Page:Midsummer Night's Dream (1918) Yale.djvu/95

Night's Dream   nine men's morris. A game played upon a sort of chessboard dug in the turf.

 No interpretation of this puzzling passage is entirely satisfactory. E. K. Chambers paraphrases it thus: 'The summer is so bad that men wish it were winter. Not only have we offended the winds, but we have neglected the hymns and carols due from us to the moon. Therefore she too is wrathful, and does her part to spoil the weather.' Furness, on the other hand, explains it as follows: 'Here in Warwickshire, says Titania, in effect (for of course she and Oberon are in the Forest of Arden, with never a thought of Athens; who ever heard of the nine mens morris on the slopes of Pentelicus?), "here the poor human mortals have no summer with its sports, and now they have had no winter with its hymns and carols. If the latter be the meaning, 'therefore' is to be understood as 'because of our quarrel.'

 There is general agreement that this passage contains some allegory; but as to the extent and interpretation of this there is great diversity of opinion. It is fairly certain that the 'fair vestal throned by the west' is Queen Elizabeth. The imagery of the whole passage was very likely suggested by the allegorical figures which appeared in the pageants and 'triumphs' of the day, and it is not impossible that there is specific reference to the 'Princely Pleasures' with which the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth in 1575.

 The story here 'changed,' i.e., reversed, is that of Apollo's pursuit of the nymph Daphne, who was transformed into a laurel tree and thus escaped.

 bush of thorns. English peasants saw 'the man in the moon' as bearing a bundle of sticks on his back.

 you see an ass-head of your own.