THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

INTRODUCTION 17
same time, in the second edition of a Mirror for Magis-
trates, they were given a certain prominence in connection
with the history of Dame Elianor Cobham.
From this time until the death of King James, they
were, as Dr. Johnson stated, much in fashion. Literary
England, as well as ordinary England, court and citizen,
witnessed them in pageants and royal progresses, saw
them represented on the stage, played the r6le of the
fairies in masques and in practical jokes, read of them in
poems and pamphlets, and sang of their beauty and
power, not forgetting to make use of a charm against
their wickedness on going to bed.
Among the writers who were most conversant with the
fairy lore of the period and in many instances most given
to making use of it, are Scot, Camden, Warner, Putten-
ham, Lyly, Spenser, Nashe, Greene, Drayton, Sir John
Harington, Thomas Middleton, Churchyard, James VI
of Scotland, Dekker, Fairfax, Fulke Greville, Beaumont
and Fletcher, Heywood, Rowlands, Hall, Burton, Shake-
speare and Jon~on.~'
Among those to whom the fairies made little or no
appeal, are Kyd; Sir Philip Sidney; Stubbes, whose
Anatomie of Abuses, contrary to expectation, fails to
refer to the fairies or to the superstitious practices in re-
gard to them; Marlowe, in whose Dido (attributed in
part to Nashe) alone, is a reference to a changeling;
Daniel ; Marston; James Howell ; John Taylor; Ford;
Peele, who, in spite of his knowledge of folklore as
shown in The Old Wives' Tale, makes but one reference
tg fairies; and many of the writers of the sonnets.
At the death of James I, approximately, the concern
46 In the works of Shakespeare and of Jonson is to be found the
most complete knowledge of the folk fairies. Jonson, in particular,
showed himself most conversant with the fairy lore of his period and
represented it most accurately.