FROM whatever point they are viewed, A Midsummer-Night's
Dream and The Merchant of Venice are evidently very different
plays. But it is appropriate to consider them together, not only
because they are Shakespeare's first comic masterpieces, closely
related in time, but because, from the point of view of the disposi-
tion and uses of awareness, they represent, for all their dissimilarity,
a common advance along the chosen road.

In the earlier plays, which exhibit some masterful individual
scenes but lack the last fine touch that confers artistic wholeness,
technique itself occupies a proportionately large place in the total
work, and, accordingly, to describe a basic principle of technique
has an obvious justification. With A Midsummer-Night's Dream
and The Merchant of Venice, however, the bones of dramatic
structure become deeply concealed in the live flesh of the whole
creation, and, being unexposed, may seem insignificant -- indeed,
may seem not to exist; hence to examine the submerged mechanics
of illusion when it is certainly not the mechanics but the illusion
itself that counts may appear merely perverse. But in the master-
pieces no less than in the exploratory comedies it is the inner
structure that confers and sustains the outward shape. If, then, an
approach to the great comedies through examination of the disposi-
tion and uses of awareness appears less relevant than a direct assault
upon the moonlight, the lyricism, and the marvellous beings, human
and other, who inhabit these extraordinary worlds, nevertheless it
does afford a way of coming at these and other conspicuous mani-
festations of Shakespeare's imagination. And Oberon and Portia,
Bottom and Shylock, the fairy world and the world where mer-
chants most do congregate are creations of so great magnitude that
any approach should be taken if it will lead to a new view of them.

In The Comedy of Errors a wide but single discrepancy in aware-
nesses resulted when we were given and the participants were

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