34 L. A. Sherman 



Indeed ! Indeed ! What sort of conclusion might one not 

 establish, if one were allowed to make up major and minor 

 premises, after this fashion, as one goes along? Quiller-Couch 

 as good as admits that there is no proof at all, nothing beyond 

 this shadowy suggestion of a 'purgation,' that this is a wedding 

 play, or that Shakespeare was ' commissioned ' to write one to be 

 shown at court. To be sure, there is a marriage in prospect, as 

 the piece opens, which same marriage is still to be consummated 

 at the close. That is the only difference distinguishing it as a 

 ' wedding ' play from As You Like It, or Tlie Merchant of Venice, 

 or Twelfth Night, in which matrimonial felicity is in prospect 

 only at the end. We cannot thus beg the question, at the very 

 start, if we are to inquire profitably 'how the thing was done.' 

 And, as has been said already, the upshot of the lecture, which 

 the author has based upon these remarkable assumptions, does 

 not fulfill the promise or the purpose of bringing to light Shake- 

 speare's artistic method or procedures. Quiller-Couch gets no 

 farther than a supposed soliloquy of his author, in which he 

 imagines how the strangely incongruous elements, — the twigs and 

 feathers and horsehair, chanced to be discerned as proper ma- 

 terials with which to build. But how they were wreathed into 

 marvellous unity, the ro t'l y]v dvai of the play as art, is not reached 

 at all. 



So we are thrown back upon our old ignorance of the occasion 

 and the inspiration of A Midsummer-Night' s Dream. We can 

 be sure of nothing save that Shakespeare had to make or chose 

 to make, at some uncertain moment, another play to meet the 

 needs of the company with which he was associated. When he 

 at that or some earlier moment ran through the group of possible 

 subjects in his mind, he came upon the idea of utilizing the lore 

 of elves and fairies. If he had liked Lyly's way well enough, or 

 had inclined to what later became Ben Jonson's way, he would 

 have constructed a masque showing Oberon and Titania and 

 Puck meddling importantly in the affairs of mortals. The com- 

 mon folk believed in that sort of meddling as steadfastly as they 

 believed in the doctrines of grace and perdition. The more in- 

 tellectual sort of theater-goers were not as yet weaned wholly 



136 



