stretch of probability to assume the presence of the Dowager Countess of Derby, the widow of the late Earl, who was Lady Strange at the date of the dedication to her of Spenser's poem in 1591; or, further, to assume that the reference to "the thrice three Muses" may have been intended as a compliment to her and the Stanley family. We must never forget, however, that in these matters we are forced, from the very circumstances, to deal with probabilities and not with actual facts; and it must also be noted that Shakespeare's company is not stated to have played at Court on "the 26 of January," though performances are recorded on the 5th January and 22nd February 1595. (See Fleay, Life and Work of Shakespeare, 1866, pp. 126, 127.) 4. Another allusion is distinctly in favour of the autumn of 1594. The reference in I. ii. 77 and III. i. 31 to the lion frightening the duchess and the ladies, is not improbably a reminiscence of an incident which happened at the Scottish Court at the baptism of Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I., in August 1594. Malone was the first to remark on "the odd coincidence," as he calls it. He quotes a pamphlet which is reprinted in Somers's Tracts, ii. 179: "While the king and queen were at dinner a chariot was drawn in by 'a black-moore. This chariot should have been drawne in by a lyon, but because his presence might have brought some fears to the nearest, or that the sights of the lights and the torches might have commoved his tameness, it was thought meete that the Moor should supply that room." Steevens, in his note to II. i. 15, refers to the following passage from the old anonymous comedy of The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, the earliest known edition of which is dated 1600: 'Twas I that led you through the painted meads, It is true that Nash, in his preface to Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is Up, 1596, mentions the name "doctor Dodypowle," but this is without any reference to the play, and the name Dodipoll had long previously been in use for a blockhead. H. Chichester Hart points out (Athenæum, 1888) that the name occurs in Hickscorner, 1552: What, Master Doctor Dotypoll, Cannot you preach well in a black boll It seems to be represented by the modern slang word "dotty." So that we can deduce no argument as to the date from the reference by Steevens. The The arguments of Chalmers for assigning the date of the play to the year 1598 may be found set out at length in Furness's New Variorum, p. 248 sqq. I shall not attempt to introduce them here, as, in my opinion, they have no real weight, and are weak and inconclusive. conjectures of Gerald Massey and of some of the German critics (Tieck, Elze, Kurz, and others), which attempt to fix an earlier or later date for the play, on the theory, amongst others, that the occasion of the performance was the marriage of Lord Essex with Lady Sidney in 1590, or that of Lord Southampton with Elizabeth Vernon in 1598-both secret marriages, by the way, and obnoxious to the Queen's displeasure-may also be found duly set out in Furness, p. 248 sqq. In my opinion, they may be dismissed as not worth serious discussion. A somewhat shrewd line of argument as to the date has been adopted by Aldis Wright in his Introduction to the Clarendon Press Edition, p. xi, where he says: "If we attempt to arrange the plays which Meres attributes to Shakespeare, so as to distribute them over the period from 1589 to 1598, we shall find two gaps, in either of which we might conjecturally place the Midsummer-Night's Dream. The interval from 1589 to 1591 is filled up by Love's Labour's Lost, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors, and Titus Andronicus. In 1593, 1594, are placed Richard the Second, Richard the Third, King John, and in these years appeared Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. The Merchant of Venice is assigned to 1596, and Henry the Fourth to 1597. Besides these there are the three Parts of Henry the Sixth, which Meres does not mention, but which, if Shakespeare's at all, must belong to the earlier part of this period, and 'Loue Labours Wonne,' whatever this may have been. On the whole, I am disposed to agree with Professor Dowden in regarding the Two Gentlemen of Verona as earlier than the MidsummerNight's Dream, while I cannot think the latter was composed after the plays assigned above to 1593, 1594, and would therefore place it in the interval from 1591 to 1593, when perhaps Romeo and Juliet may have been begun." I see no reason whatever to think that the historical plays above mentioned, i.e. those assigned to 1503, 1594, were necessarily composed after the Midsummer-Night's Dream. On the contrary, I am strongly of opinion that these historical plays show clearly that Shakespeare was still more or less-more, certainly, in Richard the Third-under the influence of Marlowe; and that in the Midsummer-Night's Dream we have the earliest, purest, and most original effort of his own genius, finding its own high level, and unswayed by the influence of any dramatic predecessor. It is the dramatic complement of the poetic efforts of 1593, 1594. Aldis Wright has, therefore, in my opinion, mistaken his " gap." The interval from 1594 to 1596 has, if we consider such evidence as has been previously adduced, every single argument of weight in its favour. Further, the evidence of style and composition is unmistakeable, and goes to show that the place of the play must be amongst the early comedies, in all probability after Love's Labour's Lost, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Errors. We have its blank verse of a somewhat regular and monotonous kind. We have the symmetrical grouping of the characters, characteristic of all the early plays. We have the usual strained conceits, the antitheses, and other rhetorical devices of Shakespeare's early manner, not to speak of certain artificial devices of construction, indicating immature stage-craft, such as the device in the first Act of leaving Lysander and Hermia alone on the stage to arrange their flight from Athens. The play abounds with rhyme, even when this is not necessary for lyrical expression. The characters, too, with the notable exception of Bottom, are more or less sketches, and are far indeed from being living exponents of Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature. The Cowden-Clarkes hereon well remark: "The internal evidence of the composition itself gives unmistakeable token of its having been written when the poet was in his flush of youthful manhood. The classicality of the principal personages, Theseus and Hippolyta; the Grecian-named characters; the prevalence of rhyme; the grace and whimsicality of the fairy-folk; the rich warmth of colouring that pervades the poetic diction; the abundance of description, rather than of plot, action, and characterdevelopment, all mark the young dramatist." With regard to the date of composition, therefore, I think a fairly strong case has been made out for the autumn or winter of 1594-95; and in this date most prominent Shakespearean scholars agree: e.g. Malone, Knight, Collier, Dyce, Keightley, Halliwell, Marshall, Dowden, and Craig. We may be satisfied to leave it at that, until the unlikely event of some tangible piece of evidence arising which will tend to correct this assumption. It cannot be said that Shakespeare is indebted to any single source for the plot of his Midsummer-Night's Dream. Hints from many quarters of his reading, knowledge, and experience seem to have been taken and welded into one beautiful and harmonious poetic mass by the force of his fancy and imagination. Some hints he took from (a) Plutarch's Lives, and from (b) Chaucer's Knightes Tale; something from (c) the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in his favourite book, Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses; perhaps a hint, perhaps not, from (d) Greene's History of James IV.; mayhap a thought or two from (e) Spenser's Faerie Queene; something from (ƒ) ballad, tale, and tradition regarding the fairy beings of English superstition and folk-lore; and possibly the hint of the "love-juice" from (g) Montemayor's Diana (1579). (a) The essential passages in Plutarch's Lives which |