THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

INTRODUCTION 7
mischievous than malignant, except for their " child-ab-
stracting propensities." 23
The commentators who followed Keightley -24
Halli~ell,~~ and Thiselton-Dyer -27 added
nothing of moment to the disc~ssion,~~ and continued to
stress the fact that Shakespeare created " the finest
modern artistic realisation of the fairy kingdom," and
to represent the fairies as " little people " of " diminutive
stature," " tiny moralists," etc., never any bigger
than little children in size.
In the more recent dissertations on the fairies of
Shakespeare and of popular mythology - I refer particularly
to Appendix A, " The Fairy World," which
forms an important section of E. K. Chambers' edition
of A Midsummer Night's Dream, I 893 ; to Alfred Nutt,
The Fairy Mythology of English Literature: its Origin
and Nature, I 897 ; 29 and to Frank Sidgwick, The Sources
and Analogues of "A Midsummer-Night's Dream,"
1908 -the lines laid down by Drake and by Keightley
have been followed, with several modifications, mainly
concerned with the theory of the origin of the fairies and
their derivation.
The older method of tracing the development of the
23 Ibid., Vol. 11, p. 127; Vol. I, pp. 16, 18, and 20.
24 See also Francis Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare and of An-
cient Manners, 1807; J. Hunter, New Illustrations of the Life,
Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare, 1845; William Bell, Shake-
speare's Puck, and his Folkslore, 1852-64; and Thomas Percy,
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1858.
25 Three Notelets on Shakespeare, 1865.
26 Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of A Midsummer Night's
Dream, Shak. Soc., London, 1845.
27 Folk Lore of Shakespeare, 1883.
28 The exceptions to this statement are the " Notelets" of Thoms
on Puck and on Queen Mab.
2g Folk-Lore, Vol. VIII, 1897, pp. 29-53 incl.