CHAPTER VI. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH (1550-1620)Not only the gossip but also the dreams, the unconscious
poetry that sleeps in the heart of the common people, appeal
tremendously to Shakespeare’s imagination and are reflected
in his greatest plays. Othello tries to tell a curt soldier’s story
of his love; but the account is like a bit of Mandeville’s fa-
mous travels, teeming with the fancies that filled men’s heads
when the great round world was first brought to their atten-
tion by daring explorers. Here is a bit of folklore, touched
by Shakespeare’s exquisite fancy, which shows what one boy
listened to before the fire at Halloween:
She comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,*
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of
love;*
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,