The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer night's Dream' by Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

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We must now consider what justification there is for believing that the
main plot of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ was suggested by _The Knightes
Tale_. Firstly, as has already been pointed out, the nuptials of Theseus
form the beginning of both play and poem; though in the poem the actual
ceremony has been performed, and it is his triumphant return to the city of
Athens that is interrupted by the widows' appeal for justice; and in the
play the action passes in the three or four days before the marriage.
Secondly, the wedding-day is the first of May, and there are two references
to that "observance of May"[16] which is given by Chaucer as the reason
both for Emilia's walking in the garden and for Arcite's seeking of the
grove where Palamon lay hid.[17] Thirdly, it can hardly be doubted that
Shakespeare took the name of Philostrate from Chaucer; Egeus he would find
also in North's Plutarch as the name of the father of Theseus; and it is
possible that Chaucer's names for the champions, Ligurge and Emetreus, may
have suggested Lysander and Demetrius. Finally, there are two or three
minor indications; Lysander and Demetrius fight, or attempt to fight, for
Helena, in the "wood near Athens," just as Palamon and Arcite fight for
Emilia in the grove[18]; Theseus is a keen huntsman both in the poem and in
the play[19]; and he refers[20] to his conquest of Thebes, which, as we
have seen, is described in _The Knightes Tale_.

Apart from these details, I do not think Shakespeare is indebted to
Chaucer. It is conceivable that the story of Palamon and Arcite affected,
but did not supply, the plot of the four lovers in _A Midsummer-Night's
Dream_; but Shakespeare has added a second woman. This completion of the
antithesis is characteristic of his early work; with a happy ending in
view, the characters must fall into pairs, whereas with Palamon, Arcite,
and Emilia, one of the men must be removed. There is nothing to prevent the
supposition that Shakespeare was acquainted from boyhood with Chaucer's
story--either in Chaucerian form or possibly in the shape of a
chap-book--and that he constructed a first draft of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_
quite early in his career as a playwright, subsequently laying it aside as
unsatisfactory, and, in his declining years, collaborating with another or
others to produce the play on that theme.

* * * * *

Sec. 2. THE GROTESQUE PLOT: BOTTOM AND THE ASS'S HEAD:
WITH THE INTERLUDE OF _PYRAMUS AND THISBE_

"But, for I am a man noght textuel,
I wol noght telle of textes never a del;
I wol go to my tale."--_Chaucer_.

* * * *

II

The second portion of our study will not detain us long, as there are no
literary sources for the "rude mechanicals," and their interlude of Pyramus
and Thisbe is derived from a well-known classical story. Shakespeare draws
them from life, and from his own observation of Warwickshire rustics, as he
drew the two Gobbos, Launce, Christopher Sly, and a host of minor
characters. Doubtless he had met many of the crew of patches, perhaps
beneath the roof of "Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot," where we
may suppose him to have made merry with "Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of
Greece, and Peter Turf, and Henry Pimpernell."

Bottom takes his name from the wooden reel or spool on which thread is
wound; "bottom" simply meaning the base or foundation of the reel. The
names of his comrades have no specific connection with the trades they ply;
but "Starveling" is appropriate by tradition for a tailor--it takes seven
tailors to make a man.

The episode of Bottom's "translation," or transformation into an ass, may
have been suggested to Shakespeare by a passage in Reginald Scot's
_Discovery of Witchcraft_ (1584)--a book with which he must have been
acquainted, as we shall see in discussing the fairy-section of the play.
Scot mentions the supposed power of witches to change men into animals, and
quotes (in order to discredit) some recorded instances. Chief among these
is the story[21] of an English sailor abroad, who got into the power of a
witch and was transformed by her into an ass, so that when he attempted to
rejoin his crew, he was beaten from the gangway with contempt. This will be
found in the third chapter of Scot's fifth book: _Of a man turned into an
asse, and returned againe into a man by one of Bodin's witches: S.
Augustine's opinion thereof_. "Bodin" is Jean Bodin, who wrote a book _de
Magorum Daemonomania_ (1581; a French version was published in the previous
year), and mentions this story (lib. 2, cap. vi.). According to Scot, Bodin
takes the story "out of _M. Mal._ [_Malleus Maleficarum_], which tale was
delivered to _Sprenger_ by a knight of the Rhodes."

Scot mentions further the famous story of the _Golden Ass_ of Apuleius[22];
a legend of the reappearance of one of the Popes, a hundred years after his
death, with an ass's head; and gives a charm to put an ass's head on a
man.[23]

From these instances a literary origin for Bottom's transformation seems
probable but Shakespeare may himself have fallen in with a survival of the
witch-superstition Almost while writing these words I receive first-hand
evidence that such a tradition is not yet extinct in Welford-on-Avon, a
village, four miles from Stratford, with which Shakespeare must have been
perfectly familiar. The witch, as usual, was an old woman, credited with
the "evil eye" and the power of causing the death of cattle and farm-stock
by "overlooking" them; and the native of Welford, from whom the story was
communicated to me, would be prepared to produce eye-witnesses of various
transformations of the old woman into some kind of animal--transformations
effected not only at Welford, but even in the centre of Stratford on
market-day!

Shakespeare had probably met with the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in more
than one form. Golding's translation in 1575 of the story in Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_[24] is reprinted in this book[25]; Chaucer included the
_Legend of Thisbe of Babylon_ as the second story in the _Legend of Good
Women_; and there appears to have been also "a boke intituled Perymus and
Thesbye," for which the Stationers' Register record the granting of a
license in 1562. There is, too, a poem on the subject by I. Thomson in
Robinson's _Handeful of Pleasant Delites_ (1584).

The _Historia de Piramo e Tisbe_ was very early in print in Italy, and
continued to be popular in chap-book form until the nineteenth century at
least.

In his commentary on _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ in the larger Temple
Shakespeare, Professor Gollancz points out the existence of a Pyramus and
Thisbe play, discovered by him in a manuscript at the British Museum.[26]
This MS. is a Cambridge commonplace book of about 1630, containing poems
attributed to Ben Jonson, Sir Walter Raleigh and others, though the greater
portion of the contents appear to be topical verses and epigrams unsigned.
Amongst these is "Tragaedia miserrima Pyrami & Thisbes fata enuncians.
Historia ex Publio Ovidio deprompta. Authore N.R." In the margins are
written corresponding passages in Latin from Ovid, whose story it follows
closely.

The play is in blank verse of a poor kind with occasional rhyming couplets.
After a prologue begins "Actus Primus and ultimus"; there are only five
scenes in all, and the whole is quite short. The characters consist of
Iphidius, father of Pyramus; Labetrus, father of Thisbe; their children,
the protagonists; their respective servants, Straton and Clitipho; and
Casina, "ancilla" or handmaid to Thisbe. There is also "a raging liones
from ye woods." The moral of the play, as stated by Iphidius, is that

"the erraticall motions in children's actions
Must to a regular form by parents be reduc'd."

These lines, and others in the play, would gain by being "reduc'd to a
regular form."

* * * * *

Sec. 3. THE FAIRY PLOT

Siecles charmants de feerie,
Vous avez pour moi mille attraits,
Que de fois dans le reverie,
Mon coeur vous donne de regrets.
Tout ne fut alors que mensonge aimable;
Tout n'est plus que realite;
Rien n'est si jolie que la fable,
Si triste que la verite!

* * * *

III

In _The Midsummer-Night's Dream_, Shakespeare presents a conception of
fairy-land as original as that which owes its propagation to Perrault and
the other French collectors of fairy-tales; its merits as a popular
delineation of the fairy-world are proved by the fact that it has obtained
the sanction and approval of tradition, passing almost at once into an
accepted literary convention; so that even to-day it is not easy to shake
off the inherited impression that the fairies are only what Shakespeare
shows them to be. He did not, of course, invent them; he had doubtless both
read of them and heard tales of them; but he invested them with a delicate
and graceful fancy that has held the popular imagination ever since. Thanks
to him, the modern English conception of the fairies is different from the
conceptions prevalent in other countries, and infinitely more picturesque
and pleasant.

As before, it will be convenient to deal first with the names of his
characters.

_Oberon_ is the English transliteration of the French Auberon in the
romance of _Huon of Bordeaux_, and Auberon is probably merely the French
counterpart of Alberich or Albrich, a dwarf occurring in the German
_Nibelungenlied_ and other works. Etymologically Alberich is composed of
_alb_ = elf and _rich_ = king. The name Oberon appears first in English
literature in Lord Berners' translation of _Huon of Bordeaux_ (c. 1534),
and afterwards in Spenser[27] and in Robert Greene's play _James IV_, which
was acted in 1589.[28] But the king of the fairies in Chaucer[29] is Pluto,
and the queen Proserpine.

_Titania._ Proserpine is the wife of Pluto (in Greek, form, Persephone,
wife of Dis). In Elizabethan times, Campion's charming poem "Hark, all you
ladies that do sleep"[30] keeps the name of "the fairy-queen Proserpina."
Shakespeare appears to have taken the name Titania from Ovid,[31] who uses
it as an epithet of Diana, as being the sister of Sol or Helios, the
Sun-god, a Titan. Scot, in his _Discovery of Witchcraft_,[32] gives Diana
as one of the names of the "lady of the fairies"; and James I, in his
_Demonology_ (1597) refers to a "fourth kind of sprites, which by the
Gentiles was called Diana and her wandering court, and amongst us called
the Phairie."

Curiously enough in Shakespeare's most famous description of the Fairy
Queen, she is called Queen Mab;[33] this is said to be of Celtic
derivation. Mercutio's catalogue of Mab's attributes and functions
corresponds closely with the description of Robin Goodfellow.

_Puck_ is strictly not a proper name; and in the quartos and folios of _A
Midsummer-Night's Dream_, Puck, Robin, and Robin Goodfellow are used
indiscriminately. In no place in the text is he addressed as "Puck"; it is
always "Robin"[34] (once[35] "Goodfellow" is added). In the last lines of
the play he twice refers to himself as "_an_ honest Puck" and "_the_
Puck," [36] showing that the word is originally a substantive. Dr. J.A.H.
Murray has very kindly allowed the slips of the _New English Dictionary_
which contain notes for the article 'Puck' to be inspected; his treatment
of the word will be awaited with much interest. The earliest and most
important reference is to Prof. A.S. Napier's _Old English Glosses_ (1900),
191, where in a list of glosses of the eleventh century to Aldhelm's
_Aenigmata_ occurs "larbula [i. e. larvula], _puca_." Prof. Napier notes
that O.E. puca, "a goblin," whence N.E. _Puck_, is a well authenticated
word. Dr. Bradley suggests that the source might be a British word, from
which the Irish _puca_ would be borrowed; this word _pooka_, as well as the
allied _poker_, has already been treated in the _N.E.D._ _Puck_, _pouke_,
we find in O.E. (Old English Miscellany, _E.E.T.S._, 76), in Piers Plowman,
and surviving in Spenser; but there are countless analogous forms:
_puckle_, _pixy_, _pisgy_, in English, and perhaps (through Welsh) _bug_,
the old word for _bugbear_, _bogy_, _bogle_, etc.; _puki_ in Icelandic;
_pickel_ in German; and many more.[37]

We may note here the euphemistic tendency to call powerful spirits by
propitiatory names. Just as the Greeks called the Furies "Eumenides," the
benevolent ones, so is Robin called Good-fellow; the ballad of _Tam
Lin_[38] refers to them as "gude neighbours"; the Gaels[39] term a fairy "a
woman of peace"; and Professor Child points out the same fact in relation
to the neo-Greek nereids.[40] Hence also "_sweet_ puck."[41] The names of
the four attendant fairies, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed,
are Shakespeare's invention, chosen perhaps to typify grace, lightness,
speed, and smallness.

The _literary_ sources on which Shakespeare, in writing of fairies,
probably drew--or those, at least, on which he could have drawn--can be
shortly stated. We have already mentioned Scot's _Discovery of Witchcraft_
(1584); this was no doubt the chief source of information regarding Puck or
Robin Goodfellow, as well as of the fairies themselves. Shakespeare was
doubtless also familiar with the treatment accorded to the fairy-world by
Chaucer[42] and Spenser[43] and with the many tales of supernatural beings
in romances like _Huon of Bordeaux_ and others of the Arthurian cycle.
There is also a black-letter tract concerning Robin Goodfellow,[44] but no
one has yet proved that this pamphlet was in print before 1628, the date of
the earliest surviving edition. Ultimately, however, this matters little,
because the tract is evidently drawn largely from oral traditions about
Robin, and so has a source common with that of much of Shakespeare's
fairy-lore.

Minor allusions, chiefly, to Robin Goodfellow, he may have met with in
various works[45] published before the assumed date of the play; but these,
again, add nothing which Shakespeare could not have learned just as well
from the superstitions of his day. What these were, and how he handled
them, we must now proceed to discuss.

In approaching a subject such as fairy-lore, it is necessary to prepare the
mind of the reader to go back to days not merely pre-Christian but even
pre-national. Our fairies can no more justly be called English than can our
popular poetry. Folk-lore--the study of the traditional beliefs and customs
of the common people--is a science invented centuries too late;[46] for
lack of evidence, it is largely theoretical. But it teaches its students
continually to look further afield, and to compare the tales, ballads,
superstitions, rites, and mythologies of one country with those of another.
The surprising results thus obtained must not make us think that one
country has borrowed from another; we must throw our minds back to a common
ancestry and common creeds. "The attempt to discriminate modern national
characteristics in the older stratum of European folk-lore is not only idle
but mischievous, because it is based upon the unscientific assumption that
existing differences, which are the outcome of comparatively recent
historical conditions, have always existed." These are the wise words of a
sound folk-lorist,[47] and should be laid to heart by all who take up the
study.

We cannot begin to investigate the origins of the fairy superstition in the
cradle of the world; we must be content to realise that there was a creed
concerning supernatural beings common to all the European branches of the
Aryan peoples, Greek, Roman, Celt or Teuton. When Thomas Nashe wrote in
1594 of "the Robbin-good-fellowes, Elfes, Fairies, Hobgoblins of our latter
age, which idolatrous former daies and the fantasticall world of Greece
ycleaped _Fawnes_, _Satyres_, _Dryades_, and _Hamadryades_," he spoke more
truly than he knew.[48]

First of all, let us consider the word _fairy_. Strictly, this is a
substantive meaning either "the land of the fays," or else "the fay-people"
collectively; it is also used as an equivalent for "enchantment." It was
originally, therefore, incorrect to speak of "_a_ fairy";[49] the singular
term is "_a_ fay," as opposed to "_the_ fairy." _Fay_ is derived, through
French, from the Low Latin _fata_, misunderstood as a feminine singular; it
is in fact the plural of _Fatum_, and means "the Fates."

Reversing the chronological order, let us proceed to compare the functions
of these beings. The Fates, whether the Greek _Moirae_ or the Roman
_Parcae_, were three in number, and were variously conceived as goddesses
of birth or of death; the elements of the primitive idea are, at least,
comprised in the conception that they allotted man his fate; we may also
note that the metaphor of _spinning_ was used in connection with their
duties.

Leaving classical lands and times, we find in the tenth century, amongst
the Eddic Lays of northern Europe, the following passage:--

"It was in the olden days ... when Helgi the stout of heart was born of
Borghild, in Braeholt. Night lay over the house when the Fates came to
forecast the hero's life. They said that he should be called the most
famous of kings and the best among princes. With power they twisted the
strands of fate for Borghild's son in Braeholt...."[50]

Here the "Fates" are the "Norns" of the northern mythology. We find them
practising the same functions again in twelfth century Saxo
Grammaticus,[51] who calls them "three maidens"; their caprices are shown
when two of them bestow good temper and beauty on Fridleif's son Olaf, and
the third mars their gifts by endowing the boy with niggardliness.

In commenting upon both the Eddic Lay and the Danish Historian, the editors
remark that this point of the story--the bestowal of gifts at
birth--survives in the _chanson de geste_ of Ogier the Dane,[52] whose
relations with the fairy-world may be narrated shortly as follows.[53]

At the birth of Ogier the Dane, five fairies promised him strength,
bravery, success, beauty, and love; after them came Morgan le Fay, whose
gift was that, after a glorious career, Ogier should come to live with her
at her castle of Avalon. When the hero was over a hundred years of age,
Morgan caused him to be wrecked near Avalon. In his wanderings he comes to
an orchard, where he eats an apple. A beautiful lady approaches whom he
mistakes for the Virgin; but she tells him she is Morgan le Fay. She puts a
ring on his finger and he becomes young; she puts a crown on his head, and
he forgets the past. For two hundred years he lives in unearthly delights,
and the years seem to him to be but twenty. He then returns to earth to
champion Christendom; but after triumphing over his foes he returns to
Avalon.[54]

The tale of Ogier was long popular in Denmark--of which country he is the
national hero--and also in France; and the notion of supernatural gifts at
birth has obtained a very wide vogue. But Ogier's story also exhibits
another very popular piece of superstition--that of a journey to or a
sojourn in the supernatural world.[55] Our English parallel to Ogier, as
Professor Child points out,[56] is Thomas of Erceldoune.

This leads us to the consideration of three English metrical Romances,
which in all probability are derived from French sources, containing
accounts of the visits to fairy-land made by Thomas of Erceldoune, Launfal,
and Orfeo. The first and last of these are also known in the form of
ballads; whether these ballads derive directly from the romances, or may be
supposed to have existed side by side with them in the fifteenth century,
is a question which must not delay us here. The romances and the ballads
may all have been known to Shakespeare in book-form or in tradition.

The romance of _Thomas of Erceldoune_ is a poem in three "fyttes" or
sections, which is preserved wholly or in part in five manuscripts, of
which the earliest may be dated about 1435. The poem tells us that Thomas
of Erceldoune's prophetic power was a gift from the queen of Elf-land, with
whom he paid a visit to her realm. The first "fytte" is occupied in
narrating his sojourn;[57] while the other two set forth the predictions
with which the queen supplied him. The romance is probably of Scottish
origin, as the prophecies treat mainly of Scottish history; but the first
"fytte" (which alone concerns us here, and indeed appears to be separate in
origin from the other two) refers to an "older story." This, Professor
Child says, "was undoubtedly a romance which narrated the adventure of
Thomas with the elf queen _simply_, without specification of his
prophecies."

Doubtless the older story was not originally attached to Thomas of
Erceldoune, who, as "Thomas Rymour of Ercildoune," is a historical
character. He lived, as is proved by contemporary documents, in the
thirteenth century, at Ercildoune (Earlstoun on the banks of the Leader in
Berwickshire), and gained a reputation as a "rymour," _i.e._ poet and
prophet--in which character he was venerated by the folk for centuries.

But the Rymour does not concern us; the tale of a mortal's visit to
elf-land would have been told of some one, whether Thomas or another; he
was a prophet, and prophets needed explanation. His journal to fairy-land,
as narrated in the fifteenth-century romance, survives in the well-known
ballad of _Thomas the Rhymer_.[58]

Two points in romance and ballad may be noted. (i) In the romance the lady
shows Thomas four roads, leading respectively to heaven, paradise,
purgatory, and hell, besides the fair castle of Elf-land. The ballad is
content with three roads, to heaven, hell, and Elf-land. (ii) Both in the
romance and the ballad, _and also in Ogier the Dane_, the hero makes the
same mistake, of supposing his supernatural visitor to be the Virgin
Mary.[59]

A curious point about the first "fytte" is that it opens (ll. 1-18) in the
first person; at line 41 Thomas is mentioned, and the poem continues in the
third person to the end, with a single and sudden change to the first in
line 208. I do not know whether any assumption as to the authorship of the
romance can be based on such facts; the "I" question in early popular
poetry forms an interesting study in itself.[60]

The English romance of _Sir Launfal_, which survives in a manuscript[61] of
the fifteenth century, is therein said to have been "made by Thomas
Chestre"; but in fact it is chiefly a translation from Marie de France's
lay of _Lanval_, dating from the middle of the thirteenth century. The
translator, Thomas Chestre, has, however, taken incidents from other "lais"
by Marie de France, and enlarged the whole until it is some three hundred
lines longer than the French original.

Shakespeare may have read the tale in print. _Sir Lambewell_ appears to
have been printed about 1558,[62] and to have remained in circulation at
least until 1575,[63] but no complete copy is now known. A single MS.
version of 1650 survives, however, in the Percy Folio.[64] This is another
translation from the same French original, but made by some one acquainted
with Thomas Chestre's version.

The story as told in the first of these manuscripts may be condensed as
follows. Launfal had been ten years a steward to King Arthur before the
King's marriage. He did not like Guinevere, who gave him no gift at her
wedding; so he asked leave of the King to go home and bury his father. He
went to Caerleon, with two knights given him by Arthur, and sojourned with
the mayor; but when his money was spent, he fell into debt, and his knights
returned to Arthur's court in rags; but at Launfal's request, they gave out
that he was faring well.

One day Launfal rode out in poor attire into the forest, and sat him under
a tree to rest. After a while, two fair damsels, beautifully attired and
bearing a gold basin and a silk towel, approached him, and bade him come
speak with their lady, Dame Triamour, daughter to the King of Olyroun, king
of fairy. Launfal was led to where the lady lay, and "all his love in her
was light."

On the morrow she promised him rich presents, and said she would come to
him whenever he wished for her in a secret place; but he was never to boast
of her love. Her presents came to him at the mayor's house of Caerleon, and
he spent his riches charitably.

The King, hearing of an exploit of Launfal's, summoned him back to court.
The Queen tempted him, but he repulsed her by saying he loved a fairer
woman; this of course lost him Triamour. Guinevere (by a trick common in
romances) accused Launfal to Arthur; but he was saved from disgrace by the
appearance of Triamour, who then carried him off into fairy-land to
Olyroun.

The romance of _Sir Orpheo_, a mediaeval version of the classical story of
Orpheus and Eurydice, has come down to us in three manuscripts,[65] two of
which are not quite complete, which are to be assigned to the fifteenth
century at latest. As in the case of _Launfal_, it is doubtless a
translation from the French; but as there is no extant original, this can
only be presumed. Orpheus becomes Orpheo or Orfeo, and Eurydice becomes
Erodys, Heurodis, or Meroudys; in the last the initial letter may be due to
the _m_ in "dame," the word preceding it.

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