Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/407

 The Folklore of Shakespeare. 379

the writings of Reginald Scot and Bishop Harsnet, and copied names of evil spirits from their pages, he still gave overwhelming prominence to " Elves of hills, brooks, stand- ing lakes and groves" {Tempest, v. i).

Midsiiniuier Night' s Dream may be said to be the Bible of the elves, and what is omitted in the description of their habits there can be obtained from some of the other plays. Michael Drayton, in his beautiful poem Nymphidia (1627), follows Shakespeare in quite the same spirit, although he seems to have gone beyond him in inventing names for fairies.

Shakespeare's folklore may be broadly divided into eight classes: i. Fairy elves. 2. Nymphs and other classical spirits. 3. Devils and evil spirits. 4. Monsters. These are all supernatural beings. 5. Witches. 6. Magicians. 7. Ghosts and apparitions. 8. Dreams. Nos. 5 to 8 are connected with human life.

I. Fairy Elves.

Mortal or ij/nnortal. It is difficult to adopt a satisfactory nomenclature for these creatures of imagination. They have been called spirits, but although the word spirit is sometimes used to express the vital principle in man and animal, one feels reluctant to call a soulless being a spirit. The variant "sprite" therefore seems more appropriate in this case.

The fundamental difference between the folklore tradi- tion and the literary treatment of fairies, mixed up with classical learning, is that in the latter case they are part of a system of evil spirits as opposed to the folklore assump- tion of mischievous soulless creatures.

There has been a battle royal among the learned on such matters as whether the fairies were mortal or not. Human mortals are several times referred to in Midsummer Night's Dream, and this caused Steevens to opine that