them together sexually is to imagine an act of same-sex, male-male intercourse, and instead of an older man loving a beautiful young man, the play gives us a boy Titania making love to the man Bottom. Insofar as the union would have to take place while Bottom is, technically speaking, only part human, their liaison could be also be seen [sic] as bestiality.

Vos (1966, p. 100) claims that comedy assumes that society must be made to work, that men must somehow learn to live together. Thus the social distance between Bottom and the Queen of the Fairies is closed in the climate of comedy, just as the difference in status between Prince Hal and Falstaff ceases to be a significant fact on Shakespeare’s stage. Tyler (1973, pp. 197–8) claims that Sh. is able to transcend the caste system when his Titania, under a spell, falls in love with the ass-headed Bottom. . . . Shakespeare’s elegant comedy affords a glimpse of the natural anarchy which he could always detect behind society’s ordered surfaces and consciously rigid distinctions, versions of which anarchy actually took place in the woods outside London during Shakespeare’s time. (P. 198): Shakespeare certainly knew . . . that Titania’s infatuation with the enchanted, ass-headed Bottom denoted a symbolic ritual in which the heights of human nature united with its depths.

Several commentators detect reflections of shifting economic and political structures. Erlich (1982, pp. 65–6, 70) argues that the Elizabethan world picture is a gross oversimplification, or, rather, wishful thinking, and that in fact a new order of relationships—one dominated by London and commercial power vested in a growing merchant-class—was the reality, and a (p. 66) new nobility consisting of nouveaux riches who bought or married titles existed beside the old aristocracy. (P. 71): The movement towards reconciliation and harmony—confirmed both by love (Nature) and by law (Culture)—on all levels of being climaxes in the guarantee of proper succession through children. Blessings on offspring are emphasized [2185–98] with an explicitness rare in Shakespearian comedy, for the drama asks how a succession proper to the family and to the state may be achieved and in what this would consist. With the family and the kingdom usually analogous in Shakespeare, the implied political dimensions of this drama for the 1590s are as important as in the history plays of the same period. Leinwand (1986, p. 29): The Athenian artisans’ bid for favor and profit by means of what they take to be decorous performance comments upon the relations between high and low status groups in Athenian society. Corresponding dynamics which would correlate Shakespeare’s company and play with the Elizabethan aristocracy may be sketched out. The four lovers’ marriage plans, . . . and the attention these plans receive in the Athenian court, glance at marriage brokering in Elizabeth’s court and her much-publicized readiness to intervene when it suited her policy or fancy. Then too, artisan players, like those in Shakespeare’s troupe in the 1590s and after, were regularly forced to accommodate themselves to numerous restrictions on playing.

Schneider (1987, pp. 193, 196) detects socio-political tension. Class struggle is a present absence sensed through the language of the working class characters, and Titania’s speech alludes to the current economic turmoil. In addition, (p. 196) in Theseus and his coterie, the play presents a small model of Elizabethan aristocratic society. . . . [a] patriarchy, which orders personal relations according to economic and political considerations. Also dealing with class structure and values are Witte (1999, p. 34), Tennenhouse (1986, pp. 42–3), Clary (1996, p. 159).

Sh. emphasizes the common humanity of the characters according to Charlton (1933, p. 64). The comedy in [MND] looks to the preservation of the whole human race as human beings rather than to the maintenance of a particular social caste. It comprehends the court, the city, and the country. It seeks for what contributes to this larger fellowship of man, rather than for what is discordant with the conventions of a class. It values the normal in mankind at large much more than mere propriety in a particular clique. Berry (1988, p. 37): At all points [during the interlude] Theseus is in charge, imposing his princely courtesy upon a stage audience that could easily get out of hand. . . . The play offers a model of the class extremes meeting with civility, good will, and harmony (contradicted by Skura [1993, p. 112]: The nobles insult, or even merely analyze the players as if they were not there—like children, or slaves, or animals). Clayton (1999, p. 68) regrets that Theseus’s speech, the kinder we [1886 ff.], has received relatively little attention. But the speech seems in earnest for both Shakespeare and Theseus, and there are no textual grounds, as opposed to categorical aprioristic judgments, for taking it otherwise. It is in earnest for good reason, its theme noblesse oblige, which might not be necessary in a genuinely classless society of the sort the world has yet to see. . . . The kinder we episode speaks well for Theseus, and it appears to speak also for the play, . . . eloquently pleading, with metaphor, anecdote, and subsequent example, advocating compassion of attitude and noblesse oblige in behavior, a socioethical message of some importance in Shakespeare’s day. Others commenting on class issues include Willson (1981, pp. 88–9); Dunn (1988, p. 28); Patterson (1989, p. 70); Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 94–5); Parker (1996, pp. 84–107), who sees the play as endorsing the status quo; Wall (2002, pp. 94–5, 112), who looks at domesticity and (p. 112) a palace world propped up by English rustic servants and a middle-class investment in sheer industry.

Imagination

The play’s treatment of and dependence on imagination generate a range of responses—the degree to which imagination is either dangerous or crucial, its place in love and in art, its role in human experience among them. See also n. 1794–1813.

A few critics link imagination with the fairies. Wigston (1884, p. 315) sees the magical powers of creation . . . in the tricks of Puck, who is very clearly the Will of the Wisp of the imagination, acting through the senses, or rather through conjecture, during the mind’s night. Schalkwyk (1986, p. 59) links the operations of Puck and Oberon closely with those of the imagination—in its influence not only on love’s vision . . . but also on ordinary perception. . . . [Puck’s] beguiling likenesses, translated into real experience, can be seen as instances of the mistaken perceptions to which all people are prone. Stavig (1995, p. 246) too thinks Puck embodies imagination or fantasy (the often chaotic night world of mind).

Others emphasize the limitations of reason and the concomitant importance of imagination. Sen Gupta (1961, p. 93) explains that the cool rationalism enunciated by Theseus is inadequate because his appreciation of art is as peripheral as his understanding of love (similarly Rudd [1979, p. 192]); Nicoll (1952, p. 106) argues that Shakespeare’s level-headedness, his sublime common sense, cannot be restricted within the ring of Theseus’ practicality: it embraces the imagination as well as the ordinary real. Colley (1977, p. 65): The wisdom of comedy, which can make blind lovers see and can transform a weaver into the paramour of a fairy queen, shuns the reason of the workaday world. . . . What ordinarily passes for reason, such as Theseus’ skepticism, is actually a type of folly. And the apparent folly of the true believers, like Bottom, represents a higher form of truth. Stavig (1995, pp. 252–3): Love may be irrational but can also be magical. . . . People who try to be fully rational end up repressing feelings that will break out somewhere. Seen from this perspective, people’s problems are also their strength, and the solutions could not have been worked out if the lovers had not thrown [253] themselves fully into their experience. . . . Shakespeare is not showing that people have no control over their actions but only that emotions are powerful and potentially beneficial. McDonald (ed. 2000, pp. xxxviii–xxxix): Reason is an especially faulty guide in matters of affection. Bottom states a home truth in 959–61—the incompatibility of head and heart. The supremacy of cool reason, to which Theseus subscribes absolutely and uncritically, is subverted most thoroughly in his famous attack on fantasy [1794–1813], where he smugly lumps together the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, and mocks belief in fairy toys or supernatural fables. Shakespeare pointedly challenges Theseus’s rational position with a host of situational ironies. In the first place, the audience has witnessed the supernatural machinations that have [xxxix] altered the desires of Lysander, Demetrius, and Titania. Moreover, Theseus himself is a lover who articulates his distrust of the imagination in a graceful, poetic speech. He is, in other words, a product of Shakespeare’s imagination, and the audience can hardly miss these contradictions. . . . Shakespeare has given us evidence of things not seen.

Verity (ed. 1893, p. xxxvi) explains that Theseus depreciates imagination with something of the intolerance of the man of action for whom the humblest bit of life, of actual experience, has infinitely more value than the finest fiction. Similarly Atherton (1962, p. 32), Beiner (1985, p. 102), Falk (1980, pp. 266, 273). Pickering (1985, p. 39): Theseus’s speech . . . dwells on the dangers as well as the achievements of the imagination, and culminates by considering the poet (and playwright). . . . We see a need for balance; to be composed entirely of imagination as the lunatic, the lover and the poet tend to be, may lead to a type of blindness. Imagination may need correction, Nevo (Transformations, 1980, pp. 104, 107, 110) suggests. As Demetrius wants Hermia, so Oberon and Titania both want the changeling boy, so Bottom wants all the roles, and rivalry disrupts the marriage of Oberon and Titania. (P. 104): We begin to perceive the nature of the comic infirmity in [MND]. It is that fluidity and instability of imagination which causes an individual to be either too identified or not identified enough: to resemble when to discriminate would be more politic and more appropriate; to represent reality in images generated by the desires of the mind. (P. 108): The whole question of corrected vision, of the tutored imagination, . . . is the essential mediator of the benign, non-disjunctive dialectic which conjures rejoicing out of mockery, and wisdom out of folly. (P. 110): Act V dazzlingly catches up and re-focuses the issues of the play, recapitulating its schooling of the imagination. Barton (in Evans, ed. 1974, p. 219) issues a caution. Gently, the comedy suggests that while it is certainly possible to mistake a bush for a bear, one may also err as Theseus does by confounding a genuine bear with a bush. The second mistake is, on the whole, the more dangerous. Others commenting on the deficiency of Theseus’s view are Boyle (1982, pp. 20–1), Bloom (1998, p. 170).

Ambivalence is not uncommon. Although Goddard (1951; 1960, p. 76) thinks Theseus’s skepticism concerns not imagination at all in its proper sense, but fantasy, a number of critics treat fancy and imagination synonymously as was common, they say, in Sh.’s day. J. P. Smith (1972, pp. 3–4) reminds us of the common Renasisance view that reason was the noblest quality of [4] man and thus the imagination should be regarded with a good deal of suspicion and must be kept under the restraints of reason. Similarly Dusinberre (1975, p. 155), Hibbard (1978, p. 81), French (1981, p. 96). Berry (1984, p. 58): All of these modes of disorientation—error, dream, madness, witchcraft, metamorphosis, disguise—center on the experience of love but also extend beyond it. The power they represent, in Elizabethan psychology, is that of the fancy, or imagination. . . . Both dreams and madness are symptoms of a disordered imagination. . . . The word fancy itself . . . can mean both love and imagination. The imagination, moreover, is in Elizabethan psychology a transitional faculty of mind. As the intermediary between the faculties of sense and reason, it plays a crucial role in all mental transformations, and its power is disturbingly ambiguous: it can work towards the disintegration of lunacy or the integration of poetry.

Some critics focus on imagination’s powers. Mack (1962, p. 278): MND has qualities that prompt one to regard it as a loving and perhaps even fully conscious study of what the imagination can and cannot do. In the play itself, we are allowed to contemplate its operations at their most persuasive, drawing us to accept the corporeal solidity of invisible and indeed imaginary presences like Puck, Oberon, and Titania, and to view them, at the poet’s will, as vast meteorological forces, pert mischievous mannikins, and onstage actors of the normal human-family size. On the other hand, in the play-within-the-play and the preparations for it we are shown how imagination can be trammeled by not trusting it. Similarly Dent (1964, pp. 126–7). Martz (1971, pp. 32, 37): The totally bad play-within-the-play turns out to be sublimely good, a sublimely good representation, that is, of the supreme power of the imagination; (p. 37) the theme of MND is that the life of the imagination is more real than any literal reality. Pickering (1985, p. 39): It is imagination that brings humans nearest to god-like status for by its power they create something out of nothing. Things that are insubstantial are given form and shape; connections are made between apparently disparate elements. Theseus understands this and summarises the potency of imagination in his famous speech at the opening of Act V. Nostbakken (2003, pp. 11–12, 16) discusses the centrality of imagination to human experience, for (p. 16) without imagination that stretches beyond the concrete realm of what can be touched and seen, there can be no love, there can be no dreaming, and finally, there can be no play.

Concentrating on the imagination’s part in love, Ulrici (1809–9; tr. 1876, p. 78) notes the power of the imagination that is active in all the characters represented, and the cause of their doings and strivings; it creates the dreams and governs the images of dreamland, and is therefore also the dominant power in the various characters of the piece. . . . Love—the main lever of the action and as here conceived and described—is in reality founded only upon the imagination. Similarly Luce (1907, p. 41). Zesmer (1976, pp. 108–9): Theseus echoes the Renaissance notion . . . that love is a derangement of the senses and that the lover’s imagination distorts reality, forcing him to perceive beauty where none exists. [Similarly Paster & Howard (1999, p. 1).] A seasoned lover himself, Theseus [109] has already experienced passion, fickleness, and jealousy; he brings to his impending marriage a perspective that the novices have not yet acquired. . . . Romantic folly is concentrated in the young people, while the wisdom to recognize it belongs to Theseus. His is a partial wisdom, some say, for it fails to perceive that illusion and imagination, as embodied in lovers and poets, may also constitute powerful forms of reality.

Paster & Howard (1999, p. 1): Sh. suggests that courtship, marriage, and putting on a play have much in common. All three are unpredictable, creative enterprises requiring daring, hope, and a willingness to look foolish in the eyes of others. Heine (1907, p. 3), Messiaen (1937, pp. 30–1), Miller (1966, pp. 29–31), Rabkin (1967, p. 204), Berry (1984, p. 177), and Blits (2003, pp. 2–3) also connect love and artistic creativity to imagination.

The poet’s imagination interests a range of critics. Wolff (1907; 1926, pp. 337–8) thinks that imagination releases the poet’s best powers, enabling him to fuse dream and life or to interpret dream (Ger.). Flathe (1863, 1:31, 33): There are lower and higher levels of art and Theseus’s words elucidate the task of higher poetry. It is the imagination which has higher and lower forms according to McKenzie (1964, p. 46). Theseus is both right and wrong—right in stressing the dangers and absurdities of the lower imagination, the mere acceptance of illusion, whether in love or art; and wrong in failing to allow of a higher imaginative truth. Yet his own words on the poet . . . bear witness to the poet’s power to unite the divine and worldly and to the power, in impressing form on airy nothing, of his creative imagination. . . . But in art as in love a truly ordered imagination reveals itself in the artists’ judgement, whether they be writers or players. Mukerji (1965, pp. 151–3) distinguishes Theseus’s position from Sh.’s; as a practical playwright he [152] did realize the importance of form and control, but as a poet and critic he undoubtedly ranges himself on the side of imaginative freedom. (P. 153): The whole fabric of [MND] is a vindication of poetic imagination. Similarly Garber (1974, p. 86). For Rabkin (1967, pp. 234 n. 10, 211) the theme is the power of the imagination surrendered to art and the corollary fact . . . that art is entirely a technique for allowing the imagination to deceive us. In addition there is (p. 211) a broad thematic concern with the role of imagination in human life. Edmunds (1981, p. 15) declares Theseus’s lines a most significant and bold statement concerning the function and power of art. Shakespeare uses the word apprehension in a famous passage in Hamlet . . . In apprehension how like a god [Ham. 2.2.306–7 (1353)]. That is, man has a god-like ability to conceive, first in the mind as God conceived the world, and also in the further sense embraced by the word, to grasp by making real what had been imagined—as God then made the world He had conceived. . . . The thought is expanded by Theseus. . . . Shakespeare the poet conceived the joy of the restoration of Hermione. He was able to go further and to comprehend some bringer of that joy. Comprehend means to apprehend with the senses, with sight, touch and hearing. The theatre is the art of the senses, the means by which Shakespeare could most effectively make actual the joy conceived by his imagination. See also Frye (1983, pp. 76–7). B. Parker (1987, p. 199): Theseus describes two kinds of imagination: that of madman and lover, which distorts; and that of poet, which amends or creates. . . . The poet’s, like the Great Creator’s, encompasses heaven and earth, similarly giving to airy nothing breath and form. It is this second kind of imagination, necessary . . . to poet and statesman alike, that Theseus embodies and expressly invokes in watching the interlude.

In poets there is a relationship between imagination and reason. Homan (1969, pp. 78–9): Quite rightly the poet’s art is one of shaping fantasies in that like the lunatic and the lover he will not be bound solely by reason. However, whereas the lunatic and the lover abandon their reason unawares, the artist consciously uses reason in conjunction with the imagination. . . . [79] Properly controlled, imagination could be the servant, not the master of man. Similarly Pettet (1950, p. 44), Miranda (1981, p. 180), Payne (1982, p. 34), Guillory (1983, p. 18). Driscoll (1983, p. 105, n. 6): Reason and imagination are different facets of a single creative process, which begets, shapes, and directs love and art. So, briefly, Hutton (1985, pp. 291–2, 304), Stevens (1985, p. 85). Lynch (1999, pp. 103, 123–4): MND can be considered an extended meditation on the right relationship between reason and imagination, culminating in Theseus’ famous lines on the problem. References to the harmony of the mental faculties, to imagination, to the roughly synonymous fantasy or fancy, and to its absent but desired compliance with reason and legitimated will, are frequent in this play. . . . [124] Theseus’ oft-quoted denunciation of imagination—[1799–1800]—is undercut by Hippolyta’s even more sceptical critique, by its own sheer lyricism, by the genuinely transformative power of love in this play, and by its source: a cipher, a wizard, a lover himself at his own wedding. We also feel the presence of the poet behind the hero, the one whose imagination has spun this entire play out of airy nothing [1808].

The exchange between Theseus and Hippolyta [1793–1818] instigates a critical debate. Bryant (1986, p. 78): Poetry, Theseus is saying grandly . . . , is only an unreliable imagination’s creation of the appearance of reality. . . . Hippolyta . . . speculates that the poetic process may be a means of discovering the presence of a reality behind the appearances of reality, however incredible those appearances may be. Hirsch (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. 109): Hippolyta’s response to Theseus is part of the play’s ongoing emphasis on the powers of the imagination. The masculine and feminine points of view are contrasted here. Hippolyta tells Theseus that there are things that are not explainable by reason but which should not be rejected. Her manner suggests that now they are married, Theseus must realize that there is a feminine way to look at and interpret reality. Bloom (1998, p. 170): For Theseus poetry is a furor, and the poet a trickster; Hippolyta opens to a greater resonance, to transfiguration that affects more than one mind at once. The lovers are her metaphor for the Shakespearean audience, and it is ourselves, therefore, who grow into something of great constancy [1817], and so are re-formed, strangely and admirably. Hippolyta’s majestic gravity is an implicit rebuke to Theseus’s scoffing at the poet’s fine frenzy [1804]. Heninger (1987, pp. 218–19) points out that the fretful exchange . . . reflects a continuing dispute over the nature of the imagination, which in turn reflects a radical shift that at the time was taking place in the prevailing world-view. As the otherworldly orientation of the early Renaissance gave way to an empiricist epistemology, and as the imagination now formed its images not by deducing ideas from above, but rather by gathering data from nature and accurately describing them, then an imagination that purports to body forth the forms of things unknown [1806] . . . is highly suspect. (P. 219): By incorporating the Renaissance debate about the imagination, Shakespeare demonstrates the polysemous nature of poetry. The same text, he shows, may have more than one meaning, dependent upon the attitude assumed by the interpreter toward the text—empathetic insider, or caustic outsider. Clayton (1999, pp. 66–7) credits them both with insight. Theseus’ skeptical voice of reason confidently pronouncing in error transcends the limitations of what he may believe [1794] when it comes to the poet, whose flights of imagination are exquisitely and accurately described; in spite of himself, he speaks for the play and of the play, and of himself at one remove, if not for Shakespeare. But how not? . . .

Theseus is not wrong about the value of cool reason [1798], even if it has limitations as applied here. But if he is wrong about the imagination, he nevertheless brings his own powerful imagination into play to deprecate the poet, who could scarcely be better appreciated by downright eulogy. . . . [67] It is a masterstroke to make Theseus its author, the rational skeptic pronouncing judgment on the irrationality of the imagination by using its highest resources to do so, condemning and commending simultaneously—to its and the poet’s credit. Theseus may be talking through his philosopher’s hat, but he has been given the poet’s own eloquence to do it with. . . . Hippolyta’s rejoinder, sound, sympathetic, reasonable, and appreciative, complements Theseus’ sweeping survey by bringing something of great constancy [1817] into the space of the poet’s shapes and airy nothing. She is made utterly gracious in joining him at an esthetic distance from the object of their contemplation: howsoever strange and admirable [1818]. One of the most notable things about the exchange is that Theseus’ imagination exceeds his reason here, and Hippolyta’s reason her imagination—ultimately to the harmony and credit of them both. See also Kittredge (ed. 1939, p. 124); Nemerov (1956, pp. 638–40); Phialas (1966, p. 131); Ribner (in Kittredge & Ribner, ed. 1966, p. 70 n.); Traversi (1968, 1:155–6); Perng (1977; tr. 1988, p. 59); Girard (1979, pp. 211–12), who, like Gibson (1908, p. 7) and Summers (1984, p. 19), is sure (p. 212) the real last word belongs to Hippolyta and reflects Sh.’s view; Payne (1982, p. 35); Hagstrum (1992, p. 350), who comments on their attitudes toward love; Bate (1993, p. 135); Holland (ed. 1994, p. 55); Williams (1995, p. 65); Van Domelen (1996, pp. 82–3); Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 811); Stockard (1997, p. 13).

Several critics elucidate the relationship between imagination and the theater. Schalkwyk (1986, pp. 61–4): A form of imaginative seeing takes place in the theater audience with a voluntary participation in the illusion while consciously excluding the possibility of believing it to be true. It is this relationship that the mechanicals fail to understand. Schalkwyk points out the complexity in Quince’s words This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring house [816–17] since the areas to which Quince points are in fact the stage and tiring-house and not a [62] hawthorn-brake or green plot. Yet both his audiences go along with . . . the double illusion. (Similarly H. Smith [1972, pp. 128–9].)

Our perception . . . involves our ability . . . to participate in an imaginative vision which involves unasserted thought and entertained emotion, and which reflects back on our normal ways of seeing and believing, with the possibility of changing them. (P. 63): The most important attribute of the imagination is its susceptibility to change; and here the imagination which constitutes love and that which characterizes the appreciation of fiction, meet. For it is the role of the imagination to break through the intractable categories and beliefs posited by reason into a new way of seeing and appreciating the world. The further paradox is that it is through fiction that such a breakthrough can be achieved. . . . It is a social phenomenon, not a metaphysical one.

Having discarded the rational dichotomy whereby an adherence to reason was seen to be the only way of overcoming the inconsistencies and delusions of the imagination, Shakespeare finally sees the imagination as a paradoxical force in human perception and behaviour—involving both truth and error and informing both appearance and reality. . . . Shakespeare’s recognition of the role of the imagination in all [64] forms of perception is ultimately a recognition of its role in human relationships. . . . It does not deliver a golden world as opposed to a brazen one, but frees us to see ourselves and our relation to the brazen world more perfectly. Heninger (1987, p. 230): The exchange between the theatre and our lives that the imagination allows, this interplay between illusion and reality, is perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest achievement. He more than any other artist has convinced us that all the world’s a stage, and vice versa. Meagher (1997, p. 41): In MND Sh. played around revealingly with the overall subject of dramatic illusion and the relationship between reason and imagination, resulting in what very nearly amounts to an anticipatory manifesto against the trends that would eventually bury the principles of Shakespearean dramaturgy under an avalanche of rationalism and systematic correctness. Others commenting on the topic include Salingar (1974, pp. 278–81), Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 39–40), Winter (2002, pp. 97–106).

A related critical concern is the relationship between dream and theater, dream and experience. Bottom’s waking soliloquy, Martz (1971, pp. 33–4) says, is probably the best statement of the theme of [MND]. . . . [Quotes 1731 ff.] . . . The dream, then, is a vision, a moment of, a perception of something beyond one’s own finitude, a mystical assurance, perhaps, that man does indeed have being. Clearly reason, the power to expound cannot touch it, and so transcendent is it that the eye of man cannot hear it, that is, our chief sense, transcending itself, cannot [34] transcend itself to that extent. And yet, [MND], taken as a whole, is such a vision, and we read it, or watch it, as that or at least as a waking dream. Herz (1977, p. 390): There are three distinct dream realms in the play. . . . In [Puck’s] terms the dream metaphor stretches from first line to last. And Hippolyta has in fact, invited us into that dream in her very first speech in the play. The lovers’ dream experience begins in the woods. With Bottom’s dream the dream/theatre metaphor is developed in its greatest complexity. . . . He illustrates how nearly allied are the actor’s illusion-making and the dream experience. Bevington (1985, p. 313): Dreaming comes to represent the transforming experience of the theater itself—from which, as Puck observes, we will awaken as though we have but slumb’red here [2209], yet sensing that what we have undergone in the artist’s world will renew us no less than it has renewed the lovers.

H. Smith (1972, pp. 125–7) argues that the dilemma of which is dream and which is reality lies at the base of Shakespeare’s comedy, from [MND] to [Tmp.]. Actual experience can seem like a dream from which one has awakened. . . . And very often the dream-reality dilemma is associated with some reference to acting or the theater. (P. 127): [MND] and [Tmp.] are related in that in both plays much of the dramatic interest comes from the fact that the characters, or some of them, are not sure whether what they are seeing—or hearing—is reality or illusion. In the Dream the central source of illusion is love. . . . When one recovers from doting, he thinks that his past experience, though real, is but a dream. Garber (1974, pp. 60, 62, 217–18) emphasizes a lesson learned by character after character within the play: that reason is impoverished without imagination, and that we must accept the dimension of dream in our lives. Without this acknowledgment, there can be no real self-knowledge. (P. 62): She adds that dream is truer than reality because it has this transforming power; it is part of the fertile, unbounded world of the imagination. (P. 217): The quicksilver dream [218] world itself is part of a complex which includes the rejection of reason and the making of art, and serves as a transitional state from which the dreamer will emerge, transformed, into a real world of social interaction. Greenfield (1998, pp. 333, 342): The dreams of Dream (and as some dream theorists say, dreams in general) are valid verbal, visual, and emotional constructs. They are autonomous and significantly experiential in themselves, rather than masks or displacements of some real meaning that has been translated and obfuscated by a concealed operant located somewhere within the dreamer. (P. 342): With deceptive modesty, [MND], throughout, reminds us of both the validity and the elusiveness of its dreamlike experiential mode and does so in the face of our most strenuous efforts to dismiss it, or to peer underneath for rationales, or to find for it realities anywhere but in itself. Phillips (ed. 1969, p. 11): One of the themes of the play is the harmony our own minds achieve in creativity and in dreams (as dreams blend incompatible elements in a synthesis which the dreaming mind—sometimes even the waking mind—entirely accepts), and it achieves this sort of harmony with its own apparently incompatible plots. Moffatt (2004, p. 185): The action within the woods . . . demonstrates the ability of shadows and dreams—the phantasmal—to reflect and affect reality. Additional discussions on the dream-reality question can be found in Reyher (1947, pp. 168–9), Hibbard (1978, p. 81), Sacks (1980, pp. 21 ff.), Boock (1981, p. 69), Finch (1981, pp. 5–6), Stewart (1981, pp. 46–7, 49, 53), Cheatham (1985, p. 228–9), Eicher (1994, p. 17).

Belsham (1789, pp. 25–6) is one among many who see Sh.’s description of the poet’s eye as referring to Sh. himself. See n. 1804–9, and also Kreyssig (1862, 3:87); Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, 1:78); Luce (1907, p. 33); Canning (1903, pp. 479–80); Meagher (1997, p. 41)—an invaluable comic self-portrait of a dramaturge at work. Pearson (1942, p. 46) theorizes that Sh. himself . . . played the part of Theseus, who discusses the imaginative faculty in a manner quite out of keeping with a duke devoted to hunting. Watkins (1946, p. 95) claims that this most searching analysis . . . of the poet’s function is Shakespeare speak[ing] straight to his audience almost forgetting his intermediary. It describes Sh.’s artistic method and his view of the imagination and of the creative process. I. Brown (1963, p. 150) finds in the lines the Sh. who never blotted a line. His comments on the methods of a writer are few, but they suggest on the whole a fast-running pen. The familiar account of the poet’s fine frenzy [1804] . . . is certainly not applicable to a plodder. The poet is likened to the lunatic and lover with their seething brains [1796]; while his imagination bodies forth the form of things unknown, [1806–7] the frenzy of the mind’s eye would not tolerate slow composition. Ramsey (1977, p. 234): Sh. has insidiously used this speech to defend his own imaginative achievement. . . . Surely Shakespeare wants us to see the value of Theseus’s common sense, but just as surely he wants us to see that, behind common sense and beyond cool reason, his imagination has bodied forth the forms of things unknown, his pen has given palpable shape to such strange things and given airy nothing a local habitation and a name. [1806–9]

Shakespeare on His Craft

The first commentators on MND as what might be called metadrama were not familiar with the term but did think about some of the matters it implies. As early as 1874 Snider (p. 167) argues that the play is its own spectator, including its audience and itself in one and the same movement. Thus there is reached a totality of Representation which not only represents something, but represents itself in the act of Representation. The very limits of Dramatic Art are touched here; it can go no further. In this reflection of the play by itself is to be found the thought which binds together its multifarious, and seemingly irreconcilable, elements. Nelson (1958, pp. ix, 13) first mentions that the play speaks of itself, offering a double convolution which shows the seams, turning the dramaturgy inside out and defines . . . the play within which it occurs. . . . [13] The fun-making about the impersonators of the props (Wall, Moonshine) no doubt reflects Shakespeare’s self-consciousness about the conventions within which any attempt at theatrical illusion must work, but it does so without that sense of metaphysical anguish we usually associate with the play scene in Hamlet, although there is perhaps more than a touch of such metaphysical probings in the epilogue, a foreshadowing as it were of the theme of the insubstantial pageant [Tmp. 4.1.155 (1826)] so central to [Tmp.]. Stroup (1981, pp. 30–31): Bottom has been himself, an ass, Pyramus, and of course an actor in the Lord Chamberlain’s company. Within the two hours traffic, he has lived on four separate levels of reality—to be [31] Bottom and not to be him at the same time is no mean accomplishment. To complicate it all he emerges from the reality of the audience to that of Bottom, to that of an ass, to that of Pyramus; and yet without the least difficulty he recedes to that of Bottom and after the play is done, to that of the actor. Withal, as Bottom he has to be always Bottom so recognized by the audience and reader. He subsumes all. And all these various roles constitute various levels of reality. If one is to understand and enjoy the play fully, one must sort them out. Bottom speaks in several voices. To understand them all is to recognize a fancy new term—metadrama. Additional commentary can be found in Huston (1973, pp. 213–14, 220–1); Foakes (1980, pp. 109–112); Montrose (1983, p. 86), who is especially interested in the play’s relation to Elizabethan culture. That the dramatic medium itself is thematized in Shakespeare’s play . . . implies a claim for a dialectic between Shakespeare’s profession and his society. . . . In its preoccupation with the transformation of the personal into the public, . . . it dramatizes—or, rather, meta-dramatizes—the relations of power between prince and playwright. . . . The play . . . contests the princely claim to cultural authorship and social authority. [MND] is, then, in a double sense, a creation of Elizabethan culture: for it also creates the culture by which it is created, shapes the fantasies by which it is shaped, begets that by which it is begotten. In addition see Mangan (1991, pp. 74, 82): Sh. is explor[ing] the nature of the theatrical experience itself. . . . The ability of art and magic to transform reality and to create new realities is one of the central obsessions of the play. Mangan details the (p. 82) false endings which leave us wondering about the realms of fantasy or of reality, as we make the transition from theater to street; Bate (1993, p. 144): Shakespeare’s often-observed self-conscious theatricality, what has become known as his metadrama, simultaneously reminds us that we are in the theatre and helps us to forget where we are.

The foci in the discussions differ—the playwright, the actor, the audience, the interlude, sometimes all of them, the purpose of artistic creation, and its relation to reality, to life.

Placing primary emphasis on the playwright’s responsibility for the success of the theatrical experience, Myers (1956, pp. 123–4) says of Theseus’s comment [2015–16] if there exists any-[124]where a wiser comment on drama and the theatre, I have not read or heard it. Sh. knew that his Pyramus and Thisbe, with the incongruities in the diction removed, and with competent actors losing themselves in their parts . . . , could be successfully presented as tragedy. For he knew that the chief difference between silly stuff and profound art is caused by the artist’s power to enlist the spectator’s imagination. Similarly Dowden (1875, p. 70), McKenzie (1964, p. 47). Edmunds (1981, pp. 14–15): The difference in quality between . . . [Pyr. and MND]—the reason why one succeeds and the other fails—has nothing to do with stage conventions. . . . Through Theseus and Hippolyta, Shakespeare explains why the one play is a work of art and the other not. In reply to Theseus’ attempt to defend the workmen’s efforts, Hippolyta retorts: It must be your imagination then and not theirs [2017]. In other words, Yes, all poets and actors are entitled to expect the audience to work with them at creating the dramatic experience, but the stimulus must come first from them: where there’s a lack of imaginative power in the writing and the interpretation you can’t expect the latent imaginary forces of the audi-[15]ence to be released. Maginn (1837, p. 371) contends that none but the best, or . . . those who approach to excellence, can call with success upon imagination to invest their shadows with substance. Edmunds (1981, p. 12): Shakespeare gives us an explanation of his method of working in [MND]. There we may discover his attitude towards theatrical illusion, what induces it and what destroys it, and a statement of the kind of belief that the poet can create in his audience. In a successful dramatic experience the imaginative resources of the poet, the actor and the audience will be fused in unison. Like all dramatists writing before the establishment of the tedious conventions of Realism, Shakespeare always expected to work on his audience’s imaginary forces [H5 Prol. 18 (19)] to piece out what he was pleased to call the imperfections [H5 Prol. 23 (24)] of his staging. . . . It is the belief of the actors in their characters, situations and relationships that creates belief in the audience. In about five minutes of Act III, Scene i, of the Dream Shakespeare encapsulates centuries of scholarly argument concerning the nature of stage illusion. Hunt (1992, p. 230): For Shakespeare in [MND], the true artistic voice entails utterances that allow for crucial imaginative play between speaker and auditor, a space in which the listener can create pleasurable meaning from the cues embedded in genuinely provocative poetry.

Placing more emphasis on the audience’s responsibility as playgoers, Knight (ed. 1839, 1:381) finds Theseus’s words full of instruction, adding that 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. Luce (1907, pp. 164–5) argues that the aesthetic faculty of the artist—the faculty of realizing and then harmonizing with the exquisite fitness [165] of things—implies and demands a similar faculty in ourselves; first working backwards, and then again forwards, our imagination must re-create what he has created. Similarly Watkins (1946, pp. 98–9); Sypher (1976, p. 193); Wells (ed. 1967, p. 36); Calderwood (1965, p. 507), who in 1971 (p. 14) reminds us that Shakespeare’s audience may respond to art’s visionary shapes with a philistine rationalism that refuses to trade the familiar solidity of a joint stool (Lr. 3.6.52 [Q1, G4r]) for the dubious insubstantiality of Banquo’s ghost. That is, the artist must always deal with those for whom art is merely mimetic, never creative, mirroring back to them in a one-to-one correspondence . . . the secure and serviceable world they brought with them to the theater. Halio (2003, p. 59) on Theseus’s if imagination amend them [2016]: This appeal to the audience’s imagination lies at the heart of any dramatic performance. . . . Without a willing suspension of disbelief, we cannot fully enjoy the performance of a play. At the same time, paradoxically, as Dr. Samuel Johnson reminds us, we remain aware that we are in a theater and not in Athens, Rome, or London. This is another function of multiconsciousness evoked by Shakespeare’s Dream. Dependence on audience imagination/participation is emphasized also by Brown (1957, p. 90), Brinkmann (1964, pp. 62–3), Brook (qtd. by Croyden, 1971, p. 15), J. P. Smith (1972, pp. 5–6), Leggatt (1974, p. 115), Pagnini (1976; tr, 1999, p. 43), Carson (1984, pp. 36–7, 43), Faas (1986, p. 69), Greer (1986, p. 24), Macdonald (1992, p. 48), Brown (2002, p. 31).

The actor’s skill or lack of it evokes comment. Hamilton (1967, p. 230): All that imagination can do to amend the actions of the players cannot overcome Bottom’s literalness. Montrose (1995, pp. 81–2): In [MND] Shakespeare calls attention to the artistic distance between the professional players and their putatively crude predecessors. . . . This professional self-consciousness is the very hallmark of the play’s celebrated metatheatricality—its calling of attention to its own artifice, to its own artistry. . . . [MND] parodies the amateur acting traditions that had been largely suppressed along with the civic drama by the end of the 1570s and the work of the professional companies active during the 1570s and earlier 1580s; and it juxtaposes to them the representational powers of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and their playwright. This contrast was made manifest by Shakespeare’s [82] company in the very process of performing [MND]. . . . The contrast between amateur and professional modes of playing is incarnated in the performance of Bottom. . . . The amateur actor who wants to be cast in all the parts, the only character to be literally metamorphosed, is also the one who, despite his translations into an ass-headed monster and a fabled lover, remains immutably—fundamentally—Bottom. The fully professional collaboration between the imaginative playwright and the protean player of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men creates the illusion of Bottom’s character precisely by creating the illusion of his incapacity to translate himself into other parts. Similarly Bednarz (1993, p. 107).

The contribution to the discussion of the interlude and the rehearsals for it is crucial. Edwards (1968, p. 53): The efforts of the actors are made more ludicrous by their contrivances to make their scene seem real, while at the same time they are reassuring the audience that it is not real (a very curious and subtle mirroring of what Shakespeare is doing in the play as a whole, to create and undermine illusion at the same time). Fly (1982, p. 9): The self-reflexive manner in which he shapes his materials . . . voluntarily opens the whole activity of play-making to a radical scrutiny, casting doubt upon the very possibility of a play’s formal creation even as the edifice is taking shape before our eyes. The result of this ambivalence is often an affirmation of art-making based upon a clear-eyed, even amused knowledge of what it is not, nor cannot be. For example, the inimitable glory of plays like [MND], [AYL], [Ado], and [AWW] depends (as their titles remind us) upon their capacity constantly to keep before us the hypothetical status, the fictionality, of their mode of being. And if these plays retain the power to enchant us, that power derives directly from our full awareness that what we are delighting in is finally an illusion, a game, a wonderful pretense. No serious student of Shakespeare is likely to miss this point. . . . The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby . . . has been nailed together by Peter Quince and his rude mechanicals, but Theseus accepts it because he knows (as we should know) that the best in this kind are but shadows [2015]. . . . [Sh.’s] self-consciousness about play-making usually remains low key and unobtrusive, but critical in shaping our response to his work. Kiernan (1996, pp. 108–9): What is being brought home to the theatre audience by this play-within-a-play is not only that the imagination of the spectators completes the theatrical experience, but also what is required to create theatrical experience in the first place, and what happens when the audience is not expected to play its part. This does not mean we must imagine, for example, that a real lion is really roaring on the stage, or that an actor really is a wall. Our part, as audience, is not to pretend that a fiction is reality, but to believe in the fiction as fiction. In his presentation of the play-within-the-play in [MND], the dramatist seems most concerned with [109] emphasising what must come first—whether a playwright and his company of actors believe in the fiction as fiction. Sweeney (1985, p. 165) is concerned with the questions about the relationship between theater and its audience, Kernan (1986, p. 91) with audience control of the meaning of a play. . . . To put the argument bluntly, the [stage] audience plays its part badly and misinterprets the play. For further discussion of related matters see Homan (1981, pp. 93–5); Cox (1982, p. 177), who suggest[s] that the perfect ineptitude of the play within a play is itself part of the perfection of [MND], and that that perfect ineptitude is intended to throw light, by reflection, on the problematic character of the realization of poetic perfection; Parker (1983, p. 46), for whom the interlude becom[es] . . . a revealing metadrama, exposing the structures and strategies of the play which appears simply to contain it; Craig (1983, pp. 91–2), who concludes that (p. 92) Hippolyta’s comment on the lovers’ story . . . can help us see . . . [that] what emerges from the treatment of the inner play . . . is the delicate balance necessary for drama, a balance between two kinds of literalness; Willems (2004, p. 104), who points out that dramatic illusion can be destroyed . . . by actors who refuse to disappear behind their parts. Hutton (1985, p. 293) singles out for analysis the problem for artists . . . when their material is perceived as being frightening or offensive, and Styan (1986, p. 10) considers Quince’s worries [857–72] fundamental to the nature of theatre and would suggest that, although some plays are more obviously metatheatrical and self-conscious, and some less so, there never has been a period when a good playwright did not exploit his audience’s pliability, its readiness to believe. P. Parker (1987, p. 124) mentions their effort not to produce a convincing and naturalized theatrical illusion, Flint (1991, p. 17) their effort not to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature [Ham. 3.2.22 (1869–70)], Saulescu (1999, p. 5) the preoccuption with secondary elements connected with the setting so that Sh., like a genuine post-modern predecessor, pushes the protagonists into the background and amplifies the role of the margin. Moon, Wall and the apologetic Lion arouse laughter and ironic comments that blur the tragic end of the lovers. Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, p. 84) thinks the interlude gives an air of greater solidity to the principal play. Similarly Fiedler (1949, pp. 83–4), Ferrara (1964, p. 197), Dillingham (1956, p. 231), Thomson (1968, p. 195).

Perng (1977; tr. 1988, pp. 57–71) looks at the path of the play script from author to director to actor to audience to show that it (p. 71) is translated at every stage of transmission from what the author might have intended. Gertz (1995, pp. 153–4, 166) explores the tensions between dramatic and performance texts, explaining that performance texts emphasize actions, dramatic ones language which enables us to see, to imagine. (P. 166): How audiences read, in the final analysis, determines how the literary system and drama are re-envisioned and transformed. Others commenting on metatheatrical topics include Turner (1974, p. 173), Herz (1977, pp. 390–1), Weimann (1988, pp. 148–50), Cohen (1989, pp. 53 ff.), Laroque (1988; tr. 1991, p. 190), Sorelius (1997, p. 93), Mikics (1998, p. 118).

A number of commentators analyze how the playwright works to accomplish audience engagement. Fender (1968, pp. 52–3) looks at Sh.’s use of Theseus because there is in Sh.’s plays an inverse proportion between the vision of the politician and that of the poet. As for ourselves, we know what happens in the play, (p. 53) but the important point is that we do not know what we know until we have seen Theseus, by contrast, arrive at the wrong conclusion. In Act 5 Theseus is merely a dramatic device used by the author to reinforce the play’s main action in the memories of the audience. Huston (1981, p. 10) feel[s] the powers of the playwright not so much in his hero as in the achievement of the play itself—in the way Shakespeare interrelates separate and apparently disparate plots, juggles the mistakings of Puck and the lovers in the woods, plays tricks with both historical and dramatic time, converts metaphor to dramatic action and dramatic action to metaphor, and finally, makes of the mechanicals’ failed play his own supremely comic success. In the process he suggests, and at once dramatically demonstrates, how the playwright may achieve and express a most rare vision [1732] at once transcending the limitations of his form and parodying his own success as a dramatist. The creation of illusion interests Felperin (1974, p. 390): The study of Shakespearean mimesis, surely the most compelling illusion of reality in world literature, begins, paradoxically, in the study of convention. Any artist, in order to represent life, must resort to the conventions of art, and in so doing, falsify life insofar as art creates a rival world different from that of life. Yet for art to be moral, to teach as well as delight, it must also be mimetic; we cannot learn from the actions of creatures with whom we have nothing in common. . . . Shakespeare resolves this paradox by subsuming within his work a recognizably conventional model of life, repudiating that model, and thereby creating the illusion that he uses no art at all, that he is presenting life directly. Of course what he is really presenting is a more complicated model with its own conventions.

O’Neill (1997, pp. 15–17): Various onstage figures—characters who sleep through or watch over events during the forest scenes . . . —are used specifically to suppress conscious analysis of the play and engage all members of the audience, simple and learned, in immediate, emotional, and unselfconscious spectation. . . . The interaction of these various audiences—onstage, backstage, and in the theatre—ultimately suggests that [MND] privileges the theatre audience’s spectatorial role, reserving all other functions—including the detached auditor’s critical consciousness—to the watcher-playwright behind the scenes. (P. 16): The onstage sleepers lull the theatre audience’s rational faculties and intensify their emotions, engaging them in an unusually deep belief state. . . .

As much as the play’s sleepers intensify emotion and call up responsive belief-states, the watchers draw an audience into even greater conviction. Metadramatically, they also define another kind of audience. Actually, there are two kinds of watchers. The second is the play’s most obvious audience—Theseus, Hippolyta, and the four young lovers watching Pyramus and Thisby. . . . More important in defining watchers as an audience type are Oberon and Puck. . . . The watchers, like the sleepers, evoke powerful responses and thus convince the audience to accept the play’s representation as a reality. Oberon’s acts of observation variously threaten violence or promise benevolence. . . . These alternations between oppressive and kindly observer keep the audience emotionally engaged. Oberon also exercises control over the action. (P. 17): Metadramatically, Oberon represents the watchful playwright, standing back from and yet acting within the play he is creating, invisible in his own person but visible in his effects. . . . This watcher is of necessity both a directing intelligence and an audience.

. . . It is in this combination of roles that Shakespeare envisions the playwright in his full capacity, working within, behind, and, in important respects, in front of the play. . . . To fulfill his function, the playwright must incorporate in himself all theatrical roles and activities—playwright, director, actor, auditor, and (not least) spectator.

The play within the play is the focus of several critics studying how Sh. achieves the illusion of reality. Rudd (1979, pp. 190–1): In the rehearsal scenes Sh. is demonstrating in considerable detail how to wreck a play. In their use of props and explanations, their mispronunciations and mangling of meaning, the clumsy style of the play, the mechanicals have (p. 191) destroy[ed] illusion. But here we must salute the bard’s matchless ingenuity; for by making it impossible to believe in Bottom as Pyramus the lover he has made it certain that we shall accept him as Nick Bottom the weaver. The same applies in a lesser degree to the other mechanicals. Lindblad (1981, pp. 143–4): Pyramus and Thisbe . . . serves a reflexive function . . . because of the way in which it introduces some of the inherent problems of stagecraft, e.g. naturalistic versus non-naturalistic means of representation, as in the case of the moon. Poetry and language accomplish this in MND. In the interlude, the mechanicals demand a degree of naturalism that is quite alien to the needs of their play. Their actor does indeed disfigure [871] the moon. So with wall and its chink. The problem is akin to Shakespeare’s own in presenting, for example, a wood with the needed density for people to get lost. (P. 144): Thus by presenting us with the absurd solutions that the mechanicals adopt in regard to the problems of staging, Shakespeare makes us appreciate the superiority of his own stagecraft. Similarly Cohen (1989, p. 58). Lieblein (1986, pp. 119–20): Peter Quince is quite right to recognize that it does not take much to make a theatre. The simple act of naming makes possible the transformation of a green plot into a stage and of a hawthorn brake into a dressing room [815–18]. Language is the instrument of the actor’s as of the poet’s imagination. (P. 120): Words in dramatic discourse designate; they turn a space into a place. . . . Nouns, pronouns (especially demonstratives), spatial and temporal adverbs—all contribute to the creating, through the process of deixis on the stage, the sense of time and place.

Theseus’s speech [1794–1813] has attracted considerable attention from those who would search out Sh.’s artistic method and his view of the imagination or of the creative process. Some students of the period find in the passage the Renaissance theory of literary inspiration. For a few people the speech is a key to Sh.’s comic genius.

Several find a definition of the creative process, or a philosophy of comedy. Freud, according to Holland (1960, p. 171), found in Theseus’ description of the lunatic, the lover, and the poet [1799] a true description of the creative imagination. Evans (1952, p. 45) considers the passage without a competitor in showing the origins and effects of poetic imagery. Similarly Taylor (1969, pp. 270–1), Reese (ed. 1970, p. 124), Riemer (1980, pp. 196–7). Ewbank (1971, p. 100) claims that Theseus comes close to Coleridge’s description of the primary Imagination as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. Fergusson (1970, pp. 125–6) notes Sh.’s control. Theseus seem[s] to describe the work of Shakespeare’s poetic imagination as it embodied the airy nothings of joy, love, and midsummer madness in verse that evokes the haunted woods. But we must [126] remember that, at the same time, Shakespeare was constructing his ingenious plot as coolly as any engineer to lead at last to true love and daylight; that he was creating Theseus himself; and that at this moment in the play he feels, like any canny showman, the need to let the audience know that he knows—as well as any of them—the difference between imagination and reason. Shakespeare’s reason is always alert, though hidden behind the scenes of the play. See Lowenthal (1996, pp. 81–2).

Others emphasize the poet’s creativity, some his mining of the irrational. Muir (1973, p. 27) contends that what Theseus intends as a gibe against poetry is a precise account of Shakespeare’s method in this play. Fly (1976, p. 30): Theseus’s words describe the perfect ease and power with which the poet captures the ideas his imagination creates. . . . Shakespeare allows the play’s authority figure to describe a poet who brings form and shape out of nothing with the same omnipotence and graceful immediacy with which Michelangelo—and Michelangelo’s God—brings life and form to Adam, and this poet may seem to us to bear a striking resemblance to the Shakespeare who wrote the play. Indeed, in plays like [MND], [1H4], and [AYL] Shakespeare achieves such an astonishing poise and balance—both in content and form—of widely discrepant materials that we may reasonably feel that the godlike creation of Theseus’ poet has actually been realized. Similarly Draper (1991, pp. 31–2). Ansari (1978, pp. 59–60): Theseus (p. 60) in spite of himself emphasizes (p. 59) the comprehensiveness of the poetic vision, and . . . the fact that the poet’s eye spans far wider horizons than can be managed by man’s speculative reach. Further, the poet is capable of creating internal imaginative structures or configurations of thought and emotion out of the chaos of experience. He is truly a maker in the sense of giving a tangible body to what is shapeless and conferring a recognizable form and proportion on sense experience so that it becomes significant and meaningful. Although Lamb (1979, pp. 485, 491) considers Hippolyta’s speech [1814 ff.] a valid statement about art, it does not allow us wholly to discount Theseus’s speech which concerns the experience of the artist. . . . Before a poet can create a controlled work of art, he must, like the lover and the madman, reach that highly dangerous state of mind in which a bush seems a bear. The poet, like the lover and the madman, is an explorer of the irrational self; like them, he must lose himself in his own labyrinth [a metaphor for art (491 n. 23)] and, if he meets a minotaur instead of an ass, risk a kind of death. Only after he experiences the labyrinth as a victim can he discover its order and create from it art. Faas (1986, pp. 136–7, 141, 170–71): While most Renaissance writers tended to regard imagination as subservient to reason, (p. 137) by equating the poet’s imagination with the hallucinations of the lunatic, Shakespeare radically changes this emphasis. . . . [He] not only makes Theseus stress the semi-psychotic potential of the poet’s imagination, but explores this potential in various of his dramatic characters. Most notably, Richard II grows more poetic as he turns frenetic. . . . This is also true of Will, the speaker of the Sonnets [who may or may not speak for Shakespeare]. . . . Shakespeare not only allows us to read Theseus’ statement as basically his own, but also illustrates its tenets in several of his works. (P. 142): The apologists of poetry tried to dissociate imagination’s psychopathological bias from the poetic imagination. By contrast, Theseus simply equates the two, while the playwright, ironically hidden behind his dramatis persona, seems to give his smiling approval. Theseus also (p. 170) illustrate[s] the hypnagogic resources of the poet’s imagination. The Duke calls [171] them tricks [1809]. . . .

At the same time, none of this hypnagogic experience precludes conscious craftsmanship, once the poet expresses it in words. Just as Theseus stresses the elusiveness of the poet’s imaginings, he emphasizes equally strongly the discrete deliberateness with which the poet Turns them to shapes [1807]. . . . The poet, and especially the playwright, works as a highly conscious craftsman when bodying forth his mythopoeic fantasies even though they may derive from hallucination or dream. See Olson (1957, pp. 97–8), Taylor (1995–6, pp. 4–5).

Mowat’s approach (1989, p. 336) differs from the others; she contrasts Sh.’s method to that described by the Duke. Interestingly, Theseus himself, advocate of the creation of character from airy nothing [1808], can be cited in evidence against himself and can lead us to a very different assessment of the Shakespeare text in relation to its Originals (to use Theobald’s language). Theseus appears in only three scenes of [MND] and speaks fewer than 200 lines. As we will see, these appearances, these lines, are not best described as the product of furor poeticus, of that divine frenzy described by Theseus in which imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown [1806–7] while the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name [1807–8]; rather, they are woven together from words, details, facts, whose local habitations were in large part others’ texts; around the name of Theseus in Dream, these details (clustered in other texts largely again around the name Theseus) combine in new patterns to give us this Theseus, the Theseus who has won Hippolyta with his sword, who rises up early to do his observation to May, whose hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, who scoffs at antique fables. By following Theseus’s name to his graven adventures in other Renaissance texts (texts long since accepted as sources for Dream) and then following the words of those adventures back into the play, we will see in small the bodying forth of a Shakespeare character, language shaped, book based, more marvelous in its careful complexity than the much-heralded creation ex nihilo proposed by Shakespeare’s text-constructed Theseus.

Charlton (1933, pp. 64–6) discerns in the lines Sh.’s first explicit statement of his comic philosophy. His comedy concentrates on vital incongruities in personality, on man’s tendency to be distracted through the ascendancy of (p. 65) his fancy or his emotion over his reason. Mere survival in the world depends upon man’s ability to differentiate rapidly and certainly between bears and bushes, and . . . the attribute of supreme value in the world is the cool reason which comprehends things as things are: . . . men without cool reason, who are the sport of seething brains and of the tumultuous frenzies of fancy and of sentiment, are [66] the victims of the world, and the butts of its comedy. Comedy, leading its action to a happy ending, leaving its characters at the end in harmony with the world, is bound to put its highest values on qualities which make for worldly happiness and success. With Theseus, the philosophy of comedy is finding its voice, and his cool reason is its prevailing spirit.

The play is Sh.’s defense of his craft, according to Dent (1964, pp. 128–9), who argues that only the most stubborn [129] precisian could have thought poetry the mother of lies after witnessing Shakespeare’s thematic distinction, however ambiguous in its ultimate implications, between the worlds of imagination and reality. Thus in offering a defense of its own existence the play simultaneously offers us Shakespeare’s closest approximation to a Defense of Dramatic Poesy in general. Smith (1977, pp. 196, 207): The challenge to the audience to enter the mysterious world of play and to sense the mystery in the ordinary world ebbs and flows in the play until it rushes up on the audience like a giant wave when Puck suggests that what they have just witnessed in the theater may itself be no more than a dream. Sh. (p. 207) is challenging the audience to question the reality of imagination and its works, while with utmost confidence he teases the audience to use the play as a lens through which to apprehend hidden truth and beauty. Cody (1969, pp. 141, 144, 147): What is celebrated in [MND] is finally the poet’s art itself—a certain aesthetic perception of love and language, Platonically conceived, as the agents of a courtly culture. The title word dream accordingly serves as a metaphor for the poetic fiction. (P. 144): The rehearsal of the familiar humanistic question of the value of fables effectively draws the pastoral themes of love and poetry, myth and language together and makes the play more completely the subject of itself. (P. 147): Sh. exploits to the utmost the convention that the truest poetry is the most feigning. Similarly Henning (1969, p. 486).

Critics detect another strain from Sidney in the play; art teaches as it delights; it embodies knowledge, truth. In other words, Sh.’s opinion of poetry is antithetic to Theseus’s. Roffe (1851, p. 29) finds it exactly in character that the doubting Theseus should thus speak of the Poetic Art [as the embodier of the unreal], and thence we may be sure that the Poet who wrote the lines for him thought precisely the very reverse. Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, pp. xxxii–iii) think Sh. favors neither the Duke’s suspicion of imagination nor the Duchess’s acceptance of (xxxiii) doubtful evidence, but rather seems to assert his quizzical wisdom here, insinuating impalpably the truer truth of art to total life, when, by such fancies as this Dream, the dramatic poet puts man’s lesser life within the passing presence of obstinate questionings of sense and outward things, the fallings from us, vanishings and blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized. Similarly Grace (1964, p. 64). McKenzie (1964, pp. 41, 47–8) regards the play as Sh.’s first attempt to explore and to justify the distinctive qualities of his art as a way to knowledge. Bottom makes (p. 47) the most important statement of the truth of dream or illusion, for to him alone . . . is it granted to [48] see dream as reality since his is the awakening, through illusion, of true imagination and faith and therefore of the highest knowledge. Sh. seeks to prove his larger theme by the most conscious demonstration of the dramatist’s power to prove that a higher truth lies in the illusion of his art. In the Dream Shakespeare has experimented with the most fundamental feature of drama—a play’s life in the theatre and the mystery of its relation to reality—not merely to point to but to demonstrate imaginatively the justification of his art. By creating in us as in Bottom a direct awareness of the power of illusion, as play or as dream, he has tried to bring us into communion with the higher reality of which our present world is only the merest shadow. According to Ferrara (1964, pp. 202–4, 206) Theseus . . . arrives at a philosophy of poetic creation which is also a theory of the subjectivity of truth. The poetic process includes the receptive act (p. 204) (the poet’s eye [1804]), the imaginative act (intuition and its translation into concrete image), and the expressive act (the poet’s Pen [1807]) during which the intuition and the image find in the word their objective definition. (P. 206) Sh. pursues and attains poetic truth, not that which the exact but cold and limited reason seeks or which the coarse senses derive (It.). Kernan (1978, pp. 187–8): Watching Pyramus and Thisbe how could anyone take plays seriously? And yet the point made by Shakespeare’s perspective is finally inescapable. All the world is a stage [AYL 2.7.139 (1118)], with players watching players watching players, as we watch Theseus watching Bottom pretend to be Pyramus. Perhaps, the logic of this endless dramatic perspective implies, the only reality finally lies in playing well and being aware that life is playing. If there is no escape from theater, and if playing is our only reality, then we have no reason to look down with Theseus and condemn as unreal any of those things that the imagination discovers and bodies forth for us onstage. A forest ruled over by a contentious fairy king and queen, a magical love potion which causes love at first sight, a comic trickster like Puck, all are at least as real as a duke who marries a queen of Amazons, rules over a city named Athens, and believes that a way of thinking called reason shows him the truth of things. And just to drive home the point, after Theseus [188] and Hippolyta and other couples, Bottom’s play finished, make their way to bed, thinking that reality reigns again, the stage fills with all those fairies which Shakespeare’s imagination has created to body forth the beneficent but tricky forces at work in nature beyond the range of the daylight eye. It is done very lightly, the claim half concealed and dismissed even as it is made, but reality is being heavily discounted and a visionary power is being claimed for the dramatic poet.

Weiner (1971, p. 334): If we deny poetry its fictiveness and insist that it is a literal representation of reality, then we deny its effectiveness, for poetry is not affirmative history which requires our belief in its truthfulness, but, taken allegorically and figuratively, is a means by which the poet’s invention may act profitably upon us. Sidney says the poet is to move us to goodness, but if he does not move us, poetry’s delight is without purpose and its teaching pointless. Baxter (1996, pp. 26–7) answers critics who are troubled by the claim that real knowledge is attainable by means of the lies, or fabrications, of fiction; he thinks that wonder, the desire to learn, and a kind of trust that truth is attainable by means of the processes of drama . . . are at the heart of Shakespeare’s poetics. (P. 27): Hypothetical cases, whether in law, or life, or literature, obviously can and do provide a way of acquiring real knowledge. Similar points are made by Boas (1896, pp. 188–9); Kéry (1964, p. 253); Homan (1971, pp. 408–10); Martz (1970; 1971, pp. 30–1), who argues that Sh. is enacting for us justification of the necessity of the experience of art to a meaningful life; Hawkins (1970, pp. 51–2, 54–6); Mandel (1973, p. 68); Coursen (1977, pp. 4, 6); Uman (2001, p. 70); Longo (1980, pp. 23–4), who says (p. 24) Puck’s final lines suggest Shakespeare’s observations about his art: trust in poetry and imagination, faith in myth as an instrument for self-understanding; Beiner (1985, p. 80); Bradbrook (1987, p. 16)—poetry awakens everyone as individuals in a social context. This is the justification of the arts; Stavig (1995, p. 2); Macdonald (1992, pp. 48–9); Richmond (1993, pp. 258–60). Among critics who claim that the play leads us to a higher truth or reality are Hudson (1848, 2:1), Heraud (1865, pp. 181–2, 491), Wigston (1884, pp. 28, 60, 308), Morley (ed. 1886, p. 9), Chesterton (1904, p. 622), Brooke (1905, p. 31), Goddard (1951, pp. 74, 78), Cope (1973, pp. 222–5), Miller (1975, pp. 254–5, 268), Herz (1977, p. 391), Kernan (1978, p. 186), Brown (1987, pp. 20–1, 23), Mikics (1998, pp. 109–10).

Wells (ed. 1967, p. 34) considers illusion a part of life; the experiences of the lovers have enrich[ed] their lives just as Bottom’s rare vision [1732] enriches his. They bring back into the ordinary world something that they learned in the world of imagination. The illusory has its part in the total experience of reality. As Snodgrass (1975, p. 220) puts it, the play implies that all illusions have their reality, all realities their illusion. Similarly Zesmer (1976, p. 108). Mandel (1973, p. 67): The most magical of Shakespeare’s characters, those who most cross the boundaries between reality and illusion and, thus, those who are most clearly associated with the imaginative faculty, Puck and Prospero, become central figures in this consideration of the relation of the play-world to the real world. Puck’s closing lines demand that the audience imagine they have dreamed what, in reality, they have seen [2207–10]. The actors are defined as shadows, insubstantial things, who have life and existence subject to the imaginative power of the audience. Within the play-world, shadows applies to Puck, Oberon, and the fairies. In the real world, shadows applies to all the actors of the play. The circle is complete when Puck equates the actors with the spirits. And the distinction between play and real world is negated by Puck’s strong insistence at the close of his speech that in the real world Puck, as spirit, exists and will make amends [2215–22]. Thus there are three possibilities relevant to Puck’s relation to the world: (1) in the play-world, Puck is a spirit; (2) in the real world, Puck, as character in a play, is only an actor, a shadow of reality; and (3) in the real world, Puck, as spirit, exists—endures beyond the play and is, in fact, a part of the world in which the audience exists. Miller (1975, pp. 254–5) points to the fairies who pose open-ended questions about illusion and reality, existence and art. . . . The fairies are a continual and unavoidable reminder of a certain indefiniteness in the world of the play. The fairies (p. 255) obliquely hint that our own offstage existence may be touched by mysteries no less genuine than those that disrupt the world of Theseus, Hermia, Bottom, and the rest. . . . . It is not so much the fairies per se as the mystery of the fairies—the very aura of evanescence and ambiguity surrounding their life on stage—that points to a mysteriousness in our own existence, and specifically in such ambivalent earthly matters as love, luck, imagination, and even faith. These are the elements of human experience with which the fairies are again and again associated. . . . [W]e are forced . . . to ask questions, ultimately unanswerable, about the substance of those mortal experiences with which they are linked. Among many others dealing with dramatic illusion are Bergeron (1977, pp. 166, 172 ff.), Edmunds (1981, p. 12), Craig (1983, p. 93), Graham (1987, pp. 43–4), Halio (1994, pp. 6, 8), Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. xxvi), McDonald (ed. 2000, pp. xxx–xxxi).

Harmony

The play’s achievement of harmony is attributed sometimes as Berry (1984, p. 197) suggests to love, sometimes as Miola (1973–4, p. 25) says to the power of human love and . . . the existence of a benign force which mercifully orders human affairs. The importance of charity is stressed by Evans (1969, p. 86): Theseus is a kind of statesman of the human heart and his philosophical comments, his stern but fair conception of legality, and his treatment of the mechanicals all underline the play’s quest for a happy unity. . . . Human happiness can only be achieved by a constant vigilance by human beings to see that their imaginations and intelligences are open, charitably, towards others. In order to sustain this, man must accept others for what they are, not for what they might be. In a similar vein is Tyler (1973, pp. 197–8). Nelson (1988, p. 88): The challenge of this play is the setting straight of the tangled love relationships . . . so that [the] marriages . . . can conform to the ideal of marital constancy which supports and models the harmony needed for well-ordered communities.

Another emphasis is on the reconciliation of opposites. Zimbardo (1972, p. 36) suggests that a dominant motif is the concordance of seeming opposites by means of the reconciling faculty, imagination, and Guilhamet (1975, pp. 258–9 and passim) analyzes the many ways the theme of achieving concord out of discord functions in the play. Alwyn (1991, p. 104): What is clear in Athens and the wood is the representation of a thesis (the rigid inadequacy of a rationale that excludes desire) followed by an antithesis (the chaos caused by the unbounded free play of desire). Act 4 brings about harmony: The lovers enact this harmony as they awake: . . . there is a harmony now between reason and experience. . . . Theseus’s rationale is softened by this sight and he sanctions the marriage of true lovers and brings about the wonderful synthesis that ends the play.

Wells (ed. 1967, p. 35) notes that in Theseus’s choice and acceptance of the players’ efforts Shakespeare seems to be hinting at the infinite adjustments necessary in the establishment of social and emotional harmony. Slights (1993, pp. 121–2) writes not of a monolithic culture but of a society made up of diverse groups who manage to live together. (P. 122): In [MND], distinct groups pursuing their own objectives, influenced by distinct values, largely unaware of each other’s existence, yet operating within the same sphere of time and place and interacting occasionally and crucially, enact such an agreement arising out of dissimilitude. Social harmony is achieved not by the triumph of passionate youth over oppressive age nor by the vindication of established hierarchy and the exorcism of disobedience but by unequal voices agreeing together. . . . Oberon’s machinations and Theseus’ blessing contribute, but the existence of diversity rather than the benevolence of authority makes possible the consensual marriages that constitute the happy ending. Similarly Sorelius (1993, pp. 168, 187), who mentions the proper ordering of the relationship between human beings as members of larger wholes such as the commonwealth of the state and the institution of the family, and since the world of the supernatural is also involved, the cosmic hierarchy and adds: (p. 187) What the comedy exalts . . . is civilization in the sense of the rule of reason and proper order, as opposed to the chaos of rebellion personified in the persons of, as it happens, two women [Hermia and Titania]. . . . Perhaps Theseus’ victory over Hippolyta and his marriage to her should also be seen as a triumph of culture over untutored nature. This victorious civilization, however, is one of mercy, reconciliation and human understanding in the commonwealth. Above all . . . the play’s ending contains a defence of untheoretical language. . . . [Quotes 1898–1902]. In [MND] Theseus and Hippolyta, both the male and the feminine principles, in a kind of dialectical dialogue, give voice to that civilizing message that the French Princess represented in [LLL]. Leggatt (1999, p. 67): The ultimate benevolence of the play’s vision lies in the possibilities it offers of courtesy, loyalty, self-deprecation; of the love embodied not in the magic flower but in Helena’s Mine own, and not mine own [1718]; of the relations between art and its audience embodied not in the heckling of the courtiers but in the final offer of Robin, so like the goodwill of Quince and his actors, Give me your hands, if we be friends, / And Robin shall restore amends [2221–2]. Maslen (2005, p. 152): [MND] . . . celebrates the love that binds communities rather than individuals. Important to the achievement of social harmony, Wells (1972, pp. 63–4) indicates, is MND’s concern with courtesy, and with moderation and restraint. . . . [64] An ideal of courtesy is implied in this play . . . even though none of the characters finds that he can easily live up to it. Others noting the harmony achieved include Dufour (1979, p. 28), Absher (1990, pp. 87–8), Tanner (ed. 1995, p. cxlix), Hunt (1996, p. 11), Halio (2003, pp. 66–7).

Transformation

The theme of transformation cuts across several strands of the play. Most critics mention Bottom in connection with the theme, but the nature and permanence of his transformation are debatable. Calderwood (1965, p. 519) thinks it unlikely that the dream has put Bottom in touch with the mysteries of the universe. . . . It has put him in touch with a fact about himself and hence provided an occasion for self-knowledge. . . . But there is no real danger that Bottom will undergo anagnorisis. Campbell (1980, p. 16) concludes that Bottom’s translation into an ass is a paradigm of the themes and tensions of the play, but its meaning is understood only insofar as we come to understand the multiple transformations in the play. Bottom himself cannot explain his transformation, his wondrous dream of being an ass, any more than the young lovers can explain their falling in love and acting like asses in the forest. . . . There remains a mystery behind the transformative power of love that cannot be articulated, only discovered by each of us in the audience. Wyrick (1982, p. 447): Bottom’s ass’s head is a blatantly literal rendition of the theme of metamorphosis which permeates the play. [MND] is in essence Ovidian, set in a moon-drenched metamorphic woodland inhabited by shape-shifting, illusion-knitting agents and subjects. Bottom is the tangible symbol of this metamorphic mist. . . . As an animated metaphor and as a malapropian character, Bottom represents verbal metamorphosis, the transposition of one word into another. This is part of the power of dramatic art, and imagination is the metamorphic practicer. But Shakespeare playfully criticizes Bottom’s literalization of art by using his own art to literalize the metaphoric and metamorphic dimensions of his central comic character. . . . He is half-man, half-ass, the visual embodiment of Puck’s dictum, what fools these mortals be [1139]. Accordingly, Bottom serves as a clear comic everyman—a mirror in which the playgoer can see the human condition. Barkan (1986, pp. 263–7): Bottom understands that the experience was a vision. He never denies its reality, but he greets it with the wordless wonderment appropriate to mystic rites of initiation. In the rehearsal scene, (p. 265) Bottom and his colleagues discover metamorphosis as they investigate mimesis. The first problem is solved by a recognition that the actor is simultaneously himself and not himself (I Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver [832–3]). (P. 266): Bottom dares to attempt self-transformation. That is Puck’s forte, so he punishes Bottom with Ovidian metamorphosis. . . . The metamorphic drama of Bottom as jackass is not only moralized, amorous, and visionary; it also helps to define the art of the theater. Bottom is punished for being an actor, and his resurrection becomes the triumph of the actor as metamorphic hero. That is the final level to be observed in his soliloquy. When Bottom draws the verbal parallel between man is but an ass [1733] and man is but a patched fool [1736], he means more than a slander upon those who verbalize visions. . . . The patched fool is a licensed actor, who was often represented with precisely those asses’ ears that are imposed on Bottom in his real life. He thus wears proudly, as a professional artist/clown/protean, that badge of asininity with which Puck attempted to humiliate him.

(P. 267): The actual performance of the mechanicals makes it clear that this equation of Bottom and dramatic art is no rhapsodic affirmation. . . . The watching of the play becomes a metamorphic activity as well. Theseus, having just asserted that imagination creates an illusory something out of nothing, declares that he and the rest of the audience will transform the nothing of the mechanicals’ ability into a recognition of their real intention.

Hapgood (1988, pp. 30–31, 30): On his release from his spell, [Bottom] has a compelling sense of wonder at what has befallen him yet soon finds ways to come to terms with his experience and fit it into his ongoing life. Bottom thus sets an example for the audience. If we are often inclined to exclaim with Horatio O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! Shakespeare [31] seems to reply with Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome (Ham., 1.5.164–5 [861–2]). (P. 30): Bottom comes closest to embodying the spirit of the play. It is he who chiefly experiences the play’s characteristic processes of recombination and transformation. . . . And he undergoes these experiences with remarkable aplomb. . . . On his release from his spell, he has a compelling sense of wonder at what has befallen him yet soon finds ways to come to terms with his experience and fit it into his ongoing life. Bottom thus sets an example for the audience.

Bellringer (1983, pp. 202–3): A theme running through the play concerns the need to accept change and to respond positively to different situations. Through dreaming and acting, people can vary their normal personalities and explore alternative selves for a while. . . . The point which the play as a whole makes is the superiority of adaptability over mere mutability in sexual relationships, in matters of love. Mutability suggested a universal state of instability. (P. 203): This positive alternative to mutability can be thought of as metamorphosis, exemplified in marriage, in magic, and in the art of acting. The power to change roles and redirect behaviour to meet changing circumstances corresponds to nature’s own life-giving rhythms and renewals, and seems to elicit the approval of the gods, or of what gods there are. Barkan (1986, pp. 260–3): Helena’s monologue at the end of 1.1 acts as a kind of argument to the action of the whole play. [Quotes 246–7] . . . She is reflecting upon the psychological metamorphoses induced by passion. (P. 262): The young people complete their education as they reintegrate themselves into the good graces of their elders and into the whole society to which marriage entitles them. (P. 263): It is the wakings up, the returns from a metamorphic condition, that really define the nature of the experience. The lovers sense having an experience of doubles—of metamorphosis, of dream and reality, of sleep and waking, and of their own shifting pairings [that] have taken them beyond normal life and have come down on the side of waking, reality, and integration into grown-up society. Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 109–10) adds sleep as the greatest, the most profound and unknowable of all tranformative states. (P. 110): We cannot consciously know that we are asleep, though we can be strangely aware that we are dreaming. Sleep in [MND] is the embodiment for unknowing metamorphosis, dream the most complete state of transformed existence that we ever, let alone nightly, undergo. For additional comment see Goldstein (1973, pp. 177–8); Scragg (1977, pp. 130 ff.), who compares the theme of metamorphosis and transformation in MND and Lyly’s Gallathea; Guillory (1983, pp. 80, 82, 186 n. 13), who prefers the term transfiguration; Carroll (1985, p. 175); Mikics (1998, p. 102).

Bottom’s experiences in the play lead critics to the idea of redemption by divine folly. Hassel (1971, p. 381): Bottom has perceived something that exists, call it fairies, or madness, or transcendental truth. The entire Pauline verse shows us how Bottom’s exposition paradoxically expresses the inexpressible wonder of love, by joining it directly and unmistakably to the inexpressible wonder of God and his love for us [quotes 1 Cor. 2:9]. He elaborates in 1980 (pp. 53–6): In his confused silence Bottom may even be asking Shakespeare’s audience to understand the vital interrelationships between the act of faith and the fact of folly in St. Paul’s Christian community and in Shakespeare’s romantic, comic one. Hassel cites 1 Cor. 2:9 and also sees verbal parallels in 2 Cor. 12:1–6: (p. 54) Both begin with references to visions. Both start twice to reveal a vision, only to stop out of prudence. In both cases the vision is believed, but the visionary realizes that its expression would render him a fool, while its repression proves his wisdom. Bottom (p. 56) prompts all of us to admit that we too are bottoms as well as heads, bodies if also souls, flesh if spirit, absurd if dignified. Zimbardo (1972, p. 36) thinks Bottom’s dream emblematic of the play’s. He is . . . a visionary, whose very synesthesia suggests a wholeness of perception that denies the partiality of any one sense. . . . He is aware, moreover, of the futility of trying to define the indefinable, of trying to report in ordinary language a moment that transcends ordinary experience. The dream is bottomless because it reenacts the archetypal sacred moment. Similarly Stroup (1978, pp. 80–1). The Martindales (1990, p. 66): In Bottom’s well-known speech after his restoration there is also a hint of mystical experience by a holy fool. . . . In particular the sentence It shall be called Bottom’s dream, because it hath no bottom [1741–2] is not only humorous in its general absurdity and abuse of a famous philological joke (lucus a non lucendo), but hints at the possibility that his dream—like the play as a whole—has a bottomless profundity (the 1557 Geneva New Testament actually has the phrase the bottom of God’s secrets in I Corinthians 2:10). According to Stockard (1997, pp. 4, 15–16) the concept of divine folly is inherent in the structure of [MND] as well as in its language. She traces in detail a portrayal of redemption by means of divine folly and finds that Sh. (p. 15) exempts no character from folly and implies that all, regardless of status, need generous treatment. The play-within-the-play . . . [16] reminds us that we have the ability to respond generously, that exercise of this power ennobles both giver and recipient, and that ultimately the power of foolish generosity resides in the Christian god, whose providential presence Shakespeare implies in the play. Others touching on the topic include Goddard (1951; 1960, pp. 79–80), Pearce (1959, No. 1, Item 8), Kermode (1961, p. 219), Traversi (1968, 1:155), Miller (1975, p. 267), Boyle (1982, p. 18), Mebane (1982, p. 266), Barkan (1986, pp. 262–4; see here).

Less sure of the profundity of Bottom’s experience is Beaurline (1978, pp. 91–3): the quasi-religious importance of his encounter seems to strike even Bottom, (p. 92) but it would be gross error to infer . . . that Bottom has had a true vision of paradise and that he has undergone religious initiation comparable to a mystical experience. . . . [93] If it were a real religious experience, the mists of error and delight would blow away in a moment, brief as the lightning in the collied night [155], and Shakespeare would have violated the mood of the forest scenes irreparably. Wyrick (1982, p. 446) says that in his speech on his vision, he is recognizing his rightful role as a mouthpiece for—not as a focus of—mystery. Willeford (1969, p. 137) considers Bottom one of the most impressive examples of the fool as the receptacle and bearer of a transcendent value that, instead of being made accessible to social life, is deranged, distorted, and ostensibly lost in the fool’s own being. Garber (1974, pp. 60–1) argues that Bottom’s vision means more to the audience than to Bottom. The elevation of the irrational above the merely rational is one of the play’s thematic patterns and related to the type of the wise fool. Thus Bottom, awakening, is immediately and intuitively im-[61]pressed with the significance of his dream, which we of course recognize as not a dream at all, but rather a literal reality within the play. (P. 79): His text [1 Cor. 2:9] is well chosen; the passage from Saint Paul he quotes in scrambled form is not only a sign of his ignorance but also, and more importantly, of his radical wisdom. Paul is expounding the doctrine of the spirit in its primacy over the letter—an important crux for metaphorical expression itself and one which has a bearing upon the symbolic medium of dream. God, he says, hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty (1 Cor. 1:27). The allusion is more meaningful to author and audience than it is to Bottom. . . . In part, the biblical quotation is thus a learned joke at Bottom’s expense. But we have learned by now that this kind of joke is almost always superseded in [MND] by a greater joke upon the learned perceiver. MacCary (1985, p. 140) suggests that the function of the parody of St. Paul is not to restore the mystic experience of St. Paul but to put all mystic experience in question. The mystery is that there is no mystery: truth exists only in concrete, individual experience, and not as some divine plan or absolute form which determines experience. Miller (1975, pp. 260, 264) claims that Bottom represents the characteristic problem of men—all men—immersed in an ambivalent reality. In his own benighted way he, more than any other figure on stage, must confront the central intellectual issue of the play. He is consistently shown encountering mysteries, the mystery of the mimetic act, the mystery of love, and (above all else) the mystery of the fairies; and his comic struggles with the complexities of experience are Shakespeare’s primary means of exploring the dilemma presented by a world . . . in which reality is necessarily perceived in terms of opposing and apparently contradictory modes of being. Bottom is (p. 264) a comic mirror for the general human condition. Others touching on the subject include Merchant (1961, pp. 184–5); Dufour (1979, p. 27); Willson (1979, pp. 407–8); Stevens (1985, p. 89) arguing that Bottom’s confusion . . . suggests unrestrained fancy’s parody of true revelation; Frye (1986, p. 50); Bloom (1987, p. 1).

Hardill (2002; 2004, p. 169): MND and Tmp. are like a clear first and last of Shakespeare’s working on a myth of human destiny. In both, though little indication is given as to why a baneful alteration first befell the feminine nature in the human make-up, that baneful change takes place, and drives the masculine character into a darkening of mind and spirit, destructive to life. In the ensuing action—the usual time of quest or ordeal in such stories, mirroring our fallen world—the debased feminine and masculine characters are enjoined to a process whereby, each working on the other, what is base in them is refined, and in their final spiritual coalescence, as in a climax that breaks their lingering debasement, a lost unity and happiness is found. Directing this process is a relic of the old winter-king, who survived in countless romances, and in some patriarchal religions as the father-god: a formidable ghost-intelligence of a lost, tragically violated world of summer, now seeking his own return through the death and rebirth of the fallen sexes, as in a child brought forth to which he is the restored mind or head of wisdom.

Myth and Interpretation

A number of interpretations of Bottom’s character take into account mythological echoes and allusions. Barkan (1980, p. 359): Bottom’s experience consists of a special sort of liminality that is at the heart of the story of Diana and Actaeon. In the extent of his vision, Bottom affirms the whole progress from sexual drives through beastliness to the divine. Shakespeare’s Actaeon comprehends . . . the voyeur, . . . the gelding, the buffoon, the holy fool. The bridge between visionary and fool is the comic assertion of humanity (I am a man as other men are [854]) which is Shakespeare’s most original contribution to the Actaeon myth. See also Barkan in n. 1728–45. Longo (1980, p. 21) sees Bottom as the comic perversion of Orpheus . . . whose dual functions as singer and deep questor have led him to become accepted as a symbol of the creative artist. . . . As the comic fusion of lover and artist, as the inept weaver whose Dream consists of a series of contraries, the various elements of the Orphic myth are mockingly and amusingly centred in Bottom. . . . Insensitive, earthy, slow-witted, delightful, Bottom represents the frustrated attempt for a synthesis of reason and imagination, lover and artist—of a teleology whose purpose is creation into organic newness and completeness. But to follow the path of Bottom is to journey in dramatic chaos and philosophic confusion. Seeing Bottom as a conflation of the minotaur and the bull which sired him, and associating his name with the skein of thread which helped Theseus escape the labyrinth, Lamb (1979, pp. 480–1), seeing Bottom as a conflation of the minotaur and the bull which sired him, and associating his name with the skein of thread which helped Theseus escape the labyrinth, assigns him the double role of (481) monster of this labyrinth and the thread leading the way out of it and credits him with the wisest sentiments about love expressed in the play . . . Bottom is an ass because he does not succumb to love; and he is a thread out of this labyrinth because he refuses to abandon his common sense even in Titania’s embrace. . . . The paradoxical attitude directed towards Bottom by the play is a paradoxical attitude towards love: not falling in love is both pathologically foolish and eminently sensible. Holland (Theseus’ Shadows, 1994, p. 150) explains that although he is at the center of the wood-maze, he is half-ass, not half-bull. Though his transformation is the play’s structural centre, . . . it does not follow that he is the kind of thematic centre that accounts of the minotaur in the play have tended to suggest. This metamorphosed man is not to be murdered but loved and laughed at: . . . this is comedy not tragedy.

Invoking the minotaur . . . is to see the myth itself paradoxically and perhaps mockingly transformed. The wood is beneficial to those who enter it, a maze that exacts no tribute from its young Athenians, a labyrinth now located just outside the walls of Athens rather than across the seas in Crete.

Hackett (2003, pp. 350–1) sees Bottom as a comic version of the Minotaur. . . . Where Titania seems to compensate for her lack of a child by adopting the Indian boy and then by infantilizing Bottom, Oberon seeks to punish her with exactly the sort of union which would produce a monstrous birth, meeting her desire for [351] motherhood with a horrific travesty. As retribution for Titania’s refusal to him of her sexual attentions, Oberon degrades her to the basest level of subhuman lust. Lecercle (1989, pp. 144–9) regards Bottom as the clew or clue, Titania’s bower as a Bower of Bliss within the labyrinth. (P. 146): Bottom is . . . ye olde English Minotaur of the Celtic wilds of West Britain where rustic mazes . . . were common rural currency, and whence hail . . . his fairy chameleon counterpart, Puck—the Celtic Pouk, and the diminutive pisky pesky fairies.

However, to an Elizabethan audience, . . . [147] Bottom . . . is also present as thread. Nor do things stop there. For if, as bottom of thread, he is a double of the labyrinth itself, Shakespeare also makes him, . . . via his earnest aspiration to embody Ercles, a double of Theseus himself. . . .

This means that Bottom is at one and the same time 1. object of desire as occupant of the inner chamber 2. the desiring subject that seeks it out and penetrates it, and 3. the very paradigm of desire itself, of the angustiae that channel it, in that it reproduces the pattern of the Cnossan-Celtic maze itself. Bottom is yet present in a fourth and last way in this iter mysticum: in the words of the Vulgate, which disappear in King James’ Bible, in the passage which comments on the Pauline anaesthesia behind Bottom’s synaesthesia (I Corinthians 2, 9): God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. (I Cor. 2, 10). In the Vulgate, the innermost truth of God sought out by the Spirit is the Bottom of God’s secrets. In this nuclear mythic module, therefore, Bottom, in a scenario which is an alchemy of name and image, occupies all the places. . . . [148] Bottom moreover takes the place of the changeling, that tantalizing object of desire, which exists only as object of desire. With its diminutive saxon suffix (ling), it is a mere allegory of the Freudian object of desire. . . . and it is as essentially enigmatic and protean: now child,[] [149] now page, now squire, now knight, and wanted more particularly for a henchman.

Wigston (1884, p. 316) sees in the relationship between Bottom and Titania a parallel with the myth of Psyche and Cupid, an allegory of the soul in relation to the senses. Isaacs & Reese (1974, pp. 355–6) relate the incident to a Dionysian ritual insuring fertility. Oberon is the big symbol, for the gift of sexual felicity and fecundity is his to bestow upon the bridal couples. Fertility rites are linked to nature myths, and MND has symbolic associations with nature-myths. . . . The repeated pattern of sleeping and reawakening, death and rebirth, and transformation and renewal is explicit insistence on the nature-myth motif. . . . In primitive forms of matriarchal society the Dionysian celebration begins with the ritual murder of the old king and ends with the formal marriage of the queen to her new king. . . . The episode of Bottom and Titania is the central one in suggesting this pattern. He is the surrogate winter-king being sacrificed for the renewed potency of the summer-king. . . . In context, this association is doubly ironic, since Theseus is a modern, patriarchal king and Hippolyta [356] partakes in the revels only vicariously and unconsciously through Titania. Richer (1974, pp. 7–8) looks at the play as reflecting periodic (annual) renewal of the universe. From this perspective, the Bottom-Titania episode constitutes a marriage of Earth and Air (or Sky). But contrary to what one might think, Titania represents Earth, Bottom Sky, Titania the moon, Bottom the sun. Paster & Howard (1999, p. 296): Doubly monstrous in his overlapping roles as lover and baby, Bottom is the object of a forbidden love like that of Queen Pasiphaë for the bull, and he is the monstrous offspring too. Echoes of mythology are noted also by Pagnini (1976; tr. 1999, p. 31) and Moisan (1998, pp. 279, 286, 288–92 and passim).

Some critics associate the artisans’ action with themes of the play. For ways in which they comment on the love theme as comic relief, satire, or corrective see Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 21), Guidi, (1963, p. 12), Miller (1966, pp. 25, 30), Fender (1968, p. 9), Willson (1974, p. 110), Brewer (1975, p. 128), Pagnini (1976; tr. 1999, p. 38), Arthos (1977, p. 107), Snodgrass (1975, pp. 214–6). For their demonstration of respect or wisdom or dignity see Olson (1957, p. 106), Colley (1977, p. 65), Bellringer (1983, p. 213), Cox (1982, p. 169).

Other

There are those who see homoerotic overtones in the relationship of Helena and Hermia. Traub (1992, pp. 157–8): When Hermia compares the primrose beds where she and Helena were wont to lie [228] to the meeting place, and later the bedding place, of Hermia and Lysander, we are encouraged to notice a repetition and displacement of one bedmate for another. . . . [MND] . . . presents Lysander’s seductive come-on, One [158] heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth [694] as no different—qualitatively, emotionally, physically—from Helena’s pained admonition [quotes 1230 ff.]. Helena concludes this passionate appeal with the question, And will you rent our ancient love asunder . . . ? [1242]. Traub’s interest lies in the asymmetry that seems to constitute the homoerotic pair: the relative power of each woman is aligned according to her denial of homoerotic bonds, which makes the desire not only . . . the already lost, but the always about to be betrayed. And the incipient heterosexuality of the woman who is recipient rather than enunciator of homoerotic desire comes to stand as the telos of the play. Marshall (1982, pp. 558–62), inferring that Helena often seems to embody the opposites of the qualities shared by the other women in the play: defiance, self-respect, independence, dignity, and that her pursuit of Demetrius [is] founded in an expectation that he will not love her, suggests that it is Hermia and not Demetrius that Helena hopes to catch. Helena (p. 559) bitterly reproaches her for forgetting the sister’s vows [1226] they shared. Marshall cites as well 1230–8 and see[s] this densely poetic emblem of female sexuality as a revision of Theseus’ figuring of the maiden vow of single life: his barren, [81] fruitless [82] state, his flower withering on the virgin [560] thorn [86] are transformed into a persuasive picture of single blessedness [87] in which two grow [1235] as one, flowering and fruitful. (P. 562): He is dubious about the marriage of Demetrius and Helena; in light of the context of this marriage—both the events leading up to it and the utter silence of Helena and Hermia throughout the last act—it is hard to imagine that such a union would adequately repair what has been sundered or restore what has been lost. Similarly Schwarz (2000, p. 220), Adelman (1985, p. 82). Boehrer (2004, pp. 99, 113–15): The bestiality motif in [MND] parallels and inverts the play’s various references to same-sex communities and attachments, and . . . both of these discursive patterns may be understood as a nervous projection of tendencies intrinsic to the play’s understanding of gender difference and heteroerotic love. (P. 113): The theme of bestiality . . . lends overt expression to the play’s uneasiness with gender difference and its inevitable role in the development of reproductive marital sexuality. However, the play’s concurrent emphasis upon same-sex union, which even extends to the fantasy of a patriarchal authoritarian marriage committed at least to the symbolic (if not actually the physical) erasure of the feminine, emerges as equally unsatisfactory and equally anxiety-provoking. Caught as she is between her changeling page and her assified lover, Titania enacts an un-[114]easy transition from the latter state to the former. In the process, she illustrates the discomforts associated respectively with these competing states of homocentric and heterocentric affection, and she reveals the interconnection between these discomforts and the paired themes of same-sex union and of bestiality that lend them expression in her play. The play ultimately [115] lacks faith in its own festive conclusion, suggesting, thus, the darker tone of Shakespearean comedies to come.

Green (1998, pp. 381–3), though, says that a Lesbian relationship between Helena and Hermia is problematic—it was far in the past and they were children. Garber (1981, pp. 32, 34–5, 38) compares the twin images speech with similar ones in AYL (1.3.73–6 [534–7]) and WT (1.2.67–75 [130–8]) which imply youth and lack of differentiation and, in fact, all three of these passages, despite or perhaps because of their calm expectation of timelessness, are framed by the anticipation of present reversal. Helena’s lament is provoked by her belief that Hermia is in league with Lysander and Demetrius to mock her unrequited love. [34] . . . The advent of sexual love, in the case of Helena and Hermia, has brought about separation and differentiation, each here presented in the image of a fall. Celia, Rosalind, Helena, and Hermia will find instead of each other (p. 35) the more fruitful coupling of sexual love. . . .

[38] The state of sexual maturity is thus presented by Shakespeare as one of individuation and differentiation. The fraternal or sororal bond is necessarily a limited one, which must yield priority to a marital and sexual bond, as the timelessness of the . . . double-cherry [image] must yield to an acceptance of time and change, and a consequent stress upon fructification and the natural round. Similarly Shulman (1987, p. 9), Bruster (1993, pp. 8, 11), Charney (2000, p. 7).

Garner (1981, pp. 52–4, 62 n.) focuses on Theseus who wants to limit women’s power. He is unsympathetic toward them and in fact has homoerotic desires, (p. 62 n. 8) recognized or not. (P. 53): It is significant that the woman whom he at last will marry is not traditionally feminine. (P. 54): By conquering and marrying this extraordinarily powerful woman, he fulfills his need for the exclusive love of a woman while gratifying his homoerotic desires. On homoeroticism, see also Girard (1974, p. 134), Holstun (1987, p. 846).

Because of the Indian boy’s origins and the conflict over possession of him, several recent critics relate him to contemporary attitudes toward race, gender, colonialism, and economic evolution. Hendricks (1996, pp. 56, 58–9) looks at contemporary attitudes toward race and the way (p. 59) [MND] constitutes race as an ideological fissure, producing a problematic dichotomy between race as genealogy and race as ethnicity or physical appearance. Loomba (2000, p. 184): The Indian boy . . . is a human subject diminished into a dream of possession, whose only purpose is to confer identity and power upon his owners. He anticipates the power and magic of possessions under capitalism. . . . As the personification of colonial possessions, the Indian boy is . . . a symptom of the transition into the Early Colonial period. . . . Colonialism facilitated, even made possible, the transition from feudalism to capitalism and colonial possessions were crucial to the reshaping of human relations as well as the commodity-form itself. . . . We might think of the Indian boy as both the commodity-form that enables, and the dream of colonial possession that signposts, the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Pask (2003, p. 182): His Indian origin . . . makes the boy into the prize of the rapidly growing English trade with the Levant and Asia. Raman (2001, pp. 242–5, 268–9, 277): In narrating her reasons for not giving up the Indian Boy, Titania renders visible both the gendered and colonial frames operative in the play.

[243] Counterpointing Titania’s matriarchal fantasy is Oberon’s exclusively male one, in which mothers play no part. Oberon regards him (p. 244) as a token of exchange, and the exchange stabilize[s] Oberon’s imperial order, whereas Titania’s economy is based on the use-values of female community, memory, and shared pleasure. For her the boy marks a shared past, a history, a set of social relations. . . . Despite their differences, Oberon’s and Titania’s [245] economies both rest upon commodifying the East, thereby assimilating its otherness within structures of Western thought. The conflict between them underscores the significance of the boy’s present absence: it marks a struggle over the form of control. Moreover, by (p. 268) explicitly indicating the other-[269]ness of the sororal bonds by stigmatizing them as Eastern—and, in fact, specifically as Indian—the play establishes an overlap between gender and colonial politics. Besides possessing the Indian Boy, Titania is associated with the East because the play locates her female order in India. (P. 277): The Indian Boy becomes a pure signifier whose exchange helps institute a new social order.

Psychoanalytic criticism finds a lot to work with in this play. Lindsay (1948, p. 127) shows how central in Shakespeare’s art was this transformation of the fairy-image. In it we witness his return into the infantile levels in order to break the fear-enslavement to the mother which the traditional fairy-image expressed and perpetuated. The incest-fantasy is robbed of its sting and accepted in order that it may be set aside, may be made into the basis for a new lyrical acceptance of life. Gui (1952, pp. 294–5, 297, 299–300) interprets the play as the passing of a midsummer-night in the experience of a child (Bottom, alias Sh.). Gui discusses Bottom’s Oedipus complex, his (p. 299) rejection of oral gratification in his dream and the substitution of word-milk just as Sh. (p. 300) destroys the breast of his mother by including the cauterized Hippolyta as her image in the play. . . . Thus [MND] contains material that helps to explain the motivations underlying Shakespeare’s creative artistry as well as the motivations that turned that artistry into literary channels of expression. Also seeing Oedipal configurations are Lechay (1981, pp. 27–8), Hartman (1983, pp. 362–3), Dunn (1988, pp. 22–3), and Calderwood (1991, p. 416).

According to Riklin (1968, pp. 289–90) the theme of the play is that the meaning of life . . . is not to be found only in following the intentions of ego consciousness. . . . The meaning of life and of all conflict consists in forcing the collective consciousness to concern itself with the unconscious and with the problem of the Self and to base itself upon them. After quoting 1814–18 he adds that (p. 290) the happenings of the unconscious, its workings and its powers, cannot quite be accepted and understood by the reasonable, rational-logical consciousness. Also Jungian in approach, Aronson (1972, p. 31, 206, 210–11) regards the theme as self discovery through a synthesis between antagonistic forces within [an individual’s] personality. The forest (p. 206) is an appropriate synonym for the unconscious, where (p. 210) the encounter between the anima and the animus elements occurs. The lovers (p. 211) wake up to a new, transformed present in which they are, once more, themselves—though they do not know what made this self-discovery possible. . . .

Consciousness has been re-established as the only power that can guide men toward fulfillment of their own selves.

Faber (1972, pp. 187–8): MND is a play that is concerned in its very essence with the problem of mastering, of controlling, those archaic, uncivilized, ungoverned, inexplicable elements which are apt on occasion to break through the protective shield of the ordered human personality. It is concerned as well with (p. 188) establishing firmly the social roles of men and women which, since the system is patriarchal, engenders ambivalence and hostility in women and thus produces a constant straining toward disorder and makes the play’s resolution temporary. Goldstein (1973, pp. 190–1, 195–6) looks at the lovers’ flight from reality and regards Helena and Hermia as the true heroes of the play for their courage in return[ing] to the reality of Athenian society. . . . They have decided to test the limits of what has been imprinted upon them; they have [191] decided to cope with and make useful or defend against the tyranny of the destructive father, Egeus. . . . They gamble on their individual strengths to cope with reality. Marriage is possible after (p. 195) the process of stripping away defenses, defenses in the manifest and dramatic form of an endless variety of disguises, is completed. (P. 196): What the characters . . . have worked through is the psychological realities of themselves as humans. . . . Theseus, Hippolyta, Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, Helena, and Bottom—each in his own degree, has resolved his identity crisis by accepting the animal within himself and through this resolution has achieved integration as a person. Girard (1980, pp. 107, 122–4) looks at the psycho-social disturbances that can upset any cultural pattern. The young lovers lose their separate identities in a whirlwind of mimetic desire. (P. 122): When the mimetic crisis has literally homogenized the community, the mimetic mechanism of scapegoating takes over and unity is restored. Ritual is the reenactment of the whole mimetic crisis, not for its own sake but for the sake of its mimetic resolution. (P. 124): Collective victimizing, real and symbolic, is fundamental to human culture. . . . Shakespeare can always provide his audience with the victims it demands while, on a more subtle plane, he ironically points to the injustice and arbitrariness of this victimizing. MacCary (1985, pp. 147–8) sees the Duke as the victim of the phantoms of his own misogyny, (p. 148) the dream as Theseus’ and its resolution as his attempt to deal with his own fears and desires. . . . Theseus’ grace, which transforms the rustics’ play and his whole world, but particularly his way of thinking about women, is . . . what Helena says love is at the beginning of the play: Things base and vile, holding no quantity,/ Love can transpose to form and dignity [246–7]. He might still fear women, but he will think the best of them.

See also Jacobson (1962, pp. 21–6), who looks at Sh.’s homosexuality and (p. 22) the elucidation of the psychosexual development of women, and Kaplan’s skeptical response (1963, pp. 112–26). Ravich (1964, p. 405) suggests that the physical change that Bottom undergoes may symbolize a mental disturbance. When Bottom hopes for wit enough to get out of this wood [966–7] he may be speaking metaphorically of recovery from insanity. Marcus (1981, pp. 269–78) traces a love-and-death motif that to some extent is present in every pair of lovers in the play. Marowitz (1988, p. 9): The Dream like all dreams, is a repression of unacceptable sexual behaviour [homosexuality] which, since it could never be stamped out, had to be heavily disguised and, as it were, propagandized out of existence—and Shakespeare’s harmonic Christian monogamy was an obvious form of camouflage. Farrell (1996, pp. 217 ff.) looks at the formation of personality. Hunter (2003, pp. 6–7) studies the unconscious fantasy material in this drama and concludes that (p. 7) the play overall manages to show romantic coupling as ridiculous, violent, unstable, and infantilizing while conserving patriarchal Athenian/Elizabethan hierarchy reformed by secret magical forces that subvert its harshness.

Drame à Clef

Rowe (ed. 1709, 1:viii) first identified the fair Vestal [535] with Queen Elizabeth (see n. 524–45) and Warburton (ed. 1747, 1:113–14) constructed the first coherent, if controversial, allegorical interpretation of 524–45. The action of the Mermaid is laid in the same time and place with Cupid’s attack upon the Vestal. By the Vestal every one knows is meant Queen Elizabeth. It is very natural and reasonable then to think that the Mermaid stands for some eminent personage of her time. And if so, the allegorical covering, in which there is a mixture of satire and panegyric, will lead us to conclude that this person was one of whom it had been inconvenient for the author to speak openly, either in praise or dispraise. All this agrees with Mary Queen of Scots. . . . Queen Elizabeth could not bear to hear her commended; and her successor would not forgive her satirist. But the poet has so well marked out every distinguished circumstance of her life and character . . . , as will leave no room to doubt about his secret meaning. She is called a Mermaid, 1. to denote her reign over a kingdom situate in the sea, and 2. her beauty and intemperate lust, . . . for as Elizabeth for her chastity is called a Vestal, this unfortunate lady on a contrary account is called a Mermaid. 3. An [114] antient story may be supposed to be here alluded to. The emperor Julian tells us, Epistle 41. that the Sirens (which, with all the modern poets, are Mermaids) contended for precedency with the Muses, who overcoming them, took away their wings. The quarrels between Mary and Elizabeth had the same cause, and the same issue.

—On a Dolphin’s back.] This evidently marks out that distinguishing circumstance of Mary’s fortune, her marriage with the dauphin of France, son of Henry II.

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath.] This alludes to her great abilities of genius and learning, which rendered her the most accomplished princess of her age. . . .

That the rude sea grew civil at her song.] By the rude sea is meant Scotland encircled with the ocean; which rose up in arms against the regent, while she was in France. But her return home presently quieted those disorders. . . . There is the greater justness and beauty in this image, as the vulgar opinion is, that the mermaid always sings in storms.

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea maid’s musick.] Thus concludes the description, with that remarkable circumstance of this unhappy lady’s fate, the destruction she brought upon several of the English nobility, whom she drew in to support her cause. This, in the boldest expression of the sublime, the poet images by certain stars shooting madly from their spheres: By which he meant the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, who fell in her quarrel; and principally the great duke of Norfolk, whose projected marriage with her was attended with such fatal consequences. Here again the reader may observe a peculiar justness in the imag’ry. The vulgar opinion being that the mermaid allured men to destruction by her songs. Similarly Griffith (1775, p. 18) who mentions the moral to be derived with regard to irregular or ill-placed affection; Capell (1783, 2:105); Rann (ed. 1787, 2:21); Malone (ed. 1790, 2:469 n.); Plumptre (1797, pp. 12, 64–76) who gives a detailed analysis of the allusions and gives alternate identifications of the shooting stars and Cupid’s victim; Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:434–5); Rio (1864, p. 120).

Lucius (1786, p. 360), however, is unconvinced by Warburton’s highly fanciful and ingenious interpretation of Oberon’s speech and argues that it would have been absurd and irreconcileable to the good sense of the poet, to have represented a nobleman aspiring to marry a Queen by the image of a star shooting or descending from its sphere. Ritson (in Steevens, ed. 1793, 5:172–5) agrees that, by the fair vestal, Shakspeare intended a compliment to Queen Elizabeth, who, I am willing to believe, at the age of sixty-eight, was no less chaste than beautiful. (Lloyd concurs [in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:434–5] as does Bowen [1997, pp. 51–2].) But Warburton’s identification of Mary Queen of Scots is out of the question; Sh. would not have had to allegorize his satire of Mary for Elizabeth’s sake, nor in the 1590s would he have feared James’s displeasure. Elizabeth, like Mary, had a sea kingdom and (p. 173) was as much a mermaid. The beauty and lust inference is as false as it is foolish: The mermaid was never the emblem of lust; nor was the gentle Shakspeare of a character or disposition to have insulted the memory of a murdered princess by so infamous a charge. Among other objections, Ritson finds ridiculous (p. 174) placing a Queen on the back of her husband: a very extraordinary situation one would think, for a married lady. (Kittredge [ed. 1939, p. 95] agrees, adding that probably Shakespeare had in mind some pageant in which a mermaid rode upon a dolphin, like Arion in the old story and in Leicester’s famous Kenilworth show of 1575.) Nor did Ritson think that Elizabeth would have appreciated the designation of Mary as the most accomplished Princess of her age. Hurdis (1792, p. 17) approves the compliment . . . paid to the unhappy Mary Queen of Scots, but Steevens (ed. 1793, 5:54–5) has doubts as do Lang (1895, p. 335) and Luce (1907, pp. 154–6).

The first connection of this passage with an actual (but as yet unspecified) contemporary pageant or masque was made by Whiter (1794, pp. 186, 188 and see n. 524–45). Boaden (1837, pp. 9–15, and see n. 524–45) identifies the occasion as the Princely pleasures of Kenilworth when Elizabeth visited Leicester who was the queen’s wooer, but her (p. 15) virgin obduracy deflected Cupid’s shaft toward Amy Robsart. Others mentioning Kenilworth as the possible inspiration of the passage include Ribton-Turner (1893, p. 124); Ward (1899, 2:88); Lanier (1902, 2:64); Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, p. 127), who think Halpin (see here) and Massey (see here) absurd; Bensusan (1910, pp. 13, 39); Hudson (ed. 1910, p. xxv), who thinks Laneham and Gascoigne the influences (see here); Hastings (1902, p. 252), who supposes an allusion to Leicester and Elizabeth; and Schelling (1908, p. 391), who comments: In a much-interpreted passage put into the mouth of Oberon, a graceful allusion is made to the festivities at Kenilworth in 1576 and to the Earl of Leicester’s futile courtship of his royal mistress; and the queen is fittingly and elaborately flattered after a custom . . . consonant with the time.

In 1843 Halpin (pp. i–viii, 1–108) explored not only the parallels suggested by Boaden but those he found with Lyly’s Endymion. He wants to show (p. viii) the appropriation of the characters and incidents of dramatic entertainments to the characters and incidents of the times then current. (P. 11): The flower is the principal figure, to whose development all the rest . . . are but accessories, and since it is susceptible of such passions as flesh and blood is heir to—the wounds of love, and the deep blush of either secret passion or conscious guilt, it must represent a person, indeed a woman since Dian’s bud (as well as the vestal virgin) signifies Elizabeth. (P. 13): Poetical justice . . . is . . . fully satisfied: the humble Pansy, triumphant for a while, is finally vanquished by the Queen of Flowers . . . ; [p. 14] the compliment to Elizabeth is complete; . . . and the important event described by Oberon . . . becomes thoroughly interwoven with its texture, and furnishes the agency . . . by which its intricacies are unravelled, and its catastrophe produced. . . . The subject is obviously one of the many love adventures in which that most romantic sovereign, whose pride it was to have it graved upon her tomb that she lived and died a Maiden Queen, was engaged. A lover (1) seeking vehemently, but in vain, to win her hand, whilst he was successfully (2) engaged in winning the affections or corrupting the virtue of a Lady of inferior rank, (p. 15) not Mary, Elizabeth’s equal to the north, not the west. After comparing the accounts of Gascoigne, Nichols (Progresses of Elizabeth), and Dugdale (Antiquities of Warwickshire), Halpin concludes, as did Boaden, that Sh.’s description is a poetic remembrance of the pageant. Leicester, whose marriage to Amy Robsart in 1550 ended with her death, possibly by murder, in 1560, was secretly married to Lady Douglas, widow of the Earl of Sheffield, in approximately 1572. By 1575, Halpin thinks, Leicester had fallen in love with Lettice Knollys, wife of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, whose misfortune it was to die or be murdered during his return from rebel-fighting in Ireland to redress the wrongs done him. Subsequently Leicester married Lettice and made financial arrangements for Lady Douglas, who married Sir Edward Stafford. But it was during his marriage to Lady Douglas that Leicester’s hospitality became an intense effort to win the queen’s hand and divert her from the suit of the Duke of Alençon. The attempt was foiled, and the tone of the visit was changed during its second week, probably by a case of (p. 43) jealousy arising from Leicester’s and Lettice’s petty indiscretions which would betray their secret to the keen-sighted few. After an interpretation of Endymion which he considers (p. 46) collateral evidence, Halpin argues that Cynthia/the Moon signifies Elizabeth, Tellus/the Earth the Countess of Sheffield, Floscula/the flower the Countess of Essex, and Endymion/Cupid the Earl of Leicester, and (p. 82) the two versions of the story are in such complete harmony, and show the position which Leicester occupied with respect to the three ladies at the particular crisis, that I cannot but think its evidence, fairly considered, almost demonstrative of the view I have undertaken to establish. Halpin paraphrases the passage (p. 91):

(P. 107): Whether I have hit the true secret or not, it is indisputable that the whole of 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.

Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:265–8) accepts Halpin’s reading and is convinced that Sh. sought, in the smallest allusions as well as in the greatest designs, lively relations to the times and places round him. Moreover, the passage has (p. 266) deeper poetic or moral bearings, to the aesthetic or moral aims of his poetry. The thematic relevance strikes Gervinus; (p. 267) Sh.’s courtesy to the queen is transformed into a very serious meaning: for contrasting with the insanity of love, emphasis is placed upon the other extreme, the victory of Diana over Cupid, of the mind over the body, of maiden contemplativeness over the jugglery of love. (P. 268): Dissolute acts prompted by the blind passion of love, were at that time committed in reality just as the ensnaring charm, embodied in a flower, has an effect upon the entanglements of the lovers in the play. Elze (1868; tr. 1874, pp. 47–50) adopts Halpin’s reading and argues that (p. 49) the whole allegory . . . only obtains . . . if the Midsummer-Night’s Dream was the play performed at Essex’s wedding. Sh. has mirrored the love affairs of the aristocracy. The object of his poetry was . . . to hold the mirror up to nature [Ham. 3.2.21–2 (1869–70)]. The complication of the loves of Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena, as well as Titania’s inexplicable passion for the ass-headed Bottom, doubtless had the greatest analogy to the love affairs at court, in which the families of Leicester, Essex, and Sidney played the most prominent parts. The events at Kenilworth were (p. 50) a turning-point in the fortunes of the Essex family, and Sh.’s compliment to the queen is anything but unintentional as he meant to render his patron Essex a service by flattering the queen to pacify her and dispose her favourably to the Earl’s marriage. His intention failed. Similarly Thümmel (1881, p. 286), Heine (1907, p. 9). Norris (1875, p. 28) finds Elze’s theory incoherent, fanciful, too complicated for credence. Oberon required for his machinations a flower possessing certain magical virtues; and we find these virtues accounted for by an Ovidian metamorphosis— . . . which is sufficiently happy if it further supports a compliment to Queen Elizabeth’s single blessedness, without our entering into particulars about her former lovers and whom they married.

Massey (1866, pp. 475–81) claims that we have the love-tiffs, fallings-out, and makings-up of the Poet’s friends, represented in the most delicate disguise, Lady Rich as Hermia, Elizabeth Vernon as Helena. He agrees with Halpin about Leicester’s wooing of Elizabeth and (p. 478) secret intrigue with the Countess of Essex but departs from Halpin about Dian’s bud—the Queen doesn’t fit the situation; she did not heal (p. 480) wanton love therefore the reference to her would be a sarcasm. It is the emblem of Elizabeth Vernon’s true love and its virtue in restoring the precious seeing to her lover’s eyes which had in the human world been doating wrongly. It symbols the triumph of love-in-earnest over love-in-idleness; the influence of that purity which is here represented as the offspring of Dian, thus connecting cause with cure and making the allegory (p. 479) impinge on the play. The occasion is the marriage of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon. Similarly Krauss (1876, pp. 237 ff.). Halpin’s theory is considered plausible by Hudson (ed. 1880, pp. 13–14), Morley (ed. 1886, p. 19), Schwartzkopff (1888, p. 306), Gollancz (ed. 1895, pp. xxxvi, 118), Lee (ed. 1907, 6:26), Smeaton (1911; 1930, p. 191), Feely (1942, p. 11), Barton (1947, pp. 181–2), Chambrun (1947, p. 99). Wilson (1905, p. 109) thinks the speech a condensation of Endymion and would like to think Sh. was present at Kenilworth.

Quiller-Couch (in Wilson, ed. 1924, p. 116) thinks the only facts beyond dispute an allusion to Queen Elizabeth, to some entertainment provided for her by one of her suitors, and, presumably, to another lady designated as a little western flower. But the editors are not convinced that the lines would have been taken as complimentary by the Queen. . . . Surely the oblation of flattery is scanty. . . . Worst of all, the little western flower so obviously gets the best of it! In short, we doubt very much whether Elizabeth was ever present at this play at all. By 1962, however, Wilson (pp. 193–9) has changed his mind, accepting the theory of a well-planned and ardent . . . assault upon the royal heart at Kenilworth. No other contemporary pageant (p. 196) was combined with an attempt to secure Elizabeth’s hand. Cupid’s aim would be Leicester’s, and (p. 197) the little western flower upon which the fiery shaft fell could only be the woman with whom Leicester consoled himself [198] when Elizabeth repulsed his advances; in a word, Lettice Knollys, . . . whom Leicester married in 1576, a few months after the Queen left Kenilworth. (P. 199): Wilson thinks Halpin’s interpretation stood until Chambers dislodged it without convincing reason. (See below, here.) Brooks (1943, pp. 95–96) identifies Oberon as the Earl of Leicester and argues that as he and Elizabeth aged, she turned her attention to changeling boys and he allowed himself to be drawn into secret marriage with Lettice Knollys. In her anger Elizabeth turned to flirting openly with the Dauphin. When that courtship ended, (p. 96) Leicester returned to greater power than ever before. . . . The quarrel of Oberon and Titania is certainly an allegorical presentation of these events.

There has, of course, been considerable reaction against Halpin’s reading. Hunter (1845, 1:292–5) gave his support, adducing new reasons, to Warburton’s reading over Halpin’s. The difficulty of the mermaid’s posture was irrelevant to the issue. (P. 293): Seeing the large space which the mermaid occupies, it can hardly be that, if there is an allegory at all, she does not bear a part in it: . . . [Mary] has the dolphin with her, which may . . . arise out of the fact that she had been married to the Dauphin of France. The Dulcet and harmonious breath may refer to her alluring Scottish accent which subdued even harsh and uncivil minds. Leonard Dacre and the Duke of Norfolk, her suitors, are the (p. 294) stars. Hunter thought that Cupid could not refer to Leicester or the flower to one of his wives because the allegory ends before the mention of the flower, which (p. 292) was a real flower, about to perform a conspicuous part in the drama. We are back in (p. 293) dramatic reality. Considering the words (p. 294) That very time, Hunter points out that when the Duke of Norfolk was aspiring to the hand of the Queen of Scots, and so, shooting from his sphere, the Queen of England was herself strongly solicited to marry, but that it was the Duke of Anjou rather than Leicester who fits the timing. Halliwell (ed. 1856, pp. 105, 109) declares that Hunter’s criticism (p. 109) appears to be as conclusive as it is reasonable, although he is skeptical about the inclusion of Mary, (p. 105) a sovereign whose execution had taken place several years previously. Fullom (1864, pp. 224–5) defends Warburton and Moberly (ed. 1881, pp. xiv, 67) refers his readers to Hunter. Pinkerton (1864, p. 338) cites a caricature of Mary called The Mermaid, which corroborates Warburton’s identification of her as the mermaid. Delius (ed. 1859, pp. ix–x) deems both Warburton and Halpin far-fetched—who would have either remembered or understood (Ger.)? Genée (1872, p. 265) thinks it unreasonable to relate details to historical persons or to Kenilworth, at which time Sh. was only a boy (Ger.), and Hense (1872, p. 279) maintains that an allegorical interpretation contributes nothing to the appreciation of the play; rather, it destroys the play’s unity of mood (Ger.). Knight (1843, pp. 77, 361) and Friesen (1875, 2:275) think the passage does refer to Kenilworth and Friesen doubts Halpin (Ger.). According to Neilson (ed. 1910, p. 141) Halpin’s view has failed of general acceptance, for it seems clear that the little western flower is a real flower, and that the passage was written mainly to emphasize its importance and to prepare for the prominent part it plays, and Kittredge (ed. 1939, p. 95) insists that to identify the little Western flower with some bride or other is downright absurd, as ll. 547–9 suffice to prove. Dowden (in Craig, ed., 1911, 1:520) has little faith in Halpin.

In commenting on the allegorical theories Furness (ed. 1895, pp. 79, 80, 88, 91) points out that the common occurrence of the images in contemporary masques and pageants is evidence of the small likelihood there is that any one in Shakespeare’s audience attached any allegorical significance to Oberon’s description, beyond his allusion to the fair Vestal throned by the West. (Similarly Holzknecht & McClure [ed. 1937, 2:218 n.].) Like Hunter he thought the flower (p. 80) beyond all allegorical explanation. . . . Let imagination run riot in a south sea of discovery with regard to every other detail—this little flower is a fact, and its magic properties must be put to use. It would be cruel were it (p. 88) not a flower, but Lettice Knollys, that was to be squeezed in Titania’s eyes. He concludes: (p. 91) To suppose that Shakespeare’s audience, whether at court or at the theatre, would at once, on hearing Oberon’s vision, recall Leicester’s intrigue of twenty years before, is to assume a capacity for court-scandal which verges on the supernatural, and a memory for it which could be regarded only with awe.

But the theories do not stop. Brandes (1896, tr. 1898, 1:76, 79–80) adds to Halpin’s reading the identification of Theseus as the bridegroom Essex. Westenholz (1896, pp. 135–6) theorizes that Nedar is an anagram of Arden, that the characters are related to Sh.’s life, and that characteristics of his mother are apparent in Helena (Ger.), Rothschild (1906, p. 248) that Theseus’s wooing of Hippolyta represents an idealized Essex paying his court to Lady Frances Sidney. But Chambers (1916, pp. 156–7) announces that the attempts of the older commentators to turn the mermaid and the falling stars and the little western flower into an allegory of Mary Queen of Scots and the northern rebellion, or of the intrigue of Leicester with the Countess of Essex, may be summarily disregarded as neither gratifying nor reasonably topical. His conjecture is a water-pageant with fireworks held when the queen visited Elvetham in 1591. Cupid all armed appears in neither pageant. (P. 157): He could only be seen by Oberon. But it is to Cupid and the wound inflicted by his bolt on the little western flower that the whole description leads up. The flower has a part in the action of the play, and possibly we ought not to seek for any further motive for its introduction. But if it points . . . at an enamoured woman, how can this possibly be . . . anybody else but the bride in whose glorification, next only to that of Elizabeth, the play was written?

Contending that previous theories about Oberon’s vision fail to motivate its introduction into the play, Rickert (1923, pp. 53–79, 81–86, 154) insists that the Earl of Hertford’s Elvetham celebrations of 1591 inspired the passage. A contemporary descriptive pamphlet (rpt. Nichols’ Progresses, 3:101–21) went into three editions, indicating public interest in the event. Details included a northern promontory, a crescent pond, and a mermaid standing on a dolphin’s back (a metaphor for a ship) approaching the Queen who is literally (p. 55) throned by the west. (P. 56): The direct compliment to the Queen refers to a vision of Cupid shooting his arrow at her, which Oberon saw but Puck could not. . . . Oberon meant that he saw it in his mind’s eye. The lines, then, are purely allegorical and say that the [57] Queen had been showered with love enough to pierce a hundred thousand hearts [537] and had passed on [540] unmoved. Hertford’s efforts to please the Queen were politically motivated. Hertford had (p. 58) in 1560 . . . married secretly her chief maid of honor, Lady Katherine Grey. . . . Shortly before the birth of a son, Lady Katherine confessed the marriage. The Queen was furious, not merely because she claimed the right to control the marriages of her relatives, but primarily because by two acts of Parliament and by the will of Henry VIII, any legitimate child of Lady Katherine Grey stood next in the succession to the throne. The offenders were imprisoned. An ecclesiastical commission appointed in 1562 declared the marriage null and the child illegitimate. In January 1568, Lady Katherine died of harsh treatment and a broken heart. Her husband continued in durance until 1571. Some time later, he married Lady Frances Howard, and was again received at court. In 1580 he was given his patrimony and became enormously rich. From that year on secretly he entered in the Court of Arches [59] year after year, a protest against the finding of the ecclesiastical commission. He had been recording the claim of his heir through Dr. William Aubrey, master of requests, but Aubrey died in 1595 and his successor betrayed the secret to the Queen, bringing Hertford to the Tower in peril of his life. Thus his desire to propitiate the Queen. Rickert regards the play (1594–5) and its compliment to the Queen as a reminder to her of the general situation and of her own obligations to him, as preliminary to a more specific presentation of his plea, possibly a compromise, the mere legitimization of his son.

Rickert marshalls topical allusions to support her claim. First, in the quarrel of Oberon and Titania over the Indian boy she sees the boy’s mother as Lady Katherine Grey, who had (p. 62) gossip’d [501] and sat with the queen at Westminster and at Greenwich where the Thames is still a tidal river. Lady Grey’s son caused his mother’s death, and Titania (Diana/Elizabeth) would have felt responsible for his welfare. Second, Rickert goes to great lengths to support her contention that Oberon represents Henry VIII punishing Titania for ignoring his will by causing her to dote on Bottom who represents King James. Even the interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe supports the allusion to James. Sh.’s aid might well have been sought (p. 154) to support the claim of the Suffolk heir . . . and to ridicule the pretensions to the throne of his Scottish rival. Similarly Day (1963, p. 293).

de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. xxiii) thinks the honey-laden lines are as resonant with contemporary allusions to actualities as a hive is resonant with bees. No less clearly, Shakespeare must have had his own good reason for dispatching Puck so far afield in search of one of the commonest of English wild flowers, a reason, presumably, that the initiated in his audience would be certain to divine. Lemonnier (1943, pp. 146–7) suggests that the piece seems, in certain regards, a reproduction of life. The love intrigues could be inspired by Derby. Bridget de Vere loved Lord Herbert, who loved Mary Fitton, who loved Derby, who loved Elizabeth deVere, who loved Southampton, who perhaps loved another. In the play Sh. resolves in a night what in reality took several years (Fr.). Craig (1948, p. 37; ed. 1951, pp. 182–3) favors Rickert’s theory, and Campbell (in Campbell, Rothschild, & Vaughan, ed. 1965, pp. 1, 6–8) detects political satire and allegory half buried beneath the surface of the action and accepts the Elvetham reading but suggests that Oberon represents Hertford himself rather than Henry VIII. Wedding guests would have expected the allusiveness. Venezky (1951, pp. 140–2) argues only for the Elvetham part of the theory, citing verbal and metrical parallels between the pageants and MND.

Acheson (1922, pp. 184, 188, 201–2, 406), contending that the play was composed for the marriage of the Earl of Southampton’s mother to Sir Thomas Heneage on May 2, 1594, (p. 188) a bridal couple that match the advanced ages and social dignity of Theseus and Hippolyta, finds in the lovers’ troubles a reflection of Southampton’s and Sh.’s mutual passion for the (p. 201) dark lady and Southampton’s resistance to the proposed marriage with Lady Elizabeth Vere (Helena). (P. 202): Bottom’s reflection upon the unreasonableness of love would be recognized only by Southampton and Sh. as referring to Southampton’s infatuation for Avisa, a married woman and tavernkeeper’s wife, as well as his disinclination to the marriage urged by his friends. To Clark (1930, p. 443) Demetrius and Helena seem to represent the Earl and Countess of Oxford, who became reconciled about Christmas, 1581, though about a year later there is evidence that Lord Oxford was again giving attention to Anne Vavasour, and in Lysander and Hermia [she] see[s] Sir Thomas Knyvet and Anne Vavasour. Evans (1956, pp. 57–60) supposes that the play reflects the Elvetham festivities and was written by Derby (p. 59) as a charming wedding present to his bride, Elizabeth Vere, (p. 60) the little western flower on whom Cupid’s love-shaft fell after missing the Queen. May (1983, p. 49): Shakespeare often treats love flippantly, but in no other comedy, I think, is love viewed as so laughably elastic an emotion as in [MND]. However, instead of nullifying this play’s suitability as a wedding entertainment, this irreverence may be a clue which ties it specifically to the Carey-Berkeley match of 1596. In Mistress Carey’s case, the course of true love leading to matrimony was almost as labyrinthine as it was for the Athenian lovers in Shakespeare’s play. For the play’s connection to this wedding, see also Wiles (1993, pp. 156–175), Hackett (2003, passim). Anderson (1997–8, p. 20) notes that the broken third-party marriage arrangement between Demetrius and Hermia followed by Hermia’s marriage to Lysander at least roughly parallels the broken third-party marriage arrangement between the Earl of Southampton and Elizabeth Vere followed by Elizabeth Vere’s marriage to Derby. Others citing this marriage include Erlich (1982, p. 72), Bednarz (1983, p. 81), who argues for the wedding of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, and Lady Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, granddaughter of Lord Burghley, and goddaughter and maid of honor to the queen. He thinks the social context for Shakespeare’s parody of Spenser is further evidence in support of this occasion and presents a detailed argument in support of Sh.’s parody of Spenser.

Halpin first mentioned Leicester’s efforts to deflect the queen from Alençon’s wooing (see above, here) and Rickert (p. 58) first hints at the succession question. For Clark (1930, pp. 437–8, 441–3) Theseus and Hippolyta represent . . . François, Duke of Alençon, [438] and Elizabeth. . . . Equally I believe, the truth about that courtship is told in the love affair between Titania and Bottom. Similarly Cameron (1982, pp. 63–4). Furthermore, Puck seems to represent the dramatist who means to watch the proceedings with the intention of taking a hand, if the occasion demands. The queen decided against the marriage, and the prince’s (p. 443) dream of being Elizabeth’s consort and sovereign of England had come to an end, just as did Bottom’s dream of a life in fairyland. Taylor (1973, pp. 31, 35, 135–40, 167, 192, 203) develops these ideas at length, emphasizing the importance of the succession question. Elizabeth’s suitor, François Hercule de Valois, the Duke of Alençon, heir to the French throne, and his retainers are good candidates not only for Bottom the Weaver, but for such characters as Quince, Snout the Tinker and Francis Flute, the Bellows Mender. Among the details she presents as evidence is Bottom’s use of the term Mounsier in addressing the fairies (Monsieur was Alençon’s title as heir to the French throne and brother to the king and Elizabeth called him Mounzeur in a letter). Bottom refers to Ercles (Hercule was Alençon’s second name). Sh.’s (p. 167) satirical portrait of Bottom was not only political but topical as well. (P. 192): Almost everyone in Bottom’s crew can be identified as a French retainer belongong to Alençon. These men were the French envoys who came to London to try to negotiate the marriage between Alençon and Elizabeth in the late 1570’s and the early 1580’s. Their names have such similarity to most of the rustics who associate with Bottom . . . that they can not be accidental. Peter Quince corresponds to Monsieur De Quincé, Snout to Du Bex; although Francis Flute has no equivalent Francis is a good French name, and he could be (p. 203) another portrait of Alençon; Snug has no French counterpart. Elizabeth, like Titania, awakes from her dream of love. Maurice (1953, p. 390) supposes that Theseus is the Count of Rutland, Hippolyta is Elizabeth Sidney who married him, and Demetrius who fled the love of Helena is Southampton refusing to marry Elizabeth Vere (Fr.). Duffy (1972, pp. 143–4) claims that Diana, Titania, and Cynthia all represent Elizabeth. Oberon, I conclude, is Essex and the wrangling between the fairy couple is a counterpart to the quarrels between him and the queen. Essex admirers thought Elizabeth should listen to Essex. (P. 144): The whole nation was disrupted by their quarreling. . . . What it symbolised unconsciously was the succession; the heir that Elizabeth had never had but must adopt and that might be Essex himself. For whatever he might admit even in his own mind, the desire was latent there and realised in such incidents as his identification with the usurper Henry IV and its expression in the dedications, pamphlets and pictures that made him a popular hero. He was young enough to be her son, hers and Leicester’s, already in a sense his father. All the overtones of the son-lover and mother-mistress embodied in the myths of the Fairy Queen were present in their relationship.

Hunt (2000–01, pp. 425–48) pursues the succession question at length and contends that features of FQ have . . . relevance for the method and substance of [MND] . . . , and this awareness facilitates the reading of a Shakespearean allegory involving Queen Elizabeth, the duke of Anjou [Alençon], and King James VI of Scotland. . . . Elizabeth had forbad all public discussion of the succession question. But through a likely allegory embedded in [MND], Essex and [426] Southampton presumably broach the question and provide an answer. A reading of Oberon’s vision lays the groundwork for my . . . explication of a political allegory involving the succession question [quotes 524–30 and 532–49]. Like Rickert, Hunt concludes that only the Kenilworth entertainment fits the (p. 429) apparently allegorical details of the latter half of Oberon’s rhapsodic speech. (P. 430): Auditors immediately understand that Oberon (and through him Shakespeare) has complimented Elizabeth, whose strong chastity deflects suitors’ amorous darts such that her mind is meditative, wise, untroubled by the romantic desire that they see making fools of the Athenian youths in the play. And yet this compliment is qualified—in fact, it disappears—when, upon reflection, the auditor (but more likely the reader) realizes that Cupid’s fiery shaft (a phallic image) does penetrate the queen, for she was symbolically equivalent to the moon, whether full or crescent. Oberon does say that Cupid’s shaft was quenched in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon [539]. The method is typical of the play, in which Elizabeth is complimented at the same time that she is not complimented. Halpin’s allegory about Leicester and Lettice Knollys indirectly criticizes the blind, categorical power of [431] Elizabeth’s chastity by suggesting the frustration and discord it could provoke.

Like Taylor (above, here) Hunt cites use of the French term monsieur, and he sees in the Titania-Oberon-Bottom triangle a parallel with Anjou’s courtship of Elizabeth. (P. 433): So hard was believing that the queen could find Anjou attractive that Leicester started a rumor that Simier had been giving Elizabeth love potions. . . . The Fairy Queen’s infatuation with Bottom reprises the Elizabeth/Anjou affair from a Protestant viewpoint. An ocular love potion . . . causes Titania foolishly to dote upon a lover unworthy of her. . . . Like Elizabeth, doting Titania showers her beloved with little gifts, . . . coins an endearing love language for him, leading him into the recesses of her natural bower—a place analogous to the Greenwich garden pavilion where Elizabeth perhaps imagined herself between the sheets. There may be an allusion to Anjou’s alleged syphilis in Quince’s comment about French crowns having no hair at all.

Hunt finds a clue to the allegorical significance of Titania’s punishment in FQ 2.10.75–6 where (p. 436) Elferon is Henry VIII’s elder brother, Prince Arthur, whose premature death permitted Oberon (Henry VIII) to marry Arthur’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. . . . Spenser stresses that King Oberon’s last will and testament named Tanaquill, Elizabeth, his royal successor. . . . [437] By depicting Titania and Oberon as married, Shakespeare allegorically suggests that Elizabeth is married to the Tudor line, or to her Tudor heritage. In 1595, she was long past childbearing and the use of a royal marriage to produce an heir. Titania and Oberon’s marriage is barren because the aged Fairy Queen was barren. Her barrenness entailed [438] the barrenness, the end, of the direct Tudor line fathered by King Henry VII. . . . By a strange dream logic, Oberon’s punishment of Titania by causing her to fall in love with an ass figuratively becomes Henry VIII’s punishment of his daughter by making her, to the scorn of her subjects, futilely fall in love with the duke of Anjou. (The futility of the Titania/Bottom amour emphasizes the political futility of Elizabeth and Anjou’s affair, insuring by allegorical logic that Oberon/Henry VIII is not really risking a Catholic succession). Oberon punishes Titania because she will not give him the Indian Boy. . . . She will not give him an heir to raise. Elizabeth wouldn’t allow discussion of the succession. Shakespeare does it through an especially dark conceit. Who, then, is the Indian Boy? The answer is an astounding one, and yet it accords with the dream logic of Shakespeare’s allegory. . . . [439] By conceiving of the Boy and his mother as Indian rather than Athenian, Shakespeare makes them royal aliens. . . . The potential claimant of Elizabeth’s throne mentioned throughout the 1590s who was legally an alien was King James VI of Scotland, son of an alien monarch, Mary Queen of Scots.

Henry VIII had, in default of the issue of his son . . . and his daughters, settled the crown on the rightful heirs of Henry’s [440] late sister Mary, queen of France and afterward duchess of Suffolk. In the 1590s, that heir was Edward Lord Beauchamp, the eldest son of the eldest representative of Mary’s marriage to Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk—Lady Katherine Grey. She had secretly and without the Queen’s approval married Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford. Elizabeth had the child declared illegitimate and said that the Henry VIII document was not really signed by him but that someone had used his dry stamp instead. . . . A large number of Elizabeth’s subjects regard[ed] King James VI of Scotland [as] the heir to the English throne. James’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret; by hereditary descent, she was next in the line of succession. . . . At this point, readers might object that Titania’s fervent devotion to the memory of the Indian votaress and to her child . . . hardly squares with [441] Mary Queen of Scots’ opposition to Elizabeth’s rule, her execution, and Elizabeth’s and James’s sometimes testy relationship. I have suggested that at times the political allegory of [MND] appears distorted. . . . Elizabeth had always refused the request of counselors that she by legislation exclude Mary as her potential successor. Moreover, she had annually paid King James a pension of £3,000, a tribute that marked him as successor. These and other facts likely reflect, at least in part, the positive bond that Elizabeth felt for her royal blood relative and her son and that she attempted to conceal. . . . The Indian votaress’s death becomes the catalyst for Titania’s profound caring for the Boy; if the real Fairy Queen felt some responsibility for that event, in dream [sic] the concern for the surviving son’s welfare would be intensified. Banished Katherine Grey had been dead from natural causes for too many decades (since 1568, in fact) and Lord Beauchamp was too illegitimate for them to represent the Indian votaress and her son.

In Shakespeare’s dark conceit, King Henry VIII as Oberon claims James VI as his surrogate son and heir as he did not (and, as regards sonship, could not) in his 1546 will and testament. (P. 444): Shakespeare’s allegory implies that, regardless of his actual will and testament, King Henry VIII (if he could have) would have made James VI of Scotland his surrogate son and member of his train and thus would have informed Queen Elizabeth—Titania—of the person she ought to embrace as her successor. Essex favored James VI as the successor. (P. 448): It is remotely possible that at the same or different stages of the composition of [MND] Shakespeare found himself under pressure to reflect ingeniously in his play the prejudices of adversarial noblemen. That he perhaps did so testifies to the courtly rather than folkloric artistry of his Dream.

Finally there are the outright skeptics. Wright (ed. 1877, p. xiv) asks why would Oberon suddenly drop allegory and come back to reality when he says to Puck, Fetch me that flower [546]? No one pretends that this has an allegorical significance, and if so, how can it be separated in such a manner from what precedes, that up to this point all is allegory and from this point all is fact? Boas (1896, p. 183) thinks little of the guesswork, and Spencer (1940, p. 236) finds no evidence of political allegory or satire. Ward (1899, 2:86–7) is skeptical, and Bevington (1968, pp. 16–17) recognizes the possible reminiscences of Kenilworth or Elvetham, but he could be speaking of more than one theory when he calls Rickert’s hazardous. Her interpretation is not only an (p. 17) outrageous treatment of Elizabeth, but it darkens one of Shakespeare’s brightest comedies. For further discussion of this and related issues, see n. 524–45.

Bell (1861, 2:314) thinks Sh. has in mind the fable of Arion from Ovid’s Fasti (2:113). Cutts (1963, p. 184) comments, whatever temporary allusions the passage affords, there is no escaping the fact that the lasting allusion is to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, IV.125–127.

Lanier (1891; 1945, p. 330) thinks the mechanicals reflect the Greene-Harvey-Nash quarrel and can be distinctly traced,—along a number of catch-words and clew-ideas which becomes so large as to make belief the direction of much the least resistance,—to Greene’s Menaphon, Harvey’s Four Letters, Nash’s Pierce’s Supererogation . . . , and Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit. [Note by editor of volume reprinting Lanier essay, Clarence Gohdes: Should the Nash work be Supplication to the Devil? Pierce’s Supererogation is by Harvey.]

For a reading of the play as commentary on the state of the contemporary theater and poetry, see Hermann (1874, pp. 6–37) and Crewe (1986, pp. 142 ff.). Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 809) links Bottom’s dream to the nature of the theater itself. For an Oxfordian reading see Phillips (1936, pp. 155–68); for an astrological reading see Cambillard (1939, pp. 118–26). Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, pp. xiii, xv) finds in the story of Oberon and Titania an allegory on the disastrous effects of instability in nature and in marriage. Sagar (1995, pp. 35, 42): All Shakespeare’s comedies are attacks on the Puritans, and [MND] is the most thoroughgoing of them all. Hippolyta’s (p. 42) something of great constancy [1817] is, within the terms of this play, the wholeness of nature. The idea of the wholeness of nature was anathema to the Puritans. Forey (1998, pp. 325, 328) finds in MND echoes of Golding’s introduction to his completed translation of 1567 with an extended Epistle to the Earl of Leicester, 616 lines in length, followed by a shorter Preface to the Reader. (P. 328): The language of the preface,

The same conveyed shall you fynd most featly in some fable.

And even as in a cheyne, eche linke within another wynds,

And both with that that went before and that that followes binds,

seems to be echoed in Theseus’s words, His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered [1922–3]. Since Leicester is the dedicatee of Golding’s translation he may have provided an element in the composition of Theseus.

Technique

Structure

Weiner (1971, pp. 329, 349) declares that there can be few who do not at some time feel with Bottom that Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream [1733–4]. Part of the problem is the play’s intricacy of construction, with its four sets of characters, symbolic locations, and the play-within-the-play that the rude mechanicals put on. Another part of the problem is the difficulty of seeing the entire play at once—each scene by itself can be understood, but it is difficult, squint as we may, to keep the whole play in focus. In short, we cannot know what the play is about until we understand the principle by which it is structured, and we cannot understand the play’s structure until we have grasped the attitudes about poetry that seem to underlie much of the play but particularly the fifth act. He concludes that (p. 349) just as the poet’s imagination, when it is well affected, renders the bewtifull visions it sees to the soul and reduces multiformity to uniformity by enfolding them in form, so the spectator’s mind, moved by the visions it in turn sees, proceeds by way of its apprehension of the formal structure of the play to the new or rare thing that the poet had devised. Although each of the elements of the play, taken out of context, may give rise to its own set of visions, those elements are firmly linked together through the structure, which relates our reactions to the parts to our comprehension of the whole.

Many critics praise the structure without analyzing it. Heraud (1865, p. 186) admires its beauty as a composition, its faultless structure, and Montgomery (1888, p. 93) calls it a thoroughly well-made play, Ker (1916, pp. 159–60) probably the most ingenious piece of dramatic construction ever turned out from any [160] workshop. There is no model for it; . . . for mere cleverness and dexterity [it] surpass[es] anything in classical comedy. It is perfect in design. Eliot (1933; 1980, p. 43), talking about comic relief in Sh.’s plays, concludes that in [TN] and [MND] the farcical element is an essential to a pattern more complex and elaborate that [sic] any constructed by a dramatist before or since. Among countless others in the same vein are Ridley (1936, p. 38), who says that three strands are interwoven so perfectly that it prevents one realising its exercise, but with admirable dramatic effect, so that the juxtaposition of scenes of widely different appeal makes not a disjointed series of contrasts, but a piece of exquisite shot-silk; Mincoff (1961, p. 22), who calls it a veritable tour de force of construction with its interwoven strains of action and of theme producing a scintillating variety in which the colours blend and reflect on one another; Leary (1977, p. 91), who admires the feat of unity in multiplicity.

Sherman (1919, pp. 141, 144) and Sen Gupta (1961, p. 93) have reservations. Sherman describes the construction as lumbering and heavy for so light a comedy but says that at the end the mechanicals have been (p. 144) brought into relation, the lovers have been delivered, the fairies watch, so the play, out of jarring and incongruous and seemingly impossible materials, has been made into a consummate unity. Sen Gupta says that if we try to analyse the action of [MND], we shall find that there is very little that is significant, and the structure will at every step be found to be faulty. He cites crude dramatic devices among other faults. Sisson (1961, p. 90) comments on human relations taking on the pattern of mathematical permutations and combinations, in which human motives play little or no part. Phialas (1966, pp. 115–16) too mentions an extremely careful joining together of three plots, thus exhibiting a diagrammatic formality which can be easily expressed in intellectual, one could almost say mathematical, terms. And this is precisely the single weakness of the play. There is no immediate human responsibility, . . . no profound development or comic recognition on the part of the lovers at the end. But such minor inferiority . . . is a matter of choice in the kind, not the execution, of its structure. Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xxxiv) considers the play an early one, mentioning artificial devices of construction, indicating immature stage-craft, such as the device in the first Act of leaving Lysander and Hermia alone on the stage to arrange their flight from Athens. Law (Pattern, 1943, p. 5) also is unable to praise the construction of the Dream so highly or to find organic unity in the four themes of the plot, and Fiedler (1949, p. 84) calls it loose.

But Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 2) counters: The apprentice years were well past, and this is a harmonious, finely structured play of great stylistic variety, and complexity of meaning. It stands to his later comedies as [Ham.] does to the later tragedies. . . . TN and Lr. may be greater plays. None, however, has the archetypal quality and general appeal of the two earlier works. Ornstein (1986, p. 74) explains that what sets A Dream apart from the earlier comedies is not so much its richly sensuous and evocative poetry, though that is new to the comedies, as its complex and perfectly assured dramatic structure. . . . The earlier comedies expand the dimensions of Roman farce by mingling clowns and caricatures with romantic heroes and heroines. A Dream has the expansiveness of the later comedies that is created by the presence of multiple dramatic worlds; the interplay between the lovers, the fairies, and the rude mechanicals points toward the interplay between Venice and Belmont in [MV], Olivia’s household and Orsino’s in [TN].

Halliwell (1849, p. 129) argues that the great difficulties which surround all aesthetic commentary on this play arise in some measure from its unity of action and of purpose having been considered axiomatical. Halliwell calls the play sui generis, an anomaly not regulated by ordinary laws. Then our chief perplexity will be the necessity of disconnecting some particular action from the rest, and regarding it as a subsequent invention. Moulton (1903, pp. 178, 229) says that the intricate tangle of love stories (p. 229) goes beyond even [TN] in intricacy of ironic situations.

The play is unusual in having a balance among character groups in place of a dominant character or pair of characters, but there is considerable difference of opinion among critics about how many character groups and worlds the play comprises. Although Wendell (1894, pp. 111–12) and a few followers find three separate plots and a few with Smeaton (1911; 1930, p. 185) note five, the majority focus on four as does Spalding (1840, pp. 479–80), who detects four groups of figures, . . . scarcely by any invention capable of being united in actual life who become harmonized to the mind’s eye, . . . the fairy band, . . . [480] the two heroic figures, . . . the Athenian lovers, . . . the cluster of ambitious artisans.

Critics tend to emphasize a temporal or cause-and-effect pattern or sequence. Maine (1848, pp. 422–3, 427–9): Between its character groups (p. 422) a coherence and connection are soon discovered, and it is (p. 423) 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. (P. 427): The first act is nearly equally divided between . . . [the court and the mechanicals]; one occupying the first half, the other the second. . . .

In Act II we are presented for the first time with . . . the Fairies. Henceforward, the first two actions, so remarkably separated in Act I, are gradually interwoven with the third, though nowhere with each other. Maine calls the fairies’ story almost epical in form,—the tale of the µηνις ’Ωβερϖνος [wrath of Oberon]; of which . . . we are enabled to trace in the play the origin, development, and consequences, and his hypothesis . . . is, that the fairies are the primary conception of the piece . . . ; that Shakespeare wished to represent this [428] fanciful creation in contact with two strongly marked extremes of human nature. . . . Finally, the interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe is the ingenious machinery by which, after the stage has ceased to be occupied by the fairy action, these two otherwise independent groups are wrought together and amalgamated. Maine sees the play as distributed into three distinguishable portions, those included in Act i.—in Acts ii. iii. and the first scene of Act iv.—and in the last scene of Act iv. with Act v. The second, and far the most important division, comprehends all the transactions of the Midsummer Night . . . . [429] The first and last actions of the drama, in which the main action does not proceed and only the subordinate groups appear, have nothing to do with the Midsummer Night’s Dream, but are merely exegetical of it.

Snider (1874, pp. 168–83) describes three movements—a real world of institutions (p. 169) in which alone man can enjoy a free and rational existence but which creates conflict with parental authority and the law, a flight to an opposite condition of existence, an ideal world which will mediate the conflict, followed by return to the real world with harmony achieved. The real world is composed of three threads, the Theseus-Hippolyta thread, the contrasting Egeus-lovers one which contains (p. 172) the love-collision and that which springs from it, . . . the poetic Fairy-land. The mechanicals and their efforts are the third thread. Snider explains that in the ideal world (p. 174) Theseus and his world . . . disappear, and their place is taken by the fairies. . . . Moreover, when Theseus reappears the sway of these supernatural beings at once vanishes. After the events surrounding the return to the real world, the fairy couple, now themselves in harmony, (p. 183) enter with their train and sing an epithalamium. . . . Thus Fairy-land has done its last duty: it has reflected the peaceful solution of the struggle, whereas previously it had imaged the strife. Moyse (1879, pp. 13–14, 18, 32) too sees a threefold pattern. (P. 18): The first act . . . is simply a prologue to all that follows. He thinks the (p. 13) wood is the world. . . . All the incidents where the tide waves of action run high and fast happen in this wood, and . . . every character in the play is brought therein if Philostrate be supposed to follow in the train of Egeus. In this setting (p. 14) the instruments by which the mechanism of the play is set in motion appear first, the fairies. After them the mortals who are affected by the deeds of the fairies. Then, the regal Theseus, through whom Shakespeare, with true dramatic art, performs the last act which restores harmony where discord reigned supreme. Then follows the (p. 32) highly artistic end with a blessing on those who have just left the stage.

Chesterton (1904, pp. 622–3) considers the play’s supreme literary [132] merit . . . a merit of design. The amazing symmetry, the amazing artistic and moral beauty of that design, can be stated very briefly. The story opens in the sane and common world with the pleasant seriousness of very young lovers and very young friends. Then, as the figures advance into the tangled wood of young troubles and stolen happiness, a change and bewilderment begins to fall on them. They lose their way and their wits for they are in the heart of fairyland. . . . [623] Then the dream-fumes begin to clear, and characters and spectators begin to awaken together to the noise of horns and dogs and the clean and bracing morning. . . . There is a rush for banqueting and private theatricals. . . . All the dreams have been forgotten . . . ; and so the play seems naturally ended. It began on the earth and it ends on the earth. . . . Of this comedy . . . the mark is that genius goes beyond itself; and one touch is added which makes the play colossal. Theseus and his train retire . . . , and silence falls on the house. Then there comes a faint sound of little feet, and for a moment, as it were, the elves look into the house, asking which is the reality. Suppose we are the realities and they are the shadows. If that ending were acted properly any modern man would feel shaken to his marrow if he had to walk home from the theatre through a country lane. As Olson (1957, pp. 101, 116) describes the three movements, the work begins with order (Act I), then passes through the cycle of a Fall which brings the domination of unbridled passion (Acts II–III). Finally, it returns to a realization of the charity and cohesive community morality in which it began (Acts IV–V). He argues that (p. 116) throughout, Shakespeare uses formal parallelism between scenes from the two plots [lovers’ and fairies’] to stress their inner relationship and to heighten the humor of both. Frye (1965, Perspective, pp. 73–8) describes first an anticomic society . . . blocking and opposed to the comic drive, second a (p. 76) period of confusion and sexual license[,] . . . of temporarily lost identity, and third (p. 78) the phase of the discovery of identity. Edwards (1968, p. 11) calls the stages separation-confusion-harmony, and Falk (1980, p. 264) finds that the structure parallels the landscape of rites of passage, which precipitates fundamental patterns of growth and renewal. Collins (1982, pp. 132–3) is skeptical of the three-stage approach which clearly regards [MND] as thoughtful drama . . . within the narrow confines of the Christian humanist [133] tradition where unbridled passion is invariably a negative force destructive of the charity and cohesive community morality by which reasonable men give order to society. He contends that this scheme arbitrarily isolates one strand of the action in the play and derives the meaning of the whole from that one part.

Seiden (1959, p. 84) writes of the play as a whole constituting an enveloping atmosphere of dreams through which may be discerned various satellite dreams. Comtois (1980, p. 306) contends that the action suggested in [MND] is the total sequence of having a dream: being awake, falling asleep, and reawakening. Shakespeare’s play is akin to daydreaming or fantasizing. His play assumes the coexistence of two worlds: the one we wake to and the one in which we dream. Some parts of the play, thus, have the tempo of growth and change that we associate with an awakened existence while in others events happen as they happen in a dream—they metamorphose, superimpose, and speed up. . . . Dreamlike experiences are central to the play’s development. Cohen (1982, pp. 67–70) argues that Shakespeare takes us away from the logical to the ever more absurd through a series of shifts and misdirections. (P. 69): Imitating the process of dream—the transition from one level of consciousness to another—Shakespeare ceaselessly directs [70] our attention away from each new illusion and thereby undoes our resistance to it. Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 95–6, 103) points out that MND has a compacted and shapely form but one that is, like any dream, notoriously difficult to unpick and lay out coherently. Formally structured, conscious of the artifice of its own shaping, the play seems to draw attention to its own formalism, making its audience [96] aware of its own sequence. It (p. 103) has a neat and symmetrical scenic form. Acts 1 and 5 take place in Athens, Acts 2 to 4 in the wood. Immediately preceding the move to the wood comes the casting scene for Quince, Bottom and company (1.2); Bottom is reunited with the others immediately after the wood scenes (4.2), before the full Athenian splendours of the court in Act 5. Holland emphasiz[es] the central moment of the play as the union of extremes, Titania and Bottom. Similarly Rose (1972, p. 19).

The symmetry of the lovers’ scenes as they progress strikes de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. 98) who diagrams the lovers’ adventures scene by scene:

Similarly Craig (ed. 1951, p. 183), who clarifies the pre-play combination in which Demetrius loves Helena and Lysander Hermia. Baldwin (1959, p. 476): The first act breaks by parental interference an antecedent square of two couples into a triangle of two men and a woman, with one woman left over. In the second act, the triangle is by Oberon’s interference also broken, so that we have a complete circle of four. Here is the involution from square to circle. Then we reverse to evolve from circle back to square. In the third act, the circle is resolved back into a triangle of two men and a woman, with one woman left over; but, of course, the women have now reversed positions. In the fourth act, the triangle is so broken that we have again the same square of two couples with which the play began.

Phillips (ed. 1969, pp. 11–12) sees something like . . . the figures of a formal dance. Theseus and Hippolyta are in the centre, the four young lovers around them . . . ; the fairies around them in a roundel or ringlet; and the clowns jigging their [12] Bergomask at the circumference. Similarly Bradbrook (1978, p. 114). Welsford (1927; 1962, p. 331): The influence of the dance has affected . . . the whole structure of the play. It is a dance, a movement of bodies. The plot is pattern, a figure, rather than a series of events occasioned by human character and passion, and this pattern, especially in the moonlight parts of the play, is the pattern of a dance, a pattern Welsford traces in detail (pp. 331–2). Hunter (1962, Shakespeare, pp. 8, 10) and Rodway (ed. 1969, p. viii) agree. McRae (1988, pp. 183–96) discusses the nature and function of the fairies’ dance [1603–4] and the Bergomask [2143–4] and concludes that (p. 195) the progress through disharmony to harmony, supernatural influence on the natural world, comic and tragic antithesis, the whole resolved in the harmony of the dance, is a clear anticipation of masque techniques. Courtly pastime is part of the festive tradition in which [MND] is strongly rooted. For the workers, the lowest class of society, to be an [196] indispensable part of the courtly ceremony, and of the resolution of courtly disharmony through participation in the dance, is a unique variation on that tradition. Nostbakken (2003, p. 7) contends that the movement of the plot is deliberately circular, from the palace to Quince’s home, to the woods, back to Quince’s home, and finally back to the palace. The structure itself is formal, almost like a round dance that the fairies perform, like the fairy rings that enchant the play and bring it to a place of harmony. Shakespeare uses the separate settings to introduce distinct groups of characters whose intentions are all focused on the marriage announced in the first scene and whose lives and actions eventually become intertwined to create the play’s entertaining chaos and allow for its festive conclusion.

Wölffel (1852, p. 119) is the first of many to comment on the wedding of Theseus and Hippoyta as the framework for a picture of independent yet interwoven groups (Ger.). Leech (1969, pp. 107–8) too talks of the frame-effect here, with Athens at either end of the Wood, yet with the Wood coming to the palace to offer a final blessing. Mincoff (1965, p. 141), explaining that the frame accounts for Acts I and V, says that the three central acts in the wood run through without a break, though the act divisions make sense—indeed they could hardly help doing so, for Act III represents a climax of misunderstandings and squabbles, while the two flanking acts give the preparation (with the first of the misunderstandings as a foretaste of what is to come), and their allayment. . . . And the scene between Titannia and Bottom, which is the companion climax to the misunderstandings of the mortals, is reserved for Act IV—after the feverish recriminations of the lovers it represents an ebbing of the emotional tension, even though it is a climax in its own right. With the awakening of the mortals in the morning and Theseus’s judgment, the action is brought to an end already in Act IV, indeed Theseus’s reappearance is already a closing of the frame, and the last act is an independent tailpiece that balances with the opening only by being an epilogue in Athens, as the first act is a prologue there. The principle of balance is applied here in its extremest and most obvious form. It does not clash with a division into acts, indeed it harmonizes with it very well. Salingar (1974, pp. 9–10) elaborates on the idea that the whole framework of the action is contrived to resemble a courtly fête. . . . The plots which [10] frame the central action arise from the preparations of the fairies and the mechanicals to honour Theseus’ wedding celebrations, on which they converge, while the central plot dealing with the lovers comes to rest at the same goal. Sh. appears to be aiming at a balance between formal ceremony and episodes of sudden impulse or sheer confusion, which yet fall, as if in spite of the actors’ intentions, into patterns of custom and revelry. According to Swinden (1973, pp. 56, 62) The outer frame of the court looks as if it encloses the experience of the wood. . . . That is the way it appears from Act I looking towards Act II. Really, the experience of the wood curves back from a point almost at the end of the play and encloses what had at first seemed to be its mortal frame. We understand this only gradually, as we move into and (perhaps) out of the dream. In Act 5 (p. 62) we begin to wonder again who is really in control. Theseus ordered the lovers to bed. . . . [But] it does not finish here, as he anticipates. It is continued by the fairies who round off the action with a song and dance. In the end, Theseus does not preside. Puck’s epilogue really does close the play.

The linkages between the plots engage the attention of critics. According to Bates (ed. 1895, pp. 12–13) the encompassing action is that of Theseus and Hippolyta, the human sovereigns. With the fairy element these never come into contact. The clown action touches both, and so does the action of the Athenian lovers. All the perplexities of the plot proceed from the fairies, save the cross in the loves of Helena and Demetrius, which is resolved by the fairies. The elves are thus at the centre of the comedy, although Titania has so far withdrawn herself from her wee lord,—as bent on maintaining masculine supremacy in fairy-land as Theseus is in Athens,—that she, too, undergoes the witchery of the magic juice. The web of enchantment that overspreads the play radiates from the mischievous little flower love-in-idleness, and its ready agents, the king of shadows [1388] and sweet Puck [410]. Verity (ed. 1893, p. 117) likes the very happy and artistic feature of the act in returning the fairies to the stage in act 5, thus bring[ing] them into marked connection with the marriage of Theseus and the other marriages, so as to link Act V. with Acts II.—IV. . . . show[ing] that the fairy interest of the play is closely allied to the human interest—i.e. that [MND] has unity of interest, if not of action. Semper (1931, p. 86): it is the fairies who provide a link-action which complicates the other plots, binds the different groups together, and provides a fitting close for the special occasion of a marriage. Knight (1932, p. 144): the fairy quarrel is at the heart of the play, sending ripples outward through the plot, vitalizing the whole middle action. Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 24) likewise considers the fairies important in the mechanical construction of the comedy and the only characters who come knowingly in contact with every one of the other groups. Halliwell (1849, p. 129) agrees that the fairies constitute the main action, as does Furnivall (ed. 1877, p. xxvi). Baker (1907, p. 186) considers the lovers the main thread of the story, the rustics the low comedy, and the fairies the complicating element for each of the other two groups, bind[ing] them together, and . . . giv[ing] the graceful and fitting close which the dramatist for a special occasion must always find. Craig (1948, p. 35) too explains that their plot ties the others together and serves to unify them. Hirsch (1968, p. 176) considers the first confrontation between Titania and Oberon . . . the most important scene in the play in terms of unifying the four strata. The dream-like, fairy world of the imagination is the macrocosm of the rational, real world: the real world reflects its conflicts in floods and rheumatic diseases: And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissension. We are their parents and original [490–2]. Seeing the Indian boy will help to establish the quarrel, but the poetic weight lies in Titania’s description of her mysterious relationship with the boy’s mother. The whole play is structured around this confrontation.

Other linkages are noted. Puck’s use of the flower’s juice affects various characters. Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, p. xxii) point out that only the serious and mature love of Theseus and Hippolyta . . . and the travesty of the romance-writers’ love in the interlude . . . lie outside the sway of Oberon’s stratagem. Halpin (1843, p. 14) regards the little western flower [543] as central to the play’s events. He details its effects from its first occurrence . . . , throughout its operations upon Titania, in act ii. sc. 3, and again, in act iv. sc. 1: upon the Lovers, in act ii. sc. 3, act iii. sc. 1, and act iii. sc. 2. It pervades the whole fable, and is the sine qua non of its progress and development. Without it, the ludicrous distress of Titania, and her reconcilement with Oberon, could not have been produced: without it, the amusing embarrassments of the Lovers could neither have been heightened nor finally disentangled: without it, the play might and would have had a denouément; but not such as the poet designed for this piece. Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 126) also sees the flower as vital, as do Wilson (1962, p. 185), who explains that there are four plots so cleverly intertwined that the working of each is necessary for the working of the others, the cusp . . . at which the lines of the tracery meet being Cupid’s little magic flower, Fisher (1957, p. 308), and Evans (1960, p. 34), who says the flower, though it touches the eyes of only three, . . . affects directly or indirectly all the principal persons. It is primarily responsible for the fact that at some time in the action each of them stands on a level of awareness below ours. Others credit the fairies, or Theseus and Hippolyta, or Bottom with unifying the plot strands. Bonazza (1966, pp. 14, 115, 118–22) comments on the (p. 115) intricately multi-level structure with four different elements: a serious enveloping action; a romantic but comic one; a tonally contrasting, anti-romantic parody; and a complicating and resolving one which lends a motivating atmosphere of enchantment to the internal action through the agency of magical instruments. Plot A is the framework, B the love story, C the mechanicals’ subplot, and D the plot providing atmosphere. The characters in A provide the occasion for the introduction of B, with Egeus (p. 116) act[ing] as the link between plots A and B. For Bonazzo’s detailed analysis, see pp. 118–22. Dillingham (1956, pp. 232–7) analyzes the function of Bottom who (p. 234) serves not only to furnish comic relief, but, as he moves in and out of the various levels of the play, he helps to tie these levels together. Pickering (1985, p. 48) calls Bottom an essential link between the mortals and the Fairy world by his involvement with Titania and as the means whereby Oberon cures his queen of her obsession. Willson (1972, pp. 118–20, 127) analyzes the relationship between the mechanicals’ and the lovers’ sections, and Leggatt (1974, pp. 106–11, 114) emphasizes both the contrasts between worlds and their moments of intimate and sympathetic contact.

The repetition of patterns offers another structural approach. According to Willson (1975, p. 35, n. 8) Sh. sets up a series of plays within plays. [MND] depicts a variety of situations wherein actors are viewed by audiences. We might say, for instance, that Theseus oversees the whole action, including the antics of the lovers, mechanicals, and fairies. Though he is not really present to comment throughout, his common sense and wisdom stand as normative yardsticks by which we can judge the comic excesses of his subjects. The lovers are viewed directly by Oberon, a playwright whose stage director, Puck, acts to change the direction of the plot. Also observed by Puck are the mechanicals in rehearsal, which the mischievous fellow interrupts in order to place the ass’s head on Bottom. The subsequent love scene between Bottom and Titania, a witty lampoon of the erotic convention of a divine goddess falling in love with a god-like mortal . . . , is observed by the invisible Puck and Oberon. Finally, the burlesque play is enjoyed by a formal audience of courtiers who poke fun at the players’ excesses. These multiple plays-within-the-play invite the audience in the theatre to see more clearly than the players the comic irony involved: at one point or another the scoffing audience-on-stage are liable to become ridiculous players for another audience as the tables are turned. Puck’s Lord, what fools these mortals be! [1139] applies to fairies and human beings alike. Nostbakken (2003, p. 14) describes a series of triangles: Egeus, Demetrius, and Theseus (in opposition to romantic love); Oberon, Titania, and the changeling; Oberon, Titania, and Bottom; and both the fairy king and queen accuse each other of love ties with Theseus and Hippolyta in double triangles almost as confusing as the overlapping triangles of the young lovers. . . . The triangle, as the typical shape of love in conflict, takes on multiple permutations. Bradbrook (Wit, 1987, p. 15) contends that the play is built on a series of triads—the contrast between daylight and Athens, the woodland kingdom of fairies and dream, and their conjunction in the last act; between the court, the city workmen, the fairy realm. The plots as such end with Act IV and the pairing off of the lovers, the reconciliation of Fairy King and Queen. . . . The three worlds interweave constantly. Höfele (1991, p. 42) identifies the various moments of awakening as the turning-points in the play (Ger.). Craig (1983, p. 93) thinks the arrival of daylight is the first of four endings, others being the ending of the interlude, the appearance of the fairies, and Puck’s final words. McNeir (1984, p. 11) and Hunter (2002, p. 4) contend that there are four epilogues or endings: the former lists the rustic Burgomask dance by the rude mechanicals, one by Puck as Robin Goodfellow, one by Oberon and Titania and the fairies, and the final and formal Epilogue by Puck, and the latter the bergomask, Theseus directing everyone to go to bed, the appearance of Oberon, Titania, and the fairies, and Puck’s final words. Bitot (1989, pp. 34–5) argues that the dramatic action is punctuated by pauses, ellipses, or recapitulations which underline the suppleness of dramatic narrative. The tumultuous history of Theseus’s loves, evoked by his conquest of Hippolyta, is retold in the course of the Oberon-Titania quarrel, superimposing two apparently distinct intrigues. At the same time, their exchange prepares us for the magic events of the night. He concludes that a pattern of anticipation and recapitulation enables the reader to remain oriented despite various and dream-like temporalities and narrative sequences (Fr.). Holderness (1991, p. 67) leaves a choice to the director and the reader but emphasizes the need for contrasts: Shakespeare’s play . . . depends for its significant structure on the establishing of contradictions. If there is no sense of difference between city and forest, court and carpenter’s shop, between the Dionysiac irrationality of emotion and fantasy, and the Apollonian rigidity of intellect and law, then the play’s contents will flow and blend into a monotonous neutrality—either Theseus’s dimension of cool reason [1798] or the alternative realm of antique fable [1795]. It is up to the director (as it is up to the critical reader) how to interpret the structure of these contradictions: the play can with equal legitimacy be seen as a resolution of discords, or as an interweaving of contraries which are left precariously balanced and essentially unresolved in the conclusion.

Several commentators point out Sh.’s use of a variety of generic forms within the play. Comtois (1980, pp. 306–8, 311) explains that each of the four character groups has a public function to perform and a private matter to resolve, so that eight patterns of action interweave throughout the play. . . . [307] Composed like a medley or a madrigal, . . . [the] overall design derives from smaller patterns. . . . Most of the scenes have their own inherent forms. . . . For example, the play-within-a-play is an inherent form contributing unity and entertainment value to a part of the whole. . . . At times he so shapes his action as to draw conscious attention to these entertainment forms as forms (an interlude, a blessing), or he may allow them to remain implicit (the lovers quarreling in the pattern of a round dance; Oberon acting out a classic comedy of intrigue), but implicit or explicit these entertainment forms fulfill their functions of making pleasure in little, as the whole play makes it in large. . . . [308] Groups of characters, replacing the single protagonist, engage in groups of actions which are balanced and integrated in such a way that no part can go unmissed or can overreach its place. . . . Near perfect symmetry of plot construction control[s] the action and reinforc[es] . . . the sense of simultaneous dreaming and artistry. Comtois compares the shape of the play to the act of a juggler who sets one ball after another circling in the air until all eight are in motion . . . then concludes by withdrawing one ball at a time until he has returned to his opening posture.

This proliferation and reduction process is partly responsible for moving the play away from the waking, toward the dream state, and back again. . . . [311] The explicit surface of diversity of character and capriciousness of event thus only appears to dominate the character of the play. In making many events instances of poetic or comic moment in and of themselves and in creating structure both graceful and tight, Shakespeare has provided audiences . . . with a deeply satisfying experience of a highly complex, but remarkably hardy, dramatic form.

Wright (ed. 1877, p. xxii), considering MND more masque than play, finds contrast in the antimasque elements, the fairies and the clowns who form the sub-divisions or semi-choruses. Similarly Thümmel (1881, p. 284), Vollhardt (1899, p. 5), De Rothschild (1906, p. 83). Lanier (1891; 1945, 4:328) thinks the interlude functions as anti-mask as do Luce (1907, p. 163) and Eckhardt (1928, p. 104). Bates (ed. 1895, p. 2) says the play has the effect of a bridal masque.

Technical problems interest several critics. There is some debate over whether the play observes the unities. Brown (1838, p. 156) contends that Err., LLL, MND, and Tmp. are written with as much regard to the three unities as Ben Jonson himself paid to them in . . . Every Man in his Humour. Indeed the unity in this comedy is less pure than in any comedy by Shakespeare. Stopes (1916, p. 173) agrees. But Matson (1853, p. 26) argues that Sh. was not ignorant of the unities but above them and achieved contrast through juxtaposition, White (1886, p. 27) that with this play Sh. began his disregard of the unities of time and place. Masefield (1954, p. 57), thinking of the practical problems of staging a play, notices that the play is constructed in divisions that could be rehearsed apart without great disturbance of the routine of the theatrical company. To Wells (ed. 1967, p. 29) it seems unlikely that Shakespeare, as he wrote, had an act-structure in mind. The scenes flow smoothly into each other till the end of that between Titania and Bottom where there is a natural break before something of a recapitulatory episode.

Some critics see the play’s construction as spatial rather than temporal, but they differ greatly in the ways they devise to explain their analyses. As Edwards (1968, p. 56) envisions it, the audience gazes down at Oberon and Puck, who gaze down at Theseus, who gazes at the workmen acting out the love of Pyramus and Thisbe. At each level there is confidence and superiority about the level of knowledge that lies below. The method must reflect ironically on the knowingness of the audience about what reality really is. What . . . sits above them? Quennell (1963, p. 169) describes a whole series of worlds, separate but superimposed, each occupying a different plane; and apart from the world of Theseus and Hippolyta, who sit enthroned to watch the spectacle, on each of these superimposed planes discord and confusion flourish. Pagnini (1976; tr. 1999, pp. 27–30, 35–7) classifies the four plots as classical, romantic, popular, and magical, resulting in (p. 28) heterogeneity and cohesiveness from the integration of discordant, contradictory elements. The play-within-the-play has (p. 30) powerful mirror-image effects. Pagnini traces the four phases of the lovers’ situations. Díaz García (1983, pp. 61, 66–8, 72, 79) analyzes Sh.’s braiding together of diverse planes—the plane of myth, of the mystery of magicians, of the theater that is represented within another theater, of the mortals, of Athens/London (Sp.).

Gollancz (ed. 1895, pp. xxxix, l–li) attributes to the effects of the flower the strangest story ever told of loves and lovers and diagrams his view in concentric circles.

He sees the wedding announced in 1 and occuring in 5 as the encircling event, the fairy quarrel as a circle within the greater one, and the spokes or cross-lines as representing the story of the lovers. The rustics form (p. l) contrast to the courtly lovers, the etherial fairies, and the dignified Theseus and Hippolyta. According to Swinden (1973, p. 53), Whenever we are concerned with either the fairies or the mortals—certainly in Acts II–IV—we cannot prevent particles of the world we are not concerned with gliding into the picture . . . as a kind of shadow . . . that falls across the lens through which we are looking. Others describing a circular pattern include Bates (ed. 1895) above, here and Phillips (ed. 1969, p. 12). To Auden (1946; 2000, p. 57) the play is like a series of Chinese boxes. . . . On the outside of the play are the bride and bridegroom [whose wedding occasioned the play] and the Elizabethan audience, inside the play are the couples Theseus and Hippolyta, Titania and Oberon, the young lovers, and in the play within the play, Pyramus and Thisbe.

Sh.’s parallels often heighten various contrasts in this play, Bradbrook suggests (1978, pp. 116–18), for example the contrast between dream and reality. The perspective of the play is like the perspective of a dream; the lovers and the royal pair are puppet-like or remotely grand; it is the fairies and the tradesmen with their wonderful dream of a play who give the substance; the others are the shadows. . . . [117] Only in a play where such feats of constructional engineering are displayed as the different levels of the triple plot supply, could the game between the actors and the audience become part of the show. It induces a rapport on quite a new level; the magic of the theatre brings in not only the bridal couples [118] (who are presumably in the seats of honour) but everybody.

Peterson (1995, p. 39) considers MND two plays in one: one which is mimetic, involving dangers to life and inviting audience identification and empathy; and another which is ludic, devoted to the improbable and offering the audience an interval of fun in which to escape for a time the problems that engage us all. Robinson (1968, pp. 383–8) discusses two realms—fairy and human. Within the human one is (p. 384) a dual condition, . . . the mood for holiday . . . that associates the human desire for new life with seasonal renewal, and a social conflict which must be solved according to the standards of custom and law. The conflict shows Theseus in a dual role. The resulting (p. 385) pattern of action . . . is both dialectical and symbolic, sequential and associative. On the one hand there is a plot, an argumentum . . . suggestive of the move and countermove pattern of Roman comedy and the proof and disproof structure of rhetoric . . . [which] can be conveniently divided into the tripartite division . . . of protasis [act 1 and most of 2 in which the play moves toward a merging of the contexts of the reality of society and the reality of nature myth, of rhetoric and ritual]-epitasis [middle of 2.2 into the early part of 4 in which there is (p. 386) a counterpointing of two modes of reality in such a way that the mythology of love is equated with the actuality of love and where the play begins to move from such discord to its comic resolution]-catastrophe [4 where harmony is achieved after (p. 387) the question of what is right is referred to the larger measure of what is natural and subsumed within it] that presents, ties, and unties a knot of intrigue. . . . On the other hand there is a magical movement, a ritualistic pattern, whereby and wherein the process of young love unfolds as a series of symbolic acts performed by the fairies. . . . As the fairies intervene, the dialectical pattern is modulated by magic and symbol. Thus in combining the two levels of action Shakespeare creates a prism through which a peculiar refraction of the relation of ordinary and symbolic reality, of experience and dream, can emerge. The fifth act is (p. 388) festival and wedding benediction, the komos and gamos which follow upon plot and toward which the plot is directed. Meissner (1954, p. 36) sees worlds of realism and romanticism (Ger.). Hollindale (1992, pp. 25, 36–7, 52) remarks that (p. 52) the first scene plays its decisive part in the overall dramatic structure . . . and establishes subtle but accurate expectations in the audience. (P. 25): The fairy marriage . . . is also a very serious and important part of the play’s design. Unity and disunity in marriage between Oberon and Titania are the focus for Shakespeare’s presentation of ideas and themes which spread far beyond the central nucleus of love and partnership. . . .

In the two-phase structure of the play, it is important that we should see the experiences of Oberon and Titania as running parallel with the vicissitudes and triumphs of the human lovers. Once their quarrel is resolved, they reaffirm a peace from which the peace of their mortal dependents will draw its own new strength. Considering the play occasional, Hollindale adds that (p. 36) the relationship between the real audience and the on-stage audience in Act V is the core of [MND]’s great structural triumph as a marriage play. Although the play’s structure has internal validity regardless of the setting in which it was first performed, it becomes particularly attractive if we think of it once more as a performance for a courtly wedding. The two audiences—the real and the dramatized—are brought close together and yet kept separate by a masterly display of theatrical tact and wit. . . . [37] We have an audience at a marriage feast watching a play about the audience at a marriage feast watching a play. But the real audience knows better than the on-stage one what really happened in the wood. We know what really happened in the wood; we know what is true. Purdon (1974, pp. 170–1, 180) detects a substructure of myth which (p. 171) actually carries the play along with it. It is a kind of Renaissance equivalent to Eliot’s objective correlative set in motion, a literary technique by which emotions and judgments are summoned up by the use of an image which embodies them. In addition, (p. 180) most of the fairy scenes operate as a masque, in which the events that actually happen in the rest of the play receive the allegorical and abstract treatment expected from this form.

Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:261, 268–9, 275–6) comments on the contrasts—of a comic-tragic counterpart in Pyramus and Thisbe to the tragic-comic point of the plot, of (p. 275) the rude mechanicals and clowns with the tender and delicate play of the fairies. Gervinus explains that Theseus (p. 276) is placed between these contrasts in quiet and thoughtful contemplation. He draws back incredulous from the too-strange fables of love and its witchcraft; he enjoins that imagination should amend the play of the clowns. . . . The real that in this work of art has become nothing, and the ideal nothing, which in the poet’s hand has assumed this graceful form, are contrasted in the two extremes; in the centre is the intellectual man, who participates in both, who regards the one, the stories of the lovers, the poets by nature, as art and poetry, and who receives the other, presented as art, only as a thanksworthy readiness to serve as a simple offering. Gervinus is one of many who admire the combination of these skillfully obtained contrasts into a whole. Others stressing alternation of moods include Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 151 n.), who points out that the clowns’ interlude, by giving us a travesty of the fate of the young lovers . . . , provides us with what in effect . . . is an anti-masque, R. M. Frye (1970, p. 163), who calls it another perspective on the events of the night, and Mehl (Forms and Functions, 1965, p. 46), who says it is, in grotesque distortion, another example of romantic love. Phialas (1966, p. 117) sees a connection of theme and tone between the play and the playlet which reproduce[s] in part the story of the lovers, while Ansari (1978, p. 54) considers the interlude the objective frame through which the subjectivities of the world of love and romance are objectified and evaluated. Fiedler (1949, p. 84) contends that there is no real attempt to integrate the inner play into the outer plot; rather it deliberately holds it off as mockery, as foil. Brissenden (1972, p. 91–2) notes particularly the rustic dance, acrobatic perhaps, earthbound certainly, [which] is the extreme contrast in the play between the mortal and the fairy worlds. It serves as an anti-masque to the masque of fairies which ends both the first night of the wedding festivities and the [92] play itself. See also his 1981 book (pp. 41, 45, 110).

Several critics develop the analogies between one scene and another, or commentaries on one scene by another, or variations on a theme. Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, 1:96): The heroic couple . . . have as a counterpart the fairy couple . . . ; and, further, there is a complex symmetry in the fortunes of the Athenian lovers, Hermia being at first wooed by two men, while Helena stands alone and deserted, whereas afterwards it is Hermia who is left without a lover, while the two men centre their suit upon Helena. Finally there is a fifth couple in Pyramus and Thisbe, . . . who in burlesque and sportive fashion complete the symmetrical design. Garber (1974, p. 65) looks at character juxtaposition—as the play’s god of love, Oberon is structurally complemented by Peter Quince, who casts and manages the most lamentable comedy of Pyramus and Thisby: and both are deliberately made parallel to Theseus, Duke and arbiter of Athens, so that the cognate worlds of reason, art, and imagination are juxtaposed through plot. Ramsey (1977, pp. 217–18) says that if clear stage denotes change of scene, there are 7 scenes only, the first two and last two scenes in Athens, and three in the woods. (P. 218): Each projects different values and styles, each offers a different slice or dimension of experience. These three worlds of the play define three separate aspects of reality; they provide three perspectives on reality. Each world of the play gives a local habitation and a name [1808–9] to, a different way of looking at, apprehending, or organizing human experience. Furthermore, the way the play holds these worlds up against each other, makes them balance and mirror and qualify each other. Beiner (1985, pp. 69–70) writes of four levels, the level of the [70] young lovers (where problems of love unfold through complications to resolution), the level of the fairy world (which has its own unfolding from problems to resolution, as well as exercising control over the lovers), the level of the mechanicals (which . . . . becomes involved in its own way in events in the forest), and the level of Theseus and Hippolyta (where we have adjudication and comment, as well as its own relationship to the issue of love and marriage). The overall plot . . . includes all these levels and their juxtapositions, as it unfolds from initial problems through comic exploration to resolution and provides clarification. Whether levels impinge on each other directly in terms of action . . . , or develop separately . . . —they are all juxtaposed, and the juxtapositions are an essential contribution to the comic meaning. There are also juxtapositions within levels (e.g., between the attitudes of Theseus and Hippolyta), and these are no less important than the others. Homan (1969, p. 73) thinks the play’s parts not so much antithetical as synthetic, . . . merely unequal parts [Oberon’s being the larger] of a single world. For Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 132) an idea is the center; the structure . . . is organic rather than mechancial. There are indeed four themes in the play, but they have no independent existence, rather they are parts of a living whole, a romantic comedy with one central action dominated by one controlling idea, . . . the irrational nature of love. Schanzer (1951, p. 238) chooses as the unifying theme which keeps the play from being as disjointed [as] has generally been believed Puck’s Lord, what fools these mortals be! [1139].

See the following for comment on or analysis of particular acts or scenes:

Act 1: Wendell (1894, p. 111); Draper (1961, p. 32), who thinks the complication of each of the several plots . . . is relegated to the pre-play; Sen Gupta (1961, p. 91); Willson (1977, pp. 1, 3–4, 49–59).

Act 3, Sc. 1: Winslow (1926, p. 114); Comtois (1981, p. 47) who provides an extended analysis of this scene and its function in the story of the lovers.

Act 3, Sc. 2: Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:428) who points out that a detailed analysis . . . of the long second scene of the third act, would best prove . . . how entirely the play was planned for representation; . . . the play and sequence of the dialogue, which is apt to appear to the reader a tangled skein, will be found to arrange itself into a lucid and well-ordered web; Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 139 n.) who locates the turning-point of the play in this scene; Bonnard (1956, p. 278), who calls this the great scene; Olson (1957, p. 116); and Evans (ed. 1967, p. 33).

Act 4: Among those who think that the action ends with Act 4 are Hodell (1894, p. 459); Neilson (ed. 1910, p. 150); Schmidt (1914, p. 116); Spencer (1930, p. 27); Noyes (ed. 1908, p. 133); Jacobi (1937, p. 68); Baldwin (1959, p. 476); Atherton (1962, p. 31); Bryant (1965, p. 11); Evans (ed. 1967, p. 38); R. M. Frye (1970, p. 155); Wilcher (1997, p. 50); Verity (ed. 1893, p. 110), who comments that the fourth act in Sh.’s plays is usually the least important, whereas here it is very important, because in it . . . the two sets of complications that formed the main subject-matter of Acts II. and III. are practically brought to an issue; de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. 99); Smith (1940, pp. 18, 39); Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. xx); Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 809). Suzuki (1990, p. 107) identifies the hunting scene as the turning point of the play, and White (1985, p. 41) sees that Sh. allows each society the courtesy of its own farewell. Beiner (1985, pp. 100–1), however, cautions that the play is far from complete in Shakespeare’s terms although the complications have been resolved. Still to come (p. 101) are responses by various characters to the events in the forest . . . ; and there is a mirror, which is explicitly given an internal status as fiction by being a play-within-the-play, with significant implications for the internal responses [both of the lovers and of those who hear their story] we are invited to judge.

Act 5: Critical of the act are Stopes (1916, p. 176), who thinks that because the ending is expected, it is not a denouement, Lawrence (1928, p. 84), who considers the last act too long, and Baldwin (1959, pp. 476–7), who declares that the fifth act does not belong to the play proper at all, which ended with the fourth act. The fifth act belongs, not by virtue of Aristotle or the five-act formula, but in the right [sic] of the wedding customs of the time. He adds that the obligatory fifth act is then provided by the framework to the story of the two couples. He cautions that (p. 477) it is not at all likely that the play was constructed for such an occasion as is represented in the fifth act, but rather that such an occasion was invented to round out the play.

White (1854, p. 206), however, comments that the fifth Act, like the finale of a finely wrought musical composition, placidly resumes the theme which was announced at its commencement, and simply blends with it the counter-theme with which it has been intricately worked up during the body of the piece. The poet ends the fairy freaks which have harrassed the human mortals through this dream, by turning the tormentors into benefactors. . . . After the grotesque fun and broad humor of the interlude, the dream resumes its fanciful and graceful form, and fades upon the mind, a troop of shadowy figures, singing benisons. Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:427–8) regards the act as of the nature and purpose of an epilogue [as does Neilson (ed. 1910, p. 150)] which inculcates the noble-minded moral of good intent received for fair performance. In addition, the play of the clowns [is] a travestie of the very incidents of the dream. . . . . What the act is to the play at large, [428] that is the concluding fairy scene with its elfin dance, following the uncouth Bergomask, to the act, and the epilogue itself has its proper wind-up in the appeal and leave-taking of Robin Goodfellow. In (1875, p. 82), he calls the last act supplementary. Wendell (1894, p. 110) explains that the fifth act recapitulates, almost musically; the final scene of the fairies is not a part of the action, but an epilogue, and de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. 99) and Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 151 n.) concur, Horwood adding that Sh. brings the characters into contact with one another, and puts in the last stitch of the construction. Hackett (2003, p. 352) argues that the ending of the play feels so very right and joyful not only because it is snatched from the jaws of potential tragedy, but also because of the ultimate happy coincidence between female desires and the preservation of the patriarchal order. Others commenting on Act 5 are Smith (1940, p. 18), Fisher (1957, p. 310), Brown (1957, p. 85), Calderwood (1965, p. 509), Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. 86), Lyons (1971, pp. 124–5), Hasler (1974, p. 394), Frye (1983, pp. 75–6), Warren (1983, p. 43), Aquino (Sense, 1986, p. 110). According to Nuttall (1967, p. 148) the epilogue carefully leads the audience back to a consciousness of its own ordinary humanity, before sending it home in happy complacency. Wilcher (1997, p. 51) thinks that the play conducts the complex ceremonies of bringing things artistically to an end twice: once toward the end of Act IV and again at the end of Act V. The result of this manoeuvre is to lend to Act V a certain amount of structural independence. Jarfe (2000, p. 96) comments that the festive end of the play contains contradictions which stand in opposition to any starry-eyed acceptance of a permanent transformation (Ger.).

Comment on the interlude is usually favorable, although Matthews (1913, pp. 80–1) finds it (p. 81) one deficiency in the play that otherwise deserves high praise for the construction. The interlude is not (p. 80) an integral part of the play. The youthful author has run out of matter, and therefore he fills up with extraneous interludes. Brown (1964, p. 90) argues that it is integral . . . ; one cannot, in fact, imagine the play without it, and Brooke (1905, p. 12) sees a connection. He calls the form of the play . . . simple. The first act and the last are of the waking day, of real life. In the midst is the night, the fanciful life of a dream. And added to this vivid contrast is the episode of the comic tragedy of Pyramus, which, in a certain sense, combines the real and the imaginative life. . . . Their play knits by its object, which is to do honour to Theseus’ marriage, the last act to the first. Finally the marriage of all the lovers is accomplished, and the fairies bless the marriage-bed in lovely poetry. Andreas (1980, p. 23) thinks it a grotesque parody of the elitist elements in the play. According to Phillips (ed. 1969, p. 22) the great burst of laughter at the clowns’ interlude which closes the action finally dissolves all the tensions and problems created earlier on, and unites all the human actors in its shared fun. White (1970, pp. 61–2) contends that Sh. thought of the Athenian democracy in terms of the acceptance of the common people. The play is incomplete without the interlude in Act V. . . . There is no other Shakespearean comedy where the common people play so decisive a role or are so widely accepted. Moreover, (p. 62) the last scene is needed. It is needed not simply for the humor and the horseplay, but also for change, the compelled humility of Bottom.

There is uncertainty about the play’s epilogue. Fleay (1891, p. 194) argues that this play has certainly alternate endings: one a song by Oberon for a marriage, and then Exeunt, with no mark of Puck’s remaining on the stage; the other an Epilogue by Puck, apparently for the Court (cf. gentles in l. [2213]). Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 131) too thinks the fairies’ song and dance an appropriate and lovely close to the private performance. Robin’s epilogue, . . . with its apology and appeal for applause, is plainly addressed to a public audience. Similarly Quiller-Couch (in Wilson, ed. 1924, p. 88), Chambers (1930, pp. 360–1), Wilson (1962, p. 206). But Wells (1966, p. 110 and ed. 1967, pp. 12–13) cautions that the belief that the wedding blessing of the last Act had [13] some extra-dramatic significance encourages a loose assumption that it is superfluous, and has been used to justify its omission in performance, whereas it is perfectly appropriate to Shakespeare’s artistic scheme, and requires no other explanation. Holland (ed. 1994, p. 107 n.) concurs, finding no evidence at all to support such an argument; I can see no reason why both endings should not have been used both at the wedding entertainment (in the improbable event that the play was written for one) and in the public theatre performances.

de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. 103) says that an echo of the dream world is recalled in the fairy masque which ends the play, Robinson (1968, p. 388) that the fairy song that ends the play . . . give[s] ritualistic expression to the action. Parrott (1949, p. 126) calls it a true epithalamium and . . . a perfect close to a play that deals with love in its varied phases. Similarly Baxter (1965, p. 72). Coghill (1964, p. 59) points out that as the lovers had all gone out from the palace into nature, so now, on their return, nature follows them in from the woods to the palace, and the fairy troupe surprises them with nature’s blessing: here is true insight into the use of a medium, a schema. Nothing is forgotten, all the motifs unite in one central thing and theme. . . .

Yet there is still the audience-world to have their participation in the experience acknowledged; so Puck, as familiar in a palace as in a cottage with his broom, speaks the Epilogue, last of Shakespeare’s surprises, and tells the audience to think the whole dream was theirs: this is not stage-craft but audience-craft.

E. T. B. (ed. [1906], 1:433) also notes that Puck asks the spectators to think that they have themselves been dreaming. In Watkins’s view (1946, p. 107) Puck’s epilogue is not part of the play: he speaks as an actor, the illusion gone; actors—and their audience too, it seems—like this custom of dropping the mask in public. But for Visser (1996, p. 72), the epilogue is the final and perhaps most daring moment of the elaborate bait-and-switch game Shakespeare has constructed. . . . By offering an apology where none would seem required, it provides a final chance for the audience to notice that there actually might be something other than just light romantic comedy going on, yet at the same time it does so in confidence that the audience will miss even this last strong hint. Now you see it, now you don’t. For other comment on Puck’s epilogue see Parrott (1949, p. 126); Atherton (1962, p. 39), who notes especially Puck’s pointed allusion to the title of the play which hints . . . that the realities of life and love are after all not so very different from dreams.

Others dealing with structure include Neilson (ed. 1910, pp. 133–50); Black et al. (1930, pp. 180–2), who details scene by scene the function of each in the overall structure of the play; Wickham (1969, p. 188), who suggests that in point of structure . . . this play takes the form of a narrative contained within four acts, together with a recapitulation and cadenza added in a fifth Act. According to Cecil (1957, pp. 53–5) no work . . . is in the deepest sense more integrated and harmonious. Shakespeare achieves this by two means. One is formal, . . . [55] but it also has an aesthetic unity; this Shakespeare effects by steeping the whole in one atmosphere, the atmosphere indicated by the title. Fisher (1957, p. 309) thinks the activity of Puck represents both a unifying and transforming power which changes the wood into the depths of a Midsummer-night’s dream. Hirsh (1981, pp. 156, 183–5, 209–11, 221) is interested in the internal construction of scenes. Jacobi (1937, pp. 66–71), Baldwin (1947, p. 479), Schilling (1953, p. 91), Lever (ed. 1961, p. ix), Atherton (1962, pp. 49–53), Hunter (1962, John Lyly, pp. 318–23), Neubauer (1970, pp. 57–9), Rose (1972, pp. 17, 19, 21, 89, 182 n. 7), and Halio (2003, pp. 33 ff.) also comment on the structure of the play.

Language and Style

Gentleman (ed. 1774, 8:137) complains that Sh. in this play tends sometimes to forget probability in his pursuit of Novelty and Originality, and that a forced connexion of various stiles with other shortcomings throw[s] a kind of shade over that blaze of merit many passages would otherwise have possessed. Such criticism is a rarity, although many commentators detect signs that MND is an early effort, among them Malone (Attempt, in Steevens, ed. 1778, 1.2:285–6): The poetry of this piece, glowing with all the warmth [286] of a youthful and lively imagination, the many scenes which it contains of almost continual rhyme, the poverty of the fable, and the want of discrimination among the higher personages, dispose me to believe that it was one of our author’s earliest attempts in comedy. Hazlitt (1817, pp. 129–30) finds more sweetness and [130] beauty of description than in the whole range of French poetry put together and lists passages that illustrate his point, and Knight (ed. 1839, 1:332) is of the 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, . . . which has never ceased to influence our higher poetry, from Fletcher to Shelley. White (1854, p. 196) admires the high place which the poetry of this play holds even among the poetry of Shakespeare. . . . There is perhaps not another production of the human mind which so has the power to make us forget the realities of life, and live for a time in the realms of fancy. By ed. 1883 (1:421) he had come to think the style uneven and incongruous and to suspect revision or rewriting. Swinburne (1880, pp. 49–50) describes the blank verse as full, sweet, and strong as the best of Biron’s or Romeo’s; the rhymed verse as clear, pure, and true as the simplest and truest melody of [Ven.] or the [Err.]. The writing (p. 50) belongs as much to lyric as to dramatic poetry. According to Harbage (1963; 1967, p. 100) only its style makes us think of it as of a higher order of creative achievement than Err., Shr., or LLL. Sanders (ed. 1971, p. 2) notices growth because the delight in the formal set speech, complex word-play, and descriptive passages, which characterise Shakespeare’s early plays, are still present; but in [MND] they are under firm control with each change of metre and every variation of style, whether it be the dignified blank verse of Theseus, the artificial couplets of the lovers, the down-to-earth prose of the mechanicals, or the dancing rhythms of the fairies, necessary to produce some desired dramatic effect.

The play’s lyricism is praised. Woodberry (in Lee, ed. 1907, 3:xviii–xix) delights in the lyrical element which is . . . omnipresent and (p. xix) is thrown over the humour as well as the beauty of the play. Cunliffe (ed. 1912, p. xiii): Its lyrical excellence is a perpetual joy to any one who has an ear for concord of sweet sounds [MV 5.1.84 (2497)]. Even the blank verse has an uplifting and enthralling music, as if Shakespeare were giving full rein to his youthful mastery of a full-toned instrument. We have not indeed the orchestral effects of his later manner, for the range of the chords he uses is comparatively limited; but in its own kind of poetry the play was and is still unsurpassed. Similarly Herford (1912, p. 28), Gundolf (1928, pp. 214–15), Crump (1925, p. 26), Isaacs (1927; in Ridler, 1936, p. 322).

Comment on the lyricism of the blank verse is mixed. Verity (ed. 1893, p. xi), Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 11), and Cuningham (ed. 1905, p. xxxiv) find immaturity in the regularity of the blank verse, and Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 8) comments on the large proportion of end-stopped lines. Mabie (1900; 1904, pp. 160–1), however, claims that the iambic pentameter . . . finds in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the full development of its melodic power. It is (p. 161) freed . . . from the stiffness and rigidity which characterized it before Marlowe’s time, and becomes soft as a flute in its lighter notes and resonant and full-toned as a bell in great passages. Welsford (1927, p. 330) also finds a musical quality in the flowing blank verse, . . . verse which is lyrical rather than dramatic; liquid clear, never checked in its course by some sudden, sharp, projecting thought. Milton’s dialogue has the terse, stichomythic quality of Greek or Senecan drama, Shakespeare’s is a part-song. General praise is lavished on the poetry by numerous others, among them Halliwell (ed. 1856, 5:16), Carruthers & Chambers (ed. 1861, 3:1), Kreyssig (1862, 3:82, 104–5), Heraud (1865, p. 186), Mézières (1860; 1865, p. 440), Smith (ed. 1892, p. x), Lang (1895, p. 328), Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, pp. 76–7), Parrott (1934; 1955, p. 139), Tillyard (1958, p. 13), Long (1976, p. 224).

In writing of the style or styles of MND, it is common for critics to mention what Robinson (1968, p. 390) has called a medley of styles. Herford (1881, pp. 57–8) comments that a purely poetic atmosphere is combined with a [58] thoroughly dramatic treatment. Prose and poetry are . . . daringly combined. Fleay (1876; 1878, pp. 130, 135) counts 850 rhymes, 441 lines of prose, 878 of blank verse, 731 of pentameter rhymes, 138 short line rhymes, 63 songs, 29 double endings, 158 alternates, 5 2-measures, 3 3-measures. Lewis (1897, p. 117), studying the uses of poetry and prose in the play, concludes that . . . metrical changes usually signify changes in action, and that no one style of discourse can claim a particular metre as its own. Even certain painfully prosaic ideas are expressed in verse. On the other hand, prose seems in this play to be quite as much associated with change in feeling as in action. Lindblad (1981, p. 134) considers it worth noting a significant reversal that occurs in the fifth Act. The normal linguistic medium of the mechanicals, namely prose, is adopted by the Athenians when they become an audience, whereas the normal medium of the Athenians when they were themselves the actors has either been blank or rhymed verse. The contrast between the bad verse of Pyramus and Thisbe and the lyricism of many of the verses in the earlier acts thus serves a self-reflexive function. Granville-Barker (1931, p. 74): The whole play, with its changing use of blank verse, rhyme, couplet and quatrain, and its shifting from ten syllable line to seven or six, is conceived as music, and in this is its integrity. Shakespeare has now mastered his medium—to the term of his present needs. Fender (1968, pp. 35–6, 38): The audience comes to chart the progress or regress of the characters . . . in terms of how appropriate their language is to their experience. The lovers (p. 36) enter the wood speaking in a highly organized, witty, complicated manner, and leave it speaking much more simply. See also pp. 42–5 on stylistic modulations as the characters’ circumstances shift. Sh. uses (p. 38) the courtly style . . . both seriously and ironically—seriously . . . to define the subtleties of love; ironically, when it is spoken by a character whose behaviour no longer squares with his view of himself. Early in the play, before the characters have left Athens, the high style seems well suited to the use made of it. For an opposing view of the courtly style, see Warren (1969, p. 131). Robinson (1968, pp. 388–90) mentions first the fairy songs used to give ritualistic expression to the action and then the contrasting (p. 389) language of argument and interpretation, designed to promote social action or interpret social experience found in the blank verse of lines 28–136[,] . . . the language of courtroom exchange, placed in a pattern of charge and countercharge, accusation and defense. . . . [Similarly on this passage Watkins & Lemmon (1974, p. 36).]

But these examples represent only the extremes of ritualistic and rhetorical style. . . . Between these extremes . . . there is a range of styles, marvelously intricate modes of expression rapidly shifting between the realities of nature and society.

One of Shakespeare’s methods of shifting from one reality to another is to elaborate the human rhetoric with figures of speech and sound and syntax in such a way that the figures combine with the sense to produce the effect of incantation. . . . After the courtroom exchange, Lysander and Hermia . . . slip into a dialogue marked by stichomythia, balance and antithesis, apostrophe, and ornate metaphor [138–50]. The effect of this exchange is to lock the two lovers in a choric lamentation that lifts their problem out of the courtroom into ritual. Robinson calls (p. 390) the changes in style . . . kaleidoscopic. Through the first 187 lines of Act II, Scene i, . . . the fairy language moves from tetrameter song and pentameter-couplet lyric describing fairy action and the world of nature into couplet jokes about Puck’s domestic involvements, on to blank-verse debate between Oberon and Titania, then into the richly metaphoric and symbolic blank-verse passages on the origin and powers of the Cupid potion. Similarly the language of the lovers moves in shifting patterns. . . .

Finally, in Bottom’s play, Shakespeare turns the medley of styles into a grand parody that burlesques the very threads out of which the language of the play has been woven.

Doran (1976, pp. 14–15) summarizes: in the poetry Shakespeare creates for Theseus and Hippolyta an allusive home in heroic Greece and creates other scenes away from the play. (Young [1966, p. 75] calls this picturization.) Word and image are important, but just as important a means of suggestion is the form of the verse and the prose. The verse is modulated throughout the play in varying meters, with rime and without it, to suit scene, situation, mood, sometimes class of character. Blank verse and rimed pentameter distinguish fine differences of tone, for in the context of the play the one carries more weight and seriousness, the other more lightness and comedy. The blank verse of the adults in the relatively stable court world is set off against the rimed couplets of the [15] young lovers in their impulsive decisions and in their shifting infatuations and infidelities under the fairy spells. The artifice of the rime in this context gives brittleness, making for our ears a subtle polyphony with the desperately earnest words of the lovers. In the moments of deeper perception or idealism, however, the lovers speak eloquently in blank verse. The fairies have rhyme and varied meters—dignified blank verse, spells in short lines and couplets. Baldensperger (1945, p. 107) also comments on Sh.’s stylistic variety, as do Craig (1948, p. 35 and ed. 1951, pp. 184, 186–7), Lever (ed. 1961, pp. xvi–xvii), Watkins & Lemmon (1974, pp. 39 ff.), Desmet (1998, p. 299), Hibbard (1981, pp. 144, 147–9). Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 28–30) points out the significance of his rhetorical virtuosity in articulating the structure and meanings of the play.

Several critics single out the prose for comment. Collins (1904, p. 190) describes the prose as realistic, colloquial, and modelled on the language of common life. de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. xxxiii) finds even the prose of the mechanicals faintly suffused with poetry, and Harrison (ed. 1948, p. 69) says that from the first . . . Shakespeare’s comic dialogue in prose was easy and mature. Walter (ed. 1964, p. 25) mentions the colloquial and flexible prose of the mechanicals and its occasional malapropism or oddity of phrasing. Parrott (1934; 1955, p. 139) admires the vigorous prose of the Bottom scenes, and Vickers (1968, pp. 67–71) concentrates on Bottom’s style.

Dowden (1893, pp. 59, 61) raises the question of whether the play is poetry or drama, calling the play in part a perfect piece of lyrical poetry, in part a very imperfect drama, adding that (p. 61) the lyrical poet . . . more nearly overmatches the dramatist than in any other of his plays. David (1935, pp. 16–17, 31–2) groups LLL, Rom., and MND as plays in which appear not only Petrarchan phrases and lyrical rhythms, but the actual forms of non-[17] dramatic verse, such as the sonnet, and the favourite sestet-stanza of [Ven.]; and with the last two plays at least, there comes a curious feeling that the action is being worked out at two levels—the purely dramatic one of the plot, and the poetic, hovering more indefinitely, like a sort of harmonic, above it. He adds that (p. 31) the domination of formal poetry is . . . marked, as might be expected in a private or court play; rhymed couplets replace standard blank verse in the expositional passages, and the cadenzas are more abstract from the dramatic development. The effect of these lyrical flights, in the creation of atmosphere, [32] however, is here more striking than in the other plays. Oberon’s description of the wounding of the little western flower [532 ff.], and of the banke whereon the wilde time blows [630] help [sic] to produce the sense of fairy night in the wood, as Hippolyta’s hunting reminiscences paint the heroic dawn in the valley; this is that use of poetry for suggestive, almost hypnotic, effect, which is to play such an important part in the mature tragedies, above all in [Mac.]. But here the poetry overflows the bounds of its application; Shakspere goes on poetising for its own sake, long after the dramatic effect, at which the poetry aimed, is achieved. The poet and the dramatist, in fact, are not yet fused into one. Related to this point is Forker’s argument (1990, p. 116): The lyrical style often serves to separate a character or the subjectivity of his interior world from the threat or mundanity of an enforced context. The lyrical speech can offer a figure on the stage escape into a poetic universe of his own fashioning. . . . The so-called arias of Shakespeare’s early plays often have the effect of freeing their speakers from social, familial, and political constraints, allowing them, through temporary disengagement, to proclaim the untrammeled centrality of the self. . . . Such speeches typically require a stasis in the progress of the story: the speaker removes himself or is removed from the usual circuits of discourse so as to explore or create a new or fancied space proper solely to his inner need, to impose coherence and expressive form upon it, and to endow the entire experience with the satisfactions of fixity and closure forbidden him by the intractable and ceaseless flux of quotidian reality. Granville-Barker (ed. 1914, pp. vii–viii), though, argues that the poetic passages are dramatic. Shakespeare’s chief delight in this play [was] the screeds of word-music to be spoken by Oberon, Titania, and Puck[.] At every possible and impossible moment he is at it. For Puck’s description of himself there may be need, but what excuse can we make for Titania’s thirty-five lines about the dreadful weather except their sheer beauty? But what better excuse? Oberon is constantly guilty. So recklessly happy in writing such verse does Shakespeare grow that even the quarrel of the four lovers is stayed by a [viii] charming speech of Helena’s thirty-seven lines long. It is true that at the end of it Hermia, her author allowing her to recollect the quarrel, says she is amazed at these passionate words, but that the passage beginning We, Hermia, like two artificial gods [1230] is meant by Shakespeare to be spoken otherwise than with a meticulous regard to its every beauty is hard to believe. And its every beauty will scarcely shine through throbbing passion. No, his heart was in these passages of verse, and so the heart of the play is in them. And the secret of the play—the refutation of all doctrinaire criticism of it—lies in the fact that though they may offend against every letter of dramatic law they fulfil the inmost spirit of it, inasmuch as they are dramatic in themselves. They are instinct with that excitement, that spontaneity, that sense of emotional overflow which is drama. They are as carefully constructed for effective speaking as a messenger’s speech in a Greek drama. One passage in particular, Puck’s My mistress with a monster is in love [1028], is both in idea and form, in its tension, climax, and rounding off, a true messenger’s speech. Shakespeare, I say, was from the first a playwright in spite of himself. Even when he seems to sacrifice drama to poem he—instinctively or not—manages to make the poem itself more dramatic than the drama he sacrifices.

Critics tend to single out particular stylistic features for comment. Schlegel (1809–11; tr. 1815, 2:151) notes Sh.’s use of rhyme which in MND constitutes a considerable part; because he wishes to give [the play] a glowing colour, or because the characters utter in a musical tone their love complaints or love suits. Kenny (1864, p. 179), though, considers the versification, more particularly in the rhyme, . . . often more or less languid and negligent. Finkenbrink (1884, pp. 17–18) points out that by means of the charm of rhyme, the poet designs to take our minds away into the wondrous world of dreams and fairies[.] By the waves of rhyme we are lulled like the enchanted lovers . . . . [18] Therefore, almost all passages of lyrical or pathetic character are in rhymed verses. Verity (1886, p. 87) concludes that artistic fitness justifies its use, whether or no Shakspere designedly employed it to obtain certain definite effects, which indeed was probably the case. Corson (1889, pp. 69–70) considers rhyme essential [70] to the poetic pitch of the play, Corbould & Rossi (1897, p. 35) to the poetic fancies, but Lang (1895, p. 329–30) complains that the lovers talk in rhyme too much. Ainger (1905, p. 22): The exuberance is more subdued than in the earlier comedy; and . . . it is less felt by the reader, because of the more abundant incident, and the quicker movement, of the dramas. . . . As human feeling and passion assert themselves in these plays, and the poet himself is stirred by the pity of it [Oth. 4.1.196 (2581)], even in the dilemmas and cross-purposes of poor Hermia and Helena, rhyme drops off from his style, and the freer blank verse asserts its necessity. Ness (1941, pp. 50, 81), although he considers (p. 81) rhyme in this play . . . fundamental to the general structure, and . . . to the pervading atmosphere of lyricism and romance, also notices that it is often used for (p. 50) an angry, passionate exchange of words between two characters, and that it often indicate[s] a certain artificiality or insincerity. Walter (ed. 1964, p. 23) finds the changes from blank verse to rhyme and vice versa . . . skilful and significant. It is worth considering whether the lovers’ rhymes are tinged with derision or not. Others looking at the uses of rhyme are Holzknecht (1950, p. 261); Craig (ed. 1951, p. 36); the Martindales (1990, p. 71) who find that the couplets seem to a modern ear distinctly stiff, but certainly they aim to achieve an Ovidian effect in their use of obtrusive rhetorical figures and schemes, their antitheses and wordplays.

According to Phelps (ed. [1851], 1:273) our imaginations are aided by the most lavish poetical embellishments, not only of lofty conception but of the most elaborate working in the musical construction of the verse, enriched with all the tropes and figures that the most recondite rhetorician could furnish (similarly Maginn [1837, p. 376]), and numerous critics elaborate on specific rhetorical devices they consider an important component of the style in this play. Wright (1985, p. 379) What modern critics have called wordplay includes a variety of traditional figures and schemes. In its simplest form, wordplay involves the repetition of words and phrases: anaphora, epistrophe, symploce, epanalepsis, antimetabole, anadiplosis, polyptoton, ploce, diacope, and epizeuxis. . . . Shakespeare sometimes lets these repetitive patterns expose the inanity of characters like Egeus, who uses homiologia . . . , diacope, epizeuxis, and epanalepsis . . . [1679]; perissologia or macrologia . . . [1684]; and a variety of figures in between (epizeuxis, diacope, ploce, antimetabole, and anadiplosis) [quotes 1679–84]. Cohen (1989, p. 59) adds isocolon, parison, paronomasia, and antanaclasis, all found in greater quantity than anywhere else in the Shakespearean canon. Evans (1952, p. 48): The mood in the Dream is lyrical and the scenes of the lovers invite a happy play of verbal conceits. In these scenes Shakespeare is not breaking new ground in language but is often doing something again, but with an added grace, because he has done it successfully before. Homan (1981, p. 79) declares the play a verbal feast though not as self-conscious about language as LLL. Language here is not simply a way of speaking sanely and lovingly about reality and about love but also a way of penetrating a larger reality. Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 806) sums up; the play’s language reflects an unusually high incidence of the tropes familiar to those who had received rhetorical and literary training. . . . The rhetorical devices, along with the subtle modulations from blank verse to rhymed couplets to boisterous comic prose, are so deftly handled that their pleasures are accessible to the learned and unlearned alike. This breadth also reflects the very wide range of cultural materials that the playwright has cunningly woven together, from the classical heritage of the educated elite to popular ballads and folk customs, from refined and sophisticated entertainments to the coarser delights of farce. Not everyone is pleased. The Clarkes (1879, passim) comment on a variety of stylistic features—antithesis, cant, corruptions of words, ellipses, idiom, irony, jests, legal phrases, to mention a few. Verity (ed. 1893, p. xi) finds the puns, classical allusions, strained turns of fancy and expression noticeable in Shakespeare’s early works, and Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 11) complains that MND abounds with rhyme, with strained conceits, with antithesis and other rhetorical devices. Luce (1907, pp. 32–3, 41–4, 143, 157) notes particularly Sh.’s use of antithesis, his diction, his blank verse, and concludes that some of the more mature passages were interpolations since much of the style is (p. 157) early. Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 8) comments on the strained conceits, antitheses, puns, stichomythia, and padding, Craig (ed. 1951, p. 22) on Lyly’s influence, especially on the fad of euphuistic speech, Neubauer (1970, pp. 48–51) on sound patterns—alliteration, assonance, etc.

The play abounds in descriptive passages admired sometimes for their own sake and often for their contribution to the atmosphere of the play. Maginn (1837, p. 376): 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 eloquence in the ornamental style, is employed in the description of the fairy scenes and those who dwell therein. Finkenbrink (1884, p. 19) comments on Titania’s description of the seasons, Oberon’s of the flower, and Helena’s passage on the double cherries as an inclination to colouring and descriptive passages. Shaw (1895; 1907, p. 170): Sh., having to bring Nature in its most enchanting aspect before an audience without the help of theatrical scenery, used all his power of description and expression in verse with such effect that the utmost any scene-painter can hope for is to produce a picture that shall not bitterly disappoint the spectator who has read the play beforehand. Raleigh (1907, pp. 32–4), citing the weather speech and the description of the rustics’ flight, says these passages (p. 34) are utterly unlike the laborious notes of a descriptive writer; they have put on immortality in metaphor, and come readily to hand because they are a part of his own life, and have been taught to speak the language of his own thought. Granville-Barker (1931, pp. 72–4) explains how Sh. creates scene and atmosphere, not . . . by immediate and direct [73] description—of what it would then at once become obvious was not there—of the trees and the moonlit sward. . . . His chief resource is to set the speakers painting in poetry, not an immediate background, but kindred images, and to play upon our imagination with these, yet so digressively and transiently that our attention is never distracted from the immediate action itself. This is the dramatic purpose in Titania’s description of the dreadful weather since she and Oberon quarrelled. He refers to (p. 74) a dozen other passages of such pure witchery. Doran (ed. 1959, p. 16) also admires his scene-painting and calls MND the end of his apprenticeship. (1974, p. 64): The flowers of Titania’s bower . . . all have some kind of history, varying in richness of literary associations or emblematic meanings. [Doran enumerates these.] To make this point is not to deny the experience of our senses. . . . What Oberon’s lines do, therefore, is to suggest the freshness of spring, a delicate sensuousness, the time of love and its vows of constancy, and beauty fit for a queen. . . .

The conceptual element in the descriptive passage is as important as the representational one. Yet it does not chill the life which touches of actuality, sensuous suggestion, and rhythm create. Also admiring are Watkins & Lemmon (1974, pp. 180–1); Hasler (1974, p. 19), who explains that the word-scenery aspect is hardly recognized as such: it is thoroughly integrated; Neilson (ed. 1910, p. 138); Crump (1925, p. 26); Welsford (1927, p. 325); Farjeon (1949, pp. 39, 49).

Other techniques include listing, which Barton (in Evans, ed. 1974, pp. 218–19) calls a manifestation of Sh.’s synthesizing impulse; (p. 219) the lists . . . create the sense of a country world that is inexhaustibly rich and various, occasionally grotesque, but basically fresh, creative, and young, mythologizing. Purdon (1974, pp. 194–5) and Marowitz (1988, p. 10) mention aetiology—the Martindales (1990, p. 73) cite Oberon’s description of the flower and its power. Hawkes (1992, p. 16) comments on the apparently gratuitous repetition . . . , that promiscuous proliferation of additional ways of putting things. . . . Modern critics and editors . . . persistently reach for their secateurs.

And yet the truth is that a repetitive mode invests the whole play, almost to an extent that seems to insist on repetition as one of its central concerns. Even at the end, it seems barely able to reach a conclusion, but splutters out with a succession of more or less conventional endings, one after the other. Harbage (1963; 1967, pp. 9, 24) points out that Sh. is skillful at regulating the speaking pace by the sounds of words. For example, in the line how slow this old moon wanes! [6–7] the long vowels in five of the six words and the holding quality of the consonants make it hard to speak otherwise than slowly. Oberon’s speech on Titania’s bower [630–7] (p. 24) is not figurative although full of images. Its beauty derives from its sounds, and from the assembly of objects placed before the mind’s eye.

Turner (1974, p. 222), writing about verbal humor, contends that in Dream Shakespeare extends verbal humor to include lengthy speeches of lyrical sentiment. Lysander, for instance, awakens to proclaim his adulation to a stunned Helena in a style unusually effusive [758–62, 766–77]. Although the situation demands his declaration of love, he need not embellish it so thoroughly with the beauties of overtalk. To take a comparable response for contrast, in the next scene, Titania awakes to state her new adoration for Bottom in a series of three brief speeches, beautifully shaped and to the point, as befits a fairy queen. Helena’s bewildered response to the sudden love of both Demetrius and Lysander expresses itself in another copiously phrased rhetorical appeal. She shapes her thoughts by introductory address, accusation, argument from facts and values, and summarizes them, all with a formality that would please an orator [1222–46; again, 1249–62 and 1264–71]. . . . Shakespeare must have been assured that the audience’s delight at the inappropriate formality of rhetoric would be warrant enough for Helena’s lengthy speech at a moment of sudden reversals in the love of Demetrius, Lysander, and the shock of Hermia. Finkenbrink (1884, p. 17) compares the diction to that of earlier plays and perceive[s] great progress. The playing with words . . . has, at least in the serious parts of the dialogue, almost ceased. . . . He also avoids Latin, Italian, and French words. . . . Then, the diction is not so much filled up with metaphors, and flowery expressions; the words begin to clothe the thoughts, not as a gorgeous robe, but as a close and well-fitting garment. On the other hand, the style is simple and perspicuous, so as not to weary the patience of the reader, very different from the profound, and somewhat obscure works of riper age.

Goldstein (1973, pp. 180–1) looks at the language of torture, while Halio (1976, p. 35) argues that the language . . . repeatedly shows an undercutting in the poetry of tenor by vehicle, or a subverting of the tone by the actual sense of the language Shakespeare uses. For example . . . the conflict between Oberon and Titania has apparently caused everything in nature to turn topsy-turvy [456–92] but old Hiems’ thin and icy crown is bedecked with an odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds, as if in mockery set upon him. The linguistic complexity . . . may be epitomized in the famous passage where Oberon describes his plan to enchant Titania: I know a bank where the wild thyme blows [630 ff.], etc. The melifluousness of the verse, the lulling rhymes of the end-stopped lines, and especially the loveliness of the imagery combine to take off nearly all of the edge of Oberon’s malice, which is quite real. Trousdale (1980, pp. 248–9) argues that Sh. takes such signifiers as May Day and the fairies and empties them of primary meaning. May Day, for example, means here less than sexual license, and the fairies are not the ones Sh.’s audience was familiar with. May Day comes to be a (p. 249) signifier of the kind of confusion Hermia and Helena experience, a confusion arising from mistaken love. Sh. equates [the fairies and Puck] with magic—they are not as bad as you think, or perhaps, they are not what you think—and the frailty of art. The sign is again emptied of its original meaning, and both signifier and meaning are used as sign. But a trace of the original sign remains. Shakespeare is . . . creating a new language which grows out of a critical exploration of the old. Further studies include Welsford (1927, pp. 325–6); Gordon (1928, p. 174) concentrating on adjectives ending in -y which lend the play appropriate rusticity; Clayton (1979, pp. 5–30) dwelling on the juxtaposition of beauty and obscenity, tragedy and comedy; Elam (1984, passim) discussing such specialized topics as allocution, deictics, indexical names, (p. 139) greenworld lingua pristina. P. Parker (1987, pp. 113–25) focuses on patterns of language and of discourse—ordered and disordered—and their reflection in the pattern of the play.

The imagery of the play attracts more attention than any other stylistic feature. Drake (1817, 2:299): The imagery of the most wild and fantastic dream is actually embodied before our eyes. Daniel (ed. 1828, p. 9) observes that 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. According to A Parallel (1835, pp. 51–2) the great [52] charm of Shakspeare’s poetic genius consists in that exquisite vein of imagery that runs through all his dialogue, and gives life and energy and elegance to natural objects. Strindberg (1909; tr. 1966, p. 222): The language in the play is like filigree work, the imagery as rich as in the finest Italian lyrics, and in our large theaters all this portraiture in miniature is lost. It goes by half-understood, and this makes the audience uneasy and uncomfortable. Halliday (1954, pp. 93–6) sees a development in Sh.’s use of imagery, not so much in the lovers as in the fairies, in some of whose speeches Sh., (p. 94) the lyric poet, is in his element. . . . . The old ceremonious modes of expression are giving place to a language that approximates more closely to that really spoken by men, as well as by fairies, and the formality of the sophisticated line is modified by a more natural rhythm. There follows the unforgettable picture of the English countryside heavy with the rains of a wet summer: the straining ox, the sweating ploughman, the unripened corn, the empty fold in the flooded field, the fat crows, lean sheep, and the mud in the nine men’s morris, the realism of which forms a delightful contrast to the more artificial style of the remainder. (P. 95): The lovers, on whom Shakespeare seems deliberately to have fastened his half-outmoded manner, speak the old emblematic language. . . . These stock literary images are ceasing to attract [96] attention, and the bird image in which the unromantic Puck so vigorously describes the flight of the rude mechanicals is something very different [1041–5]. Clearly, this picture is spontaneous. . . .

Puck’s image, however, is still narrative in form, too lengthily developed to be dramatic.

Spurgeon (1931, pp. 151–5) traces moon and nature imagery to show the way imagery . . . supplies atmosphere and background, as well as emphasizes or re-echoes certain qualities in the play, Falk (1980, p. 271) looks at the relationship of the moon/Diana/hunt association to the plot and theme, and Hackett (1997, pp. 14, 19, 23) explores the moon’s ambiguity, as does Nostbakken (2003, pp. 9–10). Knight (1932, pp. 144–5) concentrates on tempest imagery, while Kermode (1961, pp. 214–15, 217–18, 220), Berry (1972, pp. 95–6), Ansari (1978, pp. 55–6), and Stansbury (1982, p. 59) focus on eye and sight/blindness imagery. On tempest and inverted religious imagery see Olson (1957, p. 104); on music and discord see Mebane (1982, p. 262). Barber (1959, pp. 135–7) describes how (p. 136) metamorphic metaphors operate on our imaginations, and Laroque (1984, p. 25) looks at those metaphors and their relation to the play’s central theme. Lever (ed. 1961, p. xviii) comments on Sh.’s use, out of habit, of contemporary love imagery, which we are not intended to take . . . seriously, and of country imagery. The recurrent moon imagery gives a beauty and dream-like quality to all it shines on. Lindblad (1981, p. 134) thinks the dream image an excellent metaphor for a play. Sasaki (1986, pp. 81–4) discusses the play’s serpent imagery, Chiang (1996, pp. 155–75) its animal imagery which is (p. 175) dramatically employed to establish part of the play’s historical background, to delineate characters’ emotional unrest and to ironize about the complexities of stage presentation. He examines especially the animal imagery with which the lovers (p. 163) express their humiliation, hatred and fear. (P. 168): In their quarrels the Athenian lovers employ dog, cat, cur, and canker-blossom to show their contempt and disgust of one another. Nostbakken (2003, p. 9) observes that nature images bring to life the world on stage and the world beyond it, the beauty of the woods and the storms surrounding it, nature and the forces of the supernatural.

Other images reflect the discord, conflict, and chaos among the young lovers and the way their perceptions about love are exaggerated or misrepresented by the fairies’ powers. Eyes, animals, monsters all contribute to the confusion and chaos the lovers experience. Halio (2005, pp. 408–9) discusses particularly eye, moon, and nature imagery.

Kott (1964; 1966, pp. 223–4) argues that the metaphors of love, eroticism, and sex undergo some essential changes in the play. They are completely traditional to start with. . . . The clash of two kinds of imagery occurs in Helena’s soliloquy which forms a coda to Act I, scene 1. He quotes 246–9, the last couplet of which he finds disturbing in its ambiguity, suggesting that (p. 224) mind in this context seems to mean imagination and desire. . . . In Helena’s soliloquy the blindfolded Cupid has been transformed into a blind driving force, a Nike of instinct. In addition, from this point forward Sh. introduces more and more obtrusively animal erotic symbolism. Garber (1974, p. 77): Metaphor . . . is a condition structurally analogous to the dream state. Moreover, in [MND], the spectator’s eye is continually directed to the act of metaphor-making, the visible exchange of literal for figurative and fictive. The whole play is almost a tour de force in this regard. . . . The availability of art as an ultimate form of transformation, a palpable marriage of dream and reason, emerges as a logical extension of the recognized dream state.

Campbell (1948, p. 94) stresses the manner in which, by the artful use of iterative imagery, [Sh.] keeps his audience immersed in the mood of the play. Obvious examples of this phase of his artistry are the recurrent images . . . . of moonlight and woodland in MND. Similarly Ellis-Fermor (1980, pp. 85–7), who adds that (p. 86) a play is fuller and richer in significance because we are continually in the presence of certain elements in nature, themselves the reflection of the mood in which the play is written. This kind of imagery is distinct from, though it may harmonize with, setting or its Elizabethan equivalent, incidental description. For example, the iterative imagery of moonlight . . . has, because it is imagery, the power to release associations of far fuller content than could be achieved by a long expository analysis. The picture of virginity, Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon [82], illuminates with its implications and charged associations a play whose [87] central action is a tangle of cross-purposes and apparent frustrations in love. Habicht (1980, pp. 124, 127) too thinks this kind of imagery as it is repeated in changing contexts forms verbal orchestration and helps to reveal complexities of the imaginative and intellectual content to an audience from whom a word-conscious response is to some degree expected. Habicht is also interested in the echoic quality of such words. Clearly we are supposed to h e a r, to experience the words on whose echo attention is focused. The word wood is (p. 127) probably intended to refer to symbolical tree properties. . . . The poetry of words and actions explores it imaginatively, associating it with darkness and moonlight, idyll and wilderness, love and madness, and with plants, animals, and fairies. The rest of his article explores many other examples and points out their effects.

Parker (1983, pp. 38 ff.) explores another type of image, anagogic or copular, which in sexual symbolism takes the form of the one flesh of marriage. She looks at (p. 39) the connection between anagogic or copular metaphor and the breaking down of partition walls and notes in the interlude (p. 45) a play which contains a character named Wall, puns on the crossing of wall and partition in discourse, [46] and ends with the removal of the wall in the play of Pyramus and Thisbe. . . . The idea of partition is also linked to that of delay or dilation, to the deferral of consummation or ending. The opening scene establishes a link between the period of betrothal and its delaying of the nuptial hour [1] of Theseus and Hippolyta . . . , the period of reprieve (Take time to pause, [92]) in which Hermia must come to a decision, and the projected period of patience and trial for the persecuted lovers [162], with its echo of Matthew 10.

Stavig (1995, pp. 2–3): Sh. uses metaphorical structures patterned on the contrarieties and unities of cyclical nature to modify the more hierarchical understanding of people and society. In his use of metaphors of nature to express the complexities of existence, he [3] reflects the period’s changing emphasis from, in W. R. Elton’s summation, absolute natural law bestowed by God to relativistic natural law, recognized by man [1971, p. 193]. . . . 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. . . . Shakespeare uses his art to clarify the oppositions of contrarieties but not to resolve their ambiguities.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the imagery, and some qualify their praise. Taine (1863; tr. 1890, p. 135) contends that the style, loaded with contorted images, fills the mind with strange and splendid visions. Latham (1887–92, pp. 402–3) complains that Sh.’s metaphors are less carefully fitted to the feelings of the speakers than in [Err.]. But Sh. (p. 403) employs metaphor to supply the imagination of the audience with the scenery the Elizabethan stage did not possess. Walter (ed. 1964, pp. 25–6) thinks the imagery lacking the energy and fiery fusing of the images in the great tragedies. Simple similes are frequent. . . . [26][An] infusion of personification, particularly in the speeches of the fairies, adds depth and suggestiveness to descriptive passages.

Olson (1957, pp.101–13) studies the manner in which symbol and emblem reinforce . . . development [from order through disruption back to order] throughout the play. Among the symbols he examines are Theseus—order, Hippolyta—the disruption of traditional marriage, Bottom in the scene with Titania—sensuality. Rabkin (1967, pp. 203–4) traces the shifting focus of the moon symbolism: a marker of time, the accomplice of irresponsible lovers, fruitlessness, the governess of floods [478], (p. 204) fecundity and sterility, nature’s riches and her blight. . . . Shakespeare plays on the conventional force of the numerous standard associations with the moon, and we accept each one at its face value. Similarly Guillory (1983, pp. 78–9). Smidt (1986, pp. 134–5) notes that its symbolical role is highly ambiguous. . . . Virginity and sexual abandonment are equally associated with the moon. Moreover, (p. 135) no clear distinction is made as far as the effects of moonshine are concerned between appetites of the body and of the soul. Snodgrass (1975, p. 239) offers a Freudian interpretation of the moon symbol. Brissenden (1972, pp. 85–91, 96) writes about the symbolic significance of the dance and concludes that here, as (p. 96) almost always, Shakespeare’s dances are a physical representation of the great theme of order and harmony in man as part of the universe. Waith (1978, p. 201) emphasizes the theatrical metaphor that permeates the play and McDonald (2001, p. 81) the stage as symbol. Bellringer (1983, pp. 206, 209) notes the shift in the flower’s import; the magic juice . . . is . . . a dramatic symbol of change; the juice . . . suggests at first the power of indiscriminate sexual passion . . . , but Oberon changes its function . . . to the didactic and the normative. Other flower imagery also suggests change. (P. 209): Theseus’s image of the rose distilled into fragrant essence as a mark of human fulfilment in love begins a series of floral conceits connected with true love throughout the play. The botanical imagery suggests organic change, aided by human nurturing ingenuity, from seed right through to perfume. It is present, with varying degrees of irony, in Hermia’s fast-fading roses, Titania’s frost-bitten rose, the soporific musk-roses of the bank where the wild thyme blows [630], Helena’s double cherry [1236], bottom’s [sic] tearful flowerets [1568–71], the deflower’d Thisbe [2090] and Pyramus’s wonderful lily lip, cherry nose and yellow cowslip cheeks [2120–1]. Theseus’s idea of the distilled perfume of the rose preserved for use and happiness gives us an indication how to respond to the subsequent romantic imagery. His rose has to be subjected to a process of change, removed, extracted, stored. . . . His image is dramatic not only because he uses it to put pressure on Hermia, but because it serves as an analogy for the whole plot.

The character groups have noticeably distinctive styles which, as Moyse (1879, pp. 15–16) notes, reveal the nature of his characters even by the form in which they speak. Thus, for example, Titania’s dialogue (p. 16) shows her womanly nature. Montgomery (1888, pp. 94–5): Every element of this life has its own speech—the pretentious vaporings of Bottom being set down with as much care as the eloquent wranglings of Hermia and Helena, [95] the murmurous music of the fairies rippling into the wise and glowing utterance of Theseus. The doggerel of Pyramus and Thisbe is, by itself, nothing more than doggerel; but its significance, as a luminous exposition of life, is understood when it is placed in comparison with the thought of Theseus. McDonald (ed. 2000, pp. xxxii–xxxiii) likes the linguistic multiplicity of the text and the way Sh. (p. xxxiii) precisely calibrates the kinds of verse he creates for different characters and dramatic moments. Similarly Halio (2003, pp. 34–6). Brooke (1905, pp. 31–3) differentiates the twofold character of the poetry in the play. It might be divided . . . into poetry of the daylight and of the moonlight. There is a delicate spirit, a shimmer of fancy and elfin thought, without any human feeling, in the music and the charm of . . . the speech of the fairies which seems made of the silver of moonlight and to bring with it the shadows of moonlight. . . . [32] A closer humanity belongs to the delightful verse of Puck and Oberon and Titania when, with their train, they fill the house of Theseus and bless the marriage-bed. A domestic charm lives from line to line, and goes with the fairy tribe from one shadowy room to another. . . .

Quite otherwise is the poetry of the daylight. . . . It has weight of thought and feeling, and is full of the matter of human life. The first dialogue of Theseus and Hippolyta is marked by an imaginative passion which elsewhere does not appear in their words. . . . The rest of the beautiful things they say beautifully is full of that fresh good sense and that morning brightness which . . . have so much to do with noble poetry. . . .

[33] The lovers too have their own poetry. A different note fills it, . . . full of fast-changing fancies, none of them deep or penetrating. . . . Passion’s touch on the four lovers is slight.

For further comment on the fairies’ poetry see Drake (1817, 2:340–1); Guest (1838, pp. 185–6); Dowden (1877, p. 72); Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 24); Halliday (1954, p. 93); Guthrie (ed. 1954, p. 30), who reminds us that in the Fairy poetry the beautiful images are offset by others. Fairyland just is not all sweetness and charm; and Phillips (ed. 1969, p. 25), who finds it worth noting that the fairies have as down-to-earth a vocabulary as anyone: they do not speak an especially archaic or refined language, or even one with special and unusual speech-rhythms, but talk good decorative English, always appropriate to the matter in hand.

Van Doren (1939, p. 77) finds the vocabulary of Puck the most vernacular in the play; he talks of beans and crabs, dew-laps and ale, three-foot stools and sneezes [414–28], and Kersten (1962, p. 191) thinks Puck’s language is powerful if almost crude, graphic and metaphorical (lack-love, kill-courtesy) [730]. In his speech on chasing the mechanicals, the entire earthly world comes alive before our eyes in an instant through the polysyndetic or asyndetic sequencing of various elements, by means of repetition, parallelism, and alliteration [921–6] (Ger.).

Some single out the fairy songs for comment. Upton (1746, pp. 342–3) claims that the fairy songs should have an anapestic dimeter arrangment (with variations). Grey (1754, 1:63): Verses with the middle rhime which were call’d leonine, or monkish verses, seem to have been the ancient language of charms and incantations. Browne (ed. 1922, p. 121): the play’s charm lies in the songs that vary in length of line from two feet to seven, and in the arrangement of rime, having couplets, triplets, quatrains, and, in one case, a continuous rime extending over eight lines. Crump (1925, p. 26): They are exquisite and have perfect lyrical beauty. Welsford (1927, p. 330): In Shakespeare’s songs the words melt into one another, and sometimes meaning is almost lost in melody and emotion.

The mechanicals’ language elicits a variety of comments. Maine (1848, p. 427) first remarked on the homely idiomatic prose of their dialogue. Chesterton (1904, p. 625): we hear English mechanics, talking to each other with the queer formality of the poor. Bristol (1985, p. 174): The language of Bottom and his friends is strongly contrasted to the ennobled language of the court, not only in its sound and diction, but also in its orientation to the space and time of the audience. Evans (1952, p. 48): As a contrast to the sonneteering moods of the lovers there come the happy interludes of rustic prose of Bottom and his friends. The aim here is usually direct and dramatic with a natural realism, and no involved trick in the language as in [LLL], though Quince . . . cannot avoid the rule of triplicity. Colman (1974, p. 27): Like their characters and their Englishness, their comparatively frequent scurrilities help to set the working-men apart from the play’s aristocratic and magical groups of characters. They are very rarely allowed to show any awareness of their own comic lines. Franke (1979, pp. 290, 294) sees a consistent pattern of double entendres in their language. (P. 294): It was possible to surround the marriage rite with great religious and ceremonial solemnity and yet leave room for a burlesque on the animal instincts which it sanctifies. Theseus, who in his very first speech frankly acknowledges his desires [7], is the perfect representative of this kind of sensibility. Franke concludes that the elements of sexual comedy . . . are much closer at hand and much more innocent than has been supposed. It is of the essence of the play’s sexual humor that the mechanicals themselves should be serenely unconscious of the indecencies which they suggest. P. Parker (1987, p. 121): MND both presents and parodies the language of the proper construction of discourse in the mouths of those workmen (including a Carpenter, a Tailor and a Joiner) who struggle unsuccessfully to reproduce it and in their very failure reveal its joints and seams. She later (1996, p. 94) notes that botchings or misjoinings of words, . . . (with other kinds of misjoining), are precisely what the rude mechanicals enact repeatedly as their theatrical effort disjoins or dismantles the elements of otherwise naturalized theatrical illusion. . . . There is an intimate relation between their laying bare of the joints and seams of theatrical spectacle . . . and their repeated disfiguring or deforming of what Theseus . . . calls the ordered chain of discourse, an order explicitly linked with government [1921–2]. Forey (1998, p. 326): The hempen homespuns [889] . . . share the homeliness of Golding’s language and his inability, for the most part, to keep abreast of the sophisticated wit he encounters. Also relishing the mechanicals’ style are Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 807), Turner (1974, pp. 217–18).

Comment on the lovers’ style varies. Verplanck (ed. 1845; 1847, 2:6): The elaborate elegance, the quaint conceits, and artificial refinements of thought in the whole episode . . . of Helena and Hermia, and their lovers, do certainly partake of the taste and manner of those more juvenile comedies. Maine (1848, p. 426): 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. Procter (ed. 1843, 1:381): The language of the amorous human mortals [476], while doomed to illustrate the pathetic adage that the course of true love never did run smooth [144], is fraught with sweetness gathered from the purest flowers of Parnassus. The pains and pleasures, the exalting and debasing influences of the universal passion, are delineated with surpassing truth and beauty. Brooke (1905, pp. 15–16): It is only when the lovers are left alone that imagination enters, and the talk becomes poetry. Then love’s high fantastic possesses all they say like a spirit. He likes that fanciful game with words between Lysander and Hermia concerning the troubles of love. Some have called it unnatural. On the contrary, this tossing to and fro of fancies in play is quite natural to lovers when they are young. Then, since the love of natural beauty is akin to human love, the lovers lift into poetry all they say about Nature. . . .

In this uplifting air of love they are no more of the noonday, but of the twilight, half-way to the moonlight of the midsummer night, on the skirts of the dream. Shakespeare was a master of gradation. The dream-note of the next three acts is thus struck, yet it only sounds dimly, like a far off bell. As yet, the fancy of the lovers has none of the unreason of a dream. Their speech is [16] clear, their minds awake. But the atmosphere they breathe is one that easily changes into dream.

de la Mare (ed. 1935, pp. xxxv, 94) considers the lovers’ speeches poetical merely in tincture. They are shallow, stumbling, bald, and vacant. Demetrius, under the spell of the love-juice, speaks (p. 94) in the fashionable Petrarchian hyperbole of contemporary Elizabethan sonneteers. It would seem that Shakespeare purposely uses this style to express the capricious suddenness of Demetrius’ artificial change. Similarly Castelain (ed. 1943, p. 28). Evans (1952, p. 48): Much of the warm effusiveness of the language which Hermia and Lysander exchange belongs to the sonnet tradition, and the same is true of Helena and Demetrius. Halliday (1954, p. 93) calls the lovers’ language curiously archaic, literary and conventional, but Foakes (1957, p. 455) thinks that the stiff, rhetorical verse . . . is used to make us laugh at the absurdities of the lovers and also works at the same time to make us accept the ardour of their passion, and Schanzer (1957, pp. 246–7) responds to de la Mare by asking why we should assume that this is serious verse trying unsuccessfully [247] to be poetic. . . . That the shallow, stumbling, bald, and vacant verse . . . is purposely put into the lovers’ mouths to make them ridiculous can . . . be shown by looking at the context in which these lines occur. He proceeds to point out lines that are anything but shallow, stumbling, bald, and vacant to show that the verse . . . serve[s] the poet’s purpose, for [it] accentuate[s] the marionette-like nature of the lovers, mere puppets manipulated by Oberon or by Cupid. Doran (ed. 1959, p. 19) says it heighten[s] the comedy.

Pagnini (1976; tr. 1999, p. 37) finds their language genteel, affected, precious speech rich in antitheses and parallelisms. Wells (ed. 1967, p. 21): Sh. adopts a style that does not involve us too closely in the lovers’ emotions. But he gives it enough body, enough reference to larger concepts, both to keep our sympathetic interest and to enable us to see the lovers’ dilemma as an image of universal human experience. Leggatt (1974, pp. 94–5): The lovers are in the grip of a power that renders choice and will meaningless. . . . They slip naturally into a stylized manner of speech which has a ceremonial quality and presents the individual experience as part of a larger and more general pattern. . . . [95] The . . . air of literary artifice . . . sets the lovers’ experience apart as something special; and throughout the play the range of expression achieved within this framework of artifice is remarkable. Belsey (1993, p. 183) explains why the young lovers speak love talk from books. How else do people learn to talk about love in the first instance, except by reading love stories? No wonder the four lovers are virtually indistinguishable. Romantic love is in this sense oddly impersonal.

Several critcs comment specifically on the style of Theseus and Hippolyta which Howarth (1961, pp. 92–3) calls gentle in the courtier’s sense when courtiers are the speakers. But (p. 93) for all its success, there is a lamentable contradiction in the early gentle style; the style is exhibited; and it is not permissible for a gentleman to exhibit. Cook (1976, p. 19) calls Theseus’s politeness a courtly ideal expressed in the kind of high style which Lyly or the sonneteers would represent, a style which . . . invests the verse of the main body of the play, . . . toned-down Euphuism of which Pyramus and Thisbe is deprived. Ramsey (1977, p. 221) attributes the imposing quality of their speech to the cadence of their speech, their poised and urbane idiom. They seem to represent an achieved mastery of experience realized in great magnificence of style.

Several specialized studies address single stylistic characteristics or effects. St. Byrne (1936, pp. 40–2) studies Sh.’s use of the pronoun of address in the play and finds that (p. 42) thou is used in love; to a subject kindly; in reproach; in appeal; . . . in intimacy; in an aside; in affection; in scorn; in apostrophe. You is used with a title to a ruler; in courtesy; in upper class equality; by friends ordinarily; in businesslike intercourse; to a superior. Fripp (1938, 1:396) lists the language of religion and notes that Oberon’s concluding speech is a benediction. Joseph (1947, pp. 55, 130) looks at Sh.’s use of hypallage, topothesia, and (p. 130) the relation of subject and adjuncts. Kantak (1963, pp. 153 ff.) elaborates on the analogy between the stage and real life, although in this early play, (p. 163) little is yet revealed of the growing hold the image seems to have on the writer’s mind. Gertz (1995, pp. 153–66) looks at the relationship between performance text produced in the theater and dramatic text produced for the theater. The latter is relatively fixed while the former changes. Gertz explores how Sh. exploits the differences between them to create meaning. He examines the way language (p. 154) stir[s] the imagination, the use of literary tradition in the theater, illusion, and the role of the audience as interpreter, and concludes that (p. 166) what is achieved here is a perfect balance, which holds various expressions of space and levels of meaning in one metaphorical, transforming moment. Critically, both the expressions of space and levels of meaning are defined by the audiences involved, and implied, in the scene. Thus, the mechanicals, Puck, the Athenian nobles (whose critical judgment affect [sic] the players even at rehearsal), and Shakespeare’s own audiences define and interpret the interweaving of literal and figurative interpretation, while creating nodes at which to examine the interplay between dramatic and performance texts. How audiences read, in the final analysis, determines how the literary system and drama are re-envisioned and transformed. Kupper (1977, pp. 51–65) provides an additional study of the verse and prose of the play, and Desmet (1998, p. 300) emphasizes the significance of rhetoric; the play is, among other things, a study in the promise and perils of humanistic rhetoric. . . . The power of rhetoric to disfigure or transfigure both individual and culture is a subject of [MND].

Setting, Atmosphere, and Meaning

Most commentators devote attention to the atmosphere of the play; it is dreamlike, pastoral, enchanting, threatening, benign. According to Tieck (1796; tr. 1992, p. 63) Shakespeare’s purpose is indeed to lull his audience into perceiving things as if in a dream, and I know no other play which in its every aspect answers this purpose so well. For Hudson (1848, 2:32) the whereabout is as ideal as the characters, both being alike the creation of the poet’s mind. . . . The herb . . . serves to idealize the whole. . . . To our imagination the poet thus supernaturalizes, or rather unrealizes nature herself, and so brings her into sympathy with the unreal characters and events of the drama. The play, in short, is emphatically a dream, yet a dream filled with realities; . . . dreamlike realities. . . . The play . . . represents every thing as confused, flitting, shadowy and indistinct; without reason, or order, or law; the worlds of fancy and of fact everywhere running together, and interchanging their functions and qualities. In 1872 (1:263) he adds that the actual order of things everywhere gives place to the spontaneous issues and capricious turnings of the dreaming mind, and in ed. 1880 (p. 8) that the very scene is laid in a veritable dream-land, called Athens indeed, but only because Athens was the greatest beehive of beautiful visions then known; or rather it is laid in an ideal forest near an ideal Athens,—a forest peopled with sportive elves and sprites and fairies feeding on moonlight and music and fragrance; a place where Nature herself is preternatural; where every thing is idealized. Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:281) comments that in this fantastic play of an unlimited dream, . . . time and place are effaced (similarly White [ed. 1883, 1:421]), and Clarke (1864, p. 31) says fancy, uncontrolled by imagination, gives no clear picture, but only kaleidoscopic changes. . . . Dreamland becomes a reality, has laws of its own, a unity pervading and restraining all its wildest variety; showing that one idea is steadily in the master’s mind, polarizing all details toward itself. Clark (1931, p. 56) says the place is enchanting, visionary, and idealistic; Wigston (1884, p. 303) adds that the entire play is enveloped in the dreamy beauty, and unreality of a midsummer night, when moonlight, therefore fantasy, get the better of our sober imagination. Chesterton (1904, p. 623) praises the extraordinarily human and accurate manner in which the play catches the atmosphere of a dream. The chase and tangle and frustration of the incidents and personalities are well-known to everyone who has dreamt of perpetually falling over precipices or perpetually missing trains. It is dreamlike in possessing an utter discordance of incident combined with a curious unity of mood; everything changes but the dreamer. And yet Sh. contrives to make the whole matter mysteriously hilarious while it is palpably tragic, and mysteriously charitable, while it is in itself cynical.

Knight (1932, pp. 142, 159) contends that the atmosphere resembles those dreams, of substance unhappy to the memorizing intellect, which yet, on waking, we find ourselves strangely regretting, loath to part from that magic even when it leaves nothing to the memory but incidents which should be painful. (P. 159): We are in a dream-world, where a magic wood sparkles with dew-jewelled flowers, glimmering in the moonbeams; which dream is yet a love-dream, tossed though it be by unrest and frenzy. Seiden (1959, p. 84) describes the play as a sweetly disordered world of dreams, visions, and aberrations. There are dreams within dreams, the play as a whole constituting an enveloping atmosphere of dreams through which may be discerned various satellite dreams. It is (p. 85) a world in which the operation of the laws of nature is suspended. As Atherton (1962, p. 53) experiences it, after the reality of Act I, we are gradually led into a world of fantasy. After a while the dream-like qualities become so insistent that we begin to accept them as real—until we awake! It is because we have become so involved in the fantastic events and the moonlight atmosphere of the dream that we are almost startled and awakened by the morning music of the horns and hounds and hunters in Act IV, scene i. Calderwood (1965, p. 510) feels that under the influence of ubiquitous moonlight, the borders between dream, drama, and reality deliquesce so that all three circulate together in strange solution. J. P. Smith (1972, p. 10) describes the wood as a dream world where passions shift abruptly in both quality and focus, where the human may take on the subhuman and grotesque, where what happens has more of both delight and despair than our waking reason commonly admits, where the impossible is commonplace. Hare (1988, p. 104) comments that the forest has a confusing geography defying orientation; there are neither maps nor assurances that maps would help. People get lost; Puck confuses artisans and lovers. (P. 106): This is dream-like, running fast and getting nowhere, . . . the precise chronology of events is notoriously elusive, and the fairies reinforce the night’s darkness. Robinson (1890, p. 72), Goddard (1951; 1962, p. 78), and Long (1955, p. 82) offer comments similar to those above. Harrison (ed. 1948, p. 273) is at the end . . . left doubting where reality began and dreaming ended, as are Loney (1974, p. 7) and White (1985, p. 43).

Schröder (1952, 2:245) says the play has a festival atmosphere and courtly color (Ger.), and Zitner (1960, pp. 402–3) attributes the play’s quality of holiday release to the preparation for [403] an actual wedding festivity. Croce (1919; 1948, p. 43) supposes the little drama born from a smile, so much is delicate, subtle, airy: so much is light and gracious (It.). Sen Gupta (1950, p. 119) contends that the atmosphere, earthly but enchanted, . . . must be taken as the protagonist of the play. Evans (1952, p. 48) calls the mood . . . lyrical, and Fergusson (1970, p. 120) cites the title as accurately describ[ing] the heavenly mood of the play, in which nothing is to be taken too seriously.

A few commentators highlight the significance of the time of day or the pace of the action. Schanzer (Moon, 1955, pp. 238, 242) points out that unity is created by flooding the play with moonlight. . . . There is only one daylight scene in the entire play, part of the first scene of Act IV. He thinks the opening scene is not a daylight one because of the (p. 242) moon-references. Hollindale (1992, p. 22) contends that Athens and the wood . . . are times as well as places. The hours move at different speeds in the two places: slow-paced and leisurely in Athens, fast and anxiously in the wood. In Athens love is an accomplished fact for Theseus and Hippolyta, and time a ceremonious space before fulfilment. In the wood there is everything still to do, love’s impulsive negotiations are yet to be completed, and the hours of a summer’s night are urgent with compressed activity. The vantage point of the play is Athens, the place of imminent and unthreatened marriage.

Language is responsible for the pervasive atmosphere of the play in the opinion of several critics. Bradbrook (1932, p. 41) explains that for the first time he has provided his own setting, with the result that every stage setting is cheapened when put against the talk of the fairy to Puck. In 1979 she elaborates: (p. 85) the bare stage is clothed by the poetry of the fairies. Here is no question either of Italianate mansions, or of a neutral setting. The quick run and succession of scenes, in a place generally but not exactly constant, the boldness which exposes the sleeping Titania and the sleeping lovers to view throughout other scenes, and the dreamlike ease with which space is conquered—Puck’s opening speech sets the key—belong to the great open platform of the public theatre and call for no spangles, candlelights, or manufactured illusion. Raeck (1950, p. 97) considers it a wood of the imagination; it should exist only in the spectator’s imagination. Furthermore it is a natural setting which has been upset by the quarrel of Oberon and Titania. . . . It is true that the less is expressed by décor . . . , the more will the spectators’ imagination be kindled by the spoken word. Brown (ed. 1996, p. xxx) too advocates an uncluttered stage. Everything we have to see is conveyed by the language. Elam (1984, pp. 139–40) writes of the pastoral landscape which aspires not only to the vivid evocation of the Arcadian scene, but also and above all to some approximation of a pristine lingua adamica, marking off speech in the edenic golden world from the post-Babelian decadence of our own verbal commerce. . . .

Unquestionably, however, the purest and most convincing version of a greenworld lingua pristina—with the possible exception of Armado’s seasonal dialogue at the close of LLL . . . —is found in the [140] evocation of the wood by the fairy speakers in MND. Here it is uncorrupted nature herself putatively speaking, the forest presenting or representing itself, as it were, through the discourse of what in effect are its secret parts [quotes 380–5]. The illusion created by the delicately suggestive style of the fairies’ descriptions is that of an unmediated experience of that very language of nature perceived by Duke Senior in Arden. . . . It is the closest Shakespeare comes to a serious commitment to the edenic implications of the pastoral tradition.

Mowat & Werstine (ed. 1993, pp. xvi–xvii) explain in detail how the scene creation works. Ostensibly we are in Athens at the opening, but actually it is a placeless, almost timeless world of romantic love, of ritual, of mythology. This romance world is created through references to May Day observances [177], to Diana’s altar [98], to Venus’ doves [182], to winged Cupid [249], to Cupid’s strongest bow [180], and to his best arrow with the golden head [181].

In the play’s second scene, Shakespeare builds a world of supposedly Athenian workingmen (a world [xvii] created primarily through the names of the men’s occupations . . . ) but here again language displaces this world and creates a world of theater, with its scrolls [272], scrips [271], parts [286], cues [913], and bills of properties [365–6]. References to mythological figures appear here, as they do in the world of Theseus’s Athens, but now transformed through the language of the uneducated workers into comic references.

The third world is fairy land. This world is made through references to changelings [393], to fairy ringlets [461] (i.e., circle dances), to orbs [379] (i.e., the dancing ground of fairies), and to such magic flowers as love-in-idleness [545]. But more interesting are the other worlds created through the language of the fairies—first, the world of English country villagers affected by the doings of fairies, especially by that lob of spirits [386], Robin Goodfellow, a world that is never shown onstage but that is created through references to the villagery [405], the quern [406], the gossips’ bowl [418], the old aunt [422], with her withered dewlap [421], the quaint mazes in the wanton green [474], the murrain flock [472], and nine-men’s-morris [473]; second, the world of Titania’s past, with its mortal vot’ress [499] who sat with her in the spicèd Indian air [500] on Neptune’s yellow sands [502], watching embarkèd traders on the flood [503]; and, third, the world of Oberon’s past, with its mermaid on a dolphin’s back [526], its bolt of Cupid [542], its vestal thronèd by the West [535]. This pattern of displacement, this creation of worlds that thinly veil quite different worlds, may well help to explain this play’s magic, otherworldly quality.

Sh.’s choice of Athens sparks debate. According to Kean (ed. 1856, p. v) the general character of the play is . . . far from historical. Taine (1863; tr. 1890, 2:135) says the setting is the far-off mist of fabulous antiquity, Green (1933, p. 21) a mythical Athens, Thomson (1952, p. 77) not the Athens of history but of pre-history or rather mythology, Sypher (1976, p. 194) precisely the world of those antique fables Theseus scorns as being born of the poet’s seething brain. Harder (1986, pp. 52–3) contends that a scene that is nebulously fixed such as Athens and a wood near it is not specifically localized and (p. 53) allows the dramatist to play out domestic situations that have universal meaning without being contaminated by preconceptions of known space. Sorelius (1993, p. 184) would agree; by going beyond the modern Italy or France of the early other comedies into a world of vaguer locality Shakespeare achieves a greater universality. What is clear, however, is that [MND] uses the idea of a socially stratified world in which the individual is subordinated to the public good. In this sense it is less radical and less modern than the other early comedies. It can therefore be said to be more socially responsible than these. Leggatt (2004, p. 195) explains that Shakespeare’s imagination, like those of his contemporaries, was fuller of information and ideas about Rome than about Athens. It was therefore easier for Athens to be to him a generic city, reflecting not so much a particular history or culture as a general idea of city-ness. Müller (1817; tr. 1992, p. 84) defends Sh. against Johnson (ed. 1765, 1:xx–xxi), who mentions violations of chronology; Sh. transposes the scene to Athens, has Theseus enter as king to wed Hippolyta, and elves and kobolds disport themselves in the nearby woods. Dr. Johnson and Master Warburton shake their heads and reproach him for failing to observe history and chronology, for conflating past and present. But Shakespeare is unable to see why he should not. He likes it in Athens; and why should he leave Old England at home just because he wants to play in Greece, when after all he has brought all his fancies and playthings there with him? It is an offence against verisimilitude! the two grumpy old schoolmasters opine, but the poet replies that while it may perhaps offend against the verisimilitude of Theseus, it certainly does not offend against Shakespeare’s. Mathew (1922, pp. 122–3), supposing the play to have been presented before the queen, argues that (p. 123) the Fairy-tale is spoilt by the setting, which was provided to please that superior audience, the Court, and to explain to it that the writer knew the Play to be foolish. . . . The setting was made Classical to suit the Queen’s taste. He is alone in that opinion.

Halliwell (ed. 1856, 5:9), placing the setting in the classical period of Greece, explains that the scene of action might . . . have been purposely removed into a distant age in order to reconcile us to the introduction of the popular fairy mythology of England. Similarly Furnivall (ed. 1908, p. vii), who includes in the license the mechanicals. Smith (ed. 1892, p. xi) thinks the landscape (promontories, mountains) classical, and Hoppin (1906, p. 119) pictures the legendary time of Theseus, and Hippolyta, . . . whose figures and costumes are like those carved on the friezes of the temple of Theseus and the Parthenon, so that there is a touch of the Greek heroic. Postell (1907, p. 523) declares England too real, too workaday. In Athens romance breathes . . . her native air. Lowenthal (1996, p. 77) says that MND is the oldest of all the plays in its setting, reaching back to the time of Theseus and Hercules for its action, just before the Trojan War. Despite this, the play is made to feel utterly contemporary rather than antique. Blits (2003, p. 13) makes the point that Athens is universal not only in its openness to foreign customs and ways, but more fundamentally in its central concern for the love of the beautiful and the achievements of art. Though a particular city, Athens represents something that is universal or transpolitical in principle. . . . Athens is always pointing away from itself to the human as such; yet, in so doing, it is always pointing back to itself as a particular city—the first universal city.

Verplanck (ed. 1845; 1847, 2:7) contends that 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 everything 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. Strachey (1854, p. 677) and Herbert (1962, p. 33) consider it the Athens of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale. Strachey adds that this Athens has cloisters in which the nun may be doomed by her father’s will to spend her life in chanting faint hymns [82] to our lady Diana; and woods where youths and maidens do observance to the morn of May [177], and where, while they wander among beds of primroses and cowslips, they are more likely to meet with Oberon or Robin Goodfellow than with Apollo or Daphne. Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:433) explains that the cycle of mythology and tradition in which Theseus figures has, in adventure and achievement, remarkable agreement with the tone of feudal times, and that classic manners blend with mediæval more naturally at this point than at any other. Similarly Kreyssig (1862, 3:102), Lang (1895, p. 328), Green (1962, p. 92). Meagher (1997, p. 71) finds it a very unhistorical Athens, a literary creation presided over by a literary Theseus, . . . [owing] far more to Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale than to any historians. One of the most wide-open of his temporal settings, this fictitious Athens affords Shakespeare room enough to import some suspiciously English-sounding workmen, not to mention some immortal and nearly timeless fairies. Smith (1899, p. 20) considers the setting an Italian Duchy of which Theseus is the Duke, Brinkmann (1964, p. 16) a Renaissance Italian court. Cowling (1925, p. 84) considers it an Elizabethan version of prehistoric Athens . . . , and of dark woods, where fairies glide . . . amongst the boles and spreading branches, Doran (ed. 1959, p. 24) an Athens classical in the Renaissance manner, . . . easily caught up into the present, for new meanings and purposes.

Many commentators recognize, as does Wright (ed. 1877, p. xv), that there is no attempt in the whole course of the play to give [Athens] a classical colouring. . . . The play is thoroughly English from beginning to end. Similarly Verity (ed. 1893, p. xxxiv), who says only the names are classical. According to Chesterton (1904, p. 625) Sh’s description of Athens . . . is the best description of England that he or anyone else ever wrote. Theseus is . . . only an English squire, fond of hunting, kindly to his tenants, hospitable. . . . The mechanics are English mechanics. . . . Above all, the fairies are English. Moorman (1905, p. 224) comments that in reality the scenery is English—the scenery of the English midland counties where Shakespeare’s early years were spent. Similarly Hudson (ed. 1910, p. xi); Masefield (1911, pp. 65–6); Smeaton (1911; 1930, pp. 57, 184); Gordon (ed. 1910, p. xxii); Cunliffe (ed. 1927, p. 4); Welsford (1927; 1962, p. 335); Bailey (1929, p. 92), who sees here the England of the spring, not really of the summer; Richter (1930, p. 73); Charlton (1933, p. 56); Mendl (1964, p. 57); Warren (1978, p. 141), who mentions the Elizabethan court as well as the countryside. Baldwin (1959, p. 479) argues that this is not actual Athens. Patently it is one of the English palaces, with palace woods a mile without the town [362]. If this is not Windsor Forest, then what is it? At any rate, Herne’s oak [Wiv. 4.6.19 (2363)] within the forest is now the duke’s oak [370]. According to Doran (1960, p. 121) the court of Theseus, with its witty courtiers, its after-suppers and interludes, its discussions of the arts, is an Elizabethan court, not a Chaucerian one. In Lever’s opinion (ed. 1961, pp. vii, xiv) Athens . . . is not the real place, ancient or modern; it is rather a country of the mind, where all kinds of strange adventures seem possible. Although (p. xiv) the main characters have Greek names, . . . its chief interest lies in the way it presents life and love in Elizabethan England. According to Cecil (1957, p. 55) the dream-like atmosphere, established early [11] accounts for the juxtaposition of Ancient Athens and Elizabethan England, Greek hounds and Warwickshire rooks, Hippolyta, Titania, and Bottom, all mixed up together. Hall (1969, K7) calls Athens a classical device . . . to distance and romanticize what is, in fact, a very Elizabethan and very English play; Barton (in Evans, ed. 1974, p. 218) calls it partly Chaucerian, Elizabethan at the end.

The wood near Athens is frequently singled out for attention. Sprague (1935, p. 58) explains its effect: so persuasive is the atmosphere of the wood that it is with something like consternation that one comes upon old stage directions like Enter a Fairie at one doore, and Robin goodfellow at another [373–4]. Granville-Barker (1934; 1955, p. 72) calls the wood near Athens . . . almost . . . the play’s chief character. Chasles (1851, p. 199) calls the landscape fresh, laughing, enchanted (Fr.), Massey (1866, p. 473) full of fantasy. Stewart (1908, p. 107) calls it a land of enchantment and etherereal beauty. Similarly Charlton (1933, p. 56). Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 18) calls it a magic wood . . . supervised by fairies, and according to MacCarthy (1914; 1954, p. 48) the action takes place amidst surroundings more vague and changeable than clouds; the scenery paints itself, as we read, upon the darkness of the mind. . . . We feel as we read; we have hardly time to see. Alden (1922, p. 203) points out that the settings and associations . . . withdraw [the play] from the normal tests of plausibility. Brown (1957, p. 84) contends that in the wood moonlight and fairy influence suspend our belief in lasting hardship; sometimes a bush may seem to be a bear [1813], but contrariwise even a bear may seem to have no more awful reality than a shadow and may vanish as easily. Moreover the dialogue of the lovers is light and agile so that we are not allowed to dwell upon frustration and suffering. Webster (1942, p 155) claims that the moon is not in a malignant phase, but her radiance sheds a disturbing magic this midsummer night, holding all the play in an opalescent enchantment, where everything seems translated. Only with Theseus’ hunting horns at dawn and the music of his hounds does the thin, silver mist dissolve, and a world emerge in which lovers are mortal men, trees are trees merely. Barber (1959, p. 133) thinks of the wood as a region of metamorphosis, where in liquid moonlight or glimmering starlight, things can change, merge and melt into each other. Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. xiii) contend that this wood, where the laws of nature are suspended and magic rules, becomes the main locale of the entire action of the play and the fairy world of the wood and its dream vistas and its moonlight are in themselves important unifying and harmonizing elements in the play. Cutts (1968, p. 54) considers the fantasy world . . . a vehicle for complete self-delusion, indeed for the utter sloughing of self with the potent force of real magic to furnish the necessary excuse for the victims.

The threatening notes in the atmosphere are frequently noticed. Knight (1932, pp. 142, 146) detects a gnomish, fearsome, Macbeth-like quality about the atmosphere, just touching nightmare. Although (p. 146) the play continually suggests a nightmare terror, it is the playground for the purest comedy. Walter (ed. 1964, pp. 7, 14): The wood is a place of fearful changes, of distorted vision, of illusion, even of dreams that threaten. This undertone of threat, fear, and death is a necessary part of the allegory of the lovers lost in the wood of error, and of the conflict between the forces of light and those of darkness. It is (p. 14) a symbol of the dark world of evils that beset the man who allows his senses to dominate him. Burke (lecture 1972; 2006, p. 300) is reminded of the dark and savage . . . woods in which Dante was lost at the beginning of his journey into Hell. Morally, it there stands for a region of Error which one first enters at adolescence. . . . Both works touch upon the kind of attitude that proverbially equates being in the wood with being at a loss. Sorelius (1993, p. 172) considers it a place of sin rather than an earthly paradise or a pastoral setting. Oberon’s beautiful description of it . . . [630 ff.] is only there to deceive us. Roberts (1983, pp. 99, 108) points to Sh.’s unconventional use of the garden as a not-so-pleasant place, as one where we see a view of humanity in which human failings and the absurdities of human nature are recognized and pointed up in such surroundings as one might expect to be conducive to better behaviour. (P. 108): Folly and cruelty are to be found in the magical, vernal setting. Belsey (1993, p. 189) too finds the wood uncomfortable. The Athenian court represents the world of reconciliation and rationality, of social institutions and communal order, while the wood outside Athens is the location of night and bewildering passions, a place of anarchy and anxiety, where behavior becomes unpredictable and individual identity is transformed. On this reading, the fairies, who are by no means the sugary creatures of Victorian fantasy, represent the quintessence of all that is turbulent and uncontrolled in human experience, and in particular the traces of instability and violence that inhabit desire. Baker (1998, p. 349) warns that Shakespeare’s green worlds [are not] entirely amoenus: consider . . . the fairies’ quarrels. . . . Green worlds offer respite from various threats . . . , but they also contain threats of their own.

The woodland scenes are sometimes thought to be indebted to pastoral conventions. Seccombe (1904, 2:73) thinks that the scene is laid in Arcadia, which opens into fairy-land. It might be called a pastoral poem: almost all the speeches and incidents might have formed part of a pastoral by Spenser or Drayton. Many others see pastoral or ideal characteristics in the setting. Auden (1948, p. 520) considers the setting Eden, the place of pure play where suffering is unknown. In Eden, Love means the Fancy engendered in the eye [MV 3.2.63 (1409), 3.2.67 (1412)]. The heart has no place there, for it is a world ruled by wish not by will. In the same vein Frye (Perspective, 1965, p. 142) contends that the forest or green world . . . is a symbol of natural society, the word natural here referring to the original human society which is the proper home of man, not the physical world he now lives in but the golden world he is trying to regain. Ansari (1978, pp. 50–1) regards Titania’s pastoral boudoir [as] . . . [51] the picture of unfallen Paradise—the state of innocence. McFarland (1972, pp. 78–9) says that the setting is an unmistakable version of pastoral. . . . [79] Even the golden sun is too harsh a light for this play’s happiness; and the moon shining down on a midsummer’s night makes the darkness not a condition of anxiety, but a symbol of soft and benign exhilaration. But Watkins & Lemmon (1974, p. 65) glean from Titania’s words and her lullaby the atmosphere of a forest which is at once charmingly pastoral and full of dangers for the spirits who sleep and dance there. Doran (1974, pp. 58–9) sees the woods as the landscape of bucolic poetry, as in Virgil’s Eclogues. . . . It is the type implied in English romantic or ideal pastoral (as distinct from satiric pastoral). . . . That pastoral convention was not absent from Shakespeare’s mind is [59] evident in Titania’s reproach to Oberon that he has stolen away from fairyland [quotes 441–3]. The formal pastoral note does not contradict the reality of the English setting, but gives it breadth and universality by allying it to an old tradition.

Emphasizing the restorative powers of pastoral, Toliver (1971, pp. 15–16) explains that Sh. contrasts court and pastoral societies. . . . [16] When Shakespeare exposes heroes and heroines to the green world they are significantly changed. . . . He identifies the magical influence of nature with the powers of the imagination and implies that the capacity to change people which the forest’s fairy citizenry (or simply its atmosphere) exercises is similar to the poet’s power to work upon the mind. . . . When they have finished working upon those who fall under their spells, the spirit of romantic pastoral reigns throughout the society, as it has not in Spenser and Sidney and will not in subsequent pastoral. Swinden (1973, p. 110) states that in MND a pastoral scene was inset as a place of healing and self-knowledge.

For Roberts (1983, pp. 110, 115) the pastoral is tinged with realism. Once removed from the sophistications and subtle intrigues of the city the four lovers can experience adventures of love, part dream, part magic, part real, but will emerge from this therapy session in the woods their amorous difficulties all resolved. This is, in fact, what does happen, but our conclusions about the nature of love and of the therapeutic effects of withdrawal from the urban world should not be drawn too readily.

Before the courtiers enter the wood we are warned in several ways that love . . . can be cruel and self-interested. The retreat to the wood, (p. 115) far from providing perfect repose and inner harmony, or a state of content and mental self sufficiency or a haven from faulty reality, has shown only what fools these mortals be [1139].

Yoch (1985, pp. 196, 202–4), calling the play a pastoral, considers Shakespeare’s experiments with landscape description as part of characterization. For example, a character’s (p. 202) mood determines the kind of landscape envisioned. Oberon and Titania each accuse the other of adultery by describing vast mythological sites [439–55] informed with both the emotion and the elegant style of the speakers: their godlike associations, their all-seeing ability to discover infidelity no matter how far away, and their heroic recollection of splendid antique events. Titania grumpily portrays the spoiled countryside and concludes [203] by affirming that the natural disorders in the landscape are images of the dissension in the marriage at the center of power [456–92]. Or Hippolyta (teasingly, rebelliously?) recalls a hunt she has never heard matched [1633–9], and Theseus retorts by boasting that his dogs will surpass the ones she witnessed [1640–7]. Maneuvering images of the landscape to suit their own theses, the rulers in the play show Shakespeare’s versatility and control. Yoch calls this (p. 204) the personalization of the landscape, which exists only by the grace of a character’s perceptions of it. Armistead (2002, pp. 52, 54, 57, 60) considers the influence of the pastoral tradition on the play. The wood provides (p. 54) escape and concealment from the established social order represented by parental and ducal authority. But also in the wood, every turning and twisting of the path is fraught with potential peril from unseen influences. There is in the play (p. 57) a spirit of contrast between court and country, mundane and festive. Armistead concludes that (p. 60) whether used as a healing and civilizing place, or as a metaphor for the dark reaches of the human psyche, the green world stands in Shakespeare’s comedies as both a testament to the literary past and a fertile ground for continuing discourse on life and love. Garber (2004, p. 806) reminds us that many of the great comedies of the Elizabethan period, such as [MND] and [AYL], were preoccupied with questions of pastoral, of city and country.

Krieger (1979, p. 52), however, argues that the pastoral formula is not followed here. Instead of exploring from within the aristocratic consciousness, the relation between subjective will and nature, in MND the pastoral retreat explores the relation between authority—not autonomy—and nature. The lovers are so tangled up in language and their own feelings that although nature acts upon them, the protagonists in [MND] remain unaware of nature. Slights (1984, p. 70) contends that the lovers’ departure for the green world creates pastoral expectations that are never fully realized. While Shakespeare includes one undisguised myth of origins in [MND], it explains more about the perpetuation of old jealousies and rivalries than it does about the beginnings of new love such as we will see characterizes the pastoral experience of the later comedies and romances. Díaz García (1983, p. 68) points out that it is not an Arcadia of shepherds or disguises. It is the enchanted country where extraordinary beings cohabit with mortals. . . . It is a world of fairies with supernatural powers (Sp.).

A number of critics point out the polarities they find in the play’s settings. Snider (1874, pp. 169–70, 172) first discusses at length what the settings represent—the world of institutions and Reason, the (p. 170) wood dark and wild, a pure product of Nature, (p. 172) a world of external determination; it has a Mythology, which is the product of Imagination, and thus resembles dream-land, where all rushes in without cause; it is poetic, as contra-distinguished from the prosaic life in society. Berkowitz (1895, p. 5): Athens here does not mean a place, but symbolizes an ethical condition and habit. The city stands for law, the forest for lawlessness. Mendilow & Shalvi (1967, p. 84) distinguish between two distinct planes of reality. One is . . . a world of reason and reality even amidst the preparations for a wedding. . . . It is the cruel world in which a young maiden who rejects her father’s choice of a husband for her may be put to death. By way of contrast, we have the enchanted world of the woods . . . on a midsummer night. . . . [Oberon’s] powerful fairy magic reigns supreme and determines the destinies of those who fall within his power. Wickham (1969, p. 181) says that at the court all is clarity; in the wood all is confusion. He points out that reason dominates the one, emotion the other. Garber (1974, p. 62) sees a practical everyday world of Athens, in which reason and law hold sway in opposition to a dream world in the wood, and she points out that reason is a limiting rather than a liberating force for Shakespeare.

The woods are considered by some to reflect the mental or emotional states of characters. Miller (1966, p. 25) assigns to the wood the natural, the primitive, the unknown, the inward and to the city the man-made, the civilized, the conscious, the outward. As Riklin (1968, pp. 282, 286–7) puts it, Athens is the opposite of the wood and of untrammelled nature, (p. 286) the world of instinct. (P. 287): The wood is a symbol of the unconscious. Wickham (1969, pp. 182–3) argues that adolescent attitudes to sex are emblematically presented in terms of a forest that is at once hospitable and frightening. . . . Yet whether the wood is regarded as friendly or hostile it is something through which all of us must pass. . . . [183] On the far side . . . is marriage and survival in the blessing of children. Within the wood itself lie the pitfalls of physical infatuation which may or may not be matched by the ties of reason. Similarly Roberts (1977, p. 113). Paolucci (1977, p. 319) points out that in the unnatural setting of the magic wood, light and day—like familiar logic and emotional certainty—have temporarily been destroyed. Night, as the means for emotional redirection and insight through confusion, is raised in their place. The sun—symbol of reason and clarity—is replaced by the notoriously inconstant moon. And yet, when all is said and done, the experience of that long night will have served to illuminate reality much more effectively than the light of reason ever could. In the middle scenes of the play, the moon takes over as the symbol of the paradox which is the heart of the argument. McKenzie (1964, p. 43) explains that the shift to the woods from the everyday life of Athens is also a shift from Court to country, from day to night or from light to dark, from the world of sense to the world of imagination, from reason to madness, . . . from waking to dreaming, from human beings to spirits. Frattaroli (1988, p. 231) contends that Athens represents law, work, reason, sunlight, and sanity, while the woods represent love, play, imagination, moonlight, and madness. The two worlds are related much as the ridiculous to the sublime, but it is often difficult to know which is which. Similarly Mangan (1991, p. 75), who describes them as the world of philosophy, logic and reason, and the wood of madness, where magic and impossibilities hold sway. According to Alwyn (1991, pp. 97, 100), Athens evokes order, civility and reason. (P. 100): If Athens represents rational order, is the wood its antithesis: the place of madness and disorder? Our experience of the wood in performance is certainly a giddy sense of the free play of confusions. We are never sure whether the wood is a place or a state of mind, a supernatural realm or a representation of night, and through this uncertainty Shakespeare creates in us the mercurial, elusive condition of dreaming.

Van Laan (1978, pp. 53, 56) uses the words rigidity and (p. 56) fluidity to describe the two worlds, the confusion of the latter being ultimately beneficial. Miranda (1981/2, p. 175): whereas Theseus and Hippolyta live in the rational daylight world of Athens. . . . Oberon and Titania’s province . . . is the romantic moonlight world of the woods, where things happen which cannot be comprehended by cool reason [1798]. Athens is characterized by coldness and objectivity, the woods by vagueness and fluidity. Wiles (1993, p. 92) draw[s] up a table of spatial and temporal opposites in the play to show that the greenwood is the antithesis of the court in all respects:

civilization	:	nature
city	:	greenwood
indoors	:	outdoors
new moon	:	full moon
linear time	:	cyclic time
[winter]	:	spring/summer

These correlate with other obvious sets of oppositions on the social plane. Hendricks (1996, p. 44) argues that the spatial layout is not so much a bipolar (Athens and Forest) as tripolar configuration, with India sitting as the symbolic and ideological hub of departure and convergence for all the business of fairyland.

Berry (1984, p. 104) is among those who insist that the polarities do not stay stable. In one sense, the very objectivity assigned to place by a metaphor such as the green world distorts the experience of the plays. Shakespeare’s use of place is too shifty and elusive for such fixity of meaning. His symbolic oppositions are deliberately unstable. Nowhere is symbolic geography more elaborately defined, for example, than in the contrast between Athens and the wood. . . . Athens is a realm of legalism, the wood of license. Athens is a realm of mortals, the wood of fairies. Athens is a court, the wood a natural landscape. Athens serves rationalism, the wood imagination. Athens is a waking, the wood a dreaming world. And the list could be extended. Yet as soon as one presses these antitheses, they begin to dissolve. Laws are tyrannically enforced in the wood as well as in Athens. Fickleness in love is demonstrated in both places. Athens, Hermia tells us, was once a paradise, but her love has turned it into hell; the wood, so often the setting of friendship for Hermia and Helena, becomes the scene of violent quarrels. At the end of the play, moreover, the symbolic oppositions are suspended in paradox: the fairies enter the world of the court to bless the marriages at deep midnight. For Homan (1969, pp. 74–5, 81) it is (p. 75) all one world; the same moon shines on the mortals and the supernatural overseers. Even the vocabulary shared by the two worlds suggests that they are not so antithetical. He concludes that (p. 81) for us the lovers exist both within and without the forest: what they are is not just what they are in the palace. (P. 74): The forest is benevolent rather than malevolent, and far from being antithetical to Athens, the forest at times seems to be more a projection of the mortals’ collective unconsciousness. Slights (1993, pp. 114–16) too thinks the critics’ dichotomies regarding setting are misleading as events in the wood are a dreamlike distortion and heightening of experience in Athens rather than an alternative or complementary reality. Social norms constrain individual action in the wood as well as in Athens, while passion and imagination disrupt fixed order in both settings. There is a (p. 115) commingling of the natural, the human, and the artificial in Athens and in the wood. (P. 116): Thus, while the earlier comedies generally posit a contrast between human civilization and untamed nature, in [MND] the line between the human and the natural is blurred. McCullough (1991, pp. 108–12) contends that the play operates on a number of levels of reality distinguished primarily by two specific physical locations: the court and the woodland, . . . the court, the harsh and violent world of human beings—in some ways the world of the Elizabethan audience—and the woodland the world of fantastical imagination. The woodland isn’t, as many directors suppose, a world of total freedom and escape from the harsh realities of the court, but is more a world where the conventions of the everyday world are lifted (rather as happens in the theatre) and replaced, not by anarchy, but by alternative conventions, manifest in the play’s imagery as magic. He describes the court world as (p. 109) violent and oppressive, where an exact retribution is meted out on those persons, both men and women, who do not conform to its accepted values. (P. 110): There is a sense that the woodland is an overtly theatrical world; theatrical in the sense that it is a place that operates by disturbing people’s perceptions of themselves and the world around them. (P. 111): The escape to the wood is often interpreted as a retreat to nature. In MND, though, the image contained in the metaphor of the wood could hardly be further from a concept of uncorrupted nature within which both humans and animals will respond to a supposed natural rhythm of life. The domain of [112] Oberon and Titania is one where they rule every aspect and condition of life in an entirely unpredictable and unreasonable manner. . . . But it is the very fantastical and overt artificiality of this world that distances it from the dangerously familiar harshness of the world of the court. . . . It may encourage new insights. Treadwell (1991, pp. 27–8), however, does consider the wood a natural place, unlike the man-made city where Theseus’s court is located. It is governed by the fairies, who are intimately connected with nature. . . . These natural spirits, moreover, are well disposed toward mortals. . . . The wood seems to be dangerous and frightening, and is certainly mysterious, but it turns out to be a benign and healing world where confusion leads to the discovery of true [28] identity and where hatred turns to love—Theseus enters its outskirts and at once becomes able to nullify the bitter law of civilised Athens. All the mortal characters go back to the court in the end—it is their world, after all—but the Athens to which they return is a different and better place than the city from which Hermia and Lysander had fled at the end of Act I. Moffatt (2004, pp. 182, 185) reminds us that although the woods are immediately valued by the lovers as a means of escape, their notion of its worth differs from what the woods truly offer. It is by traveling in the woods that the lovers are able to reconcile with one another and Athens, and marry, not illicitly, but rather, in an Athens renewed by what has happened in the woods. . . . The woods are an antithesis of sorts to Athens, the place of philosophy, law, constancy and absolutes. Moffatt points out that although (p. 185) the woods experience is termed a dream by the lovers and the mechanicals, . . . it is the reality of the events in the woods that restore and reorder [sic] life in Athens and turns potential tragedy into comedy.

Among those associating the wood with the unconscious are Berryman (1987, p. 53), Farrell (1989, p. 185), Halio (1994, p. 2). The wood offers a release from inhibitions according to Ansari (1978, p. 49), Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. xxvi), Langford (1984, p. 44), Garber (2004, p. 229). Others analyzing the wood are Doran (1974, pp. 55–9); Lob (1994, p. 152), who sees in it a contradictory nature (Ger.); Stavig (1995, pp. 203–6), who finds it at once festive, pastoral, and fairy; Pask (2003, p. 182), who argues that it is a purely theatrical, essentially urban space. For extended comment on various details of the setting and comparison with Spenser see Hammerle (Laubenmotiv, 1953, pp. 312–20). For a discussion of Titania’s bower vs. the bank where the wild thyme blows [630 ff.] see Swander (1990, pp. 83–108).

Interlude

18th-c. notices of Pyramus and Thisby are largely confined to the interlude’s commentary on contemporary literary and dramatic devices and conventions. Sometimes the target is assumed to be specific authors or types of plays. Whalley (1748, p. 38) considers it a Sneer upon his Fellow-Writers. . . . I rather imagine that many of the Lines are either taken from some Poets of those Days, or wrote in Imitation of their Style. The Productions of the Writers in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, were miserably over-run with unnatural and far-fetched Sentiments. Taylor (1792, p. 163) suspect[s], indeed, that [Sh.] 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. Shakspeare wanted to introduce sense on the stage; to this purpose he was obliged to ridicule the nonsense which was too prevalent. Concurring are Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:234), Hermann (1874, pp. 32–3), Proescholdt (1878, p. 25), Boas (1896, p. 189), Tree (1913, p. 65). Righter (1962, p. 108) finds similarities between the artisans and those medieval dramatists who designed the mystery cycles and morality plays: they have extraordinarily literal minds; they are profoundly in earnest and they cannot tear their attention away from the audience, so that the interlude becomes, in effect, an essay on the art of destroying a play because of the meddling with illusion . . . that Sir Thomas More spoke of so severely in the Life of Richard III. Similarly Walter (ed. 1964, p. 15); Davidson (1987, p. 87); Dobson (2003, p. 120), who sees them as parodying amateur productions. Mehl (1965, pp. 109–10) assumes that the Prologue accompanied a dumb show. Sh.’s (p. 110) own brilliant handling of various contrasting modes in this play is only emphasized by this inclusion of a more primitive technique which considerably widens the range of the comedy and is cleverly set off against the high-flown rhetoric of the lovers and the fairy world. Berry (1972, p. 105) adds that as well it is an affirmation of the correct principles to which a dramatist should adhere. Among others considering the interlude a burlesque of old and contemporary tragedy are Schmidt (1914, p. 117), Bush (1931, p. 144), Semper (1931, p. 86), Gabler (1966, pp. 142–9), Vickers (1993, p. 428). I. Brown (1963, pp. 91–2) assume[s] that the proceedings are a farcical version of something, though not of all, that occurred in the professional theatre. Quince is in charge as Book-holder, guider, and Stage-manager. (P. 92): The author’s name is not mentioned; nobody seems to care about him. . . . The humble position of writers in the Tudor theatre is thus indirectly indicated. Similarly Watkins & Lemmon (1974, p. 20); Grivelet (1972, p. 41), who mentions also actors as servants of the aristocracy (Fr.). Barton (in Evans, ed. 1974, p. 218) suggests that Sh. is mocking the children’s companies and the traveling players he saw as a youth. Kernan (1978, p. 186) claims Sh. is parodying both the amateur players and the professional companies who played for the court of Elizabeth, or in aristocratic houses, on special occasions.

Robinson (1964, pp. 192–204) thinks Sh. was mocking common abuses and (p. 196) pointing to the irregular social status of professional troupes, active in London and in the provinces, a generation or more before the performance of his plays. The mechanicals talk in paradoxes, indicating (p. 195) a failure to understand the true identity of things, a reflection of the confusion of identity in the main plot and of the larger incongruities of Pyramus and Thisby. (P. 198): By dropping three persons and adding two personifications, the actors have joined their play to that large class of Elizabethan interludes and plays, conveniently labeled hybrid, which contains a mixture of historical persons and abstractions or personifications. The dramaturgy is made ridiculous by the (p. 200) self-identifications, the prologues which give away the story, and the actors who (p. 202) are uncertain what a play is, and distrustful of its magic. (P. 203): With quite inexplicable tact Shakspeare has kept the target of his burlesque as precise and as involved as possible, without losing its broad and obvious aspects. . . . Pyramus and Thisbe is not [MND]—a real play, one whose magic is so certain that its [204] characters really can be confused with each other, performed by men with a mission and a place, one of whom was so far from being a mechanical that he was shortly (1596) to be granted arms. The vapidity of the burlesque in Histrio-Mastix and Sir Thomas More shows by contrast the tact and richness of Shakespeare’s.

Some critics sense reflections of contemporary theater practices. Clary (1996, p. 157): The scenes in which the mechanicals prepare and perform their version of the Pyramus and Thisbe myth illustrate the way in which an interlude might be fashioned from an available script and suited to the purposes of nuptial revelry. Counterphobic in purpose, the wedding-night interlude relates to the sacrament of marriage as the early ludus relates to the liturgical officium: It is a playfully parodic inversion festivity that permits a release of energy in action. Wells (1999, p. 26) looks at what we can learn from the rehearsal scenes considered as a copybook demonstration by Shakespeare himself of the instability of dramatic text. As the Folio text of the play shows (in its changes of word and stage directions from the Quarto text, in its substitution of one character—Egeus—for another—Philostrate—in the last act, and in its re-allocation of certain lines of dialogue), in the course of its translation from authorial manuscript to promptbook Shakespeare’s own text underwent exactly the same kinds of changes, if on a smaller scale, as the play within the play. This makes it all the more surprising that scholars were so long resistant to the notion that variant texts of Shakespeare’s plays demonstrate theatrical revision; and the fact that we cannot be sure whether Peter Quince, who makes himself responsible for the additions to the text . . . , is the original author of the play, or merely its director with a talent, like some modern directors . . . for literary pastiche, reflects our uncertainty whether changes in the texts of Shakespeare’s own plays were made by Shakespeare himself, by members of his company, or collectively.

Felperin (1974, p. 384) contends that Sh. does something . . . truly sophisticated, and that is to invalidate older modes even as he includes them, to supersede them in the very act of subsuming them. . . . The production is hilarious not simply because it is ill-produced, but because it is old-fashioned, what Shakespeare’s own play might have looked like had it been done fifteen years earlier. By making it unmistakably archaic, Shakespeare clearly differentiates Bottom’s play from his own; yet he also makes sure to retain a certain generic resemblance—it is neither a satire, nor a history play, nor a revenge play, but a tragedy of romantic love, what [MND] . . . at several points threatens to become. Pyramus and Thisby is something like [MND] . . . and at the same time very unlike it. Purdon (1974, p. 202) thinks that Sh. uses Quince’s play for a manifoldly rich effect. Firstly, it is a statement of what he hopes he has avoided. . . . Secondly, it operates dramatically as a kind of emotional release for the lovers, who having passed through the dream and the ritual, can now sit back and watch squeaking Cleopatras boy their passion [ref. to Ant. 5.2.220 (3463)], as they are shown what might have happened in their love entanglements if something had gone wrong.

Countless others comment on Sh.’s satire or burlesque of medieval and contemporary practices, and among those with a particular angle are Mathew (1922, pp. 126–7), who focuses on such problems as the need to act Moonlit scenes in the afternoon in an open-air theatre and to suggest so many things which could not be [127] depicted with their scanty resources; Lawrence (1927, p. 137), who thinks it a burlesque nocturnal; Semper (1931, p. 86), who regards the interlude as Sh.’s defense of the scenic poverty of the Elizabethan stage; Pettet (1949, p. 114), who says the target is romance; Elam (1984, pp. 40–44), who elaborates on the effects of intrusive exposition, tautology, and other excesses. Reynolds (1940; 1966, p. 39), however, thinks it has no bearing on the usages of the professional London stage, while Winter (in Daly, ed. 1888, p. 13) enlarges the scope, calling it the father of all the burlesques in our language . . . which for freshness, pungency of apposite satire, and general applicability to the foible of self-love in human nature, and to ignorance and folly in human affairs, might have been written yesterday.

Many critics join Brink (1877–9, p. 56) in seeing in the interlude a sort of burlesque by Shakspere of his own works (it is in substance the story of Romeo and Juliet). Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, p. 84) admires the playful irony with which he treats his own art, the art of acting, and the theatre of the day, with its scanty and imperfect appliances for the production of illusion. Harrison (1971, p. 213) considers Rom. and MND complete counterparts, unique companion plays. Some think that Sh. wrote a parody because he was aware of faults in Rom. or had encountered difficulties with it. Hemingway (1911, pp. 79–80): the tragedy’s somewhat excessive emotionalism was antipathetic to the young, clear-eyed poet who would have seized upon it for ridicule. It seems far more probable that Shakespeare borrowed and condensed material from [Rom.], for mere mechanical purposes here, than that he developed a great tragic plot from this simple situation. The interlude (p. 80) is unquestionably a burlesque not only of the romantic tragedy of love in general, but of [Rom.] in particular. The two catastrophes are almost identical, and it seems hardly probable that any dramatist would write his burlesque first and his serious play afterward. May it not be, also, that Wall and Moon are the result of Shakespeare’s own difficulties in presenting on the stage the great Balcony-scene? (Farnham [1971, p. 76] disagrees, thinking MND written before Rom.) Richmond (1966, p. 152): the tragedy’s apparent sentiment . . . was consciously ridiculed in the Pyramus interlude. The bearing of the satire on the tragedy is startling, suggesting that the actual effect of the tragedy in conventional productions is really at odds with the author’s view of it, and that our impression of [MND] redresses the balance by frankly revealing the author’s distaste for sentimental love, along lines stressed by Sonnets 129 and 130. Riess & Williams (1992, p. 215) see in Snout’s part a link to Rom. Although a wall isn’t needed, Snout plays Wall. In giving the part of Wall to Snout, a tinker, Shakespeare may have been taking into account the customary deprecatory attitude toward tinkers as unskilled menders. In such unskillfulness Snout as Wall may represent the continuing hostility (not easily mended) between the feuding families imported from [Rom.]. In the wandering Wall of Pyramus and Thisby, Shakespeare perpetuates the feud of [Rom.]. Wall concludes his speaking part: Thus have I, Wall, my part dischargèd so; And, being done, thus Wall away doth go [2008–9]. . . . But Wall reenters at the end of the playlet, retaining his association with the fatal feud, for Demetrius observes that Wall, along with Moonshine and Lion, will bury the dead [2132–3]. . . . The barrier between feuding parents—not in Ovid, not in [MND], not in Pyramus and Thisby—must allude to a situation that the audience would have recognized: the Pyramus and Thisby playlet deconstructs the wall of [Rom.] hostility and ends with [Rom.] reconciliation. Others seeing parody of Rom. include Gundolf (1928, 1:208), Van Doren (1939, p. 82), Price (1941, pp. 391–2), Gamal (1963–6, p. 109), Doran (1966, pp. 74–5), Lyons (1971, p. 118), Simone (1974, p. 162), Charney (1993, p. 36), Honan (1998, p. 212).

What is caricatured, according to Snider (1874, p. 173) is the prosaic conception of Poetry. Arnold (1911, p. 116): Pyramus and Thisbe are by no means caricatures of Romeo and Juliet. Rather, they epitomize theatrical rant and sentimentality in a manner irresistibly appealing to the risibles, and, in addition, their staccato meter and neat rimes tickle the auditory sense. Daiches (1960, 1:254): it is at the same time a hilariously funny parody of the cruder kinds of drama still popular in Shakespeare’s day, a vehicle for further developing Bottom’s character, and a means of establishing the relation of the different social groups to each other.

Disavowing the idea of parody, Sinclair (1878, p. 255) declares that nothing is more scientific and serious, with the divine seriousness that joys in the summer sea of love to all men, than every word of this piece of art. Gaehde (1931, p. 249), while acknowledging the possibility of burlesque, finds the interlude, though crude and comical, more realistic than everything else in the play (Ger.). Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 85, 92): Pyramus and Thisbe is funny in and of itself without a specific object of parody, and it has a complex and powerful meaning within [MND], far more important than any local parodic effect. Holland finds no evidence that amateur actors handled classical material before Pyr. in MND. (P. 92): Hence Bottom and his fellows are trespassing into an area of performance usually the exclusive preserve of university students and comparable groups of educated amateur actors or the preserve of educated authors. Their trespass is part of the comedy: nothing like a bunch of workers attempting their own adaptation of a play on Pyramus and Thisbe had ever been seen in England, let alone Theseus’ Athens.

Inconsistencies, particularly between rehearsals and finished production, have captured the attention of the critics from time to time. Halliwell (1841, p. 4) notes that Quince selects actors for Thisby’s mother, Pyramus’s father, and Thisby’s father, none of whom appear in the interlude itself. Moreover, they rehearse the beginning of the play which does not appear in the final version. 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 [1782–3]. Similarly Clapp (1885, p. 392), Schwab (1896, p. 45). Maginn (1837, p. 372 n.) supposes the discrepancy between parts announced and parts performed intentional, as another proof of bungling, and the Clarkes (1879, p. 777) and Reese (ed. 1970, p. 68) think that the play’s dialogue in rehearsal and in final production was deliberately varied to avoid boring the audience. Kittredge (ed. 1939, p. 103 n.) assures us that the repetition of a dozen lines would not bore the audience. We are rather to imagine that the piece had been rewritten in the interval to accommodate the introduction of Wall and Moonshine as well as an elaborate prologue and an explanatory speech for Lion. Quiller-Couch (in Wilson, ed. 1924, p. 141) argues that Sh. cut down the mechanicals in order to make room for the fairies; and to abridge the clowns’ play meant of course to recast it. Foss (1932, p. 128) considers it peculiar that Quince, the supposed author, . . . should be made to speak the Prologue without any regard to punctuation. Smidt (1986, p. 121) supposes that inconsistencies may safely be taken as an indication that Shakespeare to a certain extent extemporised as he wrote. Taylor (Everything, 2003, pp. 55 ff.) itemizes the additions/revisions and the reasons for them, but Kittredge (ed. 1939, pp. 103–4 n., 125 n.) says that the worry (p. 104) may well be left to the most advanced school of Shakespearean criticism. Nor does he think any (p. 125 n.) time-analysis affords an answer to when Philostrate saw a rehearsal.

Focusing on the mechanicals, Jacobi (1937, p. 71) considers the interlude the mechanicals’ triumph and defeat, triumph in that they have staged their play, defeat because they have failed miserably, although they are encouraged by the conciliatory Theseus (Ger.). Menon (1938, p. 16) attributes the failure to the actors’ inability or unwillingness . . . to dissolve their empirical personalities in the play. Similarly Calderwood (1965, p. 513), who adds that conversely the lovers’ past identities are indeed lost in their imposed roles. He finds that the lovers’ experience . . . is more genuinely dramatic than the carefully rehearsed and formally presented Pyramus and Thisbe. Dent (1964, p. 126) argues that the mechanicals abuse their own imaginations by a failure to understand those of the audience, Greenfield (1969, p. 6) that they confuse dramatic art with life, actual life with acted life, as Evans (ed. 1967, p. 30) puts it. Willson (1969, pp. 20–4) thinks that the interlude’s mock-Senecan aspects and the rhythms may have been trying to illustrate how such a verse form would be handled by actors with no understanding of poetry. Sh. uses (p. 21) his parody as a means of characterization since the style would appeal to the mechanicals, as would (p. 22) the overflow of emotion found in the hyperbolic outbursts of those famous lovers. They of course fail (p. 23) to teach by delighting because they (p. 24) admire action and sentiment but tend to overlook the moral implications of art.

It is, of course, common for critics to tie Pyramus and Thisbe to the play in which it is embedded. Moyse (1879, p. 32) considers the episode at Ninus’ tomb . . . an example of affection stronger even than death, included as a contrast to the inconstancy that causes misery in the main play. Serio (1978, p. 21): it is Shakespeare’s supremest irony that among all the love relationships depicted in the play, only Pyramus and Thisby’s is unwavering and eternal. Similarly Weilgart (1952, p. 34). Wedgwood (1890, p. 584): it is a piece of sombre tapestry, exactly adapted to form a background to the light forms and iridescent colouring of the fairies as they flit before it.

Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:427) is the first of many others to regard the interlude as parodying what came before. Wigston (1884, pp. 315–6) too considers it a parody and (p. 316) a distorted image of complete incompacity, (ignorant of its insufficiency), whence the humour, irony and fun. Herford (ed. 1899, 1:308) considers Pyr. a travesty of love so palpably gross that, instead of captivating the imagination, it requires the active exercise of imagination to lend it the semblance of life. In the same vein are Swinden (1973, p. 61), who says in such ways are the tergiversations of the lovers reduced to inconsequence and Lechay (1981–2, p. 17), for whom it opens [the forest events] up to new meanings. Cutts (1963, p. 183) extends the scope of the interlude’s commentary beyond its satirical reflection on the young lovers; it also acts as a satirical contrast with the Theseus-Hippolyta relationship, in which Hippolyta is far too much of the Amazonian to see the need for poetry . . . , and with the Oberon-Titania relationship.

MacDonald (1883, p. 148) finds the playlet a little convex mirror of the graceful passions of childish elves, and the fierce passions of men and women. Bradbrook (1951, p. 157) calls it a mirror of the main plot, Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, pp. xii, xiv) a parody of romantic and tragic love and of (p. xiv) misguided parental authority, Styan (1967, p. 210) the mockery of would-be heroic values of the heart which ridicules the less unequivocal professions of undying love exchanged between the young ladies and gentlemen in the wood the night before. Goldstein (1973, p. 193) finds in the interlude all of the themes of the play which preceded it and some of the inconclusiveness with which AMND ends. Beneath the humor of the obscene innuendos lie the serious undertones. . . . In the main, the scene is a dramatic re-enactment in reality of the earlier nightmares experienced by the lovers and of the problems which the other characters in the play have sought to solve. Willson (1974, p. 105) assigns the interlude a corrective purpose at the same time that the actors . . . are provided with a means of joining in the final reconciliation. . . . Most important, plays within like Pyramus and Thisby allow us to recall the basic outlines of the precedent action, free from any anxiety about the fate of the actors. (1975, p. 33): Sh. gave his mechanicals a story of impetuous youth, which is charged full of coincidence and mistake in order to support a comic lesson about the dangers of such wooing to the recently-married couples. Ansari (1978, pp. 60–1): The impersonation of the two lovers offers a theatrical antithesis of the love and romance of the quartet of Athenian lovers. Moreover, by dramatizing the [61] tragic end of Pyramus and Thisby the element of death has been incorporated and triumphed over in the comic structure of the play. . . . The whole status of this playlet may be regarded as a kind of counter-myth with reference to the main action. Ormerod (1978, p. 50, n. 6): The doggerel play-within-a-play of the Pyramus and Thisbe episode may be seen as a summation of the play’s entire moral action, its pathetically padded lines a derisive version of the stale Petrarchan rhetoric peddled by the young men in their chaotic amorous volte-face in the forest, the volatility of their ocular mischoice being elliptically indicated in the wall’s chink, to blink through with mine eyne [1979]. The pastiche of the playlet ends in the grotesque deaths of its ludicrous protagonists, an element excluded from the play’s major amorous situation but, of course, an integral part of the completed treatment of the caecus amor motif. Van Laan (1978, pp. 57–8): From the time of its inception, one of the main points of the plot strand concerning the preparation of this very tragical mirth [1854] has been the obvious discrepancy between Quince’s actors and the roles assigned them. Now that it is finally performed, it occasions . . . numerous jokes that exploit this discrepancy for all it is worth and heighten the Lamentable Comedy’s [279–80] function as a metaphor to parallel and highlight the similar discrepancy between actors and roles exhibited during the lovers’ Comedy of Errors in fairyland.

But the mechanicals’ activity also has a more complicated relation to the rest of [MND]. The discrepancy they constantly betray pertains with equal relevance to Shakespeare’s entire analysis of the real world. Just as Bottom and his comrades are all patches [1031] and therefore cannot successfully portray tragic lovers—let alone lions, moons, and walls—so all [58] men of the real world have fixed roles and cannot play others at the same time: as Hermia at the beginning of the play cannot simultaneously be both a dutiful daughter and the lover of Lysander; or as Egeus at the end of the play cannot be both tyrant father and obedient subject of Theseus.

The myth of romantic love, Laroque (2002, p. 70) says, is subverted through the debunking and the bungling of Pyramus and Thisbe by the mechanicals. Champion (1970, p. 57): The inept acting—numerous malapropisms, confusion of cues with lines, misreading of punctuation, interpolated conversation with the audience, histrionic gesturing and ad-libbing—coupled with the high seriousness of the Pyramus and Thisbe legend creates a travesty of the tribulations of youthful passion and provides a hilarious capstone comment on the major theme of the play. We read frequently that this seriocomic rendition is perhaps a parody of [Rom.]. How much more certainly it sharpens the comic vagaries of romantic love as the spectator observes this mockery of the plight of the Athenian lovers.

For Auden (1946; 2000, p. 58) the interlude is a suggestion of what might have happened to the people in [MND], for Walter (ed. 1964, p. 15) a reflect[ion of] the disaster that may befall rash elopements. Garber (1974, pp. 81–2) argues that the interlude in its parodic form summarizes and unites the themes of transformation in art, in nature, and in language. It is ultimately nothing less than a countermyth for the whole of [MND], setting out the larger play’s terms in a new and revealing light. . . . The play-within-a-play thus absorbs and disarms the tragic alternative, the events which did not happen. Art becomes a way of containing and triumphing over unbearable reality. In addition, it shows (p. 82) the kinship of unreason and imagination while hinting at their real dangers. Baxter (1996, p. 25), reacting to Young’s comment (1966, p. 47) that the detail of the prologue threatens to make the action superfluous, says: This, in a sense, is right in that the Prologue rivals the performance. But he cites Brooks (ed. 1979, p. xliv): Sh. needed a burlesque counterpart to the defiance of the parental ban by Hermia and Lysander, and their attempted runaway match: tragical, to demonstrate awareness of the alternative tragic outcome; farcical, to avert the omen in a play celebrating love and happy marriage. Baxter adds: Pyramus and Thisbe retains a kind of affection and admiration for the thing parodied. Skura (1993, pp. 111–2) considers the interlude more than just a way to pass the time. It has redeeming social value. When Bottom as player gains entry into this Athenian great house, he brings with him a glimpse of the melancholy facts of life which Theseus thought he had banned from his wedding [18]. He reminds the wedding guests of the nightmare variations possible in a midsummer dream. Bottom’s play gives local habitation and a name [1808–9] to the destructive erotic forces which Theseus thinks he can control by selecting some of them to solemnize in a legal wedding ceremony—just as he thinks he can control murderous violence by sanctioning some of it in the aristocratic ritual of the hunt. Theseus rejects violent-sounding alternatives. But Bottom’s play, which passed the censor, reveals the destructive sexuality even in mutual desire, when the lovers—at least consciously—want only to love one another. . . . Pyramus and Thisbe meet at Ninny’s tomb partly because of parental restraint—as Romeo and Juliet met at the Capulet’s tomb—but just partly. The tomb is the only appropriate site for their rendezvous with destiny: this kind of love is death. Tearing down the wall between the genders is cata-[112]strophic. In Bottom’s play Lion materializes absurdly out of nowhere to symbolize the devouring, deflowering erotic violence no one wants to hear about in Athens (though Hermia does dream about it). The play may not represent what actually happened in the forest, only its potential; but Lion’s attack is an unhappily accurate figure for what will happen to Hippolytus, the child born of Theseus’s and Hippolyta’s union. For the time being, however, Bottom’s play exorcises these forces—as they were so often exorcised in the folk plays which Pyramus and Thisbe resembles. Bottom, though killed for love, bounces up again like the fool in the mummer’s play, ready to dance a bergomask.

Verity (ed. 1893, p. xxxiv) regards Pyr. as an anti-masque parodying the main plot. The humorous extravagance of love is laid bare for the edification of the pairs of lovers. They look on and laugh: and their laugh is against themselves. In Pyramus and Thisbe they see themselves unconsciously very much as others have seen them. Schanzer (1951, p. 238), Bush (1959, p. 70), Draper (1961, p. 6), and Baxter (1965, p. 71) too see it as a kind of anti-masque, and Doran (1976, p. 16) explains that it is an antimasque to a similar story turning out happily but is appropriate in a deeper sense. A true solemnity should have in it its hour of misrule, its cleansing irreverence, as well as its ordered and holy pomp. Wiles (1993, pp. 48, 58) detects certain formal features of a masque. It commences with a long prologue in which the principal emblems are deciphered. . . . An Elizabethan masque comprised a sequence of emblems or devices, and the element of narrative was secondary. Pyramus and Thisbe, like the pageant of the Nine Worthies, parodies an emblematic tradition of performance which the masque inherited (with superficial classical modifications) from the medieval world. (P. 58): The text provides the audience with an interpretation of the emblems and disguises. If we examine Pyramus and Thisbe not as a narrative but as a sequence of emblems and disguises, then we can see that in many respects it is a burlesque wedding masque. Wiles then decodes the four principal emblems . . . in Pyramus and Thisbe: the moon, the wall, the lion and the bloody mantle. According to Holland (ed. 1994, p. 93) the interlude occupies . . . the position after the end of the narrative action usually occupied by the jig and has ties with the jig. But where the jig treats parodically anything that other forms of drama might see as romantic, Pyramus and Thisbe treats seriously that tragic romantic love that the main action of the play has found by turns farcical and comedic. The parodic form . . . rests not in its material but in its manner and it is precisely the guying of the methods of conventional theatre that allows its on-stage audience to manage to disregard the commentary it threateningly offers on the potential tragedies of the night in the woods the lovers have just survived. If the jig is a form of inversion then Pyramus and Thisbe offers inversion both of the matter of the rest of the play (into tragedy) and the manner (into farce). To perceive only one side of this inversion is to lose the force of the jig.

Several commentators discuss the effect of the play within the play on the ending of MND. Hunter (Shakespeare, 1962, p. 13): The interlude helps to restore [the] dignity of the young lovers. The mechanicals’ monumental unawareness of what is happening in their scene of very tragical mirth [1854] makes the Athenian lovers seem, by contrast, to be in control of their destinies. Willson (1972, p. 125): Pyramus and Thisby emerges . . . as not the anticlimactic nonsense of inept actors so much as a final chapter in a narrative about various kinds of impetuous and passionate acts of love. It is a tragedy turned comedy, just as the lovers’ plot was transformed into lamentable mirth through the bad acting of the participants. The interlude attests to the presence of fate in the affairs of men, but likewise suggests that divine intervention is likely to bring about ludicrous instead of sorrowful results, because mortals are more often fools than tragic heroes and heroines. Leggatt (1974, pp. 100, 107): (p. 107) Pyramus and Thisbe presents a world more fantastic than that of the fairies, a world where walls move and moons speak. But we laugh it off as an absurdity. It is (p. 100) the ideal entertainment for a nuptial: the dangers that threaten love are systematically destroyed by the way they are presented. . . . The death of the hero is anything but final. . . . And through all this, the actors maintain an unbroken confidence in the rightness of what they are doing. Barton (in Evans, ed. 1974, p. 220): Without meaning to do so, Bottom and his associates transform tragedy into farce before our eyes, converting that litany of true love crossed which was rehearsed in the very first scene by Hermia and Lysander to laughter. In doing so, they recapitulate the development of [MND] as a whole, reenacting its movement from potential calamity to an ending in which quick bright things come not to confusion [ref. to 159], as once seemed inevitable, but to joy. Felheim (1980, pp. 85–6): Pyr. is rendered the most exquisite of satires, satire upon the very nature of romantic love [similarly Miranda (1981/2, p. 176)]. And how daring of Shakespeare to choose a play as the means by which he debunks his own story! . . . [86] Pyramus and Thisby is ideal: first realistically, as it allows us to laugh at the mad antics of Bottom and Co., and, secondly, as it provides satiric relief for the other, essentially sentimental, plots of [MND]. No wonder that these excellent men [2019] throw Hippolyta and Theseus into shame; they, after all, have no fear of the imagination for, realists as they are, they begin with honesty and move, by means of the imagination, into the realm of truth. It is the others who are exposed, as sentimentalists and/or pretenders; it is the lovers and courtiers who are naive and pretentious and who indeed are deceived by magic tricks. The mechanicals are neither comic relief nor lovable bumpkins but are inextricably bound into the very fabric of [MND]. They add the necessary degree of complexity; they are the essence of the play. Tanner (ed. 1995, p. cliv): The discord of the performance only serves to emphasize and enhance the concord [1857] achieved in the main play. Halio (1976, p. 35): However well things turn out for four of the couples, there is yet one whose fortune ends otherwise. Although Shakespeare, like Puck, may seem to sweep the dust behind the door [2173], he does not really get rid of it. Perhaps this is the best image for his strategy: in [MND], Shakespeare is busy with his broom, but we do not altogether lose sight of his, or the world’s, dust.

Bristol (1985, pp. 176–8) emphasizes the anti-romantic elements of the interlude; it is an admonitory gloss on the ceremonial formality of a wedding. . . . [177] The burlesque of the conventions of romantic love, like a charivari or a jig, makes a mockery, not only of the harmony of the wedding feast, but more generally of the contradictions of aristocratic marriage, where the pattern of conflicting imperatives is as likely to result in violence as in harmony. The deaths of Pyramus and Thisby are the antithesis of joyous reconciliation: they suggest the other side of marriage—disappointment, separation and death. In a way, Pyramus and Thisby is a kind of cautionary tale, although it has an ambivalent moral. It seems to warn equally against the dangers of filial disobedience and of arbitrary [178] parental rigidity. Its tragedy negates the reconciliation of the lovers; its mirth negates the solemnity of their festive celebration.

Among others commenting on the interlude are Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:427); Martz (1971, p. 74), who deems it, despite its ineptitude, paradoxically perfect communication. . . . Shakespeare thus blends complete farcicality with . . . the mystery of love, for the play-within-the-play in saying nothing (which is what a bad play says) is also saying that we are human, that we are one. The play-within-the-play is a triumph of fellowship. For McFarland (1972, pp. 89–90) the zany personification of wall is an inspired assertion of imagination’s power to transcend the mundane. For the wall, symbol of obdurate thingness, symbol of the separation of humans from one another, . . . is here—wondrously—not a wall. Not a thing at all, but a person. . . . Through its grotesque and Bergsonian humor, the wall is insistently put forward as the most significant role in this tender, happy, and ultimately meaningful play-within-a play. (P. 90): Imagination, in short, not only bodies forth the forms of things unknown [1806–7], but sees beneath the piglike exterior of a lout the dignity of a human soul. The Martindales (1990, p. 70) point out that the more crazy [the mechanicals’] views on art and the more creaky their play, the easier it is for the theatre audience to accept the reality of the mechanicals themselves. Devlin (1991, pp. 94–5) insists that at the end what should happen is that we laugh . . . , but that we are also moved by [the actors’] innocence and honest intentions. See also Turner (1974, pp. 218–19), Farrell (1975, p. 113), Desmet (1998, p. 322), Green (1998, pp. 374–5), Clayton (1999, p. 70).

For discussion of playwriting, acting, art, illusion, metatheatatrical topics see Themes and Significance, here.

Characters

The Court

Theseus and Hippolyta

Early commentary on Theseus and Hippolyta as a couple is sparse. They are generally regarded as detached from the action proper, forming, as Schlegel (1809–11; tr. 1815, 2:178) describes it, a splendid frame for the picture; they . . . appear 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. Procter (ed. 1843, 1:381) says they present a very gratifying specimen of the heroic character in repose, and to Barber (1959, p. 125) they are principals without being protagonists; the play happens for them rather than to them. This relation goes with their being stand-ins for the noble couple whose marriage the play originally honored. He adds that Theseus looks toward the hour with masculine impatience, Hippolyta with a woman’s happy willingness to dream away the time.

In addition to their function as (p. 76) a splendid golden frame, Ulrici (1868–9; tr. 1876, 2:72, 76) finds in the couple (p. 72) the grand, heroic, historical side of human nature, albeit they are engaged in the common every-day occurrence of a marriage. See Hudson (ed. 1880, p. 16), Thümmel (1881, p. 285). Others mentioning heroic attributes include Knight (ed. 1839, 1:379, 383); Spalding (1840, p. 480); Verplanck (ed. 1845; 1847, 2:5), who mentions the strangely gorgeous mixture of classical allusion and fable, with the taste, feelings, and manners of chivalry; Proescholdt (1878, p. 4), who admires their composure and calm temperateness which beseems so well the dignity of a sovereign; Dowden (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890, 8:xliv), who sees a great mediaeval knight or an Elizabethan noble and some gracious English châtelaine; Kellogg (ed. 1910, p. 15); Lever (ed. 1961, p. xii); Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. xii); Barkan (1986, p. 253); and Harbage (1963; 1967, p. 105), who adds that they strike us . . . as . . . young, imaginative, and in love. Quennell (1963, p. 173) thinks they reflect the modern magnificence of Elizabeth and her court, and Ramsey (1977, p. 221) explains why: Perhaps what most makes Theseus and Hippolyta imposing here is the cadence of their speech, their poised and urbane idiom. They seem to represent an achieved mastery of experience realized in great magnificence of style. For Kean (ed. [1856], p. v) the classical figures of Theseus and Hippolyta stand forward as the chief human personages of this most harmonious of dramas; sharing his view are Sinclair (1878, p. 252), Hales (1884, p. 95). They represent the Ideal, according to Wigston (1884, p. 304), enthroned upon the enduring mythology of what alone is the true in art or life,—the ideal significance of existence—represented in all the promise of the future as typified by a splendid wedding of eternity! Wells (ed. 1967, p. 18) thinks that they have enough non-Elizabethan traits to suggest a certain ideal quality, but . . . would in essentials be recognizable to his audience.

According to Sinclair (1878, p. 252) the noblest ideal of human love is embodied in the pair. See also Pogson (1950, p. 71); Schanzer (1951, p. 237); and Lever (ed. 1961, p. xii), who with Proescholdt (1878, p. 3), Moyse (1879, p. 14), and McKenzie (1964, p. 42) considers them model rulers as well. Winter (in Daly ed. 1888, p. 12) finds that no single trait of the piece impresses the reader more agreeably than its frank display of the spontaneous, natural, and entirely delightful exultation of Theseus and Hippolita in their approaching nuptials. They are grand creatures both, and they rejoice in each other and in their perfectly accordant love. Fulton (1976, p. 289), and, rather tentatively, Luce (1907, p. 162) concur. Theirs is, according to Hemingway (1911, p. 79), the calm and serene love of middle age. They are the pattern of love in the opinion of Walter (ed. 1964, p. 5). Clayton (1999, pp. 65–6) observes that Theseus and Hippolyta are never separated . . . ; and their dialogue is very much reciprocal from the opening exchange to their last banter on Pyramus and Thisbe. . . . Her mere four-and-a-half lines in the opening sub-scene have served every interpretative purpose, but they are sufficient in content and context to convey mutuality more readily than they can, without strain, express discontent and aloofness: [quotes 10–14]. In Dream, Theseus has a good deal of the country squire about him, and Hippolyta herself is on the horsy side, the two of them dog-fanciers together in their telling exchange in 4.1, just before they come upon the sleeping lovers. The pair’s mutuality, similarity of expression, and shared lifestyle—as Anglo-Athenian-mythical country gentry—are far more in evidence than is a raw or even cooked competitiveness here, where their speeches even run to nearly equal length. . . . This pattern of easy reciprocity obtains throughout, even when they disagree. Theirs is, on the showing, a civil(ized) relationship of [66] mutual love and good liking; and that is expressed most succinctly by my Theseus [1793]: one doesn’t address a stranger to one’s affections thus, and this is the opening note of act 5. Turner (1999, p. 97): Theseus and Hippolyta won each other in the great battle of the sexes. Their relationship is clearly one of equal mutual sovereignty and holds the promise of fertility; each is the hot wax of the other, each stamps the other with the seal of freehold, each holds the patent to the other: their wedding will be

For everlasting bond of fellowship. [93–4]

Similarly Taylor (2004, Ovid’s Myths, pp. 49–50).

Others are not impressed by the relationship between or the ideality of the characters. Skottowe (1824, 1:255–6) perfunctorily dismisses them as entirely devoid of interest (although Campbell [1846, p. 58] replies that Skottowe must have fallen asleep after the hunting scene, and that their felicity is seemingly secure, and it throws a tranquil assurance that all will end well). Spalding (1840, p. 480) notes the weakness and inconstancy of their affection, and Büchner (1865, p. 24) regards them as conventional characters who could be transposed anywhere (Fr.). Seiden (1959, pp. 87–8) concludes that the human couple will become what Oberon and Titania now are, the eternal married couple, if only because even Oberon and Titania have been unable to escape this fate. Such genial cynicism as this . . . is what one is left with as the result of [88] the juxtaposing of Theseus and Hippolyta with Oberon and Titania. In Holleran’s eyes (1967, pp. 22, 25), by no means are they cast as an ideal couple on the threshold of matrimonial bliss. On the contrary, Hippolyta appears as a rather phlegmatic Amazon surprisingly indifferent about her impending marriage. Her mate, Theseus, a reformed rake, shows more verve. . . . But hunting seems to be all they have in common. They marry for state policy rather than mutual admiration and respect and they realistically accept their responsibilities as public figures, but their love is one of the lowest forms of love in the play, being (p. 25) pure stagecraft, a political negotiation, a treaty between countries rather than a vow between lovers. See also Rodway (ed. 1969, p. 53a). Langford (1984, p. 49) complains that nowhere . . . do we witness an exchange of genuine affection between Theseus and Hippolyta. . . . It seems it is only her body and not her heart that he has come to possess. And it seems that her body is never far from his conscious thoughts. Hodgdon (1986, p. 537, n. 11) senses some tension, however slight, between them, and Hunt (1986, p. 5) says that as discords of male and female, they are too undifferentiated to create the supreme music of marriage. As chief Amazon, Hippolyta embodies the masculine and warlike character that Theseus also projects. Hence their love has at least one disturbing dimension. . . . While marriage can more fully articulate the respective characters of man and wife, it requires, for success, a meaningful degree of differentiation in the lovers to be joined together.

Some commentators see Theseus and Hippolyta as having undergone a change or as being in the process of changing. Comtois (1980, pp. 308–9), although recognizing that the overt conflict between Theseus and Hippolyta has passed, sees in their appearances sometimes a public, sometimes a private quality. . . . [309] Their meetings have the nature of encounters wherein each learns more of the other’s mind—as befits a bridal couple in the act of drawing closer to each other. Among others seeing change or a need for change in the characters is Snodgrass (1975, p. 206), who is not surprised at remnants of bitterness and sees a process of healing those age-old grudges through dreams. Stansbury (1982, pp. 57–8) argues that Theseus and Hippolyta show the power of true love: for Hippolyta’s love triumphs over the injuries done to her people by Theseus’s conquest [20–1], while Theseus’s experience of love finally moves him to overturn the Athenian law . . . and order the marriage that Egeus wished to prevent [1704–6]. Theseus and Hippolyta stress two qualities of love; firstly physical desires [58] and their fulfilment in the solemnities of married love [4–14]. . . . Secondly, Theseus stresses the permanence of true love, an everlasting bond of fellowship [94] in which married lovers shall eternally be knit [1706]. Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. xxvii) observe that Theseus and Hippolyta learn something about themselves and their relationship, and you cannot convey it without the forest. Or, because they are older, we see what’s below the formal presence of Theseus and Hippolyta; and underneath is a wild, unbridled liaison dangereuse. . . . The relationship of Titania and Oberon is a revelation of that of Hippolyta and Theseus—in a sense they work out their problem in the forest in the persons of Titania and Oberon. Like Hippolyta, Titania is a balanced person; Oberon, like Theseus, is not. If the roles of the two women and two men are doubled, this aspect of Hippolyta—Jung’s eternal feminine—is conveyed. It is the men who must change.

Numerous commentators see in the noble couple a relationship governed by reason, and a number of them regard Theseus and Hippolyta as a foil for other lovers. Godshalk (1973, p. 16), for example, mentions the natural conflict between human desire and social custom and states that Theseus and his future duchess resolve to act according to the dictates of reason and order, in contrast to Oberon and Titania who present a different picture of aristocratic behavior . . . associated with passion, unreason, unrestraint, destruction, and, as the play goes on, with fantasy. According to Seiden (1959, p. 86), Theseus and Hippolyta, when they are present, generate a solemn marital tone. They are terribly earnest about their marriage, and this seriousness helps the lovers’ mad whirligig appear to have some purpose. In juxtaposing the sententious bass-viol notes of the Theseus-Hippolyta epithalamium with the excited piccoloings of the star-crossed lovers, Shakespeare is contrasting the hurly-burly of wooing seen as Becoming with married love under the aspect of Being. See also Guidi (1963, p. 10). Calderwood (1965, pp. 510–11), however, remembering that this is a comedy, sees the couple as fulfilling a normative role . . . so far as love is concerned, Theseus as an exemplar of civil order, justice, and moderation. His former inconstancy may remind us of the young lovers’ courtship, but his present peace foreshadows theirs. (P. 511): By reminding us of this peculiar courtship and of Hippolyta’s past, Shakespeare calls upon the familiar Renaissance conception of Theseus as the man who righted an imbalance in nature, compelling the Amazonian queen to be true to her sex by becoming subordinate to his, thus reëstablishing the proper relationship between man and woman. Related to the reasonableness and normalcy associated with Theseus and Hippolyta is the fact Hense (1851, p. 36) points out, their immunity to the influence of the fairies (Ger.). Herford (ed. 1899, 1:307) thinks they once were susceptible but are no longer. See Wolff (1907; 1926, 1:339), who says true, faithful love counters the power of the fairies (Ger.); Ward (ed. 1964, p. lxxi); Arthos (1977, p. 98); and Brown (ed. 1996, pp. xv–xvi), who declares them almost untouched by the fairy [xvi] enchantment of the play although Theseus does sense its presence towards the close of the play [2145–6].

The success of the couple has been attributed to their age and to their experience and consequent maturity. Oechelhäuser (1885, 2:280–1) thinks it was Shakespeare’s intention to present the couple as a strong, middle-aged, mature, loving couple in contrast to their active pasts. But this makes the fairies’ jealousy and their own impatience comic (Ger.). Brooke (1905, pp. 8, 12) points out that because they image the sober love of middle age, with here and there a touch of passion, Theseus can care for the state and Hippolyta can philosophise with ease on the vagaries of love. And both, not caring for the loneliness with one another which youthful love desires, are delighted with the pleasures of the chase. They are (p. 12) children of the day, of clear reason and practical life. Gordon (ed. 1910, p. xvii) admires the sanity and equability of their love, and Bonnard (1956, pp. 269–70), saying the two stand for good honest human love shorn of any romantic nonsense, praises the strong quiet joy they find in each other. (P. 270): Together, he adds, they stand for experience, intelligent use of it, good sense and reason. See also Stopes (1916, p. 174); Gaehde (1931, p. 240); Hunt (1954, p. 46); Hunter (1962, Shakespeare, p. 18); Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, pp. xv–xvi), who adds that (p. xvi) the Duke and his Queen respectively represent, perhaps, imagination and common sense. If so, their marriage will be eminently successful; Wickham (1969, pp. 183–4); Phialas (1966, pp. 107–8, 115, 124); Traversi (1968, 1:142); Barton (in Evans, ed. 1974, p. 219); and Hart (1986, p. 19). Leggatt (1974, pp. 101, 103) points out that Theseus and Hippolyta seem to have forgotten their pasts. (P. 103): Throughout the final scene, Theseus and Hippolyta suggest not only mature love but a general principle of balance. . . . Each corrects the other’s excesses, but with tact and affection. McGuire (1985, p. 2) says they complement one another. Their differences become . . . the basis for a harmony that is more inclusive, more resilient, than would otherwise be possible. Marcus (1981, p. 271): These lovers have converted aggression into sexual love, which under the aegis of marriage will purge Theseus as rapist and Hippolyta as warrior. This ultimate consummation points towards deepened amity and children.

Although their trials have been overcome; [and] they have emerged serene, committed and sure of their love, according to Bellringer (1983, pp. 203–4), the events of the play cause them (p. 204) to engage in rational, discursive commentary on a number of topics, and not without minor disagreements, which give us a very muted echo of their violent courtship. Pearson (1987, p. 33) sees in Theseus and Hippolyta at the end of the play a harmony based on a mutual vision of duty: the recognition of the disparity between intent and performance, or more simply, an insight into the nature of reality. Both share a mutual attitude toward imperfection which accepts the chasm between the theoretical and the real. Belsey (1985, pp. 189–90) underscores the disagreements; apart from their shared commitment to blood sports, Theseus and Hippolyta take up distinct positions on all the issues they discuss. Where Theseus is cynical about the moon, Hippolyta invokes conventional poetic imagery [10–14]; when Theseus sceptically supposed that the young lovers have been deluded, Hippolyta counters cool reason with wonder [1814–18]; but when Hippolyta finds the mechanicals’ play the silliest stuff that ever I heard, it is Theseus who invokes imagination . . . [2014–16]. . . . The stereotypes of masculine rationality and feminine imagination are now preserved, now reversed. As a kind of chorus on the edges of a play about love, which in many ways relies on stereotypes, Theseus and Hippolyta present a musical discord [1639] which undermines fixity without blurring distinctions. Difference coexists with multiplicity and with love. . . . [190] We are able to glimpse a possible meaning, an image of a mode of being, which is not a-sexual, nor bisexual, but which disrupts the system of differences on which sexual stereotyping depends. Truax (1992, pp. 119–20, 127) praises the couple, now, sobered and transformed by deeds of valor and educated in the ways of true love, . . . ready for the responsibilities of marriage. Love’s labor has triumphed!

Thus in [MND], a marriage becomes a model of a metamorphosis completed against which the other characters, and the members of the audience as well, are invited to measure themselves. Shakespeare dramatizes the dual nature of love, the blind impulse prompted by Cupid’s arrows, and the deeper affections between men and women, characterized by insight and understanding, that can lead to true happiness. Mature love, reflecting the capacity for reason which bring [sic] man closer to God, is [120] exemplified by Theseus and Hippolyta. (P. 127): Theseus and Hippolyta, rulers of Athens, represent the wisdom of Apollo and the generative power of Venus.

Hippolyta

Before the 20th c. little is said of Hippolyta apart from Theseus. Pope & Warburton (ed. 1747, 1:97–8) note the decorum of her silence throughout most of 1.1, but Malone (Attempt, in Steevens, ed. 1778, p. 286) claims that the manners of Hippolita, the Amazon, are undistinguished from those of the other females. Thinking the character poor or thin are Furnivall (ed. 1877, p. xxvi), Purdom (ed. 1930, 1:xxxiv), de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. xxxi), Guthrie (ed. 1954, p. 23). Winter (in Daly ed. 1888, p. 12), however, despite her feminine impatience of dulness, finds no woman more beautiful and more essentially woman-like, and Corbould (1897, pp. 51–2) attributes to her that quickness of feminine temper which enables its possessor to put her finger at once on the weak spot in [52] her neighbour’s armour. She wants no mediocrity nor dulness. Bates (ed. 1895, pp. 9–10): Hippolyta is a court lady, but Shakespeare looks upon her from a distance. . . . He does not yet understand a noble woman’s heart. Hippolyta has dignity of silence, grace of speech, but little ardor, mirth, or power of personality. Theseus is too evidently her conqueror. Even [10] in trifles the man must have his way, and the woman must accept his assurance that she likes it better than her own.

20th-c. commentary on Hippolyta is not prolific, but there are definite divergences in approach. Among those finding her distant and aloof are Wolff (1907; 1926, 1:336), who thinks that because she is capable of the clear, passionless love of a friend, her relationship to Theseus is cool (Ger.), and Stockton (1964, p. 170), to whom she is a rarity, a cold and inexpressive Shakespeare heroine. So Holleran, 1967, p. 22. Latimer (1886, p. 92) calls her proud, fastidious, Theseus unfortunate in his wife; she is cool, quiet and objective according to Imam (1959, p. 58), and Evans (ed. 1967, pp. 16–17) comments on her calm and rather cold dignity but admires her mind of her own which does not merely echo the sentiments and opinions of her captor and [17] lord and master to be. Hirsch (1968, p. 177) says Hippolyta has the quiet assurance of the eternal woman. According to Evans (1969, p. 83) she is almost all mythological—the true Amazon regal beauty, only just tamed—but not quite. She is eventually humanized by Shakespeare when she expresses a feminine irritability with Theseus’s patience towards the amateur actors. Skura (1993, pp. 107–8) declares, Whatever sympathy we may have for her position, when the play opens, Hippolyta is a queen as cold as the [108] waning Athenian moon, and as tight as the drawn bow it resembles.

Hippolyta’s independence strikes some. Brooke (1905, p. 12) likes the sensible woman of high rank, with all the natural freedom of a great lady, living and thinking in the open air. Fond of the chase, she remembers with pleasure how the skies, the fountains, seemed all one mutual cry when she bayed the bear with Hercules and Cadmus,—an Amazon as well as a great lady. She responds with a savage delight to the prospect of the hunt, according to Foster (1975, pp. 202, 204–6), but look[ed] glum during the exchange between Egeus and Theseus over Hermia’s fate. (Frye [1983, p. 74], who admires her good sense, also notes her displeasure in this scene.) As the interlude is chosen and progresses, however, she perceives another side of Theseus [1886–1902]—perhaps he is (p. 204) a more imaginative and kindly man than she suspected. She senses that he has (p. 205) entered the world of the imagination [2015–16, 2018–19] and at last joins in chattering about the play. Theseus has (p. 206) chang[ed] from a tyrant to a lover, Hippolyta noting and delighting in that change. Pearson (1987, pp. 31–2) contends that in the responses of Theseus and Hippolyta to the tales of the four young lovers, the disputatiousness on Hippolyta’s part, an indirect rebellion against masculine sovereignty, is . . . one of her most sustained characteristics. . . . [She] will not allow Theseus’ assertions to go unchallenged. [32] . . . Hippolyta practices a frustratingly subtle, civil form of rebellion to masculine superiority, managing to contradict her betrothed’s pronouncements even as she seems merely to comment. There is not, either here or in Act I, a verbal signal that she is disagreeing with Theseus. This she gives only after she is wed [1814–18]. . . . She is telling us . . . that as a wife she refuses to subdue her own judgment to that of the man she has married.

One of the first to mention the complexities (or dichotomies, or inversions) introduced by Hippolyta as Amazon is Wigston (1884, p. 29), who sees Hippolyta as like the master-mistress of the sonnets, [embodying] a male and female element, separate yet identical,—the duo-uno paradox of the sonnets and of the Phoenix and the Turtle. The amazons belonged to the cult of Diana, who represented light and darkness, separation and reconciliation, disharmony and harmony. She represents Passion, Theseus Reason, according to Olson (1957, pp. 102, 111), and as Amazon (p. 102) signif[ies] a false usurpation of the duties of the male reason by the lower female passions. She is, Homan (1969, p. 77) says, a symbol of animal lust (the Amazon) who becomes a sober wife; mere sexual passion has thereby been translated into the proprieties of married love. [So Pogson (1950, p. 71.)] Yet Hippolyta remains a lover for she can still take a vicarious pleasure in what other lovers tell her, . . . and after Theseus’ cynical equation of lovers and madmen she still gets the last word. Schwarz (2000, pp. 40, 214, 217, 222): Both the play and its critical tradition present her marriage to Theseus as a frame narrative for comedy, although in the sources Hippolyta’s story begins in violence and ends in tragedy, leaving little space for the production of domestic models. To tell that story as comedy requires a suspension not only of disbelief but of knowledge. (P. 214): If the Amazon appears as a commodity, a patriarchal token, as [MND] begins, Theseus’s lines remind us that this condition is recently imposed. (P. 217): Hippolyta is always marked . . . both as Theseus’s prize and as his mirror image. Schwarz concludes that victory, as so often for men among Amazons, looks uncommonly like defeat. Finally, she comments, whether or not the play’s characters or the play’s audience knew the sources and the (p. 222) erotic complications in them is irrelevant to the fact that [MND] constructs its own story around the tensions for which Hippolyta is a reference in brief.

Many critics stress either a change in Hippolyta or the absence of the barbarity and misandry Shakespeare’s audience associated with Amazons. Hippolyta’s submissiveness impresses Smeaton (1911; 1930, pp. 186–7), who finds Hippolyta . . . somewhat less royal and imperial in her ideas than her husband. She says little throughout the play, only thirteen speeches being assigned to her, yet her influence subtly pervades its action, [187] owing to the habit of Theseus constantly to appeal to her. Love has made conquest of her, and her charm for us lies in the submissiveness wherewith the conquering Amazonian, whom defeat could not tame, bows her neck to the yoke of him who had made her love him by overcoming her in battle. The heroine is now lost in the woman, eager to surrender herself, after the nuptial knot has been tied, to the one man who has tamed her spirit. Similar comments are found in Robinson (ed. 1941, p. 97); Pitt (1981, p. 86); Bloom (1998, p. 154); Hackett (2003, p. 352); Fulton (1976, pp. 288–9), who says that by marrying Hippolyta Theseus prevents the chaos stemming from an inversion of male and female roles that Shakespeare’s audience associated with Amazons. Sherman (1919, pp. 139–40) regards her as something of an underdog. Hippolyta appeals to us especially in this strange alien home. She has been queen of the revolt against a man-ruled world. But she feels a woman’s poetic anticipation of joy in the solemnities, the formalities of her bridal. . . . We share in this idealization, and conceive and covet that all her expectations may be fully realized. This is the slender but sufficient consummation of the play. He worries about her (p. 140) peace of mind with the blind as well as heartless Theseus. Harsher is Foss (1932, pp. 123–4), arguing that Theseus’s betrothal to an Amazon emphasizes the tyranny over women in Athens. At the commencement . . . he woos her with hot-blooded sensuality, which she restrains coldly, and then has to sit and listen in silence to the degradation of her sex in this new country she has come to. By the end of Act 4, community of tastes (enthusiasm for the hunt) draws her to the strong heroic demi-god Theseus. And hearing the story of the lovers, she begins to wonder whether there is anything in this love and freedom of selection of one’s mate, and somewhat wistfully approaches her newly-wed husband on the subject. But he pooh-poohs lovers’ nonsense, and compares [124] them to lunatics and poets. Snodgrass (1975, p. 206) sees no trace of the fiercer qualities of the Amazons in her. True, she seems to get the last word in arguments; yet she is both right and uninsistent, an engaging combination. She carries herself with such grace and dignity that we wonder if a woman might be as improved by defeat as some men can. Pyle (1998, p. 207) cites Theseus’s and Hippolyta’s shared interests which lead them to falling in love. Once assured of Theseus’s fidelity, Hippolyta learns to trust him and willingly submits to his authority. The everlasting bond of fellowship [94] that they share, i.e., the mature love that blends reason and desire, exemplifies Shakespeare’s concept of true love or, Wickham (1969, pp. 183–4) would say, mature love, a state in which reason and desire are in perfect equilibrium. Montrose (1983, pp. 66, 68, 76) examines (p. 76) the Amazonian metaphor as it appears in much Elizabethan literature and finds its sinister overtones, arising from the potential (p. 66) power of the female not only to dominate or reject the male but to create and destroy him[,] . . . an ironic acknowledgment by an androcentric culture of the degree to which men are in fact dependent upon women: upon mothers and nurses, for their birth and nurture, upon mistresses and wives, for the validation of their manhood. But (p. 68) in marrying Theseus, Hippolyta is separated from her sisters and is no longer such a threat. Skura (1993, p. 107) too thinks Elizabethans would have regarded her as a subversive woman who threatens civilization . . . and must be conquered. Schwarz (2000, p. 234) looks askance at those deeming Hippolyta either submissive or successful in achieving her desire: such conclusions require as much writing as they do reading, for in [MND] Hippolyta herself never speaks of desire.

Like Pope and Warburton (above, here), Thaler (1929, pp. 26–7) comments on Hippolyta’s silences, which he says are on the borderline between the silences which define and those which reveal a part of the whole. She is (p. 27) easily bored and never suffers from an overplus of imagination. Thaler does not envy Theseus his approaching bliss, but . . . she has certain kindly instincts and momentary sympathies, for example her reaction to the lovers’ stories. And when she is in her own proper element, when she recalls the joys of the chase . . . she can be moved from silence to something like poetry. Bonnard (1956, pp. 269–70), on the other hand, takes her silence during the discussion of Hermia’s marriage between Theseus and Egeus as a sign that she will know how to keep her place. She is (p. 270) tactful and highly sensible. Wallace (1997, pp. 105, 114–16, 120, 124) finds the origin of her silence in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale but notes her (p. 114) eloquent look that speaks to the frustration and humiliation of her plight, a look that evokes Theseus’s What cheer, my love? [131]. That look (p. 115) can speak to the local and immediate business of our nuptial . . . ; [116] it can speak against the whole system of ducal and patriarchal authority within which Hippolyta finds herself entrapped. It offers us, at the very least, the opportunity to register the resistant personhood of Hippolita on the space of the stage. Marshall (1982, pp. 548–51) sees Hippolyta’s silence throughout most of the play as ominous, the first exchange between Theseus and her as tense rather than as festive, her words as noncommittal, Theseus’s perception of her as (p. 549) melancholy and cheerless. Hippolyta stands as more than an ornament for a masque, he insists; her silence is an important key to the conflicts of [MND]. The problem of how to read her silence—and what it means [550] to imagine what is going on behind the scenes . . . in the privacy of her mind—is one of the problems the play can teach us about. . . . We should be willing to consider Hippolyta’s fortunes as the curtain rises, in the same way that she perhaps weeps Hermia’s fortunes in the first scene; to do this, we must take her eyes. Marshall posits that (p. 551) both Hermia and Hippolyta are in effect tongue-tied in the same way: their fate is to have others dictate their sentiments while they are silent or silenced.

Homan (1990, pp. 23–4) thinks Hippolyta an outsider reluctant to become an insider in Athens, unhappy not only with her own situation but also with the law of Athens . . . which . . . will condemn Hermia to unhappy choices. Her tactless account of her earlier hunt with Hercules and Cadmus goads Theseus into direct response to the outsider who will soon be his wife. As the interlude progresses, however, Hippolyta (p. 24) shows a new assertiveness and a growing independence, first shown in the scene following her marriage when she has the first and last lines and when furthermore she seems to disagree—tactfully—with her new husband. She becomes assimilated into the Athenian court. Halio (1994, pp. 3–4) queries, Is she like a caged tigress, pacing up and down, barely submissive to Theseus’s conciliatory speeches? Her four and a half lines in this scene seem to reassure Theseus that the four days to their wedding will pass quickly enough, but the imagery she uses (the moon, like to a silver bow / New bent in heaven, [12–13]) functions, like other images and [4] allusions elsewhere in the play, somehow to undercut that very reassurance. Halio thinks that her silence throughout the rest of the scene, moreover, is subject to various interpretations. Does she sympathise with Hermia, who rebels against her father’s apparent tyranny? Does she glare fiercely at the men who seem to compel the young woman to an unhappy fate? Or, recognising Hermia’s plight, does she also see the need for her to submit to mightier forces . . . ? By Act IV or V has she reconciled herself to marrying Theseus, and if so, how? Does the text support this interpretation, or can it otherwise be justified? Compare Burns (1996, p. 300), who thinks her opening speech reassures Theseus and that the hostility sensed by critics and parallel to Titania’s antagonistic mood obscure[s] the play’s more multi-facetted, prismatic presentation of sexuality and desire. McGuire (1985, pp. 1–4) sees Hippolyta’s silence as an example of how much (and how little) the words Sh. penned reveal about the play. He concludes that (p. 3) the ambiguity of the words on the page prevents specificity in interpretation of Hippolyta’s silence and contends that we can (p. 4) probe her silence only in the context of a particular performance.

Aquino (Toward a Star, 1986, pp. 50, 51–3, 56–7), linking survival to flexibility which permits characters to adapt, to compromise, to take things in stride, finds this quality even in the early comedies where no female character is dominant. She claims that (p. 52) Hippolyta . . . survives and adapts to her new Athenian environment, largely, it seems, through a regained volubility. At the beginning of the play, the once powerful, legendary Amazon appears reserved and taciturn. It is the conqueror Theseus who is dominant. Perhaps Hippolyta is feeling her way. . . . If . . . she is dismayed at the sentence passed on Hermia, she does not articulate her feelings but manifests them facially [Theseus comments on her apparent distress (131)] . . . . But what a difference the dreaming away of four nights makes. After the nuptials, Hippolyta is the only woman who joins the male members of the onstage audience in a running commentary on the dramatic efforts of Bottom and Company. Moreover, her comments often are at odds with those of Theseus, but nothing daunts her [2014–17]. Furthermore, she politely but firmly contradicts Theseus’ patronizing dismissal of the strange tales told by the young lovers. . . . She who [53] had four and one-half lines in scene one has twenty in the final scene. A shrew may be in the making. But given Theseus’ . . . eagerness to please her, I prefer to see Hippolyta’s behavior in the final moments of the play as signaling the regaining of a confidence and spirit that supposedly marked her days as an Amazonian queen. She has found that which was lost—her voice—and her survival is assured. She has managed this in part by (p. 56) one-up-manship, (p. 57) as when she challenges the superiority of his hounds [1633–48]. Compare Dawson (Watching Shakespeare, 1988, pp. 22–3).

Psychological approaches to Hippolyta vary. Riklin (1968, pp. 283–4), looking at mandala symbolism, identifies Hippolyta with Antiope, who as his concubine . . . bore Theseus his son Hippolytus. . . . The Amazon represents that aspect of the anima which lives as the daughter only, in the distant, other-worldly realm of the feminine, of the unconscious. She is therefore a figure of the unconscious which, hostile, aggressive and ready for battle, opposes the masculine. . . . As a bride, Hippolyta, in our play, is already materially closer to conforming to collective consciousness than in the Greek myth where Theseus loses her again. In fact, she is a creature of scant reliability; in the myth, as well as in our play, she has acted treacherously against her kingdom of the [284] Amazons; she is, moreover, very critically, not to say saucily, balanced against Theseus’ good will. This is shown particularly clearly in the scene of the townspeople’s theatre (Act V, Scene 1). Because of her Theseus has, by the sword—his discriminating ability—and through imposed suffering, aspired to the attainment of feeling. Both these approaches indicate once again the inaccessibility of the Amazon. Goldstein (1973, pp. 188–9) suggests that every character has an identity crisis and that the Queen of the Amazons (p. 189) took on the role of the male in her society (from a patrist point of view) as it is enacted by Theseus in Athenian society. Her transformation from male to female has a transvestite flavor to it. She had all of the prerogatives of the male which she now has to give up to a male. But the hallmark of her past history remains with her for life; the traditional burned-off left breast in childhood in order to permit her to pull her bow when hunting, a physical reminder of being less than a complete woman, remains with her always. Her height, too, is that of a male. Garner (1981, pp. 53–4) argues that it is significant that the woman whom [Theseus] at last will marry is not traditionally feminine. She has been a warrior, and in her new role . . . we see her as a hunter. (P. 54): Her androgynous character appears to resolve for Theseus the apparent dissociation of his romantic life, the sign of which is his continual desertion of women who love him. Regarding the play as occasional, Hartman (1983, pp. 355, 359) says it congratulates the royal couple on their mature equanimity but more directly addresses the evolution of such psychosexual stability, the resolution of oedipal conflict, and the consequent ability for proper gender identity and adult heterosexual intimacy. (P. 359): Hippolyta, she declares, has accepted the challenge of womanhood. . . . Shakespeare does not suggest repression of sexual impulse as a solution to the oedipal problem but encourages resolution via displacement of the sexual impulse onto an appropriate love object. Palombo (1983, p. 312) cites Hippolyta’s speech [1814–18] as recognizing that the lovers’ tales reflect an adaptive change in the psychic reality of the lovers.

Theseus

There is a flurry of concern over this unhistorical duke, a more prolonged one over his morality, and then trends in the assessment of Theseus’s character emerge rapidly. One school of thought emphasizes his rationality, another his rule and his judicial stance, and another the implications for his character of his classical origins. His sense and wisdom are extolled while his skepticism elicits varied responses. Much has been made of a number of his speeches, particularly those on the mechanicals’ efforts and his speech on the lunatic, the lover, and the poet.

Chasles (1851, p. 204), offended by this immense anachronism, would erase the names Theseus and Athens from the play (Fr.), but Ruskin (Modern Painters 1846–60, Works 5:128 n.) finds no vestige of Athenian in him. Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:425, 433) thinks him incongruous with romantic incidents and accidents but considers it (p. 433) in vain to protest against an anachronism which both Chaucer and Sh. invested with interest and truthfulness. According to Staunton (ed. 1857, 1:340) he and Athens are unindividualized and represent times when the introduction of ethereal beings . . . was in accordance with tradition and romance. Hense 1872, p. 279) thinks that he was not intended to correspond to his Greek original (Ger.). See Phialas (1966, p. 123), who explains that Sh. adds Chaucerian and Renaissance features. Hudson (ed. 1880, p. 18) considers him both classic and romantic.

Theseus is a Renaissance Prince, an English nobleman or squire according to a number of critics. Moyse (1879, pp. 25–6) thinks him an English nobleman whom Sh. wanted to compliment. (P. 26): He speaks as if he were every inch a king. See also Bates (ed. 1895, p. 9). Chesterton (1920; 1971, p. 123) asserts that he is actually and unmistakably an Englishman. He is the Super-Squire; the best version of the English country gentleman. Agreeing are Robinson (1890, p. 71); Herford ([1912], p. 31); Browne (ed. 1922, p. 136); Chambrun (1927, p. 53; 1947, p. 99)—he resembles a Sydney or an Essex (Fr.); Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 133); Knight (1958, p. 277)—this ideal of magnanimous sovereignty; Munro (ed. 1957, p. 340)—he resembles the Queen herself; Holmes (1960, p. 39); Wells (ed. 1967, p. 17); Fergusson (1970, p. 121); Biswas (1971, p. 48). Moisan (1987, pp. 41–2) comments that when Theseus comes, solemnity is generally not far behind (14, [42], 1655, 1710, 2151). Boas (1896, p. 184) considers Theseus typically Tudor in his behavior and tastes and de Rothschild (1906, p. 248) points out that the splendid and gracious aristocrat Theseus [is] purged of all the foibles of the contemporary gallants, replete with all that is graceful, delicate, and pleasing. His noble thoughts are many, his diction is refined, while his imagination is not persistently occupied with efforts to dazzle by embellished wit. . . . Theseus wooing Hippolyta was an idealised Essex paying his court to Lady Frances Sidney. Duffy (1972, p. 145) calls him an idealised Essex, an Essex as he frequently liked to present himself, as a sober, religious but military nobleman. Green (1933, pp. 27–8) elaborates on (p. 28) the common Elizabethan ideal of a great man, (p. 27) young but shrewd, passionate but thoroughly controlled, a man of action and [28] also of diplomacy, experienced in the handling of arms and of men who lived by them, accustomed to courts as well as to campaigns, and to battle in which even a general might now and then be involved in a hand-to-hand struggle. . . . He is wise, and can be hard. . . . But he is essentially kindhearted, especially since in a world of more intimate human contacts than ours, it is good policy to appear kindhearted.

Although Ruskin (Modern Painters 1846–60, Works 6:511) claims that if [Theseus] ever did do anything wrong, it was all Titania’s fault (he cites 452–5), Clapp (1885, p. 391) calls Theseus a gentleman as protean in his political relations as in his love affairs, and Arnold (1955, p. 107) declares him inconstant from the beginning with the passion of Venus (Fr.), and Fender (1968, p. 11) concurs. Cody (1969, p. 129), concentrating on the first scene, says Nothing Theseus says in the entire scene, whether about divinest melancholy [18] or about chastity [74 ff.] suggests that his is the voice of integrity. Other critics excuse or justify his behavior and a few praise the morality of his advice or decisions. Hense (1851, pp. 36, 38) claims that he has overcome his sensual aberrations through moral self-determination and that he knows things are relative, not absolute, and can exhibit a benevolent humanitarianism (Ger.). Kreyssig (1862, 3:99–100, 102) considers it fitting to a gentleman that his youth was divided between triumphs in arms and in love (his amatory adventures are attributed to the influence of Cupid and the fairies). After his victory over Hippolyta, he no longer is susceptible to sentimentality and fantastic enthusiasm (Ger.). See also Labriola (1992, p. 67), who compares him to Chaucer’s Theseus in this regard.

Chambers (ed. 1897, pp. 24–5) claims that Theseus’s wayward youth illustrates the theme that love in idleness is generally only a passing fever because (p. 25) like Henry the Fifth of whom he is a prototype, he has put away childish things; he stands forth as the serene law-abiding king, no less than the still loving and tender husband, thus amplifying the play’s central idea. Similarly Charlton (1933, pp. 57–8). Others detecting the seeds of Henry V in Theseus are Dowden (1875, p. 68); Allen (1967, p. 112); Atherton (1962, p. 41); Smith ([1940], p. 18); Wolff (1907; 1926, 1:340)—Henry V and Theseus share an ideal sobriety (Ger.); Hamilton (1967, p. 230), who finds in him Prince Hal’s comprehensiveness by being of all humours (1H4 2.4.92 [1057]). Berry (1988, pp. 35–6) prefers Theseus; if [36] Shakespeare’s ideal ruler exists, it is here and not in Henry V that one should look for him. He seems always to be handling affairs with a man-of-the-world’s balance and discretion. Doran (1960, pp. 123–4) offers a suggestion concerning Shakespeare’s use of the Theseus perfidus theme which does not spoil the impression of hymeneal felicity so clearly wanted in the play and which summarizes the majority opinion. Allusions to Theseus’ less creditable affairs occur in the bickering between the Fairy King and Queen. . . . There is no risk in all this to our picture of the sober husband of Hippolyta. For one thing, the hint is given that he was not altogether responsible for his infideli-[124]ties, being subject to the same fairy spells as the lovers in the play. For another, Shakespeare has used this part of the legend mainly to enlarge the background, and he has directed it more to Oberon and Titania than to Theseus. . . . It is an example of the most skilful control of the images to make them serve a limited purpose. [See Fender (1968, p. 26).]

Shakespeare’s Theseus . . . is . . . a new and whole character: a quite satisfactory Renaissance prince, who, with glory won in many exploits, rules now with wisdom and magnificence.

Among those who specifically commend Theseus’s morality are Griffith (1775, pp. 15, 18), who praises his piety in his advice that Hermia’s father should be as a god and in his decrying of (p. 18) irregular or ill-placed affection [1802–3], and Dobbs ([1948], p. 28), who thinks that his morality, which is perhaps his primary trait, is essentially Socratic. Pogson (1950, p. 71) asks us to dismiss any preconceived notions of Theseus as a faithless lover. His desertion of Ariadne in the legend has surely a psychological, not a literal, meaning. But compare Bloom (1998, p. 154), who refers to his moral obtuseness. Blits (2003, p. 8): Shakespeare’s portrayal shows a change in Theseus from heroic virtue to moral virtue, from heroic immoderation to civic moderation in sexual desire. Erotic desire is civilized or tamed in Theseus and, by implication, in Athens as well.

His conduct as hero and ruler has received attention. Knight (ed. 1839, 1:379) writes that Shakspere has given to Theseus the attributes of a real hero, amongst which modesty is included, and Lloyd (in Singer, ed., 1856, 2:433) writes that he sweeps over the stage . . . with sublime superiority, allowing himself the princely privilege of forgetting and being reminded, is just with an air of graciousness, is indulgent magnificently, and on his wedding-day consents to be amused even without offensive condescension. In his essential function as the head of the State, according to Snider (1874, p. 168), Theseus represents the highest rational institutions of man—he is both judge and ruler. . . . He stands above the rest and commands them, but does not himself become involved in their collisions. Hart (ed. 1886, 2:iii) too has nothing but praise for the finest character in the play. He is an early ideal of a heroic warrior and man of action. His life is one of splendid achievement and joy; his love is a kind of happy victory; his marriage a triumph. Winter (in Daly ed. 1888, p. 14) finds him a most potent lesson upon the conduct of life because of his broad-minded view, . . . magnanimous spirit, . . . calm adequacy, . . . fine and high manner, and according to Dowden (1875, pp. 68, 71) his are the large hands that have helped to shape the world. His utterance is the rich-toned speech of one who is master of events—who has never known a shrill or eager feeling. . . . Theseus, a grand ideal figure, is to be studied as Shakespere’s conception of the heroic man of action in his hour of enjoyment and of leisure. Dowden finds it admirable (p. 71) impartiality that Sh. could portray with so much genuine enthusiasm this splendid and gracious aristocrat, perhaps not without a touch of the Barbarian in him. He would have found Hamlet a wholly unintelligible person, who, in possession of his own thoughts, could be contented in a nutshell. Smeaton (1911; 1930, p. 186) says he is cast in kingly mould. Exclusively a man of action, a maker and a moulder of history, he has little affinity to the poet or the thinker. Yet for all who take pains to please him . . . , he has a large-hearted sympathy. Olson (1957, pp. 101, 109) calls him the ideal ruler of both his lower nature and his subjects. Bullough (1957, 1:369) adds that he did what Shakespeare admired Henry V for doing; he moved freely among the people to ascertain their needs and qualities. His kindness and tolerance towards the craftsmen in our play is noteworthy. Others praising his strengths as a ruler include Wolff (1907; 1926, p. 340), Robinson (ed. 1941, p. 97), Émery ([1957], p. 54), and Walch (1988, pp. 87, 93, 95).

Edinborough (1960, p. 458) considers Theseus a duke who sees clearly his position as arbiter of taste and as ruler of men. Iyengar (1964, p. 169) describes Theseus as grave and gracious . . . , almost the image of the perfect ruler, . . . a warrior . . . turned to tasks of peace, a romantic who has become practical under the discipline of experience. Cook (1976, p. 229, n. 15) says the ideal is ultimately derived from the secular aristocracy . . . expounded in such literary works as Il Cortegiano and the Mirror for Magistrates. He is, appropriately, an authoritative, dignified and kindly man, accustomed to complete and unquestioned authority, according to Evans (ed. 1967, p. 16). Honan (1998, p. 216) thinks that in his noble, good-natured authority and concern with illusion, as in his freshness of thought and charity towards the rude mechanicals, he might almost typify Shakespeare’s interest in the ideal leader of a modern political state.

Others see Theseus as the hero in a moment of repose. Verity (ed. 1893, pp. xxxv–xxxvi) tries to analyze how Theseus produces his impact upon us. Not by what he does (for he has very [xxxvi] little to do), but by his presence, he creates an impression of greatness and strength—strength of mind, will, body. He has the self-centered serenity of strength, the calmness of conscious power. No crisis would evoke from him the fret and excitement of weaker natures. All who come into contact with him defer to his authority. . . . Not that there is aught of the overbearing tyrant in him. Rather, he has a full measure of the gentle considerateness innate in many men of his strong masterful type. . . . The motto of such men is deeds, not words—fact, not fancy. . . . One could wish that the play presented more scope of action for this strong, heroic king of men. Corbould (1897, p. 36) regards him as a great conqueror of the world, who is enjoying a brief calm in his eventful life; he stands on a different level from the ordinary mortals and from the fairies. . . . He is the kind of hero Shakspere loved, a man who would do and dare, the man in whose lexicon there is no such word as fail. He has gracious manners too, with a capacity for calm enjoyment as well as for a life of active work.

Perhaps because he is at leisure, a few commentators see him as more human than great. Theseus is, according to Steevens (ed. 1773, 3:101 n. 5), more exalted in his humanity, than his greatness. Steevens adds: Though some sensible observations on life, and animated descriptions fall from him, as it is said of Jago, you should take him more as a soldier than as a wit, which is a distinction he is here [Act 5] striving to deserve, though with little success; as in support of his pretensions he never rises higher than a pun, and frequently sinks as low as a quibble. (Malone [Attempt, in Steevens, ed. 1778, p. 286] likewise laments the miserable puns.) Tyrrell (ed. 1850, 1:384), who admits that he may not seem to have been a companion of Hercules, nevertheless finds him a creature of great interest, a ruler of manly and kindly feelings, and his wit is by no means of that meagre nature which some critics have asserted it to be. Leech (1964, pp. 103–4), seeing in him a family resemblance to Solinus of Ephesus, comments that (p. 104) the playwright has handled this Duke with restraint, giving him an authority, a kindliness, as well as a habit of condescension, a tinge of self-importance, and a moment of arbitrary forgetfulness.

A number of critics find distinct shortcomings in the character of Theseus. Malone (Attempt, in Steevens, ed. 1778, p. 286) leads off. 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 K. Henry VIII. he goes out a Maying. He meets the lovers in perplexity, and [285] makes no effort to promote their happiness; but when supernatural accidents have reconciled them, he joins their company. Scott (1962, p. 175) regards him, except for his speeches on the mechanics’ play and on love, as an unsubstantial figure presiding uneasily over the affairs of lovers and rustics alike. Cutts (1968, p. 51) argues that like the King of Navarre Theseus permits a lapse; the very rules of reason, order, and obedience which both . . . set up are broken down almost immediately by their own actions. He lacks self-awareness, according to Martz (1971, p. 9); he is self-regarding and sometimes tactless, according to J. P. Smith (1972, p. 11), one of the limited men of the world, as Hobson (1972, pp. 86, 165, 167) calls Theseus and Henry V. Theseus (p. 165) is generous, but also condescending, superciliously indulgent, faintly contemptuous, indifferent. His image for his love [6–9] (p. 167) is a getting, not a giving image, and his wisdom is the coldly judicious wisdom of a ruler of men. On the other hand, his cool reason is in perfect contrast to the wayward fancies of the lovers . . . and the earth-wisdom of Bottom, thus his function in the play is important. Garber (1974, p. 65) says he only appears to appropriate the role of reasonable adjudicator, but in fact he fails to analyze the situation of the lovers properly and later is persuaded to reverse his earlier ruling. The events of the dream have altered his sense of reality. Farrell (c. 1975, p. 107) thinks him inconsistent, capricious, legalistic one minute, benevolent another. Scott (1977, pp. 81, 110) contends that in matters of love Theseus’s efforts are useless and heavy-handed and regards him as patronizing, though kindly toward the lovers and the mechanicals, while Bryant (1986, p. 74), concentrating on his dealing with Demetrius [120–25], says the best one can say of this performance is that it shows one philanderer dealing with another. Falk (1980, pp. 266–7) is harsh; Theseus, though statesmanlike in [267] manner, is decisively authoritarian in matter. . . . There are no grace notes in his words and certainly no sense of ludic potential. Moreover, his advice is gratuitous, even hypocritical, since the argument he offers contradicts his own impulsive and unrestrained pursuit of Hippolyta. Having been impressed into history, Theseus has hardened into form. Theseus is not ready for the reveling appropriate to harmony and secure domestic order. Beiner (1985, p. 102) calls him a man of neat compartmentalizations who does not attempt to harmonize seeming discords between levels of experience. Girard’s opinion (1987, p. 119) is that like Polonius, Theseus does not say anything that is not true, and yet he understands nothing. Garber (2004, pp. 214–15): The dangerous hints of force and law brought to mind by the troublesome concept of wooing with a sword reveal something about Theseus and the limits of his understanding, limits that will become more evident as the play goes on. Moreover, (p. 215) both the authoritarian father and the authoritarian duke have a good deal to learn about the way love breaks old rules and makes for new ones.

Concentrating specifically on what his judicial role reveals about his character, some consider Theseus harsh. The law of Athens tempers the judgments of some; the fact that Theseus relents moderates the strictures of others. In exercising his judicial power, Bethurum (1945, pp. 86, 89) points out, Theseus is a benevolent ruler, and (p. 89) the human conquers the official Theseus when he forgives . . . Lysander and Hermia. Herford (ed. 1899, 1:303) had argued that the Athenian law, not Theseus, threatens the lovers; he overbears the despotic vindictiveness of Egeus. Herbert (1966, p. 70), calling the law ridiculous, is pleased that he brushes Egeus’s attempted tyranny into permanent oblivion, and according to Nagy (1967, p. 210) the harsh law which makes possible the judgment scene is not an expression of the character of Theseus (Ger.). Evans (1969, pp. 84, 86) admires his efforts to achieve a true conjunction of hearts and minds in his domain and calls him (p. 86) a statesman of the human heart. Brooke (1905, p. 13) admires his deep respect for Athenian law and precedent, his moderation and firmness in judgment, his support, even though he pities Hermia, of paternal authority and calls him a lucid reasoner. Others differ; Baker (1907, p. 185) sees him as severe but attributes the cause to the Elizabethans’ appetite for emotional contrasts, and Leech (1964, p. 104) finds him arbitrary; he gives no sign of recognizing the magnitude of his act. Moses (1978, p. 97) calls him the personification of Athenian law but notes the irony created by his impending wedding, causing a contradiction between his severe treatment of Hermia and his own self-indulgence. Hillman (1991, p. 72) too comments on the inconsistency. Analyzing Theseus’s attitude at greater length is Grene (1980, pp. 46–7), who recognizes a mature Theseus, whose marriage may be taken as confirming him in his settled role as Duke and magistrate. . . . Theseus’s language and bearing in this scene [1.1] distinguish his position clearly from the peremptory and tyrannic will of the father Egeus. Moreover, (p. 47) this is a Duke in whom we may have some confidence, familiar and concerned as he evidently is with the doings of his subjects, and as a lover himself, he is likely to look kindly upon the needs of the lovers, though as a mature man he will see those needs in perspective. Tennenhouse (1986, p. 74) points out that while both Egeus and the duke have been arbitrary in their exercise of authority, the power of legitimate authority is distinguished from the patriarchal authority by the monarch’s willingness to generously forgive. Turner (1999, p. 101), commenting that Theseus the lawgiver alone . . . can make the judgment and legitimate the marriages, says that his verdict is based not on natural inclination but on reason. What we have here is a model of wise rule, that recognizes the role of nature in human decisions and, when appropriate, validates the hot wax of nature’s process with the inscription of legal and property rights.

His manliness and nobility attract notice. Montgomery (1888, p. 92) gives him high marks: The gentle nature of Oberon has its more material match in the equally gentle nature of Theseus, one of the most imposing and noble characters in Shakespearian drama. See Canning (1903, p. 493). This character indicates the moral maturity of the poet, according to ten Brink (1893; tr. 1895, p. 78), because of his manly character, his delicacy of feeling, and his broad humanity. Others who pay tribute to his manliness or greatness are Furnivall (ed. 1908, p. viii), who labels him a true gentleman; Herford (1912, p. 31), to whom he represents the finest breed and the largest mould, genial and urbane, with a hero’s amused indulgence for the weak, and a man of the world’s discernment of spirits; Winchester (1922, p. 125), who considers him strong but well-balanced, self-controlled; Wolff (1907; 1926, 1:340), who calls him a strong man of action able to resist the temptations of passion (Ger.); Aronstein (1929, p. 116) (Ger.); Neilson & Hill (ed. 1942, p. 89); Knight (1944, p. 41); Tillyard (1946, p. 227), who calls Theseus Shakespeare’s first picture of the true king.

Among those who extol his wisdom is Verplanck (ed. 1845; 1847, 2:7), who admires the beautiful spirit of philosophical thought with which Theseus is filled—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. Knight (1932, p. 142) praises Theseus’s solid common sense and kind worldly wisdom and his sanity, adding in 1933 (pp. 61, 169) that he is a man in whom discords are resolved. To Marx (1940, p. 139) he is the matter-of-fact person to whom reason is supreme, but Marx notes that he is not out of place in the play, for he mentions fairy time [2146], he concedes that this palpable-gross play hath well beguiled the heavy gait of night [2149–50], and promises further celebration for a fortnight. Willson (1975, pp. 27–8) considers his the only sane voice in the midst of all this comic madness . . . , [28] a condition which befits his station in the plot and his own marriage status. . . . No courtly lover he, Theseus remains a cool and mature commentator on the realities of love, recognizing at the same time that marriage must be attended with a certain amount of revelry, pomp and circumstance. His faculties, in other words, are balanced. By the end of the play, he explains (Enframing Style, 1992, p. 43), Theseus . . . has assumed the roles of husband, father, and ruler, exemplifying as he does the model of flexibility or sensibility for such identities that Shakespeare appears to be promoting in the closes of the early comedies. Actor Alan Howard (qtd. in Loney, 1974, p. 332) found that Theseus is such a wise, experienced, full person—full of understanding—that it’s very difficult not to make him condescending and curt.

Theseus is sometimes regarded as Shakespeare’s mouthpiece. He is the author’s interpreter, according to Bodenstedt (1874, p. 141) (Ger.). Concurring are Montgomery (1888, p. 98), Rolfe (1889, p. 281), Winter (1892, p. 180), Hense (1851, p. 36), Wedgwood (1890, p. 585). Biswas (1971, pp. 48–9) claims that in this play first emerges the Shakespearian attitude to comedy. The character of Theseus is important to us, for he sets the tone of the play and gives its different strands a unity of spirit which is always more important to Shakespeare than mere structural unity. He explains that (p. 49) it is only when the extravagance of the lovers and the absurd ineptitude of the mechanicals are judged in the context of Theseus’ breadth of humanity and tolerance that we realise the true significance of Shakespearian comedy. So the role of Theseus is vital to [MND]; alternatively, the play minus Theseus would be a wild dream without any coherent meaning. Quennell (1963, p. 173) imagines that Sh. shares Theseus’s roughly patronizing air toward the mechanicals and their efforts.

Several people have thought Theseus only a spectator, or aloof, or simply relief from the frenzy of other characters. Lloyd (in Singer, ed., 1856, p. 433) regards him as little more than . . . the relief of stateliness to the vivacious scene. To Wigston (1884, p. 310) he seems . . . an impassive spectator, as he does to Zesmer (1976, p. 108) and Sen Gupta (1950, p. 121), who nevertheless sees him as pivotal, while Mincoff (1961, p. 20) calls him a chorus figure expounding objective values. Purdom (1963, p. 92), calling Theseus the protagonist, points out that he does nothing more than open and close the play. He does not have even a comic problem, and does not project himself into the action of the play. He cares only about his own marriage; all else is a matter of mere duty. Brown (1964, p. 90) imagines him a little apart from the action and commenting upon it wisely, magnanimously, sympathetically. Alexander (1964, p. 135) considers him above the strife and exempt from the accidents to which lesser mortals are subject and (1939, p. 109) an admirable point of repose amidst the vivacities of the composition.

Roffe (1851, pp. 27–9) is the first of many to comment on Theseus’s skepticism. He singles out the response to Hippolyta’s Tis strange, my Theseus, that these Lovers speak of [1793]. (P. 28): He . . . replies, paying no attention . . . to the fact that she is speaking from the testimony of four persons, a very artful stroke, on the part of the Author, at the Skeptics. To her (p. 29) incontrovertible speech he makes no reply. See Wedgwood (1890, pp. 583–4). According to Chesterton (1904, p. 623) Theseus, the incarnation of a happy and generous rationalism, has a reverent and sympathetic scepticism that all these fairies and spells are themselves but the emanations, the unconscious masterpieces, of man himself. Similarly Weilgart (1952, p. 214), Evans (ed. 1967, p. 40). As Harbage (1952, p. 147) observes, Theseus, who is one of Shakespeare’s most imposing and intelligent characters, argues convincingly against the existence of fairies in a play that teems with them. Also commenting on this irony are Doran (ed. 1959, p. 18) and Dent (1964, p. 124), while Young (1978, pp. 154–5) notices the irony that envelops Theseus . . . when he speaks condescendingly of the poetic creativity that gives him his very being and meaning. McKenzie (1964, p. 46) asserts that Theseus is a doubting Thomas, a disbeliever who cannot accept the world of illusion which is the play any more than he can accept the lovers’ story. . . . Yet we, the other audience, know him to be wrong. . . . Our own doubts, projected in Theseus, have been so undercut by the action of the play and the evidence of our eyes that we in our real world believe a truth where Theseus in his imaginary world does not. In our actual experience in the theatre therefore we are given insight into a truth that lies beyond Theseus. Kernodle (1973, p. 124) contends that Sh. shows us a scientific man, one who believes only what he can know objectively and is sceptical of imagination and illusion.

Leggatt (1974, p. 101) points out that the rational sceptic has forgotten his own past, losing clarity of vision in one respect as [he has] gained it in another, Fender (1968, p. 26) that his rationality fits him for guiding the affairs of men in the world, although it restricts his view of romantic love, of poetry, or of anything which is at least partly the product of the imagination. Snodgrass (1975, p. 237) observes that although Theseus seems very much in control he is, in fact, completely dependent on unrecognized forces. His ultrarationalism is parodied and paralleled by the literalism of the mechanics, French thinks (1981, p. 99), and Warren (1983, p. 43) seems amused that in one of the play’s most inspired moments, the fairies confound his scepticism about their existence by invading his own palace in order to bless it. Horn (1986, pp. 67–8) argues that Theseus’s own reason trips him up and undercuts him as an epitome of reason. Theseus’s explanation in Act 4 [1653–5] of the lovers’ presence in the woods is wrong although he is altogether certain he is speaking the truth. Horn cites also his rejection of the lovers’ story [1794 ff.] and his (p. 68) derisive tone of voice in declaring it almost fairy time (2146) which mock[s] the lovers for their belief in their own story and for their talk of possible fairy intervention. In each case he is wrong. Barkan (1986, p. 252) notes Theseus’s dismissal of imagination and says the joke is finally upon Theseus, of course: he is himself both ancient (as a figure of classical myth) and antic (as a player); he is also a creature of someone else’s imagination. Leggatt (1988, pp. 26–7) argues that the sceptical voice, destructive in [LLL], touches [MND] very lightly. Theseus mocks lovers, but he is a lover himself. He disbelieves the [27] story of the wood, but we have seen it with our own eyes, and he himself has had an affair with Titania. He mocks artificial fables and the dreams of poets; but he is an antique fable himself, and as a character in a play he owes his very existence to a poet. Not only is scepticism turned against itself; it becomes the occasion for belief. Calderwood’s point (1971, p. 127) is that Theseus places his own rational construction on what it is he confirms [at the end of Act 4]. There is no room in that construction for dream or drama, let alone fairy kings and their devious doings, and yet it is by the route of dream, drama, and fairy that the lovers make their way into Theseus’s good graces and Athens’s social order. On the other hand, Mincoff (1961, p. 21) insists that Theseus’ opinion [about the events of the night in the woods] cannot be dismissed out of hand; Shakespeare actually bears him out in the title of his play. And even if Theseus is wrong in this special case, he is right in the abstract; love is a very irrational, heady affair.

Green (1933, p. 29) realizes that Sh. saw in Theseus imaginative limitations, as men of the world are limited. These limitations have been called the realism of an English and an Elizabethan mind . . . , the temper of a landed gentry, by Charlton (1933, p. 64), an essentially English brand of pragmatism by Hall (1969, K7). Agreeing are Fender (1968, pp. 10, 26), who also says he (p.10) seems so coolly certain that he is right; yet we know he is wrong; Homan (1969, p. 73); Martz (1971, p. 75); Jochums (1970, p. 21), who thinks he proves the validity of Puck’s . . . Lord, what fools these mortals be [1139]. Barton (in Evans, ed. 1974, p. 219) calls him a wise leader and a good man, but, she adds, Shakespeare makes it plain that there are other, important areas of human experience with which he is incompetent to deal, and Homan (1981, p. 81) argues that the very quality that makes him such an effective ruler, inhibits him from seeing the larger world of which Athens forms merely the small center, only the beginning. Stretching beyond the palace is Oberon’s vast domain. See Griffin (1976, p. 5), who thinks him aware of his limitation.

Theseus as lover elicits comment, some of it ambiguous because of his own equivocal attitude toward love. Herford (ed. 1899, 1:xvi, 303) describes a Prospero of still unclouded fortunes, sitting, not raptly contemplative at his daughter’s wedding-revels, but urbanely jocund at his own, for (p. 303) his union with Hippolyta marks his final emergence from the barbarisms and infidelities of his youth into mature humanity and loyal love. Eichhoff (1903, 2:108) regards him as the play’s representative of true love who, rather than writing sugar-sweet love sonnets, fought Hippolyta and did her injustice but nevertheless won her confidence and love. Because he has conquered himself as well as Hippolyta, their love will endure (Ger.). Nag ([1925], pp. 2, 9), although he considers the lover Theseus remote from our age and sympathy, says he (p. 9) knows more of the human heart [than Egeus] and is not too old to have some measure of sympathy with love’s young dream. Mincoff (1961, p. 20) contends that love is for Theseus the fitting crown of his achievements, . . . and given the structural position of Theseus in the play, I think we must take his pronouncements on love as more than subjective, dramatic opinions. Harbage (1963; 1967, p. 107) calls him a true lover, and to Brown (1964, p. 90) he represent[s] a love in which mind and body are given their full rights. Stressing his self-control, Griffin (1976, p. 5) remarks that his love for Hippolyta is deep, but disciplined; it is cool rather than ardent, according to Farrell (1975, p. 100), and implicitly he views emotions as insubstantial: illusions born of airy nothing [1808]. Hart (1980, pp. 11, 15) thinks he shares a touch of the madness of lovers in his own person, although he (p. 15) would encourage or permit love only if it goes hand in hand with law and reason and judgment; the laws of love must conform to the laws of society and custom or be nullified. Greer (1981, p. 29) calls the marriage a marriage between equals who come to respect each other in that most traditional of ways—by fighting each other. In contrast, Erlich (1982, p. 74) concludes that Theseus governs prudently, yet is afflicted with love’s madness. Foss (1932, p. 124) considers him a gay sensualist, and he is, according to Moisan (1987, p. 44), as much venerean as venatic. See Muir (1972, p. 49) and Lechay (1981, pp. 14–15), who sees his psychic stability as root[ed] in . . . libidinal chaos.

Others are unsympathetic to Theseus the lover. Although Iyengar (1964, p. 169) thinks that his marriage . . . is dictated as much by love as by policy, for his heart is warm even as his intellect is clear, and although Fulton (1976, p. 289) senses not a trace of tension in the royal union about to take place, Harrison (1927, p. 26) regards him as almost jaded, having reached the period in life when he wants to settle down; he is too old for romantic nonsense. His marriage was not a love match, he adds (ed. 1948, p. 273). Cutts (1968, pp. 49–50) insists that Hippolyta is really his latest conquest, and his attitude toward her is [50] that of a conqueror on equal military terms . . . , not that of a lover over feminine weakness. Felheim (1980, pp. 80–81) claims that neither in legend nor in [MND], is [Theseus] the epitome of romantic love, (p. 81) even on his wedding night. Goldstein (1973, p. 179) likens his past and his conflicts to Oberon’s; both have conquered, have raped, and are uncertain of the love of their beloveds, and their wish to be assured the love of their brides for them is primary. Huston (1973, pp. 217–8) notes that Theseus begins 1.1 as a lover and ends it as a tyrant. (P. 218): What is primarily emphasized by Theseus’s change of part here is . . . that in this dramatic world love and tyranny are forces not separate and sharply delimited but related and curiously conjoined. Rogers (1998, pp. 117–18), however, thinks that the ruler of Athens and conqueror of the Amazons subjugates himself to the woman he desires. In taking her as his wife and, henceforth, laying [118] down his sword, the weapon which gave him power and authority over her, Theseus surrenders himself to Hippolyta. By entering into a marriage with the duke, Hippolyta gains a new source of power as queen of another realm.

Graham (1987, p. 36) contrasts the opening exchanges of Theseus and Hippolyta, so sonorous, dignified, and formally balanced, . . . [and] their love[,] . . . ceremonious, assured, and socialized with the aftermath of Egeus’s entrance, when Theseus exhibits the diametric opposites of these categories and values, and thereby begins to create the sense of confusion that awaits all quick bright things [159]. Theseus’s authority is quickly seen to be alarmingly close to Egeus’s paternal authoritarianism, the just man and the mere man of law dangerously allied. . . . And far from remaining an emblem of free rationality and the golden mean [he] is himself trapped and diminished by the conventional social ordinances which the practical reason tends to sustain. Homan (1990, pp. 22–3) finds him unresponsive to Hippolyta and to Lysander, and Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 51–3) adds that Theseus exercises male power over both Hippolyta and Hermia and expresses (p. 53) antagonism towards virginity, a state that denies male power. Schwarz (2000, p. 224), too, concentrates on his attitude toward women; for Theseus, the forceful imposition of hierarchy emphasizes the disruptive possibilities it works to suppress. The argument that puts men in power is not prophylactic but defensive, as defensive as Theseus’s heroic conquest. Women must be instructed and installed in their positions by men who must constantly assert control, and in the invention of gender violence and desire collide. Bate (1993, pp. 136–7) distrusts a character such as Theseus who, as any half-way educated person in the Renaissance could tell you, was a notorious rapist. . . . The [137] well-known tenth letter of the Heroides, Ariadne’s lament, would have predisposed many a listener against any claim made by Theseus. (Similarly Slights [1993, p. 111].) Bate finds another unattractive characteristic, the duke’s attitude toward the interlude; partly because of the delinquencies of Theseus . . . , the theatre audience is not encouraged to patronize the performers of Pyramus and Thisbe quite so much as the well-born characters on stage do. Deploring his condescension is Skura (1993, p. 32), who says that Theseus most appreciates players when they are tongue-tied [1901], so overcome with love [1901] and fearful duty [1898] that they forget their lines; then all the credit goes to him and not to them. Hyland (1996, p. 149) thinks it ironic, given his history, that Theseus should be the play’s figure of authority. His central role does not mean that the audience should unquestioningly accept his point of view, . . . for . . . the play exposes the complacency of aristocratic culture and values. . . . His condescension towards the mechanicals has far less of human warmth and generosity in it than do their tongue-tied [1901] offerings. Stavig (1995, p. 11) says that Theseus may have something to learn about the basis of wise government.

Several critics who are dubious about Theseus at the outset of the play detect significant changes which deepen and enrich his character. Herford (ed. 1899, 1:301, 303), deeming him a great creation, elaborates: (p. 303) Theseus is neither the ruthless soldier of Chaucer nor the heroic Don Juan of Plutarch, but a spirit of the finest temper and the noblest breed who has played both these parts and put them definitely by. Foster (1975, pp. 196, 200) chooses his overruling of Egeus as demonstrating the measure of his own growth. He looks at Theseus’s adventures as (p. 200) one of the finest political science courses ever invented. Sasaki (1986, pp. 77, 90) sees clearly from 452–5 that Theseus, at least before the play begins, is no symbol of reason and order, as is ordinarily supposed, but an amorous and lascivious wanderer from one woman to another. By the end of the play he (p. 90) becomes a symbolic figure of fertility and concord.

Focusing on the end of Act 4, Bryant (1986, p. 76) notices that Theseus, having found love himself, sees the discovery of love reflected in the sleeping faces of the young people before him and, perhaps prompted by the image of peace they present, magnanimously reverses himself on the spot. . . .

Theseus’s sudden action, betokening humility and charity, betokens also a larger change of heart, for his newly displayed virtues continue in Act V. One notes his forbearance with Hippolyta when she contradicts him on the subject of poetry, his charitable treatment of the simple mechanics and their absurd play, and his gentle concern for the young people he has just taken under his care. Theseus the conqueror and philanderer has grown in stature in the course of the play, it would seem. . . . The miraculous transformations of Puck’s doing are nothing to compare with what has taken place in the heart of this mature ruler, where love is no longer idle but active and growing in wisdom and stature as well as in beauty. Similarly Taylor (2004, Ovid’s Myths, p. 61). Homan (1998, p. 289) notes that Theseus, the posture of male superiority through most of the play, (p. 289) has . . . mellowed somewhat by the end. Yoshioka (1999, p. 110) contends that Theseus’ metamorphosis from a judge at the beginning into a visionary aficionado of art at the end embodies a paradigm of ideal monarchs by straddling the polarities of the visible and the invisible.

Since mid-20th c., a number of scholars have concentrated on the classical knowledge at least some in Sh.’s audience would have brought to the theater as a context for their understanding of the play and of Theseus in particular. Pogson (1950, pp. 70–71) contends that Theseus, the legendary Founder of Athens, stands for the wise Ruler, directing affairs and dispensing justice and advice as the father of his people. Having slain the Minotaur, the lower nature of Man, and escaped the labyrinth, the illusory world in which men dwell for the most part, he (p. 71) represent[s] the ideal and his Marriage Feast is an ideal union, the union which must take place before a man can come into his true development. Theseus can now become the Lawgiver and an example to others in the play and to the audience. Pearson (1974, pp. 277–98) casts doubt on that and other flattering readings, having searched for the contemporary image of Theseus in works readily available to Elizabethans. And the overwhelming stress such sources place on his unnatural, unkinde behavior more nearly fits the character Shakespeare portrayed than do the favorable views of many of the critics. Pearson thinks that Sh. (p. 280) included in his drama a deliberate reminder of Theseus’ traditional infidelity and expected his audience to incorporate that image into their response to the play along with the (p. 285) more idealized portraits of Theseus. His (p. 292) unnatural behavior and ingratitude appear in a careful reading of 4–9, usually viewed as establishing a frame of order against which the disorder of young love can be projected. She argues that desires in Shakespeare’s day usually meant lust, and ingratitude and unnaturalness, avarice and prodigality show in his image of the dowager resented for claiming her due. He has no charitable sympathy for the young lovers and flouts justice by failing to question Demetrius [120–23]. There is irony in Shakespeare’s assignment as Theseus’ (p. 295) guardian genius, Titania, who is responsible for his past infidelities and who therefore suggests future ones. The fairy blessing of the bridal beds is the final irony, for the audience would recognize that (p. 296) the issue [2189] of that blessed [2188] bride bed was Hippolytus, the son whom . . . Theseus’ later wife Phaedra unjustly accused of ravishing her, so that Theseus unjustly brought about his own son’s death.

Foster (1975, pp. 200–5) explains: An intellectual master he was, but legend shows another side of him too: a forgetfulness of what we might call human values, a lack of warmth or concern for Ariadne and for his father. (P. 201): We find [Sh.’s] Theseus with the same inattention to love and the imagination in his attitude toward Hippolyta and Hermia. As Act 5 begins, Theseus (p. 203) has not significantly advanced . . . into the world of love and the imagination, from tyrant to lover. But after Philostrate has engineered the choice of Pyr. (see Foster below, here), and after Theseus defends his choice [1879–1902], showing himself perhaps (p. 204) a more imaginative and kindly man than [Hippolyta] had suspected, he finally signals that (p. 205) he has indeed changed and entered the world of the imagination when he says The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them [2015–16]. Calderwood (1991, pp. 427–9) claims that Egeus suggests Theseus’s father Aegeus. (P. 428): The association is reinforced by the fact that in upholding the law Theseus bows to the will of a man who represents, quite literally, le nom du père. Also, the law Theseus cannot abrogate is the ancient privilege of Athens [49], a law he inherits from his father’s reign, as he inherited it from his, and so on. The monarch Theseus is as ruled by patriarchy as his subjects. But Theseus abandons his insistence on the law and when Theseus issues his judgment, Egeus turns abruptly silent, exits shortly thereafter, and disappears from the play. Theseus frees himself from patriarchal authority as in repudiat[ing] the law he shows it as a self-serving construction of patriarchal culture. He comes to this view when he is cast . . . in the role of Oberon during the middle of the play when, in his private version of a midsummer night’s dream, . . . [he] come[s] to terms with his marital anxieties and his tendencies toward [429] phallocratic tyranny—the Theseus who won Hippolyta’s love doing her injuries. Thus, as Egeus . . . seeks to humiliate Hermia by force of law, so Oberon humiliates Titania by force of love-in-idleness. When Titania capitulates, Oberon recants. If the parallels hold, perhaps we can assume that authoritarian excess has been purged not only from fairyland but also from Theseus and Athens.

Several of Theseus’s speeches have elicited extensive comment. In their responses to Theseus’s several remarks on the histrionic efforts of the mechanicals (5.1), most of the critics praise his humanity, many regarding him in these moments as Sh.’s mouthpiece. A number excuse his lack of deep appreciation by explaining that his is an active, not a contemplative nature; a few regard him as making the best of a less than satisfactory means of passing the time away. In accepting the play of the mechanicals, Theseus says For never anything can be amiss . . . [1879–80, 1887 ff.], a Reflection . . . on the Diversion offer’d by the Clowns that Gildon (in Rowe ed. 1710, 7:318) considers just, Tyrrell (ed. 1850, 1:384) and Winter (1892, p. 181) princely, Furnivall (ed. 1877, p. xxvi) and Brereton (1880, p. 110) gentlemanly. Gentleman (ed. 1774, 8:192–3 n.) thinks he exhibits humility in receiving the loyalty of the lowly and in considering their intentions important. Focusing on the difference in Theseus’s response to the play from that of the lovers, Minto (1885, p. 299) points out that Theseus is saved from the vulgar littleness of seeking amusement in the blunders of men anxious to do him service, by being made to express a greater pleasure in the modesty of fearful duty [1898] than in the rattling tongue of saucy and audacious eloquence. Woodberry (in Lee, ed. 1907, 6:xx–xxi) considers it a triumph of courtesy to detect grace in halting words and simple virtue in the awkward service of even the coarse-handed and rude-minded craftsmen of Athens turned poet and player in their lowest [xxi] estate for his sake. Theseus insists on the value of sincerity according to Dobbs (1948, p. 24), and Stauffer (1949; 1966, p. 52) speaks of the spacious thought of the close in which Theseus opens love into wider panoramas of mortal brotherhood. It becomes the gift, man to man, of good intentions. Every act of good will is an offering of love, to be received in the spirit in which it is tendered. For Bryant (1964, p. 8) warrior Theseus, for all the conventionality of his mind and the triteness of his comments about poetry, shines brightest here. The benignity of Theseus . . . establish[es] its absolute spiritual hegemony with these lines, according to McFarland (1972, p. 91).

Allen (1967, p. 112) sees a pragmatic motive in Theseus’s attitude. He is well aware that a ruler’s most valuable asset is the loyal affection of his subjects; the gift of allegiance is not to be scorned because the donors are clownish and ignorant. Beiner (1985, p. 108) is harder on him: Theseus, who dismisses imagination in principle and is only willing to exercise good will as a ruler accepting homage from his subjects and not as a spectator to a play, is not a discriminating and perceptive critic. The best and the worst in the theatre are practically alike in his opinion, and Theseus does not expect to gain insights from any play. Scott (1977, p. 110) calls him patronizing, and Nemerov (1956, pp. 637–8) notes Sh.’s doubt about the Duke and his attitude, which shifts between a serious wisdom in the allegory—the best [638] in this kind are but shadows [2015]—and an aristocratic or courtly disdain for art, not bad art only but all art, seriously expressed in the opening speech [1794 ff.], more brutally in the speech about the great clerks [1890], and carried out in his wit at the players’ expense.

Others stress the fun and think it harmless. Tyrrell (ed. 1850, 1:384–5) observes that Theseus laughs heartily at the blunders of Bottom and his companions, but they meet with no censure from [385] him, for he reasons that what poor inability would perform were it capable, should by the truly noble nature be accepted as though it had been done. After the refined courtesy and consideration of his welcome, Rolfe (1889, pp. 280–81) says, Theseus (p. 281) makes gentle fun of the poor stuff, but not in a manner than can hurt the thick-skinned performers; and at the close he tells them that their tragedy has been very notably discharged [2143]. Harbage (1947; 1961, pp. 180–1) considers 1879–89 perfect but acknowledges that this right royal pair refuse to let their kindness spoil their sport—or ours. They, too, [181] gibe the rustic actors. Bottom, however, sagely makes replies; and somehow the one who turns a weaver’s beam and the one who wields a scepter are drawn by their maker into a single communion. Leech (1964, p. 104) comments that Theseus may be tolerant and charitable, but the charity is quickly qualified, for he will get his fun from the maladroitness of simple duty, . . . and he is the leader of his court in the mocking of the performance. Similarly Anderson (1987, p. 55).

Among those who think Theseus merely beguiling the time are some who take him to task for subjecting the mechanicals to disparagement. Menon (1938, p. 13) points out that Theseus and his friends are not in the mood to lose themselves in a story. Theseus is fully conscious that he is a great conqueror obliging the ridiculous craftsmen by witnessing their performance. Besides, the play is only a diversion designed to fill up the short interval between supper and a dance on the wedding day. . . . Pyramus is chosen expressly because it is reported to be nonsense. . . . Theseus and his friends, expecting to find the play nonsense, make it so. Homan (1969, p. 80) places Theseus among those for whom art is mere bedside reading to induce sleep.

A few critics claim that the arts are not congenial to Theseus’s temperament. Boas (1896, pp. 184, 189), for example, thinks his attitude ambivalent; he is gracious and checks . . . the petulant criticism of Hippolyta, but it is with a courteous double-entendre that he tells the mechanicals that their play has been very notably discharged [2143]. As with other men of action in Sh., even the best plays are to him but shadows [2015], and in his attitude toward the artisans’ props he exhibits (p. 189) the hypercriticism of the Philistine. Madden (1897, p. 186) thinks neither husband nor wife amused; all this was mere tedious folly, necessary to be endured by persons of quality, and mitigated in some degree by the jests and merriment in which they were at liberty to indulge at the expense of the actors. De Selincourt (1911, p. 6) interprets Theseus’s remarks on the best in this kind [2015–16] to mean that since art at its best was only make-believe, what did it matter how absurd it was? Mendilow & Shalvi (1967, p. 86) make a similar point. Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 133) notes that as a man of action rather than of intellect or passion, he is a little contemptuous of the fine frenzy of the poet, but ready like a courteous prince to endure the tedious brief scene [1853] offered by his subjects, while Edwards (1968, p. 53) contends that Theseus can afford to be tolerant, because he is Baconian; he does not expect more of a play than an amusement to pass the time . . . What gives credence to the play is imagination; and imagination is suspect. . . . Theseus is not to be deceived into believing in art, and he is not much distressed by the patent foolishness of what Bottom and his friends present.

Theseus’ assertion that The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them [2015–16] likewise provokes praise and blame. Von Friesen (1875, 2:282) praises Theseus for searching for the intentions of the artisans (Ger.), and Wolff (1907; 1926, 1:341) claims the remarks show that Theseus is not without imagination(Ger.). Masefield (1954, p. 58) is grateful, after the outrageous comments of the audience, for some royal recognition by Theseus of the true intent of the little company. Mebane (1982, pp. 266–7) calls Theseus sophisticated and charitable when it comes to the rustics’ dramatic fiction. He graciously amends the faults of the [267] play with his own imagination, and he recognizes (with much greater ease than the players themselves) that literal realism is not always possible in the theater. Stockard (1997, p. 14) says that with a gesture that ennobles both himself and the players, Theseus accepts their intent and so finds the best in their foolishness. See Mendilow & Shalvi (1967, p. 87), who link the remark with the chorus in H5 (Prol. 23 [24]).

Some critics flatly refuse to credit Theseus with imaginative amendment, while others debate the exact meaning of his words. Theseus’s first impulse was to laugh the play out of court, according to Thaler (1947, p. 24). Jameson (1967, pp. 140–41) accuses the audience of little better than muted catcalls and Theseus of failing to live up to his own words. See Hunt (1992, pp. 228–9). Faas (1986, pp. 68–9) is puzzled, given Theseus’s earlier remarks, that Sh. makes Theseus defend the actors’ efforts with a phrase which appropriately counts among the poet’s most famous: [quotes 2015–16]. The words also stand out in other ways. For one, they seem to be out of character when we consider Theseus’ speech, earlier in the same scene, mocking lunatic, lover, and [69] poet. . . . They are also somewhat out of line with Theseus’ consistent mockery during the performance. There is reason to claim, then, that Shakespeare is using the Duke to make a major statement about his art.

Only a few critics are noncommital in mentioning the lunatic-lover-poet speech and the light it throws on Theseus’s character. Sherman (1919, p. 143) exclaims, Nowhere else does Shakespeare exalt a character through endowments of thought and speech as he exalts Theseus now. . . . This, if not the language of the gods, is couched and phrased in the dialect at least of demigods.

Because the speech is frequently taken as a condemnation of love and poetry as fantasy, as worthless, and sometimes as a description of wishful thinking, by far the greatest number of critics contend that this statement belongs to a character patently unable to understand the creative imagination, poetry, or drama; they deny that Theseus is Sh.’s spokesman except to a very limited and partial extent. One group follows Bundy (1924, p. 536), who says that Theseus presents the unimaginative man’s view of poetry and uses the language of contemporary psychology in contrasting imagination (apprehension, warm) and reason (comprehension, cold). Sprague (1935, p. 242) regards the lines as an expression of sturdy incredulity, Horwood (ed. 1939, pp. 151 n., 157 n.) as indication of both his limitations and his understanding. The writing is masterly; the poet is thoroughly at his ease while he laughs at his own profession and genius and causes Theseus to avow disbelief in what has just happened. If Theseus is able to throw doubt on the queer adventures of the night, they in their turn are able to impugn his philosophy. Shakespeare was far from allowing common sense to have all its own way. The tolerance of the trained statesman is based upon a profound contempt for the activities of the artist. Also noting his indifference to or suspicion of the arts and the imagination are Alexander (1939, p. 109); Hunter (1954, p. 105); Kantak (1963, pp. 159–60), who comments that the lines about imagination’s tricks (p. 160) introduce a deflation that is more eloquent than Theseus’s rhetoric. It is as if to say, surely, the Theseus’s of the world are not going to have the last word on a matter to which their masculine minds are apt to be a little opaque and un-impressionable!; Spencer (1964, p. 159); Gates (1974, p. 68); Watkins & Lemmon (Sh.’s Playhouse, 1974, p. 119), who add that the mockery of this sceptical Duke, cannot believe in Fairy toys, will recoil, however gently, upon himself; Marshall (1982, p. 556); Mebane (1982, p. 261); Donaldson (1985, p. 33), who judges such blindness . . . related to love’s blindness and the blindness of the other lovers in the play; Horn (1986, pp. 67–9), who thinks that Theseus’s reason betrays him; Sagar (1995, p. 42) who says reason has blinded him; McDonald (ed. 2000, pp. xxxviii–xxix). Frye (Recognition, 1962, p. 236), who calls Theseus, like Yeats, . . . a smiling public man past his first youth, but not, like Yeats, a poet and a critic. Kernodle (1973, pp. 124–5) sees him as a scientific man, one believes only what he can know objectively and is sceptical of imagination and illusion. See Gearin-Tosh (1991, p. 59), who calls him an earth-bound empiricist. Beaurline (1978, p. 101) contends that Theseus is making a good joke that betrays his foolish wisdom, and in a glimmer of thought, his wise folly.

Snider (1874, pp. 181–2) claims that old Theseus was a downright Philister, as the Germans say. It is the prosaic Understanding attempting to criticise Poetry, whose essence is totally outside of its horizon. Theseus [182] will not acknowledge that under this fabulous form may be found the profoundest meaning; it is not his form, and, hence, worthless. De Selincourt (1911, p. 5) agrees that this was no more the view of art taken by the author of Cymbeline, Othello, and King Lear than it was the view of love taken by the creator of Imogen and of Desdemona. It was the view of the Philistine of every age, and Shakespeare took an ironic pleasure in giving him that nationality which stood in the history of the world for all that was cultured and refined. It was the view of the serious, practical man of the world, kindly, tolerant, a good citizen, even up to a point educated, but quite devoid of artistic sensibility, and slightly contemptuous of those had it. Similarly Muir (1973, p. 26), Montrose (1995, pp. 82–3). Garber (1974, pp. 85–6) calls the lines deprecatory. Kernan (1975, From the City, p. 317) thinks it is right for Theseus—the governor of the daylight, rational world of the city—to hold such views, for the city must exclude most of the world that imagination perceives. The flight to the woods was necessary to break the over-restrictive control of laws grown cruel and unnatural, . . . but it is only in Athens . . . that the needs for orderliness can be adjusted to natural impulses to provide a satisfactory human life. To achieve this order and rule of law requires, however, the blanking out of the world perceived by the imagination of lover and poet in favour of a world almost exclusively rational. Girard (1979, pp. 208–9), commenting on Theseus’s disbelief in the lovers’ tales, says he seems to believe that the real question is whether or not to believe in the fairies. . . . Like all [209] rationalists of a certain type, Theseus has a marvelous capacity for simplifying the issues and displacing a debate toward his favorite stomping ground. Much of what he says is true, of course; but it is beside the point. To believe or not to believe, that is not the question; and, by trumpeting his fatuous skepticism, Theseus dispenses himself from looking at the remarkable pattern of the midsummer night and the disturbing clues it may contain concerning the nature of all social beliefs, including his own. . . . This neat operation frees respectable men of all responsibility for whatever tricks, past, present, and future, their own desires and mimetic violence might play on them, thus perfectly duplicating the primary genesis of myth.

Lull (1998, pp. 241, 245–6, 251–2) uses the different theories about mislineation in Act 5 to explain variations in interpretations of the duke. Some textual critics think of Sh. as exercis[ing] intentional control over all aspects of his work. Others think of him as the cultural collective, whose texts reveal such influences as social construction, multiple authorship, and even pure accident. The former group finds development in the Duke and in his relationship with Hippolyta in the final act while a reading derived from the collectivist approach . . . discovers both a more obtuse Duke and a somewhat more pessimistic ending for the play. Lull elaborates: (p. 245) If we believe that these passages are revisions, we can also see in them an authorial intelligence working to fill out the character of Theseus, rendering more plausible the Duke’s rather rapid shift from rationalist to imaginationist. Under his new wife’s subtle but persistent influence, Theseus becomes conscious first of the pressing importance of the irrational in his private life, then of some of the public uses of imagination in an Athenian community grounded on courtesy and reason. Also, the revised imagination speech, just by being better verse than the original, makes Theseus celebrate poetry while trying to denounce it. Most of the other passages mislined in Q1 show the Duke gradually coming around to Hippolyta’s point of view. In the next added passage, for example, Theseus asks What revels are in hand? Is there no play / To ease the anguish of a torturing hour? [1831–2]. Here he admits that he is as tormented by desire as any of the lovers whose perceptions he has just dismissed. In the theoretical original, he merely asks how to beguile / The lazy time with entertainment [Q/TLN 1776–7].

Just after the Duke confesses his sexual impatience—a motif carried over from his early appearances in the play—a further revision shows him considering how to reconcile opposites, making concord of this discord [1857]. . . . As he wonders aloud how to [246] reconcile the oxymora of the title, perhaps Theseus also suspects an analogy to his own paradoxical position as both rationalist ruler and man in love. Mislineations in the conversation with Philostrate reveal small shifts in Theseus’s thinking as he moves from a repudiation of imagination to a recognition of its everyday usefulness in his courtly world. The linkages of Philostrate’s nothing [1875], Theseus’s airy nothing [1808], and the nothings of 1885–6 mark the three stages of Theseus’s change as he shifts from his earlier trivializing of airy nothing to a sense that there may be concord in discord, and at last to Hippolyta’s position that minds transfigured together can transform nothing into reality. From the point of view of textual collectivism, the mislineation is (p. 251) deranged verse which returns twice to regularity, once in the middle of the passage and once at the end. The regularity makes us notice the extrametrical departures. Plato in the Ion condemns poets because they speak only through inspiration rather than by rules of art. So Theseus acknowledges the power of the poet to give shape to ayery nothing, but links such inspiration with delusions of devils, wish fulfillment, and a bush suppos’d a Beare [1813]. Yet his own lines intermittently ignore the rules of art, and when they return one last time to regularity at the end, as Walter de la Mare says, the effect is bathetic, an abysmal descent. Perhaps the variations in verse quality here signify a clash between the rules and the roots of art, concepts that remain as unreconciled for Theseus as for Plato. Lull adds that Hippolyta . . . harkens to the real poetry of Theseus’s lines . . . and tactfully suggest[s] that there is more regularity than the Duke thinks both in the poet’s eye [1804] and in the lovers’ dream. . . . If the quarto lineations are taken as correct, however, they suggest that Theseus never does get Hippolyta’s point. Passages that imply character development when emphasized by the revision hypothesis signify character stagnation when taken as meaningful mislineations. [252] Like Bottom and Quince, Theseus becomes a language-joke, a vehicle through which someone else can perceive meanings that remain hidden from the speaker.

Mislineation noticed by Pollard, interpreted by Wilson (ed. 1924), Muir (1973, pp. 25–6), McDonald (ed. 2000, pp. xlix–l), Berryman (1999, p. 90) who accepts Wilson, Lull, Brown (ed. 1996). See here.

For further comment on this speech, see n. 1794.

Egeus

Minor though he is, Egeus has attracted comment, much of it praising his characterization. Gildon (in Rowe ed., 1710, 7:316) is the first of a number of people who think the character of Egeus well-portrayed. The first Scene of the Complaint of Egeus to Theseus is very pretty, the Obstinacy of a peevish old Father, who will dispose of his Daughter without Regard to her Inclinations, is well express’d, and the Manner of his representing how Lysander had rob’d her of her Affections is extreamly agreeable to that Character. So Smeaton (1911, p. 187). Gentleman (ed. 1774, 8:140 n.) found him particularly convincing in describing Lysander’s wooing. Oechelhäuser (1885, 2:285) says Theseus mocks the blustering father, and at the end of the play Egeus is brushed off (Ger.). See also Herbert (1966, p. 70), Bonazza (1966, p. 122). Holland (Theseus’ Shadows, 1994, pp. 145–9) associates Egeus with (p. 146) his antique fables—(p. 145) Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale [2837–8, here], Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 7 [ll. 402 ff., Loeb ed.], and the story of Aegeus in Plutarch [Life of Theseus, marginal note, p. 2; see here] in all of which he is the father of Theseus. (P. 146): The mythography of Theseus contains a surprising number of family murders. . . . Theseus, directly responsible for the murder of Hippolytus, was also indirectly the cause of his own father’s death. . . . Egeus, even more significantly for [MND], was nearly responsible for the death of his son. . . . The power of the parent over life and death is exerted here only in ignorance and is transformed into joy when the child is recognized. . . . Egeus in [MND] of course knows perfectly well who his child is [147] and is still willing to have his daughter killed simply for going against his wishes and consent, thwarting him. Significantly, it is not Egeus who mentions another possibility: Either to die the death, or to abjure / For ever the society of men [74–75], becoming a nun. . . . It is worth considering whether Egeus knows of this other avenue and has deliberately suppressed it as part of his expression of complete paternal power or whether Theseus’ announcement is news to him. In Act 4 he (p. 148) is no less antagonistic, no less violent, the rhythms of his anger as breathless and impatient in their characteristic repetitions. In Q that is the end of Egeus; in F we witness (p. 149) his incorporation in Athenian society at the end of the play. But the text does not prescribe his attitude. . . .

Like it or not, Egeus has to accept that his will has been overborne, that the power of the father has limits, that his demands are not compatible either with the operation of ducal power in Theseus, whimsical though that might appear to be, or with the operation of the ending of comedy. Egeus, Theseus’ father, who chose not to kill his son, becomes Egeus, Hermia’s father, who finds he cannot choose whether to kill his child. It is as if Theseus in [MND] takes over his father’s functions in North and Golding, creating the social recognition of the child, acknowledging the lovers as Egeus there acknowledged him, but also perhaps allowing the marriages almost solely as a pleasing accompaniment to his own. Others associating Egeus with the father of Theseus include Calderwood (1991, pp. 427–8), Orgel (2003, p. 95).

Among those considering Egeus a stock character of the heavy father type whose only function is to precipitate the plot of the young lovers are Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, p. xxx), who note that the subordination of character-development to the requirements of the dramatic design as a whole demands that the angry father, Egeus, bent on frustrating love’s will, shall show no such vigorous signs of personal character as Juliet’s father or Desdemona’s reveals. To Brooke (1905, p. 14) he is hateful, to Riklin (1968, p. 283) a dominant, upright patriarachal consciousness, to Bevington (in Bevington & Craig, ed. 1973, p. 183) irrationally harsh, to Miola (1973–4, p. 27) the rigid unyielding order of the senex iratus, to Hapgood (1988, p. 38) rigidly authoritarian, to Stavig (1995, p. 41) lack[ing] the wisdom that should accompany old age. Similarly Garber (2004, p. 215). Oppen (1999, p. 47) calls him cold, ruthless, indifferent to his daughter’s love for Lysander. Green (1933, p. 24) finds at least . . . something that is prosaic and founded on the real, Robinson (ed. 1941, p. 97) notes his jealousy of his own authority, and Harbage (1963; 1967, p. 106) declares him literal-minded, speaking in flat statements, and nearly all of them made twice. . . . Egeus is a well-meaning man, but a heavy father, the world too much with him. Barnet (ed. 1972, p. 34) claims that although Egeus is the senex, the old father, it is characteristic of Shakespeare to make his borrowings his own. Stock figures like Egeus are transformed almost beyond recognition. See also Jensen (1991, p. 73), who finds him ineffectual, a feckless fussbudget.

Like Porter and Clarke, numbers of critics notice his resemblance to the heavy fathers in other plays. Lloyd (1875, p. 46) compares him to Aegeon (Err.) in position and function in the play; after appearing as a kind of prologue, he disappears until the entanglements are over. He is similar to the Duke of TGV, Capulet, and Brabantio according to Iyengar (1964, p. 167). Rabkin (1967, p. 64) links him with Brabantio in seeing a daughter’s passion as the product of witchcraft. See Aronson (1972, p. 205). Stetner (1973, p. 229) is more specific: Like Silvia’s father, Hermia’s father, the sputtering Egeus . . . , also promotes the cause of a suitor whom his daughter cannot abide. Early in the play he excoriates Lysander . . . :

Turn’d her obedience, which is due to me,

To stubborn harshness. [44–6]

That accusation is a standard one, arising apparently out of the foolish heart of fatherhood. Many a father entertains darkly the wistful notion that since he is his daughter’s god, only magic and spells and other such unnatural trickery could lure his child away from the shrine at his feet. Substantially the same charge made by Egeus against Lysander is made by Simonides against Pericles. The sportive old father of Thaisa is quite content with his prospective son-in-law, but he attacks him nevertheless. After announcing in soliloquy that he commends his daughter’s choice, he suddenly dissembles his approval and accuses the innocent Tyrian prince. . . . It is interesting to note that Egeus’s reference to cunning and Simonides’ reference to bewitch’d are echoed or suggested in Brabantio’s charge against Othello:

She is abus’d, stol’n from me, and corrupted

By spells and medicines. [1.3.60–61 (397–8)]

Not for Brabantio nor for Egeus is the objection sustained by the arbitrating dukes before whom they plead. Farrell (1975, p. 237, n. 10) is interested in Egeus as a forerunner of a type who participates in a pattern which recurs time and again in Shakespeare, with increasingly subtle psychological insight. Cf. . . . old Capulet. . . . More compelling still are the examples of Lear and Brabantio and, in a happier way, Prospero. So think MacCary (1985, p. 143), Edwards (1986, p. 30), Stavig (1995, p. 41).

Egeus’s attitude towards his daughter’s marriage has not escaped censure (as if he were a free agent rather than a creature of the plot). Griffith (1775, p. 16), while condoning Theseus’s speech on filial duties, nevertheless admit[s], 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.

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. So Brinkmann (1964, p. 59) and Taylor (1969, pp. 269–70). Olson (1957, p. 103) is of the opinion that Egeus’ problem is essentially one for the marriage manuals, a question of the right ordinate consent of the parties, but White (1911, pp. 84–5) explains that under Greek and Roman law, the parental power continued not only during the child’s minority, but during its entire life. He concludes that (p. 85) the Poet was right in making the consent of the parent essential to a valid marriage of the child, so Egeus had a right to claim that his consent was essential to the marriage of his daughter.

Probing further in an effort to understand Egeus, Farrell (1975, pp. 107–8) suggests that The quarrel over the changeling sheds light on Egeus. We might usefully regard his tyrannical anger as a means of countering a dread of abandonment aroused by the prospect of losing his child. Like Oberon, he takes obedience to be love, and independence to be rejection. And like the fairy rulers, he tries to use his child (p. 108) for vicarious ends, as if by forcing her submission to a husband demonstrably subservient to him (as Demetrius is), he could secure himself in their relation permanently. Love-making in such an artificial marriage would express not the lovers so much as the old man who created them. Hart (1980, p. 21) thinks that the sanction of the family and the state, the blessing of the law and marriage are necessary prerequisites of true love for [Egeus]. But Dreher (1986, pp. 50, 56–8) finds Egeus possessive and hurt. Daughters suddenly change. Fathers are (p. 56) stunned by the sudden change in their daughters. This irrational metamorphosis pervades [MND], in the symbolism of the magic flower, the transformation [57] wrought by sexual passion: spontaneous, irrational, yes, but undeniable. Girls become women with strange emotions that their fathers cannot accept, emotions that change their lives and leave their grieving fathers far behind them. Egeus (p. 58) is hurt by his daughter’s powerful attraction to Lysander, which he can comprehend only as witchcraft. Hart (1986, p. 20) adds: That Egeus would rather have his daughter dead than successfully rebellious shows the danger of too possessive a love. See also Anderson (1987, p. 48). Montrose (1983, p. 70) explains that Hermia is his because he has made her, and he absolves his daughter from responsibility for her affections because he cannot acknowledge her capacity for volition. Dunn (1988, p. 19) considers MND a story of oedipal revenge in which the senex is bested by the young man/son and robbed of his wife, courtesan, or daughter, and Ford (1998, pp. 39–40) sees a possible incest motif and (p. 40) sadistic streak.

Loquaciousness is the trait most often singled out for comment. White (ed. 1866, 1:xlvi) comments that when Egeus pleads his case before Theseus the words run off his tongue in heroic verse as if he were reading them from a paper. Cady (1929, pp. 23–4) points out that Elizabethans identified old age with senility and talkativeness, and that Egeus anticipates Polonius. See also Frye (1983, p. 74) who contends that he is far gone in senility. Guthrie (ed. 1954, p. 23) admires his big speech in the first scene [which] launches the whole plot, and is written with immense verve and humour so that it offers an excellent acting opportunity. Huston (1973, p. 215) too admires the speeches of this tyrant, bitter, arbitrary, irrational, and hardly more complex than Bottom’s Ercles. Only his speeches, spewed out in angry, repetitious fragments which lurch forward by solipsistically turning back to bite upon themselves, suggest genuinely human complexity; they seem the product of a mind whose synapses have begun to short out from age and wear. Watkins (Shakespeare’s Playhouse, 1974, pp. 36–7) sees Self-righteous anger . . . aptly expressed in the formal balance of

This man . . .

and

Stand forth Lysander. And my gracious Duke,

This man . . .

The aggressive hammering of Thou, thou Lysander, thou . . . , the scornful mockery of the line With feigning voice, verses of feigning love (the alliterative v reinforcing the repeated f), the lively caricature of that catalogue of messengers Of strong prevailment in unhard’ned youth, the return from direct assault upon the young offender to a renewed obsequious appeal to my gracious Duke, the heightening seriousness as the father invokes against his daughter the ancient privilege of Athens—all these details of verbal bravura build to a climax of sudden shock:

. . . either to this Gentleman,

Or to her death . . . [30–52]

[37] and a moment of silent astonishment on stage and in the playhouse follows Egeus’s cadence.

Some find evidence of Egeus’s relenting or at least accepting Hermia’s marriage to Lysander. Willson (1972, p. 120), for example, claims that The performance of Pyramus and Thisby itself underscores the final agreement by Egeus, with the prompting of an eager Theseus, to accept Hermia’s choice: the interlude treats of the theme of separation and reuniting, between families and lovers, as we learn from Bottom that the wall is down that parted their fathers [2134–5]. Bellringer (1983, p. 208) credits Theseus’s influence; Egeus’s attitude changes from one of anger to one of acceptance, owing to the influence of the flexible Theseus. From the beginning, Theseus handles Egeus’s demands intelligently and cautiously, suggesting a third solution different from the alternatives of Hermia’s death or submission, . . . so he allows for time to pass and for private consultations to take place. See Bevington (ed. 1980, p. 228), who thinks that the very irrationality of his position prepares the way for an ultimate resolution of the conflict.

Others deem him adamant to the end. Leggatt (1974, p. 103), favoring the quarto reading, argues that Egeus exhibits a grim fanaticism that makes him the only unsympathetic figure in the play; his fussy, sterile concern with his own power is the one kind of mentality the play’s final harmony can find no room for. Although Van Laan (1978, p. 85) excludes him from the final concord, he says Egeus helps define (through contrast) exactly what the harmony consists of. See also Langley (1991, pp. 125, 130).

For the potential effects on the character of the doubling of parts and of the textual differences between Q and F see Hodgdon (1986, pp. 538–40); Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 265–8); Calderwood (1991, p. 428, n. 40).

Philostrate

Philostrate is virtually ignored by the commentators. Oechelhäuser (1885, 2:285–6) observes that he is an old English Master of the Revels translated into Greek (Ger.), and Schelling (1925, p. 56) that his list of entertainments is no more than the exaggeration of a possible condition of readiness for several alternative performances at the Elizabethan court. He is, according to Atherton (1962, p. 32), too severe in his judgment of the mechanicals, particularly in saying that Bottom and Quince had never labored in their minds till now [1869–70]. Schneider (1987, p. 194): Philostrate’s scorn for the artisans . . . reemphasizes the class demarcation already marked by Puck, who terms Quince and company hempen homespuns [889] and rude mechanicals [1031]. Philostrate also marks himself as a prig and pretentious poser; and even though his role is minor, he represents a type (along with Egeus) of the blocking character or alazon. . . . By urging Theseus not to see the mechanicals, he blocks the comic release which will be provided by their performance; and by insulting them, he draws antipathy on himself, at least from those elements of the audience sympathetically aligned with the mechanicals.

Foster (1975, pp. 203–4) alone attributes to him an important function. The first remarkable thing that happens to Theseus in Act V is that Philostrate tricks him into choosing the mechanicals’ play, and begins to teach him how to use his imagination and to become a lover. If this is so, Philostrate functions as the architectus of Theseus’ transformation.

He knows how to flatter Theseus. . . . Philostrate teases Theseus by suggesting the tale of Pyramus might be intriguing and is the product of men who love him; all the time he pretends to persuade against it; he knows the imperious Theseus. When Theseus tentatively chooses the play, Philostrate shrewdly opposes his decision, to make him more firm, and at the same time tempts his imagination to awaken:

It is not for you. I have heard it over,

And it is nothing, nothing in the world;

Unless you can find sport in their intents, [204]

Extremely stretch’d, and conn’d with cruel pain,

To do you service. [1874–78]

Theseus takes the bait, announces his determination, and displays his first signs of a generous imaginativeness. . . . [1879–81].

The Athenian Lovers

Until the 1950s, notice of the young lovers is relatively sparse, often terse. Many commentators follow Malone (Attempt, in Steevens, ed. 1778, p. 287) who asks whether there is a single passion agitated by the faint and childish solicitudes of . . . those shadows of each other? although some agree with Krauss (1876, p. 228), who thinks the lovers’ story the only one that touches the emotions (Ger.). Auden (1948, p. 520) says all that matters is that their adventures form a beautiful pattern, and others join Barnet (1972; 1974, pp. 58–9) in suggesting that part of the point is that the characters are not distinct. The lovers . . . , all of whom quite naturally think that their experiences are unique, often sound very much alike, and this similarity—this uniformity of which the lovers are comically unaware—is surely part of [59] Shakespeare’s meaning. Homan (1969, p. 78) adds, however, that although lovers are all the same and foolish, they are blessed with a vision, however blurred by their own mortal grossness [977], denied Theseus, superior as he seems to them in his reasoned command over his own world. Despite the fact that Sh. characterized them very lightly, Fergusson (1970, p. 122) says, they are wonderfully actable, because their spats, delusions, and desperate changes of partner are, in fact, like those of any boys and girls when love first hits them, and Shakespeare puts them in a succession of brilliantly clear farcical situations.

Some critics view the lovers as puppets, stereotypical characters, or characters manipulated by one external force or another. Among those seeing the puppeteers as the fairies is Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 23) who calls the lovers abstract Hes and Shes of the conventional love-story. But this want of characterization is of little importance, because, which is by no means conventional, the story is told symbolically. The transferences of affection which form its principal revolutions are represented as due to supernatural agency, to the somewhat randomly exercised power of the fairies. Schanzer (1957, pp. 247–8) comments on the marionette-like nature of the lovers, mere puppets manipulated by Oberon or by Cupid. Fisher (1957, p. 307) argues that the lovers are made to represent the irrational force of sublunary passion in conflict with the rationally ordered world of the Athenian court in the heroic age of Theseus, thus their lack of individuation. Numerous others concur.

As types, they are subject to parody. Thus Bethurum (1945, pp. 87, 93) considers their plot a burlesque, (p. 93) a parody on mediæval romance. Harrison (ed. 1948, p. 273) claims that only treatment as parody with a touch of burlesque can make the lovers interesting, while Bradbrook’s angle (1951, p. 155) is that the lovers are drawn in a spirit of parody perfectly in keeping with an occasion which would mark the triumphant end of a real courtship. Oechelhäuser (1885, 2:281) considers the lovers a parody of the passion of love (Ger.).

Champion (1970, p. 47) complains that the lovers are basically static characters manipulated into humorous contradiction and incongruity. Indeed, they are virtual caricatures of lovesick youth, comic proof that reason and love keep little company together now-a-days [960–1]. Stylized for situation comedy, they have no identity aside from their love-interest, and their victimization by whimsical passion is no less at the conclusion of the play than at the beginning; that is, they have gained no new insights into the nature of love and no greater self-control as a result of their experience. Hibbard (1978, p. 79) concurs, and Bevington (in Bevington & Craig, ed. 1973, pp. 182–3), declaring the lovers engaged in mathematical permutations, sees in them no hint of the profound self-discovery experienced by Beatrice and Benedick . . . or Rosalind and Orlando. Jarfe (2000, p. 82), however, argues that even if the individualization confines itself within narrow bounds, the claim that they are indistinguishably or in the same manner affected by events is demonstrably false (Ger.).

But a number of critics do recognize a change in the lovers at the end of the play. Auden (1946; 2000, pp. 58–9) finds each of the lovers flawed by weakness or conceit or spite but by the end of the play there is a complete reversal, and (p. 59) all four now, through similar experiences, have grown up, and it is now possible for them to marry. Reese (ed. 1970, p. 10) assures us that the lovers are better people for their dream, and Billington (1991, p. 181) explains that the lovers’ confusion in the forest is a necessary part of their maturation, . . . the means of obtaining self-knowledge upon which to build that improvement. The Martindales (1990, p. 66) argue that for the lovers metamorphosis proves a healing process, an exploration of their identity and sexuality as a preparation for marriage. Baxter (1996, p. 29) infers from the term transfigur’d [1815] a fundamental and radical transformation . . . whose permanence is vouched for (though not necessarily guaranteed) by the marriages that have just taken place off-stage.

Demetrius

About Demetrius many commentators use strong words indeed. Knight (ed. 1839, 1:332) calls him impatient and revengeful, Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:260–1) somewhat malicious and inconstant. The latter says that (p. 261) caprice is master here, not motivation growing out of character; Demetrius, like Proteus in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, has left a bride and woos, like Proteus, the bride of his friend. Ruskin (Sesame and Lilies 1865, Works 18:114) says Helena suffers from the petulance and insult of a careless youth and Lloyd (1875, p. 83) deplores the unaccountable caprice of Demetrius, in leaving the maid he had courted and won to pursue the betrothed of another—a whim, a maggot of inconstancy, bred from no deeper feeling than a tendency to sudden liking, quick of change, and pertinacious—while it lasts. Similarly Oechelhäuser (1885, p. 284) (Ger.). O’Brien (1876, p. 460) too is harsh; Demetrius is weak and selfish at the core, having a fickle will, which yields to any strong pressure, and becomes capable of any degree of baseness in consequence. Proteus and Demetrius fall in precisely the same way; a new fair face catches their wavering fancy, and in both cases away goes what the worthless lover is pleased to call his heart. Demetrius is not even ashamed. If he were not so absorbed in his own desires, he would be an active, courteous gentleman enough, but his passion makes him even forget good manners; as when he tells Hermia he would throw her lover’s carcase to his hounds,—about as brutal a speech as he could have made to the girl he thinks he is courting. But his own point of view is all he can grasp. Latimer (1886, p. 92) describes him as no gentleman, but at once hot-tempered and a sneak. Green (1933, p. 32) has little use for Demetrius; he is not only ill-mannered, even cruel, but also selfish in a crude way. So also Goldstein (1973, pp. 191–2) and Summers (1984, p. 14): Demetrius here . . . [in threatening Helena with harm, even rape] exemplifies the usual assumption of the victim of love-in-idleness that he possesses the right, if not the duty, to say and do exactly what he feels like saying or doing at the moment, with no true consideration of anyone else. But compare Strier (2000, p. 179), who contends that it may be irrational for Demetrius to fall in love with his friend’s fiancé, but it happens. The play offers us the fairies and the juice as a supererogatory explanation of such a phenomenon—if we want it. The negative characterization of Demetrius occurs within the play in Lysander’s assessment of Demetrius. Spencer (1954, pp. 46–8) examines 761–2 and explains that Lysander’s indignation is directed at Demetrius not as a rival but as one who has deceived Helena (whom he now loves). He has already called Demetrius this spotted and inconstant man [119]. Demetrius is a false treachour in love, like Æneas [185]. He is a blackguard; and his very name (adds Lysander) shows that he is an inconstant lover and merits death by the sword. Wells (1976, pp. 67–8), however, thinks the allusion too obscure and suggests instead the Demetrius of Tit. had threatened fratricide, had raped and stabbed, and was (p. 68) shortly before his death, accused of a vile fault and of having a vile head. Wells thinks that whether Shakespeare intended it or not, some members of his audience would have recollected the Demetrius of Titus Andronicus when they heard Lysander’s protestations.

Some critics even find traces of perversity or even pathology in Demetrius’s character. Holleran (1967, p. 23) points out that he is more loved than loving. . . . His inconstancy or fickleness distinguishes his kind of love from that of Lysander, Huston (1973, p. 218) that Demetrius, arbitrarily tossed from Helena to Hermia by tyrannous sexual passions, allies himself with the tyrant Egeus in an attempt to force his will upon Hermia, Hunt (1986, p. 4) that his is a stunted personality. Díaz García (1983, p. 76) thinks that the terms inconstant and spotted [119] indicate moral deficiency in Demetrius (Sp.), and Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. xxvi) calls him a kind of a jock: a macho guy, and opportunist in a three-piece suit, a Harvard Business management type. Palombo (1983, pp. 301–2) diagnoses Demetrius’s problem as a (p. 302) neurotic transference to Hermia, and according to Girard (1991, pp. 33, 46), Demetrius wants what Lysander has, and (p. 46) he loves Hermia because of her contemptuous indifference to him. As Blits (2003, p. 74) explains it, Demetrius needs to be loved less in order to love at all. Demetrius can love only what he lacks and can only disdain what he has. Strictly speaking, reciprocal love is impossible for him.

Several critics temper their judgments. Wölffel (1852, pp. 123–5) notes his faithlessness, selfishness, and lack of shame and compassion, yet he has some value, which is restored by magic; had he no redeeming features Helena could not have loved him (Ger.). Winter (in Daly ed., 1888, p. 14) would call him selfish and fierce in his love, but manly, straightforward . . . , abounding more in youth and desire than in brains, and Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. xvi), despite describing Demetrius as somewhat harsh and irascible, says he is not unlikeable. Also tolerant is Evans (ed. 1967, p. 28); in modern eyes he seems to be rather a shallow cad, but one must remember the humiliation of his loss of face in the court if his rival should succeed in stealing Hermia from him and the obligation that honour would impose upon him to seek out his rival and challenge him to a duel. Meagher (1997, p. 164) does not see Demetrius as morally ambiguous because even in his nastiest moments his threats against Helena sound hollow through exaggeration, and we have been warned that he is not really himself.

Those who contemplate the effects on Demetrius’s character of supernatural interference include Foss (1932, p. 125), who comments that it requires a supernatural agency to make Demetrius true. Evans (ed. 1967, p. 15) observes that Demetrius remains permanently under the influence of the magic juice. No one but Oberon and the audience will ever know why his heart has become fixed on Helena. Newman (1985, p. 85) worries that his words upon awaking in the woods convey little sense of struggle or self-examination; he is content to explain his change of heart by means of some power [1690]. Brown (1987, p. 28) points out that Demetrius is treated only with the purple flower, which is associated with lust and sensuality, and not at all with the other one: by himself he does not even achieve the level of the healthy, sensual love that animates the natural world of the play, as his initial unfaithfulness to Helena shows.

Although Taylor (1969, p. 266) argues that Demetrius, undrugged, is as irrational as Demetrius drugged, Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 66–8) and Tave (1993, p. 11), however, contend that Demetrius is basically constant to Helena. Demetrius appears to stay in the world of Cupid, still charmed by the Flower of this purple dye, Hit with Cupid’s archery [1125–6].

But something has happened to the juice of the flower between its second and third applications. . . . Earlier it has had the same effect on both Lysander and Titania: each must immediately fall in love with whom-[67]soever they next see. Awake they would (and do) refuse the object of love created arbitrarily by the charm. But Demetrius’s spell is different. . . . [68]He had acquiesced in Egeus’ wish that he should marry Hermia but his true love is Helena. The charm leaves him in an intensified state of his previous affection, not in a new state of unwanted and unwonted desire. As Demetrius will make clear to Theseus, he was actually betrothed to Helena before he saw Hermia [1696–7] and was therefore, in English law, unable to marry Hermia in any case. His love for Helena is, as comedy prescribes, his natural taste [1699]. Tave would agree with Holland; Demetrius is under the true counter-charm and his words are the true words of the man in love. Clayton (1999, pp. 73, 75) adds: Much concern is expressed by Demetriologists: is he restored to his original love, or is he compelled by Oberon’s psychopharmacology to love Helena for evermore? He is anointed with the doting flower. . . . But though Demetrius is anointed with the flower that makes Titania and Lysander dote, his seems a case of homeopathic medicine, in effect a cure of the infection of doting upon Hermia’s eyes [256] that, unlike the others, he had contracted without floral influence. . . .

Finally Demetrius is made to be at pains to explain his case to Theseus (and to us) [quotes 1696–1701]. These measured but enthusiastic lines have the ring of sincerity and truth, and are some distance from the sheer infatuation and excess of the lovers in a trance. (P. 75): But suppose, he adds, Demetrius were in a permanent trance. True love is partly that, and for lasting and reciprocated love it is a small—and unconscious—price to pay.

Although some commentators think Demetrius suffers only a temporary aberration, others detect a real change in the character. In Auden’s opinion (1946; 2000, pp. 58–9), Demetrius thinks himself stronger than Helena because he’s loved while he himself is unloving—it’s embarrassing but delightful. Ultimately Demetrius realizes what it is not [59] to be loved. Brinkmann (1964, p. 63) points out that Demetrius rightly considers his temporary aversion to Helena as an illness that has been cured [1698–1701] (Ger.), and Phialas (1966, pp. 128–9) argues that although deeply puzzled by the change he experienced during the strange night in the woods, the one thing Demetrius does realize is that there was something false in his affection for Hermia and his rejection of Helena [129] [quotes 164 ff.]. Palombo (1983, pp. 302, 306–7, 309) contends that the emotional climax of the play occurs when Demetrius becomes fully conscious of . . . change [1689–1701] after experiencing (p. 307) a correction dream in which (p. 306) new experience is assimilated into the structure of memory. (P. 309): Demetrius is transfigured by his dream experience. Allen (1967, p. 109) compares Demetrius to Bottom who retains by daylight a sense of benign divinity at work upon human destiny, of transcendent forces that link mortal and universal love, and Hassel (1980, pp. 64, 66) explains that Demetrius learns that love has to be freely given. Then he can better cherish the one love he is so fortunate as to possess. (P. 66): Demetrius, the most dramatically transformed, speaks their mutual wonder best, and compares it to faith [1689–96]. Hinely (1987, p. 127) thinks that because his love for Hermia . . . has been outgrown in the night’s emblematic movement from adolescence to adulthood [1690 ff.], he is able to return to his original choice, Helena, the woman he apparently chose before competition with Lysander led him to claim Hermia. Pask (2003, p. 184) is skeptical: If his former love for Hermia now appears to him as a childhood trinket, we as an audience know that his love for Helena is the result of another enchantment. The comic conclusion rests upon that continuing enchantment—not a particularly compelling indication of achieved adulthood that has left behind childish things.

Helena

Helena garners more comment than the other lovers and evokes more varied responses than the others do. Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:260) describes a slender, yielding Helena, distrustful and reproachful of herself. Borchers (1912, p. 68) thinks her yielding and almost cowardly (Ger.), Smeaton (1911; 1930, p. 187) an example of sweetly wayward womanhood. Charlton (1933, pp. 59–60) considers Hermia and Helena Shakespeare’s first real flappers, straight from a lady’s seminary. (P. 60) Helena is pale and tall, the traditional emblem of forlorn maiden love, a sweet lady, sweetly doting upon inconstant man. All she asks is to be allowed to fawn and follow her lover as his spaniel. But she is just woman enough to begin to realise that life under such terms is scarcely worth it. Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, pp. xvi–xvii) says that Helena . . . has no gift at all in shrewishness [1335]. She is quieter than Hermia, more easygoing, and more stable in [xvii] temperament. At times she seems less able than Hermia to cope with the strange and perplexing situations into which the caprices of love and magic thrust her, appearing almost a little helpless and pathetic. Both evoke our sympathies and our affection.

Brown (1987, p. 26) contends that Helena’s love is not the higher, chaste love of Hermia (Demetrius’s threats to her virginity daunt her not a whit) but the lower, sensual love—what the Italian humanists called Venere bestiale, and Taylor (Female Desire, 1991, p. 122) argues that since Helena enticed and then pursued Demetrius into the wood, her moral vulnerability is always greater than Hermia’s. Additionally, the desire of both women is at odds with the kind of chaste heroine demanded by the play in which they find themselves. Douce (1807, 1:189) finds precedents which soften his judgment of her conduct: However forward and indecorous the conduct of Helena in pursuing Demetrius may appear to modern readers, such examples are very frequent in old romances of chivalry, wherein Shakespeare was undoubtedly well read. Hülsmann (1856, p. 130) finds Helena unwomanly for pursuing Demetrius who has rejected her (Ger.), and Winter (in Daly ed. 1888, p. 14) thinks her noble and loving, yet a little perverted from true dignity by her sexual infatuation and Weilgart (1952, p. 110), Harbage (1963; 1967, p. 108), Vyvyan (1961, p. 89), and Sagar (1995, p. 39) concur, but Watkins (1946, p. 62) contends that when Helena is introduced, she strikes at once the note of eloquent and witty self-deprecation which makes her gawky plainness charming and prepares us to accept her unmaidenly pursuit of her faithless lover, which would otherwise be embarrassing, as graceful comedy.

Some commentators find Helena cowardly, childish or selfish, even treacherous, while others excuse her. Wölffel (1852, pp. 132–3) sees Helena as a contrast to Hermia but no less noble or feminine. But as Hermia is brave, Helena is cowardly, Hermia prudent, rational, and submissive in her distress, Helena foolish and deluded (Ger.). See also Oechelhäuser (1885, 2:283), who thinks her sentimental and femininely cowardly (Ger.), Lewes (1893, p. 166), who considers her a whining and unsympathetic character (Ger.). For Gentleman (ed. 1774, 8:146) see n. 263–5. Knight (ed. 1839, 1:332, 383) characterizes Helena as dignified and affectionate, with a spice of female error, and Coleridge (c. 1813; in Foakes citing Raysor, p. 179) hunts a reason for Helena’s betrayal of Hermia. The act is very natural; the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold that principles have on the female heart, when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men, because they feel less abhorrence of moral evil in itself, and more for its outward consequences, as detection, loss of character, etc., their natures being almost wholly extroitive. But still, however just, the representation is not poetical; we shrink from it and cannot harmonize it with the ideal. Moyse (1879, p. 27) accuses her: Helena, distrustful and reproachful, forsook her bosom friend, and Latimer (1886, p. 119) declares that Helena from the first was mean, cowardly, treacherous, and lacking in modesty, but Corbould (1897, p. 39) says that Helena tells Demetrius about the elopement plans not out of ill-nature or treachery, but simply in order to have the pleasure of talking to him and being in his company. Green (1933, p. 31) finds her shallow, lacking honor and loyalty, the result of a babyish simplicity that knows nothing of conscience and to which the only conceivable motives are purely self-seeking, as though she were an absolutely untrained child. There is indeed a kind of innocence about her worst behaviour without which she would be unbearable. Moreover, she has no pride, or even self-respect, but would be a spaniel to her lover. But Helena has her defenders. Procter (ed. 1843, 1:381) blames the exalting and debasing influences of the universal passion for the resistless spell under which 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. Weiss (1876, pp. 218–20) thinks Coleridge misunderstood Helena in calling her betrayal of Hermia ungrateful treachery.

(P. 219): Now there is no treachery in the act of Helena, because there is no damage in it to the runaways. If she supposed that Demetrius could prevent the flight or prevail over Hermia’s repugnance, she would never have given the information to him. Her motive is entirely distinct from treachery, and is rooted in a truly feminine hope of disgusting Demetrius by showing the woman he loves running away with another man. This may cure his passion, and possibly revive it for herself. But she modestly says that even thanking her would be too great a strain upon him. Still, so far from fancying that Demetrius can detach Hermia from Lysander, she means to enrich her pain, [264]—that is, deepen it, by following to witness his despair at her rival’s flight, then have him back again. For then, perhaps, his feeling may return [220] to her from the point of appreciating her act which disenchants him. All this we have to put down tediously to rescue Shakespeare’s compactness from Coleridge’s misrepresentation.

A number of critics find Helena’s character flaws downright alienating. Mackenzie (1924, pp. 31–2) deems Helena’s actions implausible and enough to alienate our sympathies if we try to take Helena at all seriously. She takes Lysander’s turnabout of affection and his (p. 32) declaration for an ugly jest: her answer to it is the first reasonably convincing thing she has to say, and its mixture of anger, bewilderment, shame, and appeal to pity, is not ill touched in. . . . The only touch of real or moving emotion is in Helena’s pleading with Hermia not to mock her, and there, perhaps, it is a little overdone. It is fortunate that we do not have to take [the lovers] very seriously, or there would be grave risks of a chill to our sympathies from Helena’s abjectness. Auden (1946; 2000, p. 58) says that in her spite she wants to make everyone as unhappy as she is, and Hunt (1986, p. 5) actually sees a buried penchant for violence in her [581–9, 622–3, 738] that corresponds to the overt physical threats of Demetrius. Stansbury (1982, pp. 62–3) is specific: (p. 63) though physically a coward, [Helena] enjoys imagining pain and violence. (P. 62): She likens Demetrius to a griffin and a tiger [611–12], herself to an ugly bear and a monster [749, 752], and Hermia to a vixen [1360]. This wild and aggressive imagery can be associated with her keen sense of physical suffering. Other characters think of hounds as splendid predators, but Helena’s dog image is of herself as a fawning spaniel, spurned, struck and neglected by its master [582–9]. She is afraid of physical harm and pain. Others seeing limitations in Helena’s character include Huston (1981, pp. 117–19), who accuses her of posturing; she would . . . compose a script for her life in self-consciously poetic verse, which serves more to make a dramatic show of her emotions than to express them with genuine feeling. . . . She imagines herself a young lover in the romance tradition. . . . She speaks some of the most self-consciously poetic [118] verse in all of Shakespearean drama. Her first speech, for example, is almost impossibly difficult for an actress to play, because it is so obviously artificial and composed—as if Helena had been waiting in the wings, preparing the speech before her entrance. It sounds like what Helena thinks a lover in a poetic drama ought to sound like. [119] . . . Does the key to Helena’s behavior lie in that nearly oxymoronic phrase, enrich my pain [264]? Is she attracted to Demetrius principally because she is instinctively driven by self-destructive tendencies that his harsh treatment of her may satisfy? [Quotes 582–5.]

A few critics take Sh. to task for the characterization. Baldwin (1947, p. 736) complains that no leading lady after [MND] is so poorly done as is Helena, and Farjeon (1949, p. 44) declares Helena without core. She is not far, indeed, from a nonentity. Drake (1817, 2:300–1), however, responding to Malone (ed. 1790, 1:285) had called the lovers shadows, insists that 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. Drake quotes Helena’s speeches at 1359–61, 1333–52, and 1222–46 to distinguish Hermia from the (p. 301) meek, humble, and retired Helena who experiences the heartfelt pangs of severing friendship.

Sympathy and admiration for Helena are frequently expressed, especially by critics of the 19th and early 20th centuries whose view of the feminine ideal differs from later views. Griffith (1775, p. 17) is charmed with that mildness, modesty, and generous eulogium, with which the fond and unhappy Helena accosts a rival beauty [193 ff.]. Morley (1853; 1891, p. 59): It is an exquisite abstraction, a pitiful and moving picture of a gentle maid forlorn, playfully developed as beseems the fantastic texture of the poem, but not at all meant to excite mirth. Mézières (1860; 1865, p. 437) finds a bit of the pathetic in Helena. Her discourse contains a touch of the tragic in the middle of the happiest scenes. But it is only a flash of sadness which crosses the cloudless sky of the fantastical play (Fr.). Levi (1875, p. 137) sees depth in the character; Demetrius is loved by Helena with all the passion of which a woman is capable: she does not attempt to bewitch with her ways, and doesn’t humiliate herself in front of the scornful love (It.). Grindon (1883, p. 19): Nowhere, either, are we touched more tenderly with thought of what is gracious and chivalric than when with Helena in another part of the wood [2.2 and 3.2, not in F or Q, introd. by Capell]. Elliott (1885, pp. 315, 319) admires her stately grace and declares Helena (p. 319) indeed a sufferer, and Brooke (1905, p. 33) adds that Helena is far the most tormented of the four lovers, and the height of her misery would, in Shakespeare’s mind, lift her above the magic of the dream into her natural self. Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, 22:xxx) comment on Helena’s steadfastness to her own true, heroic soul whatever luck it wins. Gray (1913, p. 123) claims that Helena stands out as gaining the only bit of dramatic sympathy that goes out to any of the characters. According to Morse (1915, p. 193), the plaintive and restless note of an impotent jealousy and a hopeless affection were surely never more sweetly warbled than by the fair Helena herself. Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 17) and Smith (1940, p. 23) concur. Pogson (1950, pp. 72–3) laments that there is many a Helena wandering through the world, living always in the past, remembering that Demetrius once loved her, perhaps only for a few weeks, and as a result [73] she remains blind to the beauty of life and its real purpose. Dent (1964, p. 117), however, explains that Helena is never so doting that she cannot recognize her apparent folly. Unlike the other victims of dotage, however, her foolish behavior has its roots in a true love, once reciprocated and then unaccountably rejected. Thus only Helena can be cured of dotage by Oberon’s curing someone else rather than herself.

Bryant (1964, p. 6) considers Helena really the most perceptive of all the young lovers and . . . the best illustration of fidelity to a dream. Even before the first scene is over she has spoken wisely about love [246–55]. Fender (1968, p. 43) sees a certain civilised scepticism when she rejects the impulsive advances of Lysander and Demetrius. Her integrity is maintained until well after the other characters have gone mad in various ways. Even when the four of them meet . . . , she still speaks with the voice of sanity, trying to remind the others . . . of the gentler age which they all once shared. But she, too, finally disintegrates. Bellringer (1983, p. 210) admires Helena’s spunk and determination as does Ornstein (1986, pp. 78–9), who thinks that Helena is too stubborn to accept rejection and has too strong a sense of herself to wilt before Demetrius’s scorn. . . . Although she dwells continually on her unhappy state, she is not self-pitying and she does not want to be pitied by others. . . . [79] She may be jealous of Hermia, who now has Demetrius’s love, but she does not accuse her of stealing her fiancé. It is as if she long ago accepted the fact that Hermia was a bit more attractive and would always be the first one asked to dance. She does not wish that Hermia were less beautiful; she would simply like to be more fair. Taylor(Female Desire, 1991, pp. 124, 126–7, 129) is interested in her complexity. He claims that Helena’s persistence after Demetrius’s clear rejection [582–9] illustrates the force of desire within her, and its need for recognition and release. But when Demetrius outlines the danger to which she has subjected herself, (p. 126) she retreats from the consequences of her desire [599–605], and in defending herself she exerts a claim to remain her distinct and unique self rather than (p. 127) the anonymous auxiliary to Demetrius’ gratification. Taylor claims that (p. 129) these motives, toward the satisfaction of desire and the preservation of virginity, respectively, surely deepen the character of Helena, making her challengingly complicated, humanly inconsistent; they also make her believable because of her similarity to innumerable other girls, fictional and real, who must hold their desire in check or risk losing their men through its satisfaction.

Several critics emphasize Helena’s growth. Charlton (1933, p. 60) argues that her disillusionment has taught her much of the world. When fate turns love at length towards her, she is worldly-wise enough now to demand effective guarantees before accepting it. Hinely (1987, pp. 123–5, 128) traces her development; Helena, has indulged in the self-abasement of unreciprocated love, (p.124) finds exaggerated release in the woods, and she wallows in the abjectness of her unloved state, making her sufferings an excuse for a cloying possessiveness [quotes 582–9]. . . . Recoiling from the problematic sexual union with the unpredictable male, Helena seeks to renew the childhood innocence of an earlier oneness with Hermia [1230 ff.]. But soon there is (p. 125) sexual rivalry between them. Eventually (p. 128) Helena’s newfound sense of self, receiving the daylight reinforcement of Demetrius’s vows of love, permits her to give to Demetrius some of the autonomy she has gained. . . . Helena’s reassertion of herself as Helena, neither Demetrius’s spaniel nor Hermia’s double, ha[s] prepared [her] for the daylight return to mature reciprocal love. Leggatt (1999, p. 58), commenting on the lovers’ awakening, points out that love, as Helena now experiences it, recognizes the otherness of the other person, who is possessed and not possessed, as the men are enchanted and not enchanted and their experience is a dream and not a dream. Helena, the most obsessed and unhappy of the lovers, is the one who has this insight: the worse the ordeal, the deeper the final understanding.

The magic, apparently crude and disruptive, has been the agent in leading the lovers towards a deeper maturity and a richer experience of relationship.

Schwartz’s conclusion (1990, p. 65) is somewhat different; For Helena, . . . , what is gained is understood in terms of what has been, or may in the future be, lost. In recapturing the love of Demetrius she must at the same time acknowledge its volatility, its tenuousness. . . . Helena has and at the same time does not have her ideal of love.

Helena lends herself to psychological insights and interpretations. Preston (1869, p. 164): Helen . . . is another maniac, and, in her anxiety to propitiate her idol, betrays the lover’s flight to Demetrius. . . . Strange that we should value what does not and cannot justly belong to us, and hunt, through affection, what can never give us satisfaction. Goldstein (1973, pp. 183–7): Helena suffers the greatest anguish, . . . a victim of her desires and . . . manipulated by the desires of the other lovers, reacting with infantile acting out. Her passivity and acceptance of herself as a creature of states imposed upon her and over which she has no control suggest (p. 184) her inability to improve her impotent condition. Only once does she admit some responsibi[lity] for her situation [1270–1]. Helena’s loss of Demetrius’ love at the start of the play is sufficiently traumatic to lead her into the forest to dream that she has been rejected by her lover and her friends because she is different. Goldstein detects (p. 186) the language of the paranoid in 1219–46—e.g. confederacy, foul derision, foul—but also views Helena as an androgyne and finds echoes of Ovid’s Hermaphroditus tales in the latter part of the speech. (P. 187): Throughout the play, Helena’s terror of isolation is mirrored by her use of adjectives, twice as many of which have to do with a longing for togetherness as the others which decry her sense of isolation. Hart (1986, p. 20), calls her masochistic and the opposite of Hermia in all ways.

For individual speeches, see nn. 246–55, 582–9, 589, 1222–46, 1717-18.

Hermia

Some commentators, particularly early ones with different standards for female decorum, consider Hermia’s behavior unbecoming, others excuse it, and many admire her character and her spunk. Her dream attracts considerable comment, especially by critics with a psychoanalytic bent.

Warburton (ed. 1747, 1:100), thinking that Hermia’s ready acquiescence to Lysander’s invitation to run away would show her to be nauciously coming, reassigns Hermia’s oaths [179–89] to Lysander. Heath (1765, pp. 42–3) quarrels with Warburton for putting the best of Hermia’s speeches in Lysander’s mouth. No doubt such a conduct [speedy assent] is not to be justified according to the strict rules of prudence. But when it is considered, that she is deeply in love, and a just allowance is made for the necessity of her situation, being but just sentenced, either to death, a vow of perpetual virginity, or a marriage she detested, every equitable reader, and I am sure the fair sex in general, will be more inclined to pity than blame her. Warburton wonders at her not seeking from Lysander assurance of constancy; the intimacy of their love, Heath responds, and their perfect confidence in each other’s fidelity, surely rendered such distrustful precautions unnecessary. The ladies, I believe, will generally agree, that, if she could not rely on her servant’s love, her security would be very little bettered by his professions and verbal assurances, however solemnly given. On the phrase nauseously coming Heath remarks: The poet supposes her, not only coming, but actually come, and that each of the lovers had [43] been long in the full and conscious possession of the other’s heart; and, in this situation, the same behaviour would be extremely proper, which might reasonably disgust a stranger or slight acquaintance. Warburton had indicated that Lysander needed the reassurance of the oaths. He asks no oaths of her. They are the superfluous, but tender effusion of her own heart-felt passion. The lines on the Carthage queen are inappropriate to Lysander whereas they show Hermia’s confidence in him. See also n. 180–9.

Among those clearly aligning themselves with Heath’s position is Griffith (1775, p. 16) who, after outlining a child’s duty to parents, 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. She adds: 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. Nor can Weiss (1876, p. 227) blame her. Felton (1787, p. 101) stresses 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. Tyrrell (ed. 1850, 1:385) calls her generous and devoted. Strachey (1854, p. 679), however, although finding her full of hope and courage in the first scene, suggests that bodily fatigue and a night spent in the woods might bring on maidenly and filial remorse and fear of consequences. She is much too clever a girl, and too familiar with Helena, not to have already thought at times whether her poor friend’s fate may not be her own too. Elliott (1885, pp. 315, 317, 321) has no doubts: With her brightness and vivacity she had attracted the devotion of Lysander, and had repaid it with a strength of attachment and firmness of purpose that overruled all parental scruples and disregarded all opposition. (P. 317): She is not content with mere patience, however. She forswears all filial allegiance, compared with the stronger tie her heart has contracted, and yields loyal compliance with the plans of her lover, placing implicit trust in his devotion and honour. But her (p. 321) dignity forsook her—for dignity was never her forte—and she gave the reins to her passion. Mackenzie (1924, p. 29) finds Hermia . . . is so to speak the soprano, . . . the most firmly handled of the women. She claims that Hermia is frightened, but clinging firmly to one irrefragable fact, that worse than death or lifelong separation from her lover, is to give to another man what should be his. See also Porter & Clarke (ed, 1903, 22:xxx), who comment on her spirited opposition both to her actual fate in love and to the change in it wrought by the spell; Leggatt (1999, p. 49); n. 88–91.

Many others find the circumstances mitigating. Hankins (1978, p. 223): Whether the fathers’ godlike prerogatives include the right to select their children’s mates is a favorite question with Shakespeare. Portia is determined to follow her father’s prescribed method of selecting a husband; but Hermia, Silvia, Juliet, Jessica, Anne Page, Desdemona, Imogen, and Florizel refuse to accord their fathers the right of selection. Shakespeare’s sympathies seem to be with the children who follow the dictates of their own hearts rather than the wishes of their fathers when selecting a partner in marriage. Marshall (1982, p. 551) likens Hermia’s predicament to Hippolyta’s; their fate is to have others dictate their sentiments while they are silent or silenced. According to Slights (1993, pp. 106–8, 111) Shakespeare presents a conflict between an individual and the social norms and . . . a conflict between an inferior and a superior in a social hierarchy in a play that (p. 107) stresses the hierarchy of power. He finds Hermia deferential, apologizing elaborately to Theseus for daring to speak in his presence: [quotes 67–70]. She assumes too her subordination to her future husband, should she marry, announcing she will remain celibate rather than accept Demetrius, whose unwished yoke My soul consents not to give sovereignty [90–1]. Hermia is not radical in her outlook. But (p. 108) Hermia’s quarrel with Egeus . . . demonstrates both the coercion inherent in the exercise of authority and the limits of such power. She can resist. (P. 111): Hermia’s spirit is admirable, but young love is also presented as irrational and instable. DiGangi (2003, p. 96) argues that Hermia challenges the orthodox Protestant discourse on marriage not only by denying her father’s foresight in approving a partner, but also by rejecting Theseus’ punitive construction of life-long virginity as a state equivalent to death. His authority symbolized by his martial and marital power over his conquered Amazon queen, Theseus stigmatizes life in an all-female household as barren [81]. . . . That Hermia could prefer such an anemic existence to married life makes available the subversive knowledge that the institution of marriage, not simply enforced marriage, places an unwishèd yoke [90] upon women. Of course, what Hermia demands is not the right to remain a virgin but the right to choose the husband to whom she will grant sovereignty [91] over her body.

Other defenders include Wölffel (1852, pp. 130–1), who finds Hermia’s love sincere, her faithfulness strong, her quiet submission to the law of Athens attested to by her willingness to live a life of single blessedness rather than renounce her love. He takes issue with Gervinus’s characterization of her as quarrelsome (see below) (Ger.). Brooke (1905, p. 14) praises her modest good sense, seated in her faithfulness[; she] does not say much before the King, but what she says is steadfast and clear. . . . She is . . . reverent to Theseus, even to her father, but fixed as fate in her fidelity to her lover, wide awake to the events, and of a keen intelligence. Rovine (1987, pp. 37–8) argues that in Hermia’s case, all three of the usual obligations of women are present in the first scene, and her silence suggests the way many of Shakespeare’s female characters respond to their families, husbands or lovers, and monarchs. Hermia’s destiny is, of course, a happy one as she marries her true love [38] without incurring her father’s displeasure or the law’s wrath. Hermia’s silence, therefore, seems to have helped rather than hindered her cause. Rogan (1998, p. 8) recognizes Hermia’s shrewishness but finds it very pitiable to see such a sympathetic character receive such harsh treatment. By the end of the play, like Adriana and Kate, Hermia has been tamed.

A number of critics ascribe shrewishness or other character flaws to Hermia; Knight (ed. 1839, 1:332) describes her as somewhat vain and shrewish, Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1: 260) as the little, pert Hermia, shrewish and irritable even at school, White (ed. 1858, 4:115) as having quickness of temper and tongue, Moyse (1879, p. 27) as self-willed, firm in resolve, lack[ing] filial affection, Oechelhäuser (1885, 2:281–2) as the true type of a small, self-willed, spoiled, coquettish woman, her protestations of love as affected exaggeration (Ger.). Winter (in Daly ed. 1888, p. 14) attributes such characteristics to her impetuous and clinging ardor. Lang (1895, p. 330) finds her too fierce to be sympathetic and Browne (ed. 1922, p. 135) regards her as strong-willed and determined and hot-tempered. Preston (1869, pp. 165–6) notes a flaw in her though she is a wit, a beauty, and . . . a belle,—Hermia, though thus possessing the object of most women’s ambition, is very sensitive on one point,—[166]she is dwarfish [1329]. It is this weakness of Hermia’s mind that makes her regard Helen’s successful rivalry not as caused by any of Helen’s virtues, her gentleness, her kind heart, or even by Helen’s beauty. No, Hermia ascribes the catastrophe entirely to Helen’s superiority in height. Charlton (1933, p. 60) elaborates: Hermia, small, dark and quick of tongue, . . . is soon driven out of maiden patience, though she is schooling herself to bear with customary crosses. Her temper is as sharp as is her tongue, and excites itself most touchily in matters of her stature and her complexion. She was a vixen when she went to school [1360], and even in the drawing-rooms of the politer world she has not quite mastered her instinct to bring her nails into the fray. The customary comic play of misapprehension and unexpected confusions in the scene where the four lovers are at odds, is enormously enhanced by the sprightly sketch of the girlish moods and the feline attitudes of Hermia’s jealousy.

Green (1933, pp. 30–1) admires Hermia despite her faults; she is as frank and open as Lysander. She also is unafraid and ready of retort, almost pert, in fact, as when she flashes out to the duke her So is Lysander [61]. She is as determined as she is sharp-witted. . . . Though genuinely in love, she is too intelligent to let love blind her. . . . She . . . is kind-hearted, as when, thinking that Lysander is mocking Helena, she begs [31] him not to scorn her. But she is, as one might expect, exceedingly quick-tempered. She is resourceful and courageous according to Cowling (1936, p. 117), warm-hearted and quick-tempered according to Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 133), the most alive and vital of the women characters, according to West (1948, p. 248), tender and minxish, according to Bridges-Adams (1957, p. 384). White (1960, p. 344) sees in her nobility of character and a certain wisdom, despite her fiery temper. Harbage (1963; 1967, p. 106) points out that Theseus warns but does not bully Hermia. Hermia might prove hard to bully. Her first words, So is Lysander [61], give a taste of her quality, as does her decorous but firm demand [71–3] to know the worst that can happen to her. Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. xvi) says that Hermia . . . has the more forceful personality of the two. She is vivacious and a bit quick tempered. . . . Yet she is modest, affectionate, and loyal. We doubt that she will ever become a shrewish wife. Evans (ed. 1967, p. 19) finds her resolute, Holleran (1967, pp. 23) fiery, and Berry (1984, p. 71) perceives that only Hermia glimpses the irony in the plan to elope, for she swears to meet Lysander by all the vows that ever men have broke [186]. Like the later, disguised heroines, she plays her role with a certain self-consciousness. Her wit does not protect her, however, for like the Carthage queen to whom she alludes, she commits herself to a false Troyan [185] who will betray her. Stansbury (1982, pp. 59, 62), studying the lovers’ language, notes sixty-one occurrences of the word eye; the word is used by or of Hermia seventeen times. . . . That so large a proportion of eye-imagery is associated with Hermia reinforces our appreciation of her as both bright-eyed and clear-sighted. (P. 62): Hermia is distinguished by her self-possession and gentleness and clear-sightedness. Tennenhouse (1990, p. 144) declares that Hermia was clearly marked as the more desirable woman to marry. Brown (ed. 1996, p. xvi) finds her bold, and Hirsch (in Brown, ed. 1996, pp. xxvi, 11) says that Hermia is a really tough girl who has been acting this sugar and cream and pink feminine thing which is not really what she is. (P. 11): Hermia takes the initiative; she is a bright, practical woman.

Pickering (1985, p. 44) considers Hermia the most consistent of the lovers; she is utterly loyal and never wavers in her love for Lysander. She is entirely the victim of circumstances and none of the problems she encounters can be said to be of her own making. . . . She has a difficult and interfering father; she shows considerable courage in her defiance of him; she demonstrated restraint and decorum in her refusal to sleep beside Lysander and it is easy to understand her impassioned outbursts . . . as her situation becomes even more intolerable. Truax (1992, p. 123) insists that Hermia’s love for Lysander is clear-sighted and sure. Taylor(Female Desire, 1991, pp. 118–20) points to desire as the power that emboldens Hermia to (p. 68) override decorum and question the established hierarchy of Athens, although once in the woods (p. 119) she becomes the agent of its suppression and denial as she urges Lysander to (p. 120) Lie further off [709]. There might appear to be an inconsistency in these attitudes except that in both instances Hermia is in conflict with—is struggling to survive against—distinctly male prerogatives, the power that men possess and the right to domination that they assume. It is in these early scenes, Taylor maintains, that Hermia and Helena discover and reveal the forces that are inside themselves, direct these forces toward possessing their men on their own terms, and manage to survive the precarious environment they have produced. It is here . . . that the two women show their desire and their ability to control it.

Several critics think Hermia gains in stature from her experience. Dash (1997, p. 103) thinks she gains insight not only into herself but into the unpredictability of male behavior, and White (1970, p. 59), in a comment on 1714–15, suggests that he who sees double sees the sacred and the secular at once. Hermia, and perhaps Hermia alone, has some participation in the divine.

Modern, post-Freudian critics tend to regard dream as a privileged view into a character’s subconscious. Among those commenting on Hermia’s dream is Fender (1968, p. 42). A rigidly Christian critic might be tempted to connect Hermia’s serpent vision with the Fall. . . . It is difficult to ignore one important similarity: whatever happens in the future, the relationship between Hermia and Lysander can never be quite the same again. Lysander has lost what he called my innocence [697], and Hermia’s feeling of loss at his absence is perhaps the first great shock of her life. It is also the first step towards a new understanding of love. Faber (1972, pp. 182, 185) thinks Hermia’s dream [800–5] disguises her desire to consummate her relationship with Lysander and points out that before her dream she had been (p. 185) cruel to him, cruel as Renaissance dames were supposed to be cruel, cruel by rejecting his advances, cruel by turning him out of the rose garden so to speak, cruel for making him sleep alone. Thus Hermia in her dream is attempting to remain cruel, in accordance with the demands of her moral consciousness, and, at the same time, she is striving to become the serpent’s prey. . . . Her anxiety emerges when the deception fails. In this way, Hermia receives Lysander before going to sleep by making him believe she does not want to sleep with him, and she later attempts to deceive herself in her dream by distorting her real wishes, by turning the serpent into the preyer when she herself is the willing prey. Waddington’s reading (1988, pp. 13–14) differs: Although awareness of his perfidy cannot be separated from the image of the dream, Hermia’s love for Lysander does not permit her to be . . . judgmental, despite her abandonment. [14] Nor does she allow her soul to be poisoned with rancor. When confronted with the direct evidence of Lysander’s changed affections . . . she directs her anger not at Lysander but at Helena. . . . Even after the chase through which Puck leads the four young people, Hermia collapses from exhaustion with her last conscious thought a prayer for Lysander’s safety. . . . When she awakes, her constancy and faith are rewarded. The events of the confused night in the woods are a test of character as well as love, and one that Hermia passes more impressively than do her companions. Holland (1979; 1980, pp. 2–9, 17) takes a Freudian approach to Hermia’s two-part dream—the actual and the reported dream. The masculinity in the dream is split between the attacking, crawling serpent and her lover Lysander, smiling at a distance. This dream reveals a basic character trait of Hermia, her tendency to look at alternatives—(p. 3) Lysander as alternative to Demetrius, her judgment as an alternative to her father’s, her boldness contrasted with her modesty, or the alternatives the law allows her. According to TLN 687–718 there is (p. 5) a sexual Lysander, one whom she feels is a threat to her maidenly virtue, and a Lysander at a distance, [whom] she associates with love, courtesy, humane modesty, and loyalty. (P. 7): One of the issues raised by the serpent in Hermia’s dream is possession in contrast to true love. . . . In true [8] love . . . hearts fuse and become one. But fusion can destroy a person’s essence.

(P. 9): The sexual symbolism of her dream thus rests upon . . . her wish and her fear that alternatives won’t work, that she will have to settle for just one thing: one intrusive, penetrating, possessive lover. In a psychoanalytic context, we can guess that the adolescent Hermia is working out with Lysander a much earlier, more formative relationship with a figure never seen, never even mentioned, in this comedy: her mother. Holland sees the dream as tripartite: (p. 17) First, the snake preys on a passive Hermia’s heart in an act of total, painful, destructive possession. . . .

Second, Lysander smilingly watches the woman he so recently loved being possessed by another. His smile signifies to me another kind of cruelty—dispassion, distance, indifference—another way of relating to a play or a lover. The snake is fantastic and symbolic, whereas Lysander presents a far more realistic lover whom I can interpret all too well through our century’s alternatives to romantic commitment.

Then there is a third aspect to the dream. . . . It is a nightmare. The dream has aroused anxieties too great for Hermia to sleep through. She wakes, and we never learn how she might have dreamed that a loving Lysander plucked away a possessive snake. Instead, we are left with his deserting her for another woman. Although the play is about, among other things, Hermia’s maturation to womanhood and marriage, it seems incomplete to Holland because it isn’t clear how the lovers are brought together. In 1994 (ed. p. 14) Holland suggests that the dream might deal with Demetrius’s threats to Lysander. Rather than facing the problem of her repressed desire and Lysander’s sexuality as represented by the dream, she displaces the fear of Lysander into fear for Lysander and fear of Demetrius. The dream is now somehow Demetrius’ fault.

Hinely (1987, pp. 122–3) adds another dimension: Hermia’s fears are not merely irrational and sexual, but reflect anxieties entirely appropriate to Athenian social pressures. She is fleeing a father whose unreasoning oppostion to Lysander, a man . . . equal or superior to . . . Demetrius, suggests that Hermia is the object of her father’s incestuous desires. She is also fleeing the law and a man who has betrayed her best friend, so she risks elopement with Lysander. At the same time, and as her dream implies, Lysander is the serpent who has turned Hermia away from her state of Edenic presexual innocence. See n. 217–20. In the wood Hermia experiences (p. 123) the inexplicability of male desires. Garber’s view (1981, pp. 134–5) is that the dream seems very like a metaphor for her sexual fears. Hermia’s prudery is in striking contrast to the active and energetic quest for love by Helena, whom Demetrius upbraids for her boldness. . . . Helena’s instant reply, Your virtue is my privilege (599), is a direct inversion of Hermia’s response to Lysander, and suggests a distinction between the two women which is borne out by the development of the plot. From this point Helena’s fortunes will [135] rise and Hermia’s fall, until Hermia too realizes something of the pain and risk which are intrinsic to love. The elopement into the wood is not enough; only through solitude is Hermia forced to confront her emerging identity as a lover—and as a woman. In a play which begins and ends with reminders of sexual eagerness . . . acceptance of the sexual aspects of love is an essential prerequisite for successful adulthood and marriage. Similarly, Wiles (1993, p. 124) thinks that while Titania is the antithesis of the shrinking bride . . . , Hermia is the embodiment. She denies Lysander bed-room and insists that they behave as Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid [711]. Her subsequent Freudian dream of a snake demonstrates her fear of sexuality. Her maidenly modesty, combined with a desire to sleep, results in her losing the love of Lysander. In the peculiar context of a wedding night, Hermia’s behaviour becomes no more acceptable than that of Titania. A real bride is required to perform a dialectical miracle, and find an intermediate mode of behaviour that avoids both evils: modesty and lust. Taylor (Golding, 2003, p. 31) sees the dream as, primarily, . . . a virginal young girl’s natural fear and dread of a man entering her body. . . . But by recalling the myth [of Juno’s (p. 31) enlist[ing] the aid of the furies in punishing Ino] Shakespeare is also able to implicitly emphasize and deepen the dream’s significance as a rite of passage. The reason Juno takes action against Ino is that she is furious that here is a mortal woman who had been so blessed by fortune that she has known nothing of grief. . . . By implication, the crawling serpent on Hermia, while it clearly has phallic connotations, in addition signals the girl’s own entry into the realm of grief and suffering. He concludes that Hermia’s dream also has about it shades of Eve and the Fall.

Others commenting on the dream at some length are Chiang (1996, p. 168), who deals with its ambiguity, and Coursen (1992, pp. 80–3), who looks at both Freudian (via Norman Holland) and Jungian responses to Hermia’s dream and concludes that (p. 83) no right reading of Hermia’s lines exists. Each reading has its power and validity.

Lysander

Critics tend to favor Lysander over Demetrius; Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:260), for example, calls him the upright, open Lysander, and Wölffel (1852, pp. 120, 123–4) contends that Lysander has a proud, manly dignity enabling him to oppose Egeus’s will and defend his right to Hermia’s hand. His true love, faithfulness, and noble morals are a contrast to Demetrius’s faithlessness (Ger.). St. John (1908, p. 160) asserts that Lysander is far less gross and abusive than Demetrius. Lysander is, to Watkins (1946, p. 62), the more dashing of the two suitors, with a mordant wit and the assurance of the lover who is loved in return, and to Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. xvi) he is more amiable than Demetrius. Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, pp. xxvi, 11) call Lysander the more romantic of the lovers, . . . more a poet, (p. 11) a Byronic moaner, a Romeo, who enjoys his suffering.

Elliott (1885, pp. 316–17) is charmed; Lysander had wooed his Hermia in the good old fashion, with locks of his hair, rings, gawds, knacks, trifles, nosegays, and even sweetmeats.

(P. 317): Nor had he disdained the power of music and the charm of song, wedding sweet words to soft and soothing tones, and calling in the witchery of moonlight to give effect to both. He is, says Latimer (1886, p. 92), the true gentleman and lover. Winter (in Daly ed, 1888, p. 14), although finding both Demetrius and Lysander selfish and fierce in . . . love, thinks them manly, straightforward fellows, abounding more in youth and desire than in brains. Borchers (1912, p. 67) admires Lysander’s truth and constancy (Ger.). Foss (1932, pp. 124–5), comparing his attitude toward Hermia with Demetrius’s, calls him so modern as almost to be an anachronism and points out that it takes a supernatural agency to make him false. (P. 125): His wooing is deferential, humble, imploring, and lachrymose. Green (1933, pp. 29–30) claims that Lysander is a frank and open young man, direct of speech and with some wit and reading, who willingly speaks out bravely [30] and confidently before the great duke. Pickering (1985, p. 43) contends that Lysander . . . comes from no obvious source except the tradition of Elizabethan courtly poetry. He is the most forthright of the lovers. He adds, however, that perhaps the most interesting feature of his character is that he is the one lover who says nothing about his recollections of the night’s events; he certainly has the most to be ashamed of.

Knight (ed. 1839, 1:332), however, finds both young men impatient and revengeful, and Charlton (1933, p. 59) agrees that there is little to choose between Demetrius and Lysander because Lysander’s metal is not without . . . dross. Auden (1946; 2000, p. 58) says that Lysander is equalized with Demetrius through being unfaithful and not having his love returned. Moyse (1879, p. 27) is specific; Lysander, resolute, over-bold, candid to a fault, made light of his father-in-law’s authority. Homan (1990, pp. 21–2) sees Lysander, in part because his aunt lives elsewhere, as an outsider, indeed a (p. 22) bumptious one.

The nature and sincerity of Lysander’s love for Hermia is a subject of debate. Huston (1973, pp. 215–16) explains that Hermia and Lysander are consciously acting out the roles of tragic lovers. He concludes: (p. 216) to love by the book is ultimately to surrender one’s autonomy and to become just an actor-lover. . . . Even worse, it is to assume a role which, if taken seriously, leads inevitably to destruction: conventionally true love can prove its absolute truth only in the test of death. Some impulses in the young lover’s psyche thus actually compel him towards self-destruction. See Lysander in 151–9, for example. Burns (1996, p. 306) mentions Lysander’s reply to Hermia in Act 2 [697–704] as a triumph of sophistical, language-bending human reason. Levi (1875, p. 137) finds him a charming if erratic youth who reminds us of the Arcadia with lutes and cypresses (It.). O’Brien (1876, p. 454) sees in him a hopeful, cheery nature, bright and genial . . . [, but he is] too much absorbed with one idea at once. Lysander is so taken up with the notion of running off with Hermia, that he forgets the risk of confiding in the half-distracted Helena. . . . Besides this degree of slowness of brain, Lysander is very innocent of suspecting evil in other people, and has something pure and honest about him, which comes out strongly in the scene in the wood with Hermia before the charm falls on him. Atherton (1962, p. 7) adds that Lysander is cuttingly scornful in his attitude to a man who can win over the father without winning the daughter, but then pleads boldly and convincingly with Theseus, stressing his right to marry Hermia, and expressing his love with admirable intensity. White (1970, p. 55) observes that there is something of the animal, particularly the male animal, in these scenes, and Shakespeare suggests a universality of this animal—the thoughts again that good men have only in dreams.

Doran (1954, p. 326), on the other hand, claims that since Puck’s juice relieves Demetrius partly and Lysander altogether of responsibility for their fickleness, Shakespeare can play freely with the comic imbroglios it causes without risking the loss of sympathy for his young men. Olson (1957, p. 116) argues that it is Puck’s error that serves to heighten the comedy. The boy sinks to sleep protesting everlasting love for Hermia; he awakens from the herb eager to run through fire for Helena. He has arrived at that unsound condition where he can adduce scholastic arguments for his sanity, and so give the theme of the play another ironic twist. Hinely (1987, pp. 126–7) provides additional explanations for his behavior; Lysander is guilty of only one infidelity, and his lapse is usually attributed to Puck’s carelessness. But he, like Hermia, is affected by the tensions Athenian society has created by opposing social and individual desires. He sees love as a brief and uncertain phenomenon . . . [151–9]. In his attempt to flee with Hermia from society’s hostile power he loses his way, and his desire to find solace with Hermia is rebuffed with, Lie further [127] off yet, do not lie so near [696]. His protestations of innocence are gently but firmly rejected. . . . It is at that moment that Puck anoints his eyes; . . . . His subsequent behavior revenges Hermia’s slight and brings to a climax his own quasi-sibling rivalry with Demetrius.

Because Lysander insists his actions are dictated by reason, several critics focus on his reasoning and his language. Mincoff (1961, p. 21) complains that Lysander proclaims his love as the true amor rationalis when he has never been so fast in the grip of unreason before [770–1], and his irrationality is the focus of others. Herbert (1964, pp. 33–4) reminds us that the mortals in the play aren’t aware of the fairies. As unsuperstitious as a physicist, they attribute events to natural, not supernatural, causes. Especially Lysander. Lysander does not even swear by the conventional Olympian gods, but, when he swears, swears by his life and property. The audience knows that he is the helpless victim of divinely compelling love-juice, but in all sincerity he lectures like a rational philosopher. . . . Lysander’s doctrine of will, reason, and mature action is of course not in itself an atheistic doctrine, for it is irreverently echoed [34] from the reverent Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. But in context reason is given the authority that belongs to a tiny deity and the appeal to reason here is a diminutive counterpart of the sin of Pride. It is to defend his right to follow what reason dictates, one might say, that Lysander goes headlong to fight Demetrius. If he were not so absolutely confident, no one would laugh, even though in the constructed world of the play Lysander is absolutely wrong. Tave (1993, p. 11) explains that Lysander was under the false charm and his words were the false words of the doting young man. What Schwartz (1990, pp. 59–61, 63–4) finds interesting after Puck’s tampering is that Lysander’s [60] understanding of his own faculties falls so hopelessly short of what is really happening. . . . Not only has his reason failed to stay irrational behavior, it has become part of the pattern of the irrational. Lysander is wrong, first, in asserting that The will of man is by his reason swayed [770], since this grossly oversimplifies the psychology of desire and flatly contradicts the fact that in his own case it is his eyes and fairy will that swayed his will, and second, in believing that his reason figured in any way in the transformation.

(P. 61): What does remain constant in Lysander, however, regardless of who [sic] he is addressing, is a rhetoric completely free of doubt. . . . Absolute love becomes equally absolute hate in the case of Hermia, and complete indifference becomes absolute love in the case of Helena. Upon awaking, (p. 63) Lysander not only questions his recollection of the events of the previous night, but the connection, as well, between his ability to think and what he calls truth. For however brief a time (long enough at least to say it, so the audience gets the message even if [64] it is lost on himself) Lysander realizes that he may not be able to speak truth in spite of his desire to do so.

Newman (1985, pp. 84–5) says Lysander’s lines [1671–8] are filled with hesitations, parenthetical elements, and inverted [85] syntax . . . [and] represent a mind struggling with a profoundly disturbing experience not entirely ordered or understood. Hassel (1980, p. 65) concentrates on the outcome; Lysander learns at least how absurdly he can behave. Stansbury (1982, pp. 61–2) studies Lysander’s language closely and notices that with the exception of two brief outbursts, Lysander . . . continues the intimate form [of the second person pronoun] even while rejecting Hermia: this could be interpreted as a mark of scorn, but since Lysander is not in any other way pompous (as Egeus and Oberon sometimes are), I think it is more likely that the genuine habit of affection peeps through the cloak of superficial scorn, and the effect is to remind the audience of the dramatic contrast between Lysander’s genuine and abiding love and his temporary and unnatural hate. Since (p. 62) Hermia and Lysander are true lovers, Lysander’s language reveal[s] an underlying affection even through his enchantment.

For a discussion of a textual problem that influences interpretation of Lysander’s character see n. 1828–33.

The Mechanicals

For all their popularity on the 17th-c. stage, the mechanicals provoked no comment from the period’s critics, and in the 18th c. attention shifted to the fairy sections; criticism of the amateur players is sparse, therefore, until the 1800s. From the time of the earliest comments on them, there is a difference of opinion over the question whether or not the mechanicals are differentiated one from the other. Smeaton (1911, pp. 188–9), for example, thinks them, except for Bottom, destitute alike of separate individuality or differentiating traits either of mind or heart, Bullough (1957, 1:372) considers them stylized, and Lever (ed. 1961, p. x) considers them types rather than individuals, distinguished only by their trades. Similarly Girard (1980, p. 117). Treating them as a group, Hense (1851, p. 55) is amused by their self-satisfaction (Ger.), Strachey (1854, p. 682) by their histrionic propensity [which] is the voucher for the activity of their imaginations and by that half-belief in the reality of their play which characterizes childish and half-educated minds. Also deeming them childlike are Croce (1919; 1948, p. 43), Bryant (1964, pp. 4, 6), Fergusson (1970, p. 126). Ward (1899, 2:279) sums up: although they are delectable . . . bubbles of a humorous fancy, they are without deep design. . . . To suppose that Shakspere in these humorous creations intended to create types of character, is an imputation which, had it been known to him, might have caused him to stay his fantastic pen in a novel kind of wonderment.

More often than not, then, while critics succumb to their fascination, they treat the mechanicals as a group. For example Daniel (ed. 1828, p. 8) asks, Can imagination conceive a more whimsical company of comedians and Preston (1869, p. 167) writes: Never does Shakespeare’s wit sparkle more brilliantly or more pleasantly than in the conversation of the would-be-actors. Oechelhäuser (1885, 2:287) adds that the more serious they are the more ridiculous they appear (Ger.). The rustics have exquisite stupidity according to Cunliffe (ed. 1912, p. xv), and Crump (1925, p. 25) thinks them inimitable and their scenes the most delicate fooling in all Shakespeare. In Draper’s opinion (1934, p. 228) they usurped the main interest in the play and in Ridley’s (1936, p. 37) they are a very different kettle of mixed fish, . . . a different kind of reality, . . . the staple of life, men who work for their bread in the sweat of their brows. Michael (1986, p. 199) adds that the rude mechancials are an undeniably engaging lot of naifs who present their play as a handmade wedding gift for Duke Theseus. They hope to profit, it is true, but magnanimity is the keystone of [MND]. Charney (1993, p. 35) considers them the most endearing characters in the play, and Brown (ed. 1996, p. xviii) considers their scenes the most original in the entire play. Shakespeare has filled their dialogue and activity with many shrewdly observed details of day-to-day life and many indications of the awakening of imaginative involvement, wonder, and generosity of spirit.

The economical individualization of the characters is often praised. Marshall (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1888, 2:325) thinks that it is in the comic portion of this play that Shakespeare manifests his dramatic genius[,] . . . his power of characterization, his close observation of human nature, his subtle humour, and Herford (ed. 1899, 1:304) says they are drawn from life. Hudson (1848, 2:42) says their peculiarities derived either from nature or from their callings. Fleay (1878, p. 26) and Reid (1941, p. 77) think them the only developed characters, Agate (1943, p. 38) and Brinkmann (1964, p. 52) the only real ones (Ger.), and Cazamian (1952, p. 196) delights in their honest, solemn blundering through their ill-assorted tasks. Cowden-Clarke (1863, p. 97) is enthusiastic: What a rich set of fellows those mechanicals are! and how individual are their several characteristics! Heraud (1865, p. 174) too praises the individuation—each is a most imperfect specimen of man, and distinctive character represents degrees of individual imperfection,—the particular partial development which marks one man from another. Rich in character, therefore, are these abortions of humanity, and differing from one another as the ass from the emeu, and the ape from the elephant; yet all aiming, like the inferior creatures, to become types of man,—the paragon of animals (Ham. 2.2.307 [1354]). Baker (1907, p. 191) tries to explain Sh.’s deftness with the mechanicals; they are real, and not caricatures . . . ; they are amusing not only for what they say but for what they do. Moreover, both what they say and what they do in every case adds to the clearness of their characterization. Thorndike (1929; 1965, p. 104) maintains that Sh.’s comic invention is at full tide, and each of his clowns surpasses the other’s individual asininity. According to Rodway (ed. 1969, p. 24a) they are more different one from another than any other group of characters in the play. Phillips (ed. 1969, pp. 12, 17) regards them as representing . . . humanity in a situation somewhat too deep for it. They are (p. 17) richly human and abounding with personality: a comedy team where none is a mere stooge but all are funny in their own right, all at the same time ministering to the greater funniness of Bottom.

A few commentators are dismayed by Sh.’s passing off Bottom and his friends as Athenians. Skottowe (1824, 1:255) exclaims: Nothing can be more irregularly wild than . . . to introduce Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling . . . as amateur actors in the classic city of Athens. Campbell (1846, p. 58) responds to the complaint: I dare say Shakspeare troubled himself little about Greek antiquities; but here the poet happens to be right. . . . Athens was not a classical city in the days of Theseus; and, about seven hundred years later than his reign, the players 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. Lever (ed. 1961, p. x) complains that although described as tradesmen of ancient Athens, they are not in the least like the clever, lively Athenians we find in old Greek plays. In reality they are much more like the ordinary village people of Shakespeare’s time, ignorant but good-tempered, very respectful to the ladies and gentlemen of the court, and with a great desire to please their ruler. Davies (1997, p. 169) enjoys the droll circumstance that the citizen actors . . . are ancient Athenians whom we normally associate . . . with the drama of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. He finds amusing absurdity in the ludicrous mismatch between the reputation of Athenian tragedy and the maladroit endeavours of Shakespere’s hempen homespuns [889].

Most commentators recognize them as invincibly English and rejoice in their homeliness. Elze (1868; tr. 1874, pp. 35–6) considers the mechanicals English [36] tradesmen, such as the poet may have become acquainted with in Stratford and London, such as performed the Ludos Coventriæ at Coventry. Similarly Canning (1903, p. 433), Barton (in Evans, ed. 1974, p. 218), Bullough (1979, p. 98), Whibley (ed. 1925, 1:xvii), Chambrun (1927, p. 53). According to Draper (1961, pp. 9, 279) they have native candor and are presented (p. 279) in holiday guise in fairyland. Since they are not the conventional clowns of the day, Daiches (1960, p. 254) argues, Sh. is bringing a new dimension into English dramatic humor.

Some critics speak of the rustics as contemptible, i.e. the audience is invited to feel contempt for them or Sh. feels contempt for them; others regard them as sympathetically presented. Ulrici (1868–9; tr. 1876, 2:71, 79) is not impressed, seeing only the utmost senselessness and the most foolish ideas. He comments that these (p. 79) sober fellows are so deluded by imagination that they not only fancy themselves poets and actors, but are so afraid of the illusion they intend to produce—because they themselves are so engrossed by it—that they destroy it at the first opportunity. A more severe note of disapproval enters Tegg’s assessment (1879, p. 27). Sh.’s tone toward these amateurs, he thinks, is contemptuous. Wilkes (1882, pp. 125–6) and Crosby (1900; 1906, p. 140) agree. Other hearts are not softened, or at least not completely won; Wedgwood (1890, p. 581) calls them clodhoppers with more life than the lovers but less interest than the fairies. Stoll (1927, p. 309) deems them almost unbelievably stupid and ridiculous. Latimer (1886, pp. 100–1) thinks Sh. is satirizing them as a class at the same time that he is also satirizing (p. 101) the goings-on in a dramatic company. Robinson (1890, p. 71) calls them boors . . . almost ignorant of the language they speak, while Bowden (1899, p. 262) supposes that in the base mechanical drudges . . . Shakespeare glances at some of the characteristics of the rabble of his day. They are no longer the socialist mob of Jack Cade, but a puritanical rabble whose itching ears have been caught by the psalmody of Sternhold and Hopkins, and by the profane scripturality of the pulpit. Pogson (1950, p. 73), more sympathetic, sees that without in any way belittling their virtues or their natural goodness . . . the author yet manages to deplore their ignorance of all literature and legend, and of the beauties and subtleties and infinite shades of meaning of their own language. He shows clearly how much they are missing, how limited are their powers of enjoyment and self-expression. Giles (1868, p. 267) would respond to such criticism that if Shakespeare had made Quince the carpenter polite, Snug the joiner dignified, Bottom the weaver elegant, Flute the bellows-mender a man of fashion, Snout the tinker a man of thought, and Starveling a man of courage, all the Quinces, the Snugs, the Bottoms, the Flutes, the Snouts, the Starvelings, in his audience would have hooted him as their satirist, or despised him as a fool.

On the other side of the issue are Moyse (1879, p. 21) who points out that the rustics have an undoubted earnestness of speech that assures us the writer’s affection welled up from its depths, and Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, 1:84) says that the mastery to which Shakespeare had attained is most clearly displayed in the burlesque scenes, dealing with the little band of worthy artisans. . . . Never before has Shakespeare risen to the sparkling and genial humour with which these excellent simpletons are portrayed. He doubtless drew upon childish memories of the plays he had seen performed in the market-place at Coventry and elsewhere. Brooke (1905, p. 7) disputes those who said that Shakespeare did not care for the common folk. He did not think them fit to govern, but he had a true sympathy for them, an affectionate intimacy with their manners, their humour, and their views of life. And his new realism of the poor has never ceased to be a living element in English literature. Chesterton (1904, p. 624) praises Sh.’s rare perceptiveness about these rustics who accept [Bottom’s] leadership not merely naturally but exuberantly; they have to the full that primary and savage unselfishness, that uproarious abnegation which makes simple men take pleasure in falling short of a hero, that rude and subconscious unselfishness which is older than self. They alone with their insatiable tolerance can perceive all the spiritual devotion in the soul of a snob. Granville-Barker (ed. 1914, pp. iv–v) complains that your Cockney audience finds a countryman comic, and your Cockney writer to this day often makes him outrageously so. Shakespeare presumably knew something about countrymen, and he made the simple discovery and put it into practice for the first time in this play, that, set down lovingly, your clown is better fun by far than mocked at; if, indeed, apart from an actor’s grimaces he had then been funny at all. . . . [v] From the moment Bottom, gloweringly mistrustful of poor Snug, asks, Let me play the lion too [333], from that moment they have my heart, all five, for ever. de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. xxxiv), too, is won; stupid they may be, but they are consistently and distinctly stupid. From the little they say, a few hundred words between them, how much we divine. Why? Because that stupidity is a gift from Shakespeare. He knows these mechanicals through and through, and sharing his understanding and hospitality, we take them to our bosoms. We love, while we laugh at, them. Contempt of them is itself contemptible, as Theseus, in his wisdom, intimates. Baten (1937, pp. 29–30) has a fellow-feeling for the clowns who have something that prevents contempt; . . . it is through our sympathetic not our selfish emotions, that they interest us; we are more inclined to laugh with them than at them; and even when we [30] laugh at them we love them the more for that which is laughable in them. So that our intercourse with them proceeds under the great law of kindness and charity. Evans (1969, p. 83) finds no satire because there is no condemnation. The rustics are presented for us to laugh at, but we leave them with a glow of warmth. The comedy that emerges from their scenes is affirmative in the richest sense of the word—it affirms honest if unaccustomed toil, a desire to please, and a horny-handed kind of dignity. Others admiring their natures are Croce ([1920], tr. Ainslie, p. 172), Bailey (1929, p. 92), Alexander (1939, p. 109), Jameson (1967, p. 139), Strong (1985, 2:53), Devlin (1991, p. 94), Mangan (1996, p. 172). Finally, reviewing a 2004 production, Jefferson (2004, B1) writes: The tenderest scenes were those in which Bottom and his fellow actors rehearse, then perform their deliciously dreadful Pyramus and Thisbe. There was plenty of slapstick hilarity. But there was such human sweetness, too, and such generous virtuosity. The truest vision of love this play offers is the love the actors and the director show for its disturbances and contradictions.

The mechanicals are sometimes credited with and sometimes denied imagination. See Strachey (1854, above, here). They have a mechanical imagination, according to Taine (1863; tr. 1890, 2:140). Wolff (1907; 1926, 1:339) insists that they cannot dream, they have no wings; even wall and moonshine have to be represented (Ger.). See Lever (ed. 1961, p. x). J. Percy Smith (1972, p. 14) points out that they are totally unsophisticated about [imagination]—simultaneously afraid of stimulating it too vigorously and of trusting to its own force. Rose (1972, p. 19) comments: The Athenian workmen . . . are notably short on imagination and long on plodding logic. They are, among other things, Shakespeare’s burlesque of the purely rational sensibility represented by Theseus. Dent (1964, p. 126) says that the mechanicals abuse their own imaginations by a failure to understand those of the audience. . . . They think their audience both over- and under-imaginative, and in both respects irrational. Weiner (1971, pp. 333–4) understands that the mechanicals take their play literally, expect the audience to, and thereby undermine their efforts. Kernan (1975, p. 318) explains that Bottom and the other artisans are completely out of their depth in trying to deal with the magic of the imagination which resides within both the love story and the theatre, and their clumsy realism, doggerel verse and extravagant action are quite bad enough to deserve all the amused and superior comments [of their audience]. Welsford (1927, p. 333), though, credits them with imagination of the most simple, primal, childlike kind, as does Edmunds (1981, pp. 13–14).

Other references to the mechanicals mention the actors’ utter sincerity and obliviousness to their shortcomings. According to Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:281, 2:610) the clowns must be acted with the most solemn importance, as if in thorough earnestness. They are (2:610) insensible to the mischievous joy of others; with them nothing fails, neither their airs nor their humour. Just in this, however, lies the true ground of the comic, and it is for this reason, that in spite of all our present refinement, the comic power of these characters survives all changes of taste; these types of folly and absurdity are completely dyed with the comic colours of nature, indelible for all ages. In the delineation of this world of beings, Shakespeare appears in all his amiability. These harmless weaknesses excite his mirth and the child-like humour of his kindly heart. Kilian (1898, pp. 63–4) too mentions their sincerity, their obliviousness to their inadequacies. The contrast between the artlessness and the deep sincerity of the players and their insufficient abilities combined with the stilted pathos of their play creates the humor (Ger.). Similarly Robinson (ed. 1941, p. 99), and, in greater detail, Leggatt (1974, pp. 99–101). Price (1941, p. 391) declares that this picture of vacuity striving for utterance, doggedly determined to do its best, is the cream of silliness. It is better than the best of Wodehouse. Masefield (1954, p. 58) observes that country-people, and amateur players generally, if they have no skill as players, have always their sincerity. . . . They play with all that they have: and the nonsense can thereby be made most strangely moving. So Crosman (1997/8, pp. 11–12).

The mechanicals are sometimes compared with the low comic characters in other plays. Thümmel (1876, pp. 88–9) thinks them the best of Sh.’s clowns (Ger.). Strachey (1922, p. 68) calls them a strange contrast to the hideous trio of the jester, the drunken butler, and the savage and deformed slave, whose designs are thwarted by the magic of Ariel, while Priestley (1929, pp. 172–3) considers the humor of Bottom and Quince less deep than that of Shallow and Silence. Hill (1964, p. 19) traces the mechanicals back through Costard and Launce to Dromio of Syracuse, but Costard, for all his humour, chopped logic with his companions, and Launce had his other half in the punning Speed, whereas such characters and characteristics are not to be found among the rustics of the Dream. But their incomparable humour makes criticism an impertinence. Everett (1961, p. 331) considers their folly . . . interesting . . . in its fertility; it lacks any nobility, but it leaves room for development. She finds in addition to the innocent, ignorant, and self-loving conviction of their own adequacy in a magical or artistic world . . . a tough common sense that makes them, like Launce, and like the naturals in [LLL], twice fools, and not fools.

For their integration into the play, see Structure, here, here, for their language, see Style, here, here.

Bottom

Not until the end of the 18th c. does Bottom attract the critical attention he merits. Malone (Attempt, in Steevens, ed. 1778, pp. 286–7) thinks Bottom the only distinguished character in the play, as do Bodenstedt (1874, p. 143) and Oechelhäuser (1885, 2:287). Marshall (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1888, 2:325) hold[s] that Nick Bottom is the gem of this work (but Anon. [1891, n. p.] cannot indeed accept Mr. Marshall’s extraordinary judgment.) Deighton (ed. 1891, p. xii), Furnivall (ed. 1908, p. viii), Strachey (1922, p. 68) and Iyengar (1964, p. 170) agree with Marshall, while Knight (1933, p. 61) would have him share dominance with Oberon and Theseus, Herford (ed. 1899, 1:301) with Theseus, and Chambers (ed. 1905, p. 14) ranks Bottom with Juliet’s nurse as the first of Shakespeare’s supreme comic creations.

Taylor (1792, pp. 160–6) writes of Bottom’s character: (p. 161) 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. Bottom is a coxcomb, and the type who (p. 160) often shew themselves, by a supposed merit, or imagined ability, in things not regularly attached to them, . . . [and] 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. (P. 162): The Poet has thought proper . . . to shew . . . 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. He notes that Bottom’s wit shews itself in his dextrous obviating of supposed difficulties. Nothing intimidates him; (p. 165) one should 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.

Blunt abruptness summarizes his character in the anonymous poem The Bee (1818, p. xxxiii); he is an exquisite original illustrating the fertility of Sh.’s imagination, according to Drake (1828, p. 487). For Hudson (1848, 2:33, 38–41) Bottom is as much the poetry, the ideal perfection of the grotesque, as Titania is of the beautiful. Hudson calls him (p. 38) the most universal genius Shakespeare has delineated. Indeed, he is the most Protean critic, connoisseur and play-actor we shall anywhere find, to whom throwing the shuttle seems to require all the faculties and include all the arts within the compass of human ability. . . . [39] And his judicial powers are fully commensurate with his mimetic powers. . . . We should naturally presume, indeed, that a man would understand a thing in proportion as he had studied it; but herein we are liable to err; for critic Bottom plainly understands a thing in proportion as he has not studied it.

Maginn (1837, pp. 372–3) acknowledges that amid his own companions he is the cock of the walk. His genius is admitted without hesitation. . . . It is no wonder that . . . perpetual flattery fills him with a most inordinate opinion of his own powers. . . . [373] The wit of the courtiers, or the presence of the Duke, have no effect upon his nerves. He alone speaks to the audience in his own character, not for a moment sinking the personal consequence of Bottom in the assumed port of Pyramus. After commenting on Bottom’s temerity in criticizing the Duke, Maginn continues: We may be sure that he was abundantly contented with his appearance, and retired to drink in . . . the applause of his companions oblivious of being called hateful fool [1564] and blockhead, for he hears not their sarcasms; he could not understand their criticisms; and in the congenial company of the crew of patches and base mechanicals who admire him, lives happy in the fame of being the Nicholas Bottom, who, by consent, to him universal and world-encompassing, is voted to be the Pyramus,—the prop of the stage,—the sole support of the drama. Guizot (ed. 1821, 4:153) judges the character of Bottom one of the most comic in Sh. (Fr.), Adams (1923, p. 219) a classic in the humor of simplicity. Dowden (1875, p. 361) calls him a finer efflorescence of the absurd than any preceding character of Shakespere’s invention (but Morse [1915, p. 194] calls Dowden’s words unrestrained praise; for him Bottom is an entertaining oddity). Beerbohm (1899, p. 115) enjoys the agrestic jollity of the weaver.

The 20th-c. critics continue the encomia. Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, pp. xxvii–xxviii): Bottom alone of his group is modeled with solidity [xxviii] enough to stand out with good coarse human grain. His brag and eager prominence, the smack of his lips over his own bon mots, the air of close attention he bespeaks for his superior penetration, the matter-of-course tribute he takes it to be to unobscurable manly worth when the Queen of Faërie discerns his excellence and falls to doting on him—what so deliciously crass specimen of masculinity as all this contributes to make up was ever devised merely as the foremost figure in an awkward squad forced upon an artist to make the best of, because the goundlings demand buffoonery! Chesterton (1904, pp. 623–5) writes extensively in praise of Bottom, who is greater and more mysterious than Hamlet, because the interest of such men as Bottom consists of a rich sub-consciousness, and that [624] of Hamlet is the comparatively superficial matter of a rich consciousness. Greatness lies not in cleverness but in a certain indescribable but perfectly familiar and palpable quality of size in the personality, of steadfastness, of strong flavour, of easy and natural self-expression. Such a man is as firm as a tree and as unique as a rhinoceros, and he might quite easily be as stupid as either of them. Such men are great because their words were their own words, their memories their own memories, and their vanity as large and simple as a great hill. . . . And this . . . august and memorable fool, has never been so sumptuously painted as in the Bottom of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As well as being more human than humanity, he, like Don Quixote and Uncle Toby and Mr. Richard Swiveller and the rest of the Titans, has a huge and unfathomable weakness, his silliness is on a great scale, and when he blows his own trumpet it is like the trumpet of the Resurrection. Bottom’s literary sensibility is a great deal more genuine than that of a great many cultivated critics of literature—the raging Rockes . . . [298–300] [625] is exceedingly good poetical diction with a real throb and swell in it, and if it is slightly and almost imperceptibly deficient in the matter of sense, it is certainly every bit as sensible as a good many other rhetorical speeches in Shakespeare put into the mouths of kings and lovers and even the spirits of the dead. If Bottom liked cant for its own sake the fact only constitutes another point of sympathy between him and his literary creator. . . . There is nothing mean about this folly; nor is there in the whole realm of literature a figure so free from vulgarity. . . . And the triumph of Bottom is that he loves rhetoric and his own taste in the arts, and this is all that can be achieved by Theseus, or for the matter of that by Cosmo di Medici. Matthews (1913, p. 78) explains that Bottom is unconsciously humorous, funny in spite of himself, and, therefore, far more comic than the traditional figures sent on the stage to enliven the dialogue with external witticisms. . . . Bottom stands on his own feet; he is no longer the slightly transformed Vice of the medieval stage. He is exuberant in humor because he is inexorably human.

Priestley (1925; 1966, pp. 1 ff.) is expansive over one of the foolish Immortals; he imagines Bottom, (p. 3) in spite of certain signs of temperament in him, a worthy dependable householder with a shrewish wife, one of those somewhat vain and patronising men, not without either humour or imagination, who always induce in women alternating moods of irritation and adoration. Bottom (p. 5) appears anything but romantic, a piece of humorous, bewildered flesh, gross, earthy. . . . Seen thus, he is droll precisely because he is a most prosaic soul called to a most romantic destiny. But compared to his companions he is the romantic, the poetical, the imaginative man, who naturally takes command. . . . He is conceited, but he is, in some measure, an artist. Priestley concludes: (p. 9) It is better to be vain, like Bottom, than to be dead in the spirit, like Snug or Starveling. Although he is (p. 16) worlds away from the fully conscious humour of a Falstaff, . . . we cannot have followed him from Peter Quince’s house to the arms of Titania . . . without noticing that he is something more than a rustic target. . . . There stirs within him . . . a poet and humorist, waiting for the midsummer moon. Charlton (1933, p. 63) likes Bottom’s crude native matter of human instinct. Bottom is a bigger part of the world than is a Lysander or a Demetrius, . . . for he has, above all, the instinct which makes for the preservation of his species. . . . Even when he has been killed upon the stage he will rise again . . . and set the world to rights. He has supreme confidence in himself, and in his ability to play any part in life or in theatricals.

Bottom elicits, according to Baxter (1965, p. 66), the laughter which Heywood says lengthened long life rather than the laughter which corrects. Greenwood (2002, p. 32) adds: The laughter that Bottom arouses, and he is arguably Shakespeare’s most successful comic creation, is . . . essentially affectionate rather than mocking or hostile, and we are endeared by his inadequacies rather than dismayed. For Martz (1971, pp. 62–3) the irrepressible Bottom represents complete freedom of the spirit. He is engaging also because of his (p. 63) innocence, lyricism, poetic beauty, universal love, personal freedom. Mahood (1986, pp. 144–5) rejects Puck’s description of Bottom as a thick-skin [1035]; the concern he has shown over the ladies’ fears is anything but thickskinned, and his buoyant inventiveness at the rehearsal distinguishes him from the barren sort [1035]. Shallow he is certainly not; his grasp of dramatic illusion shows an understanding of the principle of aesthetic distance which is to stand the test, though through hilarity rather than through pity and fear, in the play acted before the Duke. Mahood adds that (p. 145) his name . . . implies level-headedness, the stability of a well-built ship. The quality makes it easy for him to keep his aplomb when wooed by the queen of the fairies. . . . It is . . . possible to play [the scenes with Titania] in such a way that Bottom is shown exercising at once his sense of reality and his power of imagination, the very combination that endows him with an understanding of the nature of drama. . . . He is Bottom the weaver who knows his place and his worth and how to humour this very eccentric great lady. . . . Even his falling asleep . . . is part of his role-playing, a tactful handling of the situation. Schwartz (1990, pp. 66–7, 73) contends that Bottom everywhere in the play enjoys a perspective that the others only fleetingly experience. He has (p. 67) two great qualities: ego coupled with practicality; and with these he offers a model of the man least at the mercy of the irrational, for he bends more easily than any other with the situation while maintaining a healthy measure of skepticism. . . . [He] is sure enough of himself to meet the fairies on equal terms, to be familiar with them. He (p. 73) is the most stable and unchanging character in the play. Draper (1991, pp. 38–9), too, comments on his adaptability.

Others, equally enthusiastic, nevertheless recognize Bottom’s limitations. Bax (ed. [1933], p. xii) calls Bottom stupid and bumptious, but at the same time lovable. He is a great baby. Sen Gupta (1950, p. 124) finds Bottom prosaic[,] . . . a realist, but the central paradox of his character is that he does not understand reality. That is why he seems to be a puzzle, a mixture of contradictory traits. When he is left to himself, he is as clear-headed as he is hard-handed, but when we find him grappling with reality he acts like a dreamer. Coghill (Wags, Clowns, 1959, p. 9) judges him a simpleton who is also a genius. See Farnham (1971, p. 78). Shaaber (1970, pp. 177–8) explains that the egregious Bottom would not be half so funny if he were merely stupid; it is the disparity between his stupidity and his immense self-possession, his inexhaustible [178] good nature that makes him delightful, makes him infinitely more amusing than a mere comic butt. Stevens (1985, p. 83) contends that as animals have fancy but no reason, so Bottom’s reason is ruled by fancy. . . . The ascendency of fancy is apparent in Bottom . . . from the moment when he and the other mechanicals credit their prospective audience with their own inability to distinguish the imaginary from the real. Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 2, 33) deems him Sh.’s first great clown figure . . . ; through him romantic ardour is genially mocked . . . , even as the dramatist’s poetic skills are ravishingly displayed. (P. 33): He never becomes aware that he has been transformed into an ass, and if this lack of awareness marks a kind of innocence which is appealing, it also defines his limitations. Bottom, a homespun realist with spectatorial detachment from his own situation, according to Mikics (1998, pp. 116, 118), is (p. 118) an admirably self-assured, and therefore somewhat oblivious, adult. Stavig (1995, p. 246) concludes that Bottom’s polarities of aspiration and limitation define his very real physical presence as a man, but his enthusiasm and vitality make him a delightful stage character. His pretensions to be gentlemanly may be possible only because of the surprising respect he gets from Titania, but he has a natural grace and decency about him that enable him to stumble through crises. . . . Harmony and marriage are as far from him as his various songs are from being genuinely musical and his love from being either passionate or divine. For comment on his vitality and enthusiasm, see Smith (1940, p. 11), Griffin (1976, p. 6), Kantak (1963, p. 158), Evans (ed. 1967, p. 42).

Only a few people dislike Bottom or think him childish. Coleridge (1846, p. 325) considers Bottom merely fantastic, without a heart. Moyse (1879, pp. 22–3) does not admire Bottom and thinks Sh. did not either. The name Bottom implies this; Bottom, the shallow man, the man whose depth is easily seen by all who have discernment. . . . Bottom . . . is full of the pride which proceeds from ignorance, pride which a large physical frame tends to increase. Fraser (1885, pp. 68–9) sees Bottom as the embodiment of ugliness and the human asinine, Jacobi (1937, p. 70) as the symbol of the hopeless stupidity of the bourgeois (Ger.), Purdom (ed. 1930, p. xxxiv) as overbearing, self-important, guileness, Parrott (ed. 1938, p. 133) as eternally ridiculous . . . , self-conceited, bumptious, and unabashed, and Castelain (ed. 1943, p. 32) (Fr.) as a limited actor, full of business, conceited, demanding (Fr.). Evans (1960, pp. 43–4) considers Bottom’s oblivion . . . fixed and immutable; he sees neither himself nor his situation truly at any moment in the action, either before, during, or after his sojourn with immortals. The ass’s head is (p. 44) the palpable extension of his native condition: it is unawareness concretized. . . . He steers an undeviating course through the ordinary and the marvellous alike. All places, persons, and things are alike to him.

Stavig (1995, pp. 196–7) thinks Bottom the prototype of masculine attitudes; he is like Egeus or the Theseus of the early scenes. (P. 197): With their lack of understanding of feminine sensibilities, both Theseus and Bottom run the risk of being too Athenian. Further, in their different ways, Theseus and Bottom try to play all the parts demanded of the male, but both have trouble finding the balanced wisdom necessary for success. There is hope for Theseus, but Bottom, despite having the right impulses and feelings within him, turns out to be an ass who can do nothing effectively.

Hazlitt (1817, p. 127) claims that because Bottom follows a sedentary trade, . . . he is accordingly represented as conceited, serious, and fantastical, but Sen Gupta (1950, p. 127) demurs. Jerrold (1853, p. 165) analyzes the effects of his conceit which flows in his veins—is ever swelling, more or less, in his heart; covers him from scalp to toes, like his skin. And it is this beautiful, this most profitable quality . . . this conceit that saves Bottom from a world of wonderment when he finds himself . . . clipp’d by the Queen of Faery. . . . He is fortified by his conceit against any surprise of the most bountiful fortune: self-opinion turns fairy treasures into rightful wages. And are there not . . . such sweet bullies in brick and mortar London? Clarke (1863, pp. 97–102) describes Bottom as (p. 97) a choice arabesque impersonation of that colouring of conceit which, by the half-malice of the world, has been said to tinge the disposition of actors. (P. 98): When is [99] true conceit ever put to a nonplus? . . . Like a Chinese tumbler, however you may thrust him from his centre, he instantly regains his position; he is equal to all contingencies. . . . [100] Conceited people, moreover, being upon such amiable terms with themselves, they are ordinarily good-natured, if not good-tempered. . . . [101] Combined with his amusing and harmless quality of conceit, the worthy Bottom displays no inconsiderable store of imagination in his intercourse with the little people of the fairy world. How pleasantly he falls in with their several natures and qualities. . . .

(P. 102): We never lose the cock-a-whoop vein in Bottom’s character. He patronises his brother-mechanicals; he patronises the fairies: he even patronises himself: If I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn [966–8]. Bottom establishes a type, according to White (1886, pp. 15, 127). The conceited, pretentious man of some ability, who is yet an ass, has in Nick Bottom his earliest and also his most admirable representative in literature. White calls him (p. 127) glorious Nick Bottom, crown-prince of all egoists, [who] sought to play the lion, and like many egoists ended in playing the donkey. Verity (ed. 1893, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii) adds that greatness is so thrust upon him [TN 2.5.146 (1151)] . . . that self-assertion became his ruling passion, and his (p. xxxvii) self-conceit . . . is never marred by a lapse into modesty. Weiss (1876, pp. 104–6) places Bottom in a class with Malvolio for self-sufficiency, though the similarity ends there since Bottom is so deep and rich with harmless vanity that he sprouts into the auricular appendages, and he shakes them in the most amiable, frisky way. . . . [105] But there is nothing sour about Bottom. . . . He is hale-fellow with all his mates. . . . He is one of those self-made men who occasionally discredit their own bringing up and help us to recover our respect for a liberal education.

But a highly successful deficiency of education does not make Bottom arrogant. . . . He is [106] good-tempered, and the first tap of flattery cracks his whole pretension. . . . Bottom miscalls his words from sheer rusticity, and not from any effort to borrow the language of his superiors. . . . So . . . he is in most senses a born natural, proprietor by birth of the crest which at last he wears. But he is not all fool, for when he wakes . . . and says he has had a dream, we notice that he is reluctant to expound it. Also noting his egotism, conceit, vanity are Dowden (1877, p. 72); Morley (ed. 1886, pp. 22–3); Winter (in Daly, ed. 1888, pp. 14, 16); Marshall (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1888, 2:325–6); Bates (ed. 1895, pp. 14, 19); Brooke (1905, pp. 28–9); Dowden (in Craig, ed. 1911, 1:525) who says he is embarrassed only by the multitude of his own gifts; Sen Gupta (1950, p. 128), who thinks his vanity of a piece with his general character, his unromantic, mechanical view of life and art; and Walter (ed. 1964, pp. 16–17), who thinks him possibly horribly afraid after his abandonment so that his song (p. 17) may signal his quavering fear and his witticisms with the fairies may be nervousness.

Bottom has many defenders. Although she regards him as an example of coarse sensuality, Stewart (1908, pp. 114–16) insists that Bottom is not all worthless—in the eyes of his fellows at least. She detects (p. 115) a certain elevation in all his later remarks and bids him farewell saying that (p. 116) the ass’ head may have been but a visible symbol of what already existed, but there is a heart beneath thy home-spun garments and thy immortal soul has not been altogether dead to the etherial vision. Palmer (1946, pp. 92, 98) objects to critics who berate Bottom for pushiness. This character who holds firmly together the gossamer structure of that most aery fabric of a vision is débrouillard. . . . He engrosses the play not because he is obtrusive, but because he is ingenuously eager to meet all occasions. . . . Nor does his love of life exceed his ability to cope with it. He does not unduly press either himself or his suggestions on the company but yields with good grace to the common voice. He is equally at home in classical antiquity, rural Britain and the kingdom of the fairies. Palmer says that Bottom (p. 98) accepts [Quince’s] authority and never questions his decisions and is neither envious nor pushful, but just immensely eager. According to Knight (1958, p. 224) Bottom has his own royalty, and the humour which he radiates is one with our recognition of it, as when we enjoy his boldness before Theseus. Like Palmer Harbage (1963; 1967, p. 109) praises Bottom’s attitude toward others. Despite his native superiority, Bottom is patient with lesser men. . . . [He] has a good word to say for the literary efforts of Quince, whom he views almost as an equal. . . . Like other actors to the manner born [Ham. 1.4.15 (620)], Bottom has an affinity with down-stage center. He is also a born teacher. . . . Things would have gone more smoothly without him, but would have lacked salt and savor. What an ineffable ass this Bottom is, and how dearly Shakespeare loves him! Hubler (1964, p. 57) insists that no man in his right mind ever wished Bottom to be more sensible than he is, and Campbell (in Campbell, Rothschild, & Vaughan, ed. 1965, p. 5) who has high praise for this comic embodiment of John Bull has progressed far beyond malapropism and rustic stupidity. . . . Like that symbol of English stability, he is firmly rooted to the earth and feels completely at home in any spot on its broad surface. Bellringer (1983, pp. 214–15) considers his ass’s head . . . at once a prize for big-headed stupidity and a symbol of man’s access to naturalness through instinct and animality. But he has initiative and inspiration. He gets things done or changed. . . . The quality which most distinguishes Bottom is presence of mind. But he is no opportunist. He is vivacious and uncalculating, unsatirical, uncorrupted, unlike some of Shakespeare’s later clowns; rather he is loyal, literal, reverential, frank and conscientious, taking everything in good faith at first and then worried lest the audience should be distressed by tragic incidents which are too harrowing. . . . Yet his motivation is touchingly sincere, the reverse of morbid. Moreover, (p. 215) he sees through the glamour of love at first sight, and, when Titania declares her instant passion, mildly and imaginatively rebukes her; [quotes 959–63]. The basic good sense of this remark gives Bottom the advantage in the exchange of pleasantries. Campbell (1984, p. 87) calls him a dunce, but one who finds nothing in the world strange, one who turns all things to his advantage and does so with sublime self-assurance. Bloom (1987, p. 1) adds: Self-assertive, silly, ignorant, he remains a personage of absolute good will. In Schneider’s opinion (1987, pp. 203–4) Bottom would seem to represent the character most immune to self-aggrandizing pretensions. Even in the childish enthusiasm of his aspirations to play all the parts . . . , Bottom seems only to want to fulfill a role for himself as star player that his fellows, his social peers, are quite willing [204] to grant him. Because of his gentlemanliness and courtesy, Lowenthal (1996, p. 85) says, Bottom’s friends think the world of him.

Most of the critics who comment on Bottom’s inestimable self-love and conceit also judge him representative of the human species. Knight (ed. 1839, 1:332) exclaims: And then Bottom! Who but the most skilful artist could have given us such a character? . . . Why, Bottom the weaver is the representative of the whole human race. His confidence in his own power is . . . profound. . . . 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. Wilson (1873, pp. 262, 264, 271) discerns in Bottom inimitable power and humorous depth of irony; he is (p. 264) a representative man, not one, but all mankind’s epitome, (p. 271) a natural genius, of a type by no means rare. There is a consequential aldermanic absolutism about him, familiar to many a civic council-board. Greenfield (1968, pp. 239–40), pointing out that the ass signifies irrationality and that in irrationality lies man’s kinship with the ass, comments that (p. 240) Bottom’s broad relationship to all mankind not only colors the rest of the play but also helps to inform the perspective from which we, the audience, also his brothers, must view it.

White (1854, pp. 210–12), thinks Bottom the strongest character in the play, complains that many have been inclined to look upon Bottom only as a stolid lout. . . . The conception is directly at variance with Shakespeare’s delineation of the character. . . . From the time he enters until he disappears, he not only claims to be, but is, the man of men, the Agamemnon of the rude mechanicals [1031] of Athens. No sooner is the subject of the play opened, than he instantly assumes the direction of it. . . . But there is some reason for all this besides his vanity: he is the best among them, and they know it. He has impressed them with his superiority, and has a moral as well as a mental influence upon them. Although (p. 211) he is a compound of profound ignorance and omnivorous conceit . . . these are tempered by good nature, decision of character, and some mother wit. That which gives him his individuality does not depend upon his want of education, his position, or his calling. All the schools of Athens could not have reasoned it out of him; and all the gold of Croesus would have made [212] him but a gilded Bottom after all. The race of Bottoms did not become extinct with Nick; nor have we reason to believe he was Nicholas the First. White (loc. cit.) and Moberly (ed. 1881, p. 63) are reminded of Goldsmith, Alexander (1939, p. 104) of Bentley, who revised Paradise Lost. Alexander (pp. 107–8) finds a robust independence in all Bottom’s thoughts and actions that is not to be extinguished even by the ass’s head. What lucidity and sanity are his, how just and straightforward his fashion of thought. . . . [107] He is sometimes himself discursive, even vagrant, for, as in many brilliant commentators, the energetic current of his thought eddies at times into a backwater. . . . [108] But there is nothing overbearing or boorish in the man.

He represents the working man, according to many critics. Maine (1848, p. 427) exclaims the πολυπραγµοσυνη of Bottom—he would now-a-days be a Chartist celebrity. Harrison (1924, p. 56) admires the complacency of this fine specimen of le phlegme Britannique and (1927, p. 27) considers him Sh.’s best picture of the British working man; stolid, unimaginative, and imperturbable, but a considerable wag in his own way. He holds his own in the play scene when all the audience jeer at him, and he subdues them to silence. Smith ([1940], p. 16) and Agate (1943, p. 46) concur. Empson (1994, p. 243) do[es] not know why critics keep saying he is typically working-class; he is a trained artisan, the same class as Shakespeare’s father, whether Shakespeare had become unclassed or not; and surely he is the life and soul of many a city boardroom. He is brave, resourceful, and generous; his vanity is a tyrant over him, and might often lead him wrong, but it lets him sail through the situations that confront him in the play. In short, he is a fundamental kind of man. On the political and social implications of his class see Herbert (1964, p. 37) and Montrose (1995, p. 70).

Johnson (ed. 1765, 1:100) singles out for comment the aspiring actor who 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. See Girard (1987, pp. 101 ff., 120), who thinks (p. 120) his avidity . . . punished, or rewarded, by his metamorphosis into a monster, and Willson (1975, p. 40) adds that Bottom can be controlled by Quince and by Theseus. Hazlitt (1817, pp. 126–8) complains that Bottom the Weaver is a character that has not had justice done him. He is the most romantic of mechanics. . . . [127] 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. . . . [128] Bottom seems to have understood the subject of dramatic illusion at least as well as any modern essayist. Heraud (1865, pp. 178–9) describes Bottom as manager. He has been pondering the drama, [179] until he conjures up fears for its success, . . . and suggests remedies. Bottom is not only critical, he is inventive. With a little practice and encouragement we shall see him writing a play himself. . . . Here is instinct rashly mistaken for aptitude, and aptitude for knowledge, by the uninstructed artisan, who has to substitute shrewdness for experience. And thus it is with the neophyte actor and the ignorant manager, whose sole aim is to thrust aside the author, and reign independent of his control; altering and supplementing, according to their limited lights, what he has conceived in the fulness of the poetic faculty. Similarly Perng (1977; tr. 1988, p. 65). Giles (1868, p. 182) argues that the dramatic fool comes naturally after the conceited fool, for in many instances one is the preparation for the other. Bottom the weaver is a most suitable type of the dramatic fool, eager to play any part. See Weller (1985, p. 75), who adds that he is our first glimpse of the theatrical star, leaving the imprint of his personality on each role. Goldstein (1973, p. 182) notes that if comfort with multitudinous roles be a measure of an actor’s sense of personal security, then Bottom is the most autonomous, imaginative of persons. His delight in imagining himself in many roles, foolish as it may appear, suggests a comfort with self which none of the other characters in the play rivals. Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, pp. xxviii–xxix), observe that like so many in little theatre, he thinks he knows better than anybody else, he is the expert, and he has a good-sized ego. He does not shut up because he is so full of himself, not in a malicious and evil way like professional actors, but simply because he knows that whatever he has to contribute is invaluable because he has experience. . . . And he has an active imagination—why? because his [xxix] job is sedentary, and solitary, and repetitious. While he works there are things going on in his head; he has a marvelous imagination. That he is a weaver is connected with how he acts: he is a dreamer, weaving his own dreams, especially of being an actor. . . .

The actor who plays Bottom must be a very good one; he must be able to portray a man who is charming, lovable, agile, innocent. Without this quality of innocence the play does not work (note his sense of wonder when he wakes up). He has to be an innocent, like all great actors are—the childlike quality must be predominant, and the imagination. Bottom is an artist. He may not be a great actor, but he has imagination, and he has skill, which the rest of them do not. Bottom represents the necessary mixture of the feminine—the imaginative, the instinctive—and the masculine desire to control the situation in order to be oneself. Bate (1998, p. 270) would agree and says Macbeth, Hamlet, and Bottom are the characters of strongest imagination in their respective plays; if we look at the play or the painting [Fuseli’s] with strong imagination, we will not dismiss their visions as illusions, as false creations Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain [Mac. 2.1.39 (619)].

As a producer Bottom is a realist without imagination, Sen Gupta (1950, p. 125) counters, and therefore is not satisfied with mere mechanical imitation, but goes out of his way to instruct his audience so that there may not be any room for misunderstanding; and if everything falls pat [1988–90] it is in spite of the fact that he does not understand the materials he manipulates any more than he understands the audience. . . . Having no true grasp of reality, this realist fails to see that, though his ideas are faultless, in practice they land him in grotesque and ludicrous situations. Similarly Ribner (in Kittredge & Ribner, ed. 1966, p. 32 n.), McCanles (1976, p. 283). Zesmer (1976, p. 111) contrasts him to Hamlet; although like Hamlet, Bottom enters enthusiastically into his theatrical production, . . . where Hamlet insists that the stage hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature [3.2.22 (1869–70)] and help uncover truth, the engagingly literal-minded Bottom would have a prologue assure the audience that his play is not real. Hasler (1974, pp. 79–80) claims that his ideas about acting and about audience involvement are not simply funny and no more. . . . The notion of the completely identified actor appears to have been quite familiar to the Elizabethan theatre. (P. 80): Unfortunately, as Bottom’s tears will have to be the real thing, he leaves no room for suggestion, illusion, sympathetic imagination, and imaginative cooperation in piecing out his performance.

On the topic of his imagination, Crossley (1975, pp. 284–5), while recognizing that conventionally, Bottom is viewed as the least imaginative figure in the play, argues that (p. 285) when he awakes from his vision and can’t classify or categorize it, . . . realizes the inadequacy of rational language to fantastic experience, unconsciously parodies the Biblical description of heaven, Bottom shows himself a true literalist of the imagination: he sees imaginary gardens with real toads in them because he avoids separating fantasy from reality by verbalizing visionary experience. Theseus is the character in the play who is most articulate about fantasy; he has a ready eloquence for describing the tricks [1809] imagination plays. He is the ass, the patched fool, the man of truncated wisdom and practical discretions. But Bottom is the child-man whose discretions are in the service of vision, . . . an affirmative, even articulate, expression of the irreducibility of vision.

A few people comment on his wit and/or language. Halliwell (1849, p. 130) is the earliest editor to comment on the problem of character consistency. See n. 170. Schücking (1919; tr. 1922, p. 96) deals with the character’s loss of unity when, in Act 3, Sc. 1, Bottom is transformed, and whereas the ass’s head is clearly meant to symbolize the nature of his mind, his language, which so far has been only funny, now becomes almost witty, and Sh. is (p. 97) carried . . . beyond the limits of the character he had drawn. So Gaehde (1931, p. 244). Lawton (1953, p. 208) explains that here Sh. is primarily concerned with the effect of the moment rather than with superficial consistency. But Lanier (1902, 1:67–8) claims that even the ass, the laughing stock and butt of the ages, discourses with such marvellous propriety,—for an ass,—and [68] yet with such more than human wit, that he wins our love. Vickers (1968, pp. 68–9) says the rhetorical figure [of hypallage] becomes a part of personality and thinks that his (p. 69) speech and behaviour throughout his transformation to an ass is a small masterpiece of decorum for Shakespeare, using the word in its Elizabethan sense of fitting style to character. Brown (1966, p. 161) finds in Bottom’s language a revelation of his innermost nature. When his comrades run from his transformation, and as he tries to be realistic and to rouse his own vanity and bravery, his words have the rhythms and progressions of actual thought and fear . . . [937–41]. There is a still more sustained intensity when he wakens from his dream [1728 ff.]. Here Bottom is revealed as the actor who wishes to be glorious in great company, even if it means singing a ballad about his own unbelievable, foolish and unsubstantial dream. Bottom’s malapropisms, Willson (1975, p. 41) contends, are a sign of his pretensions and false learning. See also Borinski (1955, p. 64). Newman (1985, pp. 85–6) points out that Sh. downplays the lovers’ responses to their experience . . . to emphasize Bottom’s soliloquy which ends the scene, . . . endowing Bottom rather than his lovers with a speculative inner life. . . . Ironically he has the most perceptive and telling moment of revelation in [MND]. In his soliloquy we hear his mind moving through experiences of the night, taken aback by their fantasy and improbabilities, for once in the play almost at a loss for words. Caught up in the [86] night’s implausibilities, even Bottom is incredulous. His sense of having had a vision, his broken prose lines which represent the stumbling movement of his mind over the night’s events, the careful rhetorical repetitions juxtaposed with his mixed metaphors of biblical allusion, all play with what I have termed the rhetoric of consciousness, parodying its strategies so as to show the irony of the woodland fantasy and to intimate the lovers’ limitations. His soliloquy also bespeaks his artistic aspirations, for he wants to order his experience into song.

Bottom’s awareness of his transformation and his conduct during it have attracted considerable attention. Hudson (1848, 2:39–41) says that Bottom’s transformation caps the climax of grotesque fanciful drollery. (P. 40): His genius in all its strength and originality comes forth. The consciousness of his new shape awakens all the manhood within him. . . . Caring but little to be a man so long as he knows [41] he seems one, he tries his utmost to be a man as soon as he knows he seems an ass. He adds (ed. 1880, p. 21): delightful to think of, it is scarce tolerable to look upon: exquisitely true in idea, it has no truth, or even verisimilitude, when reduced to fact. Horwood (ed. 1939, p. 22) thinks that his transformation to ass is symbolical, as if by magic a man should appear what he really is. [Carroll (1985, pp. 149–50) concurs as do Stevens (1985, p. 85), who says that his dream is a projection or outward show of his own state of mind, Weller (1985, pp. 76–7), Scolnicov (1993, p. 66), Belsey (1993, p. 181).] He does not, like the lovers, lose his identity but remains as true to himself as Theseus does; and though he says many silly things, he is full of character, as is shown by his conduct with the fairies, which, if it excites our laughter, also compels our respect. Allen (1967, pp. 107–8) finds Bottom the ass the epitome of common sense, . . . [with] a modesty and insouciance which are particularly notable, because they are absent from his character elsewhere in the play. As an ass, then, he (p. 108) is more modest and sensible . . . than as a human being. In the rehearsal episodes he has shown himself capable of idiocies that would be inconceivable in an ass. Bloom (1987, pp. 1–2) observes that, transformed into an outward monstrosity by Puck, he yet retains his [2] courage, kindness, and humor, and goes through his uncanny experience totally unchanged within. Others commenting on the transformation are Laroque (1984, p. 25)—Bottom is unchanged morally; White (1984, p. 37)—his change is superficial; Absher (1990, p. 86)—the crucial feature of Bottom’s response to the supernatural is that he is deeply changed by it; he is quieted by the encounter; Watts (1991, p. 42)—the transformation is physical and in part . . . psychological; Clayton (1999, p. 76)—he rises to the occasion in the fairy court; Paster (1999, pp. 276)—his is a hybrid metamorphosis drawing on a mixture of traditions; Wells (1999, pp. 17 ff.)—Bottom is translated in (p. 19) more than one sense of the word; Uman (2001, pp. 74–5)—the transformation can be seen literally and metaphorically; Berry (2002, p. 135)—the transformation is a paradoxical epiphany of otherness.

Psychoanalytic interpretations flourish in the 20th c. starting with Gui (1952, pp. 251–304), whose Freudian approach finds in Bottom the workings of Shakespeare’s unconscious, and include Jacobson (1962, pp. 21–2), who connects his interpretation to an occasion; Ravich (1964, p. 405), who thinks the transformation may symbolize a mental disturbance; Lechay (1981, p. 15); Marshall (1982, p. 568); Hartman (1983, pp. 356–7); Laroque (1984, p. 25), who regards Bottom as the changeling’s substitute self; Dunn (1988, pp. 20–7), who thinks the (p. 21) fantasy the changeling’s, (p. 22) Bottom the exemplifi[cation of] the confused and regressive sexuality of the pre-oedipal mother-son relationship; Wheeler (1995, p. 145), who says Bottom shares with Caliban a psychological rootedness in themes characteristic of very early phases of infantile development.

Also in the 20th c. relationships and comparisons are initiated between Bottom and his comic fraternity. Courthope (1903, 4:93) compares Bottom’s composure during his translation to Christopher Sly’s, and Luce (1907, p. 164) too links him with Sly but we may also regard him as an earlier Falstaff. On the former linkage see Mathew (1922, p. 118); Phillips (1936, pp. 164–5); Fraser (1962, p. 141); Frye (1965, Perspective, pp. 107–8), who sees both as victims of a practical joke; Phialas (1966, p. 118); Zesmer (1976, p. 100); Bullough (1979, p. 99); Skura (1993, p. 106); Fripp (1938, p. 395), who denies the resemblance to Sly, and on the latter, Matthews (1913, p. 78); Goddard (1951; 1960, 1:177–8); Pitt (in Pitt & Fitzpatrick, ed. 1965, p. xvii); Farnham (1971, p. 78), who likens his winning nature to Falstaff’s; Priestley (1929, p. 174); Cazamian (1952, p. 196), who recognizes that Sir John Falstolfe of I Henry VI is aesthetically akin to Bottom; Roberts (1979, p. 125). Bradbrook (1987, p. 15), who calls this most fully individualized character, . . . supremely the cause of wit in other men [2H4 1.2.10 (285)], comparable to Falstaff in his power of imaginative improvisation, and Shakespeare’s good-natured parody of his own profession.

Those linking Bottom with Launce include Wilson (1932, p. 77); Everett (1961, p. 330)—he is an expanded Launce; Launce with imagination, Launce sitting in the lap of the Gods; Frye (1970, p. 178). Hardman (1938, pp. 101–2) discerns in the pedantic Holofernes . . . a foretaste of Bottom and in the pageant of the Nine Worthies (p. 102) a first sketch of the Athenian Dramatic Society. Hill (1964, p. 19) points out that unlike Costard and Speed Bottom is unable to interpret a double-entendre, and Hamilton (1967, pp. 223–4) says that Costard’s role in [L[224]LL] clarifies Bottom’s in this play. When the lords seek to know Things hid and barr’d . . . from common sense [1.1.57 (62)], . . . they reject common sense. . . . Costard represents such common sense when he shows the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh [1.1.217–8 (228–9)]. He upholds the simple human . . . by exposing Berowne’s affections and Armado’s affectations. Bottom, in a similar role, has the same Falstaffian vitality, good spirits, and irrepressible human nature by which he adapts himself to every situation. [Similarly Ansari (1978, pp. 54–5).] Both Costard and Bottom bring the pressure of the ordinary world of human nature to bear upon the idealized world of the lovers. Those comparing Bottom and Dogberry include Kellogg (1866, pp. 118–9); Furnivall (ed. 1877, p. lv); Beattie (1879, p. 26); Smith (1940, p. 17); Neilson & Hill (ed. 1942, p. 89); Harbage (1947; 1961, pp. 19–20), who adds that in Bottom and Dogberry folly and conceit . . . are endearing because there is no (p. 20) falsehood and wickedness in them; Evans (1960, pp. 42–3); Sen Gupta (1977, p. 32); Berry (1984, p. 123). Allen (1967, p. 110) finds similarities between Dogberry and Malvolio and Bottom but unlike them, Bottom develops during the course of the play. Scott (1977, p. 119) finds Bottom and Dogberry . . . just as absurd [as Falstaff], but they are finally superior to the wiser men they parody. They suggest . . . the truth of human frailty and thus help to put high comedy, despite its artifices, in touch with reality. According to Dawson (1982, p. 217) Dogberry’s language is peppered with malapropisms, which distort language as, analogously, Bottom distorts dramatic conventions, and which reveal Dogberry’s proud concern with language just as Bottom’s theatrical bravado reveals his egotistical interest in the drama. Both are blithely unaware of [their] humorous incompetence. Ornstein (1986, p. 89) selects as Bottom’s most immediate descendants . . . Dogberry and Verges. . . . More distant relations are Bassanio, Benedick, Adam, the good Lafew, Pisanio, and Camillo, whose kindly natures never change and whose decency and loyalty sustain the belief that despite violent passion and reckless deeds, love and laughter will finally prevail. Cutts (1968, p. 50) says that Bottom out-malaprop[s] Costard and out-dull[s] Dull, . . . [and] like sly old Christopher never loses his plebian sense of the taste of hay, . . . and like preeminently Petruchio knows the value of monetary rewards. Huston (1981, p. 95) finds in Bottom Petruchio’s energy, his self-confidence, his capacity for play—for assimilating what is around him into the world of his ego. Like Petruchio, too, he plays the part of lover and tyrant, and, during the time that he retreats into an insulated world with a spellbound fairy princess (or queen) he turns temporarily into a monster. Finally, also like Petruchio, Bottom is cast in the role of hero by an audience of his peers, who recognize him as the only one among them capable of an heroic undertaking. Yet here again similarities matter principally because of what they tell us about differences. Bottom is a parody of Petruchio: he is the fairy tale hero of humble origins who never transcends those origins; he is a player with Petruchio’s all-consuming appetite for assimilation but without Petruchio’s capacity to turn what he assimilates to effect. Newman (1985, p. 86) says Sh. links Bottom with his comic fellows in the later comedies who, however more self-conscious and witty, use language to subvert social, political or sentimental hierarchies. Vain and ignorant, Bottom’s exuberance and histrionic desires help him make an imaginative leap we never see the lovers make.

For comment on Bottom’s name see DP n. 12. For stylistic analysis of Bottom’s awakening soliloquy see n. 1728–45. For thematic implications, see Themes and Significance, especially here, here, here, here, here; for his structural function, see Structure, especially here. For interpretations of his character rooted in mythological echoes and allusions, see here.

Bottom and Titania

The first reference to the memorable and bewitched exchange between Bottom and Titania occurs in an anonymous play, The Folly of Priest-Craft: A Comedy (1690, p. 18), when Leucasia comments to an Intriguing Priest on Turnabout’s conversion: 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—This forced me by the Principles of common humanity to pity you extreamly, and I am now come, like a true Romantick Lady, to free you from the Enchantment of your Error. Others have noticed the themes of error and folly in the Bottom-Titania episode, and many have pitied Titania. Taine (1863; tr. 1890, p. 138) wonders what can be sadder and sweeter than this irony of Shakespeare? What raillery against love, and what tenderness for love! The sentiment is divine; its object unworthy. The heart is ravished, the eyes blind. It is a golden butterfly, fluttering in the mud; and Shakespeare, whilst painting its misery, preserves all its beauty. Boas (1896, p. 187) is moved by this victim of Oberon’s masterpiece of revenge. . . . And so persuasive is the art of the dramatist that our pity is challenged for Titania’s infatuation, with its pathetically reckless squandering of pearls before swine, and thus we hail with joy her release from her dotage. Stewart’s first reaction (1908, pp. 112–14) is Let us draw a veil over the humiliating scene.

But even this thorough ordeal Titania passes without loss of feminine charm or royal dignity. Her homely swain’s jest on the estrangement between love and [113] reason draws from her the earnest assurance: Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful [965], a compliment which even Bottom’s vanity cannot accept without a protest. . . .

[114] Titania is not the first, nor will she be the last, to lavish a wealth of tender affection upon coarse sensuality. Similarly Preston (1869, pp. 168–9), Wolff (1907; 1926, p. 337), Scragg (1988, p. 96).

Taylor (1792, p. 163) insists that 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. In a letter to Kate Greenaway Ruskin (Letter 1884, Works 37:485) writes: but if you think you don’t feel like Titania, you simply—and this I say quite seriously—don’t understand Titania. I understand perfectly both her and Bottom—looking always from the Donkey side—Donkeys being the most humanly sagacious, as well as the most blessed, of quadrupeds (Elephants are Angelically sagacious—they are Michaels and Gabriels—instead of Balaam’s Donkeys).

I wonder if Shakespeare meant really all that the play means!

On Titania’s awaking to Bottom Watkins & Lemmon (1974, p. 77) conclude: Like many a good theatrical stroke, when it comes the sheer aptness and ingenuity of it take our breath away: it is the best kind of surprise which makes one say of course: it had to happen that way. Brown (ed. 1996, p. xviii) observes that in their scenes together the tenderness, humility, courtesy, and boundless generosity of love are made most fully apparent. Bergeron (1977, p. 165) thinks Bottom’s translation parallels Lysander’s sudden, irrational doting on Helena in II.ii. In scenes with Titania, in a sense, he becomes a kind of Pyramus, at least for the moment a romantic lover, a role unanticipated in his mundane life as actual weaver.

Several critics emphasize Bottom’s deportment as a source of amusement. Quennell (1963, pp. 173–4) pictures Bottom assert[ing] his individual dignity, when, stretched out upon [174] Titania’s bed, he . . . enjoys his royal dream, issuing his commands and extending his princely favour with a benign aplomb that would do Theseus credit. In Baxter’s opinion (1965, p. 66), in the scene with Titania Bottom assumes an air of aristocratic ennui in relation to Titania’s courtiers and contrives to be at one and the same time the essence of princely gentility and graciousness and the embodiment of the democratic spirit which acknowledges that all men, if they try hard enough, can be equal with oneself. Bonazza (1966, p. 120) contends that Oberon’s plot comes off too successfully; the irrepressible Bottom accepts it with too much aplomb. He is constitutionally incapable of being nonplussed, and Van Domelen (1996, p. 79) stresses Bottom’s boundless self-confidence [which] carries him along effortlessly in his relationship with Titania. Bottom never questions his fitness for such an affair nor his ability to carry off his part with credit.

Some commentators contrast Titania’s and Bottom’s points of view. Maginn (1837, pp. 378, 380) imagines in Titania a strong sensation of disgust as she confesses that she was enamoured of an ass! [1592] Bottom, on the other hand, takes the love of the Queen of the Fairies as a thing of course. . . . 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. Maginn’s closing apostrophe sends Bottom on his way, impervious to the criticism of the (p. 380) judicious who with all their wisdom and wit [did not captivate] the heart of a Titania. . . . Nor will they ever. Prosper, therefore, with undoubting heart despising the rabble of the wise. Leggatt (1974, pp. 89–90) finds behind the sharply contrasted voices . . . two utterly different kinds of understanding, and each one comically dislocates the other. Titania’s love is addressed to a hearer who uses it simply as the occasion for a bit of cheerful philosophizing. And the philosophy, in turn, is wasted on the [90] listener. It is all very well for Bottom to chatter away about reason and love; he has the detachment of the totally immune. But Titania is caught up in the experience of which Bottom is only a detached observer, and, ironically, his cool philosophy only gives her one more reason for adoring him. . . . In the confrontation of Bottom and Titania, the audience’s judgement is delicately suspended between both parties. Each one’s assessment of the other is amusingly wrong. . . . On reflection, there is something to be said for each of these mistaken views: for all his mortal grossness, Bottom has been touched by magic; and the fairy queen is in the grip of a passion we have already seen affecting mortals, and affecting them in a similar way. Yet this only compounds the joke, for while both have been transformed, shifted from their true natures, both are unaware of being anything but their normal selves. . . . Titania move[s] to gratify her love at once, and Bottom accept[s] his new role with cheerful equanimity. The keynote . . . is innocence.

Schlegel (1809–11; tr. 1815, 2:177–8) is the first of many delighting in the juxtaposition of the sublime and the ridiculous; 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. (P. 178): In his behaviour during the tender homage of the Fairy Queen, we have a most amusing proof how much the consciousness of such a head-dress heightens the effect of his usual folly. Campbell (1838; 1846, 1:57) anticipates the mirth of generations unborn at Titania’s doting on the metamorphosed weaver, and on his calling for a repast of sweet peas, and Hudson (1848, 2:42–3) is enthralled. In the temporary wedlock of Bottom and Titania the two extremes of the grotesque and the beautiful have met together. . . . [43] This embracing and kissing of the most ludicrous and the most poetical, the enchantment under which they are brought together, and the airy dreamlike grace which hovers over their union, are altogether inimitable and indescribable. The very diversity of the elements seems to link them in the closer affinity; while the same principle that draws them together augments their difference; Titania’s passion inspiring her into a finer issue of soul, and at the same time encouraging Bottom into a fuller expression of stomach. Their union is so very unnatural as to seem quite probable: we cannot see how anything but a dream could possibly have united them; and that they could not have come together save in a dream, is a sort of proof that they were dreamed together. And the thing engages very much the same kind of faith as a dream. The strangeness of the effect is irresistible. Too ludicrous for laughter, and too absurd for censure, we may almost say, it makes us weep smiles or smile tears of delight; while its beauty and drollness utterly silence criticism. Moyse (1879, p. 25) too stresses the vivid contrast. Yet, in spite of . . . [his] grossness, there is, obscure in the depths of the weaver’s mind, shallow as they are, a kindly nature, which the world has rightly deemed characteristic of its giants. Others commenting on the contrast are Wigston (1884, p. 304), Dowden (1877, pp. 71–2), Jessup (1929, p. 111), Rodway (ed. 1969, p. 27a), Bevington (in Bevington & Craig, ed. 1973, p. 184), Frattaroli (1988, p. 234). On parallels with the Psyche myth, see McPeek (1972, pp. 76–7).

Ten Brink (1893; tr. 1895, p. 196) comments on the point where the divine and the human, the ideal and the coarsest reality, meet, where the spirit is dragged down by the dust. See also Herford (1916; 1921, p. 36), Emery (1960, p. 3), Allen (1967, p. 108). Robinson (1968, pp. 386–7) regards the scene as the burlesque embodiment of the discordant fusion of mortals and spirits in the epitasis of the play. Bottom is ridiculed as he is ennobled in company with these gods who quarrel and love as mortals do. A man for all occasions, Bottom graciously accepts the attendance and love of Titania and her train, realizing reason and love keep little company together now-a-days [960–1]. Robinson describes (p. 387) the wedding of Bottom and Titania . . . which can be understood only on the level of ritualistic reality. . . . Bottom can enter Titania’s bower because he is translated, transcending for the nonce the measure of his ordinary reality to become holiday king in comically magical masquerade. . . . He is led as bridegroom to bed [982–92] with the Queen of Summer [972]. Such is the wedding of mortality and divinity, man and nature in ritual form. Miller (1975, p. 263) writes of the effect when, in the comic encounter, extremes meet and coexist: imagination and love and magic at their most entrancing in Titania, philistine realism at its most appealingly vulgar in Bottom. . . . Ironically, Bottom’s unblinking acceptance of the fairies provides these metaphoric beings with a solidity that nothing else, not even their presence on stage, can provide. . . . Were it not for Bottom, the fairies might be passed off as simply a personification of the providence that governs, or seems to govern, or we would like to have govern, events. Kott (tr. 1981, p. 136) explains that in Bottom’s metamorphosis and in his encounters with Titania, not only do high and low, metaphysics and physics, and poetry and farce meet, but so do two theatrical traditions: the masque and the court entertainment meet the carnival world turned upside-down. . . . This encounter of Titania and Bottom, the ass and the mock-king of the carnival, is the very beginning of modern comedy and one of its glorious opening nights. Alwyn (1991, p. 103) detects an echo of the Minotaur (which Theseus slew) in the stage image of a man with a beast’s head and darker implications of the bestial passions with which donkeys are also associated; there is charming innocence in Bottom being the only mortal to play with the fairies and yet those fairies are also supernaturally weird. In these ways Bottom and Titania’s love affair slips and slides and shifts between the sublime and the ridiculous, the animal and the refined, monstrous fear and comic delight. Their relationship, at the heart of the disordered world, is a shattered mirror image of everything an orthodox relationship between man and woman should be and it crystallises the whole night [in] the wood as a dramatic tapestry depicting how the free play of passions brings chaos to all orthodox order. Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 809) sees in the episode’s wonderful moments . . . the zany conjunction of distinct and even opposed theatrical modes. . . . Thus, for example, exquisite love poetry and low comedy meet in the wonderful moment in which the queen of fairies awakens to become enraptured at the sight of the most flatulently absurd of the mechanicals, Bottom. Similarly Devlin (1991, p. 90), Defaye (2000, pp. 140–1).

The comical and anti-romantic aspects of the scene are frequently emphasized. Lang (1895, p. 336) thinks that Titania’s size makes the infatuation comical as are the accusations against Gulliver and the Queen of Lilliput. Woodberry (in Lee, ed. 1907, 3:xv) comments: The comedy is most exquisite at this point in the play, and composed at once so grotesquely and delicately that the scene remains one of the capital memories of literature. See Castelain (ed. 1943, p. 28); Parrott (1949, p. 131); Roberts (1980, p. 85), who adds that Bottom becomes for Oberon and Puck, and in the end for Titania, a scapegoat whose sacrifice reunites the fairy king and queen. Welsford (1927, p. 338) sees the scene as antimasque. Alexander (1939, p. 104) exclaims, No comedy of situation, not farce itself can provide a stranger encounter than that between Bottom and Titania; but it belongs to the purest comedy of character, and Bottom is as much the life of this scene as he is of the interlude to follow. The main point of the scene, according to Potts (1949; 1960, pp. 24–5, 42, 151), lies of course not in the simplicity of Bottom but in the fatuity of the exquisite Titania. Every word she speaks is ridiculous; especially her application to Bottom of the word gentle [954], which still in Shakespeare’s time had its older meaning, of the nobility of mind and body. . . . [25] It is in the way in which Bottom and Titania throw each other into relief that the high comedy of the scene consists. She adds that (p. 42) Titania and Bottom belong to different planes of reality, so that if the scene is to be dramatic at all a symbolism almost as precise as that of allegory must be ascribed to it. . . . If we feel any distress or disgust at the sight of Titania embracing Bottom, then surely our sense of comedy is defective. (P. 151): She sees elements of farce in the scene, as do Wilson (1973, p. 71) and Holzknecht (1950, p. 287), who says the absurdity is increased by the queen’s disappointment in Bottom’s conversation. She bids her attendants Tie up my love’s tongue; bring him silently [1020]. . . . Apparently there are limits to infatuation and even to the efficacy of the magic blossom, love-in-idleness. Pettet (1949, p. 113) thinks that if his affair with Titania reduces love to the level of farce . . . it is love in general rather than love in the romantic form that, directly and by implication, he renders comic. Comtois (1981, pp. 45, 47, 53–4) calls the scene contrast, undiluted, which is the principle by which farce is achieved. . . . Farce results in the scenes in Titania’s bower, not only because a fairy queen and an ass/clown are contrasted, but also, more importantly, because the surface decorum of courtly manners is contrasted with such a preposterous substance of passions (for love or hay) in a pressing dramatic encounter. Comtois says that (p. 47) it is Bottom’s body that is altered, but it is Titania’s perceptions. (P. 53): Oberon had intended an action to mock Titania and so this action has mocked her, her court and the very refinement for which it stood. There is no lyric passage in this scene. Titania mastered Bottom’s prosiness in their [54] last scene. (Tie up my love’s tongue . . . ) Bottom has dominated this scene and what lyric thrusts Titania made, Bottom effectively parried, so that she is finally brought down to his level. Walter (ed. 1964, p. 12) thinks that Titania’s infatuation with Bottom portrays the degradation of physical love that lowers man to love a beast. Here, however, it gives no offense, it is pure comedy. The incongruity of beauty wooing the beast, Bottom’s massive insensibility, the burlesque of the passionate declarations of the lovers, and of platonic love in the terms used by Titania normally to describe the communion of heavenly souls, must have provided mirthful fare for the courtiers.

Seiden (1959, pp. 84, 88) calls the episode a parody of the rites of love and imagines (p. 88) the woods outside of Athens . . . a kind of Garden of Eden; and Titania, tasting for the first time the joy of the flesh at its most brutish—that is, asinine—level, is a comic Eve; and it is possible to see Bottom, his head metamorphosed into an ass’s noggin, as the serpentine Satan—and the fruit of the Tree as well, for that matter. See Berry (1972, pp. 107–8), Roberts (1983, p. 113). Fender (1968, pp. 45–6) considers the scene more sharply comic—because of its visual arrangement—and more terrifying than the lover’s quarrel in the wood. Furthermore, Titania’s imagery is more sexually suggestive than any allowed the courtiers. . . . Even Oberon is moved to pity. . . . This scene is only a more exaggerated presentation of the danger and absurdity implicit in the courtiers’ behaviour. Our relief at the solution [46] to their problems is the greater when we are allowed this oblique, retrospective image of their misdirection. Wyrick (1982, p. 445) points out that Shakespeare produces a double antithesis . . . by switching the expected attributes of the characters: Titania exhibits the amorous aggressiveness one would anticipate from a lusty beast; Bottom reacts with the reserve one would anticipate from a virtuous lady. . . . The episode—carefully placed in the middle of the play, divided in order to flank the central love confusion of the noble youths—functions as a comic filter through which the nocturnal adventures of the Athenian quartet should be viewed. In this playworld, love’s metamorphoses are comic, not malevolent. According to Leggatt (1988, p. 26), Oberon’s trick on Titania is potentially grotesque; she could, he threatens, fall in love with a beast. Instead we find her courting Bottom, whose natural clownishness is enhanced by an ass’s head. The haunting power of this image is suggested by the number of times illustrators have used it to represent the play. . . . It cannot be reduced to a simple meaning. In part, however, it mocks the claim of love to endow its victims with special perception. . . . In the fate of Titania and in the simpler fates of Lysander and Demetrius we see love as a comic distortion of the senses. Similarly Willson (1981, pp. 86–7). Bate (1993, p. 143) observes that Titania with Bottom is the nearest Shakespeare comes to a god making violent love to a mortal: by inverting the customary gender roles . . . and by making the mortal into a wise fool, Shakespeare defuses the encounter into comedy. Johann Heinrich Fuseli’s extraordinary paintings of the scene have exactly the grotesque quality of the more perverse couplings in Ovid, but in the theater it is a tryst which provokes more mirth than discomfort.

There is a debate over whether the Bottom-Titania relationship is consummated. Cody (1969, p. 135) contends that to Oberon [Titania] is proud [435]—eager for the male, glosses Johnson—and a rash wanton [438]. And a good case can be made for taking the implied tenor of her relations with the changeling and with Bottom to be Bacchic. Pagnini (1976; tr. 1999, p. 39) argues that in the woods, nature runs blindly to satisfy its whims. . . . In this space represented by Nature, sentiment and gallantry clearly count for nothing. The episode of Titania’s love for Bottom is coarsely erotic and suggestive, and the crafty eye of Priapus gleams in the weaver’s ass-head. Thus, we have malapropisms and poor grammar, misuse of words, bad rhyme, halting metre, a total inability to act anything involving pathos, and every sort of vulgarity imaginable. Dufour (1979, pp. 24–6) thinks that the meeting between Titania and Bottom is a scene which associates erotic violence with sacredness. Sexual desire unites men, animals, and gods: Jupiter made himself into a bull to love a mortal, Bottom is made an ass to love a fairy. Sexuality is in the ancient community the preferred way to achieve sacred rapture. The act of love with Titania puts an end to a difficult situation aggravated by the quarrel of the gods; Titania’s abandonment of her husband for the love of a stolen boy, which is sterile and has ill-fated consequences on a cosmic scale, disturbs the seasons, provokes sterility, sickness and death. The mediation of Bottom puts an end to these incestuous relations, and thus is reestablished the normal exchange of women and men (Fr.). See Calderwood (1987, p. 65), who imagines feelings of alarm and titillation in Sh.’s audience at the wild beast fantasy: intercourse involving man, god<dess>, and brute simultaneously. . . . But it would take a sensitive soul indeed to run in fear from Bottom and Titania. Even so, the bestializing of sex in Bottom serves as a paradigm for the forest experience of the young lovers; he literalizes what is for them metaphoric. Kott (1964; tr. 1966, p. 228) supposes that the tender, and lyrical Titania longs for animal love. . . . The frail and sweet Titania drags the monster to bed, almost by force. This is the lover she wanted and dreamed of; only she never wanted to admit it, even to herself. The sleep frees her from inhibitions. . . .

The love scenes between Titania and the ass must seem at the same time real and unreal, fascinating and repulsive. They are to rouse rapture and disgust, terror and abhorrence. They should seem at once strange and fearful. Bevington (1978, p. 89) responds. This reading . . . exaggerates distastefully and needlessly. I say needlessly because the coupling of Titania and Bottom has long been regarded as a comic version of Beauty and the Beast. . . . Such pairing of opposites is plainly suggestive of the yoking of the ethereal and the carnal in human nature. Smith (1979, pp. 20–1) too argues against Kott’s assumption that Titania wants the most phallic of beasts by saying that it is the ass’s head, not phallus, which is attached to Bottom and that she makes love to an ass without his body or a man without his head, in short, a creature without form or dignity [247]. But Titania’s showering of love on him points (unconsciously, of course) to a profound reflection of divine love in a woman: love for a man who has been debunked, reduced from his outward appear-[21]ance to the form of an ass. The false dignity stripped away, this love restores the man’s true form and dignity [247]. Wickham (1980, p. 194) comments that the Titania-Bottom scene shows that sensuality is a component of Original Sin, as bitter in its aftermath as alluring in prospect, and thus to be avoided. Graham (1987, pp. 42–3) says that the eroticism is light, ridiculous, but quite real. And Bottom longing bathetically for some good dry oats [1544] to munch, and for the tongs and the bones [1540] as a musical background, does not negate the bizarre sexuality of the situation—only [43] emphasizes it on a comic level. And at the same time, of course, Bottom’s comic reductions serve to remind us that this encounter, as well as touching on the strange, is also a woodland transposition of some of the familiar absurdities, inequalities, and malapropisms-in-act of ordinary human sexuality. Swander (1990, pp. 97–9) insists, on the basis of detailed sonic and metrical analysis, that what happens in the bower is rape. Swander dwells on Titania’s (p. 98) dialogue with the moon [1017–20] during which she pauses before the awful consequences of lust, knowing that she is about to violate Bottom sexually, knowing that rape violates nature itself, knowing that the moon and the flowers will weep. It is from the profound moral awareness of Titania that we learn the terrible power of certain kinds of acts, and of a dreadful pollution from them that can flood the world. . . . And yet the audience must now watch as Titania, though morally perceptive . . . , deliberately chooses the violence of lust and the grief of the natural world in the violated name of love. What Bottom carries from the experience is not clear, but as for Titania, (p. 99) the rapist pays. . . . I always, thinking of this moment, see (in the RSC film version) the tears on Judi Dench’s face. . . . It is a moment in which the actress can take the audience . . . into the experience of the bower, and thus into her terrible revulsion after a lust so savage that it will in effect rape the chaste moon itself. Calderwood (1991, p. 420) responds: his stylistic evidence is so subtly meaningful as to boggle the imagination. . . . Even so, Swander’s . . . careful and interesting argument makes the best case yet for a ravishment of Bottom that does not require a wild disregard of the text. Calderwood insists that only an offstage consummation would have been possible in Elizabethan England in manor house, court, or public theaters. All of Shakespeare’s (and any other Elizabethan playwright’s) bed-tricks occurred invisibly, offstage. Nor would Oberon have wanted to be cuckolded. He wanted her to love and languish for his sake [680]. Boehrer (1994, pp. 123–4, 128–9, 132), contending (p. 124) that Oberon enforces decency by indulging indecency, claims that (p. 123) [MND] is patently about bestiality. (P. 128): It is Titania . . . [129] whose humanity is more fundamentally impeached by the entire exchange, for she—not Bottom—clearly cannot distinguish a bestial love-object from a human one. In this sense, at least, Bottom’s transformation happens more to Titania than to Bottom himself. . . . Turning a woman into an animal degrades the woman, and turning a man into an animal also degrades the woman. He says that (p. 132) the spectacle of Titania and Bottom embracing and sleeping together comes as close to enacted sexual intercourse as any scene in Shakespearean comedy. . . . [MND] takes pains to establish sexual limits that it then transgresses, through metaphor and innuendo and overt representation, as often as possible, and this act of transgression constitutes a good measure of the play’s appeal to its audience. The play is a bit like a Protestant marriage-manual constructed out of animal pornography. See also Orgel (2003, pp. 93–4). Others thinking the episode involves what Stavig (1995, p. 259) calls illicit passion are Willson (1975, p. 45); Garber (1981, p. 140); Carroll (1985, pp. 154, 156); Tour (1985, p. 63); Murphy (1988, pp. 30–1), who cites Titania’s speech on the progeny of evils [456–92], redolent of fecundity, and reminiscent of our original parents, . . . who also left behind them a progeny of evils; Coursen (1992, p. 74); Hunt (1992, p. 224 and 1996, p. 5, where he adds that the act constitutes a kind of double rape, for under the sexual spell that Oberon has cast upon her, symbolically raped Titania physically rapes Bottom); Scolnicov (1993, p. 66); Wiles (1993, pp. 121–2, 124); Uman (2001, pp. 76–7), who sees an allusion to the myth of Philomel only with a reversal of roles; Hackett (2003, p. 343); Hunter (2003, pp. 3, 6); Pask (2003, p. 178). For Kahan (1996, p. 18) Oberon’s cuckolding is at least symbolic.

On the other hand, Kállay (1998, p. 12) says we’ll never know for sure, Paster (1999, p. 295) seems to agree, and Clayton (1999, p. 77) adds that the lack of stage directions at this point might be taken as performance latitude if not license for licentiousness. But both Q1 and F have Oberon present behind [1510] (i.e., unseen, eds.) for the entire action, which could hardly pass uninterrupted if it were played as in some recent productions and Oberon were truly jealous Oberon [394, 436]. After Titania’s last line, both she and Bottom inferentially now sleeping, Oberon bids Welcome, good Robin. Seest thou this sweet sight? Her dotage now I do begin to pity [1560–2]. Wells (1999, p. 21) declares that if Bottom and Titania do make love, they do it as fairies—or, to quote another of Titania’s epithets for Bottom—as angels do. However that may be. Tanner (ed. 1995, 1:cli) calls Kott’s theory of bestiality and rape more and less, prurient speculation [which] seems to me most extraordinarily to miss the point. What happened belongs, crucially and precisely, in the realm of what Henry James called the unspecified (by implication, the unspecifiable). It is a gap, a silence, an unrecuperable missingness—a mystery. It is a vital blank which we never can fill in—and nor should we try. If anything, the preliminary intimations are more Platonic than sexual: [quotes 977–8]. But as to what happened—why, even Bottom cannot tell us that. . . . Although Titania in her drugged state, intends to seduce Bottom, Taylor (Plato’s Symposium, 2004, p. 277, n. 13) says the text does not support her having sexual intercourse with a workman partially transformed to an animal. . . . Shakespeare solves the dilemma . . . by having the parties involved magically fall asleep.

Others insist on the innocence of the scene. Latimer (1886, p. 120) remarks that Titania’s infatuation for Bottom is all purity. It is the wildest folly, but fairy nature admits no thought of grosser evil. Many commentators agree with her. Darmesteter (1889, p. 62) thinks Titania’s love for Bottom springs from the fullness of a loving heart which, regardless of the object chosen, finds it worthy; love creates its own object (Fr.). Moore (1926, pp. 49–50) suggests that the episode derives from the popular moralities and that the encounter of Bottom with the ladies of the fairy court is akin to the frequent experiences of the morality [50] heroes in the seductive company of beguiling women. But Sh. replace[s] . . . the Vices with fairies: Puck’s motive is not theft, or moral injury to Bottom, but fun; and Titania is not a temptress, but an unwitting partner in the hero’s enchantment. Allen (1967, p. 115) believes Titania’s attentions to Bottom should . . . be regarded more as those of doting mother to child than those of lover to beloved. Similarly Neely (1985, p. 36). Montrose (1983, p. 65) contends that the Bottom-Titania episode acts out a common fantasy. Titania treats Bottom as if he were both her child and her lover. And she herself is ambivalently nurturing and threatening, imperious and enthralled. She dotes upon Bottom, and indulges in him all those desires to be fed, scratched, and coddled that make Bottom’s dream into a parodic fantasy of infantile narcissism and dependency. The sinister side of Titania’s possessiveness is manifested in her binding up of Bottom’s tongue, and her intimidating command, Out of this wood do not desire to go:/Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no [969–70]. But in 1996, Montrose (p. 172) says that Titania’s infatuation with Bottom has two dimensions, both of which operate at the expense of the Faery Queen: On the one hand, Bottom is impervious to Titania’s blandishments and unshakeably earthbound in his desires; on the other, Titania’s powers are circumscribed by Oberon’s. According to Martz (1971, pp. 70–2), Bottom does not respond [71] sexually to Titania at all. . . . If Bottom were to possess Titania sexually, that would surely be a metaphor suggesting that he possesses immortal love, which in turn would be a realization of imaginative reality in some ultimate sense.

Instead Bottom wears the ass’s head, which surely does not represent a triumph of imaginative reality, Puck’s or anybody else’s. Nor is Titania, victim of Oberon’s joke, suggestive of imaginative reality in triumph, although her poetic utterance is superb. What triumphs, rather, is the quality of Bottom’s response. His courtesy, mixed with fear and wonder, is immortal love, whereas Titania is only nominally immortal love. He adds that (p. 72) the ass and the fairy queen do possess each other, not sexually, but in the beauty of their communication. It is as if Shakespeare is suggesting that communication (fellowship) is an ultimate imaginative act. See also Charney (1993, p. 38), but compare Brooks (ed. 1979, p. cxv), who asserts that there is no communication between them and adds (n. 1) that carnal bestiality is surely impossible: jealous Oberon [394] will not have cast his spell to cuckold himself. [Titania’s] dotage is imaginative and emotional. Bevington (1978, pp. 90–1) argues that Titania’s misdirected [91] love is the result of the love-juice. This is not perversity, as Kott would think. Her hours spent with Bottom are touchingly innocent and tender. . . . [S]he is no Circean enchantress teaching him enslavement to sensual appetite. Instead, her mission is to purge thy mortal grossness so / That thou shalt like an airy spirit go [977–8]. It is because she is prompted by such ethereal considerations that she feeds him with apricots and dewberries, fans the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes, and the like. . . . Rather than descending into the realm of human passion and perversity, she has attempted to raise Bottom into her own. Bottom, for his part, speaking the part of the wise fool, has noted the irrationality of love but has submitted himself to deliciously innocent pleasures that are, for him, mainly gastronomic. Titania, and Shakespeare too, have indeed purged his mortal grossness, not by making him any less funny, but by showing how the tensions in this play between the dark and the affirmative side of love are reconciled in the image of Titania and the ass’s head. Bloom (1987, pp. 1–2) insists that as the possible lover (however briefly) of the Fairy Queen, Bottom remains a lasting reproach to our contemporary fashion of importing sacred violence, bestiality, and all manner of sexual antics into Shakespeare’s most fragile of visionary dramas. For who could be more mild mannered, better natured, or sweetly humorous than the unfailingly gentle Bottom? Titania ends up despising him, but he is simply too good for her! Bloom continues: (p. 2) Knowing that he lacks both beauty and wisdom, Bottom is realistic enough to see that the faery queen is beautiful but not wise. . . . Whether or not he has made love to Titania, a subject of some nasty debate among our critical contemporaries, seems to me quite irrelevant. What does matter is that he is sublimely unchanged, for worse or for better, when he wakes up from his bottomless dream. See also Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 33), who says The sexuality is all on Titania’s side. Holland (ed. 1994, p. 73) insists that what is so remarkable about Titania’s night with Bottom is not a subdued, suppressed sexual bestiality that has only been properly uncovered in the twentieth century but rather the innocence which transforms something that might so easily have been full of animal sexuality into something touchingly naïve. . . . In this dream, sexuality is diminished rather than intensified. Hall (1995, pp. 112–13) says that the Bottom-Titania scenes suggest and don’t suggest coupling. The queen is frustrated when he will not/cannot reply in the same [seductive] language. He is the ultimate failed [113] courtier of the Elizabethan court, except that he is totally exempt from the ambitions feeding their fantasies in the first place. The queen’s beautiful poetic attempt at seduction ends with an equally poetic lament for her enforced chastity [1019]. Others commenting on the innocence of the scene are Summers (1984, p. 11), Vickers (1993, pp. 427–8), Chiang (1996, p. 172), Defaye (2000, p. 141). Leggatt (1999, p. 59) points out that instead of a lurid image of bestiality (we need to remember that Bottom’s transformation is only from the neck up) we get a love affair couched in courtly politeness with, on Bottom’s part, considerable restraint. . . . As there is more to the operation of the flower than the simple confusion Robin sees, there is more to Titania’s love of Bottom than the grotesque humiliation Oberon expects. The comedy of incongruity gains unexpected subtlety from the consideration they show each other.

Occasionally critics refer to the Bottom-Titania episode as a dream, sometimes hers, sometimes his. Brandes (1896; tr. 1898, 1:78) says that the poet’s delicate irony makes the confusion reach its height and find its symbolic expression when the Queen of the Fairies, in the intoxication of a love-dream, recognises her ideal in a journeyman weaver with an ass’s head.

It is the love begotten of imagination that here bears sway. See also Auden (1957, p. 41) and Thakur (1966, p. 26). Priestley (1925; 1966, pp. 13–14) explains that if [Bottom] shows no surprise . . . and almost contrives to carry off the situation in the grand manner, we must remember that he, like Titania, is only dreaming beneath the moon-coloured honeysuckle and musk roses; the enamoured fairy and all her attendant sprites are to him only phantoms . . . , and so he acts as we all act in dreams. (P. 14): There was a poet somewhere in this dross weaver and so he came to a poet’s destiny. And then, the dream [is] done and the dreamer left to wonder. Such is the destiny of poets, who are themselves also weavers.

Schanzer (1951, p. 234) asks, is not Bottom’s ready acceptance of all the wonders of fairydom and above all of Titania’s love for him like that of dreamers who take for granted the most startling events? Farrell (1975, pp. 109–10) contends that Bottom wholeheartedly embraces the role which love-juice and the ass’s head thrust on him. Titania’s wooing of him is a vision of the child as Oedipal conqueror, tended by an all-gratifying mother-wife. As a parodic version of Oberon, he orders fairy messengers on errands, enjoying appetite and scratching with regal assurance. Yet thanks to Titania’s bedazzlement, he fulfills the wishes obscured in her struggle for the changeling. . . .

The truth and beauty of Bottom’s dream come of our recognition of it as an infantile paradise enclosed by the dangerous universe. As ridiculous as it is cherishable, the dream enacts a release from the stresses of self-consciousness. . . . Although his humility is the peculiar humility of fools, and omits effective love no less than arrogance, he is unmistakably happy . . . [110] and, as we must keep in mind, he is simultaneously ridiculous. Herz (1977, pp. 388–9) argues that the dream state rather than isolating the characters becomes the means for the most intricate involving of one with the other. . . . The difference, though, between the way Bottom and Titania experience their shared dream and the way the four lovers do derives in part from Bottom’s self-consciousness even in the depths of dream. Bottom and Titania are the critic and the myth, the [389] living emblem of how reason and love keep little company nowadays [960–1]. This is a perception that Bottom can state whilst dreaming, but one which [the lovers] can only blindly enact.

A few people stress the symbolic significance of the scene. Knight (1932, pp. 154–5), who deals with oppositions of the bestial and spiritual, says that the two extremes of our very varied dramatic persons are here brought together in the Bottom-Titania union. . . . [155] It is a symbolic union: symbolic of the whole play where opposites are so exquisitely blended in unity.

Now this is a union of the material and spiritual; or the bestial and birdlike. Birds often in Shakespeare suggest spiritual essences. . . . They are thus to be contrasted with rough beasts. Vyvyan (1961, p. 85) claims that Titania under the spell perceives a kind of divinity in Bottom and is probably nearer, in Shakespeare’s judgement, to a true vision of him than when she sees him only as an ass. . . . Eyes that have been anointed with [love-in-idleness] do . . . see something real behind the mask of mortality. What they see is something love-awakening. And therefore, if the parallel with Spenser is a true one, it ought to be a glimpse of the inmost faire. Berkowitz (1895, p. 4) points out that wise students have surmised that Titania is Pleasure, self-gratification, lawless freedom as they seem to young desire—the perfection of grace and charm and refinement. Bottom signifies these same selfish and sensuous traits as they are in their prose reality, and as experience finds them after the trial that always disappoints.

Mythology shapes the views of some commentators. Purdon (1974, pp. 192–3) finds that the monstrosity in the kingdom of love ungoverned by reason and chastity combines (p. 193) two mythological analogues . . . :

• i.The tale of an over-presumptuous man punished by being given animal attributes; e.g. Actaeon, Midas, etc.
• ii.The motif of the goddess or queen being punished by being made to fall in love with a mortal or animal; e.g. Venus, Pasiphae, Selene, etc. . . .

The former devotee of the moon can now quite prettily present that Moon, combined with flower imagery, as an argument against chastity: [quotes 1017–19]. There is a double comedy in this, of course. Whereas it is perfectly true applied to the case of Hermia, it is outrageously ridiculous when applied to Titania’s designs on a hairy Bottom. Ormerod (1978, pp. 40, 42–3) contends that the love into which Titiania flings herself with a suddenness and a violence imaging the celerity of the young lovers is not only degraded bestiality but is also ludicrous and risible. By substituting the ass-headed Bottom for the bull-headed Minotaur, Shakespeare has added a new dimension. But he has not forfeited the old association either. Ormerod adds that (p. 42) Titania’s precipitate love is explicitly sensuous and sensual and agrees with Kott that (p. 43) it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that, within the limits of what may be deemed theatrically tactful in terms of the conventions of this particular stage, the incident depicts an act of coitus between woman and ass, an act where, paradoxically, the element of reason and restraint has been predicated of an animal . . . and where the bestiality of physical desire unenlightened by moral insight is predicated of the woman.

Lamb (1979, p. 480), thinking of Bottom as a conflation of the minotaur and the bull which sired him, says that the relationship between Bottom and Titania is heavily influenced by the relationship between Pasiphae and this father bull. In the whimsical account in Ovid’s Art of Love, . . . Pasiphae is not merely lecherous: she is really in love. . . . Her concern for her lover’s food, her attempts to please him, her meeting him in the woods—all of these resemble Titania’s treatment of Bottom. And like Titania, Pasiphae never gains her love’s amorous attention; to consummate her love, Pasiphae has to resort to disguising herself in a cow’s skin. Barkan (1980, pp. 352–7) finds in the episode the sublime aspect of the [Diana and Actaeon] story re-created through comic bathos. Titania’s name comes (p. 354) from Ovid’s account of Diana and Actaeon . . . [and] reminds us that she too is the victim of a mortal intrusion upon her private amusements with her entourage. She is also identified as Diana the moon goddess and finally, she is Diana in respect to chastity, having banishe[d] all adult males from her company, substituting sexually naive characters like miniaturized fairies and changeling boys. Bottom is an Actaeon of the Apulian and Platonic kind. He will lose his companions; he is a boastful, inquisitive figure and a metamorphic personality. (P. 355): Their love is, of course, based on reversal—a union between the highest and lowest of creatures, the female wooer Diana pursuing a sexually helpless Actaeon. But it . . . fulfills sexual possibilities inherent in nature. The lush, soft pastoralism of Titania’s canopied bank is dramatized (in grotesque fashion) by the deliciously sensuous scenes between the two lovers; at the same time, the hard pastoralism of the spotted snakes is fulfilled by the very presence of the jackass in Titania’s bower. (P. 357): Both characters play roles in a traditional Platonic love story: Titania moves from the enchantment of her sense to a rapture in recognition of Bottom’s virtue, while her swain—in a more orthodox pattern—is to be perfected by confrontation with the goddess whom he has stumbled upon. Shakespeare then gives Actaeon’s dogs to Theseus and concludes the dream with barking.

In 1952 Gui (pp. 255–7) published an extensive psychoanalytic reading of the play in which Titania becomes a mother figure to Bottom who is jealous of a rival child, the Indian boy, whom he displaces in his dream. [See Dunn (1988, p. 22).] The dream includes as well Oedipal rivalry with Oberon. Jacobson (1962, pp. 22–3), looking from the standpoint of Titania, the woman, sees that (p. 23) the stolen changeling child may also represent the girl’s fantasy of stealing mother’s baby, and killing mother, as in this case the stolen child belonged to a woman who died in childbirth. Further, there can be seen here the problem of sexual identification in women. . . . Shall [the Indian child] have a male role . . . or a female one. . . . Titania is here the emasculating, i.e. castrating woman who feminizes the male child. . . . Titania must and does give up the male child . . . before she can once again share Oberon’s bed. Aronson (1972, pp. 209–10) considers Titania’s hateful fantasies . . . the result of Oberon’s violent jealousy and her unwillingness to compromise. Similarly Goldstein (1973, pp. 175–6). Hinely (1987, pp. 130–6) develops three perspectives on the dream of the union of Titania and Bottom. (P. 132): Titania’s possession of the boy is a . . . defiance of male authority and denial of male paternal rights in that he was stolen from an Indian king [392], the boy’s father. . . . Jealous Oberon [394] insists that the boy is the price of their reconciliation. Titania’s rebellious refusal to pay that price arouses Oberon’s desire for vengeance. . . . This torment, Oberon’s revenge, is his dream . . . of love reduced to animality, for it limits unleashed sexual energy to purely animal gratification. . . . [133] Oberon’s cruelty is linked to his sense of loss. Shifting to Titania’s point of view, Hinely explains that (p. 134) Oberon’s dream . . . , as it is given dreamlike enactment in Titania’s experience, is lost to Oberon’s control. Her love for Bottom is not savage and bestial, but nurturing and tender. . . . Titania’s love images the solicitous love union of mother and child, a grotesquely tender and erotic madonna and child, and on waking, Titania rejects her vision. Her dream has released the genital/sexual desires ordinarily diffused into the polymorphous sensuality not regarded as sexual in a mother’s love—the suppressed perverse or incestuous component of maternal love latent in her earlier exclusive preoccupation with the child. This love, for all its tenderness, is smothering and possessive. . . . In her anger with Oberon and attachment to her votaress, she would deny her child the autonomy that would separate him from infant dependency on the female and give him over to the male-dominated patriarchal world.

All the love, sexual and maternal, nurturing and erotic, rightfully divided between child and father, has been directed to the boy. Oberon’s jealously was not unfounded. But purged of her vision she and Oberon, (p. 135) new in amity [1605] will restore sexual harmony to the world of Athens.

Turning to Bottom, Hinely assumes that Bottom, before his transformation, is engaged in a play with sexual roles that exaggerates the uncertain role-switching of the lovers. . . . His attraction to all these roles suggests the metamorphic sexual identity of a child: lover, tyrant, woman, savage or gentle beast—all seem to Bottom within his range. . . . Puck, however, gives Bottom a role that, with the creative logic of dreams, lets him play contradictory parts simultaneously—he is both lover and beast. . . . [136] Bottom’s childlike enjoyment of Titania’s infatuation, which grows from dubious acceptance . . . to lordly command . . . underlines the nurturing and positive nature of his experience. . . . For the awakened Bottom, the dream was wonderful, a most rare vision . . . a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was [1732–3]. Farrell (1996, p. 217) suggests that his ecstatic union with the Fairy Queen burlesques the formation of personality insofar as Bottom is a bundle of infantile appetites and Titania enables him to reach into the world to gratify his needs and desires. Through her he acquires the commanding voice of a Renaissance lord. What’s more, the relationship is reciprocal inasmuch as Bottom enables Titania vicariously to work through her obsession with the changeling child. In Bottom’s dream cultural voices intermingle: parent and child; monarch and subject; divinity and mortal. They substantiate one another, offering a teasing glimpse of a ground or bottom to personality. Wheeler (1995, pp. 134–5) takes 1553, 1555–58 as an expression of Titania’s satisfaction. Enchanted Titania finds the fulfilment of her desire in her embrace of ass-headed Bottom. . . . Bottom does not seem to figure male [135] strength either as complemented or diminished by female ivy. As with an infant, Bottom’s dependence creates a situation in which he seems to be magically empowered; he will come to experience omnipotence of mind, a magical responsiveness of the world to wish, defined for him by Titania’s bounty. . . . For Bottom the demands of maintaining a masculine identity in opposition to the otherness of female sexuality—the demands that structure Oberon’s world—are suspended. Without ever ceasing to be bully Bottom, the centre of his experience is translated back into the realm of infantile at-oneness with comfort, pleasure, fantasy, and conflict-free sensuality. The sight of the sleeping pair appears pitiful and hateful to Oberon, but Bottom awakens to recall a most rare vision [1732].

Green (1998, pp. 375–6), applying queer theory, supposes that the scene enacts a . . . a complex series of misrecognitions by Oberon: of his own sodomitical intentions toward the changeling boy, of his own misogynistic fears of female power and desires, of the [376] residence of his honor in Titania and of his resentment of its disposition outside himself, of Titania’s lesbianism as bestiality and hence as sodomy, of his own desires to be desired (by Titania) and to control desires, of his own sadistic voyeurism, etc. It exposes analogically the justification for Theseus’s abduction of the Amazon: what women do when not subject(ed) to men is beyond the pale. Metatheatrically, it may represent (masculine) Elizabethan incomprehension in the face of the queen, who has the power to dispose of herself and to act on her own desires—Elizabeth as sodomite, her imagined transgressiveness, whether seeking a husband or furtively fulfilling carnal desires with men (or women) not her equals. He continues: The scene may constitute from Oberon’s voyeuristic position a reenactment of the unthinkable (lesbian) love of Titania for her votaress (mother of the disputed changeling boy), now displaced onto the manifest bestiality of Titania’s embrace of an ass, whose name—Bottom—may well conjure the anatomical pun, which introduces the (other) sodomy that is never mentioned or recognized as such but implied in Oberon’s obsession with the changeling boy. . . . Interestingly, the scene’s allusion to sodomy marks multiple social frontiers. Among others, it indicates and—from and through Oberon’s perspective—castigates, even negates, the possibilities of unrestrained female desires of any sort and their enactment . . . ; ignores the supposedly impossible aspirations of subordinate classes and their realization, . . . ; and misconstrues and/or displaces erotic desires and practices of his own—And now I have the boy (1577)—that he does not or cannot recognize as sodomy.

Francis Flute

There is little comment on Flute. Hirsch (1968, p. 178) sees him as the novice, hero-worshipping Bottom and anxious to emulate his acting skill. Similarly Brown (ed. 1996, p. xxix) considers him a young boy who is absolutely besotted with Bottom. He watches his every move to see how it is done. In every cast there is one of these. He is full of energy and of the wonder of what is to come. A few mention his attempt at acting. Hasler (1974, p. 84) points out that the rehearsal, especially with Flute speaking all his lines at once, cues and all [913], . . . pulls strongly in the anti-illusionary direction, reminding us afresh of the theatre and its technicalities. Holland (ed., 1994, p. 94) points out that Flute’s ambition was to play A wandering knight [307] [but he] will be, at worst, a lady, and Thisbe’s death, while farcical, can also in performance have a moving pathos that recalls the exhausted sadness of Helena and Hermia as they fall asleep at the end of their night of confusions.

Peter Quince

After Bottom, Quince is the most frequently singled out of the mechanicals. Wölffel (1852, p. 154) suspects Quince, the director and entrepreneur, of having composed Pyramus and Thisbe and considers him ingenious in the invention of roles (Ger.). (Taylor [2003, pp. 56 ff.] also considers him the author.) Kellogg (1866, p. 119) suggests that if Bottom is prince of donkeys, Quince takes the first place of honor in his court and his title, prince of playwrights, like that of Bottom, cannot be disputed.

Others focus on his managerial skill. White (1854, p. 210) describes Peter Quince as, after a clownish fashion, a shrewd, politic fellow recognizing the necessity for conciliating [Bottom] . . . into self-complacent satisfaction and able to do it. Concurring are Cowden-Clarke (1863, p. 99), Minto (1885, p. 261), Harbage (1963; 1967, p. 109). Procter (ed. 1843, 1:381) calls him a business-like manager, who really seems to have half an idea in his head [Watkins (1946, pp. 63–4) agrees], but Reese (ed. 1970, p. 66) thinks him the epitome of the harassed stage-manager. Moyse (1879, p. 23) judges Quince of far greater mental calibre than the hero of the mechanicals. He has a quick wit, and is . . . the practical man. . . . The sketch is true to the life. Harrison (1927, pp. 26–7) thinks that all the artisans are cunningly drawn, . . . though Quince and Bottom stand out. [27] Quince seems to be the older man, and there are indications that he is a bit of a poet. He is a man of great tact, the only person, not excluding the Duke, who can in any way handle Bottom. Hirsch (1968, p. 177): Quince is the artistic director with the ability to hold the group together. A complete professional, striving for the overall success of the production, knowing when he must give in or stand firm, and never getting personally angry at Bottom’s interruptions. But compare Priestley (1925; 1966, p. 5), who thinks Quince, the leader from seniority, merely a tool, Cecil (1957, p. 58) calls Quince the fussy ineffective producer, and Brown (ed. 1996, p. xviii) says he can neither stand up to Bottom’s demands nor speak the Prologue to the play with any sensible discretion. Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. xxix): The enthusiasm is created by Bottom, because Quince is quiet and rather scholarly and careful, he is not an artist really; he doesn’t have the imagination or the ability to make others enthusiastic—certainly he doesn’t have a chance when Bottom is around.

Wickham (1972, 2:2:182–3) outlines the duties of the book-keeper, who was (p. 183) responsible for back-stage discipline and acted as the prompter-producer in rehearsal and performance. . . . Shakespeare entrusts these duties . . . to Peter Quince who, by trade, is said to be a carpenter. Quince is a patient and resourceful stage-manager. Williamson (1962, p. 134) and I. Brown (1963, p. 92) also regard him as book-holder/prompter, while Webster (1957, p. 60) assume[s] that Shakespeare’s picture of a prompting stage-manager . . . was a most ungrateful piece of caricature.

Serio (1978/9, p. 22) treats Quince at greater length. Peter Quince, unlike his ignorant and unimaginative colleagues, distinguishes himself with his solid vision of the play. He assigns roles, devises props, sets rehearsals, gives cues, corrects pronunciation, assumes a character . . . , and writes two prologues and an epilogue—all in the hope that here is a play fitted [327–8]. As a serious-minded poet/director . . . , Peter Quince selects a play which is meant not only to delight but also instruct his audience. Wiles (1993, p. 47) actually identifies Quince with Sh.: Through the figure of Peter Quince, Shakespeare plays upon his own double identity as poet to the intellectual elite [as in his Ovidian subject matter] and crafter of plays for the masses. Boyle (1982, p. 18) calls him a caricature of Shakespeare himself, a playwright, actor, director, and producer. Honan (1998, p. 216): In Peter Quince Shakespeare burlesques himself as a Johannes Factotum whose efforts produce nonsense, and Pyramus in fact explicitly parodies [Rom.] and has mocking allusions as well to [Tit.], [Err.], and the [TGV]. Similarly Taylor (1990, p. 63) and Taylor (Other Playwright, 2003, pp. 60–61) where he specifies talents Quince shares with Sh. See Leggatt (1999, p. 63), here. Dowden (1875, p. 69), however, believed that the artisans serve as an indirect apology for his own necessarily imperfect attempt to represent fairy land, and the majestic world of heroic life. On the identification of Quince with Sh., see also Visser (1996, p. 66).

Tom Snout

Priestley (1925; 1966, pp. 3–4) finds Snout, like Starveling, a whimpering poltroon. According to Hirsch (1968, p. 178) Snout is not really a theatre person. He tries hard, but is lacking in intelligence and concentration. Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, pp. xxix, 51) imagine that Snout the Tinker has been recruited by Quince; they go to the same pub and Quince has asked him, Would you like to be in our play? and Snout has said, Are you kidding? and Quince has told him he can make some money, so he has agreed. Snout is (p. 51) a nervous Nellie who cannot comprehend that this is all pretend. Snout represents the unsophisticated who cannot differentiate between art and life. Art is sophisticated because it involves representation, pretending, imagination. Snout starts thinking of solutions too; he is learning, but Bottom is always ahead of him with solutions that convey the excitement of a person of the theatre.

In looking at Snout’s acting, Willson (1975, p. 44) claims that just as the morality plays personified virtues and vices, so Wall and Moonshine both declaim in such a way as to suggest that they are caricatures of allegorical characters, especially in their vigorous efforts to inform the audience of their functions. [Quotes Snout, 1956–65]. Cohn (1983, p. 3) comments on the fact that an actor plays the set. . . . Shakespeare’s tinker plays a wall that separates young lovers. . . . Snout summons properties to enhance his credibility: This loam, this rough-cast . . . [1962]. For all Snout’s assurances, however, theatrical truth is never simply so. The tinker’s Wall is at once a speaking character and dumb artifact of loam, stone, and roughcast. Both character and artifact are concrete stage entities or signifiers or sign-vehicles, according to your ideolect. However you may designate this person-object amalgam, he/it functions as a barrier between lovers, who can communicate only through an aperture that happy Freudians will hasten to penetrate. According to Spisak (1983, pp. 91–2), Wall takes on the dullness of its actor, Snout, and this slow-wittedness is highlighted by the rimed couplets that comprise his speech. He adds that Wall and Moonshine serve as a live audience for the lovers’ complaints, and as any good audience should, they respond. Snout is bound to fall for the apparent flattery offered him by Bottom’s excessive Pyramus. [1976–9] . . . [92] Snout’s responding to this, in turn, feeds Bottom’s stage ego, and he shows no hesitation in stretching the character of Pyramus to meet the demands of that ego. Barber & Wheeler (1986, p. 144), writing of imaginative transformations, note that when Snout comes to disfigure, or to present, [871–2] Wall, Wall is disfigured back into Snout.

Snug

Hazlitt (1817, p. 127) comments that Snug is the moral man of the piece, proceeds by measurement and discretion in all things. Perhaps because Snug declares himself slow of studie [330], Clarke (1863, p. 102) notes that he can board and lodge only one idea at a time, and that tardily, and Cecil (1957, p. 58) points out that he is frightened of any part. Hirsch (1968, p. 178) finds Snug a source of great enthusiasm, the true amateur out for fun and the prestige of being made men [1764–5]. To Brown (ed. 1996, pp. xxviii, 51) Snug the joiner (Lion) is like Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz: a big, dopey guy, very pleasant, who has been recruited, brings a huge submarine sandwich and a bottle of beer. He is pleasant but doesn’t really know what is going on. Brown imagines that (p. 51) when Snug learns he will have to speak, not just roar, he starts to think about going home.

Robin Starveling

Hazlitt (1817, p. 127) considers Starveling the peacekeeper also seconds [objections] when made by others, as if he had not the spirit to express his fears without encouragement. Clarke (1863, p. 102) finds Starveling, the tailor, a melancholy man, . . . questions the feasibility and the propriety of everything proposed. Hirsch (1968, p. 178) calls him the production manager. Toliver (1971, p. 92) is reminded by Robin Starveling’s name of the bird and the proverbial leanness of tailors—an odds-and-ends assortment of tools, fruits, weeds, and seeds. Franke (1979, p. 290) also finds his name and occupation suggestive. . . . Dryness was supposed to go with leanness as lechery with gluttony. . . . This occupational lack of virility makes Starveling a suitable choice for female parts, Thisbe’s mother and Moonshine. Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. xxix) explain that Starveling the tailor is a neat, sweet man; and what do tailors do? They sit together and work, and dream, and they tell stories to one another. Greenfield (1998, p. 338) describes little Starveling as an unprepossessing figure.

Commenting on acting ability, Schulz (1971, p. 66) argues that Bottom’s and Starveling’s effectiveness as actors is hindered by their worries that the ladies might accept Pyramus’s stage death as reality. Hasler (1974, pp. 87–8) is reminded of Launce because Starveling has a hard time with his lines and finally resorts to plain, honest prose. . . .

The similarity in their heavily deictic manner of informing the audience only serves to underline the sharp contrast between Launce and Starveling. But whereas Launce absolutely revels in the delight of improvising a scene, of toying most daringly with illusion, . . . Starveling, on the other hand, is the most timid of the mechanicals, as was already apparent from his scanty contributions to the debate in III.i. . . .

In the most absurd part of palpable Moonshine, his half-heartedness is all the more fatal. He is rattled into the blatant redundancy of this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog [2058–9]. . . . [88] Launce is an imaginative creator in his own right; Starveling a frightened and tense actor, a mere presenter, in fact, unable to put across a few lines. With Launce, Shakespeare glories in the theatre and its power of suggestion, in Starveling he reduces it to absurdity. Spisak (1983, p. 91) comments: Moonshine, besides being incongruously depicted, as Theseus notes, forsakes his verse for prose when he realizes he isn’t being heeded. Yoch (1985, p. 204) comments on the folksy rendition that Starveling gives his part, and Wiles (1993, p. 58) says that Starveling represents the negation of both Cynthia and Hymen, the two figures who should be preeminent in a wedding masque. Brown (ed. 1996, p. xv) calls him stumbling. Desmet (1998, pp. 322–3) begins by pointing out the absurdity of Pyramus and Thisbe’s plot, a poetic deficiency that requires the audience’s imagination to mend it, [which] becomes comedy by virtue of its amplified verse, which doubles, triples, and even [323] quadruples the plain words of its poetic lines. In this respect the icon of the play’s rhetorical standard is the person who says least in the play: Robin Starveling in his role as the Man in the Moon. Starveling’s own identity is amorphous; he may be either extremely thin or overly fat. Yet Starveling stands forth as a figure of masculine rhetoric, of plain speech and simple meanings. In the martial Ciceronian vein, Starveling as Moon stands forth to disfigure the play’s most elusive feminine symbol, the moon [871]. His presentation of Moon apes the sonneteer’s blazon by anatomizing the moon’s symbolic attributes: spherical shape, thorn bush, lantern, and dog. Starveling’s courtly detractors play with the rigid logic of his representation, suggesting that the moon’s horns should be on Starveling’s head rather than figured by the lantern, that Starveling himself should be crushed into the lantern, and that the moon by its nature should change [2052] and cease its tedious oratory. Starveling responds, as Titania did before him, with plain speech that challenges the inversions of hypallage: All that I have to say is to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon, I the man i’ th’ moon, this thorn-bush my thorn-bush, and this dog my dog [2057–9].

Starveling’s aesthetic is deictic, pointing to objects he carries with him. Rather than represent the moon, he offers its material substitute for community acceptance. Yet Moon’s rhetorical effort also relies on plenitude, on plenty of figuration. To this extent, Moon’s attempt to secure audience consensus prefigures that of Puck in the play’s final soliloquy. Puck seeks to avoid the serpent’s tongue [2217] of a harsh audience by asking spectators to give him their hands, replicating the linguistic chain that ties speaker and audience. Starveling unconsciously, and Puck consciously, acknowledge that the simplest of statements—an insistence that the intractable cur is my dog, for instance—is always a figure, inviting, demanding, and begging for declarations of rhetorical friendship. In Starveling’s speech we can see the power of feminine rhetoric, like the moon itself, to permeate and transfigure its subjects.

The Fairies

Dryden (1677; 1994, 12:95) defends the inclusion in literature of supernatural beings, insisting that Poets may be allow’d the . . . 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 nights Dream, and Ben Johnson’s Masque of Witches to be defended. Rowe (ed. 1709, 1:xxiii, xxvi) asserts that 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. He admires the (p. xxvi) Thoughts and Language so proper to the Parts they sustain and so peculiar to the Talent of this Writer. Gildon (in Rowe ed., 1710, 7:264) argues against those who make this a Fault in our Poet that Shakespear liv’d in an Age not so remote from a Time in which the Notion of Spirits and Conjurers, and the strange and wonderful Power of Magic, but that it was almost an Article of Faith among the Many, I mean not the very Mob, but Men of Figure and true Learning. Scott (1802; 1812, pp. 159–60) credits Sh. with im-[160]proving upon the vulgar belief, assign[ing] to them many of those fanciful attributes and occupations, which posterity have since associated with the name of Fairy, and Bell (1852, 1:155) calls Sh. the remodeller, and almost the inventor, of our fairy system. Commenting on the fairies’ originality are Furness (ed. 1895, p. xxiv); Schelling (1908, 1:393); Sidgwick (1908, p. 35); Chambers (1925, p. 77), who says their infinitesimal size sets them apart from the fairies of romance and the fairies of tradition; Shaaber (1964, p. 119); Olson (1968, p. 98); Blount (1984, p. 9), who notes their benevolence as well as their size; Halio (2003, pp. 16–17). Addison (1712; Bond ed. 3:570, 573) describes a kind of Writing, wherein the Poet quite loses sight of Nature, and entertains his Reader’s Imagination with the Characters and Actions of such Persons as have many of them no Existence, but what he bestows on them. . . . This Mr. Dryden calls the Fairie way of Writing, which is, indeed, more difficult than any other that depends on the Poet’s Fancy, because he has no Pattern to follow in it, and must work altogether out of his own Invention. [Dryden in his letter to the Marquiss of Hallifax prefacing King Arthur (1691; 1996, 16:7) speaks of the Airy and Earthy Spirits, and that Fairy kind of writing, which depends only upon the Force of Imagination.] Like Rowe, Addison comments on their speeches. (P. 573): 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 of them as 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. Pope (in Warburton, ed. 1747, 1:3) in a note on Tmp. calls that play and MND the noblest Efforts of that sublime and amazing Imagination, peculiar to Shakespear, which soars above the Bounds of Nature without forsaking Sense: or, more properly, carries Nature along with him beyond her established Limits.

Critics admire the imaginative realization of a consistent diminutive fairy world. Montagu (1769, p. 139) points out that Sh. 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. Drake (1817, 2:341–2, 344 ff.) mentions the appropriateness of their activities to their diminutive size. Hazlitt (1817, p. 129) describes an 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 . . . human mortals [476]. Skottowe (1824, pp. 260, 263–4) enjoys the appropriate and elegant tasks assigned the diminutive fairies, but also notes that (p. 263) it was peculiar to fairies to be actuated by the feelings and passions of mankind, and he warns that it cannot be too hastily inferred from the [264] diminutiveness of these testy beings, that their quarrels are indifferent to the sons of men. Lloyd (in Singer, ed. 1856, 2:426) appreciates the fact that the fairy world becomes as diversified as the natural, and we find degrees and orders among the flimsy population, from the robed and circleted Oberon and his Queen, the humorsome but observant Puck, the deft fairy mistress of robes and dewer of fairy orbs, to the cloud of graceful dancers, and the small elves not disdainful of dapper jerkins from leather of rear-mice. Pagnini (1976; tr. 1999, p. 39) thinks the fairies represent Nature, and he too mentions their hierarchical world, and Boas (1896, p. 186) points out that this kingdom of shadows reproduces in miniature the structure of human society although over them morality has no sway.

Browne (ed. 1922, p. 139) comments on the names of Titania’s airy spirits, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed, . . . fanciful names typical of beauty, lightness, swiftness and smallness. Similarly Ellison (1942, p. 101). To Toliver (1971, pp. 91–2) the names . . . [92] suggest [that] the fairy court has not only its own light and airy poetry but its common, earthy flavor, and Cook (1986, p. 129) mentions their association with minor domestic satisfactions [996–1015]. Cowling (1925, pp. 85–6) considers them unique, saying there [86] were no quaint urchins who sat upon heather bells before Shakespeare invented fairies in the diminutive sense of the word. According to Latham (1930, p. 180), diminutive, pleasing, and picturesque sprites, with small garden names and small garden affairs, associated with moon-beams and butterflies, they present themselves as a new race of fairies. . . . Instead of appearing as an active and powerful commonwealth with their traditional ruler, the fairies are given the rôle of innocuous and almost negligible attendants upon two literary or mythological sovereigns, Oberon and Titania. Sanders (ed. 1971, p. 15): It is the attendants of Oberon and Titania in whom the uniqueness of Shakespeare’s fairy world is located. The tininess of the creatures who can creep into acorn-cups, use grasshopper legs for tapers, and be deluged by the honey-bags of bees was derived by the dramatist from folk traditions; but it is his powerful evocation of such a world which started the literary and national tradition we have today. The achievement is the result of his skilful use of a large variety of poetic devices . . . [and] the detailed specificness of the fairy world.

The anonymous author of A Parallel of Shakspeare and Scott (1835, p. 51), however, does not admire the fairies. If I were asked where the greatest strength of Shakspeare’s poetry resided, I should say, certainly not in those fanciful and supernatural creations on which critics have been so much accustomed to dwell—which the stage cannot embody, nor the painter imitate; and of which I have not the high admiration so generally affected. . . . His visionary beings of another sort—the gentlefolk of Fairy Land—are too extravagant and fantastical (using the word in its bad sense) always to be pleasing. Latimer (1886, p. 93) contends that the fairies and Puck have no characters at all. Such opinions do not prevail.

The exact nature of the fairies sparks debate. Montagu (1769, p. 138) describes them as sportive and gay . . . artificers of harmless frauds, and mirthful delusions. Hudson (ed. 1880, pp. 9–10) analyzes this peculiar people at length. There is nothing of reflection or conscience or even of a spiritualized intelligence in their proper life: they have all the attributes of the merely natural and sensitive soul, [10] but no attributes of the properly rational and moral soul. They worship the clean, the neat, the pretty, and the pleasant, whatever goes to make up the idea of purely sensuous beauty; this is a sort of religion with them. . . . They have an instinctive repugnance to whatever is foul, ugly, sluttish, awkward, ungainly, or misshapen . . . [which] is why they so much practise the legerdemain of changelings, stealing away finished, handsome babies, and leaving blemished and defective ones in their stead. For the same cause they love to pester and persecute and play shrewd tricks upon decrepit old age, wise aunts, and toothless, chattering gossips, and especially such awkward hempen home-spuns [889] as Bottom and his fellow actors. Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:269, 271–3) suggests that the fairies are essentially nothing else than personified dream-gods, children of the fancy, which not alone, as Mercutio says, is the vain producer of dreams, but also of the caprices of superficial love. Sh. (p. 271) depicts them as being without delicate feeling and [272] without morality, just as in dreams we meet not with the check of tender sensations and are without moral impulse and responsibility. . . . The poet further depicts his fairies as beings of no high intellectual development. . . . Nowhere is reflection imparted to them. . . . [273] They lead a luxurious, merry life, given up to the pleasure of the senses. Mézières (1860; 1865, p. 435) too sees them as representative of dreams (Fr.), as do Perkins (1887, pp. 211, 215–16), who says they are pure, immortal, spiritual, and those whom they love they can make pure even as themselves, and Bonnard (1956, pp. 270–1). Clark (1931, p. 47) insists that the fairies have no special dramatic purpose beyond the desire to entertain. [Sh.] does not attach any particular meaning or significance to his Little People, nor does he endow them with any great powers or control over mortals.

Holland (1989, p. 25) and Sagar (1995, p. 36) emphasize their benevolence, and others, like Robinson (ed. 1941, p. 100), consider their devotion to duty, as fairies practice duty, . . . their leading characteristic. Krieger (1979, p. 53) says Titania’s servant fairies demonstrate pure service. Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 8) too mentions the train of delightfully innocuous figures, whose main office is tending their queen, protecting her from beetles, spiders and other night-creatures, and serving Bottom on her behalf as airy spirits. Brooke (1905, p. 20) comments on their reaction to the episode with Bottom; they never question her will, nor seem surprised at her vagary—and that . . . is most fantastically fantastic.

But Brooke adds that the fairies do what they like without a thought of anything being forbid, and others like Davies (1939, p. 170) think they have more than a touch of malice in them, and a profound determination to have things their own way. Guthrie (ed. 1954, pp. 18, 31) contends that a principal element of the contrast is lost if the supernaturals lose their sinister and formidable character . . . , a serious reminder in a predominantly frivolous work that, even in the gentle loveliness of a moonlit summer night, there are elements abroad which just cannot be accounted for in terms of reason and common sense. For example, (p. 31) Titania sends her fairies to war with rere-mice for their leathern wings [654], steal honey-bags, crop thighs, pluck wings from butterflies. Doran (1966, p. 75) considers fairies those amoral powers that bear so much sway in human domestic affairs, and according to Charney (2000, pp. 10–11), the fairy world in [MND] is not so gentle and pastoral as it is usually represented when the play is produced; it has a coarse, animal, amoral, and grotesque side. The fairies do not participate in the ethical delicacies and punctilioes of the human characters. This colors the representation of love in the play. Love is an irrational force, usually shown in the extreme, and we can see why the Duke at the end puts [11] The lunatic, the lover, and the poet together as of imagination all compact [1799–1800].

That the fairies are neutral is the contention of Ward (1899, pp. 280–1), who writes that (p. 281) the few incidents which occur within the sphere of the fairy crew neither produce, nor are intended to produce, any moral effect whatever, and Herford (1912, p. 34), who finds them neither good nor bad, neither angels nor fiends; too unsubstantial for morality or for passion, for serious hate or for serious love; Heine (1907, p. 6) demurs saying these qualities are present to a small degree (Ger.). According to Kernan (1975, pp. 312–13) the fairies are essentially fertility figures associated with a rich and burgeoning nature. . . . The range of their world is as vast as its parts are rich, and they move in a flash from the Indian continent across the reaches of ocean to the woods of Warwickshire.

(P. 313): Dawn is exactly the right setting for these nature spirits, for on the one hand they participate in and guide the generous, delicate and ever-renewing benisons of fertile nature, but on the other hand they have touches of a dark and destructive nature as well. Hankins (1978, p. 44) too links them with generation, Hibbard (1978, p. 83) with darkness. Bevington (1978, pp. 80–1) underscores the ambiguity of their association with nighttime; he notes Oberon’s response [1429–34] to Puck’s implication that the fairies must avoid daylight [1419–28], pointing out, however, that the lines imply that even he may not stay abroad all day. Oberon intends, apparently, (p. 81) to refute Puck’s association of the fairies with ghosts and damned spirits. Leggatt (1974, p. 105) adds that they are spirits of the night whose powers are limited and fallible. According to Smidt (1986, p. 140) the fairies . . . are full of paradoxes and ambiguities. The fairies are mischievous, dangerous and destructive even, but also benevolent. Wells (1985, p. 56) argues that by mobilizing all possible understandings of the fairies, . . . [Sh.] establishes them as enemies of all fixed and static forms. They are reorderers of identity, and they require the reader to continuously reinterpret the play. Thus, the fairies appear by turn as amoral and beneficent, purely fanciful and decorative . . . , and seriously symbolic. . . . They attract and resist all the culturally current categorizations that might have been applied to them: they foreground the arbitrary and contingent quality of all conventional characterizations. As long as the fairies are on stage, the typical register of the play is called into question, and all its promise of intersubjective transparency is deferred.

Montgomery (1888, p. 92), because of their frailties, passions, tendernesses, thinks of the fairies as human beings, with supernatural qualities, while Gollancz (ed. 1895, p. 121) thinks that the fairies were considered mortal, though not human, and Harrison (1927, p. 27) says that like the people of Lilliput, their loves and hates mock the passions of grown mortals. Frye (1965, Nature, pp. 50–1) detects in the lesser fairies . . . a childlike quality. . . . Elemental spirits are in the physical world what children, regarded as symbols of innocence, are in the ordinary human world: remnants of an original true consent, as Milton calls it, with the cosmic order. The control of elemental spirits, or magic, is thus an essential part of the music and poetry that are attributes of the higher nature of man. For additional comment on the fairy world see Woodberry (in Lee, ed. 1907, 3:xii); Littledale (1916, pp. 536–7) sees them as shadows of humanity in miniature with ever something childlike and irresponsible in their winsome ways.

Arnold (1955, p. 102) is among those supposing that the fairies reflect a higher and mysterious reality (Fr.). Brooke (1905, p. 20) thinks that the creation by Shakespeare of this fairy region with its indwellers, which, while we are in it, seems wholly reasonable and real, is one of his creative triumphs. Its isolation from humanity is complete. Human nature touches us now and then . . . ; but these touches only make us realise more fully that their life and thoughts are separate from ours, and, therefore, that when men and women get into the fairy realm, they are all astray. To create this impression was Shakespeare’s desire, and it is wonderfully done. Barber (1959, pp. 132–3, 145) considers them creatures who embody the passionate mind’s elated sense of its own omnipo-[133]tence, (p. 145) creatures of pastoral, varied by adapting folk superstitions so as to make a new sort of arcadia. Though they are not shepherds, they lead a life similarly occupied with the pleasures of song and dance. . . . They have not the pastoral labours of tending flocks, but equivalent duties are suggested in the tending of nature’s fragile beauties. . . . They have a freedom like that of shepherds in arcadias, but raised to a higher power; they are free not only of the limitations of place and purse but of space and time.

According to Beaurline (1978, pp. 86–7) they are distinctly aerial spirits . . . [87]—those intermediate spirits between heaven and earth so important to common folk and magicians. They are intimately connected with the stars, planets, and other heavenly influences, hence they affect the weather and the seasons. Greer (1981, p. 44) contends that they had no bodies, . . . cannot consummate any passion, . . . cannot die, and they cannot breed. . . . And it is given to them to bless the humans with things they themselves cannot have[,] . . . issue. Draper (1991, p. 37) says the fairies are destined to become . . . mere shadows dependent on the whim and favour of the audience. Their reality is as evanescent as the power of imagination itself; in some respects the most potent force in the play, it is also the most fragile.

The influence of the fairies is another area of debate. Maine (1848, p. 427) suggests that the fairies are the primary conception of the piece, and their action the main action. Halliwell (1849, p. 129) thinks him unquestionably right. . . . Remove them from the scene, and the play would be an impotent skeleton, variegated with a few narrow robes of exquisite poetry. Agreeing are Carruthers & Chambers (ed. 1861, 3:1); Halliwell (1879, pp. 43–4); Wigston (1884, p. 358); Gordon (ed. 1910, p. xvii), who says also that the fairies are the best drawn personages; Cuningham (ed. 1905; 1930, p. xlix). Heraud (1865, p. 175) finds their influence on earthly actions confined to their effect on nature’s courses, not human motives. Verity (ed. 1893, pp. xxxii–xxxiii) argues that the fairies of this play are the superiors of the human mortals [476] on whom they exercise their power uncontrolled. In [Tmp.] . . . man at his highest development . . . is the superior. . . . [xxxiii] The fairy Oberon is supreme over man in the one piece: the man Prospero is supreme over spirits in the other. Moberly (ed. 1881, p. xi) finds them closely allied with outward nature, as do Bradbrook (1951, p. 159), Briggs (1959, p. 45), Lever (ed. 1961, p. xv), Frye (Recognition, 1962, p. 245), Scorer (1966, p. 105), Wilson (1973, pp. 69, 72), Wells (ed. 1967, p. 25), Robinson (1968, pp. 383–4). Gundolf (1928, p. 219) thinks their influence touches both man and nature (Ger.).

Gibson (1908, p. 78) contends that Sh. allows them to exercise mischief or to work out meaningless miracles, but they cannot touch the fate of man. They may and do manage the love affairs of their human friends by their magic, but there is never any question of their obtaining real mastery. Shore (1920, p. 109), however, calls them the wire-pullers of the fates of [Sh.’s] mortal puppets. Similarly Legouis (1939, p. 116), Sen Gupta (1950, p. 221), Hunter (1962, Shakespeare, p. 10), Harwood (1964, p. 62), Herbert (1964, pp. 32–3), Walter (ed. 1964, p. 10). Evans (ed. 1967, p. 12) thinks Oberon’s love-philtre both produces and resolves the lovers’ tangles as do Fender (1968, p. 29), Scott (1977, p. 48), Doran (1976, p. 13), Ornstein (1986, p. 255 n. 7), and Moffatt (2004, p. 184), who says it is Oberon’s ability to manipulate the imagination that can have both effects. Arthos (1977, p. 106) becomes convinced that fate has been operating, and it is precisely that conviction that gives dreams their special quality of horror. . . . This is why it is apposite to recall that the word fairies comes from a word meaning fates, for the supernatural creatures of this play, picturesque and delicate as they are, are as careless and indeflectible as the witches in [Mac.].

Others regard the fairies as creatures of dream. Hudson (ed. 1880, pp. 11, 19) considers them indeed a sort of personified dreams; and so the Poet places them in a kindly or at least harmless relation to mortals as the bringers of dreams. . . . They love the dusk and twilight, because this is the best dreaming-time, whether the dreamer be asleep or awake. . . .

It is a very noteworthy point that all their power or influence over the hearts and actions of mortals works through the medium of dreams, or of such fancies as are most allied to dreams. . . . The Poet assigns to them dominion over the workings of sensuous and superficial love. Thus (p. 19) the fairy influences do not reach so far as to the proper seat of motive and principle: . . . all the elements of character and all the vital springs of faith and loyalty and honour lying quite beyond their sphere. Brown (ed. 1996, pp. ix–x) concludes that fairies are much more than a self-contained, miniature, and pretty tribe of creatures, not unlike human beings but usually invisible to mortal eyes, adding that (p. x) his non-human beings are shadows, or outward expressions of thoughts and feelings, the means to represent almost nameless fears and excitements, and almost intangible sensations.

Shakespeare’s characters speak about fairies when their imaginations or fantasies are seething with possibilities and doubts, and with images which transcend or ignore the ordinary affairs of life.

Several commentators join Snider (1874, pp. 170, 174) in regarding the fairies as representing the unconscious. They are a race of beings foreign to man and unknown in the world of Reason. (P. 174): They work upon man, deceive him, lead him about by appearances, victimize his senses, in general manifest external determination. . . . But . . . they are simply a portraiture of [man’s] own unfree stage of consciousness, of his own delusions. Similarly Garber (1974, pp. 64, 66–8) links the fairies with dream, the irrational, and imagination as well as with the (p. 66) spirit of genius loci, considering them (p. 68) inhabitants of an in-between world, neither wholly fictive nor wholly explainable in natural or even psychological terms, and Miller (1966, p. 29) suggests that if we are right in calling the fairies pure imagination, or, more timidly, the images of the unconscious mind, then fantasy as it reveals itself in daily life, the play suggests, is seldom recognized for what it is, however extensive. We pretend our most fanciful perceptions are just, acting on them as if they were rational and considered. Rodway (ed. 1969, p. 40a) regards them as symbolizing that area of life covered by such words as aesthetic, imaginative, fanciful. Hughes (1993, p. 224) contends that the fairies . . . embody the irrational fancies (in the sexual sense) of the young lovers.

Oberon and Titania

Most commentators find unflattering characteristics at the heart of the fairy quarrel which has such profound effects on the dramatic world of the play. They blame character flaws typical of human beings—jealousy, resentment of insubordination, desire for camaraderie, for example. A few find genuine concern for the welfare of the Indian boy. Arthos (1977, p. 107) says that Oberon and Titania are certainly the determiners of the fortunes of mortals, capriciously transferring affections, righting wrongs at will and as mischievously doing good. But they themselves are as bound up as the mortals they bind, as caught up in the ways of jealousy and recrimination and spite and affection as if those very onsets and attacks and repulsions were the substance of fate itself. What one might think of as the inherently limiting conditions of humans are as compelling and fateful for them. According to Warren (1983, p. 9) this fairy king and queen are immediately established as powerful dramatic characters who have both human passions and more than human influence over the affections of other people. Boas (1896, p. 187) too notes their similarities to mortals, and as an incitement [to the quarrel] . . . the undue favour with which Oberon regards the bouncing Amazon [445] Hippolyta, balanced by Titania’s attachment to Theseus. Lever (ed. 1961, p. xi) considers them completely under the influence of their feelings. Love, anger, jealousy are very quickly stirred up in them. They have very little control over their actions. Swinden (1973, p. 55) considers them both irresponsible and egocentric, not at all the right people to exercise control over nature, not adult folk like the Duke of Athens and the Queen of the Amazons.

Some link their unpleasant characteristics to their ancestry; Phillips (ed. 1969, p. 18) refers to pre-Christian Celtic tutelary spirits and thinks of them as members of this god-descended race. They have its heartlessness—they appear callous towards each other and, in Oberon’s case, towards the human beings they encounter; they are squabbling over a kidnapped human child; . . . they have its supernatural power. Pearson (1987, p. 28) thinks them clearly modelled on the anthropomorphic deities of antiquity. They are more powerful than the world they rule, yet they have human weaknesses. They are possessive. They favor specific mortals. . . . They cheat, wrangle, are strong-willed. They may be sexually promiscuous [see 445–55].

Several critics emphasize Oberon’s desire for male bonding or his homoerotic tendencies. Hunt (1986, p. 3) thinks that Oberon fixes upon . . . a masculine intimacy. . . . Oberon would make the boy his henchman [496]; the word suggests a rough male camaraderie in a world without women. Donaldson (1985, p. 45) see[s] small grounds for thinking that Oberon was concerned only with the child’s education: his position seems to be closer to Ganymede’s than to Richard Feverel’s. Nor is it clear that Titania deserted Oberon any more because of her love for the Indian boy than because of his love for the Indian boy, whom he wished to deprive her of and whom he seemed to prefer to her. If either Oberon or Titania is obsessive, both are, and together or alone they are very poor models for married couples. . . . I doubt that Shakespeare favored Oberon over Titania. Marowitz (1988, p. 9) accuses Oberon and Titania of amorality because of their previous flings and detects an even deeper reverberation; the opposition between heterosexual love and homosexual licence. Oberon, Titania, and their followers represent the homosexual oligarchy which flourished before heterosexuality became the dominant sexual fashion. The phantoms of that older order still cling to the underside of life and though active only under cover of darkness, they manage to exert their influence and project treacheries against the social order. The carnality, the bestiality, the rustic romps through morally deregulated terrains, the vague sense of orgy and riot which issue from the now forbidden love of man for man constantly subverts the rosy coloured image of heterosexual harmony which was the cover story, not only of Elizabethan theatre but Elizabethan life as well. Orgel (2003, p. 94): The real issue, the efficient cause of Oberon’s rage, is Titania’s refusal to give up to him A lovely boy . . . [392–5]. This marriage, like to one celebrated by Catullus, includes in its erotic complex the additional element of homoerotic pederasty—what Oberon wants from his wife is the lovely boy.

Foster (1975, p. 196) considers the quarrel a type of the argument over whether mother-love or father-love is best for a boy. Titania would wait on his every desire, give him all the pleasures of the senses, make him feel deeply loved. . . . Oberon would teach him courage, endurance, and independence. The ultimate answer of the play seems to be that both parents are needed, that thus there should be no conflict between these natural forces. Skura (1993, p. 110) says Oberon wanted Titania’s child to move on to more manly occupations, and he wanted Titania to move on to more manly men. Desmet (1998, p. 317) describes a custody battle. . . . Oberon seeks to free the changeling boy from maternal confinement . . . and from her effeminizing crown of flowers. Hunter (2003, p. 6): One can read Oberon’s wish to make the changeling child a member of his train as a demand for sexual differentiation, a masculinization of the pre-oedipal child. Greenwood (2002, p. 25) would agree with Foster that this is a parenting dispute. Titania Crowns him with flowers [397], which suggests a laughable indulgence that risks spoiling the boy, feminising him and depriving him of the masculine identity and destiny desired for him by King Oberon. The two fairy foster-parents clash as to who should do the garlanding i.e. educate according to their typically feminine or masculine view-points, as well as (along less clearly gendered lines) stressing the dichotomy between the garlands of thoughtless pleasure (Anacreon’s) and the garlands of meritorious effort (the Ovidian Apollo’s). In Griffin’s opinion (1976, p. 5), however, selfishness is at the root of their disagreement; each is thinking not of the boy but of self.

The marriage is a troubled one, many think. Allen (1967, p. 114) blames Titania whose share in her quarrel with Oberon does not derive from fickleness or sensuality. Rather, she has disordered her marriage, the commonwealth of fairyland, and the behavior of the elements of nature by insisting upon her responsibility as goddess (or godlet) of chastity, while neglecting her equally important duty to promote the orderly processes of regeneration in the vegetable and human worlds. In Felheim’s opinion (1980, pp. 83–4), Oberon and Titania, far from being the charming monarchs of an ideal world, are engaged in the most unpleasant of domestic brawls involving charges of inconstancy, jealousy and rivalry—all too, too human foibles; further [84] this quarrel has disastrous overtones, and it is all over a little changeling whom Titania will abandon in a foolish and debasing love. Similarly Roberts (1983, p. 112). Berry 1972, p. 93) describes the altercation as a brief account of the aftermath of marriage, the climax to love-madness. Mutually jealous, Oberon and Titania bandy discreetly phrased charges of excessive passion for Theseus and Hippolyta. Pyle (1998, pp. 204–5): at the heart of the discord between Titania and Oberon is lust, whose signs are cruelty, irresponsibility, rebelliousness, withdrawal, and unfaithfulness. She cites the accusations they hurl at each other [445–6, 449–55] and states that (p. 205) the couple’s inability to control their lustful impulses and live chastely is reflected by the unruliness of nature in their fairy kingdom. Truax (1992, p. 127) says that Oberon and Titania spar with language that links them firmly with the transitory passions of immature love. Seiden (1959, p. 87) is amused because one conceives of [the fairy king and queen] as representing the principle of absolute freedom, wantonness, and that perfect state of nature which transcends mere civilization. How shocking then—but also how delightful—that their squabble should be domestic and that their marriage should smell of the scullery, the fireplace, private property, and of post-honeymoon boredom. Hirsch & Thomson (Brown ed. 1996, p. xxvii) too focus on boredom and say to the actors who play Titania and Oberon: . . . How can you get your kicks except by creating these situations? And she gets this Indian boy and that’s really the necessary irritant, it’s the cap on the toothpaste thing; you’ve got to find something to fight about, to keep this relationship dynamic. That’s one element of it. The other is the incredible voyeurism of Oberon, which again comes from the fact that there is nothing left to be done in this relationship, so it is loaded in that way.

Oberon is reacting to what Jochums (1970, p. 17) calls Titania’s insubordination—indeed, other charges and countercharges are merely outgrowths of this basic difficulty. McGuire (1985, pp. 12–13. 154) compares Titania and Hermia, who also explicitly refuses to submit to a male who [13] claims authority over her. (P. 154, n. 11): Oberon triumphs by using the love juice to bring Titania’s sexual energies to such a pitch that she, doting on Bottom, no longer prizes the boy or the love that bound her to his mother. In victory Oberon reclaims Titania as his wife and takes the boy for himself. Bryant (1986, p. 61) claims that he wants the boy . . . mainly . . . because he needs a show of obedience from his wife and Grene (1980, p. 49) sees in him a cool love of power for power’s sake. Titania by refusing him the boy he wants affronts his absolute will and his revenge is to make her feel the full force of his power over her. Similarly Oppen (1999, p. 46). Hendricks (1996, p. 55) concurs but thinks Oberon’s revenge backfires. Once central to Titania’s erotic desires, Oberon finds himself displaced twice: first by a changeling and then, in Bottom, by a monstrous changeling to boot. Traub (1992, p. 159) argues. This affront motivates Oberon’s attempt to humiliate Titania erotically, capture the boy, and secure him for martial, exclusively masculine, purposes. Bloom (1998, p. 157): To exclude Oberon from the child’s company is . . . not just a challenge to male authority; it is a wrong done to Oberon, and one that he must reverse and subsume in the name of the legitimacy in leadership that he shares with Titania. Hunter (2003, p. 6) detects a contest between male and female power evocative of pre-oedipal conflict between matriarchal domination of the nursery and paternal jealousy of the amount and quality of attention a mother gives to her infants at the expense of her husband’s claims on her. See also n. 436 (Iealous). Stavig (1995, pp. 217–18) argues that if we see Titania as a Mother Earth figure who has maternal responsibilities . . . as vegetative soul for the whole world, the conflict over the boy becomes an appropriate symbol of the larger unresolved issues between them. Titania has lost interest in men and the masculine, while Oberon desperately [218] wants both his wife and nature once again under his control. Taylor (1969, p. 263): The king and queen are only reconciled through Oberon’s subduing Titania to his wishes, and it seems that masculine hegemony is as traditional in fairy-land as it is in the human world. Mikics (1998, p. 112), however, insists that Oberon does not want to subjugate Titania. They are equals. The manner of Oberon’s victory is crucial. Struck with sudden pity Oberon judges that Titania’s pathetic infatuation with Bottom has gone on long enough—now that he has won the changeling from her.

The question of sovereignty in marriage is the focus of some commentators. Bevington (1978, p. 90): The quarrel of Oberon and Titania reflects the recently completed struggle for mastery between Theseus and Hippolyta, and yet is conducted according to the peculiar customs of the fairy kingdom. Titania’s love for Theseus is apparently the occasion for her current visit to Athens, in order that she may be at Theseus’s wedding; yet her love for the Athenian king has taken strange forms. . . . Oberon considers his queen perfectly capable of expressing her love for Theseus by encouraging him to ravish and then reject in turn a series of human mistresses. This is the sort of mysterious affection that only a god could practice or understand. Oberon’s behavior in love is no less puzzling from a human vantage: he punishes Titania for denying him the changeling boy by forcing her to take a gross and foolish lover. These gods make a sport of inconstancy. Desmet (1998, pp. 317–19) says the issue is sovereignty in marriage, . . . [a] defense of female sexual sovereignty, the woman’s rights over her own body and soul. Titania has forsworn Oberon’s bed and company. . . . Oberon, according to Titania’s accusation, has committed at least two indiscretions, with Phillida and with Hippolyta. [441] . . . . Oberon in turn accuses Titania of adultery and of interference in Theseus’s love life. . . . [318] In leading Theseus away from these women, Titania implicitly intervenes in the master-plot of male sexual conquest. Furthermore, in her memory of her own friendship with the changeling boy’s deceased mother, Titania provides an alternative to the unwished yoke [90] of sexual submission. . . . Titania’s speech locates the changeling within an ethically and poetically superior matriarchy that reinforces her regal and maternal rights to him. Also, friendship, female-female hermaphrodite, replaces male presence. (P. 319): Titania’s matriarchy is founded on a friendship that has no price. . . . Titania’s account of the Indian changeling’s genealogy denies the possibility of symmetrical exchange. If truth is troth, then Oberon cannot replace Titania as his legitimate parent.

Kreyssig (1862, 3:900) calls the quarrel a superficial, childish dispute over not a competitor to Oberon but a child, a doll with which Titania is playing a moody game (Ger.), and Schwartzkopff (1888, p. 294) agrees (Ger.). Chambers (ed. 1897, p. 25) calls them irresponsible creatures throughout, eternal children, who will be jealous and reconciled to each other a dozen times a day. Schanzer (Moon, 1955, p. 236) responds: Their quarrel is not a children’s squabble, no sooner engaged in than forgotten, as Chambers would have us believe, but a quarrel which, if we are to credit Titania, has been in progress for many months, disrupting the whole body politic of fairyland. . . . Of irresponsibility I can find no more sign in Oberon and Titania than of childlikeness. Morley (ed. 1886, p. 18) insists that the fairy quarrel has in it no bitterness, nothing resembling human passion, and Imam (1959, p. 60) contends that Oberon’s jealousy conceals a tenderness, his wrath a humour, his appeasement a ripple of delight. The quarrel with Titania, as all else that pertains to the Fairy kingdom, is without substance.

Oberon

In considering the character of Oberon, critics examine his attitude toward Titania, his interest in the Indian boy, his attitude toward human mortals, his motivation, his function representing Nature, or Cupid, or Fertility.

Oberon has traits which many consider unattractive, even childish. Clarke (1863, pp. 103, 108) asks, what of Oberon, with his ape-like mimicry of mortal royalty, grudging and restless, till he had beguiled [Titania] of her infant page? (P. 108): His tiny majesty commits himself by royal poutings, and upbraidings, and plots, and crooked chicaneries. Thümmel (1881, p. 285) calls him self-willed (Ger.), and Stopes (1916, pp. 177–9) considers Oberon more stately, more poetic, more learned, more powerful than Puck, but with some fairy flaws. He is self-willed, determined to have what he himself [178] wants, not free from the taint of spite, willing to punish those who ruffle him, and willing to use unfair means to obtain the Indian boy. Guthrie (ed. 1954, p. 29) thinks an element of the sinister is essential. Oberon is a malevolent creature who is addressed by Puck as King of Shadows [1388]. Sehrt (1961, p. 21) calls him malicious (Ger.), and Iyengar (1964, p. 166) calls his trick on Titania cruel. Davies (1997, pp. 163–4) denounces his use of psychedelic drugs and aphrodisiacs as unscrupulous, his use of Bottom as (p. 164) exploitative, his behavior as spiteful, coldly calculated. Nelson (1988, pp. 90, 92–3, 95) pictures him acting like a hurt child, spoiling the dignified pleasures of the household, concerned (p. 92) only to get his way, [93] . . . malicious, . . . seek[ing] to avenge himself, to hurt Titania, without (p. 95) a moral vision. According to Donaldson (1985, pp. 45–6), even Oberon’s interference in the love story is not free of the malice that he shows to Titania. Though he professes to be moved by pity for Helena when he instructs Puck to put the drops in Demetrius’ eyes, his action remains a by-product of his spitefulness toward another woman, Titania. . . . Moreover, it is not clear that he expects the administering of the drops to accomplish any really felicitous purpose. His order to Puck to put [46] the fluid in the Athenian’s eyes is accompanied by the strange prediction that before Helena leaves the woods, Demetrius will seek her love and she shall flee from him, . . . an outcome more calculated to wreak vengeance on Demetrius than to do anything beneficial for Helena. . . . He does, of course, try to rectify Puck’s mistake and later has him prevent Lysander and Demetrius from killing each other. But an immortal who straightens out a mess he has himself caused hardly acquires thereby the stature of a benevolent mentor. Davies (1986, p. 127) says Oberon crows with triumph over his exaction of the changeling child from his queen, during the delusion of her dream. . . . The means of possession are manipulation and deceit, law of conquest rather than law of right. Graham (1987, p. 39) points out that Oberon has not tamed his particular Hippolyta and is himself subject to the vagaries of chance and passion, and Hinely (1987, pp. 132–3) suggests that this torment, Oberon’s revenge, is his dream. It is a dream of love reduced to animality, for it limits unleashed sexual energy to purely animal gratification. Oberon will use the magic potion . . . to make Titania full of hateful fantasies [639]. Hinely explains that (p. 133) Oberon’s cruelty is linked to his sense of loss. When setting out his plan to corrupt Titania’s imagination . . . , he describes his sleeping, no longer accessible wife in terms conveying the enchantment which the picture holds for him [quotes 630–35].

Excluded from this Edenic vision, Oberon will destroy it.

Dash (1997, p. 93) claims that Oberon is vindictive and wants to exert power. This Shakespeare’s audience might have expected since Titania was breaking the code of female behavior. Thus her humiliation. Moore (2001, pp. 109–10) adds that although seeming concerned for human justice in Helena’s case, Oberon is ready to subvert justice in his own marriage in favor of male willfulness not unlike that of Demetrius. Certainly, he will allow his affections to wander to Phillida or a bouncing Amazon and afterward charge Titania with similar interest in Theseus . . . Looking upward from the sensible human point of view (of, say, Peter Quince), the royal fairies are unfair, perhaps blindly so, [110] condescending to bless and re-order human society while free from responsibility for moral order at home.

Numerous critics consider Oberon the controlling figure in the play. Ridley (1936, pp. 36–7) says Oberon is king, and can control [37] mere human destinies, even if he can only imperfectly control his queen. So Moses (1978, p. 98). Lüthi (1957, p. 168) credits Oberon with the control (Ger.), as do Baldwin (1959, p. 483); Atherton (1962, p. 43); Scott (1977, p. 50); Bruster (1990, p. 217); Pickering (1985, p. 26) assigns as motive his concern for mortals; Vlasopolos (1978, p. 27); Nelson (1988, p. 88). He is the only character who knows anything about what has been going on, says Evans (ed. 1967, pp. 15, 34). (P. 34): He will pair the lovers off appropriately for a happy ending, gain his Indian boy and restore Titania to her fairy senses. Knight (1967, p. 268) thinks of him as the protagonist, and according to White (1970, p. 44) he is perhaps the most powerful character in Shakespeare; he has power over fickle love as well as true, according to McPeek (1972, p. 72). Brown (1966; 1967, pp. 13–14), considering especially enactment, looks closely at Oberon’s lines 1429–36. These ideas are not neatly defined, but placed and imaged so that the warmth and yellow radiance transfigure the salt and green sea; the sun overpowers the sea with the long, tidal reach of syntax, so making the green one gold. When the actor speaks the lines this metrical effect is inescapable; rhythm, pitch, stress and phrase ensure its communication. So, too, the character Oberon grows, the long, controlled sound of his speech giving him an authority which he has no need to claim—often a main consideration [14] in the balance of an acted scene. . . . The impression of controlled power in Oberon depends largely on temporal and musical means and on the clarity of performance; and because these are usually unrecognised in operation by the audience, they work with seeming inevitability—this, again, is part of their effect, giving an impression of reserved power. Bilton (1974, p. 82) thinks a sense of Oberon’s power and control . . . prevent[s] one from fearing that any of the characters will come to real grief. Hart (1980, p. 8) adds that he is close to the earth and knows its lore and has dominion over it; but his head is also in the sky and he sees far beyond the present and the visible. His greatest feat is the resolution of his quarrel with Titania. . . . Along the way he resolves the mix-up among the young lovers out of generosity and concern for the human creatures who have wandered into his realm. . . . At the end of the play, he blesses the marriages, and we know that with his power and his desire to bring harmony and happiness to all the lovers, their future is assured. Evans (1960, pp. 34, 36) credits him with near omniscience which (p. 36) fall[s], for once, a little short, and Snodgrass (1975, p. 237) warns that the male’s victory, like so much else here, may well be [177] illusory. Theseus seems very much in control; he is, in fact, completely dependent on unrecognized forces. Oberon is awarded the child; his triumph never pervades the mind as does the recollection of the imperious Titania, supreme in her bower. Taylor (2002, p. 59): Oberon gets what he wants, finally, because of his ingenuity and patience, not because of the respect due his high station. But Walter (ed. 1964, p. 10) insists that Oberon should be allowed dignity and authority, otherwise the blessings he bestows on Theseus’ marriage are empty words.

Some commentators find his motives mixed or his power limited. Herford (ed. 1899, p. 305) is terse; he displays mild beneficence towards the lovers, and calculated malice toward his queen. Latham (1930, pp. 180–1) lists his quick and violent temper, his piety, his devotion to those mortals to whom he took a fancy, his angelic visage, his [181] dwarfed stature, his splendid dress and his powers of enchantment—all characteristics of Oberon. But Bryant (1964, p. 5) says his power is limited. Langford (1984, pp. 42, 47) acknowledges Oberon’s jealousy but his motive is correction rather than revenge. He explains, though, that (p. 47) Oberon is not an example of thoroughly rational providence. Not only is he subject to passion himself, he is rather low in the divine hierarchy so that despite all his power there are still some limits as to what he can do. Anderson (1987, p. 51) finds him swayed by human emotion. . . . He has a strange sense of justice and a certain compassion toward mortals, as when he seeks to help the forsaken Helena. . . . His obsession with Titania’s little Indian boy may spring from affection or merely a desire to dominate her; in either event, Shakespeare turns the traditional fairy king—depicted as potentially vengeful toward erring mortals . . . —into an eager revenger against not only his own kind, but his own queen. A third possible motive is presented when Puck refers to jealous Oberon [394] and is developed as a possible reason for both Titania’s stubbornness and Oberon’s wrath in their dialogue [quotes 434–51]. Stavig (1995, p. 9) credits him with only limited awareness and questionable motives. In Farrell’s analysis (1989, pp. 179–80), while Oberon takes care to distinguish the fairies from damned spirits that must for aye consort with black-brow’d Night [1423–8], he commands [180] fog as black as Acheron [1398] and death-counterfeiting sleep [1405] that transforms life into a dream and fruitless vision [1412] comparable to the eschatological sleep Prospero imagines rounding our little lives. He purges the lovers of their chaotic infantile infatuation and aggression by subjecting them to a feigned execution: strike more dead / Than common sleep of all these five the sense [1597–8]. Because the quarrel between the Fairy King and Queen has disrupted the harvest cycle, their reconciliation makes the play a restoration of symbolic immortality: a fitting rite for a king of shadows who with the Morning’s love <has> oft made sport [1430]. These characteristics define Oberon as an equivocal lord of death and resurrection, a secular appropriation of Christian themes. Halio (2005, pp. 405–6) finds him one of the more complex characters in the play. On the one hand, he is an imperious husband and ruler and perhaps not even a very faithful one (see, [406] for example, 439 ff.). He demands the little Indian boy of Titania; when she refuses, he severely punishes her. Only after he finds her in a pitiable state does he relent, and only after she has acceded to his demand. On the other hand, he is very compassionate regarding the plight of the Athenian lovers and directs Puck to sort things out for them. . . . At the end, reconciled with Titania, he blesses the house of Theseus after all the couples have gone to bed, proving that he and his fairy band are . . . not malevolent creatures but spirits of another sort [1429].

Oberon is generally regarded as sympathetic toward the mortals in the play. Schlegel (1809–11; tr. 1815, 2:177) considers him desirous of relieving the lovers from their perplexities although he greatly adds to them through the misapprehension of his servant, till he at last comes to the aid of their fruitless amorous pain. Heraud (1865, pp. 184–5) too sees compassion in him, and Moberly (ed. 1881, p. xiii) says his first thought on seeing lovers at cross-purposes, is to find some means to make all well. Similarly Canning (1903, p. 493), Atherton (1962, p. 28), Woodman (1973, p. 68), Garber (1974, p. 64), Fly (1976, p. 122), Hunt (1992, p. 233). C. Clark (1931, p. 58) insists that there is no malice in Oberon, quarrelsome though he may be. Dent (1964, pp. 119–20) calls him the true dispenser of grace, as does Weiner (1971, pp. 347–8), but Donaldson (1985, p. 146) counters: Oberon’s imprecision in instructing Puck into whose eyes to put the distillation makes him a figure for Inefficient Grace. Leggatt (1974, p. 106) reminds us that in the final scene, with the peace of his own kingdom restored, Oberon uses his blessing to forestall any approaching disorder in the mortal world. Stavig (1995, pp. 223–4) finds him sympathetic to a [224] young woman who is both frankly physical and properly submissive, and he is upset with a disdainful youth [642] who refuses to show proper courtesy to his love and therefore deserves to suffer. Titania’s plight in loving Bottom parallels Helena’s, and Oberon’s sympathy for Helena prepares for his pitying of Titania.

Central to many interpretations of his character are his attitude and behavior toward Titania. According to Snider (1874, pp. 175–6), Oberon resolves to assert the husband’s right to be head of the family, and is determined to subordinate his refractory wife. His aim is unity and peace, not only in his own domestic relations, [176] but in the entire realm of which he is the supreme ruler. Skottowe (1824, 1:263) finds him by no means backward in the assertion of supremacy over his royal consort. . . . Knowledge, we have been gravely told, is power, 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. Agreeing are Wölffel (1852, p. 144), Cutts (1963, p. 184), Brooke (1905, p. 26), Riklin (1968, p. 288), and Lynch (1999, p. 108). Anderson (1987, p. 25) believes Oberon’s revenge against Titania seems purely personal and devoid of any social purpose, while Wright (1968, p. 27) insists that Oberon acts to regain his own rather than out of perverse caprice, Hunt (1986, p. 3) says he has become an outsider resenting the new attachment of his mistress to a fair-faced boy, and Slights (1988, p. 260) feels he has suffered an intolerable injury [523] at the hands of a wanton wife [438] and punishes her. Goldstein (1973, p. 180) notices that over 40 percent of Oberon’s dialogue with Titania is in the interrogative, thus a kind of begging, pleading quality is constant. Corbould (1897, p. 41) calls Oberon’s revenge playful, Beiner (1985, p. 87) comic. Pickering (1985, p. 18) contends that his plan may seem like a cruel trick but it has been made clear that for Titania’s good as well as for the order of nature, her obsession must be broken. This means of breaking it is to change it into one so unnatural and absurd that she recognises her own folly. Stavig (1995, pp. 223–4) says Oberon plans to end her rebellion by requir[ing] her to recognize her own sexuality and offer[ing] her a chance to change through experiencing the humbling but paradoxically ennobling suffering of love. In Homan’s view (1998, pp. 287–8) Oberon adopts the posture of male superiority and fails to (p. 288) hear Titania’s speech on the boy’s importance to her, and McDonald (ed. 2000, p. xlv) notes Titania’s humiliation; the most disturbing case of masculine pride is the resolution of Oberon’s plot against Titania. She yields without a struggle. Even if we conclude that Oberon has cuckolded himself in getting his way, rarely is a Shakespearean episode inflected with so little irony. This resolution may be seen, however, as a harsh but necessary means of settling a cosmic struggle, an appropriate if still troubling victory over Titania’s obstinacy. Boehrer (1994, p. 125), however, contends that although Oberon may claim to regret Titania’s disobedience . . . , he also revels in the chance to make sexual sport of her.

For Oberon, then, Titania’s plight is both hateful and delightful, and his language enables him to disavow any moral responsibility for degrading her while it simultaneously promotes her as an article of good theatrical fun.

Kahan (1996, pp. 17, 20) finds Oberon a disturbing figure, unrestrained in his patriarchal authority by the normal cuckoldry fears that accompany marriage. . . . It is clear that he has no qualms about purposely shifting the affections of his wife to another male. Nor, as the King of Fairyland, is his self-cuckolding subject to the customary derision of male group rivalry which influences the behaviour of Ford and Posthumus. . . . [20] Oberon’s self-cuckolding does not strip him of power and status as it should, but instead ensures the opposite. Hirsch & Thomson (in Brown ed. 1996, p. 33), looking at 522–63, determine that in his selfish blindness, Oberon now wants revenge. Puck excitedly anticipates the chance to torture someone. . . . And there is an explicit revelation of Oberon as male, bestial. His plan of revenge is akin to a rape, it is to be a degradation of Titania when she is most vulnerable. Uman (2001, pp. 76–7): 532–41 proves Oberon’s rapacious intent since the reference to Philomel and the story of the flower provide subtexts of rape for Oberon’s plot against Titania, born of his desire to dominate her. Schwarz (2000, p. 224) points out that for Oberon as for Theseus, the forceful imposition of hierarchy emphasizes the disruptive possibilities it works to suppress. The argument that puts men in power is not prophylactic but defensive, as defensive as Theseus’s heroic conquest. Women must be instructed and installed in their positions by men who must constantly assert control, and in the invention of gender violence and desire collide. Greenwood (2002, p. 31) insists that the scorn he pours on Titania’s amours is scathing rather than jealous. For it is not Titania’s fidelity that Oberon desires, but her power that he lusts after, her control of her suite and of everything she owns. . . . Once his machiavellian plan has worked, Oberon poses as the upholder of the fairies’ proper pride and upbraids his queen roundly so as to reduce her to submission. Conscienceless and, as a fairy, as amoral as Titania, Oberon boasts to Puck of his manipulatory tactics. Hackett (2003, pp. 350–1) supposes that where Titania seems to compensate for her lack of a child by adopting the Indian boy and then by infantilizing Bottom, Oberon seeks to punish her with exactly the sort of union which would produce a monstrous birth, meeting her desire for [351] motherhood with a horrific travesty. . . . Oberon degrades her to the basest level of subhuman lust.

Some critics concentrate on his reaction to the outcome of his trick. Seiden (1959, p. 88), thinking of the woods outside of Athens as a kind of Garden of Eden, Titania as a comic Eve, and Bottom as the serpentine Satan, pictures Oberon as a troubled Adam. But Oberon is also a cuckolded husband out of a Restoration comedy . . . who is made to outwit himself by delivering up his wife to a notorious rake. To Puck, Oberon must profess that he finds pleasure in the comic discomfiture which he has inflicted upon Titania. But this, one suspects, is in part a face-saving tactic. There is rather more conviction in the disgust and indignation with which Oberon describes the impropriety of Titania’s amours [cites 1566–71]. Cutts (1968, p. 55) contends that Oberon is shattered by the distorted effects of what he thought were quite simple methods of correction for his wife and for bemused mortals.

Oberon’s interest in the changeling provokes speculation. White (1970, pp. 52–3) says that Oberon is not all good, as nature is not all beneficent. He wants the changeling. [53] We are not sure why, but the reason that appears to make the most sense is pederasty. A passion, like the passion of Zeus for Ganymede, could explain Oberon’s wilfulness, and his willingness to let humans suffer for his and Titania’s quarrel. Cutts (p. 183) insisted in 1963 that the Indian Boy is not identifiable with Ganymede to be sure, but he does serve, Ganymede-like, as the cause of the dispute, but in 1968 (p. 53) he says that the Indian changeling boy bears too great similarity with . . . Ganymede for us to be entirely satisfied with . . . an unerotic motive. Similarly French (1981, p. 98), Goldstein (1973, p. 180). Green (1998, p. 378) argues that Oberon may succeed in degrading Titania, but his voyeurism implicates him in the bestiality he witnesses; he may have revenged himself on Titania for loving her votaress so deeply, but he can do so only by having her re-enact the supposed transgression. Moreover, Oberon may fail to recognize this scene as a displacement of his own sodomitical desires for the changeling boy. Smith (1991; 1994, p. 200) accuses Oberon of having a sexual appetite to rival Jupiter’s. . . . He ranges all over the world in all sorts of guises to satisfy all sorts of desires. . . . Whatever he has in mind, Oberon wants the boy badly enough to visit on Titania the hilarious indignity of falling in love with Bottom, ass’s head and all. Flint (1991, pp. 12–13) detects disruptive sexual overtones. While Oberon clearly has heterosexual tastes—has he not had a fling with his warrior love [13] Hippolyta before the play begins?—his desire for the young boy, like his very promiscuity, is mildly disruptive. Lanier (1999, p. 334) says his misdirected attachment to the boy . . . falls ambiguously between pederasty, paternalism, and an inappropriate attachment to male courtiers. Sinfield (2003, pp. 74–5) asks, How old is this lad? Is he old enough to be sexy? . . . If he is rather older, a sexual intensity on the part of both Titania and Oberon becomes plausible. . . . Only acute sexual infatuation, it seems to me, may plausibly move these great fairies to jeopardize the entire creation. (P. 75): Oberon, apparently, is within his rights. . . . Oberon’s seizing of the boy is a victory for patriarchy, not a challenge to it. Bevington (1978, p. 90), calling the rivalry about the changeling boy . . . bizarre, thinks it unlikely he wanted the boy as his minion—the evidence is missing or ambiguous.

There are critics who are quick to point out that Oberon actually changes in the course of the play. According to Hirsch (1968, p. 176), Oberon sees that the result of his irrational, jealous act of revenge is self-degradation, and his victory is tinged with self-loathing. The cause of the quarrel has been removed, and he can afford to pity Titania’s dotage. When he releases her, true vision follows, unclouded by anger or eroticism. Wilson (1873, p. 176) and Leggatt (1999, p. 54) mention the awaking of his pity. Sweeney (1985, p. 168): Although Oberon’s temper tantrum over Titania’s boy has disrupted all of the normal processes of nature and eventually victimizes even Titania when he casts her in love with Bottom, . . . [he] reasserts his majesty and resumes his custodianship of the natural world, in part because Titania gives him what he wants and in part because he finds what he has done hateful. He feels pity for Titania. . . . In short, the restoration of harmony in the natural world is a function of Oberon’s choice, and his choice is a function of his response to a drama he has invented for himself. His decision is both personally and socially responsible: majesty, in its dual role as chief actor and chief spectator in the social drama, chooses to act benevolently toward its subjects because the rewards are reciprocal. Otten (1988, p. 466) mentions the remorse of Oberon, and Calderwood (1991, p. 425) elaborates; in fairyland, kings demand, command, punish, and finally forgive. . . . The quality of mercy is not entirely constrained in Oberon, but it’s by no means free and generous, either, coming as it does only after he’s gotten his humiliating way. Still, Titania’s disgrace . . . moves him to pity; and if pity depends on taking the perspective of others, of feeling what wretches feel, then Oberon’s own vision has been modified for the better. . . .

Unpleasant as Oberon’s methods are, we can only judge them by Titania’s response; and from the moment of her awakening she is not only unembittered but quick both to love . . . and also to obey.

Blits (2003, p. 139) explains the process of the changes. Two things, with a single cause, have happened. Oberon and Titania . . . were initially jealous of each other’s loves. . . . The boy . . . seems to have served as a substitute for the real objects of their jealousy. Bottom, however, has, by chance, ended the conflict. Consumed by her love for him, Titania is no longer jealous of Oberon’s wanderings. . . . At the same time, the contemptible object of her dotage . . . arouses Oberon’s pity rather than his jealousy. Bottom, unlike Theseus, is not a rival, and Oberon could never consider him one. What frees Titania also frees Oberon, but in opposite ways. Dotage, for her; pity, for him. Titania originally vowed that she would not trade the boy for all of fairyland; she would keep him for the sake of his mother [498–513, 520]. But she now gives him up with no thought of his mother. And Oberon loses interest in the boy once he gets him. The boy is never mentioned again. Oberon’s plan has worked, but not in the way or for the reason he seemed to expect. Its success rests on Puck’s unauthorized and unexpected transformation of Bottom’s head. . . . Chance permits Oberon’s plan to succeed and reconciles the royal couple.

A few critics associate Oberon with nature. Pogson (1950, p. 74) calls him Pan, the spirit of nature, Warren (1969, p. 131) regards him as directly associated with the health of nature, with the morning’s love [1430] and the sun’s fair blessed beams [1433], and Williams (1995, p. 57) as stand[ing] . . . for the wood, nature and magic, poetic imagination, night, and dreams. Others think of him as a surrogate Cupid. Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:264) says Oberon is closely initiated into the deepest secrets of the Love-God, Hudson (ed. 1880, pp. 11–12) that he is endowed with the rights and powers both of the classical god of love and the classical goddess of chastity. . . . [12] He seems to use them both unchecked by any other law than his innate love of what is handsome and fair, and his native aversion to what is ugly and foul. Cody (1969, p. 135) thinks Oberon means chastity, temperance, heroic severity, as in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, . . . but he also serves Cupid. He is Cupid’s equivalent, according to Ansari (1978, p. 50). Hapgood (1988, p. 26) argues that only Oberon controls the power to change inner feelings—and that only by way of his special knowledge of transforming potions derived from the play’s chief ruling deities, Cupid and Dian. He seems even to be able to invoke the power of Venus, whose love-light helps to accomplish the key transformation, the reawakening of Demetrius’s affections for Helena [quotes 1128–30]. A few like Isaacs & Reese (1974, p. 355) see Oberon as the symbol for the gift of sexual felicity and fecundity [which] is his to bestow upon the bridal couples, and at the end of the play he blesses the wedding beds. Hankins (1978, p. 44), for example, mentions that Oberon and his fellow spirits have the duty of leading human souls into generation. They will supervise the bridal beds of the three newly married couples to make sure that they generate good offspring. A darker appraisal of Oberon’s powers is Hardill’s (2002; 2004, p. 148); he is the dark, demonic lord of the wood . . . . He is quite recognisable as a folklore version of the original winter-king, the earlier Nature myth’s destructive aspect of the summer-king, who survived . . . as a figure combining ogrousness and destinal intelligence. . . .

As Oberon is fairly obviously a demonic twin of the original summer ruler, Theseus, we can understand why he is so angry with Titania for turning Theseus into a rapist [452–3]. It is he who has been thus transformed into something violent, and the rape—often in myth denoting the first violence—is therefore part of the whole picture of destructiveness in the male that in this part of the play is shown to befall life.

Hawkins (1970, p. 55) considers Oberon a kind of dramatic metaphor for the playwright himself, Neubauer (1970, p. 59) the deus ex machina, Cope (1973, p. 225) the mythic and dramatic master of ceremonies, the author of events within the play and the surrogate author of the final blessing upon the weddings within and without the play. Similarly Farrell (1975, p. 107), Kernan (1979, p. 77), Huston (1981, pp. 113, 120), Willson (1981, pp. 87–8), Frye (1983, p. 75). Perng (1977; tr. 1988, p. 60), however, observes that although Oberon becomes a playwright with a script to be acted out . . . , not even once does his script develop precisely according to his prescribed text. Stavig (1995, pp. 255–6) claims that as order is restored in the woods and in Athens, (p. 256) Oberon and Theseus serve as analogous rulers as they preside benevolently over both wood and court. They are also surrogate playwrights who through their power shape the resolutions of comedy.

Woodberry (in Lee ed. 1907, 3:xviii) imagines Oberon as a prophecy of Prospero, as does Jobin (1979, p. 154). Olson (1957, p. 109) calls him a delicate figure for grace. He is the play’s Prospero. . . . He may have wandered in the mazes of love and war, but . . . he has overcome these. When properly sovereign, Oberon furthers the celestial love which preserves chaste marriages and keeps the cosmos in order. Stockholder (1987, p. 221), however, thinks Oberon’s magical power is less moral than Prospero’s.

Titania

Titania’s compassion has attracted attention from 19th- and 20th-c. critics. Drake (1817, 2:337), like Heraud (1865, p. 184), considers Titania as interested as Oberon in alleviating the distresses of the worthy and unfortunate. Her interest in the Indian boy is the result of humanity and compassion. Stopes (1916, pp. 178–9) considers Titania the very best type of fairy. . . . Her tendencies seem to be pacific, hers is the beneficent ideal of fairy character. A daughter of Ceres, she helps agriculture, she watches the woods and the flowers. The sports of her court keep nature healthful. . . . Titania sympathises with all who suffer, and in her sympathy strikes the highest note that all the realm of fairies had conceived.

But Titania had also the higher gift of love, even for [179] humanity, and of fidelity to love. She was faithful to her mortal friend. . . . She was quite willing to forgive Oberon his past quarrels, if he would come and patiently dance in our round.

Thakur (1966, p. 32) thinks her perhaps . . . too serious for a fairy. She is certainly sustained and massive in her feeling, she is moved and concerned. Her objectives seem wider and more humane than a quarrel about some queer Indian boy. Hart (1980, p. 8) says that essentially, her good will caused the universe to be beautiful, and Warren (1983, pp. 16–17) admires her sympathy for the human mortals who have endured the weather and also lost their compensating pastimes [cites 476–7] and her sympathy for the changeling’s mother [511–13]. (P. 17): The sympathy . . . is important, because it represents a departure from much Elizabethan literature and folklore, in which fairies were sinister creatures who misled hapless mortals and stole babies from their cradles. . . . She loves and cherishes [the changeling] for his mother’s sake, even at the cost of a violent quarrel with Oberon. While . . . the indirect result of this quarrel is unfortunate for the mortals . . . , the fairies’ direct dealings with the mortals are benevolent. Pickering (1985, p. 48) concurs but adds that her concern for the boy has . . . grown out of all proportion. . . . Accordingly she has become unattentive and disloyal to Oberon and must be corrected. The renewal of her love for Oberon brings deeper happiness to both of them. Halio (2005, p. 405) thinks that Titania’s relationship with the Indian woman who was her devoted follower shows her affectionate and compassionate nature, especially in her willingness to rear the child the woman left behind when she died. . . . When Oberon gets his way, Titania is willing to become reconciled, calls for music, and joins with Oberon in a dance that reflects their newfound concord. She joins with him, too, in blessing Theseus’s house and its occupants.

Commentators find other characteristics to praise in addition to her compassion. O’Sullivan (1840, 37–8) calls Titania the idealized personification of all that is charming in nature, favoring chaste loves and the uniting of divided hearts (Fr.). In Herford’s view (ed. 1899, pp. 306–7), she is no goddess but a fairy, childlike in her innocence and her impulsiveness and above all, helplessly subdued by the shafts of that casual and irrational love which the cold beams [307] of the watery moon [539] had instantly quenched. But if she is not cold she is the embodiment of feminine daintiness and delicacy; and all about her is imagined with an exquisite instinct for the elemental life of flower and insect and all the dainty and delicate things of nature. Clark (1931, p. 60) credits her with grace and dignity, and Baldwin (1959, p. 485) says Titania is as lovely in name and act as the moonlight itself. Nelson (1988, pp. 89, 91, 94) contends that Titania speaks the moral vision which fosters our appreciation of constancy and which gives substance to the moral vision of the play’s conclusion. In 497–513 (p. 91) Titania bespeaks a deep appreciation for [the natural order] and engenders that appreciation in us, the audience, as well. (P. 94): It is the communal morality, tied to seasons, work, birth and death, that Titania bespeaks, and it is this morality which forms the festive, and moral, frame of the play.

Titania is not without flaws; Thümmel (1881, p. 285) calls her stubborn (Ger.), and Wedgwood (1890, p. 581) thinks her jealous of Hippolyta, full of human preference, human jealousy. Delattre (1912, p. 111) calls her a conceited, self-complacent village tyrant, . . . coquettish, and Mackenzie (1924, p. 34) finds in her a shrillness that causes less incongruity than might be in her passion for the grossness of the so-translated weaver. Guthrie (ed. 1954, pp. 29, 31) suggests that Titania is little better than the malevolent Oberon and points out that she sends her attendants on cruel missions. McDonald (ed. 2000, p. xlv) finds her obstinate.

According to Berkowitz (1895, p. 4), wise students have surmised that Titania is Pleasure, self-gratification, lawless freedom as they seem to young desire—the perfection of grace and charm and refinement. Cowling (1925, p. 85): Clearly Oberon must have as his wife a fairy princess, beautiful, languorous, capricious and sentimental. Bonnard (1956, p. 277) thinks she illustrates the blindness of love, made to serve as an illustration of her own powers to seduce mortals: Titania, with her instinctive preference for whatever is most refined, most delicate, in love with . . . the very antithesis of refinement and delicacy! Olson (1957, p. 111) calls her queen of summer and a goddess of the earth, a princess of sensual passion, and see Cody (1969) above, here. Pearson (1974, p. 295) comments that if the critics who see Oberon as the representative of reason and Titania as his opposite, sensuality, are correct, then Shakespeare was working far more carefully than has hitherto been realized. For in assigning Theseus a guardian genius, Titania, who is responsible for his past infidelities, the dramatist is deliberately pointing up the perfidy and fraud in his protagonist’s legendary amours and at the same time pointing toward . . . Theseus’ next infidelity. White (1984, p. 38) observes that Titania seems to carry in her language the sensuality of the spiced Indian air, and her lust for an ass, however temporary and contrived, is revealing, and Andrews (1984, p. 188) sees Titania as neither the patroness nor the personal exponent of chastity. She is a spirit of another sort. Surely she is less likely to be thinking of the sorrows of ravishment than of the joys of consummation. The moon, we should remember, is not always the imperial votress [540] of virginity; she is also . . . associated with fertility. See also n. 1019. Greenwood (2002, p. 30) thinks of Titania as seduction personified and past mistress of love-affairs, [who] puts all her efforts into pleasing her beloved and binding him to herself. . . . Titania . . . [is] not disturbed, even distantly, by thoughts of sin or of offspring, for as a fairy she is amoral and debarred reproduction as folklore traditions explain. The only flaw for the fairy queen is the demeaning social image that she acquires by stooping as low as an asshead for a lover. Hackett (2003, p. 343) deems Titania’s sensuality no less than that of her pregnant votaress. She is clearly no Virgin Queen. Pask (2003, p. 174) comments that she is hardly a model of Spenserian chastity. . . . Shakespeare’s play is considerably more sceptical about the marriage that is supposed to crown the career of a chaste maiden.

Smidt (1986, p. 127) detects considerable ambiguity; before the application of the love-juice we may perhaps suppose Titania chaste, in spite of her reported amour with Theseus—though the meaning of chastity in this play is problematic, as we shall see. She is obviously to some extent identified with Diana, as the similarity of their names indicates. . . . When she speaks of the mother of the Indian boy being a votaress of my order [499] and when Oberon shortly afterwards makes an obvious reference to the Virgin Queen as the imperial votress [540] we can hardly help thinking of the order as that of Diana. But Titania also corresponds to Lyly’s Venus. She is a deity of Love, and her Indian boy is her Cupid. . . .

Nor is this combination of chastity and sensuality the only ambiguity in Titania’s character. Like Oberon she has potentials for cruelty as well as benevolence. By her own account the Indian boy whom she keeps in her train was adopted by her when his mother . . . died in childbirth. But whether we must suppose her to be lying or whether there is an unresolved contradiction in the text, the boy is referred to a number of times as a changeling, i.e. a human child stolen from his parents, who would have a deformed or moronic fairy infant in his place. See Puck’s 391–3, which suggests, Smidt points out, (p. 128) that Titania has had other changelings before. Brown (1987, p. 28) concurs, saying that Titania appears at both the top and the bottom of the scale, as the consort of both Oberon and Bottom, as the embodiment of pure <step>motherly love and bestial sensuality. But in this duality she is the living image of the discordia concors, the unity of chaste and sensual love, the natural spirit, better known as the spirit of nature.

Several critics look beyond the chastity-sensuality labels for what Titania might represent. Fender (1968, p. 30) parallels the functions of Diana and Titania; Sh’s Diana is the chaste wife of Oberon, but she is also the goddess of child-birth of whose order the Indian woman was a Votaress. Shakespeare emphasises her contrary roles by bringing them into conflict in the argument over the Indian boy. The ambivalence of Titania may also explain why the moon, Diana’s emblem, stands for chastity when Oberon cancels the love juice . . . but stands for mutability and erotic love when Egeus accuses Lysander of having enchanted Hermia. Doran (1974, pp. 67–8) too says her name, in so far as it connects her with the virgin and huntress Diana, mainly bewilders. But I think she can be seen in a different relation to the moon—also incomplete, but suggestive; that is to the moon in her function as the governess of growing things. . . .

The floral setting makes Titania’s concern for growing things seem rather narrowly horticultural and the decorative daintiness of her fairies’ labors makes us take them all as a pretty fancy. There is, however, a deeper note. [68] . . . She can be thought of . . . as an agent, not as the personification of the moon. Her quarrel with Oberon has disrupted the weather and the crops. Titania’s relation to the moon here is rather of analogy than of independent authority. All this is elusive indeed. Yet when she is viewed as being connected in some way to the fructifying powers of the moon, her protection of the Indian woman and her offspring is less puzzling. Diana was a protectress of young creatures, and, as Lucina, was invoked by women in childbirth.

Warren (1969, p. 131), however, argues with Fender, saying that Titania does not embody the traditional values of Diana—the huntress and goddess of erotic love: rather, the summer which still doth tend upon my state [972] and the wood she rules over is a matter not of sinister briars, but, again and again, of the loveliest most delicate wild flowers: as well as the wild thyme and nodding violet, the musk roses are sweet [633] and the woodbine luscious [632]. Such language scarcely suggests a sinister place, and these passages are famous because they are emphatic. McPeek (1972, pp. 72–4) finds aspects of both Venus and Psyche . . . in the person of Titania, and she (p. 74) functions also as a Venus figure in representing Nature herself. Hardill (2002; 2004, pp. 148–9) regards Titania as the central character of [MND] and calls her the dark will that enslaves and operates through all masculine behaviour. Her captivation and bemonstering of Bottom, her hold on the boy-child, her presence in Hermia and Helena as the motivation of the youths’ insanities of love and hate, her possession of Egeus in self-righteous tyranny and of Lysander in rebellion, her transformation of the original ruler into a demon of storms and destruction . . . [ellipsis in original] all these are [149] manifestations of her power. It is why her defeat . . . and her reclamation through surrender are so important in the restoration of sanity and human wholeness.

Other keys to Titania’s character are her relationship with and attitude toward Oberon, the Indian boy, his mother, and Bottom. Skottowe (1824, 1:263) finds Titania as little disposed, as any earthly beauty, tacitly to acquiesce in the pretensions of her redoubted lord. O’Connell (1859, p. 371): Titania gentilitially retrudes [Oberon] to his place of Prince Consort, and insists upon being wearer of the breeches as well as crown. Snider (1874, p. 175): Leaving out of account the mutual charges of infidelity as equally false or equally true, the fault of the separation would seem to lie with Titania. Pitt (1981, p. 90) finds interesting . . . the tacit assumption that Oberon’s behaviour is justified. . . . Shakespeare makes it clear that nothing Titania can claim or do will justify the fundamental wrong she has committed: she has failed to submit to her husband’s desires. To an Elizabethan audience she would appear both foolish and arrogant in her quarrel with Oberon, for punishment was bound to follow. Her crime was particularly heinous because, as Queen of the Fairies, she should exemplify the characteristics of the ideal human wife, which did not include rebellion. In keeping with the social conventions of the time Titania’s downfall is therefore inevitable. The audience joins with Oberon in laughing at her ridiculous infatuation with Bottom, applauding her return to sanity and thereby concurring with the idea that Oberon had every right to trick her. In this way Titania is linked with Hippolyta, not merely by her social position as first lady in a hierarchy, but because both have had to give in to their lords.

Independence is another characteristic found in Titania. According to Halio (2005, p. 405), the fairy queen is a delightful character who tries valiantly to stand up against Oberon and maintain her rights. For this self-assertion she is rightly championed by many feminists. She fails only because of Oberon’s nefarious scheming. She is sexy and, like Oberon, perhaps has her affairs [449–55]. Dash (1997, pp. 89–90, 100–2, 106) emphasizes Titania’s sure sense of self-worth and . . . independence of spirit. Hippolyta was presented as defeated but enigmatic, Hermia as a challenge to the rules of her society, and Helena as a self-doubting person, questioning her own worth. But in Titania Shakespeare offers a portrait of a queen, someone reliant on no one but herself for her power. Her answer to Oberon in her opening lines rings with contemporaneity: [quotes 436–7]. Why need a fairy assert she has forsworn another fairy’s bed? Since when do fairies discuss such mundane matters? Dash says that Sh. (p. 90) is using the vocabulary of divorce without presenting the actual situation. Moreover, unlike the usual separation between husband and wife of the time, this separation is instituted by the wife. Despite her stance when we first meet her, she is not angry or resentful when restored to her senses. (P. 100): Since so much of her speech sounds human, must we think of her as resigned to a power structure she cannot alter? . . .

[101] Although little has been written about Titania’s character disintegration from a fiery, concerned fairy to a compliant partner, her change and lack of any clearly defined personality in the last scenes illustrate, on the one hand, the destructiveness of Oberon’s action and, on the other, an inconsistency in characterization. Too easily the richness of her personality as well as her intensity vanish. Dash (p. 102) find[s] in Titania either an inconsistency or a tragic transformation. Since this is a comedy one must consider the former as more likely. She thinks that (p. 106) of all the women characters, Titania has changed the most, accepting her role as Oberon’s handmaid. Returning with the fairies, she sings and blesses the newly married couples’ beds. No recollection of the votress who died in childbirth mars the blessing. Nor is the Indian boy ever mentioned again.

The contest over the Indian boy is the focus of many comments. Clarke (1863, pp. 103, 108) asks, What of the feminine waywardness and sweet humanity of the little queen, Titania, with that pretty story of the Indian mother and her babe? He accuses her of (p. 108) assert[ing] her prerogative by a consistent obstinacy of purpose to retain the boy.

Calderwood (1965, p. 511) accuses Titania of violating natural order in two ways: by making the changeling child all her joy [397] at the expense of the proper object of her joy, Oberon, and by refusing to let the boy pass from a feminine into a masculine world where, if natural growth is to have its way, he belongs. Others taking this approach include Goldstein (1973, pp. 174, 189), Wright (1968, pp. 27–8), Hinely (1987, p. 132), Sagar (1995, pp. 39–40).

A few critics think Titania’s attachment to the Indian boy unnatural. Garner (1981, p. 49) describes it as clearly erotic. She . . . accord[s] him the same attentions as those she bestows on Bottom . . . . Whatever the child is to her as a lovely boy [392] and a sweet changeling [393], he is ultimately her link with a mortal woman whom she loved. Miller (1940, pp. 66, 69) argues that the Indian boy is Titania’s lover, thus causing Oberon’s jealousy and his desire (p. 69) to regain her love. Davenport (1949, p. 525) finds it difficult to agree with this, but Wall (2002, p. 95) asks what, after all, is the fairy Titania but a shadow of the servant surrogate mothers that humanists love to censure, a creature marked by her shameful desire to eroticize and infantilize a male child? Stevens (1985, p. 86) supposes that her doting on the misjoined shape of Bottom is emblematic of the state of mind that leads her to dote on the lovely boy [392]. Whereas Oberon would hold the boy in subordination as a Knight of his train [395], Titania subordinates herself to the boy. And she does so in almost exactly the same way that she does to Bottom [quotes 396–7, 1566–7].

The bond of women’s companionships and women’s desire for independence are cited by many as a cause of tension between Oberon and Titania. Barber (1959, pp. 136–7), commenting on Titania’s speech on her friend [499–513]: It is a glimpse of [137] women who gossip alone, apart from men and feeling now no need of them, rejoicing in their own special part of life’s power. Nevo (Transformations, 1980, p. 102) regards the relationship between Titania and her votaress as a mature example of the incorporate-ness [1235] of Hermia and Helena. Hunt (1986, pp. 2–3) too describes the friendship as exclud[ing] both men and danger but (p. 3) explains that she must free herself from a de-individualizing yearning for a bond with like kind—for an aspect of the self—and reachieve a love for her natural opposite: Oberon. Similarly Heuscher (1989, p. 324), Uman (2001, p. 78). The changeling boy, Traub (1992, p. 159) claims, child of Titania’s votress and representative not only of her female order, but of female-oriented erotic bonds, is an object of maternal exchange between women and the manifest link of a prior, homoerotic affection between women that doesn’t so much exclude Oberon as render him temporarily superfluous. Everett (1961, p. 276) turns to the outcome; the world of feminine loyalty that Titania clings to is . . . interesting, in the rich and strange sensuousness with which it is presented. She keeps the Indian child out of loyalty to the physical world of spiced Indian air, by night [500], on Neptune’s golden sands [502]. She gives the boy up after her unseemly passion for an ass-headed Bottom, . . . and is glad to get back her fairy kingdom [520] of detached and aerial magic, in which she is always subordinate to an Oberon who has no such weaknesses, because no such loyalties. Kahan (1996, p. 21): In [MND] it is the female and not the male friendships that have to break down. It is the women and not the men who are weakened. Disrupting the tenacity of Titania’s bond with her votaress is part of Oberon’s strategy because a female friendship has the power to disrupt a masculine authority. Titania does render up her page, thus breaking the vows she made with his mother. Oberon makes Titania break her vow in order to strengthen his control over her. Freake (1998, pp. 268–9) observes that for Titania the changeling boy is a token of friendship among women, who are united [269] in part by their self-evident primacy as progenitrixes; to give him up is to submit to male power. Sousa’s theory (1999, p. 25) is that through Titania, Shakespeare partially recovers what Athenian society has violently repressed, namely the same-sex partnership that some Renaissance writers found in the dual queenship of the Amazons. Sinfield (2003, pp. 73–4) argues that if [TNK] suggests a significant context of companionable same-sex passion, the implications in [MND] may be felt most prominently not among the boys and girls, but in the devotion of Titania to a votaress of her order, and the desire of Oberon for the son. Titania’s speech is evocative: [quotes 501–10]. The father is scarcely needed in this marvellous pregnancy, the women are self-sufficient. For this commitment Titania has forsworn the bed of Oberon . . . , turning her fairy [74] train into a feminized community. . . . The chastising of this affront to patriarchy is the comic project of [MND]. The emblem of Oberon’s power is his seizing the boy for himself.

Related to loyalty to her votaress is what some see as a desire for motherhood. Slights (1988, p. 261) thinks parenting emerges as central to Titania’s consciousness, and Calderwood (1991, pp. 417–18) says Titania . . . seems to envy the Indian queen’s pregnancy. Titania’s (p. 418) story is as devoid of husbands as [Theseus’s patriarchal account of conception] was of wives, though hers gives at least a rhetorical nod in the direction of men. But those who give birth also are mortal; she cannot enter a world in which children are created, not stolen. . . . Stepmotherhood is apparently as close as fairy queens can get to biological motherhood. Blits (2003, p. 55), however, says Titania’s reason for withholding the boy is not immediately clear. Titania will soon say that she keeps him for his mother’s sake, and will not give him up for all of fairyland [497–513]. But, later, when finally ready to reconcile with Oberon, she will give him up without a thought for the boy or his mother [1572–6]. Even more surprising, after that, neither she nor Oberon will ever mention the boy again. With their reconciliation, the boy vanishes from the play—and presumably from their hearts—without the slightest trace.

Among the critics reacting to Titania’s restored vision after the scene with Bottom is Preston (1869, p. 169); the antidote to the juice opens Titania’s eyes to see Bottom in his true character. The humility that follows her discovery leads her to embrace Oberon’s offer of amity. Boas (1896, p. 187) finds so persuasive . . . the art of the dramatist that our pity is challenged for Titania’s infatuation, with its pathetically reckless squandering of pearls before swine, and thus we hail with joy her release from her dotage, her reconciliation with Oberon, and the end of jars in fairyland. (Hollindale [1992, pp. 24–5], though, says that even in the midst of her absurd besottedness with Bottom it is impossible to take Titania very seriously [25] as a victim. She is altogether too powerful for that, despite the infatuated helplessness which Oberon has magically induced.) Cutts (1968, pp. 54–5), studying the effects on characters of catching a glimpse of their own plight, finds that (p. 55) Titania has her mirror of matronly concern for the Indian boy shattered when she is shown the stupidity of her action, and Wickham (1969, p. 188) points out that the awakened Titania (p. 188) is consumed with shame and disgust at the folly of her conduct. The result: The destruction of sensuality is thus achieved in this instance by sensuality itself. Because her love is sensual and lustful, in contrast to the lovers’ childlike romanticism, Willson (1975, p. 29) argues, she must be made laughable through more drastic means, which will best discover to the audience her licentiousness. Flint (1991, pp. 13–14) detects in her animal desires. Later Titania is (p. 14) horrified.

But not everyone thinks her humiliated. According to Wilson (1873, p. 176) Titania is, throughout, the refined ideal of the moon-lit dreamland over which she reigns. She loses none of her queenly dignity by the pranks which Robin Goodfellow is allowed to play on her. She yields herself so absolutely to the potent spell of that little western flower [543] that under its glamour, she can disport herself with queenly grace in the very arms of her monster-lover. Similarly Robinson (ed. 1941, p. 100). Brooke (1905, pp. 26–8) concurs; even when Titania is in love with Bottom, she never loses her greatness or her grace in speech. (P. 27): When it is over, she instantly forgets it as if it had [28] never been; makes no excuse for it, and takes up her life with Oberon immediately. . . . Her unconsciousness, under the spell, of her folly is charming, yet pitiful; and she has even the melancholy and the absorption of human love. Richman (1990, pp. 100–1) too thinks that although she is bewitched into a ridiculous amour, she never fully loses her original stature. Funny as they are, there is a peculiar power in her scenes with Bottom. Much of this power is drawn from her speeches in the second act, and some of it accrues from the astonishing manner in which Oberon introduces the magic herb that will bring about her dotage. . . . [Quotes 524–30.] [101] . . . The playwright diverts attention from the fact that the fairy king is actually playing a rather petty and cruel practical joke on his wife. The diversion by no means mitigates the laughter that the trick will bring about, but it suggests that the device and its accompanying laughter contain elements of wonder. Although what happens to Titania is similar in kind to what happens to the quartet of human lovers, it is raised to a greater order of magnitude. Imam (1959, p. 63) thinks her wiser by the touch of Cupid’s shaft and Dian’s Bud, and Beiner (1985, p. 100) points out that Titania is the only participant in the comedy of love to be granted the knowledge that the events really happened. . . . Unlike the others who think they have had strange visions, Titania sees her beloved ass on the ground, and does so with corrected vision.

Titania’s speech on her votaress, 497–513, is a key to her character for Dubrow (1999, pp. 148–9). What is so striking about the speech is that it juxtaposes warmth and tenderness with colder, even chilling, implications. . . . On the one hand the passage culminates in assertions of her disinterested loyalty to her votaress, with monosyllables reinforcing the insistent anaphora in lines 512–13. Despite today’s preoccupation with darker motivations, we would neglect the presence of this loyalty—the value that impels those centers of value Adam, Kent, and Horatio, the value to which Shakespeare clings in hurricanes—only at our critical peril. . . . On the other hand, in these lines Titania indulges in tellingly self-centered statements, an analogue to a narrative in which the votaress is, as that role suggests, bringing trifles to the queen of the fairies. Notice, for example, all the first-person pronouns in the opening six lines. Thus the passage gestures towards early modern social history by staging the multiple and often contradictory motives shaping the behavior of guardians—and at the same time . . . raises broader issues about surrogacy as well. The parallel metaphors of the pregnant votaress being like a treasure ship and the votaress carrying gifts to Titania may gesture towards the intangible value of the boy, but they also objectify him, turning him into yet another material treasure the loyal votaress brings to her queen. . . . In short, [MND] invites us to explore [149] the financial and other material implications of parental death. Leggatt’s emphasis (1999, p. 55) is different; if as we watch Titania’s placid submission to [Oberon] we recall her speech about the votaress—and it is one of the play’s most eloquent passages—we may feel that something has been lost: not just her own spirit and fire, which are dampened in the end, but a commitment the power of whose claims she made us feel and has now forgotten.

Titania’s relationships to other characters lend themselves to psychoanalytic readings. Holland (1960, p. 171) claims that Freud used Titania as an example of neurotic transposition of belief. He quotes Freud’s 1897 note (p. 208 in Origins): Titania, who refused to love her rightful husband Oberon, was obliged instead to shower her love upon Bottom, the ass of her imagination. Jacobson (1962, p. 23) suggests that the stolen changeling child may . . . represent the girl’s fantasy of stealing mother’s baby, and killing mother. Jacobson detects the problem of sexual identification in women . . . expressed by inquiring into the raising of the Indian child. . . . Titania is here the emasculating, i.e. castrating woman who feminizes the male child. . . . Titania must and does give up the male child . . . before she can once again share Oberon’s bed. Riklin (1968, pp. 285, 289–90) sees Titania as the intractable figure of the soul, the anima of nature who, as the mistress, hunts through the forests, bringing birth and death in her train, thus maintaining all nature in animated movement. (P. 289): Oberon . . . legitimately take[s] possession of the boy and free[s] Titania [290] from her madness. The boy had a disastrous effect when he was in Titania’s power. Now equilibrium is restored on the chthonic level, masculine and feminine are properly organized and harmony reigns once more.

Puck

Puck elicits a wide variety of responses from critics trying to assess his character. Morse (1915, pp. 187–8) is charmed by the most . . . unique creation of all the play’s characters, the most dainty efflorescence of Shakespeare’s imagination, . . . now visible, now invisible, merry wanderer of the night, the immortal Puck or Robin-[188]Goodfellow. He is a sweet little imp of darkness and light, of mischief and good nature. There is no fairy in all literature that can compete with Puck. Stopes (1916, pp. 179–80) thinks him the only being who was happy all the time because he did not care enough to suffer for the sorrows of [180] others, and he had none of his own. Alexander (1939, p. 108) describes Puck as untouched by human toil and infirmity. Webster (1942, p. 156) explains that to him the mortal world represents every reasonable idea standing idiotically on its head. Biancotti (1957, p. 190) calls him a blockhead among the fairies, a charming and joyful great immortal dwarf (It.), Knight (1958, p. 184) a law unto himself[,] . . . the presiding spirit of this magical piece. Schanzer (The Moon, 1955, p. 234) pictures him as gross and earthy, boisterous, rough, and boyish, Imam (1959, pp. 63–4) as innocent merriment appearing in swiftly-changing [64] shapes. Evans (1960, p. 38) declares that upon Puck, as upon the great professional fools, Shakespeare confers a special immunity, making laughter at his expense unlikely even during a moment when awareness makes him vulnerable to laughter. Kersten (1962, pp. 190, 193) finds him close to reality, courageous, an almost brash dwarf with a spicy sense of humor and a love of practical jokes. She finds inconsistency and moodiness in him and changeableness, all of which are characteristic of the play itself (Ger.). He is a suprahuman dizzard, Talbert (1963, pp. 251, 254) claims, (p. 254) an erring errand boy. Stavig (1995, pp. 209, 212) notes that Puck’s diverse roles in the play contribute richly to our [210] understanding of the metaphorical associations of the fairies, the wood, and the night. Except as Oberon’s servant and messenger . . . , he is detached from all ties . . . and from the elements and the senses. He has no concern about moral, social, or cosmic order, no emotional, loving, or sexual impulses, and little relationship to the natural world. He is associated with folklore traditions of luck, chance, and disorder and is unofficial Lord of Misrule, court jester, actor-director of his own shows, a Cupid, and as a messenger who gathers information and carries out commands, he functions as Oberon’s imagination . . . and will. . . . The stress of his role is on irony and humor . . . , not profound questioning. Puck fits naturally in a comedy dealing with life’s follies in a satiric but basically positive way. (P. 212): If people cannot laugh at themselves and at life’s absurdities, Puck will be interested in them. . . . His fooling helps restore the sanity that ultimately controls our sense of the play’s atmosphere of chaotic delight.

Most critics consider him representative of something—for example of nature, of Cupid, of metamorphosis, of imagination. Sinclair (1878, p. 255) calls him the poetical personification of the good nature which improvises the thousand pranks so helpful and decorative to the completion of the man-woman, the Adam-Eve, the Faust-Helen, the two-one, the eternal mystery of humanity. Wolff (1907; 1926, p. 344) thinks he embodies the moodiness of nature (Ger.), Scorer (1966, p. 106) its element of mischief, Reinhardt (ed. 1935, p. 6) its irresponsibility. Kersten (1962, p. 192) comments on his inner relationship to nature (Ger.). Postell (1907, p. 524) thinks he is Destiny. Richer (1974, p. 14) thinks Puck the ring-leader who represents at once both Eternal Love and Chance because he himself is subject to error. McCanles (1976, p. 282) sees Puck . . . as really only an embodiment of all those chance and unexplainable events that happen every day in Athens and London. If the old lady misses the joint stool, it is because Puck pulled it out from beneath her. But in the forest world, this metaphor for unexplainable trivia takes on arms, legs, a local habitation, and a name [1808–9]. Macdonald (1992, p. 36) considers Puck . . . a metaphor given a body on the stage. . . . It might be said that Puck is the imagination’s way of domesticating and ordering the random.

Numerous people associate him with Cupid. To Barber (1959, p. 144) Puck is several parts Cupid and several parts mischievous stage page, to Kermode (1961, p. 216) a natural force; a power that takes no account of civility or rational choice. He is, indeed, a blinding Cupid. As Hawkins (1970, p. 57) puts it, he reflects the arbitrary and irrational actions of love-in-idleness. Purdon (1974, pp. 186–7) thinks that Puck, to all intents and purposes, is Cupid. . . . [187] Significantly Shakespeare’s is made even more of a blind and haphazard agent than the conventional Cupid, and typically, the servant of a master, so that he stands midway between Ariel-Prospero and the Plautine and Lylian master-servant relationship. Kott (tr. 1981, pp. 117, 132, 139) asks whether love sees and desire is blind, or v. v., and whether, Puck being the culprit in [MND], he and Cupid are exchangeable. (P. 132): But the Renaissance Cupid, who appears eight times in the poetic discourse of [MND], has a different name, a different costume, and a different language as a person on stage. The blind-folded Cupid is Anglicised or translated into Puck, or Robin Goodfellow. (P. 139): The true director of the night-rule in the woods is Puck, the Lord of Misrule. Others associating Puck with Cupid include Bate (1993, p. 136), Sorelius (1993, p. 180), Holland (ed. 1994, p. 41), Clarke (1995, p. 4).

Clarke also calls Puck the metamorphic trickster of the text, and Puck exemplifies the spirit of metamorphosis for its own sake, according to Carroll (1985, pp. 173–4). His verbal transformations are as effective as his physical ones. Moreover, (p. 174) his acting powers, as a species of metamorphosis, are thus indistinguishable from his other transformative capabilities. Flint (1991, p. 12), calling Puck sinister, adds that he is deceptive: on the one hand the relatively benevolent household spirit, Robin Goodfellow, yet on the other having the power to change and multiply his shape into a variety of animal forms. Similarly Armistead (2002, p. 56). Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 47, 49): What Robin has above all is the ability to be the agent of metamorphosis, to transform himself and others. His own name changes, and (p. 49) Robin belongs to and creates a world of flux and instability, where a stool may be a stool or a metamorphosed goblin. Robin inhabits this place of shifting surfaces, of endless and almost uncontrollable transformability. Boehrer (1994, pp. 145–6) comments on ambiguity in the play and its best embod[iment] in the protean figure of Puck, who encompasses all shapes but holds to no proper shape himself. (P. 146): Puck’s multiform services for Oberon depend repeatedly upon his ability to transgress limits—of gender, species, class, and even shape itself.

For commentators who link Puck with the imagination see Theme, here.

It is not uncommon for commentators to brand Puck as amoral. Brooke (1905, pp. 3, 16–17) regards Puck as an image of Nature’s mockery of us and as (p. 16) the representative of the grotesque, unmoral, unhuman creations (for fancy, without will, has no conscience, no humanity) which so strangely go and come in dreams. (P. 17): He does no fatal mischief, but he is quite out of sympathy with the sorrows of mankind. Walter (ed. 1964, p. 12): He is devoid of a sense of moral obligations. Jackson (1966, p. 13) thinks him an atypical Shn. character because of his disinterestedness toward mankind, and Leggatt (1974, p. 107) says he is detached. He lacks perception and sensitivity according to Hart (1980, p. 8), as well as sympathy, and there is a kind of amorality in his attitude toward human beings. Bloom (1987, pp. 4–5) describes a domestic, work-a-day spirit, yet always uncannily between, between men and women, faeries and humans, nobles and mechanicals, nature and art, space and time. Puck is a spirit cheerfully amoral, free because never in love, and always more amused even than amusing. . . . [5] Hazlitt wisely contrasted Puck to Ariel by reminding us that Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with the sense of pity at the woes he inflicts, while Puck laughs at those whom he misleads. Puck just does not care; he has nothing to gain and little to lose. Only Oberon could call him gentle [524], but then Oberon could see Cupid flying between moon and earth, and Puck constitutionally could not. . . . Puck, quicksilver and uncaring, defines the limits of the human by being so far apart from the human.

Other critics see Puck as downright malicious. Spalding (1880, p. 50) calls him that malicious little spirit, Mendl (1964, p. 56) a heartless little creature, Alexander (1979, p. 52) a malevolent sprite, Frattaroli (1988, p. 232) Oberon’s somewhat sadistic factotum. Montgomery (1888, p. 93) contends that if Puck could have his way . . . , it is quite probable that Hermia and Helena would still be at odds with love, and that Bottom would still be wearing an ass’s head. Similarly Bloom (1987, p. 4). Strindberg (1909; tr. 1966, p. 223) complains that Puck, who is not a figure of light but one of evil, since he rejoices over the suffering of innocent people, muddles the intrigue through his mistakes so that the action finally becomes nightmarishly twisted, and one sees before one a drama of intrigue. I have never liked that kind of drama because it calls for effort, and, when I am looking for entertainment, I do not want to work, but relax. Taylor 1969, p. 263) complains that his sense of superiority over his human victims is human in its pettiness [quotes 1139], his attitude toward Bottom censorious, his description of him cutting. Canning (1903, p. 437) says it is Oberon’s control that keeps his mischief from permanent effect. Goldstein (1973, pp. 181–2) considers Puck not concerned with sex or gender as he is neuter, or hermaphroditic. He is (p. 182) always depicted as the most delightful of fairies, a funny leprechaun, a devoted servant to his master, . . . a torturer to all who come within his purview. Deception is his weapon. Deceit and trickery are his methods. . . . Puck is what a dream is: deceptive. But he is hardly delightful and certainly not fun to those who experience him. His vocabulary gives him away. He terrifies by his animalism, his sensuality, and his humanity, which is reduced to basic instinctual terms. For Marowitz (1988, p. 9) Puck . . . is the incarnation of our most demonic nature; an old embittered and cruel flunkey who delights in creating confusion and moral disarray. Like a superannuated Ariel, he is Oberon’s recidivist—a lifer who, unlike Prospero’s sprite, can never have his sentence commuted. Harris (1998, pp. 351–2), although considering him one of Shakespeare’s best-known and most beloved characters, does acknowledge (p. 352) malevolent dimensions in him.

Far more, like Neele (1839, p. 228), see Puck as mischievous only, not wicked. Hudson (1848, 2:34–5) elaborates, describing a mad-cap, [35] mischievous sprite, who has a deal of exquisite fine fun in teasing and vexing such fools as these mortals are, and whose roguish inadventures make things much worse than ever; and it is not till after much laughable confusion and distraction that the philanthropic fairy by a second effort brings things into order. Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, p. 274) mentions the pranks which never hurt but which often torment. Puck jests to Oberon [415] and is the lob at this court, a coarser goblin, . . . skilful at all transformations, practised in wilful tricks, but also clumsy enough to make mistakes and blunders contrary to his intention. Aronson (1972, p. 206) considers him merely an instrument of the unconscious. Sexless, like Ariel. He is an archetype closely resembling the Trickster-figure which Jung discovered in American Indian mythology. . . . Although he is not really evil, he does the most atrocious things from sheer unconsciousness and unrelatedness. Wilson (1873, p. 172) relishes this rare poetical embodiment of the comedy of mischief. Gordon (ed. 1910, p. vii) describes his penchant for tricks; he likes a rough frolic, and to be fear’d in field and town [1438] is the breath of life to him. When he is . . . confronted with the title of Hobgoblin and the list of his misdeeds [402 ff.], he is so far from being abashed that he adds to the list in a style of homespun dialect deliberately calculated to offend a courtier’s ear. Farrell (1975, pp. 103, 112): Puck’s chicanery reminds us of the inconstancy of wishes and the ungraspable mystery of the spirit. In addition, his epilogue, with its promise of sense and recompense, turns on a telltale equivocation: as I am an honest Puck [2215]. The murk he produces to mask his antics in the wood only localizes the epistemological haze he generates everywhere in the play. (P. 112): At once Puck is an agent of limitless wish fulfillment and mischief. His caprice concretizes the ungovernable nature of magic and the dissociation inherent in it. Green (1998, p. 386): Puck’s obvious pleasure in mischief is a good deal more honest than Oberon’s pity [1562] for Titania after having savored her degradation and obtained from her the other object of his desires and designs. Blits (2003, p. 200): Both as character and as actor, Puck is of course a liar. As a character, he is a mischievous sprite who deliberately leads people astray, by making them mistake the false for the true and the true for the false. And as an actor, he, like any actor, is always pretending to be what he is not. He is, in fact, more than doubly dishonest. He is an actor playing a deceiver, and he only compounds his lying by claiming to be an honest Puck [2215], which he claims, furthermore, just when he is being most ironical. Others commenting on Puck’s mischief include Ulrici (1808–9; tr. 1876, p. 75); Kreyssig (1862, 3:93–4); Perkins (1887, pp. 213–14), who appreciates the mirth in the midst of mischief, the laughter holding both his sides; Boas (1896, pp. 186–7); Figgis (1912, p. 252)—he is satirically mischievous; Browne (ed. 1922, p. 140); Latham (1930, p. 251); C. Clark (1931, pp. 57–8); Cecil (1957, p. 54); Weilgart (1952, pp. 86–7), who explains that a Puck has no human stability, and can never seriously reform. He personifies the elfish-demonic principle, which, unchangeable in itself, can [87] work magic changes in humans. He is the spirit of tragic mischief in caricature; Briggs (1959, 46), who sees no spite to mortals; White (1960, p. 348); Atherton (1962, p. 45); Green (1962, p. 93); Wells (ed. 1967, p. 19); Weld (1975, p. 197); Scott (1977, p. 50); Waith (1978, p. 211); Pickering (1985, p. 16); Sagar (1995, p. 36).

Robinson (ed. 1941, p. 100) thinks of Puck as a madcap sprite, an intellectual humorist, a player of practical jokes, thinking no ill but without much sympathy for these rather foolish humans. Cazamian’s assessment (1952, p. 196) is that Robin Goodfellow’s kindly, not ungentle, mischievousness is flavored with a very different irony, more nearly akin to humor. His practical jokes are the least interesting aspect of it. Much more germane to our purpose is the soul of quick perception that lives in him and makes him the very symbol of the ironical duality, the sense of contrasted planes from which the humorous meaning of the play develops. Puck’s roguish tricks bring out the relativity of all things human.

A few actually think of Puck as sympathetic to human beings. Palmer (1946, p. xiii) finds moments of sympathy as when Puck says Cupid is a knavish lad / Thus to make poor females mad [1488, 1490]. Fisher (1957, p. 309) argues that Puck spreads strife that he may evoke understanding. The wisdom of Puck surpasses any man-made values, and discloses to the indignation of the moralist the cult of strife inherent in elemental nature. Reed (1965, pp. 196–7) likes Puck’s readiness to reward country folk by doing their work [411], a phrase which implies a cheerful aptitude for any type of handicraft or labor, and although he is mischievous, (p. 197) he is fundamentally virtuous. Without reluctance, he carries out the benevolent designs of his master, Oberon. Riklin (1968, p. 284) considers Robin Goodfellow a rascal, a beneficent, partly Pan-like figure. . . . He plays impish pranks and is a helpful spirit to those who honor him, mischievous towards all sophistry. In this sense he re-enforces Oberon and would represent the latter’s occasionally rather blind, dynamic, active and more chthonic side. Berry (1977, pp. 52–3) reports on an interview with Konrad Swinarski: KS thinks the fairies are sexless (as are Christian angels) and are completely fulfilled in serving somebody, they are much better at that than in living their own lives. The one servant, Puck, who is not completely sexless, is a personality who understands human relationships. Somehow he is sexless, because he cannot have the relationship between a woman and a man—he can participate, like a voyeur, but his greatest opportunity is to have the power of mixing up human relationships and he enjoys it, because this brings him closer to human nature, it gives him the satisfaction of [53] feeling that he’s not completely out of this world.

Some think of Puck primarily as Oberon’s factotum. Wölffel (1852, p. 145) mentions Puck’s service but also his obstruction of Oberon’s intentions, either wilfully or by chance (Ger.). Preston (1869, pp. 162–3) considers Puck his Majesty’s Prime Minister . . . (a very Bismarck in all matters of intrigue and diplomacy) [who] is given the royal orders to execute vengeance on the Queen, and bring the refractory [163] lovers to reason. Minto (1885, pp. 298–9) explains that Puck, the presiding spirit has a very different master from Ariel, and very different notions of duty. He is, indeed, the pert and nimble spirit of mirth [17]; a mistake of [299] Oberon’s orders does not lie heavy on his conscience—the more mistakes the merrier. According to Gordon (ed. 1910, p. vii) throughout . . . he is Oberon’s man. Oberon has a value for him, and puts his shrewdness and knavery to good account. Exempt from physical laws, Puck is an expression of power, promising his master instant gratification of wishes, Farrell (1975, p. 103) argues. Weimann (1978, p. 195) insists that even though Shakespeare’s Robin retains some measure of cheeky impudence and kobold-like maliciousness, he is predominately a good-natured servant to Oberon . . . , and definitely not a traditional Vice figure. The old Vice’s audience contact emerges, if anywhere, only in song, epilogue, and relatively infrequent ironic asides. Grene (1980, p. 49) finds in him a comic controller. . . . Puck as the cunning and mischievous servant is like a Roman tricky slave with wings. He is loyal and industrious in the service of his master but he has also a pure love of absurdity and confusion and . . . is the author of all sorts of minor human mischances. Nelson (1988, p. 92) considers the relationship between Oberon and Puck . . . [as] composed mostly of play—the play of children who have no heed for order, the play of prankish boys who delight in misrule. . . . From Puck and Oberon we cannot expect more than pranks and jokes, causing mischief to no end, or causing mischief to the end only of satisfying their pleasures, their egos, their sense of humor. Also regarding him as an extension of Oberon’s powers are Bryant (1964, p. 5); Lindblad (1981, p. 137); Staton (1963, p. 167), who regards Puck as a Mercury-like messenger; Rudd (1979, p. 181), who reminds us that Mercury too was a prankster.

Snider (1874, p. 174) notes in addition to Puck’s service to Oberon his sphere of independent activity, in which he . . . causes what are usually called accidents. He seems to stand in a nearer relation to man than the other fairies, and has a certain external power over him. Imam (1959, p. 63) calls him an emancipated Spirit of the air, a minister but not a slave of his sovereign. Woodman (1973, p. 68) has a different angle: Oberon’s guidance of Puck shows a fatherly concern for his moral improvement not unlike that of a magician for his apprentice. Bevington (1978, p. 83) suggests that together, Oberon and Puck represent contrasting forces within the fairy kingdom. Perhaps their functions can best be reconciled by reflecting that their chief power to do good lies in withholding the mischief of which they are capable. . . . Only when placated by men and called by such names as Hobgoblin or sweet Puck will these spirits work for men and bring them good luck. Weld (1975, pp. 197–8) claims that their main function—Puck’s sole function—is to work on the minds of other characters, and as they do this they are like the externalized impulses, emotions, and faculties of the moralities. Specifically, as they set the others at odds, they are like the vices, [198] but they differ from them in their benignity. Eagleton (1986, pp. 25) adds that Puck mediates one character to the other, yet as the point where their false perceptions interlock he is necessarily quite unreal. Like desire itself, he is everywhere and nowhere, a transformative, teasingly ambiguous language in which assured identities are decomposed. And though such language, like the fairies themselves, is chimerical, it has the power to shape reality to its own ends. Wall (2002, pp. 107, 110) contends that Puck joins a society of fairies concerned primarily with aristocratic homage. As an attendant to the royal Oberon, he centrally serves as the court jester, appropriately called gentle Puck [524]. For most of the play, Dream invites amnesia about this spirit’s signature characteristics and instead tailors the fairy world to the image of the court. (P. 110): Although Puck sheds his place amid cream bowls to become a player in the crises of courtly fairies and lovers, his tie to domestic work reemerges in the last scene, where he enacts a dignified symbolic sweeping.

Puck’s numerous manipulations elicit comment. Hawkins (1970, p. 58) remarks that he behave[s] like a comic playwright although the operations of Puck are always subservient to those of Oberon. Willson (1975, p. 27) notices that in both plots . . . Puck is employed to create the illusions, giving him the role of master of the revels and devious Cupid. Jobin (1979, p. 158) considers him, like Oberon, both director and observer (Ger.), Delgado (1982, p. 371) at the same time spectator and actor transforming the world around him. Similarly Beiner (1985, p. 86). Dawson (Watching Shakespeare, 1988, p. 24) elaborates; as a character, Puck continuously straddles the line between performance and audience. He controls the action, giving it at times a deliberately theatrical shape—by, for example, emphasizing its comic predictability: Yet but three? Come one more; /Two of both kinds makes up four [1485–6]. . . . He is the hobgolin, the mischievous sprite. . . . For these reasons, he is often conceived of and played as distinctly different from the rest of the fairies. Hunt (1992, p. 233) suggests that Puck and Oberon are simply the playwright’s alter egos in his comedy. They convert potential tragedy to comedy. Macdonald (1992, p. 36) considers Puck part of [the play’s] dramatic technique, certainly an engine of the plot, but also, with Oberon, onstage audience to a spectacle he himself has set in motion. And . . . he is the chief supernatural agency for turning potentially tragic events into comedy. . . . Puck seems always to have some bearing on the generic status of occasions in which he intervenes, whether they are informal fireside gatherings or the kind of highly stylized courtly entertainment for which [MND] seems to have been originally designed. Laird (2002, p. 37): Sh. allows him to act as master of the revels, as much an agent of order and domestic harmony as of deviltry and discord. By doing so and by licensing the eye-dazzling exercise of magical, uncanny powers, he puts himself and the play in some danger. Many others comment on Puck’s manipulations, including Miller (1973, p. 150); Felheim (1980, p. 84); Holland (ed. 1994, p. 49), who says he is simultaneously playwright and actor and audience.

A number of commentators find clues to Puck’s character, character change, and function in his epilogue. Lever (ed. 1961, p. xii), for example, supposes that in the end . . . Puck has been tamed. He appears with a broom to sweep away the dust behind the palace door, as a good household servant of Theseus and Hippolyta, and in the last lines of the play he speaks to the audience as their friend. Kersten (1962, p. 199) claims the epilogue shows Puck’s hearty humor and his superior irony. His serious apologetic manner of speech stands in crass contrast to the nonchalance which the viewer could see in him throughout the play (Ger.). Walter (ed. 1964, p. 13) thinks his final appearance with a broom . . . [2172] not only recalls his benevolent activities, but for the moment invests him with symbolic sweeping away of evil in readiness for the lustrations and benedictions of Oberon and Titania and their train. In a similar vein is Calderwood (1965, p. 521), who thinks one aspect of the play’s blessing is its providing for the containment of irrationality and chaos. In this sense, Puck becomes the active agent of a forest drama that raises and purges the wayward human impulses whose release generates terror and pity in life.

Green (1998, pp. 386–7) admits that Puck is not as disruptive in Act 5 as he is earlier in the play, but the fact that he and his words displace the fairy royals and theirs and the fact that his words bridge the space between actor and audience, calling attention to these theatrical shadows and visions (2207 and 2210), once again recall Puck’s problematic function as the all too unreliable and often delightedly mischievous agent of Oberon.

(P. 387): Puck is the very possibility of the perverse operating within yet against constraints, of pleasures beyond such constraints. He shows the futility of thinking of absolute order and reminds us of the play’s potential for theatrical as well as ideological failure. Today we might add that how or whether these shadows have offended [2207] is closely tied to who is watching and what engages them; thus the text’s enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality and procreation might commend the play to the ascendant moralists of the religious right in the U.S. today if the scene between Titania and Bottom did not theatrically signify sexual desires quite beyond fundamentalist cognizance. But such are the scenes of desire that Puck delights in and delights in making. In my view, Puck represents the possibility of queering this play, Shakespeare, the English renaissance canon, and the culture of the theaters and classrooms in which they are daily revived.

Graham (1987, p. 49) senses the epilogue’s irony; Puck’s craven-seeming apology for his art can be seen, behind its sardonic humility, as a last touch of swagger, an assertion of the tangibility of imaginative vision. Banish Puck and his shadows and we banish the whole world, including ourselves.

Puck’s antecedents offer insight into his character. According to Sen Gupta (1950, 121) Puck has the characteristics of both the intriguing slave of Latin comedy and the Elizabethan clown, but as he is not a human mortal his activities have a lightness and a grace and a degree of irresponsibility which creatures of the earth cannot command. If he is divested of his elfishness, he will appear to be a hyphen between Lucentio’s servant Tranio and Touchstone, but as he never loses touch with fairyland, he becomes the most romantic of Shakepeare’s clowns. Greenblatt (ed. 1997, p. 808): In his role as both mischief maker and matchmaker, Puck resembles the crafty slave in comedies by the Latin playwrights Plautus and Terence, a stock character who sometimes seems to enjoy and contribute to the plot’s tangles but who manages in the end to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of the young lovers. Barton (in Evans ed. 1974, p. 218) considers him an intruder into the more elegant fairy world who does not belong properly to the forest at all, but to sixteenth-century village life as it was lived in dairies, orchards, and smoky cottage interiors. But in Lamb’s view (2000, p. 309), the play’s unlikely conflation of a priapic Robin Goodfellow with a courtly and Cupid-like Puck would seem to obliterate a subversive folk source to suit an aristocratic agenda. Puck aligns himself with monarchical values in his obedience to Oberon, in the courtly self-deprecation of his Epilogue, and especially in the snobbishness of his initial response to the artisans [889–91]. Yet Puck’s scorn for the artisans’ hempen [889] elicits the memory of his own homely origin.

Puck’s attitude toward characters and events is sometimes taken as a guide or commentary for the audience. Cazamian (1945, p. 48) values Puck’s irreverence and the buoyancy and changeableness; his roguish tricks put in relief the relativity of all things human (Fr.). Kersten (1962, p. 198) contends that he becomes the play’s intermediary and Sh.’s critical mouthpiece (Ger.). Felheim (1980, p. 84): Puck truly sees what fools these mortals be! [1139] . . . . One could say that a note of cynicism, certainly, is hidden in Puck’s Jack shall have Jill . . . all shall be well [1504–6]. Waith (1988, p. 68) points out that Puck has a superior vantage point and power. Although he, too, makes stupid mistakes, he succeeds admirably in dramatizing for us the distance between the one who laughs and the object of laughter. For the moment, at least, we see through his eyes and achieve the comic perspective Shakespeare has designed. Birenbaum (1989, p. 309, n. 21): He elicits . . . a comic awareness of humans’ natural absurdity, especially where love is concerned. Holland (ed. 1994, p. 46): For large sections of the play the action is watched by Robin, an observer and commentator, a participant through his invisibility, a doubly disturbing presence in that he both disturbs the action and disturbs our reactions to it. . . . This detachment allows for and justifies Robin’s amusement at human activity. Puck is, Doran (ed. 1959, p. 20) suggests, the comic chorus of the play. Martz (1971, p. 64): Puck is the final symbol for the comic point of view and the view of reality which Shakespeare has been developing. Weimann (1978, p. 196) comments that in Puck the traditional element of satire subsides into a highly generalized ironic commentary on the human condition: Lord, what fools these mortals be! [1139]. Vaughan (1980, p. 65) concurs. Videbæk (1996, pp. 42–3): By the end of the second act, doubt has been cast upon the value of all love. Puck, who is happily asexual and has no pity for the mortal lovers, . . . [43] through direct address . . . establishes a link of understanding between the audience and the mysterious fairy world, and we come to see both Oberon’s cruel treatment of Titania and Puck’s own mistakes over the lovers as all in the day’s work, because it has no personal importance to either Puck or the audience. Seen with mortal eyes, the doings of Act II are cruel indeed, but seen from a Puck perspective it is all an exposition of the folly of love. We have need for a figure like Puck in the night-world. Gervais (2002, p. 18): Without him we would lose our way as the lovers do and if that were to happen the play would cease to be comic and become confusing and alarming instead. This is why a convincing Puck is indispensable for any successful staging of the play. He opens up a kind of madness for us—as Theseus says poetry always does—but he also enables us to see it with clarity, to see in the dark as it were. Lord what fools these mortals be! [1139] That line has to combine laughter with wonder. Only a very exact and controlled kind of poetry could do this.

Consistently over the years commentators have mentioned Puck and Ariel in the same breath, sometimes noting similarities only, more often finding significant distinctions. Leading off is Hazlitt (1817, pp. 116, 128); Puck’s language, manners, and sentiments, his tricks and gossiping, are Sh.’s invention, and he is (p. 128) 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 [Tmp.]. Tyrrell (ed. 1850, 1:384) says he revels in innocent mischief and, comparing him to Ariel, says he is of the earth, a gross, merry spirit, of more material form, and fond of mixing with mankind, and playing rough practical jokes upon them. Procter (ed. 1843, p. 381) finds him beautifully discriminated from Ariel, who pities mortal miseries. Puck 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! [1139] Clarke (1863, pp. 104, 106): Whereas Ariel was the etherialised impersonation of swift obedience, with an attachment perfectly feminine in its character—Puck, Robin Goodfellow, is an abstraction of all the quips and cranks and wanton wiles of all the tricks and practical jokes in vogue among the human mortals [476]. Puck is the patron saint of skylarking. . . . [106] The echo of his laugh has reverberated from age to age, striking the promontories and headlands of eternal poetry; and to those whose spirits are finely touched, it is still heard through the mist of temporal cares and toils. Guizot (ed. 1821, 4:152) calls Ariel a minister of vengeance who is touched with pity for those he punishes, whereas Puck is a madcap spirit, full of fickleness and malice, who laughs at those he misleads (Fr.). Hudson (ed. 1880, pp. 8–9) thinks of Puck as Oberon’s prime minister and (p. 9) differentiates him from Ariel. The two have little in common, save that both are preternatural, and therefore live no longer in the faith of reason. Puck is no such sweet-mannered, tender-hearted, music-breathing spirit, as Prospero’s delicate prime-minister; there are no such fine interweavings of a sensitive moral soul in his nature, he has no such soft touches of compassion and pious awe of goodness, as link the dainty Ariel in so smoothly with our best sympathies. Though Goodfellow by name, his powers and aptitudes for mischief are quite unchecked by any gentle relentings of fellow-feeling: in whatever distresses he finds . . . he sees much to laugh at, nothing to pity. . . . Yet, notwithstanding his mad pranks, we cannot choose but love the little sinner, and let our fancy frolic with him, his sense of the ludicrous is so exquisite, he is so fond of sport, and so quaint and merry in his mischief; while at the same time such is the strange web of his nature as to keep him morally innocent. In all which I think he answers perfectly to the best idea we can frame of what a little dream-god should be. Marshall (ed. 1888, 2:325) exclaims, how infinitely inferior in conception is Puck to Ariel! But he does find grace and vivacity in the character.

Hazlitt (1902; 1903, pp. 151–2) sees Ariel and Puck as spiritual and superhuman characters, but he finds an inconsistency and contradiction in Puck who cannot see what Oberon sees [quotes That very time I saw, but thou could’st not (532)] and at the same time can put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes [552–3]. . . . Then, again, where Puck reappears, having produced the narcotic juice, he cannot at first find the object of his quest; and, a little farther, where Oberon comes on, and to him Puck, the former has to be advised what has occurred. Then Puck commits a mistake by applying the juice to the wrong person. We have to be careful when we play with edged tools. (P. 152): In his conception of Ariel, Shakespear recollected Puck; and the mightier fairy combines, as we perceive, some of the qualifications of Robin Goodfellow. Green (1933, p. 44), too, sees inconsistency as if Puck changes, as the play progresses, from a clumsy practical joker to a more ethereal humorist, far less in the Robin Goodfellow tradition. He also sees a dash of Ariel. Luce (1907, p. 159), who says that unlike Ariel is directed by Prospero, Puck can act on his own will. St. John (1908, p. 86) calls Puck a wonderful creature; inferior to Ariel in delicacy and freedom from earthly tendencies, he is more comic through his fondness for mischief and drollery; he was the precursor of the electric telegraph, boasting that he could put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. Mathew (1922, p. 56): Puck is a prose spirit; but Ariel is a Poem with wings. Still, Puck lives in [Tmp.] though he has been changed from Robin Goodfellow. He is not so pure and well-governed a spirit as Ariel, McCurdy (1953, p. 135) points out, but he is still a spirit, swift and musical, doing magical things at the behest of Oberon his master. Weimann (1968, pp. 17, 21) writes about the elf Puck and the spirit of the air Ariel, the former mischievous, (p. 23) the latter musical. (P. 21): Puck behaves with haughty independence, even though he is only Oberon’s servant (Ger.). Krieger (1979, pp. 54–5): Puck’s relative autonomy, by indirection, reinforces the theme of servility; his service to Oberon results not from the incapacity of his own personality but from a voluntary and a natural bond. Unlike Ariel, he never strains for freedom. Others seeing a similarity are Vehse (1851, p. 137), Cartwright (1864, p. 42), Haast (1943, p. 53), Lindsay (1948, p. 127), Halliday (1952, p. 29), Guidi (1963, pp. 12–13), Kott (1964; tr. 1966, pp. 214–15), Wells (1972, p. 65). Hibbard (1978, p. 78) finds Ariel and Puck similar in nature as well as function. They like motion and speed; while exercising great power and influence over many of the human characters, they still remain agents. It is their masters, not they, who control events.

Courthope (1903, 4:97) thinks Puck is replaced by Prospero, and Porter & Clarke (ed. 1903, p. xxix) say he is a Caliban figure, Baildon (ed. Tit., 1904, p. lxvii) a comic Aaron, . . . and though he works only temporary mischief, he is for the time being the villain of the plot. Schelling (1908, p. 393) matches Puck to the gossamer-winged attendants of the exuberant fancy of Mercutio and with the haunting music and invisible spells of [Tmp.]. Delattre (1912, p. 109) likens him to Mab, both country-born and bred.

Several critics link Puck with Bottom, opposite poles in the play. Goddard (1951, p. 178) connects him (in conjunction with Bottom) with Falstaff whose Bottom-like body is continually being dragged down, but his Puck-like spirit can hide in a thimble or pass through a keyhole as nimbly as any fairy’s. Bloom (1987, pp. vii, 1, 4) regards Bottom and Puck as the antithetical figures at the two limits of the drama’s vision, but he prefers Bottom to Puck. (P. 1): Pucks are more charming, but Bottoms are rather more amiable. MND (p. 4) is more Puck’s play than Bottom’s. Hirsch (in Brown, ed. 1996, p. 25) contends that Puck is another version of Bottom: the narcissistic performer. He brags to the Fairy. His practical jokes are both funny and cruel; and they involve transformations. Nostbakken (2003, pp. 14–15) finds the Bottom-Puck parallel revealing; Puck is [15] a fairy with a reputation for causing mischief and a clear delight in being a participant and spectator of chaos and disorder. Bottom . . . is amiable, good-hearted, and harmless though somewhat full of himself. . . . If Bottom is somewhat of a foolish clown, Puck is a trickster. More than any other characters in the play, they appear as individuals though they belong to specific groups. . . . They invite comparison as they turn our attention to magic and dreams, to the way they react to the world around them and invoke the audience’s response of sympathy or approval.

Oechelhäuser (1885, 2: 286) considers what is required of the actor of this most complicated role of the play, the daring, roguish Puck. It requires an easy, dexterous, graceful, yet daring and aggressive representation. He is a contrast to the ethereal, light figures of the fairies. Oechelhäuser imagines that in Sh.’s day the part was played by a trained boy with agility and swiftness (Ger.). Calvert (1879, p. 6), writing about Ellen Terry as Puck, remarks: Young as the figure is, there is a curious, old look in the face, as if the immemorial malice of the goblin lived in the form of the child. The sly cunning of a Puck demands a grey head on green shoulders. Darton (ed. [1914], p. xxxvii) thinks Puck a difficult part to act well, because it is hard to suggest the beauty as well as the loveliness of a perfect elvish character, but Coghill (Wags, Clowns, 1959, p. 11) says breathlessness and brio will carry Puck through his part.

Two Special Topics

Duration of the Action

An anonymous author (Illustrations, 1831, p. 16) first notes that the action is supposed to be comprised within the four days before the Duke’s marriage, mentioned in Scene 1. From Act ii, however, to the beginning of Act iv, the incidents all take place on the second night. According to Halliwell (1841, pp. 3–4) the lovers flee tomorrow night but spend only one night in the wood and are discovered by Theseus the morning before [4] that which would have rendered this portion of the plot chronologically consistent. Wright (ed. 1877, pp. xxii–xxiii) assumes that the action begins on April 27, four days before the new moon, that the night in the woods is the night of the 28th, and that then two days are lost (p. xxxiii) so that the morning of the third day is the 1st of May. Furnivall (ed. 1877, p. xxvii) points out that this is the first play of a number to have inconsistencies as to the time of the action. Instead of four nights, Sh. gives us only two before the solemnities. Daniel (1877–9, pp. 147–9) supposes that four clear days are to intervene between the time of [Sc. 1] and the day of the wedding. The night of this day No. 1 would . . . suppose five nights to come between. The lovers agree to steal away from Athens tomorrow night [174], and the mechanicals too will rehearse tomorrow night in the woods. (P. 148): Act II., Act III., and part of sc. i. Act IV. are on the morrow night, in the wood, and involve lovers, Oberon, Titania, Puck, and the mechanicals. Day 3 begins in 4.1, May day, and continues through 4.2 and 5, which takes place that evening, so that (p. 149) we have only three days. Clapp (1885, pp. 391–2) suggests that the wedding day actually was at least three days distant, as we should reckon it. . . . Scene 2 . . . is plainly contemporaneous with Scene 1, or follows it closely. The mechanicals’ and lovers’ tomorrow [189, 361] includes acts 2, 3, and in Scene 1 of Act IV. day breaks upon the following morn. . . . When Theseus . . . judicially informs Hermia that the day of his marriage and her fateful choice has arrived . . . nobody contradicts him, or asks his grace to count up the time once more on his ducal fingers. Clapp summarizes: (p. 392) parts of three successive days have therefore been occupied in the action, and a whole day has somehow dropped out. Clapp thinks Sh. would blame Puck and his crew.

Building on theories proposed by Wilson (1849; 1850, pp. 263–72, 297 ff. and 339 ff.) and Halpin (1849, pp. 16–22), the Clarkes (1879, pp. 123–4) note the ingenuity with which its author contrives to give two distinct sets of Dramatic Time in the same play. They explain that the play’s title, and the chief impression it produces, allows a single night of summer fanciful incident to be supposed . . . ; whereas it [124] also embraces the interval that elapses between the opening speech of Theseus and the concluding benediction on his nuptials, as an interval of four days. . . . Yet, so artistically is the corresponding hastening process simultaneously maintained, that no violence is done to our sense of veritableness. Furness (ed. 1895, pp. xxvii–xxxiv) is among those remembering that playwrights deal in illusion, and the illusion of this play is persuasive without reconciling the time-scheme with probability. He refuses to add a deficiency in arithmetic to those in Latin and Greek. The announced four-day delay is justifiable considering that (p. xxviii) a most momentous issue was presented to Hermia to weigh, and he adds that to the victims of fairies, time is nought; it is we cavil about the time. Like Oth. and MV, MND is measured by two clocks; (p. xxix) on the face of one we count the hurrying time, and when the other strikes we hear how slowly time passes. The first night is eliminated by the references to (p. xxx) to-morrow night, and we are given a sense of two of the remaining nights by swift, fleeting allusions which induce the belief almost insensibly that a new dawn has arisen in Act 2 and in Act 3, each followed by what seems an intervening day. After the allusions in Act 2 comes the rehearsal in Act 3; (p. xxxi) who of us ever imagines that this rehearsal is at night? Had it been at night Snout would not have had to inquire about the moon. After the allusions to dawn in Act 3 comes the midsummer noon scene of Bottom and Titania (p. xxxii) (not a bee is abroad at night for Cobweb to kill.) The lovers have quarrelled, and slept not through one night, but three nights, and these three nights have been one night. Theseus’s four days are all right, we have seen them all; Hippolyta’s four nights are all right, we have seen them all. He concludes, however, that (p. xxxiv) if . . . our feeble wits refuse to follow him, Shakespeare smiles gently and benignantly as the curtain falls, and begging us to take no offense at shadows, bids us think it all as no more yielding than a dream. Taylor (Finde out, 1971, pp. 134–6) too thinks the play illustrates a deliberate use of a double time-scheme. Richardson (1987, pp. 299 ff.) finds in MND a particularly daring violation of story and its temporality in the two internally consistent but mutually incompatible time schemes and in Pyr. also a dramatic contradiction between the period of time said to [300] pass during a single, continuous scene and the number of minutes it takes to stage that scene. (P. 302): Four days will pass for the duke, the queen and Egeus, while—at the same time—one night will pass for the lovers, fairies and workmen in the forest. [Quotes 10–11 and 1656–7.] . . . In Shakespeare’s text, two incompatible story times are present: one for the orderly city, the other for the enchanted forest, and the discrepancy (p. 303) is re-enacted in miniature in the antinomy between text time and stage time in the play within the play. [Quotes 1826–9, 1831–2]. Theseus chooses a brief scene [1853] some ten words long [1858] and after two hundred sixty continuous lines of dialogue, unpunctuated by any temporal ellipsis, a theatrical miracle occurs: The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve [2145]. . . . Twenty minutes of unbroken stage time have now become three hours of text time. Finally, Puck’s epilogue invites the audience to consider the play a dream [2207–10]. (P. 304): Such a move has temporal implications as well: if the play is the dramatization of a dream, whether the author’s or the audience’s, then a rigorous equation of story time and stage time is inescapable: the play becomes a three hour presentation of a three hour dream and thus should satisfy the most vehement temporal puritan. Richardson concludes that (p. 308) in every play, three distinct clocks are set in motion. If they don’t tell the same time, it is often because they are not intended to: for the playwright, aesthetic pattern is higher than logical order and the creation of art can be the subversion of nature.

Sasaki (1986, pp. 64–5) acknowledges the announced span of four days and four nights. Yet in the action of the play the three nights in the wood are shortened into a single night, and what is originally to have been a five days’ play includes only three days, even allowing for one day implied in Lysander’s suggestion . . . that he and Hermia should make an elopement on the following night. The audience is aware of only two days, the real action which takes place on the stage. The announced time is astronomically necessary, for it takes precisely four days . . . because, ordinarily, the period of interlunation is said to be three days, and one day of the new moon is added to them to make four days. Sh. shortens the time (p. 65) to make the audience have the impression of a transition from age through death to rebirth by means of the changing phases of the moon. For this purpose, however, the replacement of the age, death and rebirth of the moon with those of the sun, i.e. day-night-day, is more advantageous from a dramaturgical point of view: the pattern of death and rebirth becomes more impressive by this replacement, and a doubly intensified effect is produced, for the lunar and the solar effects are combined into one and the impression of the moonlight is not effaced from our mind but remains as it has been.

Fleay (1879, p. 57), however, insists that the four days can be accounted for. The marriage of Theseus is on the 1st of May; the play opens on the 27th of April, but at line 137 [138] I take it a new scene must begin . . . ; and there is no reason why it should not be on the 28th or 29th of April. I would place it on the 28th. [Fleay seems unaware of the s.d. Manet Lysander and Hermia (137) which is not in the quarto.] On the 29th the lovers go to the wood, and, in IV, i, 114 [1622], when the fairies leave, it is the morning of the 30th. But at this point Titania’s music has struck more dead than common sleep [1597–8] on the lovers. Yet in a few minutes enter Theseus, the horns sound, and they awake. Why this dead sleep if it has to last but a few minutes? Surely Act III ends with the fairies’ exit, and the lovers sleep through the 30th of April. . . . There must therefore be an interval of 24 hours somewhere, and this is only possible during the dead sleep of the lovers. If any one would ask why make them sleep during this time, I would answer that the 30th of April, 1592, was a Sunday. (Thiselton [1903, pp. 9–11] fail[s] to see the slightest indication that more than one night is involved in the lovers’ adventures in the wood. Among the evidence he cites is the hue and cry Egeus would have raised had Hermia been missing long enough for him to notice. In response to Fleay he cites the stage direction at 137 and says (p. 11) that we should be wrong in taking advantage of the silence of the Quartos by introducing such a new scene.) Paolucci (1977, pp. 317–26) traces in detail a way that we can (p. 318) translate dream into reality, moonlight into sun-time. The play opens on April 27, and the elopement and rehearsal take place on April 28. In the woods usual measurements won’t work. (P. 321): Within this new dimension, Shakespeare—far from losing sight of his earlier dramatic precision—has in fact provided us with a set of highly original clues, perfectly suited to the new setting, by means of which we can bridge the apparent time gap right up to the morning of 1 May.

The most revealing of these clues have to do with the intervals of rest within the magic wood, and . . . with reminders of sleep. The first interval comes between the two events already dated for us: the elopement of the lovers and the rehearsal of the artisans. Titania is already asleep when Lysander and Hermia . . . stumble on the scene and [322] almost immediately fall asleep. We know for certain that this is the first night in the magic wood—the night of 28–29 April—by the appearance, on schedule, of the artisans at the beginning of the next scene, where Titania awakens, sees Bottom, and claims him for her own.

The second interval of sleep comes in Act III, scene ii, where Demetrius—still pursuing Hermia—lies down to rest and falls asleep. The third interval marks the end of the wild chase and the proper regrouping of the lovers. Robin Goodfellow brings the four young people together at this point (although in the confusion of the overcast night they do not actually see one another); utterly exhausted by this time, the four at once fall into a profound sleep. These two last intervals are the ones to be dated and, as a result, distinguished from the first interval, which we may assume to occur on the night of 28–29 April.

The confusion which characterizes the third interval is especially significant in helping us to date the action. In the play’s opening scene, . . . Theseus had set a deadline, by which time Hermia was either to give in to her father’s wish that she marry Demetrius or else suffer the punishment of death. . . . The time of the new moon—as we have learned in the opening scene—is 1 May (or, rather, the night of 1–2 May). . . . If the night of the wedding is the night of the new moon, the night before it must be a night of no moon . . . in which confusion is very likely to arise because of total darkness. . . . [323] It enables us to date the third period of sleep (from which the lovers will be awakened by the royal party on the morning of the wedding) as the night of 30 April–1 May. Having thus dated the first and third intervals of sleep, we may reasonably conclude that the remaining middle interval of the sequence corresponds to the night of 29–30 April. Moreover, there is a second set of clues that reinforce the first; each of the sleep intervals coincides with the casting of one of the love spells. . . . Time is thus translated into a poetic dimension in which the three moments of conversion are clearly distinguished. . . . A third set of phenomena adds to the sensation that time as we know it has been foreshortened but not lost: Hermia’s prophetic dream, Bottom’s bottomless dream, and Titania’s vision. . . . There is, one must admit, some kind of order in the apparent confusion. . . .

It is Theseus who marks the return to the normal diurnal cycle. The lovers may be confused, (p. 325) but Shakespeare has traced the lesson and the experience for us very clearly.

Furness has said that the illusion of this play is persuasive, and several critics agree. Kittredge (ed. 1939, p. ix) says we need only observe that the four days and four nights contemplated by Hippolyta in [10–14] are not fully spanned. The action begins on the first day of the four, accounts for the second and the third, and ends shortly after midnight on the third day or, in other words, very early on the fourth. No audience would note the discrepancy, for the night in the enchanted forest is long enough to bewilder the imagination. Holland (ed. 1994, pp. 131–2, n. to l. 2) notes the problem but insists that though commentators have anguished over the discrepancy, [132] it is effectively invisible in performance.

Others commenting on inconsistencies include Moberly (ed. 1881, pp. 57–8); Gollancz (ed. 1894, p. xii); Sarrazin (1895, p. 298); Smeaton (1911; 1930, pp. 184–5); Baldwin (1959, pp. 486–9), who hypothesizes the existence of a (p. 488) precedent play; Robinson (1968, p. 388); Dowden (1877, p. 74); Anon. (ed. 1881, p. 4), who notes particularly the inconsistency of the time scheme with the discourse of the clowns in Act III; Stewart (1908, p. 104); Kellogg (ed. 1910, p. 14); Buland (1912; 1966, p. 107), who thinks the play should cover five days but presents only three; Schanzer (Moon, 1955, p. 243), who blames carelessness or a change of mind; Doran (ed. 1959, p. 116); Wilson (1962, p. 203)—twenty-four hours between the beginning and end of the play; Harbage (1966, p. 29); Wood (1966, p. 129), who thinks Golding’s Ovid perhaps gave him the hint for the prologue and the whole time-scheme; Hunter (1985, pp. 45–7) and (2002, p. 3), who links dating, occasion, and duration; and Lowenthal (1996, p. 87), who remarks: Quite simply, [Sh.] is not bound by the real world.

Stageability

More than a few critics and theater-goers have pronounced the play unactable. Hazlitt (1817, pp. 132–4) saw a performance in which Mr. Liston played Bottom. It failed. MND (p. 133) when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. . . . Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. . . . The ideal can have no place upon the stage. . . . The imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual impressions of the senses. . . . Thus Bottom’s head in the play is a 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. [134] Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. . . . The boards of a theatre and the regions of fancy are not the same thing. Agreeing about Bottom are Hudson (1848, 2:39–40; ed. 1880, pp. 5, 21); Maginn (1837, p. 370), who is also skeptical about credible fairies as well as Bottom’s transformation scene; Rolfe (ed. 1877, p. 14); Smith (1899, p. 12). A writer in the Literary and Graphical Illustrations (1831, p. 16) thinks that perhaps, from the fanciful nature of the ethereal essences with which this drama is filled, and the many sweet and beautiful descriptions it contains, its scenes, in their original form, are fitted rather for perusal than performance. Brown (1838, p. 268) too insists on its inapplicability for the stage, supposing that even the superior imaginations of theatergoers before the invention of scenery must have been disappointed as were contemporary London audiences. Strachey (1854, p. 678) bemoans the breaking of illusion when we see a great flesh and blood girl representing the Fairy Queen. . . . Any outward material representation of [the fairy activities (e.g. 982–92)] is simply an intolerable sham; while to him who beholds only with the mind’s eye not only do they all present themselves in an harmonious picture, but even Bottom, with his ass-head in the midst of the tiny sprites . . . excites no more disturbing sense of the monstrous and improbable than such an appearance would do in an actual dream. But compare Barnett (1887; 1894, p. 8). Fleay (1876: 1878, p. 130) refers to MND as a work; I do not say a play; for I agree . . . in the view that the Two Gentlemen is superior as an acting piece. See Knight (ed. 1839, 1:382; ed. 1856, 2:6); Hunter (1845, 1:282–3); Gervinus 1849; tr. 1863, 1:281–2), who sees potential problems with the fairies, the clowns, and the costumes; Hudson (1872, 1:261); Sinclair (1878, p. 153). Compare Halliwell (1841, p. 45), who adds (ed. 1856, 5:16) that although a finished dramatic piece, it is unquestionably better fitted for the closet than the stage. It is one of his most difficult acting comedies, according to Brereton (1880, p. 113). Marshall (ed. 1888, 2:326), considering the play dramatically ineffective, summarizes: . . . the various complications which arise from the mistakes of Puck, or from the designs of Oberon, do not excite our sympathy when presented in action; yet they furnish us with very delightful reading. Nor can we fail to admire the skill with which the incongruous elements of Fairyland and Clownland . . . are blended together; and the subtle manner in which the difficulty of portraying the lives of immortal and superhuman beings is contrasted with the difficulty, experienced by the rude Athenian countrymen in their attempts at what we now call realism in the scenic portion of the Interlude which they present. The drawback . . . which besets A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a stage play, namely, that the Fairies, whom our imagination pictures as diminutive beings, have to be represented by men and women, will always tend to render this play ineffective from an acting point of view. Heraud (1865, p. 186) demurs: Nor is it less fitted for the stage than for the closet. See also Hall (1871, p. 249), Winter (in Daly ed. 1888, p. 12).

The negative vein continues in the 20th c. with Luce (1907, pp. 163, 358), Hudson (ed. 1880, p. 5), Kellogg (ed. 1910, p. 14), Whibley (ed. 1925, 1:xx–xxi), Constantin-Weyer (1929, p. 40). de la Mare (ed. 1935, p. vii), while acknowledging that MND was written to be acted, contends that not merely the easiest but perhaps also the happiest and most profitable way of enjoying it is to read that book intently page by page, listening to its verbal music, pausing perhaps to mark, but without attempting to solve, any transitory difficulty. See Ridley (1936, p. 36), Parrott (1949, p. 131), Bryant (1964, p. 9).

Losey (ed. 1926, pp. 196–7) and Mackenzie (1924, p. 28), on the other hand, are representative of scores who understand the stageworthiness of MND, and Doran (ed. 1959, p. 25) complains that sufficient for performance as the play is, producers have seldom until recent times—and not always then—been willing to let it take care of itself. The myriads of productions over the years are ample warrant that the play can, indeed, take care of itself.

Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 24) finds that in retrospect we are able to see that all productions fix the play in a style, an image, appropriate to their age. For reactions such as Hazlitt’s and Morley’s he blames the operatic treatments of the 19th c., the heavily-cut, musical versions, which deprived audiences of the experience of witnessing or hearing Shakespeare’s text acted. He claims that this was first made possible by Granville-Barker, and serious critical exploration of the play for the most part also began in the twentieth century, and in the wake of his production. Peter Brook too expos[ed] as worn-out clichés most of the traditional decorativeness in staging the play. Hackett (1997, p. 62) takes Hazlitt to task because he seeks to substantiate his case by reference to the performance scene within the play. The mechanicals’ embodiments of Wall and Moonshine certainly expose the potential inadequacy of dramatic representation. . . . But the disastrous delivery of Pyramus and Thisbe is there for two reasons: first, of course, the actors’ ineptness is a source of comic entertainment; and secondly, the contrast with the outer frame of the play accentuates what drama can achieve when it is skillfully composed and performed in such a way that it can work in concert with the audience’s imaginations.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Stage and Screen

MND was performed only in adapted form throughout the late 17th and 18th c., but since the mid-19th c. it has become one of Sh.’s most-performed plays. A truly comprehensive stage history would need to be vast in scale, and this appendix limits its scope primarily to significant productions in London, New York and Stratford-upon-Avon, and to widely available films. Fuller accounts include those of Warren (1983), who provides detailed descriptions of four 1970s and 80s productions; Halio (1994), who offers a stage history that focuses in detail on several significant 20th-c. productions and films; Griffiths (ed. 1996), who provides a short stage history and a full text annotated with information on cutting and other performance choices drawn from promptbooks; Williams (Moonlight, 1997), who offers a book-length stage history; and Lopez (2010), who provides a shorter but more recent account and questions some critical truisms in the foregoing studies. Global MND performances are far more diverse than the following account can acknowledge; studies and anthologies that discuss multiple productions of MND beyond the major English-speaking venues include Williams (1990), Kennedy (1993), Hattaway, Sokolova & Roper (1994), Williams (Moonlight, 1997), Hortmann (1998), Sasayama, Mulryne & Shewring (1998), Golder & Madelaine (2001), Knowles (2004), Makaryk & Price (2006), Trivedi & Bartholomeusz (2005), and Dobson (2011).

History of Performances

1595–1642

Various writers have argued that MND was first performed for an aristocratic wedding (see here), but even if this is true, the title page of Q1 (1600) states that the play was also sundry times publikely acted; Halio (1994, p. 11) thus assumes that Shakespeare would have kept in mind transfer to the public stage when writing. If the 1595–6 date is correct (see here), the first public performances would have been staged by the Lord Chamberlain’s men at The Theatre, with later ones taking place at the Curtain from 1597 to 1599 and the Globe from 1599 onward (Gurr, 2004, pp. 1–10, 282).

There is evidence for revivals of the play in the three decades following its composition. Greg (1955, pp. 243–4) proposed that F1’s act breaks and its stage direction They sleepe all the Act (1507) indicate that this text was created after 1609 when the King’s Men began performing at the indoor Blackfriars playhouse; Foakes (ed. 1984, pp. 141–3), however, doubts that we can know this for certain (see also here). On 17 Oct. 1630, the play was performed to Charles I at Hampton Court (Bentley, 1941, 1:27). Other possible references to performances before 1642 exist. In a letter of 15 Jan. 1604, Dudley Carleton reported that On New yeares night we had a play of Robin goode-fellow performed at court before King James (Chambers, 1923, 3:279). Edward Sharpham’s 1607 comedy The Fleire may record some comic business: like Thisbe in the play, a has almost kil’d himselfe with the scabberd (E1v) (see n. 2128). And a play involving an ass’s head was performed to the Bishop of Lincoln and guests at his house in Buckden, Huntingdonshire, in either 1629 or 1631 (Chambers, 1930, 2:348–52); as punishment for playing on a Sunday, one of the actors, a Mr Wilson, was punished with his feete in the stocks, and attyred with his asse head, and a bottle of hay sett before him, and this subscription on his breast: Good people I have played the beast, / And brought ill things to passe: / I was a man, but thus have made / My selfe a silly Asse. Although Chambers (1930, 2:349) notes several Wilsons associated with the King’s men, it cannot be proven that they were the company involved.

Some scholars have attempted imaginative reconstructions of the original methods of staging MND, but they differ in the level of illusionism that they imagine. The reconstruction of Watkins & Lemmon (1974) assumes the need for a degree of scenic illusion: they imagine leafy branches attached to the theatre’s columns to represent the wood (p. 53), a property bush for Quince’s hawthorn brake (p. 72), and even an onstage fire with fire-dogs, and logs and brushwood, and smoke rising above the Globe’s trapdoor to accord with the lines Now the wasted brands doe glowe and By the dead and drowsie fier (2159, 2176) (p. 116–17). Similarly, Lawrence (1919, pp. 451–2) imagines the use of perfumed fumes to create a visible mist when Oberon calls on Puck to ouercast the night with drooping fogge (1396–8; see also n. 1396–8), and Foss (1932, p. 129) proposes that the mechanicals’ urge to represent moonshine implies that there was a regular and satisfactory way of suggesting it in professional Elizabethan theatres. However, other reconstructions stress instead the absence of scenic illusionism on the Elizabethan bare stage: Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 7) imagines Quince simply pointing to the actual tiring house when saying this hauthorne brake [shall be] our tyring house (817); Halio (1994, p.11) reminds us that the literalistic mind, lacking imagination, is thoroughly mocked in Peter Quince’s concern about moonlight and a wall; and Williams (Moonlight, 1997, pp. 23–4) envisages a bare stage production with no need for any props other than some chairs (see also here). On the use of stage machinery, Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 7) imagines that Puck could have used the flying apparatus and trapdoors to appear in unexpected places (see also Watkins & Lemmon, 1974, p. 17), but Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 24) sees no indication of trapdoor use and imagines Puck merely using the stage pillars as hiding places.

For costumes, Halio (1994, p. 11) assumes an eclectic approach, with Theseus, Hippolyta, Oberon and Titania wearing Elizabethan with perhaps a bit of classical embellishment and the lovers similar but less spectacular; however, Williams (Moonlight, 1997, pp. 27–8) takes the reference to Athenian garments (645) to indicate more overtly Greek attire. Halio (1994, p. 12) thinks the mechanicals dressed as we should expect in Shakespeare’s time (p. 12); Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 7) and Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 31) agree, believing the phrase hempen homespunnes (889) to support the latter point. For the fairy costumes, Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 8) and Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 28) look to Wiv., 4.6.35 (2378), 4.6.41–2 (2384–5), in which the Fairy Queen costume is described as loose-robed, white or green, with Ribonds-pendant, flaring ’bout her head, and to designs for Oberon and a winged woman in Inigo Jones’s masques (for which, see Orgel & Strong, 1973, 1:203–4). Watkins & Lemmon (1974, p. 25) suggest that Puck was costumed as a court jester, but Halio (1994, p. 12) points to the illustration on the title page of Robin Goodfellow his Mad Prankes and Merry Jests (1633), in which the character looks more like a satyr. Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 7) observes that Robin Goodfellow in Jonson’s masque Love Restored (1616) also carries a broom. Holland (ed. 1994, n. to 2.1.34) notes the similarity of the costuming of Robin Goodfellow in Grim the Collier of Croydon (c. 1600) and Wily Beguiled (1606), in both of which the character wears a leather suit and has a red face.

On casting, Baldwin (1927, ch. 9, chart 2) and Grote (2002, pp. 29–30) attempt to divide the roles among the known members of the Chamberlain’s Men, but their (quite different) assignments are highly speculative; Bentley (1984, p. 225, n. 21) thinks Baldwin’s conclusions . . . go far beyond his evidence, and the same could be said of Grote. Equally speculative is Mathew (1922, p. 123), who imagines Sh. playing Oberon because he wished to recite the compliment which was paid to the queen [in the fair vestal speech]; Grote (2002, p. 29) proposes instead that Sh. played Peter Quince. Better evidence exists for other casting choices. Wiles (1987, pp. 74–5) describes the qualities that make Bottom a typical role for Will Kemp, the company’s clown. Gaw (1926, pp. 302–3) suggests John Sincklo, a player of thin man roles, as the intended actor of Starveling. Lawrence (1928, p. 14) proposes that the quarrel scene reveals the actors of Hermia and Helena to be small and dark, and tall and fair respectively; Bentley (1984, p. 225) also observes the frequently noted appearance in three of Shakespeare’s comedies of the late nineties of paired heroines of contrasted stature and contrasted temperaments (the others being Ado and AYL), finding the notion that Shakespeare wrote these roles for two specific boys speculative though attractive. Amid all these theories, the only performer in Sh.’s company known to have performed in the play is recorded in the F1 stage direction Tawyer with a Trumpet before them (1924), which refers to William Tawyer, a musician for the King’s men (Bentley, 1941, 2:590).

Casting questions are intertwined with a debate over the degree of doubling that Sh. envisaged. Modern productions often double Theseus with Oberon and Hippolyta with Titania, but it is debatable whether this could be achieved on the Renaissance stage since Theseus and Hippolyta must enter immediately after Oberon and Titania exit at 1621–3 (see n. 1623). Booth (1979, p. 107) thinks lines 434–55 were written to capitalize on and intensify the effect of planned theatrical doubling as the language includes a variety of examples of changes and confusions of persona; similarly, Calderwood (1991, pp. 410–11, n. 5) argues that the four parts are so amenable to doubling that they seem designed for that purpose, and that (p. 411) the quick change would have presented no problems if the stage direction Winde horne (1622) represented an extended musical interlude. Warren (1983, p. 64) disagrees: doubling will inevitably involve some awkward contrivance in performance and also weakens the structure of the play, with its counterpointing of four distinct worlds. Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 34) thinks the rapid quick-change at 1621–3 would have been performable, but concludes that doubling was unlikely because it would have been theatrically self-conscious in a blatant way that one finds nowhere else in the play. Although the 1661 adaptation The Merry Conceited Humours of Bottom the Weaver notes in its cast list that the player of Oberon may likewise play the Duke (sig. A1v), that adaptation is structured so as to allow time for the actor to change costumes.

A more complex question concerns another doubling option suggested by the Bottom the Weaver cast list: that of the mechanicals with Titania’s fairies. This question is related to another question: whether the fairies were played by adult men or by boys. Ringler (1968, p. 126, 133) argues that the company size at the time of MND was 12 adults and 4 boys; thus, because there are four women characters who cannot double . . . the four fairies are played by the same large lumbering adult actors who take the parts of the four rude mechanicals. Ringler also requires Theseus to double the First Fairy (p. 132). Relatedly, Watkins & Lemmon (1974, p. 22) point out that Sh. seems to have imagined Titania’s fairies as male, since Bottom labels them Mounsieur and Caualery. King (1992, p. 6) disagrees with Ringler’s theory; he assumes Titania’s fairies to be female and refuses to imagine adult men playing them; he thus suggests that Hippolyta doubled the First Fairy, and regards Titania’s fairies as minor parts to be played by hired additional boys, requiring therefore a cast of 23–24 actors in total (pp. 83–4, 179–82). Kott (1993, 309) is similarly incredulous that actors of adult stature, most probably bearded or wearing moustaches could have swiftly transformed into merry, graceful, dancing and singing fairies, but makes the unusual proposal that the mechanicals were thus played by boys, their theatrical fumblings being reminiscent of children’s theatre (pp. 310–12). Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 34) prefers Ringler’s analysis since no other doubling arrangement works to reduce the size of the company sufficiently, although, like King, he imagines the First Fairy doubling Hippolyta rather than Theseus. Wells (2009, 176–7) studies the number of boy actors required in Sh.’s plays, concluding that Sh. very rarely [177] expected to have more than six; however, he notes some complicating factors to the questions about MND: Puck and Flute might have been written for boys, and Titania’s fairies could be doubled by the actors of Hippolyta, Hermia and Helena with one other boy (p. 176).

Williams (Moonlight, 1997, pp. 33–4) suspects a further doubling within Bottom the Weaver of Egeus with Puck, although he also (p. 35) shows that F1 MND enables Puck and Philostrate to double easily, a choice that can be found in numerous modern productions.

1642–1691

MND may have been performed during the interregnum in the form of a short droll, The Merry Conceited Humors of Bottome the Weaver. First published in 1661, this text is a shortened version of MND that focuses on the mechanicals and the fairies. Its title page states that it had been often publikely Acted by some of his Majesties Comedians, and lately, privately, presented, by several APPRENTICES for their harmless recreation. Kirkman (1673, A2r-A2v), in his introduction to The Wits, an anthology that reprinted the droll, elaborated: When the publique Theatres were shut up, and the Actors forbidden to present us with any of their Tragedies, because we had enough of that in earnest; and Comedies, because the Vices of the Age were too lively and smartly represented; then all that we could divert ourselves with were these humours and pieces of Plays. . . . [A2v] and that but by stealth too, and under pretence of Rope-dancing, or the like. Langbaine (1691, p. 460) wrote that it used to be acted at Bartholomew Fair, and other Markets in the Country by Strolers. However, Elson (1932, p. 412) thinks the memories of these writers are faulty, since the length and complexity of the piece present insuperable obstacles to its performance in booths at fairs and on other makeshift stages, and argues that only the apprentices’ amateur performance is likely to be factual. Brennecke (1964, pp. 52–104) describes performances of other shortened versions of MND in Germany, and reprints one by Andreas Gryphius: Absurda Comica, or Master Peter Squentz (1657).

After the Restoration, Pepys (1662; ed. Latham and Matthews, 1970, 3:208) saw a performance at the King’s Theatre on 29 Sep. 1662: we saw Midsummers night dreame, which I have never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure. Williams (Moonlight, 1997, pp. 40–1) observes that we do not know how faithful this production was to the original.

Two late 17th-c. texts of MND marked with cuts exist. One, which survives only partially, may be associated with the Hatton Garden Theatre’s Nursery; it consists of pages from F1 marked with a simple cutting of the play (Evans, 3.1:27), the most notable effects of which are the elimination of the character of Titania and of the transformation of Bottom, but it apparently never reached production (p. 29). The other is associated with the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin; its reviser cuts quite substantially but the play as a whole emerges basically intact (Evans, 1960–96, 7:6). This text too appears to represent a preliminary cut that shows no evidence of actual stage production (7:1).

1692–1839

Henry Purcell’s The Fairy-Queen, which premiered on 2 May 1692 at the Dorset Garden Theatre (Van Lennep, 1965, 408–9), heralded a new era in the treatment of MND on stage, in which the play’s potential for musical and spectacular enhancement inspired a series of drastic adaptations. As a semi-opera, The Fairy-Queen represents a theatrical form in which the spoken word was an equal with the music, dance and scenic spectacle (Williams, 1997, p. 46). The dialogue represents a drastically shortened version of MND; the authorship of the libretto is debated, but it may be by some or all of Thomas Betterton, Jo. Haines and Elkanah Settle (Williams, 1997, pp. 59–60). Purcell’s score is used primarily in musical spectacles at the ends of the acts, which feature original lyrics not based on MND. The spectacles are visions created by the fairies for the wonderment of humanity, but other than this their relationship with the play is tenuous (see here). The Fairy-Queen was revived in 1693, beginning 16 Feb. (White, 1958, p. 51). A revised text published that year features alterations, including the removal of the first scene and the addition of some extra songs; this is the version used in modern recordings (Williams, 1997, p. 59).

The score for The Fairy-Queen was lost after Purcell’s death and not rediscovered until the 20th c. (White, 1958, p. 46), but it initiated a long-lasting association of MND with opera. The first manifestations of this are two musical afterpieces based on the story of the mechanicals: Richard Leveridge’s The Comick Masque of Pyramus and Thisbe (1716) and a later adaptation of this, John Frederick Lampe’s Pyramus and Thisbe: A Mock Opera (1745). In these playlets, the lovers and fairies are entirely removed, and the remaining text is rewritten to satirize English opera, presenting the rehearsal and performance of Pyramus and Thisbe as the doomed effort of a misguided composer to prove that the English can produce operas as well as the Italians. The Pyramus and Thisbe scene also appears within Charles Johnson’s AYL adaptation Love in a Forest (1723), in which it is performed by Some Citizens of Liege to Duke Senior (p. 58).

Three operatic adaptations of MND are associated with David Garrick’s Drury Lane Theatre, and their fortunes proved that fidelity to Sh.’s text was not profitable in the 18th c. The Fairies premiered 3 Feb. 1755 (Stone, 1962, 1:467). It featured a heavily cut text sung in recitative, augmented by 28 interpolated songs, with music by John Christopher Smith. Garrick (1755, A3v) explained: Many Passages of the first Merit, and some whole Scenes in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, are necessarily omitted in this Opera, to reduce the Performance to a proper length; it was feared that even the best Poetry would appear tedious when only supported by Recitative. Where Shakespear has not supplied the Composer with Songs, he has taken them from Milton, Waller, Dryden, Lansdown, Hammond, &c, and it is hoped they will not seem to be unnaturally introduced. The adaptation removes the mechanicals entirely (Bottom’s encounter with Titania is reported but not shown), and while otherwise following Sh.’s structure relatively closely, it reduces the dialogue to its essentials (see here). Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 15) notes that The Fairies instigated the long-running tradition of casting children as the fairies in order to convey their diminutive size. The critical response was negative, albeit in diverse ways: Cibber (1756, p. 36) attacked Garrick for the insult to Shakespear’s Ghost, whose play has been minc’d and fricaseed into an indigested and unconnected Thing. But Walpole (1755; ed. Lewis and Wallace, 1973, 209–10), though finding The Fairies detestable, blamed MND itself, which is forty times more nonsensical than the worst translation of any Italian opera-books. Regardless, the play received good receipts at the box office (Williams, 1997, p. 285 n. 41).

In 1763, Garrick began a second operatic adaptation under Sh.’s title, but delegated much of the work to the playwright George Colman (Stone, 1939). This adaptation restores the mechanicals (minus Pyramus and Thisbe) but is heavily cut and adds even more original songs (see here). Colman removed many of the rhyming couplets in the belief that they were uncouth (Pedicord & Bergmann, 1981, 4:421–2). The audience response was so negative that the production lasted only one night (23 Nov. 1763); the actors received most of the blame, but the St. James Chronicle attacked the text too: though the Fairy part is most transcendently beautiful . . . the Love-Story wound up with it, and the Celebration of the Marriage of Theseus is very flat and uninteresting; even the very fine Speeches of Theseus, towards the conclusion of the Piece, are fitter for the Closet than the Stage (qtd. in Stone, 1939, p. 480). Prompter William Hopkins noted in his diary, The Sleeping Scene particularly displeas’d . . . Fairies pleas’d – Serious parts displeas’d – Comic between both (qtd. in Stone, 1939, p. 474).

In just three days, Colman adapted his MND into a short afterpiece called A Fairy Tale, which debuted on 26 Nov. (Stone, 1939, p. 481). This playlet is similar to Bottom the Weaver in its focus on the mechanicals and exclusion of the lovers (see here). Hopkins recorded it as a very pleasing Farce, & well receiv’d by the Audience (qtd. in Stone, 1939, p. 482). Defending Garrick’s musical enhancement some years later, Murphy (1801, 1:269) provides an early example of what would become the common claim that Sh.’s MND is unactable: the aerial beings, of which Shakespeare was the father, could not, it must be acknowledged, be rendered more fit for representation by any other contrivance [than music].

The next major production was Frederick Reynolds’ operatic MND, which opened on 17 Jan. 1816 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (Genest, 1832, 8:545), featuring songs from the Garrick/Colman adaptations along with new ones by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (Covent Garden playbill, repr. in Williams, 1997, p. 81). Reynolds (ed. 1816, p. iv) professed distaste for A Fairy Tale and claimed the chief object of his adaptation to be the preservation of all Shakespeare’s beauties. However, his text is in fact influenced by the 1763 Garrick-Colman MND adaptation, and cuts even more drastically (see here). Reynolds admitted that I have not only been compelled to alter, transpose, introduce new Songs, and new Speeches but also to write the whole of one additional Scene, and part of another, but insisted that I have made some atonement for my own defects, by restoring to the Stage, the lost, but divine Drama, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Reynolds’ most original changes enhance the importance of Theseus: Pyramus and Thisbe is performed in the forest to an incognito Theseus whose identity is revealed at the end, and the climax replaces the fairy blessing with a pageant and a chorus praising Theseus’s might. Genest (1832, 8:548): It is evident that he thought this divine play would not please a modern audience, unless it were made more divine by the addition of many songs – some fine scenery – and a grand pageant. The play was a moderate financial success (Williams, 1997, p. 78). The reviewer for the Theatrical Inquisitor and Monthly Mirror (vol. 8, 1816, p. 73) enjoyed the sublime scenery, splendid processions, and every thing that constitutes the pomp and magnificence of the stage and felt that as far, then, as the getting-up of the Midsummer Night’s Dream is concerned, the Managers have . . . produced a spectacle of the most magnificent description. However, a review of the printed text in the same journal (vol. 8, 1816, pp. 446–7) sneered at the Grand Pageant and attacked Reynolds for disfiguring the venerable structure of Shakespeare with his own tasteless and [447] vulgar additions. Crabb Robinson (1816; ed. Brown, 1966, p. 69), in contrast, made no mention of the spectacle, finding that despite the alterations, Shakespeare’s powerful and significant verse is delightful even when ill recited and the piece abounds in poetical beauties.

Reynolds’ production inspired William Hazlitt’s influential claim that MND is unperformable, a critical commonplace that would dog the play for decades. Hazlitt’s argument originally appeared in his review for The Examiner, 21 Jan. 1816; a shorter version then appeared in his Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817), and the original review was then reprinted in A View of the English Stage (1818). Hazlitt (1818; ed. Howe, 1967, p. 276) wrote that The ideal has no place upon the stage because that which is merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable reality. He lamented (p. 275) the triumph of ye scene-shifters, ye scene-painters, ye machinists and dress-makers, ye manufacturers of moon and stars that give no light, ye musical composers and ye full-grown, well-fed, substantial, real fairies (for fuller quotations, see here). Hazlitt’s ideas were quickly repeated by the reviewer of Reynolds’ text in the Theatrical Inquisitor (vol. 8, 1816, p. 445), for whom the play’s gay creatures of the element [Milton, Comus, 298] can never be perfectly represented by human and corporeal bodies. Daniel (1828, p. 9) similarly believed actors could never personify [Sh.’s] lovely fairies, who are too true to their own identity – too airy – too impalpable, to be represented by the sons of dull earth. Such comments were common by the 1830s (see here).

The first known American production of MND took place at the Park Theatre in New York in 1826 and was probably an adaptation of Reynolds’s (Williams, 1997, p. 91). Reynolds’s MND was revived again in London in 1833, this time enhanced with Felix Mendelssohn’s overture (1826), a piece that would soon become intimately intertwined with the play on the stage (Williams, 1997, pp. 92).

1840–1913

Hazlitt’s views on the unperformability of MND remained a commonplace throughout the 19th c.; Morley (1853; 1891, p. 56) wrote that every reader of Shakespeare is disposed to regard the Midsummer Night’s Dream as the most essentially unactable of all his plays (for more examples, see here). However, beginning in the 1840s, a new kind of MND production persuaded some critics to rebut Hazlitt’s thesis. Spectacle and music remained important in these productions, but the number of songs was reduced, and fidelity to Sh.’s text was increasingly valued.

A turning point was Madame Lucia Elizabeth Vestris’s production at Covent Garden (1840), which used a text (adapted by James Robinson Planché) that was much closer to Sh.’s. Like earlier productions it too incorporated musical sections and much visual spectacle with an emphasis on beauty and verisimilitude (Williams, 1997, pp. 99–103), but its songs were all based on passages from MND, and as Griffiths (1979, pp. 393–4) notes, the spectacles were not gratuitous like Reynolds’ but rather connected with the play and based on a reading of the text rather than a disregard for it. Vestris popularized the inclusion of Mendelssohn’s 1826 Overture. She also initiated the fashion for casting an actress (in this case, herself) as Oberon (Williams, 1997, p. 93).

The production enjoyed a relatively long run (Williams, 1997, p. 103) and caused some critics to sound triumph over Hazlitt: Halliwell (1841, p. 45, 51) concluded that the alleged unfitness of the Midsummer Night’s Dream for representation on the stage is founded on incorrect data. In fact, the success that has attended its recent production at Covent Garden Theatre entirely controverts such claims, and he was pleased to find that (p. 51) the alterations from the original version of the play are few. The Times found the production to achieve a fine poetic feeling: in the Oberon of Madame Vestris there was a dignified grace worthy of the King of fairy land, and as she stood with her glittering armour and fantastic helmet on an eminence, with a blue-tinted wood gliding by her in the back-ground, presenting different aspects of the same sylvan scenery, the effect was little short of supernatural (17 Nov. 1840). The Era wrote, The play itself has never been deemed by us an acting one . . . yet all that can be done to give a vrai-semblance to the illusion has been triumphantly achieved (22 Nov. 1840). Some remained unconvinced, though; Athenaeum retained the view that the material attractions of a pageant, however gorgeous, are no substitute for spiritual essence (21 Nov. 1840); see also Morley (1853; 1891, p. 56).

In 1843, Mendelssohn wrote an incidental score (Op. 61) for Ludwig Tieck’s production of MND in Potsdam, Germany (Williams, 1997, pp. 105–8). This score subsequently became a required part of any 19th-c. MND production, ensuring that musical interludes would remain important despite the increased fidelity to the text.

Samuel Phelps’s production at Sadler’s Wells in 1853 built on the innovations of Vestris and provided another spectacle of illusionism but removed Vestris’s songs to produce an experience closer to the original text. He also used at least some of Mendelssohn’s score (Morning Chronicle, 10 Oct. 1853). Phelps’s production created further converts to the play’s theatrical potential: Morley (1853; 1891, p. 57), who had been unconvinced by Vestris’s production, felt that Phelps’s scenography successfully created an oneiric atmosphere: not only do the scenes melt dream-like into one another, but over all the fairy portion of the play there is a haze thrown by a curtain of green gauze, which subdues the flesh and blood of the actors into something more nearly resembling dream-figures; Lloyds Weekly News (23 Oct. 1853) found that Hazlitt’s view had been blown away like so much dust. . . . The ideal trance, in which you have been plunged for the last three hours, is followed by an awakening conviction that you have been fooled during that time not less completely than Bottom himself thanks to the quiet and subdued scenery populated by real, intangible, shadowy beings. And even a naysayer, the stubbornly Hazlittian Morning Chronicle reviewer, was charmed by Phelps’s performance as Bottom, which dropped the stupid stolidity conventionally attributed to the part (10 Oct. 1853).

These three productions inspired numerous successors. The major productions from 1853 to 1911 can be discussed as a group because the Victorian era MND was a remarkably homogenous concept, dominated by accreted traditions. These traditions include the use of Mendelssohn’s score and of large casts with huge numbers of fairies and Athenian attendants. The average amount of cutting was 17–19% of the text (Williams, 1997, p. 98), and it typically de-emphasized the lovers, making Bottom and the mechanicals proportionally more significant (Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 22). Another tradition was that of actor-managers taking the role of Bottom; famous examples included Phelps and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (His Majesty’s Theatre, 1900 and 1911), who lightheartedly described Bottom as a silly, conceited fellow . . . (He was what in these days we call an actor-manager) (Tree, 1911, n. pag.).

Illusionistic scenery was another essential feature of the Victorian MND. Montgomery (1888, p. 96) was inspired by Augustin Daly’s production (Daly’s Theatre, New York, 1888) to claim that Shakespeare must have had a strong, inborn love of pictorial effect and that a producer cannot be blamed when he endeavours to show to the eye what the poet himself shows clearly to the imagination. Producers often went beyond what the poet imagined, however, by adding spectacle unrelated to the text: examples include Theseus’s barge taking the lovers home to Athens in Daly’s production (Williams, 1997, pp. 127–9), the fight between a spider and a wasp in Frank Benson’s (Benson Company, 1889–1916; see Benson, 1926, p. 80), and the real rabbits in Tree’s.

Relatedly, greater importance was attached to the play’s Athenian setting. According to Gervinus (1849, tr. 1863, 1:281–2) it had earlier been possible to see characters in MND wearing kid-gloves and the knightly accoutrements of the Spanish comedy, but following Vestris’s early experiments with historicism (see Williams, 1997, p. 97), William Evans Burton at his theater on Chambers Street, New York (1854) and Charles Kean in London (Princess’s Theatre, 1856) promoted the exactness of their reconstructions of Athens (Williams, 1997, pp. 115–16, 120–1) and others followed suit. The historicism that resulted was inconsistent: Kean (1856, pp. v–vi) admitted that since the general character of the play is far from historical and sufficient is not known of Greek life and architecture in the time of Theseus to render complete . . . accuracy possible so that he felt justified in anachronistically placing the mythological hero amid (p. vi) Athens . . . at a time when it had attained its greatest splendour in literature and art; in addition, his fairies remained dressed according to the 19th-c. ballet tradition (Griffiths, ed. 1996, pp. 30); the result, according to Morley (1856; 1891, p. 133), was a hard and jarring contrast between the Athens of Pericles and our own world of Robin Goodfellow and all the woodland elves. Burton (1854, p. 6) attempted greater consistency by representing Oberon as the miniature model of a Grecian hero and including among the fairies Satyrs, or Fauns of the wood.

Victorian directors almost always cast a woman as Oberon, and Puck was normally played by a young woman or sometimes a child, such as the youthful Ellen Terry in Kean’s production (Williams, 1997, p. 291, n. 2, and p. 304, n. 32, notes the rare exceptions). One reason may be indicated by James Agate’s comment on Julia Neilson’s Oberon in Tree’s production: the mere fact of her being a woman just differentiates it from humanity (Pall Mall Gazette, 11 Jan. 1900). There were critics of the practice: Gervinus (1849; tr. 1863, 1:280) complained about productions in which a girl utters Oberon’s part in a high treble, removing all the dignity of the calm ruler of this hovering world, and Shaw (1895; 1907, p. 188) found Augustin Daly’s uses of actresses to totally destroy the naturalness of the representation, and so accord with his [Daly’s] conception of the Shakespearean drama as the most artificial of all forms of stage entertainment.

The cross-gender casting raises questions, mostly difficult to answer, about the attitudes of Victorian productions toward the play’s gender politics. That Victorian directors were aware of the play’s potentially problematic content is evident in a synopsis by Tree (1911, n. pag.) headed For Children Only. It explains that Theseus defeated Hippolyta because in those days the equality of the sexes had not been fully established, and that their marriage shows that expediency sometimes goes hand in hand with love. Hermia’s insistence that she prefers Lysander seems to have been unusual and regrettable, and it is a great pity that in those days quite respectable persons could not regulate their affections as we are taught to do to-day. The contention between Oberon and Titania shows that even fairies are jealous when they suffer from love, and when Oberon ultimately takes pity on Titania he does so with a generosity born of conscious superiority. Tree’s tongue-in-cheek tone both acknowledges as problematic and dismisses as unimportant the possibility that the play celebrates patriarchal control over women. Some ways in which directors addressed these issues can be gleaned from the promptbooks.

Hermia’s disobedience is one moment at which patriarchy is contested. The 19th-c. critical attitude was generally in favour of Hermia against Theseus (see here), and theatre directors evidently agreed, as 19th-c. productions sometimes used the onstage Athenian crowds to create an atmosphere of popular dissatisfaction with Theseus’s judgment: in Daly’s promptbook all express terror at Theseus’s judgment, and in Benson’s the crowd that had initially cried Theseus, Hail Theseus upon his entry performed a sigh and movement when Hermia was threatened with death. Another moment at which the issues noted by Tree are at the forefront is the humiliation of Titania when Oberon wakes her and reveals what he has done; few promptbooks (in any era) are clear about what the actors do here, and no consistency of tone is apparent among them: in Daly’s promptbook, at There lyes your loue (1593), Oberon is sneering, Puck titters, and Titania turns to Bottom, looks at him horrified – Turns to Oberon, but in Benson’s the moment is apparently presented as mere comedy: Titania’s O, how mine eyes doe loath his visage now! (1595) is accompanied by children laughing, and when the ass-head is removed All laugh.

Despite such occasional differences, in general Victorian productions followed their inherited traditions very closely. Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 38): there was no discernible disagreement about characterisation or about the play’s meanings from production to production. A manager staging the play strove to surpass his contemporaries with the sumptuousness of his production within the traditional guidelines, not to challenge them.

1914–1969

Challenges to the Victorian tradition emerged during the later 19th c. when some critics began to argue that Victorian pictorial scenography obscured, rather than enhanced, the play’s beauties (see here). Cook (1875; 1883, p. 275): the play was written at a time when scenic illusion and stage artifice depended almost entirely upon the imagination of the spectators, whereas for the modern theatergoer the poetry of the subject lies hidden under stage carpentry. Shaw (1895; 1907, p. 170): in MND Sh. used all his power of description and expression in verse with such effect that the utmost any scene-painter can hope for is to produce a picture that shall not bitterly disappoint the spectator who has read the play beforehand. Of the wood created by Sh.’s poetry, Brooke (1905, p. 10) wrote, there was not a groundling in the pit who did not see it more clearly than we see it in the elaborate decoration of our stage. We are held down to the scene-painter’s view of it, and that limits our self-creativeness. But everyone in Shakespeare’s theatre made from the poet’s suggestions his own wood out of his own memories of the country. Some critics, however, contested the notion that it was better for the audience to use their imaginations; Beerbohm (1900; 1969, p. 232) asked must there not have been, even in those spacious [Elizabethan] days, a certain effort, a certain strain of the visual organs, the making of which must have distracted their attention from the play?

The anti-pictorial movement reached the stage in William Poel’s attempts at recreating Elizabethan stagecraft. Poel never directed MND, but his ideas dovetailed with those of the Modernist movement, which advocated scenography that was simple and symbolic rather than representational. Harley Granville-Barker’s radical production (Savoy Theatre, 1914) was influenced both by Poel’s ideas and by European Modernism (Kennedy, 1985, pp. 149–53). Granville-Barker (1974, p. 95) rejected illusionism, preferring Puck bounding through a palpable doorway with his little western flower. He used simple, stylized settings that could be swiftly changed (such as a forest represented by draped curtains). The fairies were re-imagined as golden metallic creatures, while Puck was played by an adult in the manner of a hobgoblin from English folklore. Granville-Barker also introduced meta-theatrical elements; in particular, Puck became quite literally the presenter of the play’s fond pageant (Barbour, 1975, p. 524); he was onstage at points not called for in the text, wandering around the stage and among the mechanicals (Dymkowski, 1986, p. 67) and even orchestrating some of the lighting and set changes: at 1437, the promptbook states Obe[ron] turns and exits quickly through curtains C followed by train[;] Puck then down C lower stage motions for lights to go down then up to cloth, bends down and raises curtain as it ascends (qtd. in Griffiths, 1976, p. 83).

Other aspects of the production alluded to the play’s Elizabethan origins: an apron stage for improved intimacy with the audience, a rejection of Mendelssohn in favour of English folk music, and return to a male Oberon and Puck (Halio, 1994, pp. 31–5). In addition, Granville-Barker used an almost full text and embraced the more artificial verse forms in the play, such as rhyming couplets, which earlier directors had removed as blots upon the dignity of the play (Granville-Barker, 1914; 1974, p. 36).

The Illustrated London News was delighted that we are given the whole text of the play. What is more, we hear it and can savour every word (14 Feb. 1914). However, Granville-Barker’s visual style was a shock for its audience and received very mixed reviews (for summaries, see Halio, 1994, pp. 33, 35; Dymkowski, 1986, p. 58, and Williams, 1997, pp. 154–5). Winter (1916; 1969, pp. 295–6) protested that it is impossible for the mind to abandon itself to the enchantment of the acted drama and allow itself to drift with the representation, self-forgetful and delighted, when it is continually compelled to consider that trees are indicated by long festoons of gray cloth, wooded banks [296] by wooden benches, and flitting sylphs by prancing gnomes that no more suggest fairies than so many coal-scuttles would!; however, the New Statesman (21 Feb. 1914) argued that viewers will enjoy it a great deal more the second time. The merits of this production come out clearer when surprise at the scenic effects, the golden fairies, and the red puppet-box Puck has subsided. Ultimately, the production was influential, not in the specifics of its design, but in its implication that an individual director or designer could produce a unique new vision of the play each time it was revived.

Between 1914 and 1960 productions varied in the extent to which they perpetuated the Victorian tradition. For example, within two years, Donald Calthrop’s Mendelssohn-free production (Kingsway Theatre, 1923) featured blue lights and art nouveau trees, fairies who seemed to derive from shadows rather than sunbeams, or to have been designed by an entomologist rather than a poet, and a male Oberon who was ever so slightly suggestive of an officer in the Kapek insect army (Evening Standard 14 Nov. 1923), while Basil Dean’s (Drury Lane, 1924) presented a traditional Victorian spectacle with Mendelssohn intact (Griffiths, ed. 1996, pp. 49–51). Most productions were halfway between the extremes; for example, William Bridges Adams’ production (Sh. Memorial Theatre, 1920) used non-illusionist (but still beautiful and representational) sets, while retaining Mendelssohn and a female Puck (Halio, 1994, p. 40). Max Reinhardt’s series of MND productions in Europe and America between 1905 and 1927 used modern scenography to effect swifter scene changes, and once experimented with an almost bare stage, but ultimately expanded into spectacular outdoor productions in Florence and Oxford (1933) and in the USA (1934), as well as in a sumptuous and illusionistic Warner Bros. film (1935); Reinhardt was both unusual in his hints at a darker reading of the fairies (see below, here) and traditional in his use of Mendelssohn (Williams, 1997, pp. 166–85).

The reviewers of this era were aware that there had once been a Victorian style of MND production and that it was gradually being abandoned. Agate (1929; 1943, pp. 43–4), pining for a real wood such as the scene-painters of my youth devised, and insisting that I must have Mendelssohn, suspected that nine-tenths of playgoers are, in my computation, still essentially Victorian as far as this play is concerned, but recognized that the way in which nine-tenths of us desire this play to be produced is still only one way, and that sixty-eight other good and correct ways remain. By 1937, the distance gained from the Victorian style was great enough that Tyrone Guthrie could archly revive it at the Old Vic in what he called a deliberate pastiche of early Victorian style (Guthrie, 1959, p. 194). His programme note began, The style of this production is early Victorian, signalling to his audience a knowing distance from tradition that made the Victorian approach a thing of the past even as it was nostalgically revived. It went on to explain his chosen style as a response to the architecture of the Old Vic but emphasised that there are many other possibilities: there must be a compromise between what archaeologists can tell us of the theatrical methods of Shakespeare’s day and those of our own. The compromise can lean more or less to ancient or modern at the discretion of the producer (n. pag.). Some reviewers were irritated that Guthrie felt the need to defend his use of Victoriana—The Times wrote White muslin, pink roses, silver crowns, moonlight and wings. . . . These are fairies and there’s an end of it (Dec. 28, 1937)—but the Victorian approach to MND had clearly become just one among many. Williams (Moonlight, 1997, pp. 193–5) describes Michael Benthall’s 1954 production, which toured North America, as the last gasp of the grand Victorian style, after which Mendelssohn was rarely heard in major productions; however, Lopez (2010, pp. 48–9, 59) describes some later examples.

One way to break from the Victorian style was to abandon the Athenian setting. At the Old Vic in 1929, Harcourt Williams experimented with staging MND in Elizabethan dress (Griffiths, ed. 1996, pp. 52–3), and in 1932, Bridges Adams redesigned his production to do the same (Halio, 1994, p. 41; Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 54). Peter Hall’s popular production (Sh. Memorial Theatre, 1959, revived 1962–3) took this approach further, presenting the play as it might have been done in some great Elizabethan country house, performed by amateurs (Halio, 1994, p. 46); its set was designed so that the transformation to the wood was rapidly and convincingly achieved without ever losing the atmosphere of the manor house, and the fairies wore (p. 50) splendid Elizabethan court clothes that suggested the cobwebs, dew and gossamer of the woods (Warren, 1983, pp. 47, 50). Hall’s 1968 film uses costumes that blend Elizabethan and modern attire, and captions an English country house with the word Athens. Alex Reeves’s popular 1958–9 production, which toured Britain after originating at Howard Payne College in Texas, was the first to transpose the play to a setting that was neither Greece nor England: Reeves chose the Wild West (see Halio, 1994, pp. 44–6), paving the way for later radical re-imaginings of the play’s setting.

Unlike some of his choices, Granville-Barker’s casting of male actors as Oberon and Puck rapidly caught on and was followed even in Guthrie’s and Benthall’s overtly old-fashioned productions; this was a relief to Trewin (1978, p. 99), who loved the nostalgia of Guthrie’s production but was glad that the practice of casting actresses in these parts had been abandoned. However, Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 188) notes that gender blurring did not disappear from the role of Oberon, observing in Guthrie’s production the feline grace of [Robert] Helpmann’s movement and the sexual ambiguity of his performance, although these qualities go unmentioned by critics. Androgyny marks the major Oberons from the 1930s through the 1950s, from Gielgud through Helpmann.

An interest in the sinister side of Oberon and the fairies is detectable in the criticism of this era (see here) and is reflected in the theatre too. Criticizing the Victorian style, Guthrie (1954, pp. 17–18) wrote that we have a tendency to sentimentalize all our ideas of fairies and personifications of Nature, but (p. 18) the play will lose a great deal of its meaning if it is robbed of a magic which springs, not from the tip of a department-store wand, but from the earth, the trees, the stones, the very air of the wood; and a magic which is not merely pretty but dark and dangerous. Reinhardt’s 1930s productions introduced elements of sinister eroticism that he also included in his 1935 film: Oberon, mounted on a dark horse and fantastically accoutred, a black cape flowing from his shoulders, speaks with calculated menace (Halio, 1994, p. 88), and in a pas de deux between Moonlight and Night that introduces Titania’s return to Oberon, the First Fairy is carried off into the dark forest on the shoulder of a strong male in black (Williams, 1997, p. 176; on the film version, see pp. 180–5). In 1954, George Devine (Sh. Memorial Theatre) made not only Oberon but also Titania a frightening, birdlike figure, with the air, light, bright and ferocious, of a falcon (David, 1955, p. 138). Puck, too, changed; several reviewers of Granville-Barker’s production noted a change from the Ariel-like Puck of the Victorians to an uglier, more brutish creature (Dymkowski, 1986, p. 66); the New Statesman felt that Puck should be at once will-o’-the’-wisp, Oberon’s jester, and a rowdy imp, but that Donald Calthrop’s performance emphasized only the latter, presenting Puck as a buffoon-sprite (21 Feb. 1914). Similarly, when Calthrop later directed his own production, a reviewer wrote that its Puck was not the Victorian Puck. . . . But he was an Elizabethan household Puck, a malicious sprite who gloried, as a village idiot might, in the havoc he had caused. He was not Shakespeare’s Puck, of course (Daily News, 14 Nov. 1923).

Tree (1911, n. pag.) had thought of MND as a picture of pure love unsullied by grossness of sensual passion, and Winter (1892, p. 176) found it to demonstrate the essential cleanliness and sweetness of Shakespeare’s mind, unaffected by the gross animalism of his time (on debates in criticism about this matter, see here), but in the post-WWII era the play’s sexual undercurrents began to be depicted more graphically, especially in the relationship between Bottom and Titania. Earlier productions had rarely implied any activities in the bower beyond an embrace and a sleep; for example, Phelps’s 1861 promptbook has at 973 Embrace. Bottom rubbing his asses head against her face – she patting his head. Tyrone Guthrie’s 1951 Old Vic production may have been groundbreaking, since critics found noteworthy the very human interest in the translated weaver taken by the Titania of Miss Jill Balcon (Times 27 Dec. 1951), who carries Bottom off with all the gusto of a Restoration lady capturing her lover (Tatler and Bystander 9 Jan. 1952). Peter Hall’s 1968 film went further: Titania lowers [Bottom] to the ground and embraces him amorously (Halio, 1994, p. 98). Other changes explored the cruel side of the play’s sexuality. As early as 1949, Michael Benthall’s Stratford-upon-Avon production depicted Hippolyta as a captive war bride (Williams, 1997, p. 189), and in 1960, at the opening of Michael Langham’s production (Old Vic), we realised with a shock that that Hippolyta . . . was in chains and by no means a willing bride (Illustrated London News, 7 Jan. 1961). The ideas of Kott (1964) about violent sexuality in MND were cited by both directors and reviewers from the 1960s onward (Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 66; Williams, 1997, pp. 215–16). By 1966–7, in John Hancock’s pop art production (staged in San Francisco, Pittsburgh and New York), Demetrius was wired with an electric codpiece that flashed on to register his sexual passions and a somewhat sadistic Oberon put the lovers through an agonized, slow motion chase on the forest turntable (Williams, 1997, p. 217). Mullin (1975, p. 532) relates Hall’s 1968 film to the modern vision of the play as erotic nightmare, due to its sinister, green-skinned and naked fairies, its Oberon with goatish beard and satyr’s horns and its panting, red-mouthed Puck.

Another change in this period is a growing awareness of the comic potential of the lovers. Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 98) notes that Victorian productions consistently shorten and soften the lovers’ wrangles in the forest (see also here), and the tendency to cut their lines for reasons of decorum reduced the amount of comedy in their scenes; as a result, Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 23) notes, in the 19th c. they were often thought of as serious rather than comic characters. Exceptions attracted comment: Morley (1853; 1891, p. 59) complained of Samuel Phelps’s production (Sadler’s Wells, 1853) that the arguments of the lovers that should have been playful, dreamlike and poetical were much too loud and real; the comedy should have been (p. 60) but a little of the poet’s sunlight meant to glitter among tears. Sprague (1944; 1963, p. 50) criticized the physicality of the blocking in Daly’s production (Daly’s Theatre, 1888): Nor is Helena to be transformed into a tragic heroine by such shifts as flinging her down repeatedly when . . . she is pleading with Demetrius. Gradually, though, comic representations of the lovers became commoner and more acceptable. Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 41) argues that the process began with Frank Benson’s productions (Benson Company, 1889–1916), and it is clear from reviews that subsequent productions experimented further. A review of Granville-Barker’s production observed that the acting revealed more dramatic comedy in the situation [of Hermia and Helena] than any reader, however imaginative, is likely to feel in it (New Statesman, 21 Feb. 1914). Basil Dean at Drury Lane in 1924 deliberately chose to have the lovers’ parts played in a lighter comedy vein than was usual . . . a breakaway from tradition that was a great success (Dean, 1970, p. 239). Trewin (1978, p. 101) recalls that as late as the 1920s, the lovers . . . were being acted as straight romantics. Gradually, players and directors began to explore these scenes in detail; it was soon clear enough that comedy would take over. Helena in particular was discovered to be a great comic role. Morley (1853; 1891, p. 59) had regarded Helena as a pitiful and moving picture of a gentle maid forlorn, playfully developed as beseems the fantastic texture of the poem, but not at all meant to excite mirth, whereas Trewin (1978, p. 101) writes that Audrey Carten (Royal Court, 1920) and Edith Evans (Drury Lane, 1924) were among the first Helenas of a new order and recalls Coral Browne’s irreverent performance in Michael Benthall’s production (Old Vic, 1957) as a soulful, questing creature, bewildered by the complexity of life and love; he concludes (p. 103) that the arrival of Helena, tall, fair, and wistful in the sighing music of her couplets, used to be dramatic; it is now the entry of a comedienne ready for the ten monosyllables of He will not know what all but he do know. There does not appear to have been a single landmark production that solidified this approach, however: Griffiths (ed. 1996, pp. 96–7) collects a series of quotations from the 1920s to the 1950s in each of which reviewers express surprise that Helena can be comic.

As the century proceeded, the comic potential of the lovers was enhanced by more physical action. Occasional bursts of physical comedy can be found in 19th-c. promptbooks: in William Evans Burton’s (Chambers Street Theatre, 1854) Lysander speaks 1314 while throwing [Hermia] violently off – she pauses a moment astounded, then flies at Helena to scratch her, and in Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s (His Majesty’s Theatre, 1900) at 1317 Lys catches Hel & pushes her L of him . . . [Hermia] runs at Hel, is caught by Lys. This kind of action is, however, rare until the 1930s, by which time Bridges Adams could include such directions as Both [Lysander and Demetrius] try to embrace [Helena]. She ducks & moves up C they then fall into each others [sic] arms (1272); Hermia kneels and clings to [Lysander] (1285); and [Lysander] pick up Her[mia]: carry her up C. put her on bank (1365). Physicality increased further in the 1950s and 60s; in Devine’s production, Helena on knees . . . catches hold of [Demetrius’] L[eft] leg and puts her hands round his neck; he then throws her off (741). By 1960, a reviewer could write that whereas not so very long ago . . . the two pairs of lovers, and their entanglements in the forest, were thought dull – and therefore naturally were dull, today directors vie with one another to get all the fun that can be got out of the lovers (Telegraph, 21 Dec. 1960); Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 155) provides other examples of this trend.

This period also shows the earliest hints of interest in a subject that would later become extremely important: the symbolic potential of the distinctions between Athens and the wood. From as far back as the 1870s, scholars have discussed the polarities and parallels between the two worlds, describing them as symbols of aspects of the human experience (see here), but theater practitioners and reviewers throughout the 19th and early 20th c. tend not to discuss the distinctions between the mortals and the fairies but rather to describe the play in its entirety as a spectacle of fantasy and beauty: for example, Tree (1911, n. pag.) enthused about the happy mixture of human perplexities and fairy fantasy in which the immortals and mortals alike are the subjects of illusion and enchantment, and a reviewer of Devine’s production described the ideal as being to set immortals, romantics, and artisans gliding past on three different levels as part of the same lovely caprice until there is no telling which is dream and which reality, who are fantastic mortals and who commonsensical immortals (Times 24 Mar. 1954). Halio (1994, p. 33) suggests that one of Granville-Barker’s aims in his radical redesign was to highlight the distinctions between these supernatural beings and the mortals. This approach, echoed by his followers, was a surprise to conservative critics, who expected the fairies to be familiar; a nostalgic reviewer unhappy with the insectoid fairies in Calthrop’s production felt that it is the Athenians who are the fantastics, the outsiders, and the look of the play should not be tuned to them, but to the comfortable English richness of the rest (Evening Standard 14 Nov. 1923), and a reviewer of Devine’s did not like the fairies to look weird and foreign, preferring them simple and fresh and above all English (Daily Express, 24 Mar. 1954).

Despite the experiments with emphasizing the distinctions between the mortals and the fairies in the first half of the 20th c., Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 51) finds that few directors or critics were, as yet, raising serious questions about the play’s meanings or themes; it was valued for its beautiful verse by neo-Elizabethan bare-stagers and Mendelssohnian pictorialists alike, and their disputes were about methods of staging, not about the meaning of the play itself. An early sign of a change to this attitude may have been Neville Coghill’s production (Haymarket, 1945); Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 62) quotes Coghill as saying that his aim was to present a sort of dramatic paean in praise of young and mature (Theseus) love, in which the flight of the young lovers into the forest was intended to symbolise the idea that marriage meant being dipped in pure Nature and returning under the blessing of nature . . . full of nuptial love. Oberon represented all things green and growing, Titania all things blue and blowing and the production was intended to express the great Wordsworthian truth Let Nature be your Teacher (for related ideas in criticism, see here). Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 65) identifies another early example in Michael Langham’s production (Old Vic, 1960), quoting its program note: It seems the mortals can find peace only when Oberon and Titania have found it. And more than this – they can find it only after being drawn into the world of Dreams back to the roots of mythology and folklore and into Oberon’s domain of half-light – more revealing by far in its fantasies than the world of Reality. After the dreamers have reawakened, their dreams, like most dreams, prove elusive. But the magic has been worked. The mortals have been touched by it, and Jack has found Jill, and wedding rite and consummation must follow. Such ideas about the play’s symbolic meaning typically went unnoticed by reviewers, however, and it was not until Peter Brook’s production (1970) that such interpretations were commonly discussed.

1970 and After

The most influential production after Granville-Barker’s was Peter Brook’s for the Royal Sh. Company in 1970 (for detailed descriptions, see Warren, 1983, pp. 55–61; Halio, 1994, pp. 48–69; Williams, 1997, p. 223–33). Brook stripped away all remnants of the Victorian tradition (save an ironic burst of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March during Bottom’s entrance into Titania’s bower) and staged the play inside a white box in which the fairy magic was represented by circus tricks. Brook cast male actors in every fairy role (except Titania), and his was the first major production to double Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania (earlier examples from 1956 onward are noted by Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 66; and Williams, 1997, pp. 216–7, 315, n. 51). Despite these radical changes, Brook also used an almost full text. His wildly popular production made many rethink the play from first to last (Halio, 1994, p. 69).

Brook’s non-literal setting derived from his symbolic reading of the play’s plot and characters. Brook (1987, p. 96–7) recalls that by dwelling on the image fairy he found that, the fairy world is a manner of speaking in symbolic language of all that is lighter and swifter than the human mind, and he searched for a theatrical way of expressing that idea, ultimately settling (p. 97) on the circus acrobat: a human being who, by pure skill, demonstrates joyfully that he can transcend his natural constraints. Sceptics protested at this approach; for example, Warren (1978, p. 141) argued that the wood, the wild flowers, the juxtaposed court and rural worlds are essential features of the play and to treat them as merely symbols for something else . . . is to jettison not just the surface of the play but its essence as well. Nevertheless, Brook’s production encouraged many later directors to move away from the literal readings of Athens and the wood that had been dominant in the theatre (see here) and instead to present the play as an allegory and to design their productions in such a way as to signify visually their interpretation of its meaning.

Brook’s foregrounding of the play’s symbolism was furthered by his doubling of Theseus/Oberon and of Hippolyta/Titania, which encouraged the notion that the fairy king and queen are another side of the personality of the mortal monarchs, or perhaps that the fairy world is the dream of Theseus and Hippolyta. Reviewers recognized this symbolism: the Illustrated London News saw Oberon and Titania as sub-conscious selves released in dream and night (12 Sep. 1970), and The Observer suggested that the wood is peopled by the subconscious personalities of Theseus and Hippolyta before their wedding; of Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena before they finalise their love. . . . In this extra-terrestrial world we meet that part of ourselves that we bury under social convention (30 Aug. 1970). This doubling choice has subsequently become, whether for aesthetic or economic reasons, virtually universal in British productions (Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 64, n. 85). Calderwood (1991, p. 411) describes its effect: when the actors appear as Oberon and Titania they can’t help evoking ghostly images of their Athenian counterparts. All the more so because just when we are asking ourselves Isn’t that Theseus, and isn’t that Hippolyta? we are also asking ourselves Isn’t this the same subversion of hierarchical and patriarchal order that we just saw so ruthlessly dealt with in Athens? For in Athens we heard that Theseus has won Hippolyta’s love doing [her] injuries, and we saw Egeus, Demetrius, and the law combine in an effort to win Hermia’s love doing her injuries, and now we see Oberon trying to win Titania’s love doing her injuries. It’s all Athens in another key or mode.

On the stage, directors have used the symbolic implications of this doubling for various purposes, but a common approach has been to represent the wood as a form of psychological therapy; Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 72) describes Brook’s production as suggesting that the homeopathically therapeutic happenings in the wood changed not only the young lovers but also Theseus’ ability to temper the excesses of patriarchal law. Reviewers have often described later productions similarly: for example, in Ron Daniels’ (Royal Sh. Company, 1981), both Theseus and Oberon were plunged in pervasive sadness (Guardian 18 Jun. 1982), and it seemed that Oberon’s revenge on Titania reflects and resolves Theseus’s subconscious hostilities toward Hippolyta (New Statesman, 24 Jul. 1982); only the therapeutic dream Theseus and Hippoltya experienced together allowed them to emerge from this sadness, so that having . . . constructively freaked out, they could marry happily (Sunday Times, 20 June 1982). This reading has become so common that, in contrast to previous eras (see here), reviewers may now castigate productions that do not delineate Athens and the wood sufficiently: one reviewer complained of Robert Lepage’s production (Royal National Theatre, 1992), the entirety of which took place within a sea of mud, the whole point of the play is that the characters undergo a transfiguration in their removal to the dark, disturbed world of the forest; if they are in the same element all evening, what crucial journey have they undergone? (The Guardian 11 Jul. 1992).

A few modern directors reject the doubling of Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania. Bill Bryden’s production (Royal National Theatre, 1982), for example, was praised for a moment at which Oberon and Titania come face to face with an unseeing Theseus and Hippolyta: a more powerful moment than can be produced by the now orthodox doubling of roles (Observer 28 Nov. 1982). Holland (1995, pp. 202–3), having seen many instances of doubling, yearns for a production that will explore the differences between the roles rather than their possible connectedness, since connecting the world of the forest and the world of the court in this way seems to me to diminish the real power of the play, the presentation of multiple mirroring worlds, the play’s glorious awareness of the parallel, usually unseen world of the fairies.

On a more general level, the acclaim that Brook’s production received justified and made convincing what had been seen by twentieth-century critics of the Shakespearean theatre as the unforgivable sin: self-conscious innovation (Lopez, 2010, p. 55). Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 234–5) writes that after Brook the burden of reinventing the play now fell heavily on every director, and as a result, the diversity of approaches is staggering to review. . . . [MND] has come to our theatres elaborately staged in both neo-romantic and darkly antiromantic veins, explored as an anthology of gender and class wars, and dressed in Victorian and Edwardian vocabularies. . . . [235] At the end of the twentieth century no single vision, no singular production, can be said to represent a norm.

Despite this diversity of interpretation, some trends can be identified. Several productions have emphasised the notion that the characters are dreaming: in Robin Phillips’s production (1977, Stratford Sh. Festival) Hippolyta’s face froze in half-recollection whenever the word ass was spoken in Act 5 (Warren, 1983, p. 63); and in Adrian Noble’s (Royal Sh. Company, 1994), Theseus delivered 2103–4 as a very deliberate nudge to Hippolyta, as if to say this is the man who was the ass in your dream (Holland, 1995, 202). There are variants on this model. In Bill Alexander’s production (Royal Sh. Company, 1986), only Hippolyta and Titania were doubled, so that reviewers interpreted the wood specifically as the dream of Hippolyta, who fantasized about an alternative relationship, the better to reconcile herself to Theseus (Halio, 1994, pp. 79–81). A group dream was suggested in Lepage’s production, in which the Athenians entered on a bed and in Mike Alfreds’ (Sh.’s Globe Theatre, 2002), which began with a framing device of the characters going to sleep, suggesting a collective fantasy (P.J. Smith, 2002, p. 107). Interpretations such as these may encourage a director to present a wood that is entirely unrelated to a literal forest: Noble’s, for example, was surreal: in a blue void, Puck . . . and the Fairy were seen in midair perched on upturned green umbrellas. Oversize household lamps hung from the flies to suggest stars, and the forest pathways were indicated by a row of doors in the blue backdrop. . . . Titania’s bower, which descended from the flies, was a huge, red, open umbrella, fitted out with pink cushions (Jackson, 1995, p. 351).

Another common interpretation focuses on sexual themes: the laws of Athens stand for repression, while the wood becomes a world of liberating but frightening sexual freedom (on this interpretation in criticism, see here). An exceptionally schematic example was Michael Boyd’s production (Royal Sh. Company, 1999), in which courtiers, in heavy overcoats and fur hats, stood stiffly at attention while snow fell from the dark sky . . . in a court where the stern Athenian law would be enforced by a kind of frigid absolutism; this repressive world was then transformed at the beginning of Act 2 when a male and female courtier began to tear off each other’s outer garments until she was revealed . . . as a very flirtatious and décolleté First Fairy, and he as the bare-chested Puck, and the ensuing action suggested that it was [219] the wood and its inhabitants that held the key to sexuality (Jackson, 2000, p. 218–19). Sexual taboos may be transgressed in such productions: for example, Matthew Francis’s (Albery Theatre, 2001) presented a wood where everyone runs wild sexually, and [Dawn] French’s female Bottom—now with an ass’s hairy haunches—adds a lesbian aspect to the taboo-breaking, bedding down with [Jemma] Redgrave’s Titania (The Independent 1 Apr. 2001). A darker interpretation of the same idea appeared in Lepage’s production, which featured animalistic sexuality amid its mud-filled set: Geckle (1993, 28) recalled the violent sexual coupling of an androgynous Puck . . . and a blue faced fairy and the mud wrestling and group sex of the young lovers in acts three and four, along with the noisy rutting of Titania and Bottom; the Times Literary Supplement described this production as a parable about the passage through terror and sexual mystery to adulthood, in which the lovers faced the primeval slime on which their civilization is founded (Times Literary Supplement, 17 Jul. 1992). The permeation of this reading into more conventional productions can be seen in Michael Hoffman’s 1996 film, whose fairies are dressed as if for a Roman orgy and whose lovers mud-wrestle in a swamp and awake from their adventure naked.

This association of the wood with primal urges is sometimes visualized by depicting the wood as the detritus of modern civilization. In John Caird’s production (Royal Sh. Company), fairyland was an anarchic junkyard adorned with stolen and re-shaped mementos of the human world, including a telephone, abandoned teddy bears and a cluttered clothes-line, where fairy wings are pegged out to dry (Independent, 6 Dec. 1989); in Lucy Bailey’s (Manchester Exchange Theatre, 2002) it was a present-day disused stretch of road by an abandoned car, in the disreputable hinterland between city and country (Dobson, 2003, p. 264), and in Greg Doran’s (Royal Sh. Company, 2005) a stylized pile of miscellaneous scrap metal towered over the back of the stage . . . apparently fly-tipped on a grand scale by affluent Athenians – old prams, bicycles, gramophones, chairs, which identified the forest as a place not so much of fertility as of the cast-away, the residual, the disowned (Dobson, 2006, p. 306).

Some directors turn away from such contemporary interpretations and link the concept of the two worlds to the play’s Elizabethan origins. Robin Phillips’s production (Stratford Sh. Festival, 1976) costumed Hippolyta as Queen Elizabeth I and presented the wood as Elizabeth’s dream, with Theseus as the stern, [63] humourless threat of male domination: this, the production implied, was how Elizabeth regarded the prospect of marriage . . . But she might entertain very different fantasies about lovers . . . and such fantasies formed the basis for the central forest sequence in which she took on the persona of Titania (Warren, 1983, p. 62–3). Bill Bryden’s production portrayed the Athenians as Edwardians while the fairies were dressed in tattered Elizabethan clothes so that upon their arrival onstage, the period slips back three centuries as . . . raggedly spectral costumes fill the stage, almost indistinguishable from dead leaves (Times, 26 Nov. 1982); Bryden interpreted the fairies as the old world of custom and folk ways . . . of what is absent from our culture, what has been lost (interview, Guardian, 23 Nov. 1982), and his production suggested the persistence of earth magic from age to age, as a force lying in wait behind all the changing civilized surfaces (Times 26 Nov. 1982); nature and tradition ultimately turned out to be surprisingly benign to earthlings (New Statesman 2 Dec. 1982). A variation on this interpretation appears in Hoffman’s film, in which the mortals are Italians c. 1900 while the fairies look like ancient Roman gods, satyrs and nymphs.

Another interpretive strand expands on the meta-theatricality opened up by Granville-Barker to treat the fairy magic as a commentary on the theatre. In Brook’s production, the players who were not on stage watched those below (Styan, 1977, p. 226), and on the last lines, Puck jumped from the stage and came through the house, shaking hands left and right, the rest of the company at his heels (Trewin, 1978, p. 105). In Daniels’ the wood scenes took place . . . on the deserted stage of a Victorian theatre at night, strewn with theatrical properties, including scenic flats with their wooden frames, not their painted sides, facing the audience (Warren, 1983, p. 46); in Caird’s Puck read jeeringly from a Penguin edition of the play, then [flung] it contemptuously aside (Independent, 6 Dec. 1989); and Edward Hall’s (Propeller Theatre, 2003) began with Puck handing out costumes to the actors (Dobson, 2004, p. 265). One variant of this metatheatrical approach treats Pyramus and Thisbe as significant to the play’s themes (for critical commentary on this notion, see here); Selbourne (1982, p. 3) observed Brook in early rehearsals describing Pyramus and Thisbe as a microcosm of the play as a whole. . . . It raises questions as to the nature of reality, and the nature of acting. . . . It asks, What is a role? and What is the meaning of the actor’s transformation? Brook (1987, p. 100) later wrote that the mechanicals set themselves to their task with such love that the meaning of their clumsy efforts changes before our eyes. Such an approach raises the possibility that there should be moments of seriousness during the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. One common method of enabling such an effect is to incorporate a moment at which the initially dismissive onstage audience becomes enraptured by the play: Brook located such a moment in Bottom’s speech beginning Sweet Moone (2074) (Selbourne, 1982, p. 205), and in his production, the courtly audience was so carried away by the lamentable comedy that it joined in song with the actors (Trewin, 1978, p. 105). Similarly, in Adrian Noble’s film (1996) this speech is delivered seriously and moves the courtly audience. In Hoffman’s film, it is Flute who changes the mood, dropping his falsetto and wig to perform his speech to the dead Pyramus without affectation; relatedly, in Barrie Rutter’s production (Northern Broadsides, 1994–5), Thisbe’s summoning of the sisters three drew the three women on stage (Hippolyta, Hermia and Helena) tenderly towards him/her (Holland, 1995, p. 201), where they cradled her in their arms in an extraordinary moment of female solidarity in the teeth of this ridiculous scenario (P.J. Smith, 1996, 67). In a related choice, Hoffman’s film sentimentalizes Bottom by depicting him as a henpecked husband whose theatrical exploits are a temporary escape from domestic restrictions.

Some of the changes since 1970 are connected to changing gender relations. Critical interest in Theseus and Hippolyta as a couple was rare until the mid-19th c. (see here) and in Hippolyta as a distinct character until the 20th (see here). Similarly, in the theatre, Theseus governs alone with no Hippolyta in The Fairy-Queen (1692), Hippolyta is of limited presence in the various 17th- and 18th-c. adaptations, and little is written about the Theseus-Hippolyta relationship on the stage until the 20th c. In contrast, when watching modern productions, Trewin (1978, pp. 102–3) recommends, at curtain-rise . . . we should observe the treatment of Hippolyta. . . . There have been several notions of her: tall and coffee-coloured; aloofly disdainful; urgently in love; scuffling with Theseus on the ground; or, just as implausibly [103] (Old Vic, 1960), ironic and in manacles. As early as 1935, Reinhardt’s film presented in Act 1 a sulky Hippolyta who seems unimpressed by her forthcoming marriage. Trewin’s comment on manacles refers to Michael Langham’s production, whose captive Hippolyta was initially sickened by the prospect of marrying Theseus (25 Dec. 1960); by the end of the production she was reconciled to her lord – though he will have to be careful . . . at the end, in love and ready for the revels, she can bear her part in the banter (Illustrated London News, 7 Jan. 1961). Later productions have attempted to make Hippolyta even less of a mere appendage to Theseus by presenting her as shocked by his strict application of the law of Athens; since there is no textual support for this reading, it is often conveyed through blocking related to Theseus’s line Come my Hyppolita: what cheare my loue? (131), the second half of which was often cut in earlier productions (see here). For example, Wells (1991, p. 200) describes Caird’s production: As Theseus delivered judgement on Hermia, Hippolyta moved forwards as if to speak in her defence. She turned scornfully from him as he looked forward to their approaching band [sic] of fellowship [94], clearly aligning herself with the wronged Hermia, again turned sulkily away on Theseus’s Come, my Hippolyta, and flounced off in the opposite direction. In Noble’s production, Hippolyta stormed off stage, leaving Theseus to follow awkwardly (Holland, 1995, p. 203); in the film adaptation of this production, she also slaps him as she exits; McGuire (1985, pp. 1–18) describes earlier variants of this approach from the 1960s and 70s. Such a staging means that when Theseus rejects the law in the final act, Hippolyta can reconcile with him without seeming complicit in the patriarchal laws of Athens. This reading of Hippolyta now dominates to the extent that a reviewer wrote of Francis’s production, it is pleasant to find a Hippolyta . . . who doesn’t keep glaring at Theseus in the approved modern fashion (Telegraph, 1 Apr. 2001).

Another point of friction between old and new ways occurs in Act 4 when Theseus overrules Egeus in favour of Hermia’s wishes. This moment requires a directorial decision because there are no lines between Hermia and Egeus after Theseus’s decision in Act 4 (and in Q1 he disappears in Act 5; in F1 he appears but does not interact with Hermia). In some older productions, reconciliation between father and daughter was signified by Hermia performing submission to her father: Reynolds’ 1816 adaptation features interpolated dialogue in which Hermia begs on her knees for approval from Egeus crying Oh, pardon! pardon! (p. 55), and a trace of this appears in Bridges Adams’ production (Sh. Memorial Theatre, 1934) in which Her[mia] kneels to [Egeus]. He places his hand on her shoulder. shakes hands with Lys[ander] (2152); Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 88) observes that such endings ensure that despite the privileging of the daughter’s wishes, the father is not displaced and the new order has the patriarch’s blessing. Peter Brook took the opposite approach: Williams, 1997, p. 229) writes that Brook exploited for the first time in the play’s performance history, the fact that the Quarto text indicates no explicit reconciliation. . . . [A]s Theseus went on to cancel the hunt, Egeus exited alone, very visibly, before the departure of the court and in a different direction and did not return in Act 5. Similar choices were made by Daniels, Caird and Noble, but other directors seek less divisive solutions: Alfreds had Egeus shrugging as if to say Well, who cares? and exiting to let them get on with it (P.J. Smith, 2002, p. 107), while in Boyd’s Egeus’s [273] fairy identity had already held his sleeping daughter in a loving embrace and he would soon be with her in the final scene exchanging harmonious banter purloined from other characters (Smallwood, 2000, 272–3).

Since the 1960s, scholars have debated whether Bottom and Titania consummate their lust (see n. 1016–19, and here), and the theatre began to answer in the affirmative. Warren (1983, pp. 57–8) relates that in Brook’s production, at 973–6 Titania lay on her back and [58] curled her legs around his, clawing at his thighs, gasping and gabbling in sexual frenzy, and Bottom was carried to her bower with a fairy’s fist thrust as a phallic symbol between his legs. This consummation has subsequently become mainstream in theatre and film, so that even Noble’s otherwise family-friendly production and film could feature graphic copulation in the bower (see Holland, 1995, p. 204). Indeed, a suggestion of the act became expected; a reviewer of Bryden’s production protested at its elderly Titania, whose age, he claimed, belied any sexual intentions in the bower (Financial Times 26 Nov. 1982).

The sinister Oberons introduced in the early 20th c. have persisted into the post-Brook era, and in particular the notion of an Oberon who desires for his wife to copulate with a monster remains present. Calderwood (1991, pp. 420–1) objects that the reasons for Oberon to wish for such a thing are unclear. Certainly, in records of performance it is often difficult to determine his rationale: crucial to the interpretation of a production’s attitude toward this question is Titania’s response when Oberon tells her, there lyes your loue, (see here), but descriptions of this key moment in performance are rare. In Liviu Ciulei’s production (Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, 1985), Titania gave a long, piercing scream, falling to the ground in convulsive shock (Clayton, 1986, p. 233), but Susan Fleetwood in Bryden’s production was merely half-amused to discover the trick they have played on her and always exuding an unaffected warmth (New Statesman 8 Dec. 1982). Film interpretations of the moment are often undefined, with the most precise perhaps being Judi Dench in Hall’s 1968 film, whose cheeks become wet with tears upon being shown Bottom, but who then shifts to a rapturous reconciliation with Oberon.

The malicious, vulgar Pucks inspired by Granville-Barker’s approach have persisted in contemporary theatre, sometimes to extreme levels. When the First Fairy in Caird’s production discovered Puck’s identity, she screamed like a star-struck groupie and grasped his leg, but he responded by kneeing her out of his orbit (Daily Telegraph 12 Dec. 1989). Of the Puck in Noble’s production, it was said Don’t ask what they call him in the wood. Don’t drop your car keys, fairies (Midweek 1 May 1995).

These vicious interpretations of Oberon and Puck can inspire directors to imply that Titania (and, if doubled, Hippolyta) might be happier with Bottom than with their own husbands. Alexander’s production featured, according to Halio (1994, p. 80), a Bottom who was gentler and more sympathetic than usual and a true alternative to the chauvinism of Theseus and Oberon, a suggestion amplified by a sequence in which Hippolyta and Bottom encountered each other briefly before the first mechanicals scene (Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 72). In Act 5 of Noble’s production, Hippolyta offered Bottom her hand at a moment of mutual recognition and shared memory of dream, suggesting that for them too, like the lovers, the convergence of dream, their minds transfigured so together [1815], is a happy [203] memory. Theseus had to put himself rather rapidly between them, for fear that the balance of his marriage might prove fragile (Holland, 1995, pp. 202–3). Similarly, Boyd’s production featured a moment in the last scene at which Bottom walked over to the bride of the monarch and put out his hand, his hard hand, to invite her to have the next dance with him. In the intake of breath, and the stunned silence, that followed, memories of these same two figures, in the moments before the interval, might have wafted into our conscious memories. . . . After a tiny hesitation, Hippolyta accepted (Smallwood, 2000, p. 273).

The lovers have been heavily sexualized in contemporary performance. By the 1960s, their scenes had already become very physical in their comedy (see here), and, perhaps inspired by Hall’s film, this physicality has increased to involve the tearing of clothing and the accretion of mud or dirt, usually to accord with a directorial concept that sees the journey into the wood as an encounter with sexuality and/or nature (see here). Sharpe (2005, p. 52) notes this tendency in Doran’s production, in which the wood was as salacious in its taste for the state of human undress as almost all forests in modern Dreams, being able to slash through the gamut of textiles . . . to remove any logistical barriers to intercourse; a textbook example may be seen in Hoffman’s film. Lovers in these productions are often semi-naked by Act 4, and Warren (1982, p. 147) notes that when Theseus encounters these figures, it is common for his suggestion that they rose vp earely, to obserue / The right of May (1653–4) to be delivered as a double entendre. However, the physicalizing of the lovers’ scenes has not always been used for simple comedy: Brook made the comedy darkly vigorous, sexual, even vicious (Halio, 1994, p. 62) so that the lovers emerged from the wan silliness in which they have been so long imprisoned (Evening Standard 14 Aug. 1972), and Noble was praised for presenting the lovers not only as comic but also as youngsters who suffer their way to maturity (Sunday Times, 7 Aug. 1994).

One final trend of note is that of some directors who have adopted a postmodern style that, in rejecting the Victorian tradition, makes overt reference to it: Daniels’ production took place in a Victorian theatre (see here); in Caird’s, the fairy world was a junkyard of Victorian and Edwardian detritus populated by horrible teenagers in wings and tutus (Wells, 1991, p. 200); and Lopez (2010, pp. 59–60) describes other examples. A more affectionate attitude to the past can be seen in Noble’s production, the visual style of which was seen as an homage to Brook’s (Holland, 1995, p. 202).

Despite all these trends, the diversity of contemporary productions is impossible to summarize. Lopez (2010, pp. 53–4) observes, the strikingly varied performance styles and concepts have a persistent underlying similarity, namely the self-conscious insistence upon their own novelty or ingenuity; he suggests that we might (and perhaps should) see this insistence upon novelty as a testament to the endlessly renewable and self-[54]renewing imaginative potential of Shakespeare’s play. But we might (and certainly should) also see it as a rhetorical gesture . . . a reaction to a perhaps unspoken, entirely understandable anxiety about the possibility that theatre audiences might not need another production of Dream.

Film and Television Versions

MND has been a popular choice for filmmakers since the early days of cinema; for a survey, see Rothwell (2004). The following is a list of those screen adaptations of MND that are available for study and which use Shakespeare’s language and a relatively full text. The list thus excludes adaptations that use modernized language, foreign language adaptations, versions that remove one or more of the subplots, and lost versions. Recordings of live theatrical performances are listed only if they have been commercially released. Silent films are not listed; for descriptions of several surviving examples, see Ball (1968).

Unless otherwise specified, information on cast and crew in versions up to 1990 derives from Rothwell & Melzer (1990). Information for versions made after 1990 derives from the onscreen credits. In addition, DVD availability (as of 2012) is specified where appropriate, and availability of rare TV films at the BFI National Archive has been confirmed.

A film’s title is given only if it differs from MND. Screenwriters listed are all credited alongside Sh., not instead of. Abbreviations used: Dir = director, Scr = screenwriter, Th = Theseus, Hi = Hippolita, Ly = Lysander, Her = Hermia, De = Demetrius, Hel = Helena, Ob = Oberon, Ti = Titania, Pu = Puck, Bo = Bottom.

1935. USA. 132 mins. B/W. Dir: William Dieterle and Max Reinhardt. Scr: Charles Kenyon and Mary C. McCall, Jr. Th: Ian Hunter. Hi: Verree Teasdale. Ly: Dick Powell. Her: Olivia de Havilland. De: Ross Alexander. Hel: Jean Muir. Ob: Victor Jory. Ti: Anita Louise. Pu: Mickey Rooney. Bo: James Cagney. A Hollywood adaptation of Reinhardt’s successful stage productions, produced by Warner Bros. Its cast includes several popular film stars and a lush evocation of the moonlit forest with hints of German Expressionism in the art design. Several balletic sequences are interpolated. Costumes are Athenian for the mortals and fantastical for the fairies. Mendelssohn’s score is used. 133 mins. Available on DVD.

1958. UK. 105 mins. B/W. Dir: Rudolph Cartier. Th: John Westbrook. Hi: Margaret Whiting. Ly: David Oxley. Her: Christine Finn. De: Eric Lander. Hel: Vivienne Drummond. Ob: John Justin. Ti: Natasha Parry. Pu: Gillian Lynne. Bo: Paul Rogers. A lavish production for the BBC’s Sunday Night Theatre series, presented with musical and balletic accompaniment. A 16mm print is preserved at the BFI National Archive in London and is available to view by appointment.

1964. UK. 111 mins. B/W. Dir: Joan Kemp-Welch. Scr: George Rylands. Th: Patrick Allen. Hi: Eira Heath. Ly: John Fraser. Her: Maureen Beck. De: Clifford Elkin. Hel: Jill Bennett. Ob: Peter Wyngarde. Ti: Anna Massey. Pu: Tony Tanner. Bo: Benny Hill. Shot in a studio for ITV’s Play of the Week series on British television. Its style shows the subtle influence of Reinhardt’s productions. The text is largely uncut; Mendelssohn’s score and balletic sequences are included. A commercial VHS edition has been released, but no DVD to date. A 16mm print is preserved at the BFI National Archive in London and is available to view by appointment.

1968. UK. 124 mins. Colour. Dir: Peter Hall. Th: Derek Godfrey. Hi: Barbara Jefford. Ly: David Warner. Her: Helen Mirren. De: Michael Jayston. Hel: Diana Rigg. Ob: Ian Richardson. Ti: Judi Dench. Pu: Ian Holm. Bo: Paul Rodgers. A low-budget film shot in and around a stately home, with costumes that blend Renaissance and modern dress. Stars some of the actors from Hall’s 1959–62 Royal Sh. Company production, but has many differences from the stage version, most notably the semi-naked fairies. Filmed largely in closeup, with magic represented by editing effects such as jump cuts. The text is largely uncut.

1971. UK. 120 mins. Color. Dir: James Cellan Jones. Th: Michael Gambon. Hi: Eleanor Bron. Ly: Edward Fox. Her: Amanda Barrie. De: Jeremy Clyde. Hel: Lynn Redgrave. Ob: Robert Stephens. Ti: Eileen Atkins. Pu: Bunny May. Bo: Ronnie Barker. Shot for the BBC’s Play of the Month series. The cast includes a number of British theatre and TV stars. Filmed on location in and around Scotney Castle, Kent. The costumes are mid-Victorian (The Times 27 Sep. 1971). A VHS tape is preserved at the BFI National Archive in London and is available to view by appointment.

1981. UK. 120 mins. Color. Dir: Elijah Moshinsky. Th: Nigel Davenport. Hi: Estelle Kohler. Ly: Robert Lindsay. Her: Pippa Guard. De: Nicky Henson. Hel: Cherith Mellor. Ob: Peter McEnery. Ti: Helen Mirren. Pu: Phil Daniels. Bo: Brian Glover. A TV film shot in a studio for the BBC Shakespeare series. Costumes are Renaissance, and the cinematography imitates the style of Rembrandt. Uses the full text. DVD available.

1982. USA. 165 mins. Color. Dir: Joseph Papp (theatre), Emile Ardolino and James Lapine (TV recording). Th: James Hurdle. Hi: Diane Venora. Ly: Kevin Conroy. Her: Deborah Rush. De: Rick Lieberman. Hel: Christine Baranski. Ob: William Hurt. Ti: Michele Shay. Pu: Marcel Rosenblatt. Bo: Jeffrey De Munn. A TV recording, shot with multiple cameras, of the 1982 Shakespeare in the Park production, performed in New York’s Central Park. The mortals wear modern dress. A VHS edition has been released, but no DVD to date.

1985. UK/Spain. 72 mins. Color. Dir: Celestino Coronado. Scr: Lindsay Kemp. Th: Neil Caplan. Hi: Manuela Vargas. Ly: David Meyer. Her: Annie Huckle. De: David Haughton. Hel: Cheryl Heazelwood. Ob: Michael Matou. Ti: The Incredible Orlando. Pu: Lindsay Kemp. Bo: Atilio Lopez. (Cast and crew list derived from onscreen credits; that in Rothwell & Melzer (1990) is inaccurate.). An adaptation of a stage production by Lindsay Kemp and David Haughton. Shot for Spanish television and also screened theatrically (Rothwell, 1999, p. 203). The play’s sexual undertones are brought to the fore and queered (Demetrius falls for Lysander and Hermia falls for Helena). The text is cut and rearranged, and Pyramus and Thisbe is replaced by Rom. on stilts. A VHS edition has been released, but no DVD to date.

1996. UK. 105 mins. Color. Dir and scr: Adrian Noble. Th/Ob: Alex Jennings. Hi/Ti: Lindsay Duncan. Ly: Daniel Evans. Her: Monica Dolan. De: Kevin Doyle. Hel: Emily Raymond. Pu: Barry Lynch. Bo: Desmond Barrit. UK. An adaptation of Noble’s 1994 Royal Sh. Company production. Uses surreal modern dress art design. Includes an interpolated framing device of a small boy dreaming the dream and watching the play’s events unfold. DVD available.

1999. USA. 116 mins. Color. Dir and scr: Michael Hoffman. Th: David Strathairn. Hi: Sophie Marceau. Ly: Dominic West. Her: Anna Friel. De: Christian Bale. Hel: Calista Flockhart. Ob: Rupert Everett. Ti: Michelle Pfeiffer. Pu: Stanley Tucci. Bo: Kevin Kline. Features a cast of star actors. Set in a Tuscan hill-town ca. 1900; the fairies look like ancient Roman gods, nymphs and satyrs. DVD available.

2001. The Children’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. UK. 115 mins. Color. Dir: Christine Edzard. Th (voice): Derek Jacobi. Hi (voice): Samantha Bond. Lys: Danny Bishop. Her: Jamie Peachey. Dem: John Heyfron. Hel: Jessica Fowler. Ob: Dominic Haywood-Benge. Ti: Rajouana Zalal. Pu: Leane Lyson. Bo: Oliver Szcypka. 115 min. Performed by a cast of amateur child actors. Renaissance costumes. A VHS edition has been released, but no DVD to date.

The Text on the Stage, 1661–1816

From the late 17th c. until 1840, MND was performed only in heavily adapted versions. The plot was often cut, rearranged and added to, and its language often rewritten and modernized. This appendix describes the large-scale structural changes made to MND in the adaptations of this era; it does not itemize every cut and change.

The Merry Conceited Humours of Bottom the Weaver (1661)

First published in 1661, The Merry Conceited Humours of Bottom the Weaver is a short comic adaptation focusing on the mechanicals and the fairies. It was probably written during the interregnum, but the exact circumstances of its performance are unknown (see here). The description is based on the following text: The Merry conceited Humors of Bottom The Weaver. As It hath been often publikely Acted by some of his Majesties Comedians, and lately, privately, presented, by several apprentices for their harmless recreation, with Great Applause. London: Printed for F. Kirkman and H. Marsh . . . 1661. [Wing S2937] It also appears in two editions of The Wits, or Sport Upon Sport from 1672 (Wing 3219) and 1673 (Wing W3220A); the differences are insignificant.

The Fairy-Queen (1692)

Henry Purcell’s The Fairy-Queen premiered 2 May 1692. It is a semi-opera: long passages of MND are interspersed with song, dance and spectacle. A revised version was performed and published in 1693. The following description is based on both texts, with significant differences indicated. For a full bibliographical comparison, see Dunkin (1945).

• 1.The Fairy-Queen: an opera. Represented at the Queen’s-Theatre By Their Majesties Servants. London: Printed for Jacob Tonson . . . 1692. [Wing S2681]
• 2.The Fairy-Queen: an opera. Represented at the Queen’s-Theatre By Their Majesties Servants. With Alterations, Additions, and several new songs. London: Printed for Jacob Tonson . . . 1693. [Wing S2682]

Savage (1973, p. 209) states that The Fairy-Queen contains about 1,350 spoken lines (Shakespearean, modified-Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean) and 250 sung lines (all non-Shakespearean but for Bottom’s eight on ousels and cuckoos). The character of Hippolyta is entirely removed. The Athenian setting disappears from the text: for example, Theseus is simply the Duke (as in Bottom the Weaver), and the Athenian garments (645) become an Embroider’d Garment (1692, p. 14). The text is pruned of what, in the Restoration, seemed archaic diction and syntax, and the verse is regularized in meter and rhyme (Williams, 1997, p. 45).

The Comick Masque of Pyramus And Thisbe (1716) and Pyramus and Thisbe: A Mock-Opera (1745)

The only MND adaptations of the first half of the 18th c. were two related playlets that adapt the mechanicals’ scenes into satires on English opera. All references to the fairies, the lovers, and the Athenian court are removed.

• 1.[Richard Leveridge,] The comick masque of Pyramus and Thisbe. As it is Perform’d at the Theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields . . . London: Printed for W Mears , , , MDCC XVI [1716].
• 2.[John Frederick Lampe,] Pyramus and Thisbe a mock-opera. Written by Shakespeare. Set to Musick by Mr. Lampe. Perform’d at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden. . . . London: Printed by H. Woodfall, jun . . . MDCC.XLV [1745].

Leveridge’s text adapts MND; Lampe’s adapts Leveridge’s. The two playlets have had little influence on the play’s stage history, and the following thus presents only a brief summary.

The Fairies (1755)

The Fairies was David Garrick’s first MND adaptation; it premiered at Drury Lane on 3 Feb. 1755. The dialogue was sung in recitative, and numerous songs are interpolated. It was a commercial success (see here).

The Fairies was published in 1755 in two editions of two issues each; see Pedicord & Bergmann, 1981, 3:422). This description is based on the second issue of the second edition (ESTC T035205), but the differences are insignificant. [David Garrick,] The fairies. An opera. Taken from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Written by Shakespear. As it is Perform’d at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. The Songs from Shakespear, Milton, Waller, Dryden, Lansdown, Hammond, &c. The Music composed by Mr. Smith. London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper . . . MDCCLV [1755]. The text is only 560 lines long and incorporates numerous songs (not described here). In general, it follows Shakespeare’s structure, but the mechanicals are entirely removed. The text is frequently rewritten and stripped to the essentials of exposition. For a fuller description of the cutting than is presented here, see the notes to the edition of Pedicord & Bergman (1981, vol. 3).

Garrick and Colman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1763)

This adaptation was begun by David Garrick but completed by George Colman (Stone, 1939). The production was disastrous and played only one night, 23 Nov. 1763 (see here). Garrick’s original ideas are recorded in a MS promptbook at the Folger Sh. Library (see Pedicord & Bergmann, 1981, 4:420–6, whose edited text is based on this MS., not on Colman’s text). The following description is based on the 1763 printed text, which represents Colman’s completion of Garrick’s work. [George Colman,] A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Written by Shakespeare: With Alterations and Additions, and Several New Songs. As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal In Drury-Lane. London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson . . . MDCCLXIII [1763]. The adaptation follows Shakespeare’s overall structure relatively closely but incorporates numerous songs, some of which are from The Fairies, but many of which are new.

A Fairy Tale (1763)

George Colman created A Fairy Tale in three days after the failure of his previous MND adaptation (see above). It is a two-act musical afterpiece about Bottom and the fairies; the lovers are entirely removed. A Fairy Tale received a more positive reception than its predecessor (see here) and was revived in a somewhat shorter version in 1777 (Williams, 1997, p. 75). The following description is of the 1763 original: [George Colman,] A fairy tale. In two acts. Taken from Shakespeare. As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal In Drury-Lane. London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson. MDCCLXIII. [1763].

Reynolds’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1816)

Frederick Reynolds’ adaptation premiered at Covent Garden on 17 January 1816. Several songs were taken from the Garrick-Colman 1763 version, but others were added by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop. It was financially successful and was revived in London and New York (see here). The following description is based on [Frederick Reynolds,] A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written by Shakspeare: with alterations, additions, and new songs; as it is performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden. London: printed for John Miller . . . 1816. In general, Reynolds’ MND follows the structure of the Garrick-Colman 1763 MND, but cuts it even further to allow for music, numerous songs (not itemized here) and spectacle, and changes the ending drastically.

The Text on the Stage from 1840

Most productions of MND today are performed with few cuts, but in the Victorian era and, to a lesser extent, the early 20th c., drastic cuts were commoner. This section analyzes the commonest textual alterations recorded in theatrical promptbooks from 1840 onward (when MND began to be performed in relatively faithful forms). The promptbooks surveyed are a representative sample of major productions staged in London, New York, and Stratford-upon-Avon from 1840–1999. In order to illustrate the most popular choices, changes are noted only if they appear in more than one of the promptbooks studied. Other studies of this kind include Halstead (1978) and Griffiths (ed. 1996), both of which present texts of MND annotated with information on textual changes in a similar selection of promptbooks to those studied here.

Note that the descriptions below use slightly inaccurate shorthand terms to refer to the time periods covered in these productions: 19th c. refers to the promptbooks from Vestris to Tree, who tend to cut heavily; early 20th c. refers to those from Bridges Adams to Hall, who tend to cut less heavily; and late 20th c. refers to the post-Brook directors (Alexander to Boyd), who tend to cut minimally.

List of Versions

This is a list of promptbooks studied for this analysis. Peter Brook’s iconic 1970 production does not appear in this study because its textual alterations were few and idiosyncratic; for an acting edition of this text, see Loney (1974).

• 1. Alexander: A copy of PEN2 marked for Bill Alexander’s promptbook of the Royal Sh. Company production at the Royal Sh. Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 8 Aug. 1986. Also used at the Barbican Theatre, London. [Sh. Centre Library RSC/SM/1/1986/MND1.]

  This production was unusual in doubling only Hippolyta and Titania. The setting was the 1930s and 50s (Halio, 1994, pp. 77–9).

• 2. Atkins: A copy of PEN1 marked for Robert Atkins’ promptbook of the Sh. Memorial Theatre production, Stratford-upon-Avon, 9 May 1944. [Shattuck no. 41; Sh. Centre Library 71.21/1944 MI.]

  Atkins had played Bottom numerous times and directed the play thrice at the Old Vic (Griffiths, ed. 1996, pp. 46–7) and almost annually at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre from 1933 through to the 1950s (Williams, 1997, p. 157). This promptbook had been used in 1938; was erased and reused (Shattuck, 1965, p. 330).

• 3. Benthall: A copy of an unidentified Shakespeare edition marked for Michael Benthall’s promptbook of the Sh. Memorial Theatre production, Stratford-upon-Avon, 23 Apr. 1949. [Shattuck no. 42; Sh. Centre Library 71.21/1949MI.]

  The setting was high Renaissance, but the wood was exotic and dark with a frightening atmosphere (Williams, 1997, p. 189).

• 4. Benson: A copy of the Memorial Theatre edition marked for F. R. Benson’s touring production, first staged at the Globe Theatre, London, 19 Dec. 1889. Entitled Working Stage Book for Music, Gas, Limes, Supers and Children’s Entrances, signed and dated 1897 by F. R. Ayrton. [Shattuck no. 27; Sh. Centre Library 72.923BEN.]

  Benson’s production was staged many times between 1889 and 1916. A modestly spectacular traditional Mendelssohnian-Athenian Dream in the Victorian manner, its cutting is relatively restrained for the time, more akin to Vestris and Phelps than to Kean (Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 35).

• 5. Boyd: A copy of PEN2 marked for Michael Boyd’s promptbook of the Royal Sh. Company production at the Royal Sh. Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 25 March 1999. [Sh. Centre Library, RSC/SM/1/1999/MND1.]

  Boyd’s production used fantastical modern dress, beginning in a wintery, buttoned-up court, and then moving into a sexually unrestrained fairy world.

• 6. Bridges Adams: A copy of the Temple Sh. edition marked for William Bridges Adams’ promptbook of the Sh. Memorial Theatre production, Stratford-upon-Avon, 16 Apr. 1934. The SCL catalogue notes that it was originally used for 1928 production and subsequently on the 1928/9 Canadian tour and for the 1930 and 1932 productions. [Shattuck no. 39; SCL: 71.21/1934MI.]

  Bridges Adams directed MND at Stratford several times. From 1928 to 1930, the production was Athenian in costume and featured Mendelssohn’s music. In 1932 it was restaged in Elizabethan dress, and Mendelssohn was banished (Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 54).

• 7. Burton: A text of MND from a copy of The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare; Illustrated: Embracing a Life of the Poet, and Notes, Original and Selected, vol. 2 (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Gray, 1850), marked by John Moore, stage manager, for William Evans Burton’s production at Burton’s Theatre on Chambers Street, New York, 3 Feb. 1854. [Shattuck no. 10; Folger Sh. Library, PROMPT MND 21.] This book also contains occasional descriptions of cuts and other choices in Vestris’s production; it also includes notes on Daly’s, as Moore was stage manager for both Burton and Daly (Williams, 1997, p. 300, n. 104).

  Burton’s production featured spectacular scenery (based on archaeological research) and Mendelssohn’s score. Cutting is fairly heavy, at 366 lines (Williams, 1997, pp. 115–17, 296, n. 26).

• 8. Caird: A copy of PEN2 marked for John Caird’s promptbook of the Royal Sh. Company production at the Royal Sh. Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 11 Apr. 1989. [Sh. Centre Library RSC/SM/1/1989/MND1.]

  Caird’s production was a postmodern parody of the Victorian tradition.

• 9. Daly: A copy of The Comedy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Written by William Shakespeare and Arranged for Representation at Daly’s Theatre, by Augustin Daly, Produced There for the First Time January 31, 1888 (1888, privately printed), marked with further cuts. The Folger catalogue suggests that it may be the book for the 1895–6 tour. [Shattuck no. 23; Folger Sh. Library, PROMPT MND 5.]

  Daly’s was a spectacular New York production. Cutting is heavy at 558 lines (Williams, 1997, p. 131).

• 10. Daniels: A copy of PEN2, marked for Ron Daniels’ promptbook of the Royal Sh. Company production at the Royal Sh. Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 15 Jul. 1981. The book was also used at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, and the Barbican Theatre, London, in 1982. [Sh. Centre Library, RSC/SM/1/1981/MND1.]

  Daniels’ production used a Victorian setting with the wood represented by a deserted theater and the minor fairies by puppets (Griffiths, ed. 1996, pp 70–2).

• 11. Devine: A copy of RID marked for George Devine’s promptbook of the Sh. Memorial Theatre production, Stratford-upon-Avon, 23 Mar. 1954. [Shattuck no. 43; Sh. Centre Library, 71.21/1954M.]

  This production was notable for its grotesque, bird-like Oberon and Titania.

• 12. Granville-Barker. A copy of the 1912 Favourite Classics edition marked for Harley Granville-Barker’s promptbook of the Savoy Theatre production, London, 6 Feb. 1914. [Shattuck no. 35; Shakespeare Collection, University of Michigan Library.]

  A modernist production that rejected illusionism. Very few textual alterations. Not consulted in person; descriptions of its cuts derive from Dymkowski (1986, pp. 74–5).

• 13. Hall: a copy of RID marked for Peter Hall’s promptbook of the Sh. Memorial Theatre production, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2 Jun. 1959. [Shattuck no. 46; Sh. Centre Library, 71.21/1959M.].

  Hall’s popular production was Elizabethan in costume and used a fixed set.

• 14. Kean: A copy of Shakespeare’s Play of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Arranged for Representation at The Princess’s Theatre, with Historical and Explanatory Notes by Charles Kean (London: John Chapman, 1856), marked with additional cuts by George Ellis, the stage manager. The Folger catalogue states that this is a proof copy of Kean’s published text, used by Ellis as his workbook. Performances began 15 Oct. 1856. [Shattuck no. 15; Folger Sh. Library, PROMPT MND 9.]

  Kean’s was a spectacular production, which attempted historical accuracy in the costuming and scenery. The cutting (838 lines) is unusually heavy, even for its time (Williams, 1997, p. 122).

• 15. Phelps: A text of MND from a copy of vol. 2 of The Plays of William Shakspeare, ed. Alexander Chalmers, 2nd ed., 9 vols. (London: J. Nichols [etc.], 1811) marked for Samuel Phelps’s promptbook of the Sadler’s Wells production, London, 19 Oct. 1861. [Shattuck no. 19; Folger Sh. Library, PROMPT MND 13.] The Folger catalogue states that this promptbook is for the final 1861 revival of this production (first staged in 1853). The catalogue states that it is based on the 1805 edition of Chalmers; in fact, it is based on the 2nd ed. (1811).

  Phelps’s MND was an early spectacular Victorian production. Cutting is fairly heavy, at 372 lines (Williams, 1997, p. 113).

• 16. Lepage: A copy of ARD2, marked for Robert Lepage’s promptbook of the Royal National Theatre production at the Olivier Theatre, London, 7 Mar. 1992. [National Theatre Archive, RNT/SM/1/354].

  Lepage’s modern dress production was performed in a sea of mud.

• 17. Noble: A copy of PEN2, marked for Adrian Noble’s promptbook of the Royal Sh. Company production at the Royal Sh. Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 3 Aug. 1994. [Sh. Centre Library RSC/SM/1/1994/MND1.]

  Noble’s production used fantastical modern dress and a surreal wood composed of flying umbrellas and dangling lightbulbs.

• 18. Tree: A copy of CLN1 marked by Fred Grove, stage manager for Herbert Beerbohm Tree, as a souvenir promptbook for Tree’s production at Her Majesty’s Theatre (staged in 1900 and 1911). [Shattuck no. 31; Folger Sh. Library, PROMPT MND 7.]

  Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s production was perhaps the zenith of the spectacular tradition. Cutting is fairly heavy, at 410 lines.

• 19. Vestris: A copy of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream: A Comedy, in Five Acts, by William Shakespere. As Revived at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, November 16th, 1840. London: J[ames] Pattie, [1840].

  Lucia Elizabeth Vestris’s production was the first since the 17th c. to present a relatively full text and instigated many aspects of the Victorian style of producing MND. Williams (1977, pp. 4–5) shows that Pattie’s publication represents Vestris’s text more accurately than another published by Thomas Hailes Lacy.

Common Textual Changes

1.1. The Judgment of Theseus (4–136)

Theseus and Hippolyta prepare for their wedding and Theseus makes his judgment on Egeus’s complaint.

Egeus’s description of Lysander’s wooing of Hermia was trimmed by all 19th-c. directors, usually by removing all or part of the lengthy list of seduction methods (36–43), presumably for its repetitive nature.

All of the 19th-c. directors except Vestris, Phelps, and Benson trim Theseus’s lecture on daughterly subjection (54–59); the result is to make the debate more about Demetrius’s worthiness than Hermia’s need for obedience. This choice may be related to the distaste expressed by some critics for Theseus’s harshness (see n. 55–9; here). 20th-c. directors normally retain the speech, although Atkins entirely removes it.

Theseus’s explanation of Hermia’s options and her reply (74–91) are cut to varying degrees by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, and Daly. Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 91) speculates that these were problematic lines in the nineteenth century on pious and/or anachronistic grounds; certainly, critics have called the reference to nuns anachronistic (see n. 79), and have also speculated on whether it is favourable toward Catholicism (see n. 74–87). Some directors demonstrate particular concern about Hermia’s line Ere I will yield my virgin Patent, vp (89): Daly alters the last three words to maiden heart and vow, and Tree reduces it to ere I will yield unto his lordship.

Theseus’s leave-taking (123–35) is lengthy and, critics have noted, repetitive (n. 132–5); it is trimmed by all 19th-c. directors to varying degrees. In particular, while all keep Come my Hippolita (131), most cut the words that follow, what cheare my loue?, which could imply that Hippolita is downcast (see n. 131). In contrast, 20th-c. productions usually keep this line, often using it to suggest that Hippolyta disapproves of the treatment of Hermia (see here); indeed, Atkins, the only 20th-c. director to cut any of Theseus’s lines here, removes the lines after 131, highlighting Theseus’s question further.

1.1. The Lovers Make their Plans (138–265)

Lysander unveils to Hermia his plan to escape Athens, and the two inform Helena of it.

Lysander’s and Hermia’s alternating lines at 146–51 have not always been popular. Although Gentleman (ed. 1774) found them to have a pretty effect in reading, and must have a better on the stage and Granville-Barker (1924; 1974, p. 112) regarded them as one of the most charming things that Shakespeare ever wrote, the overt artificiality noted by critics (n. 144–59) seems to have repelled 19th-c. directors. Vestris cut Hermia’s lines, while Burton, Kean, Daly, Benson, and Tree cut the entire section; Atkins removes two lines. Shaw (1895; 1907, p. 172) was disgusted to find that Daly cuts out the whole antiphony, and leaves Lysander to deliver a long lecture without interruption from the lady.

Similarly, the rhyming couplets at 209–14 are trimmed by Kean, Tree, and Benson. Lysander’s digressive lines about lightning (155–9) are removed by Tree, Bridges Adams, and Atkins.

Hermia’s vows of love to Lysander (179–87) are trimmed by most 19th- and early 20th-c. directors. One reason may be suggested by Gentleman (ed. 1774), who sighed, we wish the Author had not here, nor on any other occasion, changed pleasing emphatic blank verse for unpleasing unnatural rhimes. Among the directors who trim this sequence, all of them cut the reference to Dido and Aeneas (184–5), perhaps for the anachronism noted by critics (see n. 184–5), or perhaps simply for obscurity given that the mythological figures are not referred to by name. Burton, Daly, Kean, and Phelps also remove the reference to Cupid’s arrow and its golden head (181); Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 96) wonders whether they saw a phallic reference. Shaw (1895; 1907, p. 172) quotes from I sweare to prospers loues (180–3) and sarcastically observes, Mr Daly’s powerful mind perceived at a glance that the second and third lines are superfluous, as their omission does not destroy the sense of the passage. He accordingly omitted them.

Vestris, Burton, Kean, and Tree trim to varying extents Hermia’s expression of sympathy for Helena; in particular, each of them removes the lines about Helena’s wish to catch Hermia’s words, voice and tongue (199–201), which have puzzled some critics (n. 199–201); Vestris, Burton, and Kean include all three lines in their cuts, while Tree keeps 199 (making sense of the line by following his edition’s emendation to yours would I catch).

Scholars have found Hermia’s lines about her love turning heaven to hell (217–20) confusing; perhaps agreeing with Thirlby (MS 1747–53) that they are very odd and liable to ridicule (n. 271–20), Vestris, Phelps, Benson, Atkins, and Hall cut them.

All 19th-c. and most early 20th-c. directors trim Helena’s long soliloquy on her plight (240–65). While their cuts are varied, there is a tendency to focus on her belief that she can transform Demetrius’s qualities (244–7), on her description of the childishness of Cupid (250–5) and on the image of melting hail (258–9), while the briefer image of Cupid’s blindness (249) is usually retained.

1.2. Quince Assembles his Cast (269–371)

The mechanicals meet, and Peter Quince casts his production of Pyramus and Thisbe.

Most directors leave this scene virtually uncut. The only regularly cut passage is Bottom’s dithering over his beard colour and Quince’s subsequent joke about French crowns (351–9), which were presumably deemed too dated: Daly, Kean, and Phelps cut all of this material; Vestris, Burton, and Boyd keep the bare idea of beard-choosing (cutting 354–9); Tree cuts both references to French crowns, and Benson, Bridges Adams, Atkins, and Hall cut only Quince’s French crown joke (358–9).

The comedy is sometimes amplified with interpolations. One recurring convention, begun by Benson (Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 107) and followed by Tree and several Stratford productions, is a deaf Starveling: Tree’s promptbook records Starveling saying Eh? after several lines; in both Bridges Adams and Atkins, Starveling does not respond to his name at 320, and the others have to shout. In both Tree and Bridges Adams, Starveling, mishearing Quince at 323, expresses his delight at being cast as Thisbe and has to be corrected. Atkins drags the joke even further: Quince. Thisby’s mother / Star. Brother / All. Mother / Star. Oh, Sister.

2.1. Puck Meets the First Fairy (375–431)

Puck meets the First Fairy and describes himself, Oberon and Titania.

Following the lead of Frederick Reynolds’ 1816 adaptation, Vestris and Kean rework this episode to delay Puck’s entrance: his lines at 375–401 are given to a second fairy, so that he can have a more dramatic entrance (in both, he rises on a mushroom) at 402. Benson creates a simpler version of the delayed entrance: the scene begins with the First Fairy singing her first speech as a solo, Puck’s question at 375 is moved to after 381, and the Fairy replies with 384.

The Fairy’s list of tasks (380–5) is shortened by Kean, Daly, Tree, Benson, and Alexander; their choices vary, but all cut 383, perhaps for its potentially obscure use of freckles.

The lengthy descriptions of Puck’s mischief, which are full of archaic language, are shortened by most 19th-c. directors and by Atkins and Hall. The sections that attract the knife of more than one director are the milk-skimming and wanderer-misleading (406–11), the beguiling of horses (416–17), the crying of tailour (425) and the neezing quire (426–7). Since lines 412–13 do not scan, some directors insert words at the beginning of 413: Daly inserts Ha ha ha!, while Kean and Bridges Adams prefer Fairy, even though the scholarly consensus prefers a dramatic pause or gesture (see n. 412–13). At 424, the word bumme (424) clearly offended 19th-c. directors as much as it had done scholars (see n. 424): Vestris, Phelps and Tree simply remove the word, while Kean changes it to seat and Daly to beneath.

2.1. The Meeting of Oberon and Titania (434–563)

Titania encounters Oberon and refuses to give up the Indian boy; Oberon orders Puck to fetch the magic flower.

Titania’s description of Oberon as Corin (441–3) is cut by most of the 19th-c. directors, as are the classical allusions describing his infidelity (452–5). Griffiths (ed. 1996, pp. 124–5) suggests that these cuts were made for their references to adultery, but since all the directors keep Titania’s reference to Your buskind mistresse, and your warrior loue (446), the obscurity of the allusions is a more likely reason. The language is, however, certainly toned down: Kean and Tree remove 437, perhaps for the uncomfortable word bed, while Benson cuts the reference to the marriage bed at 447–8, and Kean changes their bed (448) to them both and Daly to their union.

Of Titania’s exceptionally long description of the changing weather (463–92), Gentleman (ed. 1774, ed.) wrote, though too long for repetition, we know not which lines might be spared. Directors have been less squeamish: Burton, Kean, Phelps, and Daly, as well as Hall (unusually for a 20th-c. director) cut the entire speech, while Vestris, Tree, Benson, and Atkins cut large sections of it. Kean and Tree also shorten Titania’s list of meeting places (458–62).

Titania’s description of the Indian boy’s mother is trimmed by the 19th-c. directors, every one of whom removes its references to pregnancy (504–7). Griffiths (ed. 1996, pp. 126–7) attributes these cuts to concerns over propriety. Of the 20th-c. directors, only Atkins adjusts this moment, by trimming 506–7.

The dialogue between Puck and Oberon (524–65) is normally left intact by directors.

2.1. Helena Follows Demetrius (564–625)

Oberon watches as Demetrius and Helena arrive in the wood and Demetrius spurns her.

At the beginning of the episode, Demetrius’s repetitive diction seems to have been disliked: the most often cut lines are 571–2, with their archaic pun (wodde, within this wood), which are removed by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, Daly, Tree, and Atkins; Kean, Phelps, and Tree cut 569 too (and Kean also cuts 567).

Helena’s description of her powerlessness (574–92) is cut in its entirety by Kean, and the majority of 19th- and early 20th-c. directors cut to some extent the spaniel image (especially 587–9); they may have been disturbed by the degree to which Helena degrades herself, since Gentleman (ed. 1774) noted (see n. 582–9), there is somewhat very mean, and we hope unnatural, in the open servility of Helena’s affection. Late 20th-c. directors tend to retain the lines for their comic potential (Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 129).

Another site of heavy cutting is Demetrius’s attack on Helena’s modesty and her defense of it (593–605): Burton, Phelps, and Daly cut all or most of it, while Kean and Atkins remove the implied reference to rape at 596–8. A final target is Helena’s reversals of chase narratives (609–13), perhaps for its classical allusions or for its repetition; Kean, Phelps, Benson, Tree, and Hall cut all or most of it, while Bridges Adams and Atkins cut only the animal imagery (611–13).

2.1. Oberon Makes Plans for Titania, Demetrius and Helena (626–49)

Oberon plans to use the magic flower on Titania, and orders Puck to do the same to Demetrius.

This short episode is generally left untouched by directors, but, perhaps surprisingly, Oberon’s famous I know a banke speech (630–7) was not sacred in the 19th c. This is no doubt related to the fact that the speech was frequently sung, often to the popular setting by Charles Edward Horn, a tradition still being performed as late as 1936 (see n. 630–7; Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 132–3; Williams, 1997, pp. 99, 293, n. 20); Vestris, Kean, Benson, and Tree all refer to the speech as a duet between Oberon and a fairy. Common cuts include 632–3 (on the woodbine and the eglantine), which are cut by Vestris, Kean, and Tree, and 636–7 (on the snake skin), which are cut by Vestris, Burton, Phelps, Kean, and Daly. The speech was still considered alterable in 1959: Devine moves 636–7 to before 634, so that the speech shifts more smoothly from describing the fairies to describing Titania’s fate.

2.2. The Charming of Titania (651–85)

Titania’s fairies sing her a lullaby, and Oberon charms her with the flower.

Directors generally leave this episode uncut; some remove a few lines from the lullaby, but there is no consistency in their choices. However, Burton and Daly transpose the entirety of this episode to after 811 (i.e., after Hermia’s dream), so that all four lovers are seen to enter the wood before Titania is charmed. The reason may be related to the fact that illusionistic productions typically introduced a spectacular scene change when Titania entered at 650 (see Griffiths, ed. 1996, p. 134).

2.2. Lysander and Hermia Sleep (687–736)

Lysander and Hermia prepare to sleep the night in the forest; Puck charms Lysander with the flower.

Despite Hermia’s firm rejection of it, Lysander’s desire to sleep next to her (693–715) seems to have been too racy for 19th-c. directors; indeed, Holland (Culture, 1994, p. 228) notes that it has been cut or reworked as far back as Purcell’s The Fairy-Queen (1692), and Gentleman (ed. 1774) recommended cutting lines 695–714, for though founded in delicacy, they may raise warm ideas. Vestris and Kean cut the entire discussion; the other 19th-c. directors retain the idea of Lysander lying further off, but trim in various ways the ensuing debate about it.

Directors typically leave the rest of the scene untouched, although Puck’s gradual realization that he has found the Athenians (719–28) is shortened by Kean and Daly in different ways.

2.2. Lysander Falls for Helena (738–811)

Helena encounters Lysander, who falls in love with her and follows her; after a nightmare, Hermia awakes alone.

This episode is shortened by most 19th-c. directors and by Atkins, and the cuts tend to focus on the same areas although the exact details vary considerably. Helena’s claim to monstrous ugliness (747–54) is heavily cut by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, and Atkins and trimmed by Benson and Bridges Adams; Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 139) attributes these cuts to Helena’s loquaciousness. Lysander’s equally lengthy rationalist defence of his love (770–7) is cut by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, and Atkins and drastically shortened by Benson and Tree.

The supercilious tone and curious repetitions in Helena’s subsequent attack on Lysander (780, 784) are minimized by Burton and Daly, who cut 780–3, and by Vestris, who removes the repetition of ist not enough and the exclamation young man from 780. Furness (ed. 1895) thought the repetitive style an indicator of sobbing (see n. 780–1), but it is possible that it was seen as too comic in an age when the lovers tended to be played seriously (here).

Lysander’s meditation on surfeits and heresies (792–6) is cut in its entirety by Kean, Phelps, Daly, and Benson, probably for its digressive nature. In addition, Vestris, Kean, and Daly each trim some of Hermia’s calls to Lysander (807–11), presumably for their repetition. Of the cutting of 809–11 by Vestris, Halliwell (1841, p. 51) complained that it destroys the climax, and causes the whole to fall languidly on the ear.

As noted above, Daly and Burton place the charming of Titania (651–85) at the end of this episode.

3.1. The Mechanicals Rehearse (814–87)

While preparing to rehearse Pyramus and Thisbe in the wood, the mechanicals discuss how to represent the lion, wall and moonshine.

As with the other scenes involving the mechanicals, this one is left largely uncut by most directors. The only recurring cut is the interchange about the prologue’s meter (834–7), which both Burton and Daly remove.

Snug has no definite lines in this scene (the speech prefixes for Sn. could apply to Snout), and some directors thus reassign lines to him. Benson and Tree make him the character who is afraid of the lion (839, a change from Starveling), amplifying the joke by making Snug afraid of his own role. Vestris, Kean, and Benson give Snug You can neuer bring in a wal (876, which Q1 assigns to Snout, and Q2 and F1 to the ambiguous Sn.; see n. 876); Craik (1958, p. 18) notes that the joke is funnier if given to a joiner, the very man who should have built the stage wall.

Some Stratford promptbooks of the early 20th c. record interpolated comic exclamations. For example, when the mechanicals look for moonshine in the almanac (864), Bridges Adams notes that All look over Quince [sic] shoulder; they all say No-o-o, then Yes!

3.1. Bottom Is Translated (889–936)

The mechanicals begin their rehearsal; Bottom is turned into an ass by Puck, and they all run away.

Few alterations are made to this sequence. However, Puck’s description of his ability to terrify (921–6) has been unpopular with directors of all eras: Vestris, Burton, Kean, Atkins, and Lepage cut the entirety of it, while Phelps, Daly, Benson, and Tree remove the references to animal transformations (923–6). Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 147) suggests that the intention of the cutting is to keep the focus on Bottom rather than Puck.

Directors often enhance the chaotic nature of the rehearsal and its interruption with interpolated lines. For example, when Caird’s Quince corrects Flute Ninus toombe, man (911), the bewildered Flute carefully repeats all three words; in Atkins’s production, as Flute delivers his lines, Quince repeatedly says Pip, pip, pip, reminding him of the need for falsetto; and in a pedantic move, Daniels gives the terrified Snout the line Murder! in order to agree with Puck’s later report that a mechanical cried out that word (1048).

3.1. Titania Meets Bottom (937–1020)

Bottom is accosted by the lovestruck Titania. Few directors make changes to this short episode.

A common comic touch is for Bottom’s nay at 950 to be delivered as a donkey’s neigh (recorded in Daly’s and Tree’s promptbooks); the same joke is presumably behind the Eh?! that Atkins’s Bottom utters after 950 (perhaps bewildered because he has neighed). Benthall records neighing after 954 and after acquaintance too in 1007.

Bottom’s musing on cuckoos (951–3) has been found unfunny by directors in all eras: Vestris, Burton, Kean, Daly, Tree, Bridges Adams, Atkins, Benthall, Devine, Hall, and Boyd all cut it; even Granville-Barker, who presented an almost full text, removed these lines. Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 148) notes that the cut creates a sharper contrast between Bottom’s singing and Titania’s response to it. In addition, Bottom’s archaic comments on honest neighbours and gleeking (962–4) are cut or trimmed by Vestris, Kean, Daly, Tree, and Hall.

Titania’s digressive parting speech about the weeping moon (1017–19) is cut or trimmed by Burton, Kean and Daly, conceivably in part for the discordance between poetic language and erotic desire later articulated by Kott (1964, pp. 228–9; see also n. 1016–19).

3.2. Puck Reports to Oberon (1022–62)

Puck reports to Oberon on what has happened to Titania and the mechanicals.

One might expect Puck’s speech (1028–56) to be a popular cut, since, as Gentleman (ed. 1774) suggested, though Puck’s narration possesses spirit, ease, and painting, yet as it only recites what is already known. . . . we think the scene would begin better with Oberon’s speech, supposing he had heard all from his attendant spirit before they appear. In fact, directors have tended to retain most of it; Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 152–3) explains that this episode is often the first scene after the interval, and thus serves as useful recapitulation. The only common cut in this episode is Puck’s image of the fleeing mechanicals as scattering birds (1042–6) and the ensuing description of their escape (1047–52); the section on the birds has been singled out for praise by scholars (see n. 1042–6), but to directors it presumably seemed merely digressive, so that Phelps and Daly cut the entire passage, while Vestris, Burton, Kean, Benson, Tree, Bridges-Adams, Atkins, Devine, Hall, and Lepage trim it of lines in different ways.

3.2. Hermia Accuses Demetrius (1064–1132)

Demetrius is now in love with Hermia. Oberon orders Puck to correct his mistake.

This episode is frequently cut in a number of recurrent places, illustrating the 19th-c. dislike for the scenes of the lovers quarreling (here, here). Perhaps because of the line’s metrical irregularities (see n. 1071–2), Vestris, Burton, Kean, and Daly cut from 1071 the words Being ore shooes in blood, plunge in the deepe, the latter three solving the resultant grammatical incoherence by changing and to then.

Vestris, Phelps, and Kean cut most of the lines between 1072 and 1089 (which deal with Hermia’s confidence in Lysander’s fidelity, Demetrius’s feeling of being slain by her, and the ensuing argument). Daly, Burton, Benson, and Atkins cut only the peculiar image of the tunneling Moon (1075–8), which scholars have struggled to gloss (see n. 1075–8).

Several sequences are trimmed to reduce the dialogue to a bare minimum. Hermia’s calling Demetrius a murderer and an adder (1091–6) is cut by Burton and Daly; Hall cuts only the adder (1095–6). Demetrius’s rather lengthy description of being overwhelmed by sleep (1105–10) is cut or trimmed by Vestris, Kean, Phelps, and Benson. Puck and Oberon’s difficult language at 1113–16 has been particularly unpopular: Vestris, Burton, Kean, Daly, Benson, Tree, Atkins, Benthall, Devine, and Hall remove all of it; Phelps and Bridges Adams remove only Puck’s lines (1115–16).

Oberon’s description of Helena’s paleness (1119–20) is cut by Vestris, Kean, Phelps, Tree, Benson, and Daniels (perhaps for pedantic reasons, given the inability of actors to turn pale at will).

3.2. The Quarrel of the Lovers (1134–1384+1)

The lovers engage in a long and tempestuous quarrel.

Griffiths (ed. 1996, pp. 153–4) calls this the most heavily cut [154] scene in nineteenth-century stagings. Almost every line has been subject to cutting by at least one director, as the 19th c. tended to regard the lovers to be an encumbrance to the play (see here); Genest (1832, 8:546), for example, wrote of Reynolds’ 1816 abridgement, the dialogue between the lovers is properly curtailed, as great part of it is written in a manner unworthy of Shakspeare, and Winter (1892, p. 174) admired Daly’s production for making the sequence judiciously compressed, so that the spectator might not see too much of the perplexed and wrangling lovers. For brevity’s sake, the following account describes only those cuts engaged in by more than two directors; for most of the cuts described below, other nearby lines may also have been cut by one or more of the directors mentioned.

Puck’s little rhyme at the end of his conversation with Oberon (1142–5) is cut by Burton, Kean, and Daly, perhaps because the more famous 1139 already sums up his attitude to the mortals.

There are several common cuts during Lysander’s and Helena’s quarrel (1147–61); Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 158) attributes them to concerns about propriety, but the commonest do not seem improper, and may be more related to the difficulty of the language: Lysander’s insistence that he bears the badge of faith (1151–2) is cut by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Daly, Benson, Tree, and Atkins; Helena’s line about when trueth killes truth (1154) is cut by Vestris, Burton, Phelps, Daly, and Benson; and her extended conceit on weights (1156–8) is cut by Vestris, Kean, Phelps, Daly, Benson, and Tree.

When Demetrius wakes, his extended metaphors about Helena’s beauty are often trimmed; the commonest cut is the obscure reference to the Taurus mountains (1166–7), removed by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, Daly, Tree, and Hall. Helena’s complaint at the other lovers’ incivility (1172–3) seems innocuous but is cut by Kean, Phelps, Daly, Benson, Tree, and Bridges Adams, perhaps because it is somewhat repetitive of the preceding and succeeding lines.

In Lysander’s rejection of Hermia (1204–18), directors normally keep the straightforward middle section (1210–13) but cut all or part of the eye and ear imagery (1204–9); the commonest cut of all is the difficult 1206–7 (cut by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, Daly, Benson, Tree, Bridges Adams, Atkins, Benthall, Devine, Hall, and Daniels).

In Helena’s first dialogue with Hermia (1219–71), every 19th- and early 20th-c. director has his/her own method of shortening the sequence, but the most frequent cuts involve 1237–41, of which Gentleman (ed. 1774), who liked it but found it too long (see n. 1245–6), wrote This appeal to former friendship is natural, agreeable, and affecting; being spun out rather too far, we have marked some lines for omission. Hermia’s image of the artificiall gods (1230–5) is cut by Burton, Kean, Daly, Benson, Tree, and Atkins; the heraldry image (1240–1) is cut by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, Daly, Benson, Tree, Atkins, Devine, Benthall, Daniels, and Boyd (the latter is a late 20th-c. director for whom this is his only cut in the entire episode).

The four-way quarrel between the lovers at 1275–1317 has caused some critics concern because of its violent nature (see n. 1219–1384+1).Gentleman (ed. 1774) recommended its deletion: the puzzles of love are very entertainingly produced in this scene, but imagination seems too much sifted, and therefore frequently reproduces ideas by which they are unavoidably enervated; other scholars have been similarly concerned by the potentially vulgar nature of the violent quarrel (see n. 1219–1384+1). As a result, this sequence has been subject to frequent but extremely different approaches to cutting. There is little consistency among the directors, but the commonest cut is line 1287; it contains a textual crux involving the words No, no: heele / Seeme to breake loose in Q1 or No, no, Sir, seeme to breake loose in F1 (see textual n.), of which none of the numerous guesses editors have suggested is convincing (Foakes, ed. 1984) but which needs to be resolved by directors as it affects the blocking. The line is simply omitted by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, Daly, Benson, and Tree along with various surrounding lines; later directors are less drastic: Granville-Barker (in one of his rare cuts), Devine, Benthall, and Hall remove only the words No, no: heele or No, no, sir.

In the quarrel between Hermia and Helena (1315–52) and in the buildup to the duel (1353–84+1), the references to the women’s heights have been an area of concern (1322–32, 1337–40, 1361–2, 1365–7, 1384), perhaps because they demand a tall and a short actor (see here). Kean cuts all of them, Benson cuts all except 1361 (perhaps because it does not directly compare the women), and Burton cuts them all except 1384, which thus becomes a non sequitur.

Two directors rearrange the episode so that some of the dialogue between the women is spoken without the men present (perhaps to avoid the requirement for the men to stand and listen with no lines). Kean moves 1375–7 to after 1283 and thus has the men exit for their duel, leaving the women to quarrel alone; their quarrel ends with 1495–6 (moved to an earlier position), so that Hermia goes to sleep at the end of the quarrel, rather than after the duel. Similar choices are made by Vestris, who moves 1375–6 to after 1314 so that the men exit there; and Benson, who moves lines 1341–51 (up to . . . no further) to after 1379 (that is, after the men have exited).

3.2. The Duel and the Sleep (1386–1506)

On Oberon’s orders, Puck confuses Lysander and Demetrius within a fog and then sends the lovers to sleep, one by one.

Kean, Daly and Benson cut Puck’s defiant statement that he is delighted at the chaos he has caused (1393–4), perhaps because, as Canning (1903, p. 494) observes, Oberon ignores his comments (see n. 1393–4).

Vestris, Kean, Daly, and Atkins cut 1401–4, perhaps because its anticipation of Puck’s tricks risks spoiling the humour. Similarly, Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 169) notes that 1413–18 anticipate the denouement by describing what will happen to the lovers and Titania; these lines are cut or trimmed by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Daly, Atkins, and Daniels.

Kean cuts the entirety of Puck’s and Oberon’s speeches about the coming daybreak (1420–34), Phelps and Daly cut them heavily, and Burton cuts most of Puck’s. Scholars have often noted the thematic importance of Oberon’s speech, which stresses that Sh.’s fairies are different from ghosts (n. 1421–8); but Brown (1966, p. 13), while defending their theatrical power, acknowledges that the plot is scarcely forwarded by the information of the first six lines and these directors may thus have found the speech a digression.

Granville-Barker (1974, p. 124) called lines 1497–1506 Puck’s lullaby chant of appeasement and wrote, no-one . . . can possibly go wrong over the speaking of that. It is as surely set to its own essential music as if it were barred and scored. However, some 19th-c. directors would have disagreed, as they amplified it with music and extra singers and reassigned the lines: Vestris and Kean have the lines sung by a chorus of fairies, Benson gives them to a 2nd. Singer, and Daly has 1497–8 sung by Spirits and 1499–1504 by a Fairy.

4.1. Titania and Bottom Sleep (1511–58)

Bottom is waited on by the fairies, and then he and Titania sleep.

This short episode is left largely untouched by directors, and there is little similarity in the minor cuts that Kean, Daly, Atkins, and Daniels make to Bottom’s banter with the fairies. However, Titania’s curiously drastic order that her fairies be alwaies away (1554) has puzzled many scholars (see n. 1554) and similarly bothers Kean (who changes it to be awhile away) and Tree (who cuts the line).

4.1. Titania Awakes (1560–1621)

Oberon undoes the spell on Titania and wakens her; they reconcile.

Oberon’s description of encountering Titania in the forest (1563–78) is cut in its entirety by Hall, who thus leaves the fate of the Indian boy untold. Other directors are less extreme, with Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, Daly, and Atkins trimming only the description of the flowery garland (1568–71).

As Griffiths (ed. 1996, pp. 177–8) notes, Oberon’s words at 1579–85 and 1605–10 anticipate what the audience is shortly to see; perhaps for this reason Vestris, Kean, and Atkins cut or trim them.

The double call for music and direction Musick still at Titania’s awakening (1597–9, 1603) has puzzled scholars (n. 1597–1603): Daly and Benson remove both so that the music arises without any calls for it; Vestris, Kean, Tree, and Atkins cut only 1597–9 and Daniels only 1603.

Vestris, Burton, Daly, Benson, and Boyd move Bottom’s waking speech (1728–45) to the end of this scene, so that he wakes before the entrance of Theseus and Hippolyta. In Daly’s production, the purpose was to make possible an interpolated scenic depiction of the mortals’ return to Athens (see Williams, 1997, p. 127–9). Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 179, 185) notes that moving Bottom’s speech also has the effect of prolonging the suspense over the lovers’ fates and avoids having two consecutive Bottom scenes; however, the latter point does not apply to Vestris, who also moves the reunion with the mechanicals so that it follows Bottom’s speech before Theseus and Hippolyta enter.

4.1. Theseus Wakes the Lovers (1624–1726)

Theseus and Hippolyta arrive at the wood and wake the lovers; Theseus overrules Egeus’s demand for Hermia’s death.

One might expect Theseus and Hippolyta’s long and digressive disquisition on hunting (1624–47) to be an obvious target for cutting, but this sequence is in fact left untouched by almost all directors, even in the 19th c.; the only exceptions are Kean and Tree, who remove only two lines each. Gentleman (ed. 1774), who frequently advocated the cutting of lengthy speeches, wrote instead that the observations on hunting are poetically descriptive; and highly pleasing to any one who has a taste for the exhilarating sports of the chace; other appreciative comments by scholars of the period (see n. 1624–48) suggest that the 19th-c. directors may have considered it impossible to cut.

Lysander’s speech at 1671–5 is meandering, reflecting his bleary confusion (see n. 1671–8) but also making it ripe for trimming: lines are removed by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, and Daly. Egeus’s and Demetrius’s lines at 1681–8 repeat what the audience already knows, and are cut or trimmed by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Daly, Benson, and Hall. The end of Demetrius’s speech about his transformation has not been popular, especially the lines about sickness (1698–9), which scholars have struggled to paraphrase (see n. 1698–1700), and which are included in their cuts by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Daly, Benson, Atkins, and Hall. The extended wonderment of the lovers at the end of the scene (1712–26) is cut in its entirety by Kean and Hall, drastically shortened by Burton and Daly, and trimmed of its last two lines (from lets follow . . . ) by Benson and Tree.

4.1. Bottom Awakes (1728–45)

Bottom awakes and ponders the night’s events.

As noted above, Vestris, Burton, Daly, Benson, and Boyd move this speech so that Bottom wakes before the arrival of Theseus; Vestris moves his reunion with the mechanicals too.

Most directors leave Bottom’s monologue intact. The only common target is the opaque 1743–5, which is unclear as to whose death Bottom plans to sing at (n. 1745): Daly simply cuts the lines, but Vestris, Burton and Kean alter it to at Thisby’s death, and Bridges Adams echoes Theobald (ed. 1733) in emending it to after Death.

4.2. Bottom is Reunited with the Mechanicals (1747–89)

The relieved mechanicals greet Bottom on his return.

Daly cuts the entire scene. Although it is present in the Tree promptbook at the Folger Sh. Library, Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 187) notes that Tree too cut the scene after the opening night in order to save time and did not restore it in revivals except via a dumbshow.

Some scholars have doubted that the pedantic Quince would make the Paramour gaffe at 1758 and have suggested that he should be the corrector, not the corrected (see nn. 1757–8, 1759–60); most directors see no problem here, but Hall and Benthall give 1758 to Snout; Benthall also gives 1759–60 to Quince so that he corrects Snout.

5.1. Theseus’s Court Prepares for the Entertainments (1793–1902)

Theseus and Hippolyta ponder the lovers’ story, and Theseus selects an entertainment for the evening.

Theseus’s speech on imagination (1793–1821) is shortened by Vestris, Daly, Benson, Tree, and Atkins, whose cuts fall primarily in the speech’s climax (beginning with Such trickes . . . at 1809). In addition, 1829 is cut by Kean, Benson, and Tree, perhaps for the sake of propriety (it implies impatience for bedtime amusements).

There is a textual crux at 1833–78: in Q1 Philostrate provides the list of entertainments and Theseus both reads out and comments on them, but in F1 Egeus provides the list, Lysander reads it, and Theseus comments (see n. 1841–57 and textual n.). Vestris, Phelps, Brook, and Noble follow Q1; Alexander and Caird follow F1. Other directors prefer different combinations: Kean, Daniels, and Boyd follow F1 but change Egeus to Philostrate; Daly has Philostrate provide the list and Demetrius read them out; Atkins has Philostrate read out the first play but Theseus read about Pyramus and Thisbe; Benthall and Devine have Philostrate both provide and read out the plays for Theseus’s commentary; and Hall has Philostrate read out the plays and Theseus comment.

Some directors appear to find the list of potential entertainments overlong or dated in its satire: Daly, Benson, and Tree cut everything except Pyramus and Thisbe, while Phelps and Atkins cut everything except the Athenian eunuch, and Burton and Kean cut only the thrice three Muses.

Most of the discussion of Pyramus and Thisbe’s contradictory nature (1855–67) is cut by Benson and Tree, while Kean, Phelps, and Benthall cut only the textual crux relating to strange snow (1855–6) (see n. 1856).

Egeus/Philostrate’s insistence that Pyramus and Thisbe is unsuitable (1874–8) is cut or trimmed by Daly, Benson, Tree, and Atkins, with the last two lines being the commonest target, perhaps for their slight obscurity, which some scholars have noted (see n. 1876–8).

The long discussion about watching commoners in performance (1879–1902) is often heavily cut, presumably because it can seem digressive: Daly, Atkins, and Benthall remove almost all of it, while Burton, Kean, Phelps, and Tree trim it in different ways.

5.1. Pyramus and Thisbe (1903–2152)

The mechanicals perform Pyramus and Thisbe.

The text of Pyramus and Thisbe itself is cut very little by directors (except for Kean, who cuts several sections, including the entirety of Quince’s synopsis at 1926–54). Although it is present in the published text, Halliwell (1841, p. 52) says Vestris too cut the synopsis, a decision he found problematic: we would also ask how Theseus, unassisted by the Prologue’s description of the dumb show . . . can recognize the representation of moonshine?

The obscure reference to Shafalus and Procrus (2001–2) is cut by Kean and Phelps. The major problem for directors, however, has been bawdry: Bottom’s kissing of Wall’s stones (1993–4), conceivably a bawdy pun on testicles (see n. 1994), is cut by Daly and Burton and trimmed by Kean, as is the word hole (2003–4), which Burton and Daly change to chink at 2003, and which Burton also changes to and at 2004 (see n. 1979 and 2003–4). Similarly, lines 2146–50 refer to beds more than once, and this may be why they are trimmed by Kean, Phelps, Benson, Daly, and Tree; in addition, to bed at 2146 is changed to now list by Daly and away by Kean.

The 19th- and early 20th-c. convention of the deaf Starveling has resulted in common textual alterations involving his speaking his lines at inopportune moments. One example appears in both Bridges Adams and Atkins: Starveling begins to say This lanthorn doth . . . when he is introduced during the synopsis (1935), but the others stop him. In addition, other directors add verbal jokes relating to Quince’s prompting: extra Ninus reminders are interpolated at 2005 and/or 2063 by Daly, Benthall, Daniels, and Noble. Daly, Tree, Atkins, and Benthall all motivate Bottom’s hesitancy at Which is: no, no, which was (2091) by having Quince correct him mid-line.

Pyramus and Thisbe itself is cut sparingly, but the comments of the auditors, which are full of archaic puns, are often heavily cut even by late 20th-c. directors. For the sake of brevity, the following summary describes only those cuts that are engaged in by more than two directors. In the critique of Quince’s line delivery, one or both of the comparisons of him (to a rough Colte or a tangled Chaine, 1917–18 and 1922–3) are cut by Kean, Benson, Tree, Atkins, Devine, Daniels, Lepage, and Boyd. 2010–13, which includes the difficult textual crux surrounding Moon vsed (Q1) and morall downe (F1) (see n. 2010), is cut by Kean, Phelps, Daly, Bridges Adams, Atkins, Devine, Daniels, Lepage, Noble, and Boyd; Hall amends to wall down, and Caird to wall raised. The quibbling on foxes and geese (2032–7) is entirely removed by Kean, Tree, Atkins, Devine, Benthall, and Hall and trimmed by several others including the late 20th-c. directors Lepage and Boyd. The invisibility of Moonshine’s horns (2042–43) is included in the cutting of Kean, Benson, Tree, Bridges Adams, Atkins, Devine, Benthall, Hall, and Daniels. In the rest of the Moonshine debate (2044–61), the joke about Starveling belonging inside the lantern is normally kept, but the more obscure humour that follows is trimmed by most directors, including the late 20th-c. directors Daniels, Alexander, Caird, and Boyd. The charmingly superfluous 2071–2 is cut by Benson, Tree, and Daniels. Theseus’s and Hippolyta’s pity for Pyramus (2086–8) is another target: in Benson, Tree, Atkins, and Lepage, neither character pities him; in Kean and Daniels only Hippolyta does. During the commentary on Pyramus’s death, the quibbling on Die and ace (2100–2) is removed by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Daly, Benson, Tree, Bridges Adams, Atkins, Devine, Hall, Benthall, Daniels, Caird, and Boyd. The obscure jokes about the moth, followed by the line with the word videlicet (2112–15), are cut or trimmed by Burton, Kean, Daly, Bridges Adams, Atkins, Devine, Hall, Benthall, Daniels, Lepage, Boyd, and even by Caird and Noble who rarely cut anything. In addition to all this cutting, Daly, Lepage, and Boyd reassign some of the courtiers’ interpolations in order to give lines to Helena and Hermia (their silence in Shakespeare’s text has been remarked on by scholars; see n. 1819–20).

The Bergomask dance and Theseus’s call for it (2143–4) are cut by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Phelps, Daly, Atkins, and Lepage.

5.1. The Fairies Bless the House (2154–222)

The fairies enter and bless the weddings of the mortals, and Puck delivers the epilogue.

Puck’s list of night-time horrors (2154–73) has not been popular; it is cut entirely by Daly and heavily trimmed by Vestris, Burton, Kean, Benson, and Tree. Griffiths (ed. 1996, p. 210) notes that Tree cut these lines only at matinees, perhaps because they were considered too frightening for children; Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 98) uses the cutting of these lines as an example of the Victorian tendency to omit any shade of the suggestive and any shadow of the unpleasant (98).

Also subject to heavy cutting have been Titania’s speech (2180–3) and the speech at 2185–206, assigned to Oberon in Q1 and unassigned in F1 where it is headed The Song (see textual n.). Most directors give the lines to Oberon although Benson gives 2199–2206 to Titania and Daly gives her 2175–9. Daly cuts both speeches, while the other 19th-c. directors—Vestris, Kean, Phelps, Benson, and Tree—focus their cuts on the first two-thirds of The Song, perhaps in part due to its focus on bride-beds and childbirth.

The tendency for directors to turn the final scene into a musical fairy spectacular sometimes affects the text: Kean gives 2180–3 to a fairy instead of Titania; Benson gives 2170–3 to Fairies instead of Puck; Tree gives Oberon and Titania’s lines at 2175–83 to a singing fairy; and Daniels turns 2182–3 and 2201–4 into a group song with Titania and other fairies.

Finally, even Puck’s epilogue (2207–22) has not been sacrosanct: Benson cuts it entirely, while Burton, Kean, Daly, and Tree also cut heavily, although with little consistency in their choices, and Vestris reassigns it to Oberon.

Music in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

MND as a Musical Play

Few of Sh.’s plays enjoy a closer association with music in the cultural imagination than MND. For many critics, the term musical and metaphors drawn from music offer the best descriptors for the play’s structure, its effect upon its audience, and the special qualities of its verse. White (1948, p. 192) asserts that music was certainly in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Guinle (2003, p. 42) speaks of the polyphonic structure (Fr.) of the play, which he argues resembles that of early modern choral music. Blackstone (1977, p. 3) sees it as one of Shakespeare’s most musical plays, noting that few Renaissance plays can boast of more spoken music, more lyrical poetry. Goddard (1951, p. 75) describes the sequence in which Theseus refers to the musicall confusion / Of hounds and Echo in coniuncton (1631–2) and Hippolita reminisces about the musicall discord of the Spartan hounds (1638–9) as as nearly perfect a metaphor as could be conceived for A Midsummer-Night’s Dream itself and for the incomparable counterpoint with which its own confusions and discords are melted into the sweet thunder of a single musical effect. Hudson (1880, p. 15) sees MND as a play that has room but for love and beauty and delight, for whatever is most poetical in nature and fancy, and for such tranquil stirrings of thought and feeling as may flow out in musical expression. Granville-Barker (1974) believes that the appeal of the play’s language (p. 95) is as directly to the ear as the appeal of a song or a symphony and that its (p. 103) verse has the virtues of chamber music; he sees Sh. as deliberately engaging a variety of vocal colors, as in an opera, and remarks that (p. 111) while it would be misleading to speak of a musical range of voices wanted, from basso for Theseus to soprano for Titania,—for that would be to formalise the matter unduly to the prejudice of individual character—nevertheless one should have in mind some such structure of tone. Hunt (1992, p. 233) similarly sees the voices of MND as definitive elements in Sh.’s first fully orchestrated comedy.

The Thematic Significance of Music in MND

The perceived musicality of the play as a whole relates closely to the nature and impact of its vocal and instrumental music per se. As Brooks (ed. 1979, p. cxxii) declares, when the spoken verse is so various in its forms, and so often lyrical in tone, the distance from dialogue to song is not great. And the songs and dances are no less an integral part of the drama than the set speeches. For Noble (1923, p. 53), MND is a key landmark in the development of Sh.’s use of music, exhibiting a great advance on his previous efforts in his management of song. See also Idem at n. 659–76. For many critics, this last point is the crucial one about the music in MND. Long (1955, p. 88) asserts: Shakespeare joined music with some of his most delicate poetry in order to set his fairies apart from the gross mortals of the play; it is hardly a coincidence that, throughout the play, music is reserved completely for those episodes involving the fairies or the rustics in contrast to the fairies. Blackstone (1977, p. 101) similarly links the thematic import of music in the play with the dainty airy quality of the fairies; like the poetry of MND, she suggests, the music serves to immerse audiences in the fairies’ world.

More controversy has arisen around the question of the relationship between this delicate fairy music and the other music in MND. For Stevens (1964, p. 22), Bottom’s ballad, The Woosell cock, so black of hue, is precisely the opposite of fairy music: There is something quite topsy-turvy about Bottom’s musical, as about his other artistic, efforts. . . . The supernatural is all air and fire; he is all earth. Ryan (2009, p. 82) disagrees, suggesting that despite the gulf that yawns between their species and their ranks, the Athenian sons of toil and the ethereal citizens of Oberon’s realm harbour a curious kinship[.] . . . When Bottom comforts himself by crooning The ousel cock so black of hue / With orange-tawny bill . . . , he might as easily be a fairy, singing a fairy song. Opposing both the fairy music and Bottom’s song, argues Richman (1990, p. 129), is the musicall discord of Theseus’s and Hippolita’s hunting party: Even as the fairies’ music is dying out, the playgoers hear the very different music of hunting horns and Theseus’s blank verse about the sweet thunderous cry of dogs on the trail of their quarry. . . . Shakespeare . . . invites a comparison between the magic music of the fairies and the natural music of horns and hounds. In so doing, he brings about a modulation from haunted night’s dream to the natural morning in which the dreamers awake. Frye (2010, 28:222), too, sees this hunting music as affirming the value of everyday life: Below [the] upper world of magic and music, which is also the world of genuine or restored nature, is the middle world of ordinary nature. . . . The extraordinary loveliness of the lines given to Theseus and Hippolyta about the music of hunting suggests the harmony of a world below the heavenly sphere, theologically fallen, but with its own kind of beauty and energy.

A last strand of critical discussion around the thematic significance of music in MND centers upon the meaning of the play’s dances and of the music that accompanies them. For Long (1955, p. 94), the music and dance in 4.1 symbolize the concord re-established between Oberon and Titania. For Brooks (ed. 1979, p. cxxiii), too, the dance of Oberon and Titania is the ritual which ratifies the reconciliation of the fairy rulers, and symbolizes the renewed dance in the realm of nature which depends upon them. Brissenden (1981, p. 43) sees this dance––together with the play’s closing Bergomask and fairy blessing––as offering a summarising action and a universal symbol; these work to (p. 41) comment upon the major pattern of order and disorder in the action. Similarly, Lindley (2006, p. 132) suggests that the final fairy dance appears uncomplicated in [its] suggestion of harmony between the elements and groups within the playworld. Howard (1993), by contrast, sees the relationship between the play’s dances in oppositional terms. For her, Oberon’s and Titania’s dance in 4.1 embodies (p. 335) the subordination of popular culture to a patriarchal elite, while both the round dance of Titania’s fairies and the Bergomask are (p. 331) popular forms that function (p. 342) not to naturalize [this] order but to reveal it as provisional and man-made. Lindley (2006, p. 133), however, argues that the music of these disparate dances qualifies such arguments: there is surely an instrumental differentiation between the accompaniment of the [fairy] dances and the unmistakably low-life tongs and bones which Bottom demands . . . , and which might have featured in the Bergomask at the end. For further analyses of early modern philosophical and social attitudes to dance as they pertain to Sh.’s drama, see Naylor (1931, pp. 110–46) and Howard (1998, pp. 69–92).

Music Created for and Inspired by MND

A number of scholars have documented the very extensive archive of incidental music created for productions of MND and of musical settings of its text. The catalogues of Greenhill et al. (1884, pp. 34–49), Danford (1962, pp. 198–253), Hartnoll (1964, pp. 264–6), and Gooch & Thatcher (1991, 2:969–1134) attest to the fact that MND has historically been one of the most popular of Sh.’s works among composers. In Greenhill et al., for example, MND rates more entries for song settings based upon its text than any other single Shn. play. Gooch & Thatcher offer over 1700 entries for music based upon or created for MND, including 850 examples of incidental music from countries around the world as well as numerous overtures and non-theatrical song settings.

MND has also inspired a number of full-scale operatic and musical theatre works. It was the basis for such durably successful operas as John Christopher Smith’s The Fairies (1755), many of the settings from which graced productions of the play well into the 19th c.. It stirred the creativity of many of the most illustrious composers in Western music history, including notably Henry Purcell (The Fairy-Queen, 1692), Luigi Mancinelli (Sogno di una notte d’estate, 1917), Carl Orff (Ein Sommernachtstraum, 1952), and Benjamin Britten (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1960). The two most enduringly famous of these works, Purcell’s and Britten’s, offer a study in contrasts. The former is a semi-opera or series of masques created to accompany a radically shortened version of MND; Furness (ed. 1895, pp. 340–3) provides a detailed account of its complex relationship to Sh.’s playtext. For further discussion of Purcell’s The Fairy-Queen and its relationship to the performance history of MND, see here. In Sadie (ed. 1992, 2:109), Curtis Price asserts that The Fairy-Queen is not a corruption of Shakespeare’s play but rather an extended meditation on the spell it casts. Britten’s opera, by comparison, uses Sh.’s text throughout and stays relatively close to Sh.’s dramatic structure; the composer and his collaborator Peter Pears added only one line of non-Shn. text in their creation of the libretto. Again in Sadie (ed. 1992, 3:381), Arnold Whitall notes that Britten found it a particular challenge to start with a text other than a custom-made libretto, and Shakespeare’s play had to be cut by half, notably by the total omission of the play’s first act. Both works, however, have been applauded as prime examples of their composers’ respective melodic geniuses.

Further important operatic works are even more distantly related to MND but still bear strong marks of its inspiration. These include particularly Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon (1826); Ambroise Thomas’ Mignon (1865–6), with its references to MND and well-known aria Je suis Titania; and Michael Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage (1946–52). The latter opera uses none of Sh.’s text, but Tippett (1995, p. 200) asserts himself that the midsummer of the Dream is, at a far remove, the midsummer of The Midsummer Marriage.

MND also gave rise to perhaps the most famous suite of incidental music ever created for a Shn. play, that by Felix Mendelssohn (overture, 1826; incidental music, 1842). For decades, Mendelssohn’s music remained inextricably tied to the play’s fortunes onstage, while in the 20th c. it became a metaphor for all that was perceived as risible about 19th-c. staging traditions. For further discussion of the relationship between Mendelssohn’s incidental music and MND’s fortunes onstage, see here. Granville-Barker (1974, p. 105) complains that it involves a quite unallowable treatment of the text; involves, besides, the practical suppression of the lyrics, opining that You spotted snakes, for instance, might be written in German or Choctaw for any sense that the cleverest singer of it to this music can make for the keenest listener. Pennington (2005, p. 101) thinks that Mendelssohn might as well have declined the offer to write incidental music for MND, for the music at its best is too much for the play, at other times not enough. . . . Incidental music should never do more than half the work, but Mendelssohn’s Dream is like a tidal wave. Even so, Sanders (2007, p. 46) remarks that it seems scarcely possible nowadays to see a stage production or film version or even a television adaptation of [MND] that does not in some way feature the Overture and Incidental Music composed for the play by Felix Mendelssohn. In this case, a musical setting inspired by Sh.’s play has transformed that play’s identity within the Western cultural imagination.

The Music of MND as Identified in the Quarto and Folio Texts

With MND’s vast and rich musical history in mind, the reader may be surprised to note with Blackstone (1977, p. 78) that if one considers its musicality on a statistical basis, [the play] contains surprisingly little music. Although Wilson & Calore (2005, p. 393) assert that the magical atmosphere imbuing A Midsummer Night’s Dream is reflected in its ample use of music and song, only a few songs and musical cues are actually noted in the earliest texts of MND. Moreover, these texts do not always make fully clear where, or even whether, songs and instrumental music occur. The SDs of Q1 MND identify definitively only the following musical passages:

• 1.You spotted Snakes, with double tongue (solo/choral song, 660–76, preceded by SD Fairies sing)
• 2.SDs specify winde horne before the entrance of Theseus and his train at 1622, and again winde hornes for the awakening of the lovers at 1661 (instrumental music).

The following further musical passages are implied by the dialogue in Q1:

• 3.The Woosell cock, so blacke of hewe (solo song, 942–5 and 947–50, implied by Bottom’s line, I will sing, that they shall heare I am not afraide [940–1])
• 4.Lulling music (probably instrumental, implied by Titania’s line, Musick, howe musick: such as charmeth sleepe [1599])
• 5.Dance music (instrumental, implied by Oberon’s line, Sound Musick: come, my queen, take hands with me, / And rocke the ground whereon these sleepers be [1603–4])
• 6.Bergomask dance (instrumental, implied by Bottom’s line, Will it please you, to see the Epilogue, or to heare a Bergomaske daunce, between two of our company? [2135–7] and Theseus’ response, But come your Burgomaske [2143–4])
• 7.Fairy song and dance (solo/choral song, implied by Oberon’s lines, And this dittie after me, Sing, and daunce it trippingly [2179] and Titania’s lines, First rehearse your song by rote, / To each word a warbling note. / Hand in hand, with Fairy grace, / Will we sing and blesse this place [2180–84])

The following further musical, or possibly musical, SDs occur in F1:

• 8.They sleepe all the Act. which may indicate music played during act breaks at indoor playhouse performances (1507)
• 9.Musicke Tongs, Rurall Musicke after Bottom’s line, I have a reasonable good eare in musicke. Let vs have the tongs and the bones (1539–41)
• 10.Musicke still after Titania’s line, Musicke, ho musicke, such as charmeth sleepe (1599–1600)
• 11.Flor. Trum (Flourish Trumpet) immediately before Quince’s entrance as Prologue in 5.1 (1904)
• 12.Tawyer with a Trumpet before them before the entrance of Pyramus and Thisbe, Wall, Moonshine, and Lion into the Pyramus and Thisbe play in 5.1 (1924)

For none of these musical or potentially musical passages have settings from Sh.’s own period survived. Long (1955, p. 87) suggests that if the wedding for which the play was written was performed at the home of Sir George Carey, Lord Chamberlain, there is a good chance that some of the music for the play was composed by John Dowland, the famous lutenist and song writer, who was apparently employed in Sir George Carey’s musical establishment at that time. No evidence has emerged to support this attractive hypothesis, and more recent scholars have found it likelier that Sh’s company called upon pre-existing popular or folk music for the play. As early as 1914, Sharp (1914, p. 12) prefaced his folk song settings for Granville-Barker’s production of the play with the assertion that folk-music is the only music that suits Sh.’s work, mating like with like—the drama which is for all time with the music which is for all time. If popular or folk music was indeed used in the original productions of MND, it is possible that particular tunes became enduringly linked with particular lyrics or moments in the early modern imagination, but equally likely that the company called upon different tunes for different stagings and audiences. As Blackstone (1977, p. 80) writes, the loose stage directions in both Q and F of the Dream . . . suggest that, at least for the dance music and perhaps the ballad and closing song-dance, the music may have been changeable. No one has ever discovered the tunes that Shakespeare’s players used for the songs and dances in the Dream, but even if they had, the tunes would only indicate the use of music in an actual production. So far, scholars have discovered no evidence that could prove beyond doubt what melodies Sh. and his company envisaged for MND or what instruments they used to play them. What follows, then, is a summary of scholarly speculations about the resources that might have been used on the Shn. stage to create the musical effects of MND and about the music that might have been heard on that stage.

The Musical Resources of the Shn. Stage as They Appear in MND

The first musical requirement of MND in its own period was undoubtedly for actors who could sing. The fact that both You Spotted Snakes and the play’s putative final song appear to have been sung by fairy characters has suggested to many scholars that these singers were likely to have been boys. For the likelihood that the fairies were played by boys on the early modern stage, see here. Blackstone (1977, p. 75) assumes that seven boy actors altogether appeared in MND. Among them, she suggests, only four . . . need sing, and those four need not have great acting ability because three of them have only a few lines. Davies (1939, p. 165) agrees that large numbers of children are needed . . . as fairies if the play and its music are to succeed. Lindley (2006, p. 184) notes that if this were to be the case, however, it would mean that the play called for significantly more boy actors than was usual and refers to the hypothesis of Ringler (1968, p. 134) that the fairies were in fact played by the same adult actors who played the mechanicals. Though Lindley (2006, p. 185) concedes the possibility of this argument, he notes that [t]here is, nonetheless, a significant difference between the sound of high and low-pitched voices – the effect of etheriality is more easily achieved by the former. In either case, as Blackstone (1977, p. 75) concedes, MND demands a number of singers relatively exceptional in Sh.’s oeuvre; the precise requirements of each song are discussed in more detail below.

The only non-vocal musical instrument that we can speculate with some certainty was heard in the early performances of MND is the trumpet. Not only is the trumpet mentioned repeatedly in the Folio version of the play, but it was among the quintessential sounds of the early modern theatre, as Smith (1999, p. 218) notes: Customarily it was three trumpet blasts . . . that signaled the start of performances at the Globe. Wilson (2011, p. 123), similarly, asserts that the trumpet was the most common instrument in the outdoor theatre, used especially to signal the arrival on stage of a person of rank. Danford (1962, pp. 198–200, 201–3) notes a number of recorded instances in the play’s history in which trumpets have been used in this manner to accompany the entrances and exits of the play’s most high-ranking mortal characters, Theseus and Hippolyta. Wilson (2011, p. 123) views the SD Flor. Trum. in the Folio text at the moment of Quince’s entry as Prologue as [p]arodying this practice; this reading underlines the manner in which Sh. could use the established musical language of his theatre to achieve specific comic or dramatic effects.

More widely debated is the question of the larger instrumental resources that may have supported the music of a play like MND. Theatrical entrepreneurs like Philip Henslowe certainly expended considerable sums on a range of musical instruments; in a diary entry for December 1598, for instance, Henslowe (1961, p. 102) records paying 40 shillings for a basse viall and other enstrementes for the companey. Whether a musical ensemble or consort composed of numerous instruments accompanied the songs and dances of MND is less clear. Stevens (1964, p. 23) suggests that the most likely consort for this play would seem, perhaps, to be a consort of viols, to accompany the lullaby in the manner of the early stage-songs for voice and viols, but goes on to reference Thomas Morley’s Consort Lessons (1599, 1611) and Philip Rossiter’s Lessons for Consort (1609), as well as The Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowful Soule of William Leighton (1614), in order to argue that the classic form of consort for theatre music was not a consort of viols or of recorders but a broken consort (that is, a consort of mixed instruments). Long (1955, p. 87) imagines a similar ensemble accompanying Titania’s lullaby: Under the circumstances a rather large grouping would be indicated; the classic broken consort—a lute, a mandore, a treble viol, a bass viol, a cittern, and a flute or treble recorder would have been appropriate. He goes on to theorize about their positioning on or offstage, suggesting that [w]hile the fairies sang, the musicians were apparently hidden from the audience, as indeed they probably were throughout the play. Similarly, Blackstone (1977, p. 95) imagines that if the dance to accompany You Spotted Snakes were a lively one and separate from the song, the usual theatrical broken consort would have accompanied it from the music room. Lindley (2006, p. 100), however, raises doubts about the likely presence of the broken consort in the performance of a play as early as MND, citing an as yet unpublished work by Ian Harwood that finds the evidence for the consistent use of the mixed consort in the theatre less than compelling, noting that almost all of the evidence for its employment comes from choirboy plays, or from later printed texts of early plays. He also suggests (p. 92) that the use of the central space in the gallery over the stage as a music-room . . . was probably imported into the open-air theatres some time after about 1608, in imitation of the practice at the indoor theatres. We cannot, then, confidently pinpoint the precise number of instruments used to accompany the songs and dances of MND, nor assert that musicians were placed offstage to create a magical and ethereal atmosphere. Commands such as Titania’s for musick, such as charmeth sleepe might have been answered by single instruments or by many (or even by voices), and by visible or invisible musicians, depending upon the particular venues and dates of the play’s performances over the course of its early production history.

Discussions of Key Musical Passages (in Order of their Appearance in MND)

1. You Spotted Snakes (660–76)

You Spotted Snakes, often dubbed the lullaby or fairies’ lullaby, appears to have been the passage from MND most frequently set to music throughout the play’s history. Gooch & Thatcher (1991, pp. 1092–9) list eight pages of settings of this lyric from the 18th to 20th c., not including settings that belong to full suites of incidental music. Hartnoll (1964, p. 266) lists more than forty settings between 1794 and 1964 alone, of which Mendelssohn’s of 1842 is the most famous. Greenhill et al. (1884, p. 40) and Hartnoll (1964, p. 266) agree that the first known theatrical setting of the song is that in John Christopher Smith’s The Fairies (1755), an aria that Blackstone (1977, p. 348) describes as one of Smith’s best efforts in the entire opera. Gooch & Thatcher (1991, p. 1097) list the first independent setting of the song as the glee by R. J. S. Stevens that survives in an MS of 1782 and in published versions of 1782 and 1791. (Hartnoll [1964, p. 266] incorrectly gives this glee’s date as 1800.) Roffe (1878, p. 58) remarks that the four-voiced glee, You Spotted Snakes, by Mr. R. J. Stevens, is a general favourite, and most deservedly so in every respect. This glee was the one selected by Caulfield (1864, pp. 87–95) for his 1864 collection of Shn. vocal music. Following Greenhill et al. (1884, p. 40) and Hartnoll (1964, p. 266), Gooch & Thatcher (1991, pp. 1093–4) also note among the earliest settings of the song the version by William Benson Earle in his Eight Glees (London, 1788), where it appears as The Fairy Song.

These early surviving settings date from almost two centuries after MND’s first performance; as Duffin (2004, p. 480) notes, we lack any indication of [the song’s] original melody. Scholars have linked imagined versions of this melody to a range of well-known early modern composers and tunes. Sharp (1914, pp. 17–20) set it to the iconic early modern country dance tune, Sellenger’s Round. Blackstone (1977, p. 96) proposes an air possibly resembling a Morley canzonet and lightly contrapuntal in character. Long (1955, pp. 86–7) sets the lyric to a tune originally published as a galliard in Anthony Holborne’s Pavans, Galliards, Almains, and Other Short Aeirs (1599). The fact that in Holborne’s collection this piece was titled Galliard: Lullabie offers some justification for the choice, and Seng (1967, p. 31) cites it as the only plausible existing proposal for this lyric’s music. However, the lyrics fit the tune somewhat awkwardly and unidiomatically, and Long (1955, p. 85) himself appears to have offered the setting only as an example, for he believes that the appropriateness of the song to the situation and the close affinity of its structure to the art song suggest that Shakespeare wrote the song to be set to music especially composed for the play.

Perhaps the most successful suggestion to date of a popular early modern melody that might fit You Spotted Snakes is Duffin’s (2004, p. 480) suggestion of the ballad tune commonly known as Robin Goodfellow. No definitive evidence has yet been located to prove that this melody, or its association with particular lyrics, predated MND. Chappell (1859, 1:143) cites as his earliest source for it a work from 1642. Since his time, however, earlier sources have been identified, and their pairings of music to words may support Duffin’s conjecture that the tune might have been used in MND. It appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book of 1609 (Fuller Maitland & Squire [1899, 2:268]) and twice in Earle’s MS song collection of 1615 (British Library, Add. Ms. 24665, n.p.), first with the English text As Att Noone Dulcina rested and later with the Latin text Pulcher Nuper Rosalina. An MS of c. 1623–53 in the Folger Sh. Library (V.a.262) matches it to a broadside ballad entitled, The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow, which begins: From Oberon in fairy land, the King of ghosts and goblins there, / Mad Robin I, at his command, am sent to view the night-sports here. This marriage of words to tune may postdate MND, but does suggest a relationship between this melody and the denizens of fairyland in the early modern popular imagination. If the lyrics of As Att Noone Dulcina were also associated with the tune in Sh.’s time, their relation of the sexual seduction of a shepherdess by her swain in a pastoral setting at night might also have inflected the early modern audience’s reactions as they watched the scene of Titania’s infatuation with Bottom after hearing this melody as a lullaby. The tune fits Sh.’s lyrics neatly and appears appropriate to its dramatic function. Lindley (2006, pp. 184–5) describes Duffin’s as a particularly felicitous conjecture—the tune’s movement from a steady 4/4 rhythm for the verse to a livelier 6/4 for the refrain works extremely well in suggesting both the ritual formality of a [185] charm, and the playfulness of its fairy performers. Wilson & Calore (2005, p. 393), too, cite Duffin’s proposal as a plausible one, though like Lindley they recognize that it remains but one possibility among many for the original melody of the lullaby.

As the textual notes and commentary notes for lines 659–76 of this edition discuss in depth, much scholarly debate around You Spotted Snakes has focused upon the problem of who sings or speaks which lines, since Q and F offer different answers to this question. Seng (1967, p. 31) follows Capell’s hypothesis as outlined in the nn.; for him, there seems little question about the intended arrangement of the song’s parts: ll. 1–4 are solo, followed by ll. 5–10 as a refrain either by another voice or a chorus of voices, and ll. 11–14 are a second stanza sung solo, followed again by a similar refrain. The final two lines, though not typographically distinguished by the compositor of the quarto, are obviously intended to be spoken as dialogue. Long (1955, p. 85) sees matters somewhat similarly; he views the Folio assignments as most likely to be correct and agrees, albeit with some hesitation, with modern editors who, noting that the second stanza of the song is sung solo and the first stanza is not, have assigned the first stanza to the 1. Fairy, the second stanza to the 2. Fairy, and have marked the refrains as choruses for all of the fairies. Blackstone (1977, p. 95) notes that many modern editors have followed this path and have assumed that a fairy sings the first verse, as well as the second verse, as a solo and that all the other fairies join hands in a circle and join in with the chorus, Philomel with melody, &c. She, however, argues that there is nothing in either [Q or F] to indicate a solo for the first verse—in fact, everything indicates that all the fairies sing the first verse.

Few extant settings of the lullaby or efforts to reconstruct its original form have attempted to follow the letter of Q and F as Blackstone does. Smith’s setting in The Fairies (1981, 3:170–1) gives the song as a solo to Titania, changing the line Come not neere our Fairy Queene (663) to (p. 170) Come not near the Fairy Queen and Come our lovely lady nigh (668) to (p. 171) Come the Fairy’s pillow nigh to accommodate the change. The early glees by Stevens and Earle use four-part harmonies throughout. Mendelssohn’s well-known setting follows the hypothesis outlined by Capell (ed. 1783, 2.3:106), assigning the first stanza to a solo soprano, the first refrain to chorus, the second stanza to a second solo soprano, and the second refrain again to chorus. In the compact disc that accompanies his study, Duffin (2004, Track 81) gives his proposed early modern setting of the song to two sopranos, Ellen Hargis and Custer LaRue, each of whom sings one stanza of the song while both join together to sing the refrains. Among these settings, only Mendelssohn’s sets the closing couplet, Hence away: now all is well: / One aloofe, stand Centinell (675–6), to music.

2. The Woosell cock, so blacke of hewe (942–5 and 947–50)

Composers have set the ditty to which Bottom resorts in order to cheer himself when his fellows abandon him in the wood much less frequently than the other song lyrics in MND. Both Greenhill et al. (1884, p. 41) and Hartnoll (1964, p. 266) list an 18th-c. setting by Charles Burney. The former catalogue gives this setting a date of 1762, while the latter lists its date as c. 1763. The difference in dates is explained by the fact that Hartnoll appears to be referring directly to the published text of Garrick’s production at Drury Lane. In this text, Garrick (1763, p. 48) provides a table listing the songs performed in the production and their composers, and offers Burney as the composer for Bottom’s song. Greenhill et al. (1884, p. 41), conversely, refer to Roffe (1878, p. 60), who describes the Drury Lane production as having taken place about 1762. Roffe further remarks that there are notes to this song in Mr. Caulfield’s collection. No name of any composer is given, so they may be very early. The tune that appears in Caulfield (1864, 1:96) has so far not been identified in any earlier source, but Gooch & Thatcher (1991, p. 1089) follow Roffe in citing it as the earliest known setting for the song. Hence, it is reproduced below.

Few contemporary scholars, however, have been content to accept this undated fragment of music as a likely candidate for the original setting of The Woosell Cock. Most agree that this original is likely to have derived from a popular ballad well known to the play’s original audiences. Long (1955, p. 89) sees little doubt that here Bottom sings two fragments of a song. The completion of the song, to judge from the text, was probably a refrain. . . . The tune . . . is unknown. For the purpose of illustration, he offers a conjectural setting of the words to an early modern ballad tune that (p. 90) is printed in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (1600) with the title Rowland, and in Robinson’s School of Music (1603), with the name Lord Willoughby. Seng (1967, p. 35) notes Professor John Ward’s suggestion of the tune Wooddy-Cock, which appears in the Fuller Maitland & Squire edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (1899, 2:138–45), on the grounds both that its title is appropriate to Bottom’s catalogue of birds and that its tune could easily fit Bottom’s words. Duffin (2004, pp. 477–8) makes an ingenious argument in favour of the ballad tune Whoop, Do Me No Harm, Good Man, the earliest surviving lyrics to which contain a series of -ill rhymes and word usages that offer parallels to those in Bottom’s song. He notes that this tune’s (p. 478) most distinctive feature is the extended (and probably octave-displaced) pickup to the last phrase, which may have evolved as the most effective way to deliver the whoop text. In the case of The Woosel Cock, this is a built-in vehicle for a braying, asslike delivery for that part of the text. On Duffin’s CD (2004, Track 80), singer William Hite effectively demonstrates the comic potential of braying across the wide intervals that introduce the final phrases of the Whoop tune, making a good case for Duffin’s hypothesis.

In this instance, however, it seems as well to remember with Seng (1967, p. 35) that the original actor [of Bottom] could have used almost any popular ballad-tune. As Long (1955, p. 89) suggests, the performance of the song was probably as crude as could be sung with any resemblance to music, since the humor of the situation is derived partly from the dainty Titania’s delight in what was, no doubt, a far-from-angelic voice. Blackstone (1977, p. 66) offers perhaps the most convincing proposal for the original setting (or lack thereof) for this song when she suggests that possibly a contemporary popular song which influenced both Shakespeare’s song and the poem has not survived, or possibly Shakespeare composed the lyrics without a tune in mind and left the tune up to the actor’s ingenuity. The less recognizable the tune, the more comic is Bottom’s scene, and quite possibly the actor did not keep any tune in mind when singing his song. In this case, comic effect was likely more crucial than musical values, and the chance that early modern Bottoms called upon some degree of improvisation to achieve such effects is great.

3. They sleepe all the Act (1507)

The SD at the end of Act 3, They sleepe all the Act. (1507), may record musical practice associated with MND at certain points in its performance history. Lindley (2006, p. 92) notes that the practical necessity in the hall theatres of trimming the candles was . . . covered by music, known simply as The Act and shows (2006, p. 93) that the King’s Men adopted such practices after they took over the Blackfriars Playhouse in 1608. The allusion to the Act may thus allude to the music played between the acts of MND as it was staged after this date. Indeed, the appearance of such a direction in F1 after its absence in Q1 may be a sign of the changes wrought in the musical practice of the King’s Men once they began performing at the Blackfriars.

4. Musicke Tongs, Rurall Musicke (1539–41)

For scholarly conjecture regarding this SD from F, see n. 1541.

5. Musick: such as charmeth sleepe (1599) and F1’s SD Musick still (1599–1600)

The music demanded by Titania’s request for Musick, howe musick: such as charmeth sleepe (1599) appears self-evidently to be lulling or calming. Long (1955, p. 91) sees it as working to emphasize the fairy-gentlefolk relationship in the play, adding that (p. 92) it is the function of the music to restore the sleeping mortals to their senses. Because of its association with sleep, this music harks back to the earlier music associated with the Fairy Queen, You Spotted Snakes; as Blackstone (1977, pp. 101–2) notes, a lullaby-dance was the last piece of music which Titania heard before falling under the spell and, fittingly, a lullaby-dance is the first piece of music she hears upon waking. . . . In the opening scene Titania linked herself [102] with harmony and melody, and in her second scene she was linked more specifically with the lullaby. Appropriately, then, Oberon first asks her for music to put the mortals into a deep sleep which the merriment will not disturb. Brooks (ed. 1979, p. cxxiii), too, sees this music as mirroring Titania’s lullaby earlier in the play, while the winde hornes of Theseus and Hippolyta that follow it mirror Bottom’s Woosell Cock and its stimulating qualities: the earlier pattern of mortal music which awakens, fairy music which induces sleep is repeated in this scene.

The earliest surviving incidental music for MND that includes music specifically relating to this passage appears to be Mendelssohn’s, in which the Nocturne is intended to accompany the sleep of the lovers. As Long (1955, p. 92) observes, other than the general nature of the music, which was probably soft and soothing, we know nothing positive about the melody and setting that might have been heard on Sh.’s stage. He proposes that it might have been of the kind that would be produced by an instrumental arrangement of such an ayre as Sleep, Wayward Thoughts, by John Dowland. Other similarly soothing and nocturnal works, such as the work for solo lute entitled A Dream and often ascribed to Dowland, reproduced below, might fit the bill equally well and offer a more direct link to the play’s title and themes:

Alternatively, Sh.’s company might have directly reused the music of You Spotted Snakes, this time in an instrumental form. Long (1955, p. 92) surmises that the original music was probably played by the same consort that accompanied the first fairy song, and recycling of the tune already associated with Titania’s sleep is far from unlikely. If so, Blackstone (1977, p. 101) proposes, two markedly different renditions of the same music (or parts of the music), varying in volume and tempo seem called for.

For the considerable scholarly debate occasioned by the SD that follows Titania’s call for sleep-charming music in the First Folio, Musick still, see n. 1599, as well as the textual note for this SD. As those notes show, no scholarly consensus exists as to whether Musick still alludes to quiet, gentle, or preternaturally calm music, as in the SD Still Musicke, which accompanies the entrances of Hymen, Rosalind, and Celia at AYL 5.4.108 (2682); or whether it evokes music that continues from the previous, or under the following, scene to accompany the lovers’ slumber. Titania’s reference to musick: such as charmeth sleepe may imply the former. It is, however, worth noting Dessen & Thomson’s assertion (1999, p. 216) that most uses of still in early modern SDs are calls for sound or action to continue. They list this particular SD as an example of the use of still to indicate sound within to continue. The evidence they offer also suggests that in cases where still is used as a synonym for soft to describe instrumental sound, the word order still music (as opposed to music still) generally appears. If, as Dessen & Thomson believe, F1’s Musicke still does indeed imply music that played continuously beneath a scene—and perhaps even music that took up the strains established in Act music during which the lovers slept—it may record another instance of post-Blackfriars musical practice on the part of the King’s Men.

7. Sound Musick: come, my queen, take hands with me, / And rocke the ground whereon these sleepers be (1603–4)

As noted in n. 1603–10, many critics view the dance implied between Oberon and Titania at this point as crucial to the meaning of MND. Long (1955, p. 93) describes it as the turning point of the play, in which the resolution of the quarrel between Oberon and Titania [is] . . . quickly followed by a harmonious adjustment in mortal relationships. Whether one imagines that the dance in question was a slow and stately or a quick and boisterous one depends partly on one’s interpretation of Oberon’s word rocke, a debated question also discussed in n. 1604.

We have no solid evidence from the early modern period about the music heard at this point. Long (1955, p. 94) offers the plausible proposal that the music to which Oberon and Titania danced was probably a pavane, as the pavane was the most stately of the dances performed in the courtly circles of the period, and Oberon and Titania, though they are fairy monarchs, are every inch a king and queen. He gives as his example a pavane from John Adson’s Courtly Masquing Ayres of 1621, but many earlier pavane settings may give us a stronger sense of the kinds of stately dances Sh. and his company might have associated with their fairy king and queen at the time of MND’s first performances. For instance, the Passymeasures Pavan of John Johnson (c. 1545–94), one of Queen Elizabeth’s court musicians, dates from closer to the likely composition date of MND and offers an effective example of a pavane that could have been interpreted for the stage in either a lively or a lulling manner while still conveying the regal qualities of Oberon and Titania.

5. Winde Hornes (1622, 1661)

Little need be said about the winde hornes specified in Q to herald the arrival of Theseus and Hippolyta into the wood and then to awaken the lovers. They were used less for musical than for dramatic purposes. Lindley (2006, pp. 97–8) remarks that the amphitheatres certainly used [an] instrument of limited capacity . . . [98]—the horn . . . , associated either with hunting, or else the arrival of a post. Horns created, asserts Smith (1999, p. 243), the acoustic equivalent of a visual scene—an aura, perhaps; their broad, plangent blasts evoked the hunt scene as we see (and hear) it not only in MND but also in plays as disparate as Shr., Tit., Lr., and Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness. To the critical remarks noted at n. 1622, we might add Foakes (ed. 1984, p. 116): the blowing of hunting-horns marks the coming of day, with a blast of sound very different from the music for Oberon and Titania. For Stevens (1964, p. 22), the playworld’s true norm is sounded by Theseus with his horns and hounds (Winde Hornes . . . Hornes and they wake), bringing back, though not for long, the daylight world. The Elizabethan horn was a signalling, not a musical instrument; but neither would it have belonged to Bottom’s skiffle band.

6. The Bergomaske (referenced at 2135–7 and 2143–4)

For a detailed commentary on the sources and likely early modern English understanding of the term bergomask, as well as scholarly conjectures about the dance’s thematic significance within MND, see n. 2136.

As with the other music of MND, we have no firm evidence as to the precise bergomask or bergamasca dance(s) used in early modern English productions of MND. Long (1955, p. 96) believes that the dance was probably a jig and that as such it was likely a song and dance involving much pantomimic satire. He recalls Morley (1597, p. 180), who describes such dances as a wanton and rude kind of musicke, and proposes a bawdy dialogue song from Chappell (1859) entitled Wolsey’s Wild to illustrate his thesis. Blackstone (1977, pp. 87–9) devotes little space to the likely early modern form of the Bergomask and indeed considers wistfully (p. 89) the possibility that Shakespeare might have considered a ballad for Bottom in its place, as per the weaver’s promise to make a ballad of Bottom’s Dream and sing it at Thisbe’s death.

Given the variety of bergamasca settings preserved in Elizabethan and Jacobean lute books and similar collections, however, such efforts to push the bergomask away from the name (and hence the musical form) Sh.’s mechanicals give to their dance are perhaps unnecessary. Early modern players of MND, whether in a noble house or on a public stage, could have called upon any number of bergomasks current in their own musical culture. One of the best known examples of such a bergamasca setting is that preserved in the Straloch MS of Gordon (1995, Fol. 1/1) and there entitled The Buffens (The Buffoons). Both title and tune give a sense of the jolly, rustic dance music that might have accompanied the Bergomask of Bottom and his fellows on the early modern stage.

7. The Final Fairy Song (referenced at 2180–4)

As n. 2175–206 attests, considerable scholarly debate throughout the critical and editorial history of MND has focused upon the question of whether Sh. intended the fairies to sing in the play’s final moments, and if so whether any of the verse that appears in Q and F was originally set to music or whether a separate song, for which the lyrics have not survived, was sung. Insofar as musical settings of the pertinent passages can give evidence on either side of the debate, they may be said to indicate that 18th- and 19th-c. composers were widely convinced by the notion that Oberon’s speech beginning Now, untill the breake of day (2185) was intended to be sung, while more recent composers appear to have been less interested in this idea. Greenhill et al. (1884, p. 49) list eleven settings between 1727 and 1843. The earliest can be found in Leveridge (1727, 2:50–4). This setting, which adds non-Shn. text to text taken from Puck’s, Oberon’s, and Titania’s final speeches, is well described by Roffe (1878, pp. 64–5): The plan of this setting is solo for first, second, &c, up to an eighth fairy, with a chorus to each [65] solo, which chorus is upon Oberon’s words, Hand in hand, &c. Mr. Leveridge has made some occasional alterations in the words, and to his sixth fairy has assigned the words Weaving spiders, come not here, &c., transplanted from the second act of this play.

Like Greenhill et al., Roffe (1878, p. 65) also notes settings by R. J. S. Stevens, Christopher Smith (for The Fairies), and William Linley, as well as a number of settings by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop that accommodate a range of different vocal configurations. He praises particularly Cooke’s favourite five-part glee and chorus, commencing with Oberon’s words, Hand in hand.

From the 19th c., meanwhile, Mendelssohn’s incidental music for MND includes a setting that begins with a choral version of Oberon’s first lines, Through the house give glimmering light (2175), sets for solo soprano Titania’s speech ending Will we sing and bless this place (2183), and closes with a fairy chorus reprise of Oberon’s speech. Thanks in part to the popularity of Mendelssohn’s music it was not uncommon for this final passage of the play to be sung on the 19th-c. stage. Moreover, Mendelssohn’s setting was not the only one to be heard in the Victorian theatre. Williams (Moonlight, 1997, p. 130) remarks that the lavish final tableau of Augustin Daly’s 1888 New York production was accompanied not by Mendelssohn’s score but by Bishop’s song from the 1816 opera for the lines Through the house give glimmering light.

The 20th c., on the other hand, seems to have devoted little musical energy to this passage. No major recent production appears to have featured a new setting of the final putative fairy song. Discussing his score for Peter Brook’s hugely influential interpretation of the play, Peaslee (in Brook [1974, pp. 69, 70]) acknowledges that the text actually calls for song and dance at that point, but praises Brook for doing it straight out, as a solo speech. It’s very quiet—and very effective! This approach appears to have become all but standard in production. Gooch & Thatcher (1991, pp. 1083, 1090, 1091) list only eight 20th-c. non-theatrical settings of the text, of which six are settings of the full passage beginning with Through the house give glimmering light. One setting their catalogue appears to omit is Samuel Barber’s Song for a New House of 1941 for voice, flute, and piano, which begins with Puck’s lines, [N]ot a mouse / Shall disturb this hallowed house (2170–1) and continues to set Through the house give glimmering light. The parts and score for Barber’s setting are held at the Music Division of the Library of Congress, but it remains unpublished (see Heyman [1992, pp. 204–5] and Wentzel [2012, pp. 130–1]).

As in the cases of You Spotted Snakes and The Woosell Cock, no music definitively related to these verses survives from the early modern period. In this instance, by contrast with those of the earlier passages, few modern scholars have striven to reconstruct their possible original settings, perhaps because relatively few accept that they were indeed intended to be sung rather than spoken. Seng (1967) does not acknowledge this passage as belonging among the vocal songs in Sh.’s plays, and thus does not list any proposals for its original setting. Long (1955, pp. 97–101) believes that it was sung, but in this case (unlike those of the earlier two songs) he does not attempt to fit the words to an existing early modern art song or ballad tune; rather, he offers (p. 100–1) for illustrative purposes, The Urchin’s Dance created for Middleton’s play Blurt, Master Constable. Duffin (2004) makes no mention of the song in his Shakespeare Songbook. He does, however, offer a setting (2004, p. 347) for Roses, Their Sharp Spines Being Gone from TNK, which Granville-Barker (1974, p. 108–9) believes might serve as a good Shn. option in default of better for producers who wish to provide a fairy song at the play’s end, and which Sharp (1914, pp. 25–8), in fact, set for Barker’s 1914 production of MND. Further conjecture about a possible early modern musical setting for the penultimate speeches of MND or for a lost song and dance that might have appeared at this point seems likely to be overly speculative, barring the discovery of new evidence relating to this question.

Other Passages of MND Set to Music

In closing, it is worth noting that many passages of MND other than those likely to have been set to music on the early modern stage have inspired musical creativity over the course of the ensuing centuries. Noble (1923, p. 54) goes so far as to assert that a greater part of this comedy has been set to music than is the case with any of the others. Among the many passages favored by composers, the ones most commonly set have been the First Fairy’s speech beginning Over hill, over dale (376 ff.) and Oberon’s speech beginning I know a banke where the wilde time blowes (630 ff.). All of the major Shn. music catalogues discussed in these pages list numerous settings of these passages, ranging from William Jackson’s 1770 four-part glee of Over Hill, Over Dale for 2 sopranos, tenor, and bass to G. A. MacFarren’s 1856 solo setting of the same text for Pauline Viardot (see Greenhill et al., 1884, p. 37), and from Liza Lehmann’s 1892 setting for high voice of I know a bank under the title Titania’s Cradle to Stephen Chatman’s 1986 setting as part of his choral suite Love and Shapes High Fantastical (see Gooch & Thatcher, 1991, pp. 1080, 1079). In the 18th and 19nth c. these two passages were very often sung in production, and Noble (1923, p. 54) appears to be responding to this tradition when he warns that in the case of a passage not marked for music, . . . if it is decided to treat it musically as is frequently the case, the very greatest care must be exercised. He accepts that Over hill, over dale may work effectively as an aria for the Fairy, but disdains the practice of having Puck answer in kind: I have several times heard the passage rendered as a duet; and the incongruity was very irritating. He abrogates completely the setting of I know a banke to music, asserting that (pp. 54–5) the propriety of such treatment is very doubtful. If treated as a song, it is very difficult to avoid the sound of Italian opera, the unreality of [55] which is so absolutely foreign to Shakespeare’s dramatic scheme.

As in the case of the other passages discussed here, the musical fate of these passages of MND may have more to tell us about stage history than about either the text of the play or its musical history. The vast majority of major musical settings of MND date from the 18th and 19th c., when the play was considered almost as much a musical as a dramatic work. Not only the key songs and instrumental passages indicated in Q and F but many other sections of the text were set to music in this period, which saw the advent of operatic and quasi-operatic treatments of Sh.’s play as well as a great volume of other incidental and non-theatrical music based upon it. Although the 20th c. produced a good deal of new incidental music for MND and witnessed the creation of such major operas as Britten’s based upon it, the play was no longer as synonymous with musical performance as it had once been. In the new millennium many sections that were once set to music as a matter of course, including the final speeches of Oberon and Titania as well as earlier fairy passages, are now almost always performed as spoken verse.

As for the early modern musical fortunes of MND, though much music undoubtedly adorned the play in its time and this music has occasioned extensive conjecture in the modern era, we are currently no closer than our predecessors to knowing precisely how MND sounded on Sh.’s stage. As the ongoing appearances of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March in both productions of MND and actual wedding parties show, however, music remains closely entwined with the play’s life onstage and in popular culture. Whether through new discoveries regarding early modern settings of its music or new compositions based upon its words, MND appears likely to retain its reputation as one of Shakespeare’s most musical plays.