THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS 73
mandro, or some old Nigromancer did inhabit, who would shewe
me Fayries, or the bodie of Helen, or the new shape of Venus.26
The ladies he referred to are the ladies of England, who
are further described in the same paragraph as
of pure complexion . . . their eyes percing like the Sun beames,
. . . their speach pleasant & sweete, . . . their gate comly, their
bodies straight, their hands white, a1 things that man could wish,
or women woulde haue, . . . And to these beautiful1 mouldes,
chast minds: to these comely bodies tgperance.
Had there been as great and as striking a difference be-
tween the proportions of the fairies and those of mortal
ladies as is the case today, it would scarcely have oc-
curred to the mind of any person, in spite of the fairies'
reputation for beauty, to confuse them with the body of
Helen or of Venus, or to compare ordinary ladies to
them without noting, as could easily have been the case
here, the discrepancy between their measurements.
That there was little difference between the fairies'
figure and that of mortal ladies can be seen also in the
plays of the period. In The Pilgrim, Alinda and Juletta
are taken for fairies.27 Marina in Pericles is identified
by her father at first sight as a fairy:
But are you flesh and blood?
Have you a working pulse? and are no fairy?
No motion? 28
In Ilfonsieur Thomas, Thomas, dressed in his sister's
clothes and described as " a strange thing like a gentle-
woman," is regarded and treated like a fairy or evil
spirit." The men appearing as morris dancers in The
26 John Lyly, Bond ed., 1902, Vol. 11, p. 200.
27 Fletcher, Darley ed., 1851, V, 4.
2a v, I.
29 Fletcher, V, 8.