. 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. {162} 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.

'All's Well.'

More sombre topics engaged him in the comedy of 'All's Well that Ends
Well,' which may be tentatively assigned to 1595. Meres, writing three
years later, attributed to Shakespeare a piece called 'Love's Labour's
Won.' This title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to
'All's Well.' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which has also been identified
with 'Love's Labour's Won,' has far slighter claim to the designation.
The plot of 'All's Well,' like that of 'Romeo and Juliet,' was drawn from
Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (No. xxxviii.) The original source is
Boccaccio's 'Decamerone' (giorn. iii. nov. 9). Shakespeare, after his
wont, grafted on the touching story of Helena's love for the unworthy
Bertram the comic characters of the braggart Parolles, the pompous Lafeu,
and a clown (Lavache) less witty than his compeers. Another original
creation, Bertram's mother, Countess o