Shakespeares Christmas Gift to Queen Bess | Page 5

foot the punishment of the rebellious lady. The audience, easy believers in spells, magic, and witchcraft, are in full sympathy with Puck's mission to secure the potion whose magic power will create love or cause infidelity and hatred. Never had poetry been fuller of imagery or sweeter in verification than in the lines spoken by Oberon; nor had Queen Elizabeth ever received a more graceful compliment:--
"Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea maid's music. That very time I saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd; a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the West, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow. As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy free. Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell; It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness. Fetch me that flower."
[Illustration: Earl of Leicester receiving Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth
"And the imperial votaress passed on In maiden meditation fancy free." ]
Mark the Queen's flushed cheek and parted lips! The "mermaid on the dolphin's back" is no fancy picture, but an exact description of one of the pageants at the festivities in her honour at Kenilworth. Although twenty years have passed, memory still loves to linger about those days when she visited her favourite, the fascinating Earl of Leicester, on her royal progress, before state policy and private pique had combined to create strife and alienation.
From memory also was the verse-picture painted. The lad of eleven, who had made light of the fifteen miles between Kenilworth and Stratford by tearing across ditch and hedge and meadow, could not easily forget the sights of that memorable day. Little then could he foresee the present hour; but rightly now does he judge that these reminiscences of the olden days will please Her Majesty.
Rightly also does he judge that the ridiculous situations between the lovers will not be displeasing. A Queen whose whole reign has been marked by warfare against the marriage of her courtiers and her clergy, whose own mother's marriage had been so unhappy, will sympathise with Puck when he says of the lovers:--
"Those things do best please me That fall out preposterously,"
or,
"Lord! What fools these mortals be!"
A mad frolic now begins in fairyland. Puck stirs up all sorts of complications by squeezing the magic flower juice on the wrong eyes with such sad results that Titania falls in love with the weaver, Bottom, with the ass's head on his shoulders; the two friends, Hermia and Helena, rail at each other over the seeming desertion of their lovers. But in the morning, the spell having been removed and each lover restored to his proper relations, the rivals become once more true friends. The fairy King and Queen also have become reconciled, and prepare to celebrate the double wedding of the mortals with sports and revels throughout their fairy kingdom.
[Illustration: Queen Elizabeth in her Later Years]
The fifth act restores the lower stage and the palace of Theseus. His wedding festivities have begun. The hard-handed men of Athens perform their crude interlude, made all the more grotesque by the awkwardness of Francis Flute, the bellows-mender. In the character of Thisbe, it is his part to fall upon the sword and die, thus ending the play. Imagine the delight of the courtly auditors when the clumsy man in the part of the disconsolate lady falls, not upon the blade, but upon the scabbard of the unfamiliar weapon!
But laughter and applause are arrested by the appearance of a bright, transparent cloud. It reaches from heaven to earth, and bourne in upon it, with music and with song, are Oberon, Titania, and their elfin train. The cloud parts, and Puck steps forth to speak the epilogue:--
"If we shadows have offended Think but this, and all is mended. That you have but slumber'd here While these visions did appear."
The Christmas play is over, but not over the Christmas fun. Lords and ladies are but human, and have devised a "stately dance," in which they themselves participate until nearly sunrise, the Queen herself joining at times, and never so happy as when assured of her "wondrous majesty and grace."
Did they--did any one--at this Christmas play of three hundred years ago feel the full charm and glory of this immortal creation of the poet? Did its lines ring in their ears the