HCC Winter 08: LECTURE THREE
I. Waking Up
Titania wakes up from her affair with Bottom. (IV.i.79-105; pp. 62-63)
Theseus and Hippolyta woke up early to go hunting. (IV.i.106-130; pp.
64-65)
The young lovers wake up. (IV.i.131-202; pp.
64-66)
Bottom wakes up from being an ass. (IV.i.203-222 pp. 66-67)
What are they waking up to? With each couple and each character, what has been gained, what has been lost, and what are the opportunities for growth?
Gains
> Marriage or remarriage is on the horizon for
four couples.
> Cosmic order restored (fairies).
> Political order restored (
> A future launched (the next generation).
Losses and changes
> Hermia and Helena have lost their intimate friendship.
> Demetrius is “back” with
> Lysander has experienced love for someone else.
Will this make him a better partner?
> Theseus begins the play siding with Egeus. He
ends the play ruling in favor of the lovers. Has he become more flexible?
> Hippolyta no longer rules her own kingdom. Does
she gain some interpretive and deliberative power in a new polis?
> Oberon has had to see his wife in love with an
ass, and accept the fact that it was his idea.
>Ttitania has to give up sheltering the childhood of the Indian boy, and
let him grow up among men. Is this a form of growing up for her, too?
Ř
Titania has also had to give up Bottom, whom she loved erotically, not
just maternally. Can she transfer any of this love back to Oberon?
Rate those Relationships?
Hermia and Lysander: solidest ground
Demetrius and
Theseus and Hippolyta: we have hopes for them (and
Oberon and Titania: not sure what this couple will
talk about at night (or what it means for climate change).
II. Bottom’s Dream: the final awakening
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 in the forest. 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 deep connections between the trade guilds or “mysteries” and the
“mystery plays” or sacred dramas of the Middle Ages.)
Some things to note about Bottom:
> 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
:: Bottom gets to be in a“mystery
play” after all??
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?
III. Theseus, Hippolyta,
and Shakespeare on the Imagination
HIPPOLYTA:
‘Tis strange my Theseus, that these
lovers
speak of.
THESEUS:
More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and
madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than
cool reason ever comprehends.
The
lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of
imagination all compact:
One sees
more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is,
the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in
a brow of
The poet’s
eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth
glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies
forth
The
forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns
them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local
habitation and a name.
Such
tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it
would but apprehend some joy,
It
comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the
night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
(V.i.1-22)
antique: old, classical; crazy, weird, grotesque
fairy toys: silly stories about fairies
shaping fantasies: active imaginations (negative sense? positive sense?)
apprehend: grasp, intuit, imagine
comprehend: understand, make sense of, submit to reason
compact: composed of; in agreement on.
sees Helen’s beauty …. : imagines a dark-skinned woman to be fair
imagination bodies forth …: the poet makes things up in his mind, and then uses language and writing (“the poet’s pen”) to give them existence as poetry (“a local habitation and a name”).
apprehend: expect, want, anticipate
comprehend: discover, identify, fix
HIPPOLYTA’S RESPONSE
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images
And grows to something of great constancy;
But,
howsoever, strange and admirable.
All their minds: the young people all
underwent the same experience.
More witnesseth....: appears to be more
than simply something made up
Constancy: consistency,
coherence; but also, fidelity, faithfulness. Etymology: standing (stans), together (con-).
Admirable: causing wonder;
strange (but also, deserving our attention, respect, admiration).
Circle
all the “together” words:
all, all, together,
witnesseth, constancy
What
does togetherness have to do with theatre? We sit or stand together and witness
a common spectacle, a common scene in which works of the imagination are
literally “bodied forth” by actors on the stage. They work together
collectively, so that we can witness together, as a group, the stories they act
out for us.
Shakespeare on the
Imagination: Points and Arguments
Theseus’ argument: the
rationalist
Poets are no better than madmen and lovers. They
simply make things up and then write them down, just as madmen see devils
everywhere, and lovers believe that their beloveds are the most beautiful
people in the world.
Hippolyta’s response: the
romantic
The fact that the young people’s stories are
consistent (“constant”) with each other means that maybe something did happen in the forest.
In any case, their story deserves our attention and gets us thinking.
Shakespeare’s argument :
the poet-dramatist (my interpretation!!)
“Things unknown” are not necessarily false. Poets
use imagination and fantasy (like fairy stories) to think about truths
concerning human relationships (such as how people use stories and traditions
to “make” their lives.) Moreover, dramatic poetry is special because it is a
shared art, an art of “witnessing” and “constancy.” We assemble “all together”
to witness and think through these imaginative fictions as a group, remaining
“constant” to a shared social vision through the things “bodied forth” in the
theatre.
III. Pyramus and Thisbe: Questions and Challenges (if we run out of time, we will cover this material in the next lecture!)
the play the mechanicals have chosen to perform: the
tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe
> from the Latin poet Ovid
> source text for Romeo and Juliet
> parallels with the main story
> games with genre: tragedy becomes comedy
> the Mechanicals’ staging worries:
::frightening
the ladies
:: how to represent Wall and
Moonshine
The
play-within-a-play: another case of Shakespeare weaving various media,
traditions, and plots into a single imaginative world (review our thesis about Shakespeare
the Maker).
Wall, chink and moonshine:
their meanings in the larger play
wall: the barrier between
lovers (rules, laws, parents).
chink: their means of
communication; the openings that lovers find within blocked situations.
moonshine: the transformative
light of imagination and experiment associated with the forest at night – and
with the possibilities of theatre.
Shakespeare on moonshine:
“Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:
To-morrow night, when Phoebe [moon] doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal,
Through
(I.i.208-213;
p. 10)
Wall, Chink, and Moonshine:
the mechanicals’ approach
The Rude Mechanicals use human actors to represent
these elements.
wall: played by Tom Snout the Tinker
chink: ditto (with his finger and thumb!)
moonshine: played by Robin Starveling the Tailor with a lantern
The humor here:
> They could have made props! (After all, we know
they have the skills, and know what to do with a hammer.)
> They misjudge the audience’s imaginative and
rational capacities.
::
They worry that the audience will think it’s a real lion.
::
They expect the audience to accept a man as a wall.
::
Moonshine is not a thing; it’s an atmosphere and a mood.
Challenge for directors:
> Keep
it funny.
> Don’t make all the jokes at the expense of the
Rude Mechanicals.
> Thesis recap: Shakespeare’s double relation to the Rude Mechanicals.