THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

2 INTRODUCTION
ence between the fairies of Shakespeare and those of na-
tive tradition, but represented, as features characteristic
of all English fairies, those particular features exempli-
fied by the fairies of A Midsummer Night's Dream:
namely, diminutiveness, amiability and charm. " The
fairies," Ritson stated, " were exceedingly diminutive,
but, it must be confessed, we shall not readily find their
actual dimensions. They were small enough, however,
if we may believe one of queen Titanias maids of honour,
to conceal themselves in acorn shells." Upon their
amiability and charm, he was equally positive:
. . . the idea of a fairy could never inspire any but pleasing sen-
sations; these little people being always distinguished for their
innocent mirth, and benevolent utility. It was far otherwise, in-
deed, with superstition and witchcraft, which, though equally false,
were, nevertheless, as firmly believed; as they induced ignorance
and bigotry to commit horrid crimes; but nothing of this kind is
imputable to the fairie~.~
In I 802-1 803, Sir Walter Scott, in his essay " On the
Fairies of Popular Superstition," called attention to the
influence of Shakespeare upon the fairies of native tra-
dition. Among the causes which he assigned for the
change in the characteristics of the English fairies from
those of the traditional dwarfs or berg-elfen of the Gothic
and Finnish tribes from whom he would have them de-
rive,7 he noted " the creative imagination of the sixteenth
century " :
Many poets of the sixteenth century, and above all, our immortal
Shakespeare, deserting the hackneyed fictions of Greece and Rome,
4 Fairy Tales, p. 35.
Ibid., p. 61, 1st footnote.
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1803, Vol. 11, pp. 174-241.
Ibid., p, 179.
* Ibid., p. 180.