wakened to find an ass's head planted upon him. All comes right, as it ever must in fairyland; the true lovers are reunited; the faithful unloved lady gets her faithless lover; Titania repents and is forgiven; and Theseus's wedding is graced by the "mirthfullest tragedy that ever was seen."

We have in Midsummer Night's Dream three distinct groups of characters-the lovers, the city clowns rehearsing for the play, and the fairies. These three diverse groups are combined in the most skillful way by an intricate interweaving of plot and by the final appearance of all three groups at the wedding festivities of the Duke of Athens and his Amazon bride Hypolita. The characterization, light but delicate throughout, the mastery of the intricate story, the perfection of the comic parts, and the unsurpassed lyrical power of the poetry, are all the evidence we need that Shakespeare is now his own master in the drama, and can pass on to the supreme heights of his art. He has learned his trade for good and all.

It is not a bad way of placing the last of the comedies in the first period of Shakespeare's production, to say that it is the counterpart in comedy of Romeo and Juliet. Like Romeo, Lysander has made love to Hermia, has sung at her window by moonlight, and has won her heart, while her father has promised her hand to another. Like the lovers in the tragedy, Lysander and Hermia plan flight, and an error in this plan would have been as fatal as it was in Romeo and Juliet, but for the kind interposition of the fairies. Again, the "tedious brief scene" of Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the rustics at the close of the play, is noth

ing but a delightful parody on the very theme of Romeo and Juliet, even to the mistaken death, and the suicide of the heroine upon realization of the truth. At the end of the parody, as if in mockery of the Capulets and Montagues, Bottom starts up to tell us that "the wall is down that parted their fathers." Finally, the whole fairy story is the creation of Shakespeare in a Mercutio mood.

In the diversity of its metrical form, Midsummer Night's Dream is also the counterpart of Romeo and Juliet. The abundance of rimed couplet, combined wherever there is intensity of feeling with a perfect form of blank verse, is reminiscent of the earlier play. Passages of equally splendid poetic power meet us all through, while at the same time we feel the very charm of youthful fervor in expression that the tragedy displayed.

Date. -There is nothing certain to guide us in assigning a date to the play, except the mention of it in Meres's list, in 1598. The absence of a uniform structure of verse, the large proportion of rime (partly due, of course, to the nature of the play), the unequal measure of characterization, and the number of passages of purely lyric beauty argue an earlier date than students who notice only the skillful plot structure are willing to assign. Perhaps 1593-5 would indicate this variation in authorities. Some evidence, of the slightest kind, is advanced for 1594. A quarto was printed in 1600, another with the spurious date 1600, really in 1619.

Source. The plot of the lovers has no known direct source. The Diana Enamorada has a love potion with an effect similar to that of Oberon's. The wedding of Theseus and the Amazon queen is the opening theme of Chaucer's Knight's Tale, and some minor details may also have been borrowed from that story. No doubt, Shakespeare had also read for details North's

account of Theseus in his translation of Plutarch. Pyramus and Thisbe came originally from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which had been translated into English before this time. Chaucer tells the same story in his Legend of Good Women.

The fairies are almost entirely Shakespeare's creation. Titania was one of Ovid's names for Diana; Oberon was a common name for the fairy king, both in the Faerie Queene and elsewhere. Robin Goodfellow was a favorite character among the common folks. But fairies, as we all know them, are like the Twins in Through the Looking-glass, things of the fancy of one man, and that man Shakespeare.

There is the atmosphere of a wedding about the whole play, and this fact has led most scholars to think that the play was written for some particular wedding, —just whose has never been settled. The flattery of the virgin Queen (II, i, 157 f.) and other references to purity might show that Queen Elizabeth was one of the wedding guests.

CHAPTER XI

THE PLAYS OF THE SECOND PERIOD

HISTORY

COMEDY AND

It is difficult for us of to-day to realize that Shakespeare was ever less than the greatest dramatist of his time, to think of him as the pupil and imitator of other dramatists. He did, indeed, pass through this stage of his development with extraordinary rapidity, so that its traces are barely perceptible in the later plays of his First Period. In the plays of his Second Period even these traces disappear. If his portrayal of Shylock shows the influence of Marlowe's Jew of Malta, it is in no sense derivative, and it is the last appearance in Shakespeare's work of characterization clearly dependent upon the plays of his predecessors. However much Shakespeare's choice of themes may have been determined by the public taste or by the work of his fellows, in the creation of character he is henceforth his own master. Having acquired this mastery, he uses it to depict life in its most joyous aspect. For the time being he dwells little upon men's failures and sorrows. He does not ignore life's darker side, he loved life too well for that, but he uses it merely as a background for pictures of youth and happiness and success. Although among the comedies of this period he wrote also three historical plays, they

have not the tragic character of the earlier histories. They deal with youth and hope instead of crime, weakness, and failure. In the two parts of Henry IV there is quite as much comedy as there is history; in "Henry V, even though the comic interest is slighter, the theme is still one of youth and joy as personified in the figure of the vigorous, successful young king. For convenience' sake, however, we may separate the histories from the comedies. To do this we shall have to depart somewhat from chronological order, and, since there are fewer histories, we shall consider them first.

Henry IV, Part I. To the development of Henry V from the wayward prince to one of England's most beloved heroes, Shakespeare devoted three plays, Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V. The historical event around which the first of these centers is the rebellion of the Percies, which culminated in the defeat and death of Harry Percy, 'Hotspur,' on Shrewsbury field. In Richard II, Shakespeare had foreshadowed what was to come. The deposed king had prophesied that his successor, Henry Bolingbroke, crowned as Henry IV, would fall out with the great Percy family which had put him on the throne; that the Percies would never be satisfied with what Henry would do for them; and that Henry would hate and distrust them on the ground that those who had made a king could unmake one as well. And this prophecy was fulfilled. Uniting with the Scots under Douglas, with the Archbishop of York, with Glendower, who was seeking to reestablish the independence of Wales, and with Mortimer, the natural successor of Richard,