Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... under the year 1594; Dr. King's Lectures upon Jonas delivered at Yorke in the year of our horde 1594.] The general characteristics of the play lead to nothing very definite as far as its date is concerned; the rhymetest is obviously no criterion, for the comedy is intentionally lyrical; but the blank-verse, with its paucity of doubleendings and general regularity, the carefully elaborated plan and symmetrical arrangement of the plot, the comparative absence of real characterisation, the many reminiscences of country life, the buoyancy of its tone, all these elements manifestly connect A Midsummer-Night's Dream with the group of early 'love plays, '--Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Comedy of Errors, and it may reasonably fee placed between this group and the play to which they all seem to serve as preparatory efforts, the love-tragedy of 'Romeo and Juliet, '--i.e. about the years 1593-1595. In all probability it passed through various revisions before its appearance as we have it in the First Quarto. The Sources, (i.) Shakespeare may well have evolved A Midsummer-Night's Dream from Chaucer's Knight's Tale* to which he is obviously indebted for many elements. The general framework of the play--viz., the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta, must have been suggested by the Tale; but Shakespeare ingeniously opens the 'Dream' before the marriage, so that this event may round off the whole play; Chaucer introduces us to the pair at their home-coming after the marriage. In the 'Tale' we have Palamon and Arcite rivals for the hand of Emelie; in obedience to the symmetrical plan of Shakespeare's early plots, these give place to two pairs of lovers, with their more complex story of crossed love; Emelie in fact resolves.
