te and occasion of the play:
This play appears in Meres's list of 1598 and in the Quartos of 1600.
Titania's description of the unseasonable weather (II. i. 92, foll.)
may refer to the year 1594. Note that Chaucer in the 'Knight's Tale'
speaks of the tempest at Hippolyta's home-coming. Many critics have
believed that the play was written on the occasion of some marriage in
high life, but they do not agree as to whose it was.

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Upon what does the interest of the last Act centre? How does the
ending suit the various threads of the Play?

Is Theseus or Hippolyta the wiser critic of 'the story of the night';
and which of them is the wiser critic of the play of Pyramus and
Thisbe?

SOURCES OF THE PLAY

1. WHERE SHAKESPEARE FOUND SUGGESTIONS FOR HIS MORTALS

In Plutarch's 'Life of Theseus' will be found passages which furnished
Shakespeare with some points for his drama. Chaucer's 'Knight's Tale'
is also said to have given him material. The editor of the "First
Folio Edition" suggests in the introduction that a reading by
Shakespeare of a poem in his day supposed to be Chaucer's, 'The Flower
and the Leaf,' gave him an important hint for his plot. Examine for
yourself, and state what indebtedness you find in any of these
sources. In I. i. 20, Theseus says to Hippolyta, 'I woo'd thee with my
sword.' Compare this with the account given in Chaucer. According to
another version of the story Hercules gave Hippolyta to his kinsman
Theseus in marriage. Compare 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' and the 'Knight's
Tale' with Shakespeare's 'Dreame.'

2. WHERE SHAKESPEARE FOUND SUGGESTIONS FOR HIS FAIRIES

The models in literature from which Shakespeare drew may have been
'Huon of Bordeaux,' where he got little, however, but the name Oberon.
The name Titania may have been derived from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses.'
The Fairy Queen in Shakespeare's day usually went by the name of Queen
Mab. Puck's characteristics seem to have been derived from the little
tract of 'Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests.' Rolfe, in
the notes to his edition of the play, says that White argues that this
was probably written after "A Midsommer Nights Dreame." Ward thinks
that the entire machinery of Oberon and his court may have been
derived from Greene's 'Scottish History of James IV,' and that Titania
may have been suggested by Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath's Tale.' He
probably owed his fairies in great measure to tradition or folk-lore