A Midsummer Night’s Dream, April 23, 2024

AMND – The title page from the first quarto, printed in 1600.

We were celebrating the 460th birth anniversary of William Shakespeare. Many of us will remember the major way in which KRG celebrated the 450th birth anniversary with a week-long festival at David Hall, beginning with an opening ceremony on April 21, 2014.

This comedy from 1595 has one plot line about the marriage of Theseus, ruler of Athens, with Hippolyta, and two sub-plots. The major sub-plot involves two pairs of lovers who are confused about whom to marry because of the magical love juice spread by Puck, at the command of Oberon, King of the Fairies. The other sub-plot is a play within the play conducted by rough working men called ‘mechanicals’ concerning the story of Pyramus and Thisbe which they want to perform for the wedding ceremony of Theseus. Puck’s character is so memorable that ‘puckish’ has become a word to express playful humour.

The business about the wall in the play (the occasion for a very rude scene) is because Pyramus and Thisbe as mentioned by Ovid lived next-door to each other and spoke through the adjoining wall, after being forbidden by their parents to marry. The origin of the Romeo and Juliet story also lies in the same tale of Ovid.

We see many kinds of love on display: unrequited love (between Helena and Demetrius), love quarrels: (between Oberon and Titania). There’s passionate love too, parental love and mad sexual love. Shakespeare depicted them all in this short play. But one thing is assured:

The course of true love never did run smooth (Lysander)

Theseus speaks another truth:

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.

                                                                      

Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Titania and Bottom (1848) painting by Edwin Landseer.

We even hear Bottom (the working man player who becomes the ass of Titania’s affections) exclaim after his other-worldly experience in fairyland:

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.

He is employing a vision of St Paul from the first letter to the Corinthians, verse 2:9, expressing the epiphany that will be revealed to the blessed in the life to come, surpassing all human imagination. Though, being Bottom, he gets the quotation mixed up between ear and eye. Incidentally, the name Bottom comes from the next verse in Tyndale’s translation of the Bible (recall that the St James version came only after Shakespeare’s death): 

But God hath opened them vnto vs by his sprete.

For ye sprete searcheth all thinges ye the bottome of Goddes secretes.

(In the KJV this is rendered

But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.)

After many mixups and fruitless pursuits Oberon intervenes with more love juice to pair the correct lovers, and his own beloved Titania too has been cured of her fascination for the ‘changeling’ and is content to please her husband with a gift of the boy.

All is well and the working men with their play and the lovers with their new-found happiness grace the occasion of the duke’s wedding. 

Puck delivers the parting oration

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber'd here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend:

if you pardon, we will mend:

You have but slumber'd here