Overview
But, all the while that Shakespeare was fancifully assuring his patron How to no other pass my verses tend Than of your graces and your gifts to tell, his dramatic work was steadily advancing. To the winter season of 1595 probably belongs 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' The comedy may well have been written to celebrate a marriage-perhaps the marriage of the universal patroness of poets, Lucy Harington, to Edward Russell, third earl of Bedford, on December 12, 1594; or that of William Stanley, earl of Derby, at Greenwich on January 24, 1594-5. The elaborate compliment to the Queen, 'a fair vestal throned by the west' (II. i. 157 seq.), was at once an acknowledgment of past marks of royal favour and an invitation for their extension to the future. Oberon's fanciful description (II. ii. 148-68) of the spot where he saw the little western flower called 'Love-in-idleness' that he bids Puck fetch for him, has been interpreted as a reminiscence of one of the scenic pageants with which the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Kenilworth in 1575. The whole play is in the airiest and most graceful vein of comedy. Hints for the story can be traced to a variety of sources-to Chaucer's 'Knight's Tale, ' to Plutarch's 'Life of Theseus, ' to Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (bk. iv.), and to the story of Oberon, the fairy-king, in the French mediaeval romance of 'Huon of Bordeaux, ' of which an English translation by Lord Berners was first printed in 1534. The influence of John Lyly is perceptible in the raillery in which both mortals and immortals indulge. In the humorous presentation of the play of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' by the 'rude mechanicals' of Athens, Shakespeare improved upon a theme which he had already employed in 'Love's Labour's Lost.' But the final scheme of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' is of the author's freshest invention, and by endowing-practically for the first time in literature-the phantoms of the fairy world with a genuine and a sustained dramatic interest, Shakespeare may be said to have conquered a new realm for art.
Full Product Details
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Imprint: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 0.60cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.163kg
ISBN: 9781502704306
ISBN 10: 1502704307
Pages: 116
Publication Date: 04 October 2014
Audience:
Children/juvenile
,
Children / Juvenile
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Author Information
William Shakespeare was an English Poet, actor, playwright. He is the greatest writer in the English language and the world's Greatest dramatist. He was baptised the 26 April 1564 and died the 23 April 1616.
