A Midsummer Night’s Dream – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Act 1, Scene 1 (406-11, Theseus, Duke of Athens and Hippolyta the Amazon Queen await their wedding; Egeus shows up with his daughter Hermia and the two men who are courting her: Lysander, whom she prefers, and Demetrius, Egeus’s pick for her; Egeus calls upon Theseus to apply the harsh Athenian law that would condemn her if she won’t marry Demetrius; Theseus sides with Egeus, telling Hermia that she must marry Demetrius or either die or remain chaste. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

The play opens with a conversation between Theseus, Duke of Athens and the Amazon Queen he has conquered and is now set to marry. [1] Theseus’s desires seem to outpace the time that nature keeps: he says that of moon’s progress, “She lingers my desires / Like to a stepdame or a dowager / Long withering out a young man’s revenue” (406, 1.1.4-6). Hippolyta prefers to let nature follow its pace, and allies herself with that, and then “the moon—like to a silver bow / Now bent in heaven—shall behold the night / Of our solemnities” (406, 1.1.9-11).

Be that as it may, the archetypal “war between the sexes” of this Athenian duke and Amazonian queen has given way to a traditional wedding ceremony. Theseus, though himself impatient, promises Hippolyta that violence and chaos will be transformed to marital decorum and an orderly society: he will marry the female warrior “in another key,” as he says, and all will be done “With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling” (407, 1.1.18-19).

But as Lysander will soon say to Hermia, “The course of true love never did run smooth” (409, 1.1.134), and Egeus comes onto the scene to stir up trouble (407, 1.1.22-23). His daughter Hermia has refused Demetrius, the suitor he has chosen for her, and now the father begs the Duke to uphold the harsh law of Athens (407, 1.1.41-42). Hermia must assent to a life with Demetrius, or she will either forfeit her life or remain a virgin for the rest of her days.

Such outlandishly cruel “laws” are useful in comedies and romances since they allow the playwright to deal with primal issues of life and death, to depict universal struggles in the starkest manner. The Angry Father, or senex iratus derived from Greek and Roman comedy, [2] is a handy device in Shakespeare’s bag of drama-tricks, and here Egeus serves as an obstacle in the path of the lovers Hermia and Lysander.

The father is perhaps jealous of his daughter’s affection, and he accuses Lysander of offenses just short of warlock status. Lysander, says Egeus, has “bewitched the bosom of my child” (407, 1.1.27). He has “interchanged love tokens” (407, 1.1.29) with the young lady; he has sung facetious or “feigning” songs of love to her; and given her alluring gifts to steal her fancy away from her father and transfer it to himself. None of this sounds to us like anything but normal courtship, but to Egeus it’s a mortal threat.

The old man aligns himself with the symbolic power of absolute interdiction. He envisions a rival order to the one Theseus has staked out, one that allows no room for his daughter Hermia to pursue natural desire. The result of this will be the confusion, chaos, and vexation at the center of Shakespeare’s play.

Theseus, given that he himself has used force to win his own lover and now intends to fold this violent force into a life within the civic order with Hippolyta, can hardly do anything but accede to Egeus’s forceful demand that his daughter should obey him or die. To state Theseus’s dilemma in other terms, as a ruler he can’t afford to make his first move the perpetuation of the violence he used to subdue Hippolyta and her independent Amazon warriors. [3]

Theseus denies Hermia any agency, any livable choice, in the matter of marriage. He insists that to her, Egeus should be “as a god” (407, 1.1.47), and describes her as “but as a form in wax / By him imprinted …” (407, 1.1.49-50), to preserve, alter, or destroy as he sees fit. Theseus asks Hermia directly whether she can “endure the livery of a nun …” (408, 1.1.70) just to escape marriage to a man she doesn’t love. Hermia’s answer is defiance: she will not submit.

As for Lysander, he mocks Egeus and Theseus’s promotion of civic “right” over true love, the prioritizing of civilization to enlist a couple’s erotic energy to enhance its own power satisfy its collective, society-building imperatives. He points out to Theseus that Demetrius has himself behaved like a cad toward Nedar’s daughter Helena, first encouraging her and then cruelly dropping her for his new and financially promising interest in Hermia. All the same, Theseus stands by Athenian law, so if she won’t submit, Hermia will have to choose between “death or … a vow of single life” (409, 1.1.121).

In conversation with Hermia, Lysander tries without much success to calm her anxieties with a recitation of many of the agency- and life-denying bars and catastrophes that ensure the truth of his maxim, “The course of true love never did run smooth …” (409, 1.1.134).

The young man describes the experience of true love in a way that might elicit admiration from the great Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides, who described the experience of deep learning as a kind of “flash” followed by utter darkness. [4] So Lysander on love as being “Brief as the lightning in the collied night / That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth / And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’ / The jaws of darkness do devour it up” (409, 1.1.344-47).

Lysander’s plan, as he details it to Hermia, involves taking refuge in the woods not far from Athens, and then traveling to his dowager aunt’s home, where Athenian law does not apply (409-10, 1.1.156-68). This plan will take the main couples off to one of Shakespeare’s most beloved green worlds, the fairy kingdom of Oberon and Titania.

Lysander’s condition for the trip, “If you lovest me” (410, 1.1.163), seems to inspire a bit of ire in Hermia, or at least it prompts her to swear (among other things) by “all the vows that ever men have broke, / In number more than ever women spoke …” (410, 1.1.175-76) that she will gladly make the journey and marry him, leaving behind the golden city of Athens that seemed to her “a paradise” (411, 1.1.205).

Helena now enters. She is Hermia’s childhood friend, and has problems of her own to deal with. She is in love with her former suitor Demetrius, who now cares only for Helena and, presumably, her father’s wealth. When Lysander tells her of his plan to steal away with Hermia into the forest, Helena decides to reveal this information to Demetrius for her own selfish benefit. A strain of jealousy and competitiveness is evident in Helena’s complaint after her friend departs with Lysander: “Through Athens I am thought as fair as she” (411, 1.1.227).

In spite of her disappointment, Helena puts much faith in the power of love even as she says this profound feeling involves neither judgment nor clarity of vision: “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity” (411, 1.1.232-33). Perhaps, then, it is not quality in the lover that we love, but rather what we ourselves project onto or into the beloved. Love is a thing of fantasy, and is scarcely amenable to reason.

To what extent, then, can desire be directed so that it guarantees order, social harmony and decorum? As is the case with most of Shakespeare’s comedies, that will be a question to consider as the play goes on. In any event, Helena’s determination to tattle on her old friend to Demetrius ensures that the already feuding Oberon and Titania will be joined by two human couples rather than one.

Act 1, Scene 2 (412-14, Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding will include a play as entertainment, and six tradesmen in Athens decide to compete for the prize money; director Peter Quince assigns acting roles and hands out scripts; they all plan to rehearse in the woods beyond Athens.)

This comic scene continues the theme of transformation introduced by the first scene’s pre-nuptial conversation between Theseus and Hippolyta and Hermia’s statement about love’s capacity to change the beloved into something wonderful. Several workingmen have determined to compete for the honor of putting on a play in the presence of the Duke and Hippolyta. These “mechanicals” are men whom we would not ordinarily consider significant in the world of art, but their discussions give us some of Shakespeare’s most notable commentary on his chosen profession, if we may make such a connection.

Peter Quince is the director of The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe, a tragic play about star-crossed lovers that is nonetheless also a “comedy,” according to the title. [5] It doesn’t matter much to Quince and his fellows how their play is classified—the aim is that it be entertaining and affecting.

Bottom the Weaver is informed that he is to play the hero Pyramus (412, 1.2.16), and he demonstrates his skill in declamatory versifying from some old instance of the character Hercules, but he can’t imagine confining himself to just one role, even if it is a starring one. As the roles are handed out, Bottom tries to usurp them all: “let me play Thisbe too” (413, 1.2.43), he pleads, and “Let me play the lion too” (413, 1.2.58).

Bottom is a delightful, rather childlike fellow (some might call him a narcissist, though that’s probably too harsh) who wants to project himself into everything around him, and he seems quite excited about the prospect of using art to escape everyday reality. That escape (or at least vicarious adventure) is indeed one of the things that art can provide.

Meanwhile, Flute, who will play the female lead Thisbe, worries that he is too near to an adult male to play such a role, while Snug the Joiner is blessed with the exciting role of the Lion. His worry is that he is “slow of study” and will need an advance copy of his lines. Quince assures him that he’ll do fine—the “lines” are “nothing but roaring” (413, 1.2.56-57).

Bottom’s pitch for usurping the lion’s role is hilarious, and it brings up an interesting representational concern. “I will roar that I will do any / man’s heart good to hear me” (413, 1.2.58-59), he boasts, but Peter Quince is quick to observe that roaring too wildly would frighten the refined, noble ladies in the audience, and thereby cost all the commonfolk acting the play their necks: “That would hang us, every mother’s son” (413, 1.2.64), they all say in unison.

This concern for the risks of excessive realism in dramatic representation sounds silly coming from working-class artisans trying to put on a foolish play, but it was in fact a serious concern going back even to Greek drama. [6] Audiences’ emotional reaction, according to some critics, was heavily dependent on the playwright’s ability to induce them to take what they saw onstage as all but real, or at least very “lifelike” (verisimilar). The workingmen, then, offer a logical extension of such a view when they worry about their lion-representation frightening theatergoers out of their real-life wits.

The lion’s part—no pun intended—goes to Snug after all, and Quince need only put out some sensible instructions for the rehearsal: he gives the actors only their own lines, and prays them “to con them by tomorrow night” (413, 1.2.) They are to meet Quince in the woods about a mile from Athens, there to rehearse by the moon’s light. The reason the director gives is that if they rehearse outside of town, they will avoid workaday distractions and nosy competitors. Other than the privacy-based concerns, these sound like realistic instructions for actors in Shakespeare’s time. [7]

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (414-20, Oberon and Titania, the Faerie King and Queen, argue over who will get to raise an Indian boy; to wrest control of the boy, Oberon commands Robin Goodfellow or “Puck” to bring him a pansy flower so he can sprinkle its juice in Titania’s eyes and make her fall in love with the first creature she sees upon waking. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

Our introduction to the enchanted forest is to hear the dialogue of Robin Goodfellow (“Puck”) and a fairy who has come to prepare the way for the coming of the imposing Faerie Queen, Titania. The fairy has a job to do, flitting everywhere in the vicinity and being careful to “dew her orbs upon the green” and “hang a pearl [dewdrop] in every cowslip’s ear” (414, 2.1.9, 15) before the Queen and her retinue arrives. [8]

Robin reminds the fairy that the Fairy King, Oberon, is due to “keep his revels here tonight” (414, 2.1.18). He says the king is “passing fell and wrath” because Titania “as her attendant hath / A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king— / And jealous Oberon would have the child / Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild” (414, 2.1.21-22, 24-25).

The king and queen are presently separated over the custodianship of this little boy, each preferring to bring him up in their own gender-specific ways. Perhaps we are to understand that Titania would keep the boy just as he is, while Oberon would initiate him into maturity in the masculine style.

If the female fairy attendant to Titania evokes the more delicate micro-effects of the natural world and its processes, Robin should remind us of nature’s rougher qualities: he acknowledges with apparent pride to his fairy companion that he is exactly “that merry wanderer of the night” (415, 2.1.43) she suspects he is: the one who causes no end of mess, chagrin, and trouble for the careless or foolish humans who become subject to his mischievous efforts.

We may think of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem, “Pied Beauty,” with its love for “All things counter, original, spare, strange; / Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)” [9] and add to that fine description the impish, troublemaking gleam in Puck’s eye: he is all things unpredictable in nature, things and phenomena that double back and make fools of us when, in our carelessness and determination just to live our lives, we least expect it. Let’s call him “Shakespeare’s uncertainty principle,” at least for this play.

None of this is to say that Puck is a malign spirit. As Oberon’s helper, he is mischief in its lighter aspects—not the murderous Mischief invoked by Marc Antony in Julius Caesar. [10] Perhaps we can best understand Robin Goodfellow to be the obverse of the chaste power that overlooks Shakespeare’s play—namely, Diana, [11] virgin goddess of the moon, whose significance is signaled by the impatient Theseus at the play’s outset when he says that the moon (and goddess) impedes his desires. [12]

We now meet the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania. [13] Along with Prospero’s Island in The Tempest and the Forest of Arden in As You Like It, [14] the forest outside Athens, inhabited by the immortal members of the Fairy World, is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved Green Worlds—a place for what Oberon will later call “fierce vexation,” [15] but also a verdant charmed circle for the sorting out of the discords and misunderstandings that beset human and divine lovers.

Magical transformations happen in this “palace wood,” but Oberon and Titania are beset by the same jealousies and grudges as the play’s mortals. Control of a changeling Indian boy’s future is only part of what separates this immortal power couple: Titania, it seems, is quite jealous of what she’s certain are Oberon’s erotic adventurism and dalliances. She accuses him of inhabiting the spirit of classical pastoral poetry, “in the shape of Corin,” she says, has he “sat all day / Playing on pipes of corn and versing love / To amorous Phillida” (415, 2.1.66-68). [16]

Also in question, as far as Titania is concerned, is Oberon’s possibly sexual connection with Theseus’s soon-to-be bride Hippolyta, whom she calls Oberon’s “buskined mistress” and “warrior love” (415, 2.1.71). The suspicion is mutual since Oberon thinks Titania has a connection with Theseus, too. It sounds as if these two really need a fairy-capable marriage counselor, but in any case, Oberon is minded to inform Titania of the troubles their recent history together have caused for the human world over which they partly preside.

The effects Oberon catalogs with regard to the weather sound severe—“contagious fogs” (416, 2.1.90) that cause riverbanks to overflow, with consequent failures in the crop-growing cycle, and so forth. These problems or glitches, says Oberon, have wrought misery and havoc with the human beings who are, for all their otherworldly pretensions, deeply affined with and dependent upon the workings of the natural world both great and sweeping, granular and small.

When even in little things nature is out of kilter, the rhythms of human life become contorted, confused, and everything is less intelligible, less bearable: “No night is now,” says Oberon, “with hymn or carol blessed” (416, 2.1.102), and we are to understand that that is no small thing. Oberon and Titania are the powers who together are supposed to sustain and bless the mortals in their care, beings who are far more subject to the natural world than they are. “They have one job,” as we would say, and their wrangling is preventing them from doing it.

Oberon thinks the solution is simple: Titania just needs to deliver that Indian child into his custody: “I do but beg a little changeling boy / To be my henchman” (416, 2.1.120-21). Unfortunately, this supposedly reasonable request is greeted coldly by the Fairie Queen, who has something of the great Queen Elizabeth I about her. Titania is particularly attached to this boy since his mother, a votary of hers, died while giving birth to him. [17] Her answer to Oberon, then, is “for her sake do I rear up her boy, / And for her sake I will not part with him” (417, 2.1.136-37).

In a broader sense, Titania also seems concerned to maintain her sphere of authority by withholding from Oberon something he dearly covets. If that’s so, the fairy monarchs have their own elfin “war between the sexes” going on.

Oberon decides on the spot to punish Titania for her obstinacy, but he knows better than to confront the powerful demigoddess directly, so he summons Robin, or “Puck,” [18] to help him cast a spell on her. The flower they need is the pansy, which acquired its great property of inspiring love from a miscast arrow of Cupid that landed on the flower (417-18, 2.1.165-74). [19] So now this flower, also referred to as “love-in-idleness” (417, 2.1.165), causes instant affection, regardless of the object’s worthiness or unworthiness. [20]

The pansy, then, serves as an emblem of the power that Helena invested in love itself when she said, “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity.” [21] It has an apparently unrestricted power to kindle and shift libidinal energy; it is Eros stripped of the restraint of cultural norms and limitations. Oberon hopes by this botanical device to extort the Indian boy from Titania in exchange for releasing her from whatever unpleasant love relation the flower causes her to forge.

This plan duly hatched, Oberon has time to observe the goings-on between Demetrius and Helena, which at present are distressing to see. Demetrius continues to scorn the fair Athenian maid, who would gladly sacrifice much of her dignity to somehow undo his indifference. As she admits to him, she adores him all the more for his disdain: “I am your spaniel, and, Demetrius, / The more you beat me I will fawn on you” (418, 2.1.203-04).

Helena is so determined that she would reverse the usual course of the Ovidian love-chase: “Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase” (419, 2.1.241), [22] she says to Demetrius, even though she herself considers this inappropriate for a woman. As she laments, “We cannot fight for love as men may do; / We should be wooed and were not made to woo” (419, 2.1.241-42).

Seeing all this, Oberon takes pity on Helena, and decides to help her. It is not up to Demetrius, says the Fairy King: “Ere he do leave this grove / Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love” (419, 2.1.245-46). Just then, Robin arrives with the magical flower Theseus needs. He himself will use it to bewitch Titania, while Robin’s orders are to fix the issue between Demetrius and Helena. Theseus’s vague command, however, will cause some trouble: “Thou shalt know the man,” he tells Robin, “By the Athenian garments he hath on” (420, 2.1.263-64).

Act 2, Scene 2 (420-23, Oberon sprinkles pansy-juice in sleeping Titania’s eyes; Robin mistakenly bewitches Lysander, who is sleeping next to Hermia, and departs; Demetrius and Helena make their entrance, and he abandons her in the forest; Lysander, upon awaking, at once falls in love with Helena; Helena is convinced that she is being mocked and runs away from Demetrius; Hermia wakes up from an unpleasant sleep and searches for Lysander.)

Titania enters, gives some nature-related orders, and calls for a fairy song to lull her to sleep. Even though the fairies around her sing a song of protection for their queen, once she is asleep the fairy king Oberon has no trouble gaining access to her side. Drop goes the pansy juice into Titania’s eyes, along with a little prayer that ends, “When thou wak’st, it is thy dear. / Wake when some vile thing is near” (420, 2.2.33-34). And so he unleashes on his queen the indecorous, even degrading element of Eros, the power of love.

In come Hermia and Lysander, both tired half to death, and they make their sleeping arrangements. Lysander is all for “one bed” in the forest, but Hermia firmly favors chastity as a key element of decorum, fitness of attitude and conduct. “Nay, good Lysander,” she says, “for my sake, my dear, / Lie further off yet; do not lie so near” (421, 2.2.44). Soon enough, though, both are fast asleep after pledging their lifelong loyalty.

The transformations enjoined by Oberon are supposed to yield predictable results, but it’s hard to control such a magical power. Robin enters, a bit frustrated that so far he has been unable to find the Athenian youth that his master wants him to “medicate,” but at least he comes upon Lysander sleeping separately from Hermia. Robin mistakenly sprinkles Lysander’s eyes with the pansy juice that should have been sprinkled over the eyes of Demetrius (421, 2.2.76-81),

Robin, a member of the “sprite” world, makes this big mistake because he can’t process the fact that Lysander and Hermia are sleeping apart only because they respect the human custom of chastity before marriage, not because they are upset with each other. “Puck” is a natural creature, and cares nothing for customs of that sort, or concepts like “chastity.” [23] To him, Lysander seems like a “lack-love” and a “kill-courtesy” (421, 2.2.77), not a proper man.

In race Helena and Demetrius, still wrangling over his disdain for her, which has all but shattered her confidence in her attractiveness. That is no surprise since here, love is figured as a zero-sum game in which there must be winners and losers, and a species of often cruel exclusivity reigns. Consonantly, the pansy flower transfers love from one object to another. Its magic is not of the add-on sort or aggregative sort: for humans, even in the forest, there is to be no hippie-like “polyamory” or “free love.”

Helena stands directly above the sleeping Lysander. No sooner does the young man wake up than he falls in love with Helena and, therefore, out of love with his beloved of a few minutes back, Hermia. Way to go, Robin Goodfellow! Comically, Lysander claims that his newfound love is entirely grounded in humankind’s highest faculty: he says to Helena, “Reason becomes the marshal to my will / And leads me to your eyes …” (422, 2.2.120-21). [24]

A downcast Helena can hardly believe that Lysander would so meanly mock her, knowing of her troubles with Demetrius. “When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?” (422, 2.2.124) she demands of Lysander, and in return he is able only to cast himself as a chivalrous knight even as he trashes his now-loathed “ex” Hermia.

Lysander bids still-sleeping Hermia stay far from him, saying that he hates her as “a surfeit of the sweetest things / The deepest loathing to the stomach brings …” (423, 2.2.137-38). How similar a pronouncement, and yet how different a sentiment, that is from Duke Orsino’s lyrical observation at the beginning of Twelfth Night: “If music be the food of love, play on, / Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken and so die.” [25] While Lysander is in earnest in his present loathing of Hermia, Orsino is in love with love itself—he is not rejecting his love object, Countess Olivia.

Hermia now awakes, and can scarcely believe Lysander isn’t near her side so she can recount to him her bad dream: “Methought a serpent ate my heart away” (423, 2.2.149), she begins, and decides to go off in search of her Lysander.

Well, at least Oberon carried out his part of the plan properly—he began the scene by squeezing pansy juice onto Titania’s eyelids (420, 2.2.27-34). She remains asleep at the end of the second act, but not for long.

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (423-27, the tradesmen meet in the woods to begin their rehearsals; Peter Quince and the others voice some concerns about certain representations; Robin observes them and decides to turn Bottom the Weaver into an ass; terrified, the other actors run away; Bottom sings and awakens the bewitched Titania, who immediately falls in love with him, and takes him to bed.)

Our lowly actors are hard at work, rehearsing in the forest for the nobility’s future viewing pleasure. Bottom continues to worry about excessive realism. “There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and / Thisbe that will never please” (423, 3.1.8-9), he says, and one of those things is that “Pyramus must draw a / sword to kill himself, which the ladies cannot abide” (423, 3.1.9-10). While the inexperienced critics Snout and Starveling want to get rid of the play’s violence altogether, Bottom finds a better solution.

The eighteenth-century French author and critic Denis Diderot is generally credited with naming the “fourth wall” in drama, but the habit of maintaining or erasing the imaginary stage-front barrier between audiences and actors has been around since the beginning of drama. [26] What Bottom proposes to do is to step outside his role temporarily and, in a prologue, directly tell the audience not to be afraid of the sword since, after all, it’s only a play they’re watching. We might call it a Renaissance drama trigger warning for “scenes of violence, catastrophic misunderstanding, and tragically frustrated love pursuits.” We’ve been warned!

Snout worries about the lion, so Bottom decrees that he must show his human features through his suit: “half his face / must be seen through the lion’s neck …” (424, 3.1.32-33), and he must address the audience and “tell / them plainly he is Snug the joiner” (424, 3.1.39-40). The workmen-theorists, then, think the audience will be traumatized by the sight of a whimsical man in a lion-suit, which tends to imply that the audience is not capable of distinguishing between dramatic or fictive representations and everyday reality.

The issue of representing moonlight must also be worked out, and here the matter concerns not excessive realism but an insufficient amount of it (424, 3.1.51-55). Aside from reproducing moonlight, the second, similar difficulty is how to represent a wall, but Bottom has an ingenious strategy to deal with this: an actor will stand onstage and either be tricked up to look like a wall, or he will create a crack with his hands, which will signify the fissure through which Pyramus and Thisbe speak (424, 3.1.57-60).

The language Bottom uses is significant: “Some man or other must present Wall; and let him / have some plaster, or some loam, or some roughcast about / him to signify ‘wall’; or let him hold his fingers thus, and / through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisbe whisper” (424, 3.1.57-60). Is this an attempt to supply the realistic detail considered necessary to the representation’s success, or—if we attend to Bottom’s final “or” above—is he asserting that the audience will, in fact, be able to process a purely conventional representation of natural things, the moon and its light?

A similar ambiguity attaches to the “moonshine” problem. Bottom supposes that natural moonlight can simply be let in through a casement in the theater-chamber’s window, while Quince proposes something different: “or else one must come in with a bush of thorns / and a lantern and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, / the person of Moonshine” (424, 3.1.51-53).

In both instances, there seems to be a little confusion here between the neoclassical precept that the dramatic representation must deceive the audience into taking something (or some event) on the stage for the real thing and the perhaps more generous assertion that audiences have little or no trouble a) distinguishing between make-believe and reality and b) accepting a purely symbolical or conventional presentation on the stage without sacrificing their ability to respond emotionally to what they see onstage.

Even though Peter Quince betrays his ignorance of the finer points in this debate over dramatic realism vs. conventionalism or symbolism when he mistakes the word “disfigure” for “figure,” Shakespeare may be marking off the whole affair as another tendentious “either/or” debate of the sort criticism so often generates, to little purpose. It seems reasonable to assert that audiences are able to deal with either approach, or both—the director will determine which kind of representation suits the particular scene. In the case of the workmen’s Pyramus and Thisbe, we will be getting a generous heap of both strategies.

It may be that Bottom and the others’ concerns about excessive and deficient realism indicates more about them than it does about their noble and gentlefolk-exclusive audience. Do they themselves have trouble negotiating between reality and fantasy, so that they think their so-called betters have the same problem? In the enthusiastic Bottom’s case, at least, that could be a consideration. Still, these clumsy actors are wrestling with an important neoclassical concern: what is the moral impact of fictional representations? Can mere fantasies cause distress or even actual harm in the world beyond art and literature? [27] Anything worthwhile is probably capable of causing difficulties when mishandled or misunderstood. [28]

By chance, Robin lights upon the rehearsal scene, and decides to try his brand of mischief on the workmen-actors. Evidently, saying “I’ll be an auditor— / An actor too perhaps, if I see cause” (425, 3.1.67-68), he determines that partially transforming Bottom into an ass will be his contribution to the rehearsal, along with chasing the frightened actors round and round until they flee in terror.

Bottom, now with an ass’s head, is shocked at the way he is treated, and puts a fairly brave face on his predicament: “This is to make an ass of me, to / fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, / do what they can” (426, 3.1.106-08). He decides to sing a lovely song featuring observations on songbirds as a balm to his soul: mentioned are the “ouzel cock,” the thrush, and the wren; the finch, sparrow, lark, and cuckoo (426, 3.1.110-13, 115-18).

Why does Robin pick Bottom to transform and not another among the actors? Since the human character Bottom is somewhat of an ass in the pejorative sense, it seems appropriate that Bottom should be “translated” (426, 3.1.105), as the terrified Peter Quince terms the change, into a stubborn, obtuse donkey. To be translated is literally, etymologically to be “brought over.” Here, presumably, the change is from one realm and one species to a different realm, and a different species. Bottom becomes strangely connected and affined with the natural world, transformed from a man into an animal.

If a more theoretical reason is desired, we could suggest that when the actors’ roles were handed out, Bottom wanted to play all of them—he imagined throwing himself into each of them with great success and impressing everyone. Now he is privileged (if that’s the right word) to experience something that none of his fellow workmen is likely ever to experience: turning from a human being into an animal.

Titania awakens to the sight of the translated Bottom, and the magic pansy-juice does its work: the Queen of the Fairies declares, “thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me / On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee” (426, 3.1.124-25). When Bottom tries to back away from this ardent woman, saying, “Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason / for that” (426, 3.1.126-27), she makes him an offer he can’t refuse, considering her powers and high state: “Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no” (426, 3.1.135).

Bottom is soon accorded all sorts of attention to sweeten the deal. No less dignitaries than “Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed” (426, 3.1.144) are commanded to wait upon him, and he is pleased to be able to converse with them one by one.

Perhaps Bottom has got himself into this fix because of his obstreperous, overly enthusiastic personality, but that’s no reason to be ungenerous in our understanding of him. He may have trouble managing his narcissistic tendencies and fantasy projections, but he is by no means alone in the play in not being able to do that. Narcissism and projection are part of love, too, and Bottom is gifted with a most remarkable, and even unique, set of experiences in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Act 3, Scene 2 (427-438, Robin informs Oberon about the bewitching he has done, but when Demetrius arrives panting after Hermia, Oberon realizes that Robin bewitched the wrong Athenian; Oberon then charms Demetrius, and Robin goes to find Helena, who enters followed by a doting Lysander; Demetrius wakes up and falls in love with Helena; Helena is sure both suitors are making fun of her; when Hermia discovers that Lysander is pursuing Helena instead of her, she menaces Helena. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

Puck relates to Oberon how he transformed Bottom (427-28, 3.2.6-34), then in Oberon’s presence he discovers his error in having sprinkled pansy juice on Lysander rather than Demetrius: “This is the woman, but not this the man,” (428, 3.2.42), says Robin, and then he and the Fairy King stand and behold the knock-down argument that Hermia and Demetrius have over his possessiveness toward her.

Oberon is pleased that Titania has fallen in love with the transformed Bottom, but he is not pleased about Lysander’s situation, and sets about making things right. Robin’s mistake has sundered that rarest of things—a couple grounded in true and faithful love, and it has left Hermia wondering where in the world Lysander has gone (429, 3.2.88-91). Oberon now bewitches Demetrius (430, 3.2.102-09) to turn his affections toward Helena and away from his less-than-pure, un-magical appreciation for Hermia.

Robin sees good sport in the coming fireworks amongst the couples: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” (430, 3.2.115) And he isn’t wrong since, once again, he and Oberon, realizing what’s about to happen—namely, that when Demtrius wakes up newly enraptured with Helena, he and Lysander will vie for Helena’s affections—get to observe a human argument, first between Lysander and Helena, who believes herself to be the butt of a cruel joke, and then adding Demetrius and Lysander’s bitter quarrel over her attentions: “You both are rivals and love Hermia, / And now both rivals to mock Helena” (431, 3.2.155-56).

Helena laments to Hermia, “[I]s all forgot? / All schooldays’ friendship, childhood innocence?” (432, 3.2.201-02) Hermia protests her innocence truthfully, but things soon turn ugly when her weak point is found: she fears being mocked for her short stature: Helena “hath made compare / Between our statures; she hath urged her height . . .” (434, 3.2.290-91). The assumption Hermia makes is not so hard to fathom since the matter of attraction or the lack thereof touches the very heart of a person’s identity, and almost always involves fear of rejection.

Demetrius and Lysander go off into the woods to fight a duel over Helena (435, 3.2.335-37), and Helena, in spite of her taller stature, flees the wrath of Hermia. With the men and the women alike quarreling, we have reached the height of chaos in this play.

Oberon suspects that Robin is not only responsible for all this discord, but as it turns it, he isn’t wrong. Robin says, “this their jangling I esteem a sport” (435, 3.2.353). The King orders the impish “Puck” to follow the warring males and keep anything untoward from happening by leading them on and tiring them out until they sleep. He is also told to fix his mistake with Lysander (435, 3.2.354-68) by undoing the charm that he had laid upon him with the pansy, also known as Cupid’s flower.

Oberon himself will soon extort the Indian boy from Titania in exchange for releasing her from her love match with an ass. What Oberon, a king in the comic mode, seeks above all is harmony: of the soon-to-be-sleeping human lovers, he says, “When they next awake, all this derision / Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision, / And back to Athens shall the lovers wend / With league whose date till death shall never end” (435-36, 3.2.370-73). As for Titania, Oberon explains, “I will her charmèd eye release / From monster’s view, and all things shall be peace” (436, 3.2.375-77).

The men soon grow weary, and Helena and Hermia also tire and lie down to sleep. While all four humans sleep, Robin is able to correct his earlier mistake with Lysander. As he sums up the repair, “Jack shall have Jill, / Naught shall go ill, / the man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well” (438, 3.3.461-63). Robin doesn’t sharply differentiate one human couple from another: to him, what matters is the act of coupling itself, the simple fact of union. He doesn’t trouble himself with the choice of object. [29]

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1 (438-43, Titania and her assistant faeries treat Bottom royally, and he falls asleep next to her; Oberon reveals to Robin that Titania has relented about possession of the Indian boy, so now it’s fair to un-bewitch her and Bottom; Titania and Oberon charm Bottom along with Hermia and Lysander, Demetrius and Helen into a profound slumber, and depart; Back in Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta make conversation; in the forest, Bottom wakes up and waxes philosophical about his strange experience as an ass.)

Bottom satisfies his nonhuman desires with some delicious hay, and then gives in to sleep while Titania lies next to him (439, 4.1.30-43). Oberon has succeeded in his plan to extort the Indian boy from Titania, whom he now pities, conceding, “I will undo / This hateful imperfection of her eyes” (439, 4.1.60-61).

After Titania has been returned to normal, it will be Robin’s task to turn Bottom back into a man. Oberon explains that Robin should remove the ass’s head from Bottom, “That he, awaking when the other do, / May all to Athens back again repair / And think no more of this night’s accidents / But as the fierce vexation of a dream” (439, 4.1.64-67).

The First Folio’s punctuation of the first two lines may help us understand Oberon’s meaning: “That he awaking when the other doe, / May all to Athens back againe repaire….” [30] A modern Englishing of the entire four-line passage could run, “So that when Bottom awakes at the same time the others do, / They may all return to Athens, / And think that this night’s events / Have been no more than the intense disturbance arising from a bad dream.” More on this anon, when the lovers wake up and try to explain to Theseus what has happened.

Oberon now sprinkles a counter-herb or antidote, Dian’s bud, [31] in Titania’s eyes and thereby undoes the spell he had earlier cast upon her with the pansy flower, or “love-in-idleness.” Titania awakes, and says confusedly, “My Oberon, what visions have I seen! / Methought I was enamored of an ass” (441, 4.1.74-75). At that point, Robin undoes Bottom’s transformation, and then Titania and Oberon dance near the spot where the human lovers still sleep. Apparently Oberon will tell Titania later how exactly all these strange things have come to pass. Or at least that’s what she asks him to do.

What we have been witnessing is a species of “vexation” in which nothing holds true about even those things in which humans put the greatest stock. Everything is subject to whimsical magic and is beyond mortal control. Still, just as no lasting harm comes to Titania, none will come of this “vexation” or fitful state of agitation that overtook Bottom (through his “translation”) as well as Lysander and Demetrius (through herbal enchantment) and even Hermia and Helena by their participation in the night’s strange, confused happenings.

Beyond the palace as the hunt is getting started, Hippolyta shows some of her old fighting spirit, reminding Theseus that she has kept better company than him—his hounds may be very fine, just as he boasts, but she has heard the dogs of Hercules and Cadmus, and is dubious about Theseus’ claims of supreme tuneableness between the dogs and the horns (440-41, 4.1.110-16): “I never heard / So musical a discord, such sweet thunder” (441, 4.1.115-16), she needles Theseus, who is driven to brag still more about his hounds.

The tenor of this conversation is civil—a far cry from the violence that forged the union of Theseus and Hippolyta. When the hunting party happens upon the sleeping lovers, Egeus importunes Theseus to practice severity, shouting, “I beg the law, the law upon his head!” (441, 4.1.152) But Demetrius, Egeus’ favorite, robs him of the opportunity by declaring his renewed interest in Helena, which leaves Hermia free to marry Lysander. The Duke offers a triple wedding at the temple nearby, and the happy couples, still adjusting to the waking world, follow Theseus and recount what they can of their forest dreams (442, 4.1.196-97).

To end the scene, Bottom waxes philosophical about his strange vision: “Man is but an ass if he / go about to expound this dream” (442-43, 4.1.203-04), he says, and continues in a remarkably g garbled way to misquote from 1 Corinthians 2:9: “The eye of man hath not heard, the / ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his / tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream / was” (443, 4.1.207-10; see endnote for accurate citation). [32]

St. Paul goes on to say at 1 Corinthians 2:15, “But he that is spirituall, discerneth all thynges, yet he hym selfe is iudged of no man.” Perhaps Bottom asserts a special insight into the nature of his vision, even if he can’t fully expound it. As many critics have noted, Bottom alone among the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is privileged to see and talk with the inhabitants of Oberon and Titania’s fairy realm. Even when transformed into a demi-donkey, he doesn’t change: somehow, he is at home in this dream-world, this place of strong desire.

In any event, Bottom’s hope seems to be that with Peter Quince’s help, he can get this vision turned into a ballad and have it sung at the end of a play (443, 4.1.210-14). Like his fellow “mechanicals,” Bottom shows respect for his dramatic art. But like them as well, he shows a healthy regard for its practical, material benefits: it’s possible to print and peddle a dream that one can’t fully understand or expound, and still turn a decent profit.

Bottom’s reaction to his experience differsfrom the couples’ response to theirs. They are just trying to reacclimate themselves to the everyday world and make sense of what happened. The weaver, however, is not “vexed” in quite the same way that the other characters are. Most of us live fitfully trying to negotiate the gap between waking and sleep, reality and fantasy, what is and what might be, but not Bottom.

Then, too, Bottom—perhaps because his vision involves a transformation from human into animal, not merely a sorting-out of love objects—seems to feel a strong sense of wonder in the aftermath of his vision, even as he quickly moves to consider practical ways of squeezing profit from it. Is Shakespeare—a working artist not infinitely removed from the status of the laborers he good-naturedly mocks in this play—hinting that his own response to his art is similarly twofold: a matter of both wonder and utility?

Act 4, Scene 2 (443-44, just as the tradesmen are sure their hopes of putting on their play are lost, Bottom arrives and tells them that their play is “preferred” for tonight.)

The other actors are waiting for Bottom to make his appearance, lest they lose their chance at courtly patronage suitable to their humble rank. It seems that the play’s marriages have just taken place, as Snug tells the others, “Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple, and / there is two or three lords and ladies more married” (443, 4.2.15-16).

Although the workmen are worried that their moment of dramatic glory has passed, Bottom shows up and receives a hero’s welcome. Still, he keeps largely mum about his great adventure with Titania and her attendants, preferring to relate something more comprehensible: their play is “preferred” (444, 4.2.34). It has been recommended, which seems to mean not that it is certain to be performed but that it will be one of the options set before Theseus for the evening’s entertainment. The actors must all be ready to roll should they be chosen.

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (444-53, while not crediting the two young couples’ accounts of their recent strange experiences, Theseus chooses Pyramus and Thisbe for the evening’s entertainment; the play is silly, and the sophisticated audience mocks it; Theseus, however, respects the tradesmen’s sincere efforts and is moved by them; when the couples have all gone to bed, the Fairy King and Queen and their helpers bless their marriages; Robin Goodfellow asks the audience to be generous towards Shakespeare’s play, or at least to think of it as a dream.)

At the palace after the wedding feast, Theseus tells Hippolyta and his lords (the lovers will arrive after he speaks these words) that he will have none of this day’s talk about fairyland-based “antique fables” (444, 5.1.2) [33] such as the now-happy couples Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius, have related to him about their strange time in the woods outside Athens. He comes across as a gentle but firm skeptic: “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, / Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more / Than cool reason ever comprehends” (444, 5.1.4-6).

In his view, “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact” (444, 5.1.7-8), and he expounds further that the poet’s “imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown” and then his “pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name” (444, 5.1.14-17). What has been imagined in the Classical poetic frenzy or furor poeticus, [34] that is, is given shape, definiteness, and order during the process of composition. [35]

Imagination, Theseus continues, is bound to provide causal agents for anything it treats: “in the night, imagining some fear, / How easy is a bush supposed a bear!” (444, 5.1.21-22) Art, then, is one way people make sense of what our experiences and feelings give us to process.

Hippolyta is somewhat less willing to downplay what she has heard from the lovers about their wild night in the forest. The collective story they have told, she thinks, “More witnesseth than fancy’s images / And grows to something of great constancy” (444, 5.1.25-26). As we would say in the wake of Scully and Mulder and the X-Files, “The truth is out there.” [36]

While Theseus may sound rather dismissive of the arts, he actually finds in them entertainment sufficient to “ease the anguish of a torturing hour” (445, 5.1.37). That is no small thing in the present circumstances, as he, Hippolyta, and the other couples must endure a three-hour waiting period before they retire to bed on their wedding night.

So what’s on the menu for tonight, asks Theseus? Philostrate (or Egeus, in some versions) rattles the items off: a couple of Classically themed pieces, but as a mythic figure himself, Theseus doesn’t need to hear that stuff again, and the satirical disquisition on “The thrice-three muses mourning for the death / Of learning …” (445, 5.1.52-53). That sort of thing isn’t what’s needed either, says Theseus. [37] As luck would have it, that leaves what Philostrate pans as a fustian, silly play summarized as “A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus / And his love Thisbe …” (445, 5.1.56-57).

This play sound unpromising, but the illogical and whimsical PR-blurb only piques the Duke’s interest, as does the cynical Philostrate’s admission that in rehearsal, the suicide of Pyramus affected him more than he thought possible: this act, he says, “Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears / The passion of loud laughter never shed” (445, 5.1.69-70).

What finally sells Theseus on this particular play, though, is Philostrate’s description of the men who would be acting it. These are “Hard-handed men that work in Athens here, / Which never labored in their minds till now …” (446, 5.1.72-73). Theseus’s response to this is noble in the best sense: “I will hear that play. / For never anything can be amiss / When simpleness and duty tender it” (446, 5.1.81-83). The players are honest, and they earnestly want to entertain, so that should be good enough for even the elite audience that awaits the performance.

Hippolyta is not convinced by this logic, and worries that the workmen-players will be humiliated. Not a whit, Theseus reassures her: we never get perfection in art, only effort with varying degrees of success. “Our sport,” he says, “shall be to take what they mistake. / And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect / Takes it in might, not merit” (446, 5.1.90-92). A spectator should be more than a mean-spirited fanny in a seat: Theseus promotes a kind and gracious critical standard, of a sort that has seldom prevailed from Classical times to the present. Honest effort is to be rewarded, not hissed and dismissed. [38]

In spite of Theseus’s kind words, things get off to a rocky start when Peter Quince butchers the punctuation of a courtly prologue, which turns what he says into a near-nonsensical patter. Theseus, Lysander, and Hippolyta trade barbs at Quince’s expense. In honor of Theseus’s advance generosity, though, it’s probably best to set the speakers’ tone to “amused” rather than viciously critical. Apparently nonplussed (if he even hears any of this tittering in the audience), Quince goes on to spill the entire plot, leaving no suspense for the presentation itself. [39]

The critical talk pipes down for a while as the play proceeds, [40] with Snout as “Wall,” Bottom as Pyramus, and Flute as Thisbe all gamely going about their business. Finally, Hippolyta can’t hold silent, and says, “This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard,” while in return, Theseus says, “The best in this kind are but shadows, and the / worst are no worse if imagination amend them” (449, 5.1.207-09). As a statement of critical principle, this sounds like what many of us will take for Shakespeare’s own wonderful combination of boldness and humility.

That is, a stage representation will always pale in comparison with “the real thing,” but it’s sufficient to accomplish its ends if the audience roots for the players to succeed. The audience’s generous imagination is the closest any artist can get to the Prologue’s famous “muse of fire” in Henry V. [41] What are drama’s “ends,” then? Most likely, Shakespeare would have approved of the standard set forth by the Roman poet Horace: to be both utile (useful) and dulce (sweet, pleasant, entertaining), [42] or, as Sir Philip Sidney puts it in “An Apology for Poetry,” the poet should “teach and delight.” [43]

Next, in comes Snug as “Lion.” Just as the workmen had previously planned, Snug takes pains to ensure that the ladies will not be frightened: [44] “Then know that I as Snug the joiner am / A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam” (449, 5.1.218-219). His phrasing here is interesting in that the actor both steps forth as himself, Snug, and at the same time he is a ferocious lion—or, if you please and as the Norton editors aptly note—“a lion fell,” which may mean either “ferocious” or “a man in a lion’s-skin,” for “fell” can be interpreted as “fleece,” too. [45]

Starveling enters as the Man in the Moon, with his lantern representing the moon, and then … the noble audience cuts him off in gentle mockery so many times that he can only blurt out in exasperation, “All that I have to say is to tell you that the lan- / tern is the moon, I the man i’th’ moon, this thornbush my / thornbush, and this dog my dog” (450, 5.1.247-49). [46] So that’s that.

Bottom next acts the leadup to Pyramus’s suicide based on the misrecognized mantle that Thisbe dropped in her flight from the raging lion. Theseus finds this scene far from affecting, and says, “This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would / go near to make a man look sad” (450, 5.1.277-78). But Hippolyta disagrees, saying instead, “Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man” ().

Here, it is Hippolyta who seems closer to the generous critical precept that Theseus set forth before the beginning of Pyramus and Thisbe: her inflection of that principle may remind us of Samuel Johnson’s excellent observation in his “Preface to Shakespeare” that we are moved by an action before us on the stage not because we are fooled into taking them for real, but that they remind us of something real that we would respond to: “Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.” [47]

Although the legends surrounding Theseus and Hippolyta are complex and varied, some of them say she suffered many losses during the Amazonian war, one of whom was her sister Antiope. It may be that we are witnessing a difference in the sensibilities of these two strong-minded partners concerning the war and the deaths that overtook key participants. [48]

In any case, Pyramus bids the world goodbye with his trusty sword, wailing “Tongue, lose thy light; / Moon, take thy flight. / Now die, die, die, die, die” (451, 5.1.293-95). In short order, Thisbe does the same in similarly dreadful, choppy verses. In spite of the poetry’s wretchedness, it isn’t hard to see the appeal: around the same time (circa 1595), Shakespeare authored Romeo and Juliet, another play that tells the story of young lovers whose destruction turns on tragic accidents and misrecognitions.

Theseus lauds the players and tells them diplomatically that no epilogue will be needed, but a Bergomask dance would be very welcome. [49]

Robin Goodfellow, aka “Puck,” offers a thrilling characterization of the faeries who serve Oberon and Titania as little creatures who live to the fullest at night: “And we fairies that do run / By the triple Hecate’s team / From the presence of the sun, / Following darkness like a dream, / Now are frolic” (452, 5.1.369-73). It is Robin’s present task to take his broom and “sweep the dust behind the door” (452, 5.1.376).

Oberon and Titania speak out their instructions to their fairy underlings, with orders to dance and sing exactly what he will go on to say: all that they do in Theseus, Hippolyta and the other couples’ chambers will be designed to sanctify the unions of the mortals within them and render the offspring flowing from their acts of generation beautiful. Happy futurity is the theme in all things.

The fairies all go to spend the night fulfilling these obligations, which leaves Robin alone on the stage, to speak an epilogue. In it, he invites the audience either to think of the play (if they don’t care for it) as “no more yielding but a dream” (453, 5.1.414), or, if they like it, as an earnest promise of more fine performances to come. With that, Robin calls for applause, and the play is done.

Final Reflections on A Midsummer Night’s Dream

To some degree like love itself, the theater (“make-believe”) is a power in the world and one to be treated with due regard. At the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, therefore, Robin Goodfellow begs indulgence for its excellent mockery of romantic desire as an irrational, chaos-inducing force that nonetheless seems conducive to individual happiness and good social order.

The epilogue is effective, as Robin leaves matters to the audience’s imagination: it is their prerogative to judge what they have seen, and their burden to perpetuate the play in their own minds or let it pass away. Shakespeare’s conception of an ideal audience involves a certain active quality: they themselves must flesh out the representation and determine its value.

On the whole, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a romantic comedy with a fairy-guided twist. This play may owe much of its success over the centuries to its way of dealing with passion in a curiously dispassionate, bemused, moonstruck manner. This fairy-land perspective has already been captured by the time Robin says to Oberon in Act 3, Scene 2, “Shall we their fond pageant see? / Lord, what fools these mortals be!” (430, 3.2.114-15)

Shakespeare and his creations generously proceed to let us in on that divine, lordly perspective. We know that the chaste moon-goddess Diana is looking over the whole affair from her distant perch. In the end, as Theseus himself predicts midway into the play “the fierce vexation of a dream,” the strife and confusion, will give way to spirit-blessings and decorum (440, 4.1.83-90).

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93861-6.

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] See Plutarch’s “Life of Theseus,” Chs. 25-26. penelope.uchicago.edu. Accessed 10/20/2024.

[2] The senex iratus is one of several stock characters in Greek and Roman comedy; his role is generally to impose obstacles and make a fool of himself. The miles gloriosus or braggart soldier is another such foolish character—his vanity and ego get him into trouble every time.

[3] We might connect Theseus’s stance as a lover to the position of a chivalric lover during the European Middle Ages. The chivalric code in love and war amounts to a containment strategy over against the primal instincts and impulses towards selfishness and violence, lest they break out in their purest form, and civilization lose the protective shield of certain codes that constrain kings, warriors, and lovers from behaving in chaotic, unsustainable ways.

[4] See Maimonides, Moses (or Rabbi Moses ben Maimon). The Guide for the Perplexed. Trans. M. Friedländer. London: Routledge, 1910. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9/4/2024. In his Introduction’s “Prefatory Remarks,” Maimonides writes, “At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day. Our nature and habit then draw a veil over our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as before. We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves in the thickest darkness of the night.”

[5] Norton footnote 4 for pg. 412 of the current play suggests that this mixed-up title is a sendup of the titles of early plays, such as one stages by Thomas Preston, Cambyses: A Lamentable Tragedy Mixed Full of Pleasant Mirth. Shakespeare’s own propensity to mix genres in much the same way probably derives from his knowledge of his predecessors’ work. He does not observe strict generic rules or restraints in either his comedies or tragedies. On the topic of Pyramus and Thisbe, see Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Book 4.55ff. Trans. Brookes More. theoi.com. Accessed 10/16/2024.

[6] Readers of ancient Greek tragedy will easily recall that in plays such as Oedipus Rex, just to name the most famous example, violence was generally kept offstage in favor of simply recounting it. Apparently, the Greek playwrights thought that direct representation of violence would only distract their audiences.

[7] See Norton footnote #4 for pg. 413 of the current play. As the note suggests, actors did not generally receive a copy of the entire play—all they got was a strip containing their own lines and cues. See “Actors in Shakespeare’s Day” by the Utah Shakespeare Festival and “The Acting Profession of Shakespeare’s Time” by Orlando Shakes. Accessed 10/16/2024. Also of great interest: “Henslowe’s Diary as a Blog.”

[8] The descriptions of the fairies’ actions sometimes seem as if designed to evoke the small-scale transformations and natural processes of the forest, which can indeed seem magical to those who observe them closely. Early mythologies and religions often reveal this sense of human connection to natural processes and events. The myths and lore of the Greeks and Romans are redolent of such sensibilities.

[9] Hopkins, Gerard Manley. “Pied Beauty.” poetryfoundation.org. Accessed 10/20/2024.

[10] Antony’s “Mischief” accords well with “havoc” and “the dogs of war”; see Norton Tragedies 318, 3.1.275.

[11] Diana is the Roman name for the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis.

[12] See the present play at 406, 1.1.3-6.

[13] With regard to the character Oberon, see Huon of Bourdeaux, Chs. XXI-XXIII. See also the Encyclopedia Britannica entry “Oberon.” Also of interest: “Oberon.” 2018, JD MacDonald. On Titania, Wiktionary offers that this is another name for the goddess Artemis (Roman: Diana), and that the name is also etymologically close to the Greek word for the Titanesses, daughter of Ouranos and Gaia. All accessed 10/16/2024.

[14] Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731. See also The Tempest. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 397-448.

[15] Current play, Norton 439, 4.1.67.

[16] “Corin” is the name of the kindly old shepherd in As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731.

[17] As Norton footnote #6 to pg. 414 points out, a changeling is either a fairy child put in place of a stolen human child or, as in this case, the human child that has been taken.

[18] On the history of the fairy character “Puck,” see “Puck: That Shrewd and Knavish Sprite Called Robin Goodfellow.” boldoutlaw.com. Accessed 10/16/2024.

[19] The Norton footnote #7 for pg. 417 of the current play mentions this lore about the pansy flower, or “love-in-idleness” or “Cupid’s flower.” See image of pansy flower. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 10/21/2024.

[20] The name “love-in-idleness” may imply that just as Helena’s words suggest, love involves a narcissistic projection of qualities into a beloved object to bind it to us. Another thing to note about the magic of this “Cupid’s flower” is that it is pure, stripped of complications such as concern for social status, money, and so forth.

[21] Current play, Norton 411, 1.1.232-33.

[22] See Ovid’s “Apollo and Daphne” in Book 1 of Metamorphoses. Trans. Golding, 1567. perseus.tufts.edu. Accessed 10/21/2024.

[23] The term “chastity” often refers to the preservation of a woman’s virginity before marriage, but it is also used to describe the preservation of monogamy within a marriage.

[24] See Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article “Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Theories of the Emotions.” The section on Aristotle is especially valuable on the relationship between the will, emotions, and the faculty of reason. plato.stanford.edu. Accessed 10/21/2024.

[25] Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97. See 743, 1.1.1-3.

[26] See “Breaking the Fourth Wall Explained.” backstage.com. Accessed 10/16/2024. The fourth wall takes several forms by extension: the front of a stage, a camera lens, perhaps even the narrative of a book. Basically, while the audience can see and hear the actors, the actors behave as if they can’t see or hear the audience. A soliloquy—lines spoken by an actor alone on the stage at some point other than a prologue or epilogue—only breaks the fourth wall if that’s the actor’s intention.

Usually, the goal is instead to have the actor talking things out for himself or herself. Diderot’s advice to actors runs, «Imaginez sur le bord du théâtre un grand mur qui vous sépare du parterre. Jouez comme si la toile ne se levoit pas.» (Commentary author’s translation: “Imagine that at the very front of the stage a giant wall separates you from the audience. Carry on with your acting as if the curtain had never been raised.”). See this page (French) in Œuvres de Théâtre de M. Diderot, avec un Discours sur la Poèsie Dramatique, Tome Premier. Amsterdam, 1771. HathiTrust. Accessed 10/17/2024.

Sometimes, a soliloquy may hover between self-address and audience address, but in any case, soliloquy speakers reveal what they are thinking, which makes for a certain intimacy in a hushed theater. In Hamlet, Shakespeare makes the prince criticize actors who “ham it up” for the audience—that, thinks Hamlet, is a sloppy, undisciplined way of breaking the fourth wall, and it’s bound to degrade the integrity of the performance.

[27] Some critics may consider this a crude topic, sliding over into “moral panic” territory. But that need not be so. If one wants to claim benefits for engaging with the arts, it is fair to consider also that they might, at least potentially, cause harm. In “The Decay of Lying,” Oscar Wilde—certainly no proponent of censorship—notably makes his dialogic character Vivian say, “Paradox though it may seem—and paradoxes are always dangerous things—it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life.” See “The Decay of Lying.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 10/21/2024.

[28] With regard to representation’s basic limits (how realistic can a play be?), today we take for granted a host of cinematic special effects when we watch a film adaptation of a Shakespeare play. When we view a play in the theater, however, we are closer to the limitations of Shakespeare’s own day. One can only do so much by way of illusion on the stage, so Shakespeare often asks his audience to use their own imaginations. What he calls for is essentially a Coleridgean “willing suspension of disbelief.” See Biographia Literaria, and in particular, pg. 191/213. HathiTrust. Accessed 10/18/2024.

[29] Robin is part of nature’s grand perspective, so to speak, on the needs of individual humans and mating couples. He does not enter into their emotions, expectations, or customs in a granular way.

[30] See the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 1623 Folio, electronic pg. 177 col. 2. Accessed 10/20/2024.

[31] Flower lore: Diana’s bud, artemisia absinthium (common wormwood). See “Dian’s Bud and Monk’s-hood Blue” in The Shakespeare Garden, Esther Singleton, 1922. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 10/21/2024. See also “A Midsummer Night’s Garden” in forestofhearts.com blog. Dec. 2023 by Rachel Stevenson of the Shakespeare Institute. Accessed 10/21/2024. An image of artemisia absinthium. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 10/21/2024.

[32] The Norton editors refer to this allusion as well, citing the Bishop’s Bible for 1 Corinthians 2:9. ⁹But as it is written: The eye hath not seen, & the eare hath not heard, neither haue entred into the heart of man, the thynges which God hath prepared for them that loue hym.” StudyLight.org. Accessed 10/20/2024.

[33] The Norton Shakespeare’s marginal gloss of “antique” as “antic” (as in madcap or grotesque) helps us to interpret this passage.

[34] By the Roman critic and poet Horace’s time, this notion of the furor poeticus was already ancient—Plato’s Socrates, after all, describes the reciters of Homeric epic in precisely this way. See his dialogue Ion. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 10/21/2024. Horace, an urbane writer, says that the mad poet is “Like one whom an odious plague or jaundice, fanatic frenzy or lunacy, distresses; those who are wise avoid a mad poet, and are afraid to touch him; the boys jostle him, and the incautious pursue him.” Ars Poetica. poetryfoundation.org. Accessed 10/21/2024.

[35] Here we are using the word “composition” to indicate the process of writing, but sometimes, as in Romantic-Era treatises, it may refer to what happens in the artist’s mind before a poem is written down.

[36] One of the sci-fi fictive investigatory series’ catchwords was “The truth is out there.” It competed with “I want to believe.”

[37] The Norton Footnote 3 for pg. 445 of the current play says this satirical title may be topical, referring to the death of certain of Shakespeare’s fellow playwrights in difficult circumstances.

[38] In concluding his thought (and anachronism aside), Theseus might almost be leveling a shot at angry old King Lear, who clearly failed to appreciate in his daughter Cordelia what Theseus so respects in his fearful ministers and entertainers: “Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity / In least speak most, to my capacity” (446, 5.1.104-05).

[39] It’s fair to point out that most likely, everyone in the noble audience already knew the story.

[40] The Globe opened in 1599, and after 1609 or so, he also staged some plays at the more intimate Blackfriars. See Harbage, Alfred. Shakespeare’s Audience. Columbia UP, 1969. One thing to enjoy about Shakespeare’s staging of the Pyramus and Thisbe play is how the aristocratic audience seems both genuinely engaged and yet capable of conversing amongst themselves, making jokes, and passing critical judgments. Shakespeare must have noticed this sort of behavior at the theaters where he put on his own plays. A Shakespeare play in a big theater would have been spellbinding and yet quite a social affair.

[41] See Shakespeare, William. The Life of Henry the Fifth. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 790-857. The famous prologue begins, “Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention, / A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene” (791, 1.0.1-4).

[42] See Horace. Ars Poetica. poetryfoundation.org. Accessed 10/21/2024. The lines in question run, “Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, / lectorem delectando pariterque monendo; hic meret aera liber Sosiis, hic et mare transit / 345 et longum noto scriptori prorogat aeuum.” (Commentator’s translation: “He carries the day who mixes together the useful with the pleasant, / in equal measure delighting and advising the reader; / This book makes the booksellers money—this book crosses the ocean, / And ensures the well-known writer a lasting reputation.”) Ars Poetica in thelatinlibrary.org. Accessed 10/21/2024.

[43] See Sir Philip Sidney’s “Defence of Poesy.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 10/21/2024. The relevant passage is “Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle termeth it in the word μίμησις [mímesis]; that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight.”

[44] Hippolyta the fierce Amazon Queen may be amused by this silly assumption about the play’s women.

[45] See Footnote 3 for current play, Norton pg. 449.

[46] Why does the Man in the Moon need a thornbush bundle and a dog? See The Yale Historical Review’s article “The Hatch and Brood of Time 22: Followers of the Man in the Moon.” Accessed 10/20/2024.

[47] See Johnson, Samuel. “Preface to Shakespeare.” Another excellent observation in the same preface is, “The reflection that strikes the heart is not, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 10/20/2024.

[48] See Plutarch’s “Life of Theseus,” Chs. 25-26. penelope.uchicago.edu. Accessed 10/20/2024.

[49] Shakespeare’s plays ended with dancing and sometimes other forms of entertainment. See Veronica Horwell’s article “The jig is up—Shakespeare’s Globe sends them out dancing.” The Guardian Newspaper, Oct. 1, 2014. Accessed 10/20/2024.

Commentaries onShakespeare’s Comedies

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

ENDNOTES

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Comedies