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Aug 07, 2013
"The course of true love never did run smooth;"
is a famous, often-quoted line - a truism throughout all ages and
cultures. Where does it come from? It is spoken by a character called
Lysander, in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, and articulates possibly the play's most important theme.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a fanciful tale, full of poetry and beautiful imagery, such as,
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with
"The course of true love never did run smooth;"
is a famous, often-quoted line - a truism throughout all ages and
cultures. Where does it come from? It is spoken by a character called
Lysander, in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, and articulates possibly the play's most important theme.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a fanciful tale, full of poetry and beautiful imagery, such as,
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:"
and,
"Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence."
It is thought that A Midsummer Night's Dream was written between 1595 and 1596, probably just before Shakespeare wrote "Romeo and Juliet",
although both underwent many revisions, both on-stage and off. And as
with all Shakespeare's plays, it is impossible to be sure of any dates
or an exact order. Unusually, the main plot seems to have been entirely
his own invention, although some characters are drawn from Greek
mythologies. Theseus, for instance, the Duke whom we learn at the start
of the play is to marry the Amazon queen Hippolyta, is based on the
Greek hero of the same name. Plus there are many references to Greek
gods and goddesses in the play. The play is set in Athens, and there is a
"play within a play" (a theme to which Shakespeare returned time after
time) which is based on an epic poem by the Roman poet Ovid.
The
play also includes many English fairy characters such as "Puck" - or
"Robin Goodfellow", to give him his alternative name. "Robin Goodfellow"
is a particularly English figure, who was very popular in the
sixteenth-century. Fairies had been very much respected and feared for
time immemorial. People were in awe of their magical powers. They were
believed to often be mischievous at the very least, if not positively
malignant, and names such as "Goodfellow" were meant to appease or
pacify them, so as not to incur their vengeance. The moon was a source
of myth and mystery, to be wondered at and its influence possibly
feared. Oberon's,
"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania"
And Puck's,
"Now it is the time of night,
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide:"
are
indicative of the audience's superstitions and the common beliefs of
the time. Many such elements in Nature were viewed as supernatural; what
we now term "pagan" was the norm, and although people were fascinated
by the fairies and "little people", they also feared them. Puck's
comment,
"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
could
be voiced by any fairy up to mischief. The woodland at night would be
both enchanting and thrilling to an Elizabethan audience - an
unpredictable place of danger and possible bewitchment. The fantastical
atmosphere, and the magic of the surreal fairy sphere which Shakespeare
conjures up, are important and unique elements of this play.
The
third component is the depiction of ordinary working trade and craftsmen
in London of the time, and the theatrical conventions such as men
playing the roles of women. The scenes where these foolish and absurd
characters are involved provide much of the humour. They often make
laughing stocks of themselves via Shakespeare, for our entertainment,
and although much of this play seems strange and whimsical to a modern
audience, it is classed as one of his comedies. It is completely
different from any other of the plays which Shakespeare had written up
to that point, although some of the themes present themselves again in "Romeo and Juliet", but given an entirely different emphasis and dramatic intent.
One
such theme is the ownership of females by their father. The play opens
with Egeus asking for Theseus's support, in insisting that Hermia
(Egeus's daughter) should marry whom he chooses,
"As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law"
(The
third choice, if his daughter refuses to do her father's bidding, is
for her to live a life of chastity as a nun, worshipping the goddess
Diana.) This was the prevailing ethos in Elizabethan times, and there is
no question that a daughter was the legal property of her father.
Additionally, a common justification for choosing a future husband for
his daughter could be summed up in the idea that "love is blind". Egeus
is not merely insisting on his rights as a father, but wants the best
for his daughter, and according to the Elizabethan view, thinks that an
arranged marriage is the best way of protecting her from any irrational
romantic nonsense.
Hermia herself is refusing to submit to her
father's demands, as she is in love with Lysander. This theme, of a
young girl's rebellion against her father, is against all conventions of
the time, and is taken up with a devastating conclusion in "Romeo and Juliet." Shakespeare's own views on the power of love are unclear. Helena says,
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:"
which
could easily be the author's voice, and tends towards the opposite
view. Perhaps one could speculate that this could have been the reason
why he developed the idea further, to make a much more serious statement
in his tragic play.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, however,
is a much more frivolous and fanciful affair. Not one love affair but
three are intertwined throughout the play. Demetrius, whom Hermia has
been commanded to wed, is in turn loved by Helena. So Hermia loves
Lysander, and Lysander loves Hermia. Helena loves Demetrius - but
Demetrius also loves Hermia rather than Helena. So one young woman has
two suitors, the other none, but since four are involved the audience
are hoping for a traditional "happy ending". In the meantime, there are
plenty of chances for misunderstandings.
As the play proceeds we
are invited to laugh at this hapless group, in their lovelorn
afflictions, rather than feel any true sympathy, because the whole
affair is portrayed in such a light-hearted way, as opposed to the
tragic story of young love, "Romeo and Juliet", which has
probably not yet been completed. In that play there is tension
throughout, and the sure knowledge, (as the audience had been told in
the prologue) that there would be no happy outcome. Here we are free to
poke fun at the young lovers' "torments", as we are fairly sure of
everything ending happily.
Other characters who become involved
in the confusion are "Titania", queen of the fairies, and "Oberon" king
of the fairies. Shakespeare has taken the character of "Titania" from
Ovid's "Metamorphoses", and his "Oberon" may have been taken from the medieval romance "Huan of Bordeaux", translated by Lord Berners in the mid-1530s.
In A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Oberon is jealous of Titania's favourite, a changeling Indian child.
She is keeping the child as a page, but Oberon wants to train him as a
knight. All the young lovers from Athens, plus the main fairy
characters, are in the woodland for various reasons at the same time.
The woodland of course being also the realm of the fairies, much
confusion is bound to follow. The audiences of the time will have
greatly anticipated and appreciated this devilment, as "Robin
Goodfellow"'s pranks and tricks will have been well known to them.
To
a modern audience, the events seem farcical, and the play does require
quite a leap of faith to enjoy the fairytale whimsy of the woodland
scenes. Nevertheless, the scenes of passion between the beautiful,
graceful Titania and the clumsy Bottom, with a grotesque ass's head, are
so incongruous that its humour is timeless and crosses any boundaries
with ease.
There are other "opposites" which tickle our funnybones even after so many centuries. Helena is tall, a "painted maypole", whereas Hermia is short, "though she be but little she is fierce,"
and both their scuffles and the enchanted lovers' declarations seem
deliberately ridiculous in this context. They are overly earnest and
serious - and followed immediately by joking, merry, clumsy workmen. All
the fairies are ethereal, Titania being particularly beautiful; all the
craftsmen earthy and clumsy, Bottom being particularly grotesque. Puck
plays pranks, whereas Bottom is an easy and natural victim. Puck uses
his magic with ease, whereas the craftsmen's attempts to stage their
play is laborious and ridiculous by contrast. The incompetent acting
troupe's enactment of the "play within a play", "Pyramus and Thisbe",
is still humorous even now. Juxtaposing these extraordinary differences
to exaggerate the contrast, meant that Shakespeare ensured laughs from
his audience, while heightening the surreal fantastical elements.
The
idea of dreams is perhaps the central pivot of the play. Events happen
in a haphazard fashion, and time seems to lose its normal motion and
progress. No one in the woodland scenes is ever in control of their
environment - even Puck makes mistakes with his love potions. He
gleefully revels in such mistakes,
"Lord, what fools these mortals be!
...
"Then will two at once woo one, -
That must needs be sport alone;
And those things do best please me
that befall preposterously."
Yet
Theseus and Hippolyta are always entirely in control of their rational
world. The audience is given no explanation for the fantastical woodland
sphere, with its illusions and fragile grip on reality. Shakespeare is
clearly manipulating our sense of understanding throughout, inducing a
dream-like feeling to the action.
The love potions are magical or
supernatural symbols of the power of love itself, inducing the same
symptoms that true romantic lovers exhibit in their natural state, of
unreasoning, fickle and erratic behaviour. No one who has been given a
love potion in the play is able to resist it, much as falling in love
appears to others to be inexplicable and irrational.
Towards the end of the play we have a delightful rendering of the bumbling tradesmen's attempts to stage "Pyramus and Thisbe," which Shakespeare has taken from Ovid's epic poem "Metamorphoses". He also incidentally uses the plot again for "Romeo and Juliet",
which seems quite bizarre, given the way it is used as a ludicrous
farce here. Theseus and Hippolyta are well aware that the enactment of
this play may be farcical and clumsy. They have been warned by
Philostrate that the production is by "hard-handed men", (or as Puck calls them "rude mechanicals") and that their production is,
"Merry and tragical! tedious and brief
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow"
and
this adds to their anticipation. And Theseus will welcome the diversion
of such fancies. His wise words earlier, about his world of the
rational,
"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends"
could refer both to the action which we have seen so far, and the workmen's play we are about to see.
The
audience views this absurd little play through the eyes of Theseus and
Hippolyta. The young Athenian lovers are also present, having been
satisfactorily paired off, as we suspected they would be. Everyone is
relaxing and poking fun at the hapless players,
"This is the silliest stuff I ever heard"
protests
Hippolyta, but Bottom, the bumbling buffoon, breaks out of character
every now and then, to earnestly assure his audience that all is as it
is meant to be - they merely need to keep watching and they'll
understand...
Shakespeare has written their performance as a
delicious satire of the overly melodramatic earlier actions of the young
lovers, and recognising this makes it even more hilarious to the
audience. The young Athenians' overpowering emotions are made to seem
even more ridiculous by virtue of these clumsy actors and this provides a
comic ending to the play. Since the Pyramus and Thisbe of the
craftsmen's play were themselves facing parental disapproval, it
encapsulates and echoes the whole play within which it is set.
The
final speech by Puck highlights the thematic idea of dreams. If the
audience does not care for the play, he says, or if we have been
offended by it, then he suggests it should be considered as nothing but a
dream. It is interesting that the fairies are all still present as the
wedding are about to take place. Shakespeare's message is not entirely
clear here; it is as if he is merging the fairies and their magic with
Theseus and Hippolyta's rational world. Perhaps it is to convey that we
will never be free of the irrationalities and unpredictabilities of
romantic love; either that or that the fairy folk will always be around
us to create havoc. The workmen's play was mocked by Theseus and
Hippolyta, perhaps the message is that human behaviour and ceremonies of
the larger play, that is the real rational world, are unknowingly
mocked by the fairy folk. Who knows?
A Midsummer Night's Dream
is not one of Shakespeare's greatest masterpieces. Although it remains
popular and is staged quite regularly, this may be down to imaginative
staging and the exceptional production values we now have. On the page
it reads as an inconsequential play, all whimsy, candyfloss and fluff.
It is both significant and noticeable, how Shakespeare revisited some of
the themes here, in "Romeo and Juliet," but in that play he used
them with such skill that he created an abiding and deeply tragic
drama. In both plays we have the intoxicating and overwhelming influence
of romantic love, the powerlessness of young women to rise up against
their families and conventions, and the "potions" to influence a
particular course of events; all those elements are here too, but
combined to make a fantastical, frivolous, illusory bit of nonsense.
However there is much beautiful poetic imagery in this play, such as,
"My soul is in the sky"
"Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;"
"...by thy gracious, golden, glittering streams" and,
"O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!" (even if this last is to an ass...)
Yes, A Midsummer Night's Dream
does provide a few smiles even now. And if your taste runs to flights
of fancy; if you like to read tales of fairies such as Peas-Blossom,
Cobweb, Moth and Mustard-Seed, using language and imagery such as,
"Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:"
"[I] heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back..." or
"Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness"
if
you are attracted by gauzy fragility and a sense of illusion, then you
may enjoy the fantasy and whimsy of Shakespeare's play. For as "The
Bard" says,
"... 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."
...more
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