Montemayor (1592).
Shakespeare probably read it in an English translation by B. Yonge,
which had been in Ms. about ten years. This story gives Julia's part
of the play, but contains no Valentine. The Silvia of the story,
Celia, falls in love instead with the disguised Felismena, and when
rejected kills herself. Whether it was Shakespeare who felt the need
of a Valentine to support the tale, or whether this was done in the
lost play of _Felix and Philiomena_, acted in 1584, cannot be told.
The Valentine element may have been borrowed from another play, of
which a German version exists (1620).

+Midsummer Night's Dream+ is Shakespeare's experiment in the fairy
play. Four lovers, two young Athenians of high birth and their
sweethearts, are almost inextricably tangled by careless Robin
Goodfellow, who has dropped the juice of love-in-idleness upon the eyes
of the wrong lovers. King Oberon tricks his capricious and resentful
little queen, by the aid of the same juice, into the absurdest
infatuation for a clownish weaver, who has come out with his mates to
rehearse a play to celebrate Theseus's wedding, but has fallen asleep
and {150} wakened to find an ass's head planted upon him. All comes
right, as it ever must in fairyland; the true lovers are reunited; the
faithful unloved lady gets her faithless lover; Titania repents and is
forgiven; and Theseus's wedding is graced by the "mirthfullest tragedy
that ever was seen."

We have in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ three distinct groups of
characters--the lovers, the city clowns rehearsing for the play, and
the fairies. These three diverse groups are combined in the most
skillful way by an intricate interweaving of plot and by the final
appearance of all three groups at the wedding festivities of the Duke
of Athens and his Amazon bride Hypolita. The characterization, light
but delicate throughout, the mastery of the intricate story, the
perfection of the comic parts, and the unsurpassed lyrical power of the
poetry, are all the evidence we need that Shakespeare is now his own
master in the drama, and can pass on to the supreme heights of his art.
He has learned his trade for good and all.

It is not a bad way of placing the last of the comedies in the first
period of Shakespeare's production, to say that it is the counterpart
in comedy of _Romeo and Juliet_. Like Romeo, Lysander has made love to
Hermia, has sung at her window by moonlight, and has won her heart,
while