her father has promised her hand to another. Like the lovers in
the tragedy, Lysander and Hermia plan flight, and an error in this plan
would have been as fatal as it was in Romeo and Juliet, but for the
kind interposition of the fairies. Again, the "tedious brief scene" of
Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the rustics at the close of the play,
is {151} nothing but a delightful parody on the very theme of Romeo and
Juliet, even to the mistaken death, and the suicide of the heroine upon
realization of the truth. At the end of the parody, as if in mockery
of the Capulets and Montagues, Bottom starts up to tell us that "the
wall is down that parted their fathers." Finally, the whole fairy
story is the creation of Shakespeare in a Mercutio mood.

In the diversity of its metrical form, _Midsummer Night's Dream_ is
also the counterpart of _Romeo and Juliet_. The abundance of rimed
couplet, combined wherever there is intensity of feeling with a perfect
form of blank verse, is reminiscent of the earlier play. Passages of
equally splendid poetic power meet us all through, while at the same
time we feel the very charm of youthful fervor in expression that the
tragedy displayed.

+Date+.--There is nothing certain to guide us in assigning a date to
the play, except the mention of it in Meres's list, in 1598. The
absence of a uniform structure of verse, the large proportion of rime
(partly due, of course, to the nature of the play), the unequal measure
of characterization, and the number of passages of purely lyric beauty
argue an earlier date than students who notice only the skillful plot
structure are willing to assign. Perhaps 1593-5 would indicate this
variation in authorities. Some evidence, of the slightest kind, is
advanced for 1594. A quarto was printed in 1600, another with the
spurious date 1600, really in 1619.

+Source+.--The plot of the lovers has no known direct source. The
_Diana Enamorada_ has a love potion with an effect similar to that of
Oberon's. The wedding of Theseus and the Amazon queen is the opening
theme of Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_, and some minor details may also
have been borrowed from that story. No doubt, Shakespeare had also
read for details North's {152} account of Theseus in his translation of
Plutarch. Pyramus and Thisbe came originally from Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_, which had been translated into English before this
time. Chaucer tells the same story in his _Legend of Good Women_.