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!