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Indiana University Studies 
self analyzes some of the contradictions of the story, in a 
passage which Nicholson has regarded ( Notes and Queries, 
6th Series, IV, 2) as perhaps the original suggestion for 
Bottom’s fondness for hay : 
The bodie of man is subject to divers kinds of agues, sicknesses, 
and infirmities, whereunto an asses bodie is not inclined: and mans 
bodie must be fed with bread, &c. : and not with hay. Bodins asseheaded 
man must either eate haie, or nothing: as appeareth in the storie . 2 
Scot’s recipe for setting “an horsse or an asses head upon 
a mans shoulders,” which was first pointed out by Douce as 
the original source for Shakespeare, is still further afield. 
For present purposes, there is no significance in all of the 
elaborate preparation, unless it be taken merely as an addi- 
tional proof of the contemporary belief in the possibility of 
such a performance : 
Cut off the head of a horsse or an asse (before they be dead) other- 
wise the vertue or strength thereof will be the lesse effectuall, and make 
an earthern vessell of fit capacitie to conteine the same; and let it be 
filled with the oile and fat thereof; cover it close, and dawbe it over 
with lome: let it boile over a soft her three daies continuallie, that the 
flesh boiled may run into oile, so that the bare bones may be seene: 
beate the haire into powder, and mingle the same with the oile; and 
annoint the heads of the standers by, and they shall seeme to have 
horsses or asses heads. If beasts heads be annointed with the like oile 
made of a mans head, they shall seeme to have mens faces, as diverse 
authors soberlie affirme . 3 
Much simpler than this elaborate system is the one given 
by Albertus Magnus, De Secretis Naturae. Perhaps of all 
the analogues from the lore of witchcraft and magic, the 
account of a transformation performed by Dr. Faustus is 
closest to the spirit of A Midsummer Night's Dream, assign- 
ing the feat, as it does, to the whimsical prank of a magician, 
who entertains his subjects with revelry until the time of 
their enchantment has expired: 
In this, and such pastime they passed away the whole day; when 
night being come Dr. Faustus bid them all to supper, which they lightly 
agreed unto, for students in these cases are easily intreated; wherefore 
he promised to feast them with a banquet of fowl, and afterwards 
they would all go about with a mask. . . . Dr. Faustus commanded 
every one to put on a clean shirt over the other cloaths: which being 
done, they looked one upon another; it seemed to each one of them that 
2 Reginald Scot, The Diseovei'ie of Witchcraft, Nicholson reprint, London, 1886, p. 99. 
3 Ibid., p. 315. 
