her much and just conjugal castigation," says Campbell. Is he right,
and will Benedicke feel so?--or is Swinburne right, who says she is "a
decidedly more perfect woman than could properly or permissibly have
trod the stage of Congreve or Molière" and who speaks of her "light
true heart"?

Is the superficial Claudio worthy of Hero?

Are the faults in the plot of the Play, such as are necessitated by
the design of using the characters themselves and their "noting" of
one another as the source of events, and, therefore, in the last
analysis not faults, a study of their relation to the design leading
us, as Hartley Coleridge puts it, never to censure Shakespeare without
finding reason to eat our words?




A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME


Having read "A Midsommer Nights Dreame" as a whole, if it be not
already fresh in the mind, or, if possible, having seen it acted, then
consider more carefully the characteristics of its dramatic structure,
studying the plot and progress of the story as it is unfolded act by
act, also the sources, the characters, and so forth, as suggested in
the following study.


ACT I