+Source+.--The plot of the lovers has no known direct source. The _Diana Enamorada_ has a love potion with an effect similar to that of Oberon's. The wedding of Theseus and the Amazon queen is the opening theme of Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_, and some minor details may also have been borrowed from that story. No doubt, Shakespeare had also read for details North's {152} account of Theseus in his translation of Plutarch. Pyramus and Thisbe came originally from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, which had been translated into English before this time. Chaucer tells the same story in his _Legend of Good Women_. The fairies are almost entirely Shakespeare's creation. Titania was one of Ovid's names for Diana; Oberon was a common name for the fairy king, both in the _Faerie Queene_ and elsewhere. Robin Goodfellow was a favorite character among the common folks. But fairies, as we all know them, are like the Twins in _Through the Looking-glass_, things of the fancy of one man, and that man Shakespeare. There is the atmosphere of a wedding about the whole play, and this fact has led most scholars to think that the play was written for some particular wedding,--just whose has never been settled. The flattery of the virgin Queen (II, i, 157 f.) and other references to purity might show that Queen Elizabeth was one of the wedding guests. [1] Schelling, _Elizabethan Drama_ I, 264. [2] See p. 8. {153} CHAPTER XI THE PLAYS OF THE SECOND PERIOD--COMEDY AND HISTORY It is difficult for us of to-day to realize that Shakespeare was ever less than the greatest dramatist of his time, to think of him as the pupil and imitator of other dramatists. He did, indeed, pass through this stage of his development with extraordinary rapidity, so that its traces are barely perceptible in the later plays of his First Period. In the plays of his Second Period even these traces disappear. If his portrayal of Shylock shows the influence of Marlowe's Jew of Malta, it is in no sense derivative, and it is the last appearance in Shakespeare's work of characterization clearly dependent upon the plays of his predecessors. However much Shakespeare's choice of themes may have been determined by the public taste or by the work of his fellows, in the creation of character he is henceforth his own master. Having acquired this mastery, he uses it to depict life in its most joyous aspect. For the time being he dwells little upon men's failures and sorrows. He does not ignore life's darker side,--he loved life too well for that,--but he uses it merely as a background for pictures of youth and happiness and success. Although among the comedies of this period he wrote also three historical plays, they {154} have not the tragic character of the earlier histories. They deal with youth and hope instead of crime, weakness, and failure. In the two parts of _Henry IV_ there is quite as much comedy as there is history; in _Henry