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MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

"IN 'The Midsummer Night's Dream,' there flows a luxuriant vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have been brought about 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. The fairy world here described, resembles those elegant pieces of arabesque, where little genii with butterfly wings rise, half-embodied, above the flower-cups. Twilight, moonshine, dew, and spring perfumes, are the elements of these tender spirits; they assist Nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves, many-coloured flowers, and glittering insects; in the human world they do but make sport childishly and waywardly with their beneficent or noxious influences. Their most violent rage dissolves in good-natured raillery; their passions, stripped of all earthly matter, are merely an ideal dream. To correspond with this, the loves of mortals are painted as a poetical enchantment, which, by a contrary enchantment, may be immediately suspended, and then renewed again. The different parts of the plot; the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, Oberon and Titania's quarrel, the flight of the two pair of lovers, and the theatrical manœuvres of the mechanics, are so lightly and happily interwoven, that they seem necessary to each other for the formation of a whole. Oberon is desirous of relieving the lovers from their perplexities, but greatly adds to them through the mistakes of his minister, till he at last comes really to the aid of their fruitless amorous pain, their inconstancy and jealousy, and restores fidelity to its old rights. 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. The droll wonder of Bottom's transformation is merely the translation of a metaphor in its literal sense; but in his behaviour during the tender homage of the Fairy Queen, we have an amusing proof how much the consciousness of such a head-dress heightens the effect of his usual folly. Theseus and Hippolyta are, as it were, a splendid frame for the picture; they take no part in the action, but surround it 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 shades of night disappear. Pyramus and Thisbe is not unmeaningly chosen as the grotesque play within the play: it is exactly like the pathetic part of the piece, a secret meeting of two lovers in the forest, and their separation by an unfortunate accident, and closes the whole with the most amusing parody."-SCHLEGEL.

"The Midsummer Night's Dream' 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.

"In a piece where the imagery of the most wild and fantastic dream is actually embodied before our eyes-where the principal agency is carried on by beings lighter than the gossamer, and smaller than the cowslip's bell, whose elements are the moonbeams and the odoriferous atmosphere of flowers, and whose sport it is

'To dance in ringlets to the whistling winds,'

it was necessary, in order to give a filmy and assistant legerity to every part of the play, that the human agents should partake of the same evanescent and visionary character; accordingly both the

higher and lower personages of this drama are the subjects of illusion and enchantment, and love and amusement their sole occupation; the transient perplexities of thwarted passion, and the grotesque adventures of humorous folly, touched as they are with the tenderest or most frolic pencil, blending admirably with the wild, sportive, and romantic tone of the scene, where

'Trip the light fairies and the dapper elves,'

and forming together a whole so variously yet so happily interwoven, so racy and effervescent in its composition, of such exquisite levity and transparency, and glowing with such luxurious and phosphorescent splendour, as to be perfectly without a rival in dramatic literature.”—DRAKE.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream !' At the sight of such a title we naturally ask-Who is the dreamer? The poet, any of the characters of the drama, or the spectators? The answer seems to be that there is much in this beautiful sport of imagination which was fit only to be regarded as a dream by the persons whom the fairies illuded: and that, as a whole, it comes before the spectators under the notion of a dream.

"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, (and all is mended,)
That you have but slumber'd here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.'—

"Shakespeare was then but a young poet, rising into notice, and it was a bold and hazardous undertaking to bring together classical story and the fairy mythology, made still more hazardous by the introduction of the rude attempts in the dramatic art of the hard-handed men of Athens. By calling it a dream he obviated the objection to its incongruities, since it is of the nature of a dream that things heterogeneous are brought together in fantastical confusion. Yet, to a person who by repeated perusals has become familiar with this play, it will not appear so incongruous a composition that it requires such an apology as we find in the Epilogue and title. It cannot, however, have been popular, any more than Comus is popular when brought upon the stage. Its great and surpassing beauties would be in themselves a hindrance to its obtaining a vulgar popularity.

"There is no apparent reason why it should be called a dream of Midsummer Night in particular. Midsummer night was of old in England a time of bonfires and rejoicings, and, in London, of processions and pageantries. But there is no allusion to anything of this kind in the play. Midsummer night cannot be the time of the action, which is very distinctly fixed to May morning and a few days before. May morning, even more than Midsummer night, was a time of delight in those times which, when looked back upon from these days of incessant toil, seem to have been gay, innocent, and paradisaical. See in what sweet language and in what a religious spirit the old topographer of London, Stowe, speaks of the universal custom of the people of the city on May-day morning, 'to walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kinds.' We have abundant materials for a distinct and complete account of the May-day sports in the happy times of old England; but they would be misplaced in illustration of this play: for, though Shakespeare has made the time of his story the time when people went forth

To do observance to the morn of May,'

and has laid the scene of the principal event in one of those half-sylvan, half-pastoral spots which we may conceive to have been the most favourite haunts of the Mayers, he does not introduce any of the May-day sports, or show us anything of the May-day customs of the time. Yet he might have done so. His subject seemed even to invite him to it, since a party of Mayers with their garlands of sweet flowers would have harmonized well with the lovers and the fairies, and might have made sport for Robin Goodfellow. Shakespeare loved to think of flowers and to write of them, and it may seem that it was a part of his original conception to have made more use than he has done of May-day and Flora's followers."-HUNTER.

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Or this popular drama two editions were published prior to its appearance in the 1623 folio. One, entitled, "The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice. With the extreame crueltie of Shylocke the lewe towards the sayd Merchant, in cutting a iust pound of his flesh : and the obtayning of Portia by the choyce of three chests. As it hath beene diuers times acted by the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. At London, Printed by I. R., for Thomas Heyes, and are to be sold in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Greene Dragon. 1600," 4to. The other, "The excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. With the extreme cruelty of Shylocke the Iew towards the saide Merchant, in cutting a iust pound of his flesh. And the obtaining of Portia, by the choyse of three caskets. Written by W. Shakespeare. Printed by J. Roberts. 1600," 4to.

"The Merchant of Venice" is the last play of Shakespeare's mentioned in the list of Francis Meres, 1598; and we find, in the same year, it was entered on the register of the Stationers' Company :-" 22. July, 1598, James Robertes] A booke of the Marchaunt of Venyce, or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyse," &c. &c. But that it was written and acted some years before there appears to be now very little doubt. Henslowe's "Diary" contains an entry, 25th of August, 1594, recording the performance of "The Venesyon Commodey." This Malone conjectured to refer to " The Merchant of Venice," which is the more probable as it has since been found that, in 1594, the fellowship of players to which Shakespeare belonged was performing at the theatre in Newington Butts, conjointly, it is believed, with the company managed by Henslowe.

The plot is composed of two distinct stories;-the incidents connected with the bond, and those of the caskets, which are interwoven with wonderful felicity. Both these fables are found separately related in the Latin "Gesta Romanorum." The bond, in Chap. XLVIII. of MS. Harl. 2270; and the caskets, in Chap. XCIX. of the same collection. Some of the circumstances, however, connected with the bond in "The Merchant of Venice," resemble more closely the tale of the fourth day in the "Pecorone" of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, in which it is noticeable too, that the scene of a portion of the hero's adventures is laid at Belmont. The "Pecorone," though first printed in 1550, was written nearly two hundred years before. A translation of it in English was extant in our author's time, of which an abridgment will be found in the "Illustrative Comments" at the end of the play. Upon this translation the old ballad of "Gernutus," which is found in Percy's "Reliques," entitled," A New Song, Shewing the crueltie of Gernutus, a Jew, who lending to a Merchant a hundred Crownes, would have a pound of his fleshe, because he could not pay him at the day apointed. To the Tune of Black and Yellow," -was most likely founded. Whether the fusion of the two legends was the work of Shakespeare or of an earlier writer, we have not sufficient evidence to determine. Tyrwhitt was of opinion that he followed some hitherto unknown novelist, who had saved him the trouble of combining the two stories, and Steevens cites a passage from Gosson's "School of Abuse," 1579, which certainly tends to prove that a play comprising the double plot of "The Merchant of Venice" had been exhibited before Shakespeare began to write for the stage. The passage is as follows— Gosson is excepting some particular players and plays from the sweeping condemnation of his "pleasaunt inuective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Iesters, and such like Caterpillers of a Commonwelth: "-" And as some of the players are farre from abuse, so some of their playes are without rebuke, which are easily remembered, as quickly rekoned. The two prose bookes played at the Belsavage, where you shall finde never a worde withoute witte, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vaine. The Jew, and Ptolome, showne at the Bull; the one representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and bloody mindes of usurers;" &c.

The expression worldly chusers is so appropriate to the choosers of the caskets, and the bloody mindes of usurers, so applicable to the vindictive cruelty of Shylock, that it is very probable Shakespeare in this play, as in other plays, worked upon some rough model already prepared for him. The question is not of great importance. Be the merit of the fable whose it may, the characters, the language, the poetry, and the sentiment, are his and his alone. To no other writer of the period could we be indebted for the charming combination of womanly grace, and

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