Theseus a leading character in his story, and has ascribed the unearthly incidents to mythological personages, conformable to a legend which professes to narrate events that actually happened in Greece. Shakespeare, on the other hand, has merely adopted Theseus, whose exploits he was acquainted with through the pages of North's Plutarch, as a well-known character of romance, in subordination to whom the rest of the dramatis persone might fret their hour; and has employed for supernatural machinery those "airy nothings" familiar to the literature and traditions of various people and nearly all ages. There is little at all in common between the two stories except the name Theseus, the representative of which appears in Shakespeare simply as a prince who lived in times when the introduction of ethereal beings, such as Oberon, Titania, and Puck, was in accordance with tradition and romance. Beyond one or two passing allusions, there is no attempt to individualize either the man or the country, and, but for these, Theseus might have been called by any other name, and have been lord of any other territory. There is another enunciation of the critics, which requires to be taken with considerable modification: we are told that the characters of the play are classical, while the accessories are Gothic; but the distinction implied is not perhaps so great as we have been led to believe. Godwin has called Theseus the "knight-errant " of antiquity, from which it might be inferred that the knight-errant of the middle ages was a very different person to the romantic hero of ancient times: but, in truth, the two characters were almost identical, as the history of Theseus proves. What material difference, for example, is there between his victory over the Minotaur, and that of Guy, the renowned Earl of Warwick, over the Dun cow? The combats with dragons and other ferocious monsters, the protection of the virtuous and the weak against the wicked and the strong, fluctuation of good and evil fortune, adventures with the fair sex, and engagements with supernatural enemies, these were the incidents of every story in which a warrior was made to figure as the hero of romance. Nor is there anything peculiarly Gothic in the imaginary population of the fairy-world. It is not improbable that many of our legends connected with this fabulous race were derived indirectly from Greece itself. It is impossible to read the Golden Ass of Apuleius, one of the few prose works of imagination which have been transmitted to us from ancient times, without being struck by the similarity of classic and Gothic literature in this department of romance. The Fawns, Satyrs, and Dryads of the Greeks were undoubtedly of a kindred origin with the woodland fairies of more recent times, and the intervention of an agency known as witchcraft is alike traceable in both ages. There can be little doubt that Golding's translation of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe suggested the interlude by the hard-handed men of Athens, as North's Plutarch certainly furnished the characters of Theseus and his "bouncing Amazon;" but that which constitutes the charm and essence of the play, the union of those gross materials with the delicate, benign, and sportive beings of fairy-land, "lighter than the gossamer, and smaller than a cowslip's bell," was the pure creation of Shakespeare's own illimitable and delightful fancy. EGE. Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke! THE. Thanks, good Egeus. What's the news with thee? EGE. Full of vexation come I, with complaint Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me, I beg the ancient privilege of Athens, THE. What say you, Hermia? be advis'd, fair To you your father should be as a god; THE. HER. I would my father look'd but with my eyes! THE. Rather, your eyes must with his judgment look. HER. I do entreat your grace to pardon me. THE. Either to die the death, or to abjure Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires, HER. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord, new moon, d (The sealing-day betwixt my love and me, DEM. Relent, sweet Hermia ;-and, Lysander, yield Thy crazed title to my certain right. Lys. You have her father's love, Demetrius; Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him. EGE. Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my Lys. I am, my lord, as well deriv'd as he, And, which is more than all these boasts can be, THE. I must confess that I have heard so much, And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof, But, being over-full of self-affairs, My mind did lose it.-But, Demetrius, come; I have some private schooling for you both. so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven And in Spenser's "Faerie Queen," II. viii. 19:-- "So would I, said the enchanter, glad and faine The course of true love never did run smooth:] This sentiment is not uncommon, but it has never been so beautifully expressed. It occurs in Milton's" Paradise Lost," Book x. 896, et seqq., and we meet with it in Middleton's "Blurt, Master Constable," Act III. Sc. 1:— HER. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low!‡ Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years; HER. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young! Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends; § HER. O hell! to choose love by another's eye! Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it; Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen,(2) unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say,-Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion. HER. If then true lovers have been ever cross'd, It stands as an edict in destiny : Then let us teach our trial patience, Because it is a customary cross; As due to love, as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers. Lys. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia. I have a widow aunt, a dowager Of great revenue, and she hath no child; "Thou hast not collied thy face enough." e Fancy's followers.] Fancy is used here in the same sense as in Act II. Sc. 2: "In maiden meditation, fancy free;-" And in Act IV. Sc. 1: "Fair Helena in fancy following me." you Enter HELENA. HER. God speed fair Helena! Whither away? More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, HER. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. HER. I give him curses, yet he gives me love. HEL. O that my prayers could such affection move! HER. The more I hate, the more he follows me. HEL. The more I love, the more he hateth me. HER. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine." HEL. None, but your beauty; would that fault were mine! [face; HER. Take comfort, he no more shall see my Lysander and myself will fly this place. a And prospers loves;] This is the reading of the quarto published by Fisher; that by Roberts, and the folio, have love. b Your fair:] That is, your beauty. See "Love's Labour's Lost," note (a), p. 69, and the "Comedy of Errors," note (b), p. 121. The folio reads, you fair. c 0, were favour 80,-] Favour, in Shakespeare sometimes means countenance, features, and occasionally, as here, good graces generally. d Your words I'd catch, fair Hermia, ere I go,-] The old copies read, "Your words I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go." The very slight alteration, which gives intelligibility to the line, was first made in the folio, 1632. Helena would catch not only the beauty of her rival's aspect, and the melody of her tones, but her language also. If the lection here proposed is inadmissible, we must adopt that of Hanmer,-"Yours would I catch," for the old text will never be accepted as the author's. e His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.] Thus, Fisher's quarto; Before the time I did Lysander see, O then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a* hell! HER. And in the wood, where often you and I [Exit HERMIA. Lys. I will, my Hermia.-Helena, adieu : As you on him, Demetrius doter on you! [Exit LYSANDER. HEL. How happy some o'er other-some can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know. And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste, Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste; And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft‡ beguil'd. As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy love is perjur'd everywhere: For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne, He hail'd down oaths, that he was only mine; And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, So he dissolv'd, and showers of oaths did melt. I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight: that by Roberts, and the folio, have, "none of mine." f And stranger companies.] In the old text the passage runs as follows: "And in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, Emptying our bosoms of their counsel swell'd, There my Lysander and myself shall meet, And thence from Athens turn away our eyes To seek new friends and strange companions." The restoration of "counsel sweet," and "stranger companies," is due to Theobald, and as the rest of the scene from the entrance of Helena is in rhyme, there can be no reasonable doubt that these four lines were originally in rhyme also. |