CONTENTS -- GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE -- PREFACE -- INTRODUCTION -- 1 Moral conventions and human sympathy, 1775 -- 2 Artists' interpretations of dramatic effects, 1787 -- 3 Commentary on A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1790 -- 4 Bottom as coxcomb, 1792 -- 5 Response to Malone, 1793 -- 6 Illustrations of some passages, 1794 -- 7 His fertile and creative fancy, 1800 -- 8 On metre, invention, and a unified whole, 1815 -- 9 Unity of feeling and of imagery, and the fairies, 1817 -- 10 Bottom, Puck, and the incompatibility of poetry and the stage, 1817 -- 11 Malone's last words, 1821 -- 12 Mainly on the fairies, 1824 -- 13 The fairy world, the clowns, the poetry, 1828 -- 14 New actors on the mimic scene-the fairies, 1828 -- 15 Marginalia and other notes, 1836 -- 16 Bottom the lucky man, 1837 -- 17 Critics refuted, 1838 -- 18 Originality in structure, machinery, and language, 1839 -- 19 The Pictorial Edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1839 -- 20 The poet's dream, 1840 -- 21 Anachronisms, Nick Bottom as Midas, and stage representation, 1841 -- 22 Oberon's Vision allegorized, 1843 -- 23 Fairy drama and human nature, 1843 -- 24 Poet of the Fairies, 1844 -- 25 A comment, with some explanatory notes, 1845 -- 26 The theme of self-parody, 1846 -- 27 Introductory remarks, 1847 -- 28 The sister arts, and the play's structural balance, 1848 -- 29 A festival of dainties, 1851 -- 30 The Dream and Art, 1851, 1872, 1883, 1884 -- 31 A most charming entertainment of the stage, 1853 -- 32 Samuel Phelps's Bottom, 1853 -- 33 Dramatic and poetic art, 1854 -- 34 Dialogue with a sceptic, 1854 -- 35 Critical remarks on the play, 1856 -- 36 Celtic elements, 1859 -- 37 Genre and inner purpose, 1863 -- 38 Intuitive power of characterization, 1863 -- 39 The play's limitations, 1864 -- 40 The sacred mysteries in the play, 1865 -- 41 The secret meaning of the Interlude, 1865.

42 The perfection of imbecilic clowns, 1866 -- 43 Not critics, but lowly worshippers of the Beautiful, 1869 -- 44 The theme is love, 1871 -- 45 Bottom - an ass, but no fool, 1873 -- 46 A Midsummer Night's Dream as masque, 1874 -- 47 Self-reflexive structure: the Real, the Ideal, and the Representation, 1874 -- 48 Shakespeare differentiated from Bacon, 1875 -- 49 Theseus as the central figure, 1875 -- 50 A comedy of incident, 1875 -- 51 Consummation of Shakespeare's lyrical genius, 1876 -- 52 Bottom, a self-made man, 1876 -- 53 The full glow of fancy and fun, 1877 -- 54 The wood is the world, 1879 -- 55 Titania and Ovid, 1880 -- 56 A Platonic reading, 1884 -- 57 Interpreting the spoken verse, 1885 -- 58 Observations on the lovers and the mechanicals, 1886 -- 59 Poet rather than dramatist, 1888 -- 60 Source of the play's popularity, 1888 -- 61 Classical and modern, 1890 -- 62 Reason and desire in Oberon and Titania, 1890 -- 63 The development of morality and art, 1891 -- 64 A true work of art, 1894 -- 65 The duration of the action, 1895 -- 66 Life and art, 1895 -- 67 Daly and the idea of titivation, 1895 -- 68 Remarks on the play and modern education, 1895 -- 69 Theseus, Bottom, and the Interlude, 1896 -- 70 The central idea, 1897 -- 71 The airy dream, 1898 -- 72 Illusion, realism, and imagination, 1900 -- 73 Dream visions, 1903 -- 74 A comedy of situation and enchantment, 1903 -- 75 Shakespeare's working classes, 1903 -- 76 The atmosphere of the play, 1904 -- 77 Love, dreamland, and Helena, 1905 -- 78 The theme of illusion, 1907 -- 79 The nature and sources of the play, 1908 -- 80 The most beautiful work of man, 1909 -- 81 Shakespeare's conception of his art, 1911 -- 82 Screeds of word-music, 1914 -- 83 Three types of fairies: Puck, Oberon and Titania, 1916 -- 84 The dream's validity, 1917 -- 85 Comedy of love, 1920 -- NOTES -- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY.

INDEX -- I: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- II: SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- III: GENERAL INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z.