HCC Winter 09: LECTURE THREE
forum: Friday, January 16, 11:00-11:50, Bio Sci III Lecture Hall (this room)
office hours: Tuesdays, 1-2:45, HIB 185 (HCC Office) and by appointment, jrlupton@uci.edu
In the play, the fairies are “real.” Puck and Oberon do act
upon the lovers. Yet Shakespeare also gives us enough sense of a history of
friendship and flirtation among the young people to give the switches some
psychological coherence.
II. The Rude Mechanicals
|
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. |
> trades and mysteries: (“hard-handed men, that work in
> manual labor versus mental work
> Shakespeare:
the son of a glover addresses a courtly audience
> Shakespeare both compares and contrasts theatrical making with
manual making
> Question:
who gets to make what? (and for whom)?
***You may enjoy …. The
Beatles performing Pyramus and Thisbe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOpEZM6OEvI
My 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 status of his poetic art, but he also
acknowledges and even celebrates the role of handicrafts and collaboration in
theatrical making, including his own.
The case of
Bottom
> humiliation of Titania (by subjecting her to sexual and
romantic love for an animal)
> laughter at the working man’s expense
> body humor, sexual humor; playing to the groundlings
> yet, also a sense of wonder and tenderness
:: between Titania and Bottom
:: between Shakespeare and his creation
:: Bottom is a weaver ... and so is Shakespeare!
Bottom
wakes up from his dream:
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, he thinks
he is still rehearsing.
Patched fool: clown role. Bottom’s “ethos” or
character type is that of the fool or
clown (he would have been played by the company’s best comic actor). Here, he
becomes something more – not unusual for Shakespeare’s fools (Caliban, Jacques,
even Hamlet himself …)
Ballad: popular song. He wants to make his
dream into art, and weave it into the play-within-a-play.
It hath no bottom: mysterious, unfathomable. The “pathos” or
feeling here is of wonder and awe. Bottom is “transformed”
or “translated” from the butt of humor to a participant in mystery and wonder
-- in which we share. (We are the audience of the soliloquy.)
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. Comedy: Losses and Gains
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?
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)?
IV. 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”). Compare the movement of Bottom’s speech: he also has a vision that he wants to transform into a ballad; he has also experienced the extremes of heaven (Titania) and earth (ass).
apprehend: expect, want, anticipate
comprehend: discover, identify, fix
Logos: Imagination, the
common characteristic of poets, madmen, and lovers, should not be trusted.
Ethos: Theseus speaks as
a rationalist and ruler of
Pathos: Theseus wants to
diminish any sense of wonder we might have leaving the forest.
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, or how holidays connect us to forces and systems larger
than us.) 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.
Walls, chinks, and
moonshine ….
wall: the barrier between
lovers (rules, laws, parents).
chinks: their means of
communication; the openings that lovers find within blocked situations; holiday
and festival as a release from parental law and supervision.
moonshine: the
transformative light of imagination and experiment associated with the forest
at night – and with the collective making that theatre is. This collective
making includes both the collaborative efforts of the actors in concert with
other theatrical makers, and the “constancy,” the “fidelity” and
“standing-with” of the audience who bears witness to the play and makes its
dreams come alive.