And hell too strong for me to buckle with: Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust. It is immediately after this that she is taken prisoner and sent to the stake. THE FAIRIES In two of the Shakespeare plays, fairies take an important part. The skepticism of the twentieth century has scornfully rejected the serious views of the world in ancient days on the subject of fairies but apparently the time is near when ocular evidence will demonstrate their reality. Those who have read The Coming of The Fairies by A. Conan Doyle, will be familiar with the story of how some of them were photographed in a glen in the North of England and of the array of expert opinion on the genuineness of the negatives. The subject will doubtless be in controversy for a few years until the evidence becomes so abundant that incredulity must give way. Meantime, an examination of that rollicking comedy, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, and the drama of The Tempest, will furnish interesting descriptions of the fairies. Just as the great dramatist takes clairvoyance, premonitions and ghosts as facts of nature, he presents the fairies likewise. They are realities and in The Tempest the number of charac ters on the stage is about equally divided between human beings and fairies. In A Midsummer-Night's Dream the curtain that shuts a large part of nature from the vision of most of us is lifted a little and we get a glimpse of the life that cannot be observed with the physical senses. The fairies dance and frolic for us and, while the poet avails himself of the license to which the muse is rightly entitled, he gives us a faithful portrayal of the characteristics of these witching denizens of the world invisible. In their essentials there is no difference between the fairies of the Shakespeare plays and the nature spirits of the Leadbeater books. Puck makes himself visible or invisible at will and quickly assumes various forms to suit the purpose of the moment; and he greatly enjoys the task Oberon assigns him of misleading and glamouring mortals-a characteristic familiar to students of the astral and etheric regions. I'll follow you, I'll lead you 'bout around, Sometimes a horse, I'll be, sometimes a hound, And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. The dramatist lets us see that these non human but intelligent beings belong to another order of creation and do not understand life as we do. A thing of much value to us has no value in their eyes. They would not exchange a knowledge of the favorite spots in which To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, for all the wealth and joys of mortals; and looking on at the incomprehensible actions of the physical plane people Puck exclaims, Lord, what fools these mortals be! C. W. Leadbeater, in his work The Astral Plane, describes these nature spirits-as the whole of this great lower strata of the deva evolution is known to Theosophy-as "tricky and mischievous but rarely malicious." These characteristics come out prominently in such characters as Puck and Ariel. Puck describes himself as "that merry wanderer of the night" who devotes himself with great gusto to goodnatured mischief, for his own and others' entertainment, and it was when he was playing his favorite tricks on his victims that they would "swear a merrier hour was never wasted." Ariel, in The Tempest, takes similar delight in making a victim of Caliban. He finds Caliban, on account of his ignorance and stupidity, easily |