Apart from these details, I do not think Shakespeare is indebted to Chaucer. It is conceivable that the story of Palamon and Arcite affected, but did not supply, the plot of the four lovers in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_; but Shakespeare has added a second woman. This completion of the antithesis is characteristic of his early work; with a happy ending in view, the characters must fall into pairs, whereas with Palamon, Arcite, and Emilia, one of the men must be removed. There is nothing to prevent the supposition that Shakespeare was acquainted from boyhood with Chaucer's story--either in Chaucerian form or possibly in the shape of a chap-book--and that he constructed a first draft of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ quite early in his career as a playwright, subsequently laying it aside as unsatisfactory, and, in his declining years, collaborating with another or others to produce the play on that theme. * * * * * Sec. 2. THE GROTESQUE PLOT: BOTTOM AND THE ASS'S HEAD: WITH THE INTERLUDE OF _PYRAMUS AND THISBE_ "But, for I am a man noght textuel, I wol noght telle of textes never a del; I wol go to my tale."--_Chaucer_. * * * * II The second portion of our study will not detain us long, as there are no literary sources for the "rude mechanicals," and their interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe is derived from a well-known classical story. Shakespeare draws them from life, and from his own observation of Warwickshire rustics, as he drew the two Gobbos, Launce, Christopher Sly, and a host of minor characters. Doubtless he had met many of the crew of patches, perhaps beneath the roof of "Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot," where we may suppose him to have made merry with "Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece, and Peter Turf, and Henry Pimpernell." Bottom takes his name from the wooden reel or spool on which thread is wound; "bottom" simply meaning the base or foundation of the reel. The names of his comrades have no specific connection with the trades they ply; but "Starveling" is appropriate by tradition for a tailor--it takes seven tailors to make a man.