PREFATORY NOTE

The restriction of this volume to the twenty plays most commonly read and most frequently acted has permitted the use of a type of comfortable size and the inclusion of introductory and explanatory matter without which the plays can hardly be understood by the ordinary reader. Since Shakespeare's time, words have fallen out of current use or taken on new meaning, customs and institutions have changed, and the methods of stage representation have been revolutionized. Without burdening the reader with superfluous antiquarianism, the editors have endeavored to supply such information as would be of help and interest.

In the introduction to each play a somewhat fuller account of its stage history has been included than has hitherto been usual in editions of this scope, and particular attention has been given to the important Shakespearean revivals, on both sides of the Atlantic, of the last hundred years. Information as to recent performances is not easy of access, and this is possibly the reason why editors in the past, while giving due space to nineteenth century criticism, have omitted or slighted performances which, often remarkable in themselves, are surely worthy of record as restoring Shakespeare to the stage free from the additions and corruptions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this connection the editors wish to acknowledge with hearty thanks the kindness with which Professor Talcott Williams, Director of the School of Journalism of Columbia University, put at their disposal his unique collection of English and American newspaper clippings, which is specially rich in Shakespearean references.

The text is in general based on that of the First Folio, with modernized spelling. The original stage directions have been, as far as possible, retained, and additions by later editors enclosed in square brackets; where the stage directions of the quartos appeared significant, they have been included, and their source indicated.

The Globe line-numbering has been followed for the sake of convenience in reference. The proper scansion of metrical passages has been facilitated by two devices: (a) by the insertion of accent marks to guide the reader in the pronunciation of words stressed differently in Shakespeare's usage than at present; e.g., revénue, cómmune; (b) by retaining the differentiation which the original Folio makes between past tenses of verbs in 'd and in ed. Wherever the latter form appears in verse lines, the meter requires that it should be pronounced as a distinct syllable.

The plays are arranged in the order, which, without violating the ascertained results of Shakespearean chronology, is thought most advantageous alike to the college student and to the general reader.

In the preparation of the volume, there has been constant interchange of opinion beeen the various editors, and Professor Cunliffe has been charged with the general superion of the proofs. It has not been thought desirable, however, to exclude individual ment altogether, and an initial, affixed to each introduction, indicates the editor mure cularly responsible for the treatment of the play in question.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

SOURCES OF THE PLOT-While Shakespeare's under the name Alberon or Auberon into Frenet use of his material in A Midsummer Night's Dream romance, where he appears, first in verse and then in is profoundly original, the threads interwoven in the prose, as "the king of fairyland," situated somewhere plot were already familiar to Elizabethan readers. in the far East. Lord Berners' English translation, Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch (first The Book of Duke Huon of Bordeaux, first printed published in 1579) mentions in the Life of Theseus about 1534, gave the fairy king the name of Oberon, the marriage of that hero with the Amazon Queen and doubtless formed the foundation of the play of Hippolyta and his love affairs with Perigouna, Huon of Bordeaux, acted in 1593-4, and now lost. Ægles, Ariadne, and Antiopa, referred to in II. i. Spenser connects Oberon's name with Huon's at the 78-80. Chaucer had made Duke Theseus a leading beginning of Book II of The Faerie Queene (1590) personage of his popular Knight's Tale, and had de- and the fairy king under the name of Auberon was scribed how on a hunting expedition on a May morn a character in an entertainment offered to Queen Theseus had found two lovers fighting for the hand Elizabeth at Elvetham in Hampshire in 1591. There of a fair lady. The names Ægeus, Lysander, and are contemporary references to other fairy plays, but Demetrius are found in Plutarch, and Philostrate is it is most likely that the suggestion came to Shakethe name assumed by Arcite in disguise in the speare by way of Lyly, whose device of mythological Knight's Tale. As Chaucer made Theseus a hero of compliment to Queen Elizabeth is used in A Midmedieval chivalry, Shakespeare made him an Eliza-summer Night's Dream, II. i. 155-164, and whose bethan nobleman, and his marriage is celebrated in presentation of The Woman in the Moone as "a poet's the Elizabethan manner, "with pomp, with triumph, dream" is recalled in the title of Shakespeare's play and with revelling," in which Bottom and his com- as well as in Puck's epilogue and other passages. panions, obviously Shakespeare's contemporaries, fall Spenser gave his fairy queen the name of Tanaquil into their appropriate places. The story of Pyramus or Gloriana, and identified her with Queen Elizabeth. and Thisbe, which forms the subject of their "very | Shakespeare probably chose the name Titania because tragica! mirth," was a commonplace of classical he liked it; it is a Latin adjective, meaning "titanmythology, to be found in Shakespeare's favorite born," applied by Ovid to Diana, who was identified Ovid, in Chaucer, and in many other authors. by Shakespeare's contemporaries with the queen of

The combination of these two groups of courtiers the fairies. Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, as he is inand clowns with the fairies was a master stroke of differently called in the play, belongs to native folkinvention, though some hint had been given for it in lore rather than to classical or romantic tradition. the introduction of fairies by Lyly in his classical Puck is a general term rather than a proper name, play Endymion (pr. 1591). Lyly's fairies dance and and it is to be noted that in the final speech of the sing, but they take a subordinate part in the plot play Robin describes himself as “the Puck"; Shakeand are not individualized. Oberon indeed had been speare doubtless used the word "Puck" in the stage mentioned by name as "King of Fayries" in Greene's directions to indicate Robin Goodfellow just as he Scottish History of James IV, but he serves merely used the word "Clown" to indicate Bottom. It is the as presenter of the play and stays outside of the same word as Devonshire "pixie" and Scottish action. This play was entered in the Stationers' "pauky," and has numerous analogues in European Registers for publication on May 14, 1594, and our earliest printed copy is dated 1598, but it must have been written before Greene's death in 1592, and it was probably acted about 1590. Oberon's literary genealogy is easily traced. He is the Alberich (elfking) whom we know in German mythology as the guardian of the treasure of the Nibelungs, and passed

languages signifying a sprite or hobgoblin. Robin Goodfellow was the familiar English name for a mischievous but helpful fairy. Before Shakespeare, several writers had put on record the popular beliefs that Robin skimmed the cream from the milk bowls, threw down the pewter dishes if they were not well scoured, pinched maids in their sleep that swept not