Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/358

( 342 ) A Midummer Night’s Dream, nor that of The Winter’s s Tale, denotes the eaon of the action; the events which are the ubject of the latter, occurring at the time of heep-hearing, and the dream, from which the former receives its name, happening on the night preceding May-day.Thee titles, therefore, were probably uggeted by the eaon at which the plays were exhibited, to which they belong; A Midummer Night’s Dream having, we may preume, been firt repreented in June, and The Winter’s Tale in December. Perhaps, then, it may not be thought a very improbable conjecture, that this comedy was written in the ummer of 1612, and produced on the tage in the latter end of that year; and that the author availed himelf of a circumtance then freh in the minds of his audience, by affixing a title to it, which was more likely to excite curioity than any other that he could have choen, while at the ame time it was ufficiently jutified by the ubject of the drama. Mr. Steevens, in his obervations on this play, has quoted from the tragedy of Darius by the earl of Sterline, firt printed in 1603, ome lines o trongly reembling a

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