NOTES ON THE INTRODUCTION
[1] For The Knightes Tale, see Prof. Skeat's edition (modern spelling) in the "King's Classics," and his excellent introduction.
[2] was named
[3] realm
[4] called
[5] were not
[6] besieged
[7] See Mr. R.B. McKerrow's note on Nashe's reference to the name in Have with You to Saffron-Walden (Works, iii. 111).
[8] See Statius, Thebais, I, 13-14, etc. (Chaucer refers to "Stace of Thebes," Knightes Tale, 1436.) Athamas, having incurred the wrath of Hera, was seized with madness, and slew his son Learchus. His wife Ino threw herself, with his other son Melicertes, into the sea, and both were changed into sea-deities, Ino becoming Leucothea, and Melicertes Palaemon, whom the Greeks held to be friendly to the shipwrecked. The Romans identified him with Portunus, the protector of harbours.
[9] See Skeat's The Knight's Tale, xi-xv.
[10] little.
[11] In this passage, Statius describes the meeting between Theseus, returning in triumph with Hippolyta, and the widows of those slain at the siege of Thebes, who complain that the tyrant Creon will not permit their husbands' bodies to be either burned or buried. This episode, as we shall see, is the opening of the Knightes Tale, and reappears in a modified form in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
[12] J. M. Rigg's introduction to his translation of the Decameron (1903)
[13] This opening, derived from Statius (see note, p. 13), serves merely to introduce the main story, much in the same way as the Theseus story in A Midsummer-Night's Dream is simply the "enveloping action" of the play.
[14] W.W. Greg's edition, i 19-20, ii. 168. Henslowe's dates for the performances are 17 September, 16 and 27 October, and November, 1594. Against the first entry are the much-discussed letters "ne," which appear to mark a new play. It will be seen that according to the theory that A Midsummer-Night's Dream belongs to the winter of 1594-5, this Palamon and Arcite play was performed immediately before.
[15] Professor Gollancz considers that Shakespeare had no hand in the play.
[16] Cf. I. i. 167 and IV. i. 129-30.
[17] It is perhaps fantastic to interpret too literally Arcite's song to May—"I hope that I som grene gete may"—but, however little of their primitive significance now remains, celebration of the rites of May is by no means extinct. See E.K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, I. 117: "their object is to secure the beneficent influence of the fertilization spirit by bringing the persons or places to be benefited into direct contact with the physical embodiment of that spirit."
Shakespeare's apparent confusion of a May-day with a Mid-summer-night may seem pardonable to the folk-lorist in the light of the fact that various folk-festivals appear to take place indiscriminately on May-day or Midsummer-day. See Chambers, op. cit. i. 114, 118, 126.
[18] Cf. III. ii. 331 and 401, etc.
[19] Cf. IV. i. 100-183.
[20] In V. i. 51.
[21] Reprinted in this book, p. [135].
[22] He might have added Lucius the Ass, a similar tale by Lucian of Samosata.
[23] Reprinted in this book, p. [139].
[24] Ovid, Met. iv. 55, sqq.
[25] See p. 73.
[26] Addl. MS. 15227, f. 56b.
[27] Faerie Queen, II. i. 6, II. x. 75.
[28] See A.W. Ward's English Dramatic Literature, i. 400, ii. 85.
[29] The Marchantes Tale, 983 (Skeat, E. 2227).
[30] A.H. Bullen's edition of Campion (1903), p. 20.
[31] Metamorphoses, iii. 173. Ovid, in the same work, uses "Titania" also as an epithet of Latona (vi. 346), Pyrrha (i. 395), and Circe (xiv. 382, 438). The fact that Golding gives "Phebe" as the translation of "Titania" in iii. 173, is a strong piece of evidence that Shakespeare sometimes at least read his Ovid in the Latin.
[32] Ed. Brinsley Nicholson, p. 32. Book III, chap. ii. (See p. [135].)
[33] Romeo and Juliet, I. iv, 53, sqq.
[34] In II. i. 40, "sweet puck" is no more a proper name than "Hobgoblin"; so also in l. 148 of the same scene. In neither case should the name be printed with a capital P.
[35] II. i. 34.
[36] V. i. 418, 421.
[37] Wright, English Dialect Dictionary, s.v. Puck, gives Scotland, Ireland, Derby, Worcester, Shropshire, Gloucester, Sussex and Hampshire as localities where the name is recorded.
[38] Text H in Child's Ballads, I. 352.
[39] Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1890), vol. ii, tales xxv, xxvi, etc.
[40] Ballads, I. 314, and note.
[41] M.N.D., II. i. 40. (See note on p. [37].)
[42] The Wyf of Bathe's Tale, at the beginning; and elsewhere.
[43] The Faerie Queene, chiefly in Book II, where in Canto X, stanzas 70-76, he gives a fictitious list of the generations of fairies; the first "Elfe" was the image made by Prometheus, to animate which he stole fire from heaven; the list ends with Oberon, and Tanaquil the Faerie Queen.
[44] Reprinted in this book, pp. [81]-121.
[45] Mr. Chambers, in his edition of the play, Appendix A, § l8, gives (i) Tarlton's News out of Purgatory (1590) (see p. 63), (ii) Churchyard's Handfull of Gladsome Verses (1592) (see p. 141), (iii) Nashe's Terrors of the Night (1594).
[46] The word folk-lore has only been in existence sixty years, and the science is very little older; it was vaguely referred to as "popular antiquities" before that time.
[47] Alfred Nutt, The Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare (1900), p. 24. This little book is instructive and valuable.
[48] Nashe's Works, ed. R.B. McKerrow, i. 347.
[49] Gower, however, does so, as early as the fourteenth century; Confessio Amantis, ii. 371.
[50] The opening of the beautiful Helgi and Sigrun Lay as translated by Vigfusson and York Powell in Corpus Poeticum Boreale (1883), i. 131; see also the editors' Introduction, i. lxi, lxiv.
[51] Danish History, iii. 70, 77; vi. 181; cf. O. Elton's translation (1894), pp. 84, 93, 223, and York Powell's introduction thereto, lxiv.
[52] "It is worth noting that the Romance of Olger the Dane contains several late echoes of the old Helgi myth. a. The visit of the fairies by night to the new-born child ... e. His return to earth after death or disappearance ... Mark that Holgi is the true old form ... The old hero Holgi and the Carling peer Otgeir (Eadgar) are distinct persons confused by later tradition."—Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. cxxx.
"The Fates ... bestow endowments on the new-born child, as in the beautiful Helge Lay ... a point of the story which survives in the Ogier of the Chansons de Geste, wherein Eadgar (Otkerus or Otgerus) gets what belonged to Holger (Holge), the Helga til of Beowulf's Lay."—Saxo, Danish History, lxiv.
[53] Cf. Child's Ballads, i. 319.
[54] In Huon of Bordeaux Merlin comes with King Arthur to Oberon's death-bed; Arthur introduces him as his nephew, the son of Ogier the Dane and "my sister Morgan."
[55] The mere mention of these subterranean explorations opens up an immense field of discussion and speculation that can here be only relegated to a note; we can treat at greater length none but those legends which bear directly on our subject. Odysseus visited Hades, Aeneas descended to Orcus or Tartarus, and they have their counterparts in every land and every mythology. Human aetiological tendencies supply explanations of any cavern or natural chasm—even a volcano must be the mouth of the entrance to hell or purgatory—from Taenarus, where Pluto carried off Proserpine, and the Sibyl's cavern, whence Aeneas sought the lower regions, to the famous Lough Dearg in Donegal, the entrance to "St. Patrick's Purgatory," and the Peak cavern in Derbyshire. The student may begin his researches with T. Wright's St. Patrick's Purgatory (1844). A very common tale in Celtic literature is that of the visit of some hero to the underworld and his seizure of some gift of civilisation—just as Prometheus stole fire from heaven.
[56] Ballads, loc. cit.
[57] A version of Fytte I will be found in this book, pp. [122]-132.
[58] See Child's Ballads, No. 37, Thomas Rymer, i. 317-329; also the romance, Thomas of Erceldoune (E.E.T.S., 1875), where Prof. J.A.H. Murray prints all texts parallel, and adds a valuable introduction.
[59] A similar episode survives in a Breton folk-tale, cited by Professor Kittredge in Child's Ballads, iii. 504. In Huon of Bordeaux (E.E.T.S. edition, p. 265), Charlemagne mistakes Oberon for God.
[60] See Gummere, The Popular Ballad (1907), pp. 66-7.
[61] Cottonian, Caligula A. II. A later version is at the Bodleian, MS. Rawlinson C. 86, and a Scottish version in Cambridge University Library, MS. Kk. 5. 30.
[62] It was licensed to John Kynge the printer between 19 July 1557 and 9 July 1558. See Arber, Stationers' Registers, i. 79. Two fragments are in the Bodleian; see Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript (1867), i. 521-535.
[63] In this year it is mentioned, as having been amongst Captain Cox's books, in Laneham's famous Letter. See Shakespeare Library reprint, p. xxx.
[64] Brit. Mus. MS. Addl. 27,879; see Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript, i. 142.
[65] Harl. 3810 (British Museum), printed by Ritson in Ancient English Metrical Romances (1802) ii. 248; the Auchinleck MS. (W. 4. 1, in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh), printed by D. Laing in Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland, iii; and Ashmolean 61 (Bodleian Library, Oxford), printed by Halliwell in his Fairy Mythology, p. 36. The three are collated by O. Zielke, Sir Orfeo (Breslau 1880), a fully annotated edition. The last is used here.
[66] A grafted fruit tree; here probably an apple.
[67] It may be seen in Child's Ballads, i. 215, with a full analysis of the romance, and in the present editor's Popular Ballads of the Olden Time, Second Series, p. 208.
[68] Ballads, i. 338-340; see also various "Additions and Corrections" in the later volumes, and s.v. Elf, Elves, etc. in the Index of Matters and Literature.
[69] Morte Darthur (ed. Sommer), vi. l. 3.
[71] See J.M. Synge, The Aran Islands (1907), p. 48, and A. Nutt, Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, p. 22.
[72] See Synge, op. cit., p. 47.
[73] See his admirable article on Sir Orfeo in the American Journal of Philology, vii. 176-202. The Courtship of Etain may be seen in English, translated from the two versions in Egerton MS. 1782. and the "Leabhar na h-Uidhri"—an eleventh century Irish MS.—in Heroic Romances of Ireland, by A. H, Leahy, i. 7-32.
[74] A. Nutt, Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, p. 12.
[75] Wyf of Bathe's Tale, 1-6.
[76] See A. Nutt, op. cit., pp. 16-17; and various authorities given by G.L. Kittredge, op. cit., p. 196 notes.
[77] Pronounced shee.
[78] Mr. Alfred Nutt (op. cit., pp. 19-23) is at pains to show the close association of the Tuatha Dé Danann with ritual of an agricultural-sacrificial kind, in the aspect they have assumed—"fairies"—to the modern Irish peasant. The Sidhe have fallen from the high estate of the romantic and courtly wooers and warriors, as they must once have fallen from the Celtic pantheon.
[79] Chap, xxv. (E.E.T.S. edition, 72). Oberon recites his history again in chap. lxxxiv. (p. 264).
[80] Chap. xxii. (E.E.T.S. edition, p. 65, sqq.).
[81] Cf. Child's Ballads, Nos. 2 (The Elfin Knight), 4 (Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight), 41 (Hina Etin), and perhaps 35 (Allison Gross), with his note on the last, l. 314, referring to No. 36 (The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea).
[84] Tarlton's News out of Purgatory, published by Robin Goodfellow (1590), Shakespeare Society reprint, p. 55.
[86] See the extracts from Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft and the Robin Goodfellow tract, pp. 133-140 and 81-121.
[87] Romeo and Juliet, I. iv. 33-94. See above, p. [37].
[88] Had I been able to find a book, Veridica relatio de daemonio Puck, referred to in the article Diable in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Occultes (in Migne, tome 48, vol. i., p. 475), it might be that it would prove of great interest. In any case this allusion (pointed out to me by Mr. R.B. McKerrow) is an early instance of Puck used as a proper name.
[89] Abbreviated from E.K. Chambers' full analysis with references, Warwick Shakespeare edition of M.N.D. pp. 142-4.
[90] See II. i. 155.
[91] How far Shakespeare associated his fairy queen Titania with her nominal parent Diana, is a question that would make matter for an elaborate study in mythology and mysticism, and might yet lead to no result. Diana is Luna in the heavens; Lucina (the goddess of child-birth) and the Huntress on earth; and Hecate in the underworld, goddess of enchantments and nocturnal incantations, often also identified with Proserpina. Titania is a votaress of the moon; we have seen that fairies are intimately concerned with mortal babies, and that there is a fairy-hunt (see the quotation from James I's Demonology, p. [37] above); and we have also noted the confusion of Proserpina with the fairy-queen.—The Tuatha Dé Danann are said to be "the folk of Danu"—who is Danu? Hecate was called Trivia, on account of the above tripartition of Diana; her statues were set up where three roads met, and the fairy-queen in Thomas the Rhymer points out to him the three roads that lead to heaven, hell, and elf-land. Speculation is easily led astray.
[92] J.M. Synge, Aran Islands, p. 10.
[93] The metamorphosis of Hyacinthus, for instance, Bk. X, 162, sqq.; although there are others in the same book. See also the alteration in the mulberry caused by Pyramus' blood (pp. [77]-80).