Shakespeare, William
Shakespeare, William (1564–1616),English playwright, poet, director, and actor, who uses forms of the word ‘fairy’ in at least ten of his plays, as well as in Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare mentions elves in five plays; nymphs in eight plays, Venus and Adonis, The Passionate Pilgrim, and the Sonnets; sprites or supernatural spirits in 20 plays, Venus and Adonis, Troilus and Cressida, and The Rape of Lucrece; goblins and hobgoblins in five plays. These references, as well as marked presence of fairies in the works of Spenser, Drayton, and Lyly, among many other contemporaries, indicate that fairy folk and legends were familiar to Shakespeare's audience.
In The Anatomy of Puck, thus far the longest recent study of Shakespeare's general use of fairy material, K. M. Briggs maintains that the Elizabethan era was a golden age of fairy lore. She ascribes...
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