however we may laugh at the silliness of Bottom and his companions in their ridiculous play, the author labours under no more than the common calamity of dramatists. They are all but dealers in shadowy representations of life, and if the worst among them can set the mind of the spectator at work, he is equal to the best.”

Maginn has missed the more important significance of the passage. Its dramatic appropriateness is the essential point to observe. To Theseus, the great man of action, the worst and the best of those shadowy representations are all one. He graciously lends himself to be amused, and will not give unmannerly rebuff to the painstaking craftsmen who have so laboriously done their best to please him. But Shakspere's mind by no means goes along with the utterance of Theseus in this instance any more than when he places in a single group the lover, the lunatic, and the poet. With one principle enounced by the duke, however, Shakspere evidently does agree, namely, that it is the business of the dramatist to set the spectator's imagination to work, that the dramatist must rather appeal to the mind's eye than to the eye of sense, and that the co-operation of the spectator with the poet is necessary. For the method of Bottom and his company is precisely the reverse, as Gervinus has observed, of Shakspere's own method. They are determined to leave nothing to be supplied by the imagination. Wall must be plaistered; Moonshine must carry lanthorn and bush. And when Hippolyta, again becoming impatient of absurdity, exclaims, "I am aweary of this moon! would he would change!" Shakspere further insists on his piece of dramatic criticism by urging, through the duke's mouth, the absolute necessity of the man in the moon being within his lanthorn. Shakspere as much as says, "If you do not approve of my dramatic method of presenting fairy-land and the heroic world, here is a specimen of the rival method. You think my fairy-world might be amended. Well, amend it with your own imagination. I

can do no mɔre unless I adopt the artistic ideas of these Athenian handicraftsmen."

It is a delightful example of Shakspere's impartiality that he can represent Theseus with so much genuine enthusiasm. Mr. Matthew Arnold has named our aristocrats, with their hardy, efficient manners, their addiction to field sports, and their hatred of ideas, "the Barbarians." Theseus is a splendid and gracious aristocrat, perhaps not without a touch of the Barbarian in him. He would have found Hamlet a wholly unintelligible person, who, in possession of his own thoughts, could be contented in a nutshell. When Shakspere wrote the Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which, with little dramatic propriety, the Duke of Milan celebrates "the force of heaven-bred poesy," we may reasonably suppose that the poet might not have been quite just to one who was indifferent to art. But now his self-mastery has increased, and therefore with unfeigned satisfaction he presents Theseus, the master of the world, who, having beauty and heroic strength in actual possession, does not need to summon them to occupy his imagination—the great chieftain to whom art is a very small concern of life, fit for a leisure hour between battle and battle. Theseus, who has nothing antique or Grecian about him, is an idealized study from the life. Perhaps he is idealized Essex, perhaps idealized Southampton. Perhaps some night a dramatic company was ordered to perform in presence of a great Elizabethan noble-we know not whom-who needed to entertain his guests, and there, in a moment of fine imaginative vision, the poet discovered Theseus.

[From Weiss's "Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare."*]

All the scenes of the Midsummer-Night's Dream which depend upon the desire of the Athenian mechanicals to *Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare, by John Weiss (Boston, 1876), p. 109

fol.

amuse their prince are merely comical when taken alone. The characters thus constructed, by passing into the serious portions of the play, infect it with the element of humour; for the simple earnestness of all their clownishness fraternizes in no offensive way with the more poetical moods of high society, and we feel the charm that equalizes all mankind. The pomp of a court is concentrated at a fustian play that is poorly propertied with bush, lantern, and a fellow daubed with lime. Simpleness and duty tender this contrast, and it comes not amiss. Their crude parody of the fate of Pyramus and Thisbe, done in perfect good faith, is a claim that humble love may have its fortunes too, as well as that of the proud and overconscious dames who have been roaming through the woods, sick with fancies. What a delightful raillery it is! Yes, we take the point: "The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them."

It is also a suggestion of the subtlest humour when Titania summons her fairies to wait upon Bottom; for the fact is that the soul's airy and nimble fancies are constantly detailed to serve the donkeyism of this world. "Be kind and courteous to this gentleman." Divine gifts stick musk-roses in his sleek, smooth head. The world is a peg that keeps all spiritual being tethered. Watt agonizes to teach this vis inertia to drag itself by the car-load; Palissy starves for twenty years to enamel its platter; Franklin charms its house against thunder; Raphael contributes halos to glorify its ignorance of divinity; all the poets gather for its beguilement, hop in its walk and gambol before it, scratch its head, bring honey-bags, and light its farthing dip at glow-worms' eyes. Bottom's want of insight is circled round by fulness of insight, his clumsiness by dexterity. In matter of eating, he really prefers provender: "good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow." But how shrewdly Bottom manages this holding of genius to his service! He knows how to send it to be

oriented with the blossoms and the sweets, giving it the characteristic counsel not to fret itself too much in the action. . . .

The humour in this play meddles even with love; for that, too, must be the sport of circumstance and superior power, yet always continue to be the deepest motive of mankind. The juice of love's flower dropped on the eyelids of these distempered lovers makes the caprices of passion show and shift; love in idleness becomes love in earnest, as Puck distils the drops of marriage or of mischief. Titania herself is possessed with that common illusion which marries gracious qualities to absurd companionship. Says Puck,

"Those things do best please me

That befall preposterously."

But this is fleeting. Shakspeare soon breaks the spell in which some of his most delicate and sprightly verses have revelled. The whole play expresses humour on a revel, and brings into one human feeling the supernature, the caprice and gross mischance, the serious drift of life.