Partly for reasons already stated, and partly for others that I scarce know how to state, A Midsummer-Night’s Dream is a most effectual poser to criticism.  Besides that its very essence is irregularity, so that it cannot be fairly brought to the test of rules, the play forms properly a class by itself:  literature has nothing else really like it; nothing therefore with which it may be compared, and its merits adjusted.  For so the Poet has here exercised powers apparently differing even in kind, not only from those of any other writer, but from those displayed in any other of his own writings.  Elsewhere, if his characters are penetrated with the ideal, their whereabout lies in the actual, and the work may in some measure be judged by that life which it claims to represent:  here the whereabout is as ideal as the characters; all is in the land of dreams,—­a place for dreamers, not for critics.  For who can tell what a dream ought or ought not to be, or when the natural conditions of dream-life are or are not rightly observed?  How can the laws of time and space, as involved in the transpiration of human character,—­how can these be applied in a place where the mind is thus absolved from their proper jurisdiction?  Besides, the whole thing swarms with enchantment:  all the sweet witchery of Shakespeare’s sweet genius is concentrated in it, yet disposed with so subtle and cunning a hand, that we can as little grasp it as get away from it:  its charms, like those of a summer evening, are such as we may see and feel, but cannot locate or define; cannot say they are here, or they are there:  the moment we yield ourselves up to them, they seem to be everywhere; the moment we go to master them, they seem to be nowhere.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

The Merchant Of Venice was registered at the Stationers’ in July, 1598, but with a special proviso, “that it be not printed without license first had from the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain.”  The theatrical company to which Shakespeare belonged were then known as “The Lord Chamberlain’s Servants”; and the purpose of the proviso was to keep the play out of print till the company’s permission were given through their patron.  The play was entered again at the same place in October, 1600, his lordship’s license having probably been obtained by that time.  Accordingly two distinct editions of it were published in the course of that year.  The play was never issued again, that we know of, till in the folio of 1623, where the repetition of various misprints shows it to have been reprinted from one of the quarto copies.