“The Fairies of Shakespeare”

Of all the Elizabethans who made mention of [fairies], there is no one who showed himself more cognizant of the belief in their existence, and no one who featured more prominently [than Shakespeare] their traditional power and activities. In several plays of his, they appear in their own proper person on the stage; in others, mortals are mistaken for them; and in others, space is given to a recital of their activities or a statement of their powers.

On first acquaintance, there seems but little difference between the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and those of native tradition and of Shakespeare’s other plays. The train of Titania take their places in a forest as is usual. They materialize as a commonwealth of elves and fairies with their rulers. They come at midnight, and hasten away at sunrise. They break into song at any pretext, and dance their way through the play. They can fetch jewels from the deep and are addicted to cleanliness. A human changeling is among their number and a mortal is carried away into their world, and the recollection of the hour of their appearance sends mortals to their bed.

On closer study, however, the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are seen to be what Oberon calls them, “spirits of another sort” (3.2.410).1 Whatever is homely or substantial or dangerous has been removed from the picture of them, which Shakespeare paints, and only their rules are still invested with formidable powers and uncertain tempers. Diminutive, pleasing, and picturesque sprites, with small garden names and small garden affairs, associated with moon-beams and butterflies, they present themselves as a new race of fairies, as different from the popular fairies of tradition as are those fairies from the fays of medieval romances.

To create this new conception of fairyland, Shakespeare inaugurated a number of changes in the traditional fairy lore of the period:

Rather than active and powerful, the fairies are given roles of almost negligible attendants upon Oberon and Titania.

Fairies, for the first time, are made consistently good. They are not mischievous and dangerous as believed to be. They become Good Neighbors, making the world happier and prettier. No longer do they demand money for services.

They do not appear from underground or from hell to inspire fear. Instead, they travel from places like India to insure joy and prosperity to kings and their brides (Theseus and Hippolyta).

Fairies cannot stand disturbance of the peace. Rather than creating fairies that steal children from their cradles or

disfiguring them as early moderns believed, Shakespeare’s fairies have excessive desires for children’s wellbeing.

1 The New Folger Library, 1993.

Instead of pinching and kidnapping humans, fairies in Midsummer refuse to allow any hurt or discomfort to come to the mortals they encounter.

Especially is the change in the character of the fairies emphasized by Shakespeare in his introduction in the fairy kingdom of Robin Goodfellow, who is employed, instead of the fairies, to frighten and mislead mortals, to bewitch Bottom and carry him away into fairyland, to clean the palace of Theseus, and to call attention to the evil reputation and connections of the fairies of tradition.

The difference between these fairies and those of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is again made apparent in the extravagant attachment for flowers, which Shakespeare attributes to his fairies…the fairies are completely identified with buds and blossoms, dew-drops and butterflies…their occupations, for the most part, consist in watering the fairy ring, in hanging dewdrops in buds, in putting spells upon beetles and worms, snails and spiders. Their names are Cobweb, Mustardseed, Moth, and Peas-blossom.

The fourth innovation which Shakespeare made in the popular fairy mythology was the reduction of the fairies’ former measurements and figures to those of the most diminutive proportions….acorn cups become their hiding places…the wings of butterflies serve as their fans. These diminutive proportions which, slightly modified, less than a century and a half later became the characteristic proportions of the English fairies, would seem to have been the invention of Shakespeare…before 1594…as far as can be ascertained, there is no record of any diminutive fairies or elves in the 16th century in England…the fairies before 1594 and throughout the period, fairies are pictured as possessing the statures of boys and maidens, or those of full-grown men and women.

…there are few definite records of any diminutive fairies or elves any time in England before the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Latham, Minor White. “The Fairies of Shakespeare.” The Elizabethan Fairies: The Fairies of Folklore and The Fairies of Shakespeare. Otagon Books, by special Arrangement with Columbia UP, 1972.