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Copyright
©
(2007) JOHN HUDSON All Rights Reserved
LAYERS OF MEANING IN SHAKESPEARE; THE EXAMPLE OF
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM 
by John Hudson
The Shakespearean author used a technique of writing on many different layersso that she could communicate what she wanted to say to anyone who took thetrouble to study carefully what she had written. Using Jewish styles of reading itwould not be hard to understand the true meaning, but the Christians who justread the two top layers would understand nothing of what they were about.Each play is written as if it were a building, like a house, with multiple floors.Different sets of events take place in each different ‘floor’ and each usesdifferent terms and language. The audience or reader is supposed
to go vertically up and down between the different floors 
and to put it all togetherin order to work out what the whole ‘house’ actually means.
Surface Level;
In the top story of the house that is
A Midsummer Night’s Dream 
 there is the peculiar tale about the actor who plays Bottom who falls asleep in awood and finds himself among a world of fairies. He is transformed into an assand the fairy Queen, who has the odd name Titania, has sex with him. Sheorders people to pluck the wings off butterfies, and to amputate legs off thebees.There is also a fight between Queen Titania and King Oberon, which is neverproperly explained but is about a little Indian boy who Titania has captured andcrowned with prickly flowers—this being the main sort there are in the forest.Oberon wants him back but we never are told why. Then Bottom acts a part in aplay in which he stabs himself to death. This
is a most peculiar plot 
, but thereis a reason why it is like this. To understand it you have to look at all the layers.
Contemporary allegory
; The next level down in the house is contemporaryallegory. It tells us that the Fairy Queen represents Queen Elizabeth, who wasdescribed in Spenser’s famous poem as the Fairie Queen. She is described in theplay as imperial, like an Emperor. Her motto was ‘always the same’, which couldbe seen as obstinacy.That is why the Fairy Queen caresses the Ass on her lapand strokes his ears. It follows a standard emblem for obstinacy. Bottommeanwhile represents King James. He eats oats and the Scots love theirporridge. He thinks a thistle is a flower—and it was the national flower of Scotland. He itches and scratches, like King James who suffered from a skincondition.
Medieval allegory;
The next level in the house is the medieval level, the time of Chaucer. Here we find the plot that involves the girls, it has been based on a girlcalled Emily --another of the ways that Amelia wrote herself into the plays. Wealso find that Bottom has been based on Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas, a comicidiot knight who wore Jewish armour. This is the first indication that the Bottomcharacter might be a comic Jew.
 
Copyright
©
(2007) JOHN HUDSON All Rights Reserved
Queen ElizabethTitaniaTitus/  Domitian King OberonYahwehTheseus King James BottomMinotaur St Paul/Jesus Daughter of  A Titan EmilySir Thopas Hermia Little Indianboy
TOP STORYLEVELGROUND FLOOR LEVEL; THEBIBLICAL SATIRE& INTERTEXTCONTEMPORARYALLEGORYMEDIEVALALLEGORYCLASSICALALLEGORY
Three crosses & Bottom/Jesus dies withPierced side, and should have hung
 
Copyright
©
(2007) JOHN HUDSON All Rights Reserved
Classical allegory;
Down to the next level, which is that of classical mythology,Bottom is identified as a monster like the minotaur in the labyrinth—who gotkilled by Theseus, who is also in this play. There are references to thread, whichTheseus used to get out of the labyrinth. It is also at this classical level that wesuspect that Titania might be one of the names of Diana—Queen Elizabeth likedto pretend she was Diana—and refers to her being the daughter of a Titan. Thisis however not the whole story.
Biblical Allegory;
If we peel off these other layers then we reach the final layerwhich is set in the time of the New Testament.. Bottom acts a part in a play inwhich he is “a most lovely Jew” (3,1,90). He quotes the letters of St Paulthinking he had been translated into heaven. He tries to quote 1 Corinthians butgets the body parts wrong. Bottom kills himself by stabbing himself in theside—like Jesus was stabbed in the side. We are told the play ends with apassion. There is a suggestion he should have been hung . The light disappearsand people play dice at his feet---all like in the Gospel crucifixion story. Thenhe is resurrected (5,1,336). It also turns out that Pyramus and Thisbe are atraditional allegory for Jesus and the Church (Jesus dies for the love of theChurch, Pyramus dies for the love of Thisbe).To further alert us, in the symmetrical structure of the play, the crosses in theHermia and Helena dialogue are paralleled by the implicit crosses in theperformance of the Mechanicals’ play—the account of a rehearsal in whichsomeone is stretched with cruel pain, the death Bottom as a rewriting of thepassion narrative, and Thisbe who has been hiding like a silkworm under themulberry tree, a traditional metaphor for the crucifixion.)At this deepest layer—which is
Biblical allegory mixed up with the events of the Roman-Jewish war 
fought by Titus Caesar – we find the name Titania wasone of the names of the Flavian family, such as Titus’s sister. Here in
AMidsummer Night’s Dream 
the author is depicting Titus/Titania as destroyingthe bees, by amputating or pruning off their limbs -- which is indeed how Titustreated Eleazar the true Jewish messiah during the Jewish War. The bee imageryis a pun which refers to the traditional messianic dynasty of Israel, namely thelineage of the Maccabees. The playwright has created a graphically accurateportrait of how Titus treated Eleazar the Macca-bee.The reason that Theseus says that Bottom may recover
at the hands of the surgeon 
and prove an ass is that this echoes the crucifixions that Titus orderedand are described in the autobiography of Josephus, which invites the reader tointerrogate the relationship of these 2 crucifixion stories---one supposedly thattook place in the year 33, the other in 73, but which have remarkable andstrange relationships;- in both 3 men are crucified,-in both one man survives (and in one of these cases it is at the hands of thesurgeon),-in both the person taking down the bodies is a Josephus,-in one case his surname is bar Matthias, in the other ariMatthea,-in one case taking place at the hill of the empty skull, in the other at the villageof the inquiring mind.
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