59. How is the atmosphere of the beginning maintained by the manner and lines of Portia's entrance? 60. What is the outcome of the incident of the rings?— of Antonio's fortunes? All the unsigned footnotes in this volume are by the writer of the article to which they are appended. The interpretation of the initials signed to the others is: I. G. = Israel Gollancz, M.A.; H. N. H. Henry Norman Hudson, A.M.; C. H. H.⇒ C, H. Herford, Litt.D. PREFACE By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A. THE EDITIONS Two Quarto editions of A Midsummer Night's Dream appeared in the year 1600: (i.) A Midsommer night's dreame. As it hath been sundry times publickely acted, by the Right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. Imprinted at London, for Thomas Fisher, and are to be soulde at his shoppe, at the signe of the White Hart, in Fleetestreete. 1600. (ii.) An edition with the same title, bearing the name of "Iames Roberts" instead of "Thomas Fisher." These editions are styled respectively the First and Second Quartos; the Second was probably a pirated reprint of Fisher's, but the differences between them are unimportant, and though the First must be considered the authoritative text, both copies are remarkably accurate, when compared with other Quartos. The First Folio version of the play was printed from the Second Quarto, with a few slight and unimportant changes, and with some careless errors. THE DATE OF COMPOSITION The only positive piece of external evidence for the date of A Midsummer Night's Dream is its mention by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, 1598. Various attempts have been made to fix the occasion for which the play was originally written. Lord Southampton's marriage with Elizabeth Vernon has been proposed by some, but this did not take place till 1598; others maintain that the occasion was the marriage of the Earl of Essex with Lady Frances Sidney, the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, in 1590; there is, however, absolutely no authority for the statement, and the probabilities are strongly opposed to the supposition. The most valuable internal indication of the date of composition is perhaps to be found in Act v. i. 52–55:— "The thrice three Muses mourning for the death Of Learning, late deceased in beggary. This is some satire, keen and critical, Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony." We have most likely in these lines a reference to the death of Robert Greene, "utriusque Academiæ in Artibus Magister," the novelist and dramatist, whose Groatsworth of Wit contained his well-known attack on "the onely Shake-scene in a country"; in this pamphlet Greene spoke as the very representative of "Learning," and sounded the alarm of the scholar-poets at the triumphs of the “unlearned" players in general, and of one "up-start crowe" in particular. Greene died in degraded beggary in the autumn of 1592. The phrase "the thrice three Muses" was in all likelihood suggested by Spenser's Teares of the Muses (published in 1591), in which the nine Muses severally bewail the neglect of the scholars, one of many similar laments to be found in Elizabethan literature (cp. e.g. the lines at the end of the first sestiad of Marlowe's Hero and Leander). The words "late deceas'd" would, according to this interpretation, fix the date of composition at about 1592-3. On the other hand, it is maintained that Titania's description of the disastrous state of the weather (II. i. 88117) points directly to the wretched summer of the year 1594; various contemporary accounts have come down to us of that terrible year, all of them recalling Shakespeare's words: |