APPENDIX THE TEXT THE TEXT is so fully discussed in the Preface to this volume that little remains to be added, except the opinions of two or three editors, and an account of an alleged Third Quarto. From the days of Dr JOHNSON all editors mention, with more or less fullness and accuracy, the Quartos and Folios, but KNIGHT is the earliest, I think, to express an opinion as to the degree of excellence with which the TEXT of this play has been transmitted to us. Although I have given the substance of his note at V, i, 115, I think it best to repeat it here. 'One thing is clear to us,' says KNIGHT (Introductory Notice, p. 331, 1840?), 'that the original of these editions [i. e. the two Quartos], whichever it might be, was 'printed from a genuine copy, and carefully superintended through the press. The 'text appears to us as perfect as it is possible to be, considering the state of typography ' of that day. There is one remarkable evidence of this. The Prologue to the inter'lude of the Clowns in the Fifth Act is purposely made inaccurate in its punctuation 'throughout. The speaker "does not stand upon points." It was impossible to have ⚫ effected the object better than by the punctuation of [Q]; and this is precisely one ' of those matters of nicety in which a printer would have failed, unless he had fol'lowed an extremely clear copy, or his proofs had been corrected by an author or an 'editor.' R. G. WHITE (ed. i, p. 18, 1857): Fortunately, all of these editions [Q,, Q2, and 'F] were printed quite carefully for books of their class at that day; and the cases in which there is admissible doubt as to the reading are comparatively few, and, 'with one or two exceptions, unimportant.' Rev. H. N. HUDSON (Introduction, p. 1, 1880): ' In all three of these copies [the Quartos and Folio] the printing is remarkably clear and correct for the time, inso⚫ much that modern editors have little difficulty about the text. Probably none of the 'Poet's dramas has reached us in a more satisfactory state.' In 1841 HALLIWELL stated (An Introd. to Sh.'s Mid. N. D. p. 9) that 'Chetwood, ' in his work entitled The British Theatre, 12mo. Dublin, 1750, has given a list of 'titles and dates of the early editions of Shakespeare's Plays, among which we find A moste pleasaunte comedie, called A Midsummer Night's Dreame, wythe the freakes of the fayries, stated to have been published in the year 1595. No copy either with 'this date or under this title has yet been discovered. It is, however, necessary to 'state that Steevens and others have pronounced many of the titles which Chetwood has given to be fictitious.' Hunter, biased, possibly, by an innocent desire to fix the date of composition, is the only critic who has a good word for Chetwood, whose accuracy is commonly held in light esteem. HUNTER asks (New Illust. i, 283): Have Chetwood's statements 247 'ever been examined in a fair and critical spirit, or do we dismiss them on the mere 'force of personal authority brought to bear against them? A copy cannot be pro'duced; but neither could a copy of the first edition of Hamlet be produced in the 'time of Steevens and Malone; yet it would have been a mistaken conclusion that 'no such edition existed because neither of those commentators had seen a copy. 'Chetwood gives the title somewhat circumstantially, as if he had seen a copy; and 'if some of his traditions may be shewn to be unfounded, if he may be proved to 'have been credulous, or even something worse, his writings contain some truth, and 'we cannot perhaps easily draw the line which shall separate that which is worthy 'of belief from that which is to be rejected without remorse.' W. A. WRIGHT (Preface, iv) gives to Chetwood the coup de grace in the present instance: the spelling of "wythe" is sufficient to condemn the title as spurious.' DATE OF COMPOSITION It is stated in the Preface that the following lines and allusions furnish internal evidence of the Date of Composition: 1. 'Thorough bush, thorough briar.'—II, i, 5; 2. Titania's description of the disastrous effects on the weather and harvests caused by the quarrel between her and Oberon.-II, i, 94–120; 3. 'And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.'—II, i, 14; 4. 'One sees more devils than vast Hell can hold.'—V, i, 11; 5. A poem of Pyramus and Thisbe. 6. The date of Spenser's Faerie Queene. 7. The ancient privilege of Athens, whereby Egeus claims the disposal of hu daughter either to give her in marriage or to put her to death.-I, i, 49; 8. 'The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death of learning, late deceast in beggerie.'-V, i, 59; 9. And, finally, that the play was intended for the celebration of a noble marriage. These will now be dealt with in their foregoing order: I. 'THOROUGH BUSH, THOROUGH BRIAR.'-II, i, 5. CAPELL in 1767 (i, Introd. p. 64) said: 'if that pretty fantastical poem of Dray'ton's, call'd-"Nymphidia or The Court of Fairy," be early enough in time (as, I 'believe, it is; for I have seen an edition of that author's pastorals printed in 1593, 'quarto) it is not improbable, that Shakespeare took from thence the hint of his 'fairies: a line of that poem "Thorough bush, thorough briar" occurs also in his 'play.' In the Variorum edition of 1773, STEEVENS asserted that Drayton's Nymphidia 'was printed in 1593,' but in the next Variorum the assertion was withdrawn, and no decisive conclusion as to the priority of Drayton or Shakespeare was reached, until MALONE, in the Variorum of 1821, settled the question in a note on 'Hob goblin,' II, i, 39, as follows:-'A copy of certain poems of this author [Drayton], 'The Batail of Agincourt, Nymphidia, &c., published in 1627, which is in the col'lection of my friend, Mr. Bindley, puts the matter beyond a doubt; for in one of 'the blank leaves before the book, the author has written, as follows: "To the noble "Knight, my most honored ffrend, Sir Henry Willoughby, one of the selected 666 patrons of thes my latest poems, from his servant, Mi. Drayton.”' Drayton having been thus disposed of, a new claimant to priority was brought forward. 'There seems to be a certainty,' says HALLIWELL (Memoranda, 1879, p. 6), 'that Shakespeare, in the composition of the Midsummer Night's Dream, had in one 'place a recollection of the Sixth Book of The Faerie Queene, published in 1596, for 'he all but literally quotes the following [line 285] from the Eighth Canto of that 'book :--"Through hils and dales, through bushes and through breres,"-Faerie 'Queene, ed. 1596, p. 460. As the Midsummer Night's Dream was not printed ' until the year 1600, and it is impossible that Spenser could have been present at any representation of the comedy before he had written the Sixth Book of the 'Faerie Queene, it may be fairly concluded that Shakespeare's play was not composed 'at the earliest before the year 1596, in fact, not until some time after January the '20th, 1595-6, on which day the Second Part of the Faerie Queene was entered on 'the books of the Stationers' Company. The sixth book of that poem was probably 'written as early as 1592 or 1593, certainly in Ireland, and at some considerable time 'before the month of November, 1594, the date of the entry of publication of the 'Amoretti, in the eightieth sonnet of which it is distinctly alluded to as having been completed previously to the composition of the latter work.' This opinion Halliwell saw no reason to retract; he repeats it almost word for word in his Outlines (1885, p. 500). But it does not meet FLEAY's approval. 'Mr 'Halliwell's fancy that Spenser's line... must have been imitated by Shakespeare .... is very flimsy; hill and dale, bush and brier, are commonplaces of the time.'Life and Work, p. 186. They have been commonplaces ever since, unquestionably, and doubtless FLEAY could have furnished many examples from contemporary authors or he would not have made the assertion. Nor is there any proof,' Fleay goes on to say, 'that this song could not have been transmitted to Ireland in 1593 or 1594.' But what, we may ask, would have been the object in transmitting a 'commonplace'? I quite agree with Fleay that there is small likelihood in HALLIWELL'S suggestion, but is it quite fair to scoff at a 'fancy,' and in the same breath propose another, such as the 'transmission to Ireland'? 2. TITANIA'S DESCRIPTION OF THE PERVERTED SEASONS.-II, i, 86-120. As this item of internal evidence still walks about the orb like the sun, it deserves strict attention, and to that end, for the convenience of the reader, the whole passage is here recalled: Hath euerie petty Riuer made so proud, 'That they haue ouer-borne their Continents. The oxe hath therefore stretch'd his yoake in vaine, The fold stands empty in the drowned field, • Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson Rose, 'By their increase, now knowes not which is which; And this fame progeny of euils, 'Comes from our debate, from our diffention.' 'The confusion of seasons here described,' said STEEVENS, in 1773, 'is no more 'than a poetical account of the weather which happened in England about the time when this play was first published. For this information I am indebted to chance, 'which furnished me with a few leaves of an old meteorological history.' This assertion that the 'old meteorological history' applied to the weather about the time this play was published, that is, about 1600, STEEVENS repeated in 1778 and in 1785, but in 1793, having adopted MALONE's chronology of the Date of Composition, which placed this play in 1592, STEEVENS silently changed the application of his 'old meteorological history' to the weather eight years earlier, and said that his few leaves referred to the weather' about the time the play was written.' [Italics, mine.] The • date of the season,' STEEVENS goes on to say, 'may be better determined by a 'description of the same weather in Churchyard's Charitie, 1595, when, says he, ““a “colder season, in all sorts, was never seene." He then proceeds to say the same ' over again in rhyme :— "A colder time in world was neuer seene: "The skies do lowre, the sun and moone waxe dim; "The winter's waste driues water ore the brim; "Nature thinks scorne to do hir dutie right "Because we haue displeasde the Lord of Light." |