in the efficacy of the taker. This species of anachronism, common to all modern writers before and during the age of Shakespeare, seems to have risen in part from a comparative dearth of classical learning, which left men to contemplate the heroes of antiquity under the forms into which their own minds and manners were cast. Thus all their delineations became informed with the genius of romance: the condensed grace of ancient character gave way to the enlargement of chivalrous magnanimity and honor, with its "high-erected thoughts seated in the heart of courtesy." Such appears to have been the no less beautiful than natural result of the "small Latin and less Greek," so often smiled and sometimes barked at, by those more skilled in the ancient languages than in the mothertongue of nature. Puck is apt to remind one of Ariel, though they have little in common, save that both are supernatural, and therefore live no longer in the faith of reason. Puck is no such sweet-mannered, tender-hearted, music-breathing spirit, there are no such delicate 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 sweetly 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 whatsoever distresses he finds or occasions he sees much to laugh at, nothing to pity: to tease and vex poor human sufferers, and then to think "what fools these mortals be," is pure fun to him; and if he do not cause pain, it is that the laws of Fairydom forbid him, not that he wishes it uncaused. Yet, notwithstanding his mad pranks, we cannot choose but love him, 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. It would seem that some of the tricks once ascribed to him were afterwards transferred to witchcraft. Well do we remem ber a black spot in the bottom of the old churn over which we have toiled away many an autumnal evening. A redhot horse-shoe had been thrown in to disbewitch the cream, and had left its mark there. Report told how a certain old woman of the neighborhood was fretting and groaning the next morning with a terrible burn. Of course she was burnt out of the churn, and, she away, the butter soon came. But of all the characters in this play, Bottom descends by far the most into the realities of common experience, and is therefore much the most accessible to the grasp of prosaic and critical fingers. It has been thought the Poet meant him as a satire on the envies and jealousies of the green-room, as they had fallen under his keen yet kindly eye. Surely the qualities uppermost in Bottom had forced themselves on his notice long before he entered the greenroom. It is indeed curious to observe the solicitude of this Protean actor, and critic, and connoisseur, that all the parts of the forthcoming play may have the benefit of his execution; how great is his concern lest, if he be tied to one, the others may be "overdone or come tardy off"; and how he would fain engross them all to himself, to the end of course that all may succeed to the honor of the stage and the pleasure of the spectators. But Bottom's metamorphosis is the most potent drawer-out of his genius. (The sense of his new head-dress stirs up all the manhood within him, and lifts his character into ludicrous greatness at once. Hitherto the seeming a man has made him content to be little better than an ass; but no sooner does he seem an ass than he tries his best to be a man; and all his efforts that way only go to approve the perfect fitness of his present seeming to his former being. Schlegel ingeniously remarks, that "the droll wonder of Bottom's metamorphosis is merely the translation of a metaphor in its literal sense." The turning a figure of speech thus into visible form is a thing only to be thought of or imagined; so that probably no attempt to paint or represent it to the senses can ever succeed. We can bear, we often have to bear, that a man should seem an ass to the mind's eye; but not that he should seem so to the eye of the body. A child, for example, takes great pleasure in fancying the stick he rides to be a horse, when he would be frightened out of his wits were the stick to quicken and expand into an actual horse. In like manner, we often delight in indulging fancies and giving names, when we should be shocked, were our fancies to harden into facts: we enjoy visions in our sleep, that would only disgust or terrify us, should we wake up and find them solidified into things. The effect of Bottom's transformation can scarce be much otherwise, if brought upon the stage. Delightful to think, it is intolerable to look upon: exquisitely true in idea, it has no truth, or even verisimilitude, when reduced to fact; so that, however gladly imagination receives it, sense and understanding revolt at it. COMMENTS By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS THE DRAMATIC ELEMENTS This play is the shortest of the collection-the least marked in delineations of personal character-the least charged with moral significance the most musical or lyrical. It is picturesque, imaginative, playful, and droll. 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. Yet, physically speaking, a large portion of the characters are more difficult of adequate impersonation than those of any other play. Before imitation of sentiment or passion is thought of, we are met at the outset with the impossibility of donning the costume. The words set down belie the claim of any actor of mortal mould to utter them; the delicate, ethereal, diminutive, yet energetic fairies, move and speak in measures and proportions that are out of all harmony with any conceivable subject histrionic. Nevertheless, with these difficulties Shakespeare coped, and not ignoring but admitting and improving them, making them the very theme and groundwork of his fanciful contrasts and ludicrous incongruities, he wrote a drama and not a poem, and, I have no doubt, brought it forth with an effect corresponding to the "right happy and copious industry" he had thereon bestowed.-LLOYD, Critical Essays. Like the sources-pretty enough surely-of its poetic inspiration, so the dramatic elements of A Midsummer Night's Dream are more than usually manifold. No less than four streams of story flow through these glades of summer and fairyland, sometimes uniting, sometimes apart, till they mingle forever as they pour their tribute into the great ocean of truth and beauty. We have the story of the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta. This may be called the main stream-though the point is a doubtful one; then there is the interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe, with all that leads up to its performance; next, the fortunes of the two pairs of lovers, the stream of true love that never yet ran smooth; and, touching these here and there, the troubled currents of the quarrel between the Fairy King and Queen; and we may add that the three latter never lose sight of the first. Otherwise we may find the poet's main motive in the fairy element, and the influence it is made to exert on two extremes of human society; these extremes, moreover, are introduced to us separately in Act i., and at length, in Act v., when the fairy element has been withdrawn, they are admirably united by the "tragical mirth" of Pyramus and Thisbe.—LUEL, Handbook to Shakespeare's Works. THE THEME OF THE PLAY The theme which the action carries out in the spirit of the fantastico-comic view of life is 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 irresistible charm. It is the magic power of love which has caused the bloody feud between Theseus and the Amazon queer to resolve itself into a gay wedding feast. Ti tania has fallen in love with an Indian boy, whom Oberon in a fit of jealousy, demands her to give up, so that he may make the boy one of his huntsmen: and this again gives rise to the bantering play of the elves among one another. Egeus, the father of Hermia, has taken a blind preference for Demetrius, which is his only reason for re fusing his daughter's hand to Lysander, and he wishes to * |