IV.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

THE play of a Midsummer Night's Dream is plausibly conjectured to have been composed when Shakespeare was in his thirtieth year; that lusty season of life when the luscious honey-dew of youth has not yet dried up or evaporated, and when the sinews of genius have consolidated into the firm maturity of luxuriantly developed manhood.

This, and the play of the "Tempest," are the only ones in which the poet has availed himself of, and rendered important for the purpose of his plot, the agency of the fairy world; and although in no one of his dramas are there to be found more exquisite flights of fancy than in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," yet, as a compounded whole, the most ordinary judge would be able to recognise in it less of the developed experience and tact in dramatic arrangement than in that superb composition and uninterruptedly perfect plot of the "Tempest." There, the several classes of character keep their appointed state, and become more or less prominent according to their several grades. The important beings-I mean those on whom the onward march of the story depends -never decline into secondary consequence in the reader's imagination. From the storm and shipwreck, in the first

scene, raised by Prospero, to the dissolving of the mighty pageant by the same magician-power, when his plans are fulfilled, in the last scene, the consummation of events is in undeviating progress. A less complicated, and more interesting story, with more varied forms of fanciful creation, has rarely, if ever, been combined than in the "Tempest."

In the play now under consideration, the "subordinate" agents pre-occupy the mind, by reason of their great potency and surpassingly beautiful creation; or by the engrossing demand that others make on our attention, on account of their fine dramatic nature and verisimilitude, with sideshaking broad humour. Really and truly, Demetrius and Lysander, Hermia and Helena, with their love-crosses and perplexities, constitute the chief agents in the drama. Their way of life is the "plot"-disturbed, it is true, by the madcap sprite Puck, whose mischievous agency is so admirably employed to distort the course of their true love; and, with a two-handed scheme to befool poor little Titania, becomes not only the important movement in the machinery, but, in fact, we scarcely think of any other in conjunction with him; he and his fellow-minims of the moon's watery beams are the great (though little) people of the drama. Bottom and his companions are the cap and bells; and the classic stateliness of Theseus and Hypolita, with their sedate and lofty nuptialities, form-as Schlegel happily observes-"a splendid frame to the picture." These take no part in the action, but appear with stately pomp, and dwell apart in royal exclusiveness. Their discourse upon the pleasures of the chase, with his descriptions of his hounds, is the best, and, indeed, almost the only passage that presents itself to the memory when we think of the characters themselves. The whole of that scene is redolent of rural life; like Esau's garment, "it smelleth as of a field." It has all the bracing vigour and life of the young day, when, as old Chaucer says,

"The sun looks ruddy and brode,

Through the misty vapour of the morrowning;
And the dew, as silver, shining

Upon the green and soté grass.'

My hounds (says Theseus) are bred out of the Spartan kind;

So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable

Was never holla'd to nor cheer'd with horn."

It was a happy thought of the poet, in introducing the play within the play, got up by the " Athenian mechanicals," in honour of Duke Theseus's marriage, to make a travesty of the old tragic legend of "Pyramus and Thisbe," and thereby turning it, as it were, into a farce upon the serious and pathetic scenes that occur between the lovers in the pieceDemetrius and Helena, and Lysander and Hermia.

But what a rich set of fellows those "mechanicals" are! and how individual are their several characteristics! Bully Bottom, the epitome of all the conceited donkeys that ever strutted and straddled on this stage of the world. In his own imagination equal to the performance of anything. separately, and of all things collectively; the meddler, the director, the dictator. He is for dictating every movement, and directing everybody-when he is not helping himself. He is a choice arabesque impersonation of that colouring of conceit which, by the half-malice of the world, has been said to tinge the disposition of actors, as invariably as the rouge does their cheeks. Peter Quince, although the delegated manager of the company, fades into a shadow, a cipher, a nonentity before him; for the moment Peter announces the commencement of proceedings with, "Is all our company

G

here?"-in darts first tragedian, Bottom, "You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip." And when Quince does produce the scroll, the other instantly proposes something else. It is interesting to follow out this feature in Bottom's character-a perfect variety in the "class" "bumptiousness," ranging under the general "order" "conceit." Our "first tragedian" then interrupts the manager with: "First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so, grow to a point." And no sooner, again, does Quince proceed to read the title of the play, than Bottom bursts in with his comment : "A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry,”— merry!-it was high tragic in their estimation. And then he instantly resumes his dictation: "Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves." His own name coming first, he promptly replies: Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed." His part is the chief point. And when the part of Pyramus, the lover's part, is assigned to him, he announces that the audience "must look to their eyes; for that he will move storms"-" he will condole in some measure." Great, however, as Mr Bottom professes to be in the lover's vein, his "chief humour (he declares) is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely; or a part to tear a cat in; to make all split." Then he will play Thisbe—the heroine-if he may hide his face; and he will "speak in a monstrous little voice." Then he will play the lion: "Let me play the lion, too. I will roar, that it will do any man's heart good to hear me. I'll 'roar, that I'll make the Duke say, 'Let him roar again! let him roar again!'" What an amusing caricature of selfesteem! The idea of a man pluming himself on the possibility of being encored in a roar. But the roaring is objected to, for that it would frighten the ladies; and that were enough to hang every mother's son of them. But when is