k
proceeds, the looseness and disconnectedness of the parts increase. The
whole is held together by a "frame"; a device which has passed into the
epic of Ariosto ('Orlando Furioso,' xxviii.), and which is not unlike
that used by Boccaccio ('Decameron') and Chaucer ('Canterbury
Tales'). This "frame" is, in short:--A certain king of India, Shahriyar,
aroused by his wife's infidelity, determines to make an end of all the
women in his kingdom. As often as he takes a wife, on the morrow he
orders her slain. Shahrzad, the daughter of his Vizier, takes upon
herself the task of ridding the king of his evil intent. On the night of
her marriage to the king, she, together with her sister Dunyazad, so
engrosses his mind with her stories that the king seeks their
continuance night after night; thus she wards off her fate for nearly
three years. At the end of that time she has borne the king three male
children; and has, by the sprightliness of her mind, gradually drawn all
the conceit out of him, so that his land is at rest. The tales told
within this frame may be divided into: (_a_) Histories, or long
romances, which are often founded upon historical facts; (_b_) Anecdotes
and short stories, which deal largely with the caliphs of the house of
Abbas; (_c_) Romantic fiction, which, though freely mingled with
supernatural intervention, may also be purely fictitious (_contes
fantastiques_); (_d_) Fables and Apologues; (_e_) Tales, which serve the
teller as the peg upon which to hang and to exhibit his varied learning.
In addition to this "frame," there is a thread running through the
whole; for the grand theme which is played with so many variations is
the picturing of love--in the palace and in the hovel, in the city and
in the desert. The scenes are laid in all the four corners of the globe,
but especially in the two great centres of Muhammadan activity, Bagdad
and Cairo. It is not a matter of chance that Harun al-Rashid is the
Caliph to whom the legends of the 'Nights' have given a crown so very
different from the one which he really wore. Though his character was
often far from that which is pictured here, he was still a patron of art
and of literature. His time was the heyday of Muhammadan splendor; and
his city was the metropolis to which the merchants and the scholars
flocked from the length and breadth of Arab dominion.

To unravel the literary history of such a collection is difficult
indeed, for it has drawn upon all civiliza