A Midsummer-Night's Dream was registered at the Stationers' October 8,
1600, and two quarto editions of it were published in the course of
that year. The play is not known to have been printed again till it
reappeared in the folio of 1623, where the repetition of certain
misprints shows it to have been printed from one of the quarto copies.
In all three of these copies, however, the printing is remarkably
clear and correct for the time, insomuch that modern editors have
little difficulty about the text. Probably none of the Poet's dramas
has reached us in a more satisfactory state.
The play is first heard of in the list given by Francis Meres in his
_Palladis Tamia_, 1598. But it was undoubtedly written several years
before that time; and I am not aware that any editor places the
writing at a later date than 1594. This brings it into the same period
with _King John, King Richard the Second_, and the finished _Romeo and
Juliet_; and the internal marks of style naturally sort it into that
company. Our Mr. Verplanck, however, thinks there are some passages
which relish strongly of an earlier time; while again there are others
that with the prevailing sweetness of the whole have such an
intertwisting of nerve and vigour, and such an energetic compactness
of thought and imagery, mingled occasionally with the deeper tonings
of "years that bring the philosophic mind," as to argue that they were
wrought into the structure of the play not long before it came from
the press. The part of the Athenian lovers certainly has a good deal
that, viewed by itself, would scarce do credit even to such a boyhood
as Shakespeare's must have been. On the other hand, there is a large
philosophy in Theseus' discourse of "the lunatic, the lover, and the
poet," a manly judgment in his reasons for preferring the "tedious
brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe," and a bracing
freshness in the short dialogue of the chase, all in the best style of
the author's second period. Perhaps, however, what seem the defects of
the former, the fanciful quirks and far-fetched conceits, 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, and preclude a disproportionate resentment of some naughty acts
into which those love-bewildered frailties are betrayed.
There is at least a rather curious coincidence, which used to be
regarded as proving that the play was not written till after the
Summer of 1594. I refer to Titania's superb description, in ii. 1, of
the strange misbehaviour of the weather, which she ascribes to the
fairy bickerings. I can quote but a part of it:
"The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the Spring, the Summer,
The childing Autumn, angry Winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazèd world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension."
For the other part of the coincidence, Strype in his _Annals_ gives
the following passage from a discourse by the Rev. Dr. King: "And see
whether the Lord doth not threaten us much more, by sending such
unseasonable weather and storms of rain among us; which if we will
observe, and compare it with what is past, we may say that the course
of nature is very much inverted. Our years are turned upside down: our
Summers are no Summers; our harvests are no harvests; our seed-times
are no seed-times. For a great space of time scant any day hath been
seen that it hath not rained." Dyce indeed scouts the supposal that
Shakespeare had any allusion to this eccentric conduct of the elements
in the Summer of 1594, pronouncing it "ridiculous"; but I do not quite
see it so; albeit I am apt enough to believe that most of the play was
written before that date. And surely, the truth of the allusion being
granted, all must admit that passing events have seldom been turned to
better account in the service of poetry.
* * * * *
I can hardly imagine this play ever to have been very successful on
the stage; and I am sure it could not be made to succeed there now.
Still we are not without contemporary evidence that it had at least a
fair amount of fame. And we have authentic information that it was
performed at the house of Dr. John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, on
Sunday, the 27th of September, 1631. The actor of Bottom's part was on
that occasion sentenced by a Puritan tribunal to sit twelve hours in
the porter's room of the Bishop's palace, wearing the ass's head. This
Dr. Williams was the very able but far from faultless man who was
treated so harshly by Laud, and gave the King such crooked counsel in
the case of Strafford, and spent his last years in mute sorrow at the
death of his royal master, and had his life written by the wise,
witty, good Bishop Hacket.
* * * * *
Some hints towards the part of Theseus and Hippolyta appear to have
been taken from _The Knight's Tale_ of Chaucer. The same poet's
_Legend of Thisbe of Babylon_, and Golding's translation of the same
story from Ovid, probably furnished the matter of the Interlude. So
much as relates to Bottom and his fellows evidently came fresh from
Nature as she had passed under the Poet's eye. The linking of these
clowns with the ancient tragic tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, so as to
draw the latter within the region of modern farce, is not less
original than droll. How far it may have expressed the Poet's judgment
touching the theatrical doings of the time, were perhaps a question
more curious than profitable. The names of Oberon, Titania, and Robin
Goodfellow were made familiar by the surviving relics of Gothic and
Druidical mythology; as were also many particulars in their habits,
mode of life, and influence in human affairs. Hints and allusions
scattered through many preceding writers might be produced, showing
that the old superstition had been grafted into the body of
Christianity, where it had shaped itself into a regular system, so as
to mingle in the lore of the nursery, and hold an influential place in
the popular belief. Some reports of this ancient Fairydom are choicely
translated into poetry by Chaucer in _The Wife of Bath's Tale_.
But, though Chaucer and others had spoken about the fairy nation, it
was for Shakespeare to let them speak for themselves: until he clothed
their life in apt forms, their thoughts in fitting words, they but
floated unseen and unheard in the mental atmosphere of his fatherland.
So that on this point there need be no scruple about receiving
Hallam's statement of the matter: "_A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ is, I
believe, altogether original in one of the most beautiful conceptions
that ever visited the mind of a poet,--the fairy machinery. A few
before him had dealt in a vulgar and clumsy manner with popular
superstitions; but the sportive, beneficent, invisible population of
the air and earth, long since established in the creed of childhood,
and of those simple as children, had never for a moment been blended
with 'human mortals' among the personages of the drama." How much
Shakespeare did as the friend and saviour of those sweet airy
frolickers of the past from the relentless mowings of Time, has been
charmingly set forth in our day in Hood's _Plea of the Midsummer
Fairies_.
What, then, are the leading qualities which the Poet ascribes to
these ideal or fanciful beings? Coleridge says he is "convinced that
Shakespeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind,
and worked upon it as a dream throughout." This remark no doubt
rightly hits the true genius of the piece; and on no other ground can
its merits be duly estimated. The whole play is indeed a sort of ideal
dream; and it is from the fairy personages that its character as such
mainly proceeds. All the materials of the piece are ordered and
assimilated to that central and governing idea. This it is that
explains and justifies the distinctive features of the work, such as
the constant preponderance of the lyrical over the dramatic, and the
free playing of the action unchecked by the conditions of outward fact
and reality. Accordingly a sort of lawlessness is, as it ought to be,
the very law of the performance. King Oberon is the sovereign who
presides over the world of dreams; Puck is his prime minister; and all
the other denizens of Fairydom are his subjects and the agents of his
will in this capacity. Titania's nature and functions are precisely
the same which Mercutio assigns to Queen Mab, whom he aptly describes
as having for her office to deliver sleeping men's fancies of their
dreams, those "children of an idle brain." In keeping with this
central dream-idea, the actual order of things everywhere gives place
to the spontaneous issues and capricious turnings of the dreaming
mind; the lofty and the low, the beautiful and the grotesque, the
world of fancy and of fact, all the strange diversities that enter
into "such stuff as dreams are made of," running and frisking
together, and interchanging their functions and properties; so that
the whole seems confused, flitting, shadowy, and indistinct, as fading
away in the remoteness and fascination of moonlight. 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 everything is idealized, even to the sunbeams and
the soil; where the vegetation proceeds by enchantment, and there is
magic in the germination of the seed and secretion of the sap.
The characteristic attributes of the fairy people are, perhaps, most
availably represented in Puck; who is apt to remind one of Ariel,
though 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 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. 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.
In further explication of this peculiar people, it is to be noted that
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, 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;
whatever of conscience they have adheres to this: so that herein they
not unfitly represent the wholesome old notion which places
cleanliness next to godliness. Every thing that is trim, dainty,
elegant, graceful, agreeable, and sweet to the senses, they delight
in: flowers, fragrances, dewdrops, and moonbeams, honey-bees,
butterflies, and nightingales, dancing, play, and song,--these are
their joy; out of these they weave their highest delectation; amid
these they "fleet the time carelessly," without memory or forecast,
and with no thought or aim beyond the passing pleasure of the moment.
On the other hand, they have an instinctive repugnance to whatever is
foul, ugly, sluttish, awkward, ungainly, or misshapen: they wage
unrelenting war against bats, spiders, hedgehogs, spotted snakes,
blindworms, long-legg'd spinners, beetles, and all such disagreeable
creatures: to "kill cankers in the musk-rosebuds," and to "keep back
the clamorous owl," are regular parts of their business. Their intense
dislike of what is ugly and misshapen is the reason 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" as
Bottom and his fellow-actors in the Interlude.
Thus these beings embody the ideal of the mere natural soul, or rather
the purely sensuous fancy which shapes and governs the pleasing or the
vexing delusions of sleep. They lead a merry, luxurious life, given up
entirely to the pleasures of happy sensation,--a happiness that has no
moral element, nothing of reason or conscience in it. They are 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.
Their very kingdom is located in the aromatic, flower-scented Indies,
a land where mortals are supposed to live in a half-dreamy state. From
thence they come, "following darkness," just as dreams naturally do;
or, as Oberon words it, "tripping after the night's shade, swifter
than the wandering Moon." It is their nature to shun the daylight,
though they do not fear it, and to prefer the dark, as this is their
appropriate work-time; but most of all they love the dusk and the
twilight, because this is the best dreaming-time, whether the dreamer
be asleep or awake. And all the shifting phantom-jugglery of dreams,
all the sweet soothing witcheries, and all the teasing and tantalizing
imagery of dream-land, rightly belong to their province.
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. So that their whole
inner character is fashioned in harmony with their external function.
Nor is it without rare felicity that the Poet assigns to them the
dominion over the workings of sensuous and superficial love, this
being but as one of the courts of the dream-land kingdom; a region
ordered, as it were, quite apart from the proper regards of duty and
law, and where the natural soul of man moves free of moral thought and
responsibility. Accordingly we have the King of this Fairydom endowed
with the rights and powers both of the classical god of love and the
classical goddess of chastity. Oberon commands alike the secret
virtues of "Dian's bud" and of "Cupid's flower"; and 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;
that is, he owns no restraint but as he is inwardly held to apply
either or both of them in such a way as to avoid all distortion or
perversion from what is naturally graceful and pleasant. For
everybody, I take it, knows that in the intoxications of a life of
sensuous love reason and conscience have as little force as they have
in a life of dreams. And so the Poet fitly ascribes to Oberon and his
ministers both Cupid's delight in frivolous breaches of faith and
Jove's laughter at lovers' perjuries; and this on the ground,
apparently, that the doings of those in Cupid's power are as harmless
and unaccountable as the freaks of a dream.
In pursuance of this idea he depicts the fairies as beings without any
proper moral sense in what they do, but as having a very keen sense of
what is ludicrous and absurd in the doings of men. They are careless
and unscrupulous in their dealings in this behalf. The wayward follies
and the teasing perplexities of the fancy-smitten persons are pure
sport to them. If by their wanton mistakes they can bewilder and
provoke the lovers into larger outcomes of the laughable, so much the
higher runs their mirth. And as they have no fellow-feeling with the
pains of those who thus feed their love of fun, so the effect of their
roguish tricks makes no impression upon them: they have a feeling of
simple delight and wonder at the harmless frettings and fumings which
their merry mischief has a hand in bringing to pass: but then it is to
be observed also, that they find just as much sport in tricking the
poor lover out of his vexations as in tricking him into them; in fact,
they never rest satisfied with the fun of the former so long as there
is any chance of enjoying that of the latter also.
* * * * *
All readers of Shakespeare are of course familiar with the splendid
passage in ii. 1, where Oberon describes to Puck how, on a certain
occasion,
"I heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song."
And all are no doubt aware that the subsequent lines, referring to "a
fair vestal throned by the west," are commonly understood to have been
meant as a piece of delicate flattery to Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Halpin
has recently given to this famous passage a new interpretation or
application, which is at least curious enough to justify a brief
statement of it. In his view, "Cupid all arm'd" refers to Leicester's
wooing of Elizabeth, and his grand entertainment of her at Kenilworth
in 1575. From authentic descriptions of that entertainment we learn,
that among the spectacles and fireworks witnessed on the occasion was
one of a singing mermaid on a dolphin's back gliding over smooth water
amid shooting stars. The "love-shaft" which was aimed at the "fair
vestal," that is, the Priestess of Diana, whose bud has such
prevailing might over "Cupid's flower," glanced off; so that "the
imperial votaress passèd on, in maiden meditation, fancy-free."
Thus far, all is clear enough. But Halpin further interprets that the
"little western flower" upon whom "the bolt of Cupid fell" refers to
Lettice Countess of Essex, with whom Leicester carried on a secret
intrigue while her husband was absent in Ireland. The Earl of Essex,
on being apprised of the intrigue, set out to return the next year,
but died of poison, as was thought, before he reached home. So Halpin
understands the "western flower, before milk-white," that is,
innocent, but "now purple with love's wound," as referring to the
lady's fall, or to the deeper blush of her husband's murder. And the
flower is called "love-in-idleness," to signify her listlessness of
heart during the Earl's absence; as the Poet elsewhere uses similar
terms of the pansy, as denoting the love that renders men pensive,
dreamy, indolent, instead of toning up the soul with healthy and noble
aspirations. The words of Oberon to Puck, "that very time I saw--but
thou could'st not," are construed as referring to the strict mystery
in which the affair was wrapped, and to the Poet's own knowledge of
it, because a few years later the execution of Edward Arden, his
maternal relative, was closely connected with it, and because the
unfortunate Earl of Essex, so well known as for some time the Queen's
favourite, and then the victim of her resentment, was the son of that
Lettice, and was also the Poet's early friend and patron.
Such is, in substance, Halpin's view of the matter; which I give for
what it may be worth; and freely acknowledge it to be ingenious and
plausible enough. Gervinus regards it as "an interpretation full of
spirit," and as "giving the most definite relation to the innermost
sense of the whole piece." And I am very willing to believe that
Shakespeare often took hints, perhaps something more than hints, for
his poetry from the facts and doings of the time: nevertheless I
rather fail to see how any real good is to be gained towards
understanding the Poet from such interpretations of his scenes, or
from tracing out such "definite relations" between his workmanship and
the persons and particulars that may have come to his knowledge. For
my own part, I doubt whether "the innermost sense" of the play is any
the clearer to me for this ingenious piece of explanation.
Besides, I have yet to learn what proofs there are that the ill-fated
Essex was an early patron and friend of Shakespeare. That great honour
belongs to the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke. It was Lord Bacon,
not Shakespeare, who enjoyed so richly the friendship and patronage of
the generous Essex; and how he requited the same is known much too
well for his credit. I am not unmindful that this may yield some
comfort to those who would persuade us that Shakespeare's plays were
written by Lord Bacon. Upon this point I have just four things to say:
First, Bacon's requital of the Earl's bounty was such a piece of
ingratitude as I can hardly conceive the author of _King Lear_ to have
been guilty of: Second, the author of Shakespeare's plays, whoever he
may have been, certainly was not a scholar; he had indeed something
vastly better than learning, but he had not that: Third, Shakespeare
never philosophizes, Bacon never does anything else: Fourth, Bacon's
mind, great as it was, might have been cut out of Shakespeare's
without being missed.
* * * * *
Any very firm or strong delineation of character, any deep passion,
earnest purpose, or working of powerful motives, would clearly go at
odds with the spirit of such a performance as I have described this
play to be. It 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. Any such tuggings of mind or heart as would ruffle and
discompose the smoothness of lyrical division would be quite out of
keeping in a course of dream-life. The characters here, accordingly,
are drawn with light, delicate, vanishing touches; some of them being
dreamy and sentimental, some gay and frolicsome, and others replete
with amusing absurdities, while all are alike dipped in fancy or
sprinkled with humour. And for the same reason the tender distresses
of unrequited or forsaken love here touch not our moral sense at all,
but only at the most our human sympathies; love itself being
represented as but the effect of some visual enchantment, which the
King of Fairydom can inspire, suspend, or reverse at pleasure. Even
the heroic personages are fitly shown in an unheroic aspect: we see
them but in their unbendings, when they have daffed their martial
robes aside, to lead the train of day-dreamers, and have a nuptial
jubilee. In their case, great care and art were required, to make the
play what it has been blamed for being; that is, to keep the dramatic
sufficiently under, and lest the law of a part should override the law
of the whole.
So, likewise, in the transformation of Bottom and the dotage of
Titania, all the resources of fancy were needed, to prevent the
unpoetical from getting the upper hand, and thus swamping the genius
of the piece. As it is, what words can fitly express the effect with
which the extremes of the grotesque and the beautiful are here brought
together? What an inward quiet laughter springs up and lubricates the
fancy at Bottom's droll confusion of his two natures, when he talks,
now as an ass, now as a man, and anon as a mixture of both; his
thoughts running at the same time on honey-bags and thistles, the
charms of music and of good dry oats! Who but Shakespeare or Nature
could have so interfused the lyrical spirit, not only with, but into
and through a series or cluster of the most irregular and fantastic
drolleries? But indeed this embracing and kissing of the most
ludicrous and the most poetical, the enchantment under which they
meet, and the airy, dream-like grace that hovers over their union, are
altogether inimitable and indescribable. In this singular wedlock, the
very diversity of the elements seems to link them the closer, while
this linking in turn heightens that diversity; Titania being thereby
drawn on to finer issues of soul, and Bottom to larger expressions of
stomach. The union is so very improbable as to seem quite natural: we
cannot conceive how any thing but a dream could possibly have married
things so contrary; and that they could not have come together save in
a dream, is a sort of proof that they _were_ dreamed together.
And so, throughout, the execution is in strict accordance with the
plan. The play, from beginning to end, is a perfect festival of
whatever dainties and delicacies poetry may command,--a continued
revelry and jollification of soul, where the understanding is lulled
asleep, that the fancy may run riot in unrestrained enjoyment. The
bringing together of four parts so dissimilar as those of the Duke and
his warrior Bride, of the Athenian ladies and their lovers, of the
amateur players and their woodland rehearsal, and of the fairy
bickerings and overreaching; and the carrying of them severally to a
point where they all meet and blend in lyrical respondence; all this
is done in the same freedom from the laws that govern the drama of
character and life. Each group of persons is made to parody itself
into concert with the others; while the frequent intershootings of
fairy influence lift the whole into the softest regions of fancy. At
last the Interlude comes in as an amusing burlesque on all that has
gone before; as in our troubled dreams we sometimes end with a dream
that we have been dreaming, and our perturbations sink to rest in the
sweet assurance that they were but the phantoms and unrealities of a
busy sleep.
* * * * *
Though, as I have already implied, the characterization is here quite
secondary and subordinate, yet the play probably has as much of
character as were compatible with so much of poetry. Theseus has been
well described as a classic personage with romantic features and
expression. The name is Greek, but the nature and spirit are
essentially Gothic. Nor does the abundance of classical allusion and
imagery in the story call for any qualification here; because
whatsoever is taken is thoroughly steeped in the efficacy of the
taker. This sort of anachronism, common to all modern writers before
and during the age of Shakespeare, seems to have arisen 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 mind and manners had been cast. Thus their delineations became
informed with the genius of romance; the condensed grace of ancient
character giving way to the enlargement of chivalrous magnanimity and
honour, with its "high-erected thoughts seated in the heart of
courtesy." Such in Shakespeare's case appears to have been the no less
beautiful than natural result of the small learning, so often smiled
and sometimes barked at, by those more skilled in the ancient
languages than in the mother-tongue of nature.
* * * * *
In the two pairs of lovers there are hardly any lines deep and firm
enough to be rightly called characteristic. Their doings, even more
than those of the other human persons, are marked by the dream-like
freakishness and whimsicality which distinguish the piece. Perhaps the
two ladies are slightly discriminated as individuals, in that Hermia,
besides her brevity of person, is the more tart in temper, and the
more pert and shrewish of speech, while Helena is of a rather milder
and softer disposition, with less of confidence in herself. So too in
the case of Demetrius and Lysander the lines of individuality are
exceedingly faint; the former being perhaps a shade the more caustic
and spiteful, and the latter somewhat the more open and candid. But
there is really nothing of heart or soul in what any of them do: as we
see them, they are not actuated by principle at all, or even by any
thing striking so deep as motive: their conduct issues from the more
superficial springs of capricious impulse and fancy, the "jugglery of
the senses during the sleep of reason"; the higher forces of a mental
and moral bearing having no hand in shaping their action. For the
fairy influences do not reach so far as to the proper seat of motive
and principle: they have but the skin-depth of amorous caprice; all
the elements of character and all the vital springs of faith and
loyalty and honour lying quite beyond their sphere. Even here the
judgment or the genius of the Poet is very perceptible; the lovers
being represented from the start as acting from no forces or
inspirations too deep or strong for the powers of Fairydom to
overcome. Thus the pre-condition of the two pairs in their
whim-bewilderment is duly attempered to the purposed dream-play of the
general action. Nor is the seeming stanchness of Hermia and Demetrius
in the outset any exception to this view; for nothing is more wilful
and obstinate than amorous caprice or skin-deep love during its brief
tenure of the fancy.
* * * * *
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 that the Poet meant him as a satire on the envies and
jealousies of the greenroom, as they had fallen under his keen yet
kindly eye. But, surely, the qualities uppermost in Bottom the Weaver
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, 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 honour 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 to be a man has made him
content to be little better than an ass; but no sooner is he conscious
of seeming an ass than he tries his best to be a man; while all his
efforts that way only go to approve the fitness of his present seeming
to his former being.
Schlegel happily remarks, that "the droll wonder of Bottom's
metamorphosis is merely the translation of a metaphor in its literal
sense." The turning of 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--at least we often have to bear--that a man should seem an ass to
the mind's eye; but that he should seem such to the eye of the body is
rather too much, save as it is done in those fable-pictures which have
long been among the playthings of the nursery. So a child, for
instance, takes great pleasure in fancying the stick he is riding 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 awake and find
them solidified into things. The effect of Bottom's transformation can
hardly be much otherwise, if set forth in visible, animated shape.
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; so that, however gladly imagination receives it,
sense and understanding revolt at it.
* * * * *
Partly for reasons already stated, and partly for others that I scarce
know how to state, _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ is a most effectual
poser to criticism. Besides that its very essence is irregularity, so
that it cannot be fairly brought to the test of rules, the play forms
properly a class by itself: literature has nothing else really like
it; nothing therefore with which it may be compared, and its merits
adjusted. For so the Poet 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; all is in the land of dreams,--a place for dreamers, not
for critics. For who can tell what a dream ought or ought not to be,
or when the natural conditions of dream-life are or are not rightly
observed? How can the laws of time and space, as involved in the
transpiration of human character,--how can these be applied in a place
where the mind is thus absolved from their proper jurisdiction?
Besides, the whole thing swarms with enchantment: all the sweet
witchery of Shakespeare's sweet genius is concentrated in it, yet
disposed with so subtle and cunning a hand, that we can as little
grasp it as get away from it: its charms, like those of a summer
evening, are such as we may see and feel, but cannot locate or define;
cannot say they are here, or they are there: the moment we yield
ourselves up to them, they seem to be everywhere; the moment we go to
master them, they seem to be nowhere.