those outside the pale, being
"What fools these lovers be!"

The sources from which Shakespeare drew the plots of his three dozen of
plays are for the most part easily recognisable; and although in each case
the material was altered to suit his requirements--_nihil tetigit quod non
ornavit_--there is as a rule very little doubt as to the derivation. We can
say with certainty that these nine plays were made out of stories from
Boccaccio, Masuccio, Bandello, Ser Giovanni, Straparola, Cinthio or
Belleforest; that those six were based on older plays, and another
half-dozen drawn from Holinshed; that Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Sidney,
Greene, and Lodge provided other plots; and so forth, until we are left
with _The Tempest_, founded in part on an actual contemporary event,
_Love's Labour's Lost_, apparently his only original plot--if indeed it
deserve the name--and finally our present subject _A Midsummer-Nights
Dream_.

The problem--given the play--is to discover what parts of it Shakespeare
conveyed from elsewhere, and to investigate those sources as far as is
compatible with the limits of this book. For this purpose, it is most
convenient to adopt the above-mentioned division into three component plots
or tales; and because these are rather loosely woven together, the
characters in the play may be simultaneously divided thus:--

1. Theseus. The main (sentimental) plot of the four
Hippolyta. lovers at the court of Theseus.
Egeus.
Philostrate.
Lysander.
Demetrius.
Helena.
Hermia.

2. Bottom. The grotesque plot, with the interlude
Quince. of _Pyramus and Thisbe_.
Snug.
Flute.
Snout.
Starveling.

3. Oberon. The fairy plot.
Titania.
Puck.
Fairies.

It may be observed that for these three plots Shakespeare draws
respectively on literature, observation, and oral tradition; for we shall
see, I think, that while there can be little doubt that he had been reading
Chaucer, North's Plutarch and Golding's Ovid, not to mention other works,
probably including some which are now lost, it is also impossible to avoid
the conclusion that much if not all of his fairy-lore is derived from no
literary source at all, but from the popular beliefs which must have been
current in oral tradition in his youth.

* * * * *

Sec. 1. THE MAIN (SENTIMENTAL) PLOT OF
THE FOUR LOVERS AND THE COURT OF TH