THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

180 THE FAIRIES OF SHAKESPEARE
" spirits of another sort." 34 Whatever is homely or
substantial or dangerous has been removed from the pic-
ture of them, which Shakespeare paints, and only their
rulers are still invested with formidable powers and un-
certain tempers. Diminutive, pleasing, and picturesque
sprites, with small garden names and small garden
affairs, associated with moon-beams and butterflies, they
present themselves as a new race of fairies," as different
from the popular fairies of tradition as are those fairies
from the fays of the medieval romances.
To create this new conception of fairyland, Shake-
speare inaugurated a number of changes in the traditional
fairy lore of the period.
Instead of appearing as an active and powerful com-
monwealth with their traditional ruler, the fairies are
given the r6le of innocuous and almost negligible attend-
ants upon two literary or mythological sovereigns, Oberon
and Titania.
Oberon, already familiar on the stage as the king of
the fairies through James the Fourth of Greene and the
Entertainment at Elvetham, seems to have been taken by
Shakespeare directly from Huon of Burdeux. With his
quick and violent temper, his piety, his devotion to those
mortals to whom he took a fancy, his angelic visage, his
34 111, 2, 1. 388.
"The fairies which he [Shakespeare] saw in his imagination in
the Midsummer Night's Dream are not those of popular English
tradition. They are not wild enough, nor unearthly and malicious
enough. . . . Remember that many in his audience had seen fairies;
those who had, wanted no more of them. Shakespeare gave them
gracious romantic inventions, who speak charming verse about the
weather." John Masefield, Shakespeare & Spiritual Life, The Ro-
manes Lecture, Oxford, 1924, p. 13.
For a different interpretation of the fairies of M. N. D., cf. Floris
Delattre, English Fairy Poetry, 1912, Chap. IV.