Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/406

 THE FOLKLORE OF SHAKESPEARE.

BY HENRY B. WHEATLEY, D.C.L.

{Read at a Meeting of the Folklore Society, 2ist Jujie, 19 16.)

The folklore to be found in the works of Shakespeare forms a subject of the greatest interest, the illustration of which has by no means been exhausted. There is plenty of material for a systematic treatment which would present a handbook of great value, but much of this material does not lie on the surface, and requires research to discover allusions that are not at once manifest.^

Shakespeare was the first great folklorist who went to the very source of the learning of the folk. Others had done much, but he laid down the rules. He was a con- scientious collector who did not invent, but saw the inherent beauty of the popular mythology, and then presented it to the world with all the gorgeousness and beauty which he alone could give it. This he did most completely in his presenta- tion of the fairies, when he rejected the legends of antiquity related by learned authors, who generally confused the elves with the fiends and familiars of the sorcerers. Although at times Shakespeare made use of literary sources, such as

1 Mr. Thiselton Dyer's volume contains much useful information, and is helpful in elucidation of passages that have been unexplained or misunderstood. T/u-ee Noteless on Shakespeare (1865), by the late Mr. W. J. Thorns, the founder of our Society, and the inventor of its name, contains a charming essay on fairies. A chapter on "Folklore and Superstitions," by Prof. H. Littledale, in the great work, Shakespeare^s England, published by the Clarendon Press since the reading of this paper, is full of information presented with much freshness.