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only mentions the name 'doctor Dodypowle,' without referring to the play, and Dodipoll was a synonym for a blockhead as early as Latimer's time. In endeavouring therefore to approximate to the date of our play, we may leave out of consideration the passage quoted by Steevens; for it is, to say the least, quite as probable that the author of the Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll borrowed from the Midsummer Night's Dream, as that Shakespeare borrowed from him a conceit which is not very far-fetched. All that we really know is that the Midsummer Night's Dream was written before 1598. Chetwood, in his British Theatre, published in Dublin in 1750, gives a list of the early editions of Shakespeare's plays, in which appears 'A moste pleasaunte comedie, called A Midsummer Night's Dreame, wythe the freakes of the fayries,' which is said to have been published in 1595. But Chetwood's descriptions have been pronounced fictitious by Steevens, and the spelling of 'wythe' is sufficient to condemn the present title as spurious. Malone at first placed the Midsummer Night's Dream in the year 1595, then as early as 1592, but his later opinion was that it was written in 1594. In that year Dr. King, afterwards Bishop of London, preached at York a series of sermons upon the history of Jonah, which were published in 1618 under the title 'Lectures upon Ionas.' The second lecture (p. 36) contains a description of the disastrous season, to which Titania is supposed to refer in her reproaches of Oberon (ii. 1. 81-117), and which she attributes to their quarrel. 'The moneths of the year haue not yet gone about, wherin the Lord hath bowed the heauens, and come down amongst vs with more tokens and earnests of his wrath intended, then the agedst man of our land is able to recount of so small a time. For say, if euer the windes, since they blew one against the other, haue beene more common, & more tempestuous, as if the foure endes of heauen had conspired to turne the foundations of the earth vpside downe; thunders and lightnings neither seasonable for the time, and withall most terrible, with such effects brought

forth, that the childe vnborne shall speake of it. The anger of the clouds hath beene powred downe vpon our heads, both with abundance and (sauing to those that felt it) with incredible violence; the aire threatned our miseries with a blazing starre; the pillers of the earth tottered in many whole countries and tracts of our Ilande; the arrowes of a woefull pestilence haue beene cast abroad at large in all the quarters of our realme, euen to the emptying and dispeopling of some parts thereof; treasons against our Queene and country wee have knowne many and mighty, monstrous to bee imagined, from a number of Lyons whelps, lurking in their dennes and watching their houre, to vndoe vs; our expectation and comfort so fayled vs in France, as if our right armes had beene pulled from our shoulders.' The marginal note to this passage shews the date to which it refers. 'The yeare of the Lord 1593, and 1594.' Dr. King's description of the extraordinary disturbance of the elements is confirmed by Stowe in his Annals for the same year. Under date 1594 he says, 'In this moneth of March was many great stormes of winde, which ouerturned trees, steeples, barns, houses, &c. namely in Worcestershire, in Beaudly forrest many Oakes were ouerturned. . . . The 11. of Aprill, a raine continued very sore more then 24. houres long and withall, such a winde from the north, as pearced the wals of houses, were they neuer so strong . This yeere in the month of May, fell many great showres of raine, but in the moneths of Iune and Iuly, much more: for it commonly rained euerie day, or night, till S. Iames day, and two daies after togither most extreamly, all which notwithstanding, in the moneth of August there followed a faire haruest, but in the moneth of September fell great raines, which raised high waters, such as staied the carriages, and bare downe bridges, at Cambridge, Ware, and else where, in many places. Also the price of graine grewe to be such, as a strike or bushell of Rie was sold for fiue shillings, a bushel of wheat for sixe, seuen, or eight shillings, &c. for still it rose in price, which dearth happened (after

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the common opinion) more by meanes of ouermuch transporting, by our owne merchants for their priuate gaine, than through the vnseasonablenesse of the weather passed.' (Annales, ed. 1601, pp. 1274-9). A similar description is given in the journal of Dr. Simon Forman, the astrologer, which is quoted by Mr. Halliwell (Phillipps) in his Introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream (p. 6, ed. 1841), from MS. 384 in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. These passages have been so often referred to as containing the prose version ́of Titania's speech that I have thought it best to give them at length, if only for the purpose of shewing that in all probability Shakespeare had not the year 1594 in his mind at all. It is true that King, and Stowe, and Forman alike describe great storms of wind and rain and disastrous floods as characterising this year, but notwithstanding we are told ' in the moneth of August there followed a faire haruest,' and the subsequent high prices of corn are attributed not to a deficiency in the crop but to the avarice of merchants in exporting it for their own gain. Now this does not agree with Titania's description of the fatal consequences of her quarrel with Oberon, through which

'The green corn

Hath rotted, ere his youth attain'd a beard.'

In this point alone there is such an important discrepancy that if Shakespeare referred to any particular season we may without doubt affirm it was not to the year 1594, and therefore the passages which have been quoted have no bearing、 upon the date of the play. I am even sceptical enough to think that Titania's speech not only does not describe the events of the year 1594, or of the other bad seasons which happened at this time, but that it is purely the product of the poet's own imagination, and that the picture which it presents had no original in the world of fact, any more than Oberon's bank or Titania's bower.

Another passage which has been appealed to as afford

ing internal evidence of the date of our play is in v. I. 52, 53, where Theseus reads from the list of performances submitted to him for approval by the master of the revels,

The thrice three Muses mourning for the death

Of learning, late deceased in beggary';

in which some see an allusion to the

death of Spenser in 1599,

others to that of Greene in 1592. In the former case the lines must have been interpolated after Spenser's death, for we know the play was in existence in 1598.

It was Knight who

first suggested that the reference is to the death of Greene. Rejecting the supposition of Warton that Shakespeare here 'alluded to Spenser's poem entitled "The Teares of the Muses, on the neglect and contempt of learning," which appeared in 1591, he maintains, 'These expressions are too precise and limited to refer to the tears of the Muses for the decay of knowledge and art. We cannot divest ourselves of the belief that some real person, and some real death, was alluded to. May we hazard a conjecture? Greene, a man of learning, and one whom Shakspere in the generosity of his nature might wish to point at kindly, died in 1592, in a condition that might truly be called beggary. But how was his death, any more than that of Spenser, to be the occasion of "some satire keen and critical"? Every student of our literary history will remember the famous controversy of Nash and Gabriel Harvey, which was begun by Harvey's publication, in 1592, of "Four Letters, and certain Sonnets, especially touching Robert Greene, and other parties by him abused." Robert Greene was dead; but Harvey came forward, in revenge of an incautious attack of the unhappy poet, to satirize him in his grave-to hold up his vices and his misfortunes to the public scorn-to be "keen and critical" upon “learning, late deceas'd in beggary." The conjecture which we offer may have little weight, and the point is certainly of very small consequence.' It may safely be said that the conjecture would have had more weight if the reasons

for it had not been given, for it is difficult to see any parallel between Gabriel Harvey's satire and

'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death

Of learning,'

which must of necessity satirize some person or persons other than him whose death is mourned, even supposing that any particular person is referred to. On the whole, I am inclined to think that Spenser's poem may have suggested to Shakespeare a title for the piece submitted to Theseus, and that we need not press for any closer parallel between them.

Chalmers, in his Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare-Papers (pp. 359-370), gives the reasons which induced him to place the composition of the Midsummer Night's Dream in the early part of 1598. He finds, in the speech of Theseus at the beginning of the fifth act, the line, 'One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,'

which, he says, 'is, plainly, a sarcasm on Lodge's pamphlet, called Wits Miserie, and the Worlds Madnesse; discovering the Incarnate Devils of this age.' Lodge's tract was printed in 1596, and as he mentions other poets and suppresses Shakespeare's name Chalmers infers that Shakespeare in revenge wrote the line which is quoted above. An equally strong reason for believing that Shakespeare had read Lodge's tract before writing Midsummer Night's Dream, is that he uses the word 'compact,' which is also found in Lodge.

The next step in Chalmers's argument is that in 1597 there was a poem, entitled Pyramus and Thisbe, published by Dunstan Gale, which in his opinion was prior to Shakespeare's work. But as no one has seen this`edition of Gale's poem, and as the story of Pyramus and Thisbe was accessible to Shakespeare from other sources long before 1597, we may dismiss this piece of evidence brought forward by Chalmers as having no decisive weight. He next takes for granted what is merely suggested by Malone, that Shakespeare borrowed from a comedy called the Wisdom of Doctor Dodipoll, and

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