The History of Shakespeare's A Midsummer-Night's Dream

"The thrice-three Muses, mourning for the death
Of Learnings late deceas'd in beggary."

A Midsummer-Night's Dream has something to the effect of a bridal masque. It is easy to see in imagination a stately Elizabethan hall thronged with applauding gentles, while the young poet, still in the dress of Lysander, receives with becoming modesty the thanks of a noble bridegroom, and bends his knee to the imperial smile of the "fair vestal throned by the west." Again the critics have recourse to the Elizabethan annals, and again the fruits of research are confusion and disappointment, although two weddings within the decade have excited especial interest.

The Earl of Essex espoused the widow of Sir Philip Sidney in April, 1590. It was a private marriage which, when divulged, brought down upon the young husband the hot wrath of the queen. A private marriage, however, might admit of private festivities. Shakespeare was then a "poor player" of twenty-six, seeking a patron. There is, apparently, a loyal reference to Essex, who was three years Shakespeare's junior, in Henry V. (Prologue to Act V., lines 29-34), and it is probable that sooner or later the two men were personally acquainted. If the play was acted on or near May Day, the plot becomes significant, while the title, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, usually understood, like Twelfth Night, as indicating the time when the comedy was first brought upon the stage, may have been added for a later public presentation in a London theatre. The other wedding about which much wistful curiosity has played is that of the Earl of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon in 1598. This, too, was a secret marriage, and one peculiarly unwelcome to the queen. To the Earl of Southampton Shakespeare had dedicated, in formal terms, his Venus and Adonis in 1593, and, this time with words of strong affection, his Lucrece in 1594. Neither wedding date is satisfactory. How could Shakespeare write so well in 1590? How could he write so ill in 1598?

The likelihood is that we have in A Midsummer-Night's Dream a boyish comedy of clowns and fairies and bewildered lovers, hastily retouched and enlarged for some high occasion upon which the figures of Theseus and Hippolyta, and the exquisite flattery of the queen, had a direct bearing; but likelihood is not fact. We do not know.

There was one Francis Meres living in London at the turn of the century, a scholar younger than Shakespeare by a year and destined for the pulpit and the ferule. He had artistic longings in him, however, and gave an unusual attention to contemporary authors, painters, and musicians of his own nation. He counted Shakespeare the best dramatist, both in comedy and tragedy, of the English stage, and it is to him we owe the precious list of Shakesperean plays known in 1598: "for comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labors Lost, his Love Labour's Wonne, his Midsummers Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet." The publishers of London were not far behind the critic in learning of these plays, and, before 1600 was over, eight of the twelve had been issued in sixpenny quartos. In October of that year, when Thomas Heyes obtained from the Master Wardens of the Stationers' Company a license to print The Merchant of Venice, — already printed, perhaps without authority, by the prominent and slippery stationer, James Roberts, — Thomas Fisher registered for A Midsummer-Night's Dream. In the same year, 1600, but probably later, Roberts, without a license, printed the play more attractively and less correctly. Fisher's edition is known as the First Quarto (Q1), and Roberts' as the Second Quarto (Q2). The third original text, that of the First Folio (F), 1623, was taken from the Second Quarto slightly revised — apparently from a copy which had been used in Shakespeare's theatre, and into which stage directions had been somewhat minutely written. The Folio is the only one of these three texts which indicates the division into acts. It was left for later hands to mark out the scenes.

The play, in one guise or another, has held the stage ever since it was first produced. It is suspected of being the comedy which brought the Bishop of Lincoln into disgrace in 1631. Scandal whispers that the prelate, with guests, had witnessed in his own house on a Sunday evening a play in which one of the characters wore an ass-head. The unlucky actor was compelled by the growing power of the Puritans to sit for twelve consecutive hours "in the Porters Lodge at my Lords Bishopps House, with his feete in the stocks and attyred with his asse head, and a bottle of hay sett before him, and this subscription on his breast:—

'Good people, I have played the beast,
And brought ill things to passe.
I was a man, but thus have made My selfe a silly Asse.'"

Our own century has contributed to Shakespeare's magic comedy appreciative study, Mendelssohn's music and, on the whole, successful performances. It is true that until the elfin troops themselves

"Come from the farthest steep of India"