Farmer remarks, "The title of this play seems no more intended to denote the precise time of the action than that of The Winter's Tale, which we find was at the season of sheep-shearing." "In Twelfth Night," says Steevens, "Olivia observes of Malvolio's seeming frenzy that it is a very Midsummer madness. That time of the year we may therefore suppose was anciently thought productive of mental vagaries resembling the scheme of Shakespeare's play. To this circumstance it might have owed its title." Malone thought, no doubt wrongly, that the title was suggested by the time when it was first introduced on the stage. "To the inheritors of the English tongue," says Furness (Preface, p. v), "the potent sway of fairies on Midsummer eve is familiar. The very title is in itself a charm, and frames our minds to accept without question any delusion of the night, and this it is which shields it from criticism." And he further remarks (Preface, p. viii), "The discrepancy noted by Dr. Johnson can be, I think, explained by recalling the distinction, always in the main preserved in England, between festivities and rites attending the May day celebrations and those of the twenty-fourth of June: the former were allotted to the day-time and the latter to the night-time. As the wedding sports of Theseus, with hounds and horns and interludes, were to take place by daylight, May day was the fit time for them; as the cross purposes of the lovers were to be made straight with fairy charms during slumber, night was chosen for them, and both day and night were woven together, and one potent glamour floated over all in the shadowy realm of a midsummer night's dream." In effect, therefore, Shakespeare's title meant no more than a dream which might be

dreamt, or the shadowy events of which might pass, in any night in the height of summer-"the middle summer" (II. i. 82). This, I think, is satisfactory enough for English readers who are not enslaved to the idea that Shakespeare's ways of thinking are other than Shakespeare's ways, and who will gladly leave to the Germans their Sommer Nacht's Traum and all the mass of irrelevant discussion thereon. The English reader will continue to rejoice in his English poet. "Robin Goodfellow" is enough for him. He will leave to the Germans their very German "Ruprecht" and vulgar "Walpurgisnacht's Traum"; and he will decline to look at Shakespeare through the medium, as Furness would put it, of fantastic German distortions.

Nor need the duration of the action of the play cause us any real concern. No doubt Shakespeare is emphatic enough in his opening as to the four happy days which will bring in another moon, and the four nights which will quickly dream away the time: and whether he forgot his initial outline and only assigned one night to the four days, or leaves us to imagine them, or dream them, or intimates them to us by "swift fleeting allusions which induce the belief almost insensibly that a new dawn has arisen," seems to me a matter of the smallest consequence. It is a matter

for the practical dramatist, who knows the wants of the stage. We know that such dramatic workmanship is a feature of many of Shakespeare's plays; e.g. in the Merchant of Venice three hours are the equivalent of three months, and in Othello many days are compressed into something like a day and a half. Such compression is a vital dramatic necessity. As Furness aptly remarks (Preface, p. xxxii), “There are allusions in the second Act, undeniably,

to the near approach of a dawn, and again there are allusions in the third Act, undeniably, to the near approach of a dawn; wherefore, since divisions into acts indicate progress in the action, or they are meaningless, I think we are justified in considering these allusions, in different acts, as referring to two separate dawns; that of Wednesday and that of Thursday, the only ones we need before the May-day horns are heard on Friday." In a word, the cardinal fact to be remembered in this respect is, that Shakespeare wrote for his audience and not for the reader in the closet for the imaginative spectator, and not for the coldly-comprehensive critic or scholar. In fact, the whole truth of the matter is concisely stated by Professor Hall Griffin, quoted by Professor Dowden in the Introduction (p. xxii) to his edition of Hamlet in the Arden Shakespeare: Shakespeare is at fault; he did not trouble himself to reconcile . . . inconsistencies which practical experience as an actor would tell him do not trouble the spectator." Or, as Dowden himself still more concisely states it in the Introduction (p. xxxi) to his edition of Romeo and Juliet, "the dramatist knew that spectators in the theatre do not regulate their imagination by a chronometer." Mr. P. A. Daniel's note on the duration of the action, taken from the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1877-79, Part ii. p. 147, will be found in the Appendix, and may be found useful by or interesting to the curious

student.

The primary, if not indeed the one positive piece of external evidence in connection with the date of composition of A Midsummer-Night's Dream is the well-known reference by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, or Wit's

Treasury (p. 282), registered in September 1598. It runs:- "As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labors lost, his Love Labors wonne, his Midsummers Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; for Tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet." That is the external evidence, implying as it does the existence of the play in 1598; and it is simply a matter of conjecture how long Meres may have composed his book before it was registered, and how long before the book's composition the Midsummer-Night's Dream had been written and acted. It is noteworthy, however, that the play stands fifth in Meres's list of comedies; and this fact affords, I think, some slight indication of Meres's belief, knowledge, or recollection that it was not amongst the very earliest of Shakespeare's plays. It is also noteworthy that it stands eighth in the list of comedies as printed in the First Folio.

Let us see, then, how far the internal evidence of the play itself enables us to form an opinion as to the date of composition. There are certain lines and allusions which furnish clues more or less satisfactory; and the most important of these will now be considered; the general conclusions to be drawn from them being to justify the belief that the play was composed in the autumn of 1594-95, and was in all probability acted in the succeeding month of January, if not earlier.

1. The first and most important allusion is contained in

II. i. 81-117, namely, Titania's description of the disastrous effects on the weather caused by her quarrel with Oberon. There are several contemporary descriptions of an excessively wet and cold summer occurring in the year 1594. Evidence of this kind cannot, of course, be regarded as conclusive; but I think it certainly comes within the region of lawful conjecture; and taken in conjunction with the other points and allusions occurring in the play, I think it affords a reasonably strong presumption that the above date cannot be far wrong. Titania's description, which, in its place, is not particularly dramatic or requisite, would at any rate have special point for audiences hearing the play late in 1594 or early in 1595, and not likely to have forgotten the unseasonable weather of the previous summer; and this and the fact that the play is almost entirely concerned with out-of-door existence are, I think, presumptions in favour of the supposition that Shakespeare's thoughts were running on the "distemperature" of the previous months, and that he adopted it as useful dramatic material; and this notwithstanding that there seems to be recorded "a faire harvest" in 1594. This latter, in any event, would not strike men's minds so forcibly or universally as the distemperature" of the seasons. The contemporary de

scriptions are as follows:

(a) Stowe's Annals, 1594 (ed. 1631, pp. 766 sqq.): “In this moneth of March was many great stormes of winde, which ouerturned trees, steeples, barnes, houses, &c., namely in Worcestershire, in Beaudley forrest many Oakes were ouerturned. . . . The II of Aprill, a raine continued very sore more than 24 houres long and withall, such a winde from the north, as pearced the wals of houses, were they