THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

THE FAIRIES OF SHAKESPEARE 181
dwarfed stature, his splendid dress and his powers of en-
chantment - all characteristics of Oberon, the " dwarfe
kynge of the fayrey," in the romance - he was admir-
ably adapted to play one of the leading parts in the im-
aginary and poetic fairy kingdom of a romantic comedy.
The name Titania Shakespeare appears to have taken
from Ovid's Met~rnorphoses,~~ where it occurs as one of
the synonyms of Diana. The precedent for Diana's
sovereignty over the fairies is to be found in the Discovery
of Fitch~raft,~' in Golding's translation of Ovid's
Metarnorph~ses,~" in the Faerie QueeneJ3' and in Endirni~n.~'
But the character of the picturesque and romantic
queen who rules over the fairies of A Midsummer
Night's Dream and the plot in which she is involved are
~hakes~eare's own creation.
The powers which were attributed to Diana and to
Oberon, both in their own persons and in that of the king
and the queen of the fairies, are still exercised by the
fairy rulers of Shakespeare. Their connection with
mortals, however, is revealed as unfailingly beneficent
and altruistic, an attitude vastly different from that of
Diana, " the goddesse of the Pagans," associated with
witches in the Discovery of Witchcraft, and from the
Oberon of whom Gerames and Huon stood in much fear
in Huon of Burdeux.
For the first time the fairies themselves are made consistently
good.41 NO longer do they function as the
38 Book II1,l. 173. Cf. also E. K. Chambers, " The Fairy World,"
p. 159; and Sidgwick, Sources and Analogues, p. 36.
37 Scot, 1651 ed., Book 111, Chap. XVI, p. 52.
38 Book IV, 1. 304.
39 Spenser, " A Letter of the Authors."
40 Lyly, IV, 3.
41 " Of his [Shakespeare's] unlimited sway over this delightful
world of ideal forms, no stronger proof can be given, than that he has