A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM

IN 1600 two quarto editions of A Midsummer-Night's Dream appeared. The earlier, printed for Thomas Fisher, seems to have been taken from an authentic manuscript, and on it the present text is based. The later, printed by James Roberts, follows the earlier with few changes beyond the addition of some stage directions. The text of the play in the First Folio appears to have been printed from a prompter's copy of Roberts's Quarto. The chief differences are in the division into acts, not hitherto marked, and in the presence of yet more detailed stage directions. The only piece of external evidence of the existence of the play before 1600 is the mention of it by Meres in 1598. Attempts to date it more exactly are based chiefly on very slight probabilities. The supposed borrowing of II. i. 2, 3 from the sixth book of The Faerie Queene, and the possible allusion in v. i. 52 to Spenser's Teares of the Muses are of no real assistance. Slightly more plausible is the theory that Titania's description of the inverted seasons in II. i. 88-114 derived point from the violent storms which afflicted England in 1594, and was perhaps suggested by them. It is hard to believe that the fear of the clowns lest the lion should frighten the ladies needed the hint of an actual incident occurring at a spectacle at the Scottish court in 1594, when a Moor was substituted for a lion lest the spectators should be disturbed. So far as these very slight indications go, they point to 1594-95. The impression one receives of the stage of maturity implied in the style, characterization, and construction of the play, and the evidence from the meter fit this date; and most modern scholars incline to accept it.

Certain marked peculiarities of A Midsummer-Night's Dream indicate that it was not written primarily for the public stage. The prominence of the marriage of Theseus in the setting, the general masque-like character of the whole, with its abundance of lyric, dance, and spectacle, and the virtual epithalamium with which it closes, all suggest that it was originally devised for some nobleman's wedding. The open flattery of Elizabeth in I. i. 157–164, and the praise of chastity in L. i. 74, 75, point further to the actual presence of the Queen. The most suitable occasion so far suggested is the marriage of the Earl of Derby to Elizabeth Vere, which took place at the Court at Greenwich in 1594.

No original for the main plot has been found. The most obvious sources whence Shakespeare may have derived information about Theseus are Chaucer's Knight's Tale and North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Theseus. From the former he might have got the idea of the marriage festivities of Theseus, the May-Day observances, the hunting scene, the name of Philostrate, and some minor details. From the latter he might have taken a few proper names, and allusions to the previous adventures of Theseus in love and war.

The story of Pyramus and Thisbe was accessible to him in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in Golding's translation of the same, in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, and in various later forms. A lovepotion with an effect somewhat similar to, but by no means identical with, that of the love-juice of Oberon plays a part in the Diana of Montemayor, from which the dramatist had taken part of the plot of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

The fairy-lore is based mainly on popular tradition. Titania is one of Ovid's names for Diana. Oberon had appeared in medieval romances such as Huon of Bordeaux, in Greene's James IV, in The Faerie Queene, and elsewhere. Robin Goodfellow was a familiar figure in folk-lore, and had already made his way into books. But Shakespeare worked on these figures, and on the fairyworld in general, a transformation into something all his own; and in so doing permanently modified this whole field of popular fancy. There is perhaps no one achievement of his genius which has had so pervasive an effect as his treatment of fairies in the present play and in Mercutio's speech on Queen Mab, in Romeo and Juliet.