And when it has been said that the fairies are a creation
from traditionary belief, a full and accurate description of them has
been afforded. They are an embodiment of a popular superstition, and
nothing more. They do not conceal any thought of the poet who has
created them, nor are they used for any deeper purpose with regard to
the other persons of the drama than temporary and objectless annoyance.
Throughout the whole play runs a healthy, thoughtless, honest, almost
riotous happiness; no note of difficulty, no shadow of coming doubt
being perceptible. The pert and nimble spirit of mirth is fully
awakened; the worst tricks of the intermeddling spirits are mischievous
merely, and of only transitory influence, and "the summer still doth
tend upon their state," brightening this fairyland with its sunshine and
flowers. Man has absolutely no power to govern these supernatural
powers, and they have but unimportant influence over him. They can
affect his comfort, but they cannot control his fate. But all this is
merely an adapting and elaborating of ideas which had been handed down
from father to son for many generations. Shakspere's Puck is only the
Puck of a hundred ballads reproduced by the hand of a true poet; no
original thought upon the connection of the visible with the invisible
world is imported into the creation. All these facts tend to show that
when Shakspere wrote "A Midsummer Night's Dream," that is, at the
beginning of his career as a dramatic author, he had not broken away
from the trammels of the beliefs in which he had been brought up, but
accepted them unhesitatingly and joyously.
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