ABSTRACT
Fairies were almost essential in a Midsummer play, and Shakespeare has used them to enforce the view of love as an enchantment which alienates the minds of its victims with a sudden, ridiculous madness. In love, as Puck exclaims, 'Lord, what fools these mortals be!'-whether under a fairy spell or not. Putting into operation Lyly's dramatic parallelism, Shakespeare sets over against the degrees of mankind the different ranks and kinds of fairy according to folklore and literature. Incidentally Lyly in Endimion IV.3 has fairies who kiss the sleeping hero and pinch Corsites, thus illustrating the two sides of fairy behaviour. The theme of marriage is associated with fairy monarchs in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale-which treats of the marriage of an elderly man, Januarius, who marries the young May. She falls in love with the squire Damian, who finally possesses her in a pear tree after her husband has gone blind. There is much discussion of the ethics of marriage and the relations between the sexes in this tale, and towards the climax the King and Queen of the Fairies, Pluto and Proserpina, sit in the garden and discuss the infidelity and wiles of the female sex; thus paralleling in their way the previous discussions between mortals. Pluto restores January's sight in time for him to see his wife in .flagrante delicto, but Proserpina gives her wit to persuade her husband that he did not see straight. Boccaccio has a pear tree but no fairies (Decam. Day 7, Nov. g). The idea of fairy monarchs commenting on human life and taking sides for and against mortals while quarrelling between themselves probably came to Shakespeare from Chaucer when he was thinking about the marriage of the mature Theseus (and maybe of the bridegroom for whom the play was written). Shakespeare's brilliant and mocking invention made the King and Queen suffer from the same passions as men and women, know desire, anger, jealousy, like the ancient gods. Instead of Pluto and Proserpina he introduced Oberon, Titania, and Puck or Robin Goodfellow.
