Shakespeares Christmas Gift to Queen Bess | Page 5

or by rushy
brook, Or in the beached margent of the sea, To dance our ringlets to
the whistling wind." ]
Over hill, over dale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, Over park, over
pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter
than the moon's sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs
upon the green.
The fairy Queen and King appear, engaged in a very human quarrel.
Titania, like any mortal woman, is little disposed to yield to the
demands of her lord and master one of her cherished treasures. They
part in anger, and Oberon summons Puck, the arch mischief maker, and
sets on 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