36 L. A. Sherman 



romantic age. The popular fancy craved and expected unex- 

 ampled things. And, somehow, we cannot imagine Shakespeare 

 taking a low aim here. At any rate, it is clear that he turned to 

 classic myths. Theseus is more, than a kingly figure. North's 

 Plutarch has it that the Athenians honored him as a demigod at 

 the end. Thus Shakespeare removes the theater of his fairy 

 operations far f ron^ all suggestions of allegoric or local reference. 

 And the story of Hippolyta and her Amazons seems to have ap- ' 

 pealed to Shakespeare, — even if no author since has bethought 

 him of its dramatic possibilities. And the marriage of these 

 super-mortals can be turned to rich account. Royal weddings 

 always set the world agog. 



Then, too, Shakespeare from first to last has an eye to con- 

 trasts. He delights to bring prince and grave-digger, thane and 

 gate-warder, into the lists of intellectual combat, and not always 

 to the discomfiture of the humbler wit. The wide-mouthed 

 * countryman ' presumes to jest with Cleopatra over the asps that 

 she has sent for. Dogberry and Verges are fetched from England 

 to save Hero from the plot of Borachio and Don John. To fill 

 up the other end of the social scale, between which and our epic 

 pair the shadowy forms of Puck and Oberon shall ply their trade, 

 Bottom and his fellow mechanicals shall flit back from British to 

 Athenian shops, through twenty-five centuries of Aryan history. 



Here, then, are the incongruous materials, the gross and the 

 gossamer, the romantic and the vulgar elements. By what 

 manipulations of art can Shakespeare wreathe them into poetic 

 and dramatic unity? How shall it be possible to relate the un- 

 speakable Bottom, and Quince, and Flute, and Snout, to the 

 redoubtable Theseus and the irresistible Hippolyta? How is 

 either party to be dealt with by the fairy personages ? Of course, 

 it will not do to bring the bridal figures, nor indeed — soberly and 

 vitally — ^the coarse meclianicals, into subservience to the fairy 

 parts. So it will be necessary to supply other characters, not of 

 the highest nor of the lowest order, for Oberon and Puck to dis- 

 port themselves, incidentally to their own concerns, with and upon. 

 This is the sum of the task, the problem on which Shakespeare has 

 set his thought. 



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