who lived in a prosaic age, and fostered in this particular the real ignorance by which he was surrounded. He sums up the merits of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, after this extraordinary fashion:-"Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasure which the author designed. Fairies, in his time, were much in fashion: common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great." It is perfectly useless to attempt to dissect such criticism: let it be a beacon to warn us, and not a "load-star" to guide us.

Mr. Hallam accounts A Midsummer-Night's Dream poetical, more than dramatic; "yet rather so, because the indescribable profusion of imaginative poetry in this play overpowers our senses, till we can hardly observe anything else, than from any deficiency of dramatic excellence. For, in reality, the structure of the fable, consisting as it does of three if not four actions, very distinct in their subjects and personages, yet wrought into each other without effort or confusion, displays the skill, or rather instinctive felicity, of Shakspeare, as much as in any play he has written." Yet, certainly, with all its harmony of dramatic arrangement, this play is not for the stage-at least not for the modern stage. It may reasonably be doubted whether it was ever eminently successful in performance. The tone of the epilogue is decidedly apologetic, and "the best of this kind are but shadows," is in the same spirit. Hazlitt has admirably described its failure as an acting drama in his own day :

"The Midsummer-Night's Dream, when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective: everything there is in the foreground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable reality. Where all is left to the imagination (as is the case in reading), every circumstance, near or remote, has an equal chance of being kept in mind, and tells accordingly to the mixed impression of all that has been suggested. But the imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual impressions of the senses. Any offence given to the eye is not to be got rid of by explanation. Thus Bottom's head in the play is a fantastic illusion, produced by magic spells on the stage it is an ass's head, and nothing more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine."

And yet, just and philosophical as are these remarks, they offer no objection to the opinion of Mr. Hallam, that in this play there is no deficiency of dramatic excellence. We can conceive that, with scarcely what can be called a model before him, Shakspere's early dramatic attempts must have been a series of experiments to establish a standard by which he should regulate what he addressed to a mixed audience. The plays of his middle and mature life, with scarcely an exception, are acting plays; and they are so, not from the absence of the higher poetry, but from the predominance of character and passion in association with it. But even in those plays which call for a considerable exercise of the unassisted imaginative faculty in an audience, such as the Tempest, and A Midsummer-Night's Dream, where the passions are not powerfully roused, and the senses are not held enchained by the interests of a plot, he is still essentially dramatic. What has been called of late years the dramatic poem-that something between the epic and the dramatic, which is held to form an apology for whatever of episodical or incongruous the author may choose to introduce-was unattempted by him. The Faithful Shepherdess' of Fletcher-a poet who knew how to accommodate himself to the taste of a mixed audience more readily than Shakspere was condemned on the first night of its appearance. Seward, one of his editors, calls this the scandal of our nation. And yet it is extremely difficult to understand how the event should have been otherwise; for the 'Faithful Shepherdess' is essentially undramatic. Its exquisite poetry was therefore thrown away upon an impatient audience-its occasional indelicacy could not propitiate them. Milton's 'Comus' is in the same way essentially undramatic; and none but such a refined audience as that at Ludlow Castle could have endured its representation. But the Midsummer-Night's Dream is composed altogether upon a different principle. It exhibits all that congruity of parts-that natural progression of scenes-that subordination of action and character to one leading design-that ultimate harmony evolved out of seeming confusion-which constitute the dramatic spirit. With "audience fit, though few,”—with a stage not encumbered with

decorations, with actors approaching (if it were so possible) to the idea of grace and archness which belong to the fairy troop the subtle and evanescent beauties of this drama might not be wholly lost in the representation. But under the most favourable circumstances much would be sacrificed. It is in the closet that we must not only suffer our senses to be overpowered by its "indescribable profusion of imaginative poetry," but trace the instinctive felicity of Shakspere in the "structure of the fable." If the Midsummer-Night's Dream could be acted, there can be no doubt how well it would act. Our imagination must amend what is wanting.

Schlegel has happily remarked upon this drama, that "the most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have arisen without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident; and the colours are of such clear transparency, that we think the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath." It is not till after we have attentively studied this wonderful production that we understand how solidly the foundations of the fabric are laid. Theseus and Hippolyta move with a stately pace as their nuptial hour draws on. Hermia takes time to pause, before she submits

"To death, or to a vow of single life,"—

secretly resolving "through Athens' gates to steal." Helena, in the selfishness of her own love, resolves to betray her friend. Bottom the weaver, and Quince the carpenter, and Snug the joiner, and Flute the bellows-mender, and Snout the tinker, and Starveling the tailor, are thought fit through all Athens to play in the interlude before the Duke and Duchess on his wedding-day, at night." Here are, indeed, "dissimilar ingredients." They appear to have no aptitude for combination. The artists are not yet upon the scene, who are to make a mosaic out of these singular materials. We are only presented in the first act with the extremes of high and low-with the slayer of the Centaurs, and the weaver, who "will roar you an 't were any nightingale,”—with the lofty Amazon, who appears elevated above woman's hopes and fears, and the pretty and satirical Hermia, who swears

"By all the vows that ever men have broke,

In number more than ever woman spoke."

"The course of true love" does not at all "run smooth" in these opening scenes. We have the love that is crossed, and the love that is unrequited; and worse than all, the unhappiness of Helena makes her treacherous to her friend. We have little doubt that all this will be set straight in the progress of the drama; but what Quince and his company will have to do with the untying of this knot is a mystery.

To offer an analysis of this subtle and ethereal drama would, we believe, be as unsatisfactory as the attempts to associate it with the realities of the stage. With scarcely an exception, the proper understanding of the other plays of Shakspere may be assisted by connecting the apparently separate parts of the action, and by developing and reconciling what seems obscure and anomalous in the features of the characters. But to follow out the caprices and allusions of the loves of Demetrius and Lysander,—of Helena and Hermia;—to reduce to prosaic description the consequence of the jealousies of Oberon and Titania;-to trace the Fairy Queen under the most fantastic of deceptions, where grace and vulgarity blend together like the Cupids and Chimeras of Raphael's Arabesques; and, finally, to go along with the scene till the illusions disappear-till the lovers are happy, and "sweet bully Bottom" is reduced to an ass of human dimensions ;-such an attempt as this would be worse even than unreverential criticism. No, the Midsummer-Night's Dream must be left to its own influences.

"It is probable," says Steevens, "that the hint of this play was received from Chaucer's 'Knight's Tale."" We agree with this opinion, and have noticed some similarities in our Illustrations. Malone has, with great hardihood, asserted that the part of the fable which relates to the quarrels of Oberon and Titania was "not of our author's invention." He has nothing to show in support of this, but the opinion of Tyrwhitt, that Pluto and Proserpina, in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale,' were the true progenitors of Oberon and Titania; that Robert Greene boasts of having performed the King of the Fairies, and that Greene has introduced Oberon in his play of 'James IV. (See Illustrations of Act II.) Malone's assertion, and the mode altogether in which he speaks of this drama, furnish a decisive proof of his incompetence to judge of the higher poetry of Shakspere. Because the names of Oberon and Titania existed before Shakspere, he did not invent his Oberon

and Titania! The opinion of Mr. Hallam may correct some of the errors which the commentators have laboured to propagate. "The Midsummer-Night's Dream is, I believe, altogether original in one of the most beautiful conceptions that ever visited the mind of a poet, the fairy machinery. A few before him had dealt in a vulgar and clumsy manner with popular superstitions; but the sportive, beneficent, invisible population of the air and earth, long since established in the creed of childhood, and of those simple as children, had never for a moment been blended with 'human mortals' among the personages of the drama. Lyly's 'Maid's Metamorphosis' is probably later than this play of Shakspeare, and was not published till 1600. It is unnecessary to observe that the fairies of Spenser, as he has dealt with them, are wholly of a different race." Of these imaginary beings Gervinus says,

Separated from their external actions and their reference to human kind, it is marvellous how Shakspere has made their inner character correspond with their outward occupations. He has represented them as beings without any delicate feelings and without morals-as in a dream we receive no shock to our sympathies and are without any moral rules or apprehensions. They carelessly, and without conscience, mislead human creatures to faithlessness; the effects of the changes which they cause make no impressions upon their minds; they take no part in the inward torment of the lovers, but only sport and wonder at their apparent errors, and the folly of their behaviour. These little deities are depicted as natural souls without the higher capabilities of the human spirit; lords, not of the realms of reason and morals, but of material ideas and the charms of imagination; and therefore equally the creatures of the fancy which works in dreams and the illusions of love. Their notions thus go not beyond the corporeal. They lead a luxurious and cheerful natural and sensual life; they possess a knowledge of the secrets of nature, the powers of flowers and plants. To sleep in blossoms, lulled by song and dance, guarded from the moonbeams, fanned by the wings of butterflies, is their delight; attire of flowers with pearls of dew their pride; if Titania desires to tempt her new love she proffers him honey, apricots, grapes, and a dance. This simple and sensual life is mingled, by the power of fancy, with a delight in, and a desire for, whatever is choicest, beautiful, and agreeable. With butterflies and nightingales they sympathize; they make war on all ugly animals, hedgehogs, spiders, and bats; dance, sport, and song are their highest enjoyments; they steal beautiful children and substitute changelings; deformed old age, toothless gossips, 'wisest aunts,' the clumsy associates in the play of Pyramus and Thisbe, they annoy; while they love and reward cleanliness and kindness. This accords with the popular belief. . . . Their sense of the beautiful is perhaps the only superiority they have, not only over the mere animal, but over the low human creatures utterly destitute of any appreciation of the fanciful or beautiful. Thus to the notions of the fairies, whose sense of the fitting and agreeable have been so finely developed, it must have been doubly comic that the elegant Titania should have become enamoured of an ass's head."