animal--transformations
effected not only at Welford, but even in the centre of Stratford on
market-day!

Shakespeare had probably met with the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in more
than one form. Golding's translation in 1575 of the story in Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_[24] is reprinted in this book[25]; Chaucer included the
_Legend of Thisbe of Babylon_ as the second story in the _Legend of Good
Women_; and there appears to have been also "a boke intituled Perymus and
Thesbye," for which the Stationers' Register record the granting of a
license in 1562. There is, too, a poem on the subject by I. Thomson in
Robinson's _Handeful of Pleasant Delites_ (1584).

The _Historia de Piramo e Tisbe_ was very early in print in Italy, and
continued to be popular in chap-book form until the nineteenth century at
least.

In his commentary on _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ in the larger Temple
Shakespeare, Professor Gollancz points out the existence of a Pyramus and
Thisbe play, discovered by him in a manuscript at the British Museum.[26]
This MS. is a Cambridge commonplace book of about 1630, containing poems
attributed to Ben Jonson, Sir Walter Raleigh and others, though the greater
portion of the contents appear to be topical verses and epigrams unsigned.
Amongst these is "Tragaedia miserrima Pyrami & Thisbes fata enuncians.
Historia ex Publio Ovidio deprompta. Authore N.R." In the margins are
written corresponding passages in Latin from Ovid, whose story it follows
closely.

The play is in blank verse of a poor kind with occasional rhyming couplets.
After a prologue begins "Actus Primus and ultimus"; there are only five
scenes in all, and the whole is quite short. The characters consist of
Iphidius, father of Pyramus; Labetrus, father of Thisbe; their children,
the protagonists; their respective servants, Straton and Clitipho; and
Casina, "ancilla" or handmaid to Thisbe. There is also "a raging liones
from ye woods." The moral of the play, as stated by Iphidius, is that

"the erraticall motions in children's actions
Must to a regular form by parents be reduc'd."

These lines, and others in the play, would gain by being "reduc'd to a
regular form."

* * * * *

Sec. 3. THE FAIRY PLOT

Siecles charmants de feerie,
Vous avez pour moi mille attraits,
Que de fois dans le reverie,
Mon coeur vous donne de regrets.
Tout ne fut alors que mensonge aimable;
Tout n'est plus que realite;