s, which allowed a poor family to get along with their cow, and their idleness. Some of the traits of these garrulous, incompetent villagers blossom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as a band of "rude mechanicals." John Clare wrote: [a long quotation from Clare's Enclosure follows] (149).
Bly's argument seems to confuse "English business" with English landholders, but this would take more research to confirm. And, presumably, Bly uses the words "idleness" and "incompetent" ironically. But he is dead wrong, again, about Shakespeare's characters. These men are indeed "mechanicals" and each is identified by his occupation: carpenter, weaver, tinker, bellows-mender, joiner, and tailor. But they are certainly not country-dwellers whose livelihoods are threatened by enclosure of the commons. They are "a group of Athenian craftsmen who come into the wood to rehearse a little play they hope to present at court for the wedding festivities" (Doran 16). They are urbanites, not rural characters interested in enclosure. In addition to this mistak
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