Titania, "a spirit of no common rate," is yet subject to passion and jealousy, and had a mortal friend, "a votaress of my order."[91] The fairy of folk-lore in Shakespeare's day is nearly everything that the fairies of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ are; we may possibly except their exiguity, their relations in love with mortals, and their hymeneal functions. His conception of their size as infinitesimal at least differs from that of the popular stories, where (as far as can be ascertained) they are shown to be about the size of mortal children. We may conclude these remarks with the modern Irish-Catholic theory of the origin of the fairies:-- "When Lucifer saw himself in the glass, he thought himself equal with God. Then the Lord threw him out of Heaven, and all the angels that belonged to him. While He was 'chucking them out,' an archangel asked Him to spare some of them, and those that were falling are in the air still, and have power to wreck ships, and to work evil in the world."[92] * * * * OBERON'S VISION. _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, like too many other plays of Shakespeare, has been unable to escape the inquisition of "deuteroscopists"--those who are always on the look-out for historical and other allusions. The dainty passage (II. i. 148-174), in which Oberon gives Puck directions how and where to find the magic herb that works the transformations of love in the rest of the play, appears to contain a reference to Elizabeth as "a fair vestal throned by the west" and "the imperial votaress." So much may be reasonably granted; but Warburton in his edition proceeded to identify "the mermaid on a dolphin's back" with Mary Queen of Scots, the dolphin of course being the Dauphin, and so forth. This interpretation of the alleged secret allegory was displaced in 1843 by one rather more plausible--though still needlessly fantastic. _Oberon's Vision_, by the Rev. N.J. Halpin (Shakespeare Society, 1843) attempts to prove that in composing this passage Shakespeare was referring to the Earl of Leicester's attempt to win Elizabeth's hand, when she visited him at Kenilworth in 1575; the mermaid, uttering dulcet and harmonious breath, so that the rude sea grows civil, and the stars that shot from their spheres, are explained, by parallel passages from contemporary accounts, as parts of the pageant or "Princely Pleasures" which formed the Queen's entertainment. The Earl was simultaneously intriguing with Lettice, Countess of Essex, who ultimately became his wife; and it is she who, according to the Rev. Halpin, is intended by the "little western flower"; to him the passage means:-- "Cupid, on behalf of the Earl of Leicester, loosed an arrow at Queen Elizabeth; but the Virgin Queen's maidenhood was so unassailable that the bolt missed her, hitting the Countess of Essex, who succumbed." In other words, Shakespeare mentions the Queen only in order to point out her rival's success!