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The music now passes to the supernatural, and we have Puck's invocation to the spirits, whom he summons to raise a storm and sink the vessel in which the lovers have embarked. Puck's recitative is very powerful, and the chorus of the spirits in response, a very rapid presto movement, is in its way as effective as the incantation music in "Der Freischütz."
The first flower assists in the development of a plot which is to enact the 'momentariness' of 'sympathy in choice. The cross-purpose, fostered by Puck's mistake, seems to provide the comparatively grosser sort of merriment for this Act which Bottom and his friends supplied for the first; and the dainty humor and sprightly novelty attending the introduction of the fairies on the scene, the description of their quarrel, and the foreshadowing of the influence they are to have on the next stages of the story, may be shown to occupy the chief place in the plot at this period, the crossed lovers, who predominated in the first Act, now falling into a relatively subordinate position.
Show how this transformation makes the mismating of Titania with Bottom more gross and obvious to the audience; also how this is the next direct effect of Oberon's revenge. Notice that scene ii. takes up the cross-effect already worked upon Lysander by Puck's mistake, instead of on Demetrius, as Oberon intended, and sets forth its further effects upon Helena and Hermia.
While with one hand we are contriving means of transit for our ideas, and even our very voices, compared to which Puck's girdle is anything but talismanic, with the other we are stretching out to grasp the action of mind on mind, pushing our way into the very realm of mind itself.
"My darling my darling!" she made quivering answer. "Say I've come in time!" He tried to speak again, but could not. Yet the deathly cold was giving way like ice before the sun. He could feel his heart beating where before he had felt nothing. A hand that was not Puck's came out of the void beyond her and held a spoonful of spirit to his mouth.
The morning after the ball at Count Walther Puck's, Euchar received a note from Ludwig, running as follows: "Dearest and most beloved friend, I am utterly miserable. I am stricken by destiny. It is all over with me! I am dashed down from the flowery summit of the fairest hope into the blackest and most fathomless abyss of the deepest despair.
Men have been trying ever since to catch up with him, but they have not gone ahead of him yet. If, only three hundred years ago, this were the case, what must have been Puck's fun, when he saw men in the early days, working so hard to make even a clay cup or saucer.
That odor of the fish-houses had always been bad enough before, but now it seemed to rise in her nostrils and sicken her. And now, Jennie, I can only repeat Puck's words, "What fools we mortals be!" That man Frenchy rushed out of the door as we were going by. His face looked as if he had been suffering tortures. "Please, please!" he cried. "Come, vite, heem Docteur hawful seek.
In reality most people wear motley all day long and the fairy powers are leprechauns, tricksy, irresponsible sprites, willing enough to make merry with those who can laugh with them; but players of all Puck's tricks on "wisest aunts telling saddest tales." I sometimes think that it is Ascher's chivalry, his fine knightliness, which has killed his sense of humour.
I'd never thought to bless Julian O'Farrell, but now I willingly agreed. Sometimes, dimly, I had divined latent goodness in him, as one divines vague, lovely shapes floating under dark depths of water. And he had said once that love for me was bringing out qualities he hadn't credited himself with possessing. I had taken that as one of Puck's pleasantries!
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