om what is naturally graceful and pleasant. For
everybody, I take it, knows that in the intoxications of a life of
sensuous love reason and conscience have as little force as they have
in a life of dreams. And so the Poet fitly ascribes to Oberon and his
ministers both Cupid's delight in frivolous breaches of faith and
Jove's laughter at lovers' perjuries; and this on the ground,
apparently, that the doings of those in Cupid's power are as harmless
and unaccountable as the freaks of a dream.

In pursuance of this idea he depicts the fairies as beings without any
proper moral sense in what they do, but as having a very keen sense of
what is ludicrous and absurd in the doings of men. They are careless
and unscrupulous in their dealings in this behalf. The wayward follies
and the teasing perplexities of the fancy-smitten persons are pure
sport to them. If by their wanton mistakes they can bewilder and
provoke the lovers into larger outcomes of the laughable, so much the
higher runs their mirth. And as they have no fellow-feeling with the
pains of those who thus feed their love of fun, so the effect of their
roguish tricks makes no impression upon them: they have a feeling of
simple delight and wonder at the harmless frettings and fumings which
their merry mischief has a hand in bringing to pass: but then it is to
be observed also, that they find just as much sport in tricking the
poor lover out of his vexations as in tricking him into them; in fact,
they never rest satisfied with the fun of the former so long as there
is any chance of enjoying that of the latter also.

* * * * *

All readers of Shakespeare are of course familiar with the splendid
passage in ii. 1, where Oberon describes to Puck how, on a certain
occasion,

"I heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song."

And all are no doubt aware that the subsequent lines, referring to "a
fair vestal throned by the west," are commonly understood to have been
meant as a piece of delicate flattery to Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Halpin
has recently given to this famous passage a new interpretation or
application, which is at least curious enough to justify a brief
statement of it. In his view, "Cupid all arm'd" refers to Leicester's
wooing of Elizabeth, and his grand entertainment of her at Kenilworth
in 1575. From authentic descriptions of that entertain