house in Shoe Lane. To this will he affixed his name and the seal of his arms, on the 20th of July, 1625, being then in perfect sense and memory. The executors declined to take upon themselves the execution of the will, and on the first of May, 1626, a commission issued to Rose Florio, the widow, to administer. It does not appear that the Earl of Pembroke caused the Dialogues or the Dictionary to be printed; but Wood informs us that the manuscript additions to the Dictionary were placed in the hands of Torriano, and that they were used by him in his Italian Dictionary published in 1659. dream 282 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Ar the sight of such a title we naturally ask-Who is the dreamer? The poet, any of the characters of the drama, or the spectators? The answer seems to be that there is much in this beautiful sport of imagination which was fit only to be regarded as a dream by the persons whom the fairies illuded: and that, as a whole, it comes before the spectators under the notion of a dream. If we, shadows, have offended, Think but this, and all is mended: Shakespeare was then but a young poet, rising into notice, and it was a bold and hazardous undertaking to bring together classical story and the fairy mythology, made still more hazardous by the introduction of the rude attempts in the dramatic art of the hard-handed men of Athens. By calling it a dream he obviated the objection to its incongruities, since it is of the nature of a dream that things heterogeneous are brought together in fantastical confusion. Yet, to a person who by repeated perusals has become familiar with this play, it will not appear so incongruous a composition that it requires such an apology as we find in the Epilogue and in the title. It cannot, however, have been popular, any more than Comus is popular when brought upon the stage. Its great and surpassing beauties would be in themselves a hinderance to its obtaining a vulgar popu larity. The finest poetry is heavy in repetition on the stage. Only the repeating the long and beautiful passages in recitative gave this play a temporary popularity when it was revived in better times. Many, no doubt, have felt what few beside Pepys would have cared to record. The play was printed in 1600; but it existed before that date. It is named by Meres in 1598. Earlier than that date we have no positive proof of its existence. Chetwood speaks of an edition printed in 1595.* Have Chetwood's statements ever been examined in a fair and critical spirit, or do we dismiss them on the mere force of personal authority brought to bear against them? A copy cannot be produced: but neither could a copy of the first edition of Hamlet be produced in the time of Steevens and Malone: yet it would have been a mistaken conclusion that no such edition existed because neither of those commentators had seen a copy. Chetwood gives the title somewhat circumstantially† as if he had seen a copy: and if some of his traditions may be shewn to be unfounded, if he may be proved to have been credulous or even something worse, his writings contain some truth, and we cannot perhaps easily draw the line which shall separate that which is worthy of belief from that which is to be rejected without remorse. In aid of this date of Chetwood comes the allusion to the wet season of 1594. Mr. Halliwell has drawn attention to a passage in Forman's Diary, in which we have a description of the season: ‡ but a more pertinent passage from a lecture of Dr. J. King delivered at York is brought from Strype in illustration of the * See The British Theatre, 12mo, Dublin, 1750, as referred to by Mr. Halliwell. † A most pleasante Comedie, called A Midsummer Night Dreame, wythe the freakes of the Fayries. An Introduction to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, 8vo. 1841, p. 6. well-known passage in this play by the Rev. Mr. Blakeway of Shrewsbury,* who came late into the Shakesperian field, but whose notes are always so pertinent and so instructive that we cannot but regret they should be so few. There is no apparent reason why it should be called a dream of Midsummer Night in particular. Midsummer night was of old in England a time of bon-fires and rejoicings, and in London of processions and pageantries. But there is no allusion to anything of this kind in the play. Midsummer night cannot be the time of the action, which is very distinctly fixed to May-morning and a few days before. May-morning, even more than Midsummer night, was a time of delight in those times which, when looked back upon from these days of incessant toil, seem to have been gay, innocent, and paradisaical. See in what sweet language and in what a religious spirit the old topographer of London, Stowe, speaks of the universal custom of the people of the city on Mayday morning, "to walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kinds." We have abundant materials for a distinct and complete account of the May-day sports in the happy times of old England; but they would be misplaced in illustration of this play: for though Shakespeare has made the time of his story the time when people went forth To do observance to the morn of May, and has laid the scene of the principal event in one of those half-sylvan, half-pastoral spots which we may conceive to have been the most favourite haunts of the Mayers, he does not introduce any of the May-day sports, or shew us any * Boswell's Malone, vol. v. 342. thing of the May-day customs of the time. Yet he might have done so. His subject seemed even to invite him to it, since a party of Mayers with their garlands of sweet flowers would have harmonized well with the lovers and the fairies, and might have made sport for Robin Goodfellow. Shakespeare loved to think of flowers and to write of them, and it may seem that it was a part of his original conception to have made more use than he has done of May-day and Flora's followers. To an extravagant commentator this play might open the whole subject of the Fairy Mythology, just as The Tempest might be made to call for whatever can be collected respecting that so-called philosophy in which Prospero was so accomplished an adept. But both these subjects are subjects for distinct treatises, and to say much concerning them in reference to these plays is, to say the least, a misplacing of the curious learning. The following note from a pleasant little work printed in 1828, entitled Fairy-Mythology, seems, however, almost essential to the right understanding a material circumstance, and to the justification of the author: The Shakesperian commentators have not thought fit to inform us why the poet designates the fairy queen Titania. It, however, presents no difficulty. It was the belief of those days that the fairies were the same as the classic nymphs, the attendants of Diana, "That fourth kind of sprites," says King James, "quhilk be the gentiles was called Diana and the wandering court, and among us called the Phaeries." The fairy-queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid frequently styles Titania. Vol. ii. p. 127. We shall be the less surprised to find Diana in such company when we recollect that there is much in the Fairy Mythology which seems but a perpetuation of the beautiful conceptions of primeval ages, of the fields, woods, mountains, rivers, and the margin of the sea being haunted by nymphs, the dryades and hamadryades, oreades, and naiades. It is a |