6.1.2 The post-climax of the comedy
All loose ends of the plot have already been tied; what happens in the scene we already know, save for the selection of the workmen’s play, which is not surprising. The play is a celebration of marriage:
· the “tragical mirth” of Pyramus and Thisbe in its original story points to the dangers of passionate love, from which our lovers have been delivered;
· in its dialogue and performance, it shows that creating dramatic narrative is not for amateurs;
· but in its well-meaning presentation to the newly-weds it proves Theseus right in his claim that “…never any thing can be amiss/When simpleness and duty tender it”.
The presence of the mechanicals at the wedding feast reflects the connected or organic nature of hierarchical society, and identifies the good ruler with his loyal subjects. A far more serious celebration follows: the fairies, led by their king and queen and the inevitable Puck, bring to the bedchambers the fertility, and to the children, in due course, the good health which all those in the audience would wish to enjoy. This is remarkably simple, but is formally arranged:
· the discussion of the lovers’ “dreams” at the start of the scene mirrors Puck’s description of the audience’s slumbering “while these visions did appear”;
· the hilarious and good-natured entertainment at the wedding-feast gives way to a more serious, but equally joyful, blessing by the fairies;
· reversing the order in 4.1, Theseus’ exit is followed moments later by the entrance of the fairy king: day gives way to Night’s, earthly rule to that of the good spirits, as Theseus understands in urging retirement to bed, not because he is impatient, or overwhelmed with desire, but because: “’T is almost fairy time”.[7]
The opening of the scene is quite intimate: Theseus speaks seriously to Hippolyta (he is not inhibited by the presence of so trusted a servant as Philostrate; a ruler of his standing would rarely be alone with another person). The episode is fairly static to allow the debate to be heard, but the arrival of the four young newly-weds brings Theseus to a consideration of the short-listed entertainments for his wedding-feast. He is given a written list of these, which he reads, evidently for the first-time, half aloud, half to himself. His interest in Pyramus and Thisbe alarms Philostrate, who tries to dissuade him. When this “play” is performed, we see exaggerated histrionic gestures, and such redundant devices as actors playing the wall, moonshine and the lion. These three introduce themselves and explain what they are doing (the wall also explains his exit from the stage). Bottom and Starveling both step out of character to address their audience directly. For other clues to the nature of the action we must look to the remarks of Theseus and his guests. After the bergomask dance, and the departure of the nobles, we see the far more skilful dancing of the fairies, by means of which they enact their magic. At last, the actor playing Puck steps half out of character to address the audience; to do this he will come to the front of the stage, and end by calling for applause. The set-piece discussion of imagination, especially of “the lunatic, the lover, and the poet” is the last in series of commentaries on reason and love which runs through the whole drama. The long speeches, in tetrameter couplets, of Oberon, Titania and Puck, perfectly fit their r”le here of beneficent and magical spirits. Throughout this play, Shakespeare has used enomous variety of verse forms and prose: almost always these perfectly fit their dramatic context, whether for carrying narrative, expressing argument, meditation on an idea, describing what we cannot see or casting a spell. We often laugh at characters, but we never laugh at the dramatist’s control of his medium. Lest we take this for granted, Pyramus and Thisbe serves as a corrective. We see here what happens when rhetorical devices and rhyme are used mechanically and without sensitivity. Quince’s garbling of the punctuation makes the Prologue less intelligibl;e but no less pompous and windy. We find weak rhymes (“Thisbe/secretly”; “sinister/whisper”), excessive use of “O” (167 ff., but we have caught the lovers doing this before, if to a less degree), crude stichomythia (191-200) and tongue-tying alliteration (“Quail, crush, conclude and quell” or “Come blade my breast imbrue”).Shakespeare shows clearly in the rest of the play how to avoid lines which the actor cannot speak, unless the character is knowingly playing with sound effects) and simple inaccuracy, especially where terms have been mixed up (“I see a voice”; “Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams”; “These lily lips,/This cherry nose,/These yellow cowslip cheeks”). The play is not so bad that the workmen cannot plausibly take pride in it. But the educated nobles can see its faults readily. Of course, we can see skill in its composition: Shakespeare has contrived the verse form, so that errors and crudities are pointed by the rhymes, and the whole has a rollicking metrical energy which exactly matches the gusto of the inexpert but enthusiastic actors. The male and female leads have lines which are meant to give scope for the actors’ great talent: there are fairly long speeches, with overwrought climaxes. We suppose that while Bottom is cast as Pyramus because his exaggerated delivery commands respect among the workmen, Flute is cast as Thisbe because he is the youngest man (his beard is only now beginning to grow).
Chapter 2. The brilliant majesty of Shakespearean language one the example of the comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
1.2.2 The language of Shakespeare
Although we can observe features of the play’s language on the page, it should be noted that the play was written (never published) by Shakespeare for theatrical performance, and that effects of language are meant to be heard, as by an attentive audience they would be. Moreover, few of these effects are merely decorative; most help interpret the action on stage. In discussing the play’s language, you should not merely list matters of interest, but should structure your comments according to categories or some other arrangement. The headings under which this section of commentary has been arranged may help.
By narrating events, Shakespeare is able to shorten the time directly represented on stage while providing the audience with necessary background information. Good examples of this would be Puck’s account to the fairy of his master’s quarrel with Titania, or Titania’s own account of how she came by the changeling child. Where a tale may be already known to most of the audience, the narration can be very brief, as in Theseus’s “I wooed thee with my sword/And won thy love, doing thee injury”. More immediate events not directly shown may also be narrated, as when Puck tells the audience he has gone through the forest “But Athenian found I none”, or when Oberon tells Puck how he has met Titania, “Seeking sweet favours for this hateful fool” (Bottom) and that she has given up the child. Description, often with an element of narration, is essential to this play.
Imagination is an important theme, and the playwright boldly initiates a debate about imagination in the latter part of the play. “The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them”, to which comes the retort that in watching Pyramus and Thisbe the “audience” must compensate for the defective imaginations of the “performers”. In the Dream, as elsewhere, Shakespeare depends upon, but successfully excites, the audience’s imagination. Things that cannot possibly be shown on stage are described vividly to us. These include:
· Oberon’s celebrated “bank whereon the wild thyme blows”
· Lysander’s and Hermia’s description to Helena, in 1.1, of the moonlight and the wood;
· Helena’s description in 3.2 of her “school-days’ friendship” with Hermia, with its repeated images of “union in partition”,
· and Puck’s description of Night’s terrors at the end of the play (“Now the hungry lion roars/And the wolf behowls the moon”) contrasted with the security of those in Theseus’s house (“…not a mouse/Shall disturb this hallow’d house”).
A sense of the fairies’ magical power and of exoticism is established in references to remote places (“the farthest steppe of India” or “the spiced Indian air”) or Puck’s ability to circle the earth in “forty minutes” (much less on stage). The wood, too, is exotic and ambiguous: it is beautiful but dangerous. The description of these things contrasts with the more homely and familiar elements: the native English flowers and herbs, and the folk traditions reflected in Puck’s account of his mischief. Often narration and description are mixed. This is true of the example cited above of Titania’s account of the “votaress” of her order, as well as of her account of the disruption in the natural world caused by her quarrel with Oberon. Oberon, in his account of the “fair vestal, throned by the west” also mixes narration with descriptive detail, as does Puck when he explains to his master how “Titania wak’d and straightway loved an ass”. The frequent references to the wood and the moon instruct us to keep thinking of what we cannot directly see, while a line such as “weeds of Athens he doth wear” explains Puck’s mistaking Lysander for Demetrius. What the playwright conveys here is not sartorial information but the nature of Puck’s error. Lysander could be wearing any style of clothing and we will accept what Puck says.
Comment is of course frequent in Shakespeare: characters comment on their own situation, on others’ actions, or more generally. In the play’s first act Lysander, Hermia and Helena comment on their own situation and move on to make general statements about love. Helena’s general comments are wiser, as her own conduct is more foolish. In the final act of the play comes Theseus’s extended discussion of the imaginations of poets, lovers and madmen, while some of the most memorable comment is made pithy by its brevity: “Reason and love keep little company together nowadays” and “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Theseus’s long speech on imagination is addressed ostensibly to Hippolyta but has the quality of thinking aloud usually found in the soliloquy, while two other remarkable extended comment-speeches (Helena at the end of 1.1, and Bottom at the end of 4.1) are soliloquies. All of these invite the audience to reflect, with the speaker, on the subject of his comment. In this play songs have a special place, as in The Tempest. They allow unusual verse-forms, and these suggest to the audience the magical power that the fairies command. For the magic of “Cupid’s flower” and “Dian’s bud”, a rhythmic tetrameter couplet (eight syllables, or seven by omission of the unstressed syllable, but always with four stresses) is used, and becomes the characteristic voice of Oberon, Puck and Titania in the latter part of the play. (In 2.1, not doing magic, but discussing their own affairs all three use the pentameter line, whether in couplets or blank verse.)
Where dialogue is not in the form of narrative, description or comment (that is, most of the time) it carries the action of the play. Thus, in the first scene Egeus and Demetrius demand a favourable judgement, Hermia asks what her options are but shows her seriousness, Theseus plays for time, the lovers resolve to flee from Athens and inform Helena who decides to betray them. The action of the next scene, as the mechanicals prepare their play, is far less schematic: all are on stage for the whole scene, and each tries to help the common purpose, although Quince at first and subsequently Bottom have more to say.
To clarify what can be a confusing play, Shakespeare has used more variety in the form of the dialogue than in most plays. Indeed, the amount of dialogue which is in rhyme is only exceeded by the earlier comedy Love’s Labours Lost. In the Dream blank verse frequently gives way to rhymed couplets or more elaborate stanza forms, but is used for moments of high seriousness, where the use of rhyme gives a lighter effect. Good examples of this use of blank verse would be in the middle part of 1.1, where Theseus tests the seriousness of Hermia’s love for Lysander, 4.1, before Bottom wakes, and Theseus’s “lunatic…lover…poet” speech in 5.1. But the best example comes in 2.1. Puck and the fairy have been speaking in couplets; their talk is of the homely pranks which Puck plays, and this comes after the brief account of Oberon’s and Titania’s quarrel. Thus, the change of mood from the light-hearted couplets about Puck’s practical jokes to the angry opposition of the fairy king and queen is perfectly tritium by the opening outburst: “Ill met by moonlight”. We will find similar transitions elsewhere, often switching from blank verse to the couplet to accelerate the action. At the end of 3.2, the two young women speak in matching six-line stanzas, while Oberon uses the same tetrameter line (twice the rhyme goes beyond a couplet) for giving love-in-idleness and later its antidote (2.2, 26-33; 3.2, 102-109 and 4.1, 70-73). The pentameter couplet is well-suited to the low comedy of Puck’s pranks (2.1, 42 ff.) as it is to his account at the start of 3.2, of how his mistress “with a monster is in love”. The same line used earnestly with no trace of irony shows how ridiculous are the protestations of love for Helena made variously by Lysander (“Transparent Helena! Nature shows art,/That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart”) and Demetrius (“O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!/To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?”). Here the line is used mechanically but it can be used more fluently, as in Oberon’s pastoral lyric (“I know a bank etc.”), by Titania (“Out of this wood do not desire to go”) and by Hermia (“Now I but chide, but I should use thee worse,/For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse”). We note, however, that as the young lovers’ dissension moves to passion and the threat of violence, the playwright returns to blank verse. After Puck has safely separated the antagonists, the impending resolution is shown by the return to rhymed verse: the two men speak in couplets, though Puck supplies whole or half lines; the two women speak in a six line stanza form (which, interestingly is used in successive speeches by Lysander and Helena, in 3.2, just after Puck’s “Lord, what fools these mortals be”) and Puck concludes the scene with a song: “On the ground/Sleep sound etc.” What is striking is how the same formal line, such as the couplet, is used to such varied dramatic effect: Puck’s homely account of mischief, the exaggerated passion of the young men or the beautiful lyricism of Oberon’s description of Titania’s bower. The tetrameter, always rhymed, usually in couplets, is used with less variety and only by the fairies: in the theatre it quickly comes to suggest to the audience a sense of magical activity, and it is the dominant verse form at the end of the play’s last two acts. This line is used as Oberon and Titania “rock the ground whereon these sleepers be” and as they “sing and bless this place”, and it is the line used by Puck as he addresses the audience at the play’s conclusion.[8]