It may be observed that for these three plots Shakespeare draws respectively on literature, observation, and oral tradition; for we shall see, I think, that while there can be little doubt that he had been reading Chaucer, North's Plutarch and Golding's Ovid, not to mention other works, probably including some which are now lost, it is also impossible to avoid the conclusion that much if not all of his fairy-lore is derived from no literary source at all, but from the popular beliefs which must have been current in oral tradition in his youth.
§ 1. THE MAIN (SENTIMENTAL) PLOT OF THE FOUR LOVERS AND THE COURT OF THESEUS
"And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere."
Chaucer.