See E.K. Chambers, _The Mediaeval Stage_, I. 117: "their
object is to secure the beneficent influence of the fertilization spirit by
bringing the persons or places to be benefited into direct contact with the
physical embodiment of that spirit."
Shakespeare's apparent confusion of a May-day with a Mid-summer-night may
seem pardonable to the folk-lorist in the light of the fact that various
folk-festivals appear to take place indiscriminately on May-day or
Midsummer-day. See Chambers, _op. cit._ i. 114, 118, 126.
[18] Cf. III. ii. 331 and 401, _etc_.
[19] Cf. IV. i. 100-183.
[20] In V. i. 51.
[21] Reprinted in this book, p. 135.
[22] He might have added _Lucius the Ass_, a similar tale by Lucian of
Samosata.
[23] Reprinted in this book, p. 139.
[24] Ovid, _Met._ iv. 55, sqq.
[25] See p. 73.
[26] Addl. MS. 15227, f. 56b.
[27] _Faerie Queen,_ II. i. 6, II. x. 75.
[28] See A.W. Ward's _English Dramatic Literature_, i. 400, ii. 85.
[29] _The Marchantes Tale_, 983 (Skeat, E. 2227).
[30] A.H. Bullen's edition of Campion (1903), p. 20.
[31] _Metamorphoses_, iii. 173. Ovid, in the same work, uses "Titania" also
as an epithet of Latona (vi. 346), Pyrrha (i. 395), and Circe (xiv. 382,
438). The fact that Golding gives "Phebe" as the translation of "Titania"
in iii. 173, is a strong piece of evidence that Shakespeare sometimes at
least read his Ovid in the Latin.
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