“ But Arcite replied that love knows no law; decrees of man are every day broken for love; moreover Palamon and he were prisoners, and were like two dogs fighting for a bone which meantime a kite bears away. Let each continue in his love, for in prison each must endure.
Now a duke name Pirithous came to visit his friend Theseus; who being also a friend to Arcite begged Theseus to let him go free out of prison, which Theseus did. And Arcite was set free without ransom, but on condition that his life should be forfeit if he ever set foot again in any domain of Duke Theseus. ”

“ Then on a hot day he saw the king of fairy and his retinue riding with hounds and blowing horns; and again he saw a great host of knights with drawn swords; and again he saw sixty ladies, gentle and gay, riding on palfreys and bearing hawks on their wrists. Their falcons had good sport, and Orfeo drew nigh to watch; and looking on the face of one of the ladies, he recognised Meroudys. ”

“ THE HOSTESS'S TALE OF THE BIRTH OF ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW
Once upon a time, a great while ago, when men did eat more and drink less—then men were more honest, that knew no knavery, than some now are that confess the knowledge and deny the practice—about that time (whensoe'er it was) there was wont to walk many harmless spirits called fairies, dancing in brave order in fairy rings on green hills with sweet music (sometime invisible) in divers shapes: many mad pranks would they play, as pinching of sluts black and blue, and misplacing things in ill-ordered houses ”

“ 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. ”

“ Obreon took Robin by the hand and led him a dance: their musician was little Tom Thumb; for he had an excellent bag-pipe made of a wren's quill, and the skin of a Greenland louse: this pipe was so shrill, and so sweet, that a Scottish pipe compared to it, it would no more come near it, than a Jew's-trump doth to an Irish harp. After they had danced, King Obreon spake to his son, Robin Good-fellow, in this manner—
When e'er you hear my piper blow,
From thy bed see that thou go;
For nightly you must with us dance,
When we in circles round do prance. ”

“ And in truth as Arcite rode in triumph down the lists, looking up at Emilia, Pluto, at the bidding of Saturn, sent from hell a fury, that started from the ground in front of Arcite's horse, which shied and threw his rider; and Arcite pitched on his head, and lay as though dead. They bore him to Theseus' palace, cut his harness from off him, and laid him in a bed.
Theseus for three days entertained the knights of the tourney, and then all of them went their several ways. But Arcite lay dying; no longer had Nature any power ”

“ Many old women, that then had more wit than those that are now living and have less, said that a fairy had gotten her with child; and they bid her be of good comfort, for the child must needs be fortunate that had so noble a father as a fairy was, and should work many strange wonders. To be short, her time grew on, and she was delivered of a man child, who (it should seem) so rejoiced his father's heart, that every night his mother was supplied with necessary things that are befitting a woman in child-birth, so that in no mean manner neither ”

“ THE TRICKS OF THE FAIRY CALLED PATCH
"About midnight do I walk, and for the tricks I play they call me Patch. When I find a slut asleep, I smutch her face if it be clean; but if it be dirty, I wash it in the next piss pot that I can find: the balls I use to wash such sluts withal is a sow's pancake or a pilgrim's salve. Those that I find with their heads nitty and scabby, for want of combing, I am their barbers, and cut their hair as close as an ape's tail ”

“ It is none the less of value to recognise at the outset that A Midsummer-Night's Dream is more of a masque than a drama—an entertainment rather than a play. The characters are mostly puppets, and scarcely any except Bottom has the least psychological interest for the reader. ”

“ Each part, of course, is coloured by the poet's genius, and the whole is devoted to the comic aspect of love, its eternal youth and endless caprice, laughing at laws, and laughed at by the secure. "What fools these mortals be!" is the comment of the immortal; the corollary, left unspoken by those outside the pale, being "What fools these lovers be!"
The sources from which Shakespeare drew the plots of his three dozen of plays are for the most part easily recognisable ”

“ This same he-fairy did love a proper young wench, for every night would he with other fairies come to the house, and there dance in her chamber; and oftentimes she was forced to dance with him, and at his departure would he leave her silver and jewels, to express his love unto her. At last this maid was with child, and being asked who was the father of it, she answered a man that nightly came to visit her, but early in the morning he would go his way, whither she knew not, he went so suddenly. ”

“ HOW ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW WENT IN THE SHAPE OF A FIDDLER TO A WEDDING, AND OF THE SPORT THAT HE HAD THERE
On a time there was a great wedding, to which there went many young lusty lads and pretty lasses. Robin Good-fellow longing not to be out of action, shaped himself like unto a fiddler, and with his crowd under his arm went amongst them, and was a very welcome man. There played he whilst they danced, and took as much delight in seeing them, as they did in hearing him. At dinner he was desired to sing a song, which he did to the tune of Watton Town's End [10] . ”

“ Rude Robin Goodfellow, the lout,
Would skim the milk-bowls all,
And search the cream-pots too,
For which poor milk-maid weeps.
God wot what such mad guests will do
When people soundly sleeps!
. . . . . .
These are but fables feigned,
Because true stories old
In doubtful days are more disdained
Than any tale is told.
THOMAS CHURCHYARD
from A Handfull of Gladsome Verses (1592) .
[144]
THE MAD MERRY PRANKS OF ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW
(To the Tune of Dulcina.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Horns, in English folk-lore, appear to belong rather to elves than to fairies [81] —the elves that haunt hills, and are known all over Europe; dwarfs, trolls, kobolds, pixies, and so forth. Teutonic witches are called horn-blowers. Again, the fairy-train or fairy-hunt is supposed to carry horns; we have seen it already in Sir Orfeo, [82] and in Thomas of Erceldoune, [83] the fairy-queen bears a horn about her neck.
But this Oberon of Huon of Bordeaux is mortal, and is not pictured as being abnormal in stature, any more than Mider. ”

“ Titania is a votaress of the moon; we have seen that fairies are intimately concerned with mortal babies, and that there is a fairy-hunt (see the quotation from James I's Demonology, p. 37 above) ; and we have also noted the confusion of Proserpina with the fairy-queen.—The Tuatha Dé Danann are said to be "the folk of Danu"—who is Danu? Hecate was called Trivia, on account of the above tripartition of Diana; her statues were set up where three roads met, and the fairy-queen in Thomas the Rhymer points out to him the three roads that lead to heaven, hell, and elf-land. ”

“ King Orfeo was greatly distressed, and none could advise him. On the morrow he took his queen and ten hundred [51] knights to guard her beneath the ympe tree; but in vain, she was away with the fairy, and they knew not whither. King Orfeo in grief called together his barons and knights and squires, and bade them obey his high steward as regent; he himself went forth barefoot and in poor attire into the wilderness, with naught but his harp.
So for ten winters he abode in the forest and on the heath, in a hollow tree, or under leaves and grass, till his frame shrank and his beard grew long ”

“ We see everything on every side, yet no man seeth us. Though pleasant the plains of Ireland, yet are they a wilderness for him who has known the great plain."
But Etain would not go to him, before Eochaid was willing to resign her. And the king would not, yet allowed Mider to embrace her before him. Mider took his weapons into his left hand, and Etain with his right, and bore her away through the skylight. The guards outside beheld two swans flying, and they flew towards the elf-mound of Femun, which is called the Mound of the Fair-haired Women. ”

“ ANALYSTS OF CHAUCER'S KNIGHTES TALE
Old stories relate that once there was a Duke Theseus, lord of Athens, a conqueror of many lands. His latest conquest was "Femenye" (once called Scythia) , whose queen Hippolyta he wedded and brought home, accompanied by her young sister Emilia. Now as he drew near to Athens, a company of ladies met him in the way, and laid before him their complaint, to the effect that, their husbands having fallen at the siege of Thebes, Creon the tyrant of Thebes would not let the bodies be buried or burned, but cast them on a heap and suffered the dogs to eat them. ”

“ The Spirit of Mischief puts a happy end to the differences of the four lovers, and by his transformation of Bottom reconciles the fairy King and Queen, while he [3] incidentally goes near to spoiling the performance of the "crew of patches" at the nuptials of Theseus by preventing due rehearsal of their interlude. It is perhaps a permissible fancy to convert Theseus' words "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet," to illustrate the triple appeal made by the three ingredients the grotesque, the sentimental, and the fantastic. ”

“ In Huon of Bordeaux Merlin comes with King Arthur to Oberon's death-bed; Arthur introduces him as his nephew, the son of Ogier the Dane and "my sister Morgan."
[55] The mere mention of these subterranean explorations opens up an immense field of discussion and speculation that can here be only relegated to a note; we can treat at greater length none but those legends which bear directly on our subject. Odysseus visited Hades, Aeneas descended to Orcus or Tartarus, and they have their counterparts in every land and every mythology. ”

“ Know you this by the way, that heretofore Robin Goodfellow and Hobgoblin were as terrible, and also as credible to the people, as hags and witches be now: and in time to come a witch will be as much derided and contemned, and as plainly perceived, as the illusion and knavery of Robin Goodfellow. And in truth, they that maintain walking spirits with their transformation, &c, have no reason to deny Robin Goodfellow, upon whom there hath gone as many and as credible tales as upon witches ”

“ Thus we see—to take into consideration but a few points of the myth—that the fairy-superstition and the elf-superstition were melted together in the popular pre-Shakespearean mind, and that Shakespeare himself, making a new division of the characteristics of the two, yet re-welded the whole into one realm by putting the Puck in subjection under the fairy king.
The main characteristics of Shakespeare's fairies, then, may be summarised shortly:— [89]
They are a community under a king and queen, who hold a court; they are very small, light, swift, elemental; they share in the life of nature ”

“ The Fairies do principally inhabit the mountains and caverns of the earth, whose nature is to make strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows or on mountains, being like men and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, children and horsemen, clothed in green, to which purpose they do in the night steal hempen stalks from the fields where they grow, to convert them into horses, as the story goes.... ”

“ Thus the poor maid was freed from this ruffian, and Robin Good-fellow, to see this gallant so tame, went away laughing, ho, ho, hoh!
HOW ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW TURNED A MISERABLE USURER TO A GOOD HOUSE-KEEPER
In this country of ours there was a rich man dwelled, who to get wealth together was so sparing that he could not find in his heart to give his belly food enough. In the winter he never would make so much fire as would roast a black-pudding, for he found it more profitable to sit by other men's. ”

“ Eochaid Airemm, king of Ireland, found him a wife in Etain daughter of Etar in the Bay of Cichmany, and with her Mider of Bri Leith (a fairy chief) was in love. On a summer's day, as the king sat on the heights of Tara beholding the plain of Breg, a strange young warrior appeared, gave his name as Mider, and challenged Eochaid to a game of chess for a wager. Many were the games they played, and at first Eochaid won, and bade Mider carry out [56] certain tasks. But at last Eochaid was defeated, and Mider for his reward asked to be allowed to hold Etain in his arms and kiss her. ”

“ THE FAIRIES' FAREWELL 151
THE FAIRY QUEEN 155
NYMPHIDIA 158
[73]
THE LEGEND OF PYRAMUS AND THISBE
From Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1575) , Book IV, ff. 52-3.
Within the town (of whose huge walls so monstrous high and thick,
The fame is given Semiramis for making them of brick)
Dwelt hard together two young folk, in houses joined so near,
That under all one roof well nigh both twain conveyéd were.
The name of him was Pyramus, and Thisbe call'd was she,
So fair a man in all the East was none alive as he.
Nor ne'er a woman, maid, nor wife in beauty like to her. ”

“ The character-drawing is far more subtle than the poet's; Chaucer leaves the reader's sympathies equally divided, despite the fact that he says plainly that Arcite was in the wrong, because he violated the compact of the two kinsmen to assist each other in love.
We must now consider what justification there is for [24] 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 ”

“ The queen of the Amazons was Hippolyta, and she had a sister named Antiopa. One story says that Hercules slew Hippolyta; another that Hippolyta was enticed on board his ship by Theseus; a third, as we have seen, that Theseus married Antiopa. It is not easy to choose incidents from these conflicting accounts so as to make a reasonable sequence; but, as North says, "we are not to marvel, if the history of things so ancient, be found so diversely written." ”