“Making
love” in Shakespeare
> In “the course of
true love” speech, Shakespeare catalogues for us the different love stories
available to him. (Compare “tagging,” “linking,” and “branding” today.)
> His characters are also aware of these
different stories, and must figure out their relationship to them. Recipes for
attitude [hermia]? for action [lysander]? for disaster [
> Both Shakespeare and his characters are making
their own stories out of a database of available plots.
I.
Meeting the Rude Mechanicals, Act One, Scene ii
|
Quince the Carpenter |
Carpenter = builder (structure of the building, not details) |
Quince = “quines,” blocks of wood use for building |
director |
|
Bottom the Weaver |
Weaver = maker of cloth |
Bottom = skein on which the yarn is wound; also, bottom as “butt” or “ass” |
he plays Pyramus, the tragic lover |
|
Flute the Bellows Mender |
Bellows mender = repairs the bellows used to increase the flow of air to a fire. |
Flute = fluted bellows for a church organ; high pitched voice of a boy actor before his voice changes |
He plays Thisbe, the female lead |
|
Snug the Joiner |
Joiner = skilled carpenter who makes stairs, cabinets, finishings |
Snug = close-fitting, well-joined |
He plays the Lion |
|
Robin Starveling the Tailor |
Tailor = sews clothes (costumes!!) |
Starveling = tailors were proverbially thin |
He plays Thisbe’s mother |
|
Snout the Tinker |
Tinker = mends metal household items such as pots and pans. |
Snout = spout of a kettle |
He plays Pyramus’ father. |
The Rude Mechanicals
and Making
Ø They are makers by profession.
Ø Their making, however, is considered lesser
than that of poets (“hard-handed men, that work in
Ø Their skills would have been needed by the
theatre (costumes, sets, draperies, props).
Ø Before the Reformation, each guild was
expected to help put on a “mystery play” (a play with a religious theme;
performed in English, not Latin; by tradesmen; in a “pageant wagon” or
two-tiered movable float).
> Asses (donkeys) were featured in some
mystery plays and public religious processions. For details, see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01798b.htm
Ø These men, however, are not performing a
Bible story, but rather a tale from classical poetry (the Latin poet Ovid – we
will talk more about the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in Lecture 3)
Ø Shakespeare was fashioning himself as a poet,
a literate “maker” of worlds, and in the first performance at least, he was
addressing a courtly audience who did not participate in the trades.
Ø He was, however, the son of a glover, and had
some ties to the guilds and craft traditions. The audience in the public
theatre would have included working men among the “groundlings” as well as
successful independent craftsmen in the galleries.
More on mystery plays: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/mi-sampler/mystery_plays.htm
Not sure what the Reformation was? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation
thesis:
the rude mechanicals and theatrical making
In the scenes with the rude mechanicals, Shakespeare
pokes fun at working-class men in order to establish the higher ground of his poetic
art, but he also acknowledges and even celebrates the role of handicrafts in
English theatre.
**Paper prompting:
Good performances manage to include and communicate both of these impulses. How
does Michael Hoffman’s film staging represent the Rude Mechanicals as both
comic figures and figures worth identifying with? How will your staging
incorporate Shakespeare’s double relationship to his craftsmen-characters?
** View clip here: https://eee.uci.edu/programs/humcore/Student/Fall2007/video/Chapter_4.swf
/
Mozilla browser best.
II.
Meeting the Fairies
Last time, we talked about
Shakespeare’s use of classical mythology – the characters of Theseus and
Hippolyta – as one of the traditions that he draws on in “making” the world of MSND. Yet it feels more like an English
estate than the Athenian polis, and when we leave the court for the forest, the
Englishness of the setting and of the traditions that Shakespeare is drawing
on.
English folklore and holidays
> May Day: villages celebrated spring and
fertility with dancing, a Maypole, and the crowing of a May Queen on May 1.
> “maying”: Girls would gather flowers in the early
morning, often with young men, in preparation for the day’s festivities.
“Maying” could also just mean springtime courtship in general.
> Midsummer Night: June 23, the eve of
> Midsummer madness: “a state of mind
marked by a heightened readiness to believe in the delusions of the
imagination.” (Introduction, p. lxiv)
More on maying: http://www.capjewels.com/mgp/Maying.html
Fairies:
> Fairies are spirits
of nature. They are part of rustic (rural) English paganism, an ancient folk
tradition that preceded Christianity, merged with Catholicism, and was under
some attack by the Reformation.
> They were also part of poetic high culture (Edmund
Spenser’s great poem The Faerie Queene,
was published in 1590.)
Some scholarly sources on fairies in Elizabethan
England:
Britanica
On-Line
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9033595/fairy
Spenser
Encylopedia (through Google Books)
http://books.google.com/books?id=LPxd5sliodAC&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=elizabethan+fairy&source=web&ots=lOnULZ6piK&sig=20JIP-kA68oMEFDPvyEwC9DJZvM
Oberon
>King of the Fairies
>stage director of the fairy action
Titania
>Queen of the Fairies
>Her power struggle with Oberon mirrors Hippolyta’s forced courtship
by Theseus
Conflict in
Conflict between Fairy King and Fairy Queen can cause disturbances in
nature.
Psychological level as well: as if our own parents were fighting
>object of contention: the Indian Boy
::child
:: page/ servant
:: token of a lost
relationship with the boy’s mother
TITANIA
Set your heart at rest:
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following,--her womb then rich with my young squire,--
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.
(II.i.122-127; pp. 21-22)
votaress of my order: human follower of the Fairy Queen
Find Metaphor One: ships with sails filled with wind look like pregnant women
Find Metaphor Two: the pregnant woman, fetching snacks for Titania, resembles a ship filled with merchandise.
Puck
> household spirit
> leads travelers
astray
>pranks and tricks
> works for Oberon
“I am that merry wanderer of the night;
I jest to Oberon and make him smile …” (II.i.43; p.
18)
III.
The Young Lovers Get Lost
Recall the situation at the beginning of the play:
>Hermia and Lysander are in love
>Demetrius used to love
>
In the forest, thanks to the intervention of Puck and a
magical flower called “love-in-idleness,” both Demetrius and Lysander love
How do we understand causality in this scene? Are the young people just puppets of magical beings? Or does the magic work with, bring out, certain conditions and possibilities already inherent in their relationships and interactions?
Ø human factors: prior friendship and intimacy of the young people
Ø supernatural factors: Puck and the magic flower
Ø mediating between the human and the supernatural: holidays and rituals, which provided some of the framework of their earlier games with each other
Looking for evidence?
“In the wood, a league without [outside] the town,
Where I did meet thee once with
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay [wait] for thee.” (I.i.165-68; p.9)
>They have met here before.
>The ritual of maying, as a social rite, provides a framework for young people to meet and mingle
>The ritual of maying, as a religious rite, links the human to the supernatural
> Maying: one of the traditions out of which the lovers
make, unmake, and remake their relationships. (Remember our thesis: “They must learn how to make their
ways through a landscape shaped by rules, stories, traditions, and images.”)
FOUR
LOVERS ON STAGE AGAIN:
Act Three,
Scene Two
HERMIA: O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom!
You thief
of love! what, have you come by night
And stolen
my love’s heart from him?
Have you
no modesty, no maiden shame,
No touch
of bashfulness? What, will you tear
Impatient
answers from my gentle tongue?
Fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet, you!
HERMIA: Puppet? why so? ay, that
way goes the game.
Now I
perceive that she hath made compare
Between
our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with
her personage, her tall personage,
Her
height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him.
And are
you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I
am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am
I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am
I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto
thine eyes.
Juggler: street
performer; someone who uses sleight of hand to switch things around in the air
Counterfeit: lier,
faker, pretend friend
Puppet: doll, puppet.
Toy, theatrical prop. Made thing.
Thou painted maypole:
maying imagery comes back – in the form
of insults!
>Notice the use of theatrical
language and language of making (counterfeit, juggler, puppet, maypole) in
their “stagey” fight
> Very funny on stage – but
also a sense of the cost to H and H’s friendship brought about by this whole
adventure (and indeed by courtship and marriage as such).
> Are they all “puppets,” or are they also authors of their own stories?
Do you enjoy Shakespearean Insults? Visit The Generator:
http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html?
III. Bottom’s Dream [IF TIME!!]
> more metamorphosis
> humiliation of Titania
> humiliation of Bottom
> body humor, sexual humor
> yet, also a sense of wonder and tenderness
:: between Titania and
Bottom;
:: between Shakespeare and his creation
When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer: my
next is, ‘Most fair Pyramus.’ Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the
bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God’s my life, stolen hence, and
left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit
of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound
this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I
was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. 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. I will get Peter
Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play,
before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at
her death.
(IV.i.203-221; pp. 66-67)
When
my cue comes: Half-awake, half-asleep, Bottom thinks he is still rehearsing.
Heigh
ho! Peter Quince! Etc. : looks for his friends and can’t find
them.
But a
patched fool: Bottom is playing the fool’s part in the play. In this speech,
he begins to be something more.
Ballad:
song (popular song, story song). Bottom
wants to make his dream into art, and weave it into the play that he and the
mechanicals will perform.
It
shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom in it: the
word “bottom” moves here from “ass, butt,” into something deeper, as Bottom
becomes a witness to “bottomless” wonder and mystery. Recall that historically,
guildsmen had been responsible for putting on the great medieval mystery plays. A Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes a bit
of a “mystery” itself, brushing against things unknown and supernatural.
(Remember the link between the trade guilds or “mysteries” and the “mystery
plays” or sacred dramas of the Middle Ages.)
Staging
note: Kevin Kline’s performance of the speech in Michael Hoffman’s
1999 production captures Bottom’s capacity for dignity and wonder. How would you deliver these lines?