10.

Midsummer Night’s Dream

The forest as a theatrical stage…

Levels of reality and illusion

By now you have become completely familiar with the notion of suspension of disbelief.
It was only given a name in 1817 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the romantic poet – two
centuries after Shakespeare’s time, and well after the Greeks also played with the notion,
but definitely in use much before the 19th century poet theorized it.

It was the time when Coleridge was working along with William Wordsworth on the
publication of their Lyrical Ballads. It was a time when, unlike in the Elizabethan age,
people tended to be pragmatic and to reject what they could not understand or explain
scientifically. It was indeed the time of the industrial revolution, against which
Coleridge and Wordsworth were among the first to react, hence probably the necessity
for them to theorize the notion.
The idea was later taken up by J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings) in an
essay written in 1939, in which he declared he preferred to speak of a secondary belief
based on an internally consistent fictional world. Tolkien says that, in order for the
fiction to work, the spectator or reader must believe that what he sees or reads is true
within the secondary reality of the fictional world.

Whatever term you may use, the general idea is that you are ready not to be concerned
with the verisimilitude of a situation, that you are willing to ignore the reality of what
you are viewing and rather adhere to what the sight you are viewing is pretending to
show you. You are ready to believe that there is a lion on the stage if you are told this is
one. You will not be afraid, but you will not see an actor, you will see a lion.
The supernatural aspects of things were easily taken for granted on Shakespeare’s time
– just as they may be in certain cultures still today, in which the notion of verisimilitude
is not relevant. But many of Shakespeare’s plays show his concern with the audience’s
response to illusion and reality. Remember the prologue to Henry V:

…let us, ciphers to this great accompt,

On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies….
[…]
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
[…]
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
[…]

The concern with illusion and reality is particularly present in Midsummer Night’s
Dream, in which the forest may be seen as the mise en abyme of what Tolkien called
the internal world.
The whole play requires of course our suspension of disbelief: we take the actors for the
characters they impersonate and believe that we are shown Athens and a forest –
Tolkien’s secondary reality. What happens in the forest is a dive into a third level of
reality, a magical world in which all sorts of things become possibly, which can only be
understood as a dream by the characters from the city, unreal as it appears to them. The
suspension of disbelief or adhesion to the internal world is thus left for the audience only
to experience – we have seen fairies, but the Athenians haven’t – except for Bottom,
who enables us to step into yet another dimension.

What the Athenians are supposed to experience is suspension of disbelief when they
attend the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. But there is no room for suspension of
disbelief, because there is no way they can believe what the mechanicals perform before
them – all the less so as the mechanicals themselves make sure to deconstruct the
artifices they use.

The Pyramus and Thisbe’s play within the play.

You know about Shakespeare’s habit of introducing a subplot that parallels the main
plot and serves to reveal certain aspects of the main story - a subplot usually showing
lower class people or servants, to match the aristocratic characters of the main plot
without however putting them in the shade.
Another characteristic trait of Shakespeare’s art is the insertion of a play within the play,
as is the case for instance in Hamlet, with the insertion of the performance of “The
Mousetrap”, which enables Hamlet to be sure of Claudius’ guilt, since Claudius is scared
when he sees a representation of his own crime. Another example of encapsulation may
be found in The Taming of the Shrew, in which the audience watches the character of
Sly watching a play. And even the interlude in The Tempest is a way of producing a
mirror image to one element of the plot, as a teaching to the lovers.

But things are trickier with Midsummer Night’s Dream. The multiplication of parallel
love stories on so many different levels (Duke and Queen, four young lovers, Oberon
and Titania, Titania and Bottom, and finally Pyramus and Thisbe) makes it just
impossible to establish a hierarchy between the stories, and the ruling class people come
to be elbowed aside not only by supernatural beings but even by the rudest mechanicals.
The Pyramus and Thisbe episode somehow steals the show, a reminder of the tragedy
the lovers’ story might have turned into. So much so that Theseus, first relegated to the
role of a bystander, is not even given the last word, which rests with Oberon, Titania
and Puck. Worse, when Theseus leaves the stage for the last time, Puck comes in – “sent
with broom before / To sweep the dust behind the door” - …Theseus as mere dust….

But there is more to this than the putting of characters on the same footage. If the basic
plot is a love story, that of Pyramus and Thisbe is also one of course, but if we consider
that it is as a play that it is a subplot, then what it mirrors is…. the whole play, as a
play, and not as a plot. And the subplot is a way of commenting upon the basic one,
not in terms of contents but of form. What is thus in question is again the art of staging,
and the interlocking of audiences.
An immediate analysis of the use of prose and verse underlines the double play with the
audience that is being “performed”.
We know that the use of prose versus verse in Elizabethan plays has a social
significance. It is thus quite natural that the mechanicals should speak in prose, while
the people belonging to the upper classes should use verse. So would the fairies, because
of their special status above normal people.
Quite expectedly, the prose that Quince and his mates use is dropped when they perform
the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude. It is meant to be a play in the purest style – at least
as the mechanicals intend it, even though it takes the form of a farce, a caricature, when
performed by them, because of their excess of zeal combined with their incompetence.
But what they mean to perform is a piece of ART, for which verse is required.
Meanwhile, their spectators speak in prose, thus somehow lowering themselves to the
level of commoners – or perhaps rather using the sort of language a general audience
may be supposed to speak when coming to the theatre. They switch back to verse the
moment the Pyramus and Thisbe play ends.

We may thus want to look at the mechanicals’ performance as a lesson (or counter-
lesson) on the art of the theatre.
Turning their performance into a caricature enables Shakespeare to underline what
dramatic art should or should not be – possibly as a means of distancing his own art
from the more basic forms of medieval drama. Medieval plays portrayed highly
caricatural characters, which was understandable if one considers that the plays were
performed outdoors, where types had to be exaggerated in order to be better perceived.
Only the later building of proper theatrical spaces made it possible to refine the action
and the characterisation.
The old technique which blended the narrative parts and the action, to make up for what
was too difficult to represent, is also caricatured, with the mechanicals making self-
announcements of who they are, explaining at length and too systematically what they
are representing in case their audience does not get it.

Cf Snout: “In this same interlude it doth befall/That I, one Snout by name, present a
wall”…
Cf Snug, as the Lion: “You, ladies…. / May now perchance both quake and tremble
here,/ When lion rough , in wildest rage, doth roar./ Then know that I, as Snug the joiner,
am / A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam.”
Cf Starveling as Moonshine: “This lantern doth the horned moon present,/ Myself, the
Man i’ th’ Moon, do seem to be…”

The mechanicals have so much difficulty telling reality from fiction that they need to
literally make one with the character they embody. Thus, the wall can only be a wall if
Snout is covered in plaster. But conversely, the insistence on the part of the mechanicals
that their audience may be explained how theatrical illusion is being used, as if the
audience knew nothing about it, is just as caricatural; they first consider it in act III, sc
1, when they are afraid the audience might be put off by Pyramus drawing a sword to
kill himself:

Bottom – There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please.
First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How
answer you that?
Snout – By'r lakin, a parlous fear.
Starveling – I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.
Bottom – Not a whit: I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue; and let the
prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not
killed indeed; and, for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not
Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear.

In the same way, with the lion:

Snout – Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?
Starveling – I fear it, I promise you.
Bottom – Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves: to bring in – God shield us!
– a lion among ladies, is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl
than your lion living; and we ought to look to 't.
Snout – Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.
Bottom – Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the
lion's neck: and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect,–
'Ladies,'– or 'Fair-ladies– I would wish you,'– or 'I would request you,'– or 'I would
entreat you,– not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours. If you think I come hither as
a lion, it were pity of my life: no I am no such thing; I am a man as other men are;' and
there indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.

And this is indeed what Snug will perform in act V :

Lion (Snug) – You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear
The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
May now perchance both quake and tremble here,
When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am
A lion-fell, nor else no lion's dam;
For, if I should as lion come in strife
Into this place, 'twere pity on my life.

By making it clear that there are actors behind the characters, the mechanicals underline
the fact that the audience may not be aware of what theatrical illusion is – and we do
know from archives that it was sometimes the case indeed : a spectator getting on stage
to stop a character from killing another one – while we know of course that an actor has
no intention of killing another actor.
There is little risk here that this may happen indeed, so intent the mechanicals are upon
making sure their audience sees the tricks. They are so afraid of having the audience
mistake the illusion for reality (which is indeed the aim of all theatre) that their audience
will indeed never take them for anything but bad actors showing themselves not in a
story but in performance (which is what the audience should want to forget)

Shakespeare the playwright may well be having a laugh not so much at the expenses of
an ignorant audience as at the over explicit dumb show which accompanied the plays of
his contemporaries. There is such a show for instance in Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy
– as if the audience was incapable of understanding what was going on by themselves.
However, one may retort that it is exactly what happens in Henry V, at the beginning of
each act...

Also mocked is the role of a woman given to a man: Flute, who is to play Thisbe, objects
that he has “a beard coming”, and his voice has already broken. The use of a mask to
hide his male identity only underlines more the substitution. Similarly, Bottom’s
insistence on his ability to perform several roles (he suggests he could be Lion and
Pyramus as well as Thisbe) is Shakespeare’s hint at the lack of enough actors to play
all the parts.

Snug describes himself as being “slow of study”, and we know that actors were given
very little time for learning their parts, while consecutive performances were seldom
given, which implied quite a deal of improvisation. This is parodied when Flute says he
rehearses “all his part at once, cue and all”, or when Starveling alias Moonshine mistakes
Pyramus’ last line before dying “Moon, take thy flight” for a stage direction and leaves
the stage in such darkness that Thisbe cannot see him – Hippolyta is aware that
Starveling has made a mistake indeed and asks: “How chance Moonshine is gone before
Thisbe comes back and finds her lover?”

A similar caricature of the actor’s job may be found in Quince’s suggestion that Snug
play the lion “extempore, for it is nothing but roaring”. Shakespeare may suggest that
on the contemporary stage, much of the speech was nothing but “extempore roaring”.

Caricatural too is the style of Bottom in rehearsals, often loftier than necessary, with
excessive use of rhymes: see act I sc. 2:
Bottom, asking Quince.... – What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant?
Quince – A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.
Bottom – That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience
look to their eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest: yet
my chief humour is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to
make all split.
The raging rocks
And shivering shocks
Shall break the locks
Of prison gates;
And Phibbus' car
Shall shine from far
And make and mar
The foolish Fates.

Bottom alias Pyramus’ s words in act V/ or rather Quince’s, since he is the playwright,
may appear as a derision of the excess of poetical devices:

Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;

I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;
For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams,
I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.
But stay, O spite!
But mark, poor knight,
What dreadful dole is here!
Eyes, do you see?
How can it be?
O dainty duck! O dear!
Thy mantle good,
What, stain'd with blood!
Approach, ye Furies fell!
O Fates, come, come,
Cut thread and thrum;
Quail, crush, conclude, and quell!

What a lesson in alliterations indeed...

The many critical comments on the part of the noble spectators also suggest the flaws
in performance:
Theseus about Quince delivering the prologue “This fellow does not stand upon points”
– a kind comment upon the mere punctuation, when in fact whole of Quince’s speech
has been expressing the exact opposite of what he really meant:

Enter QUINCE for the Prologue

Prologue
If we offend, it is with our good will.
That you should think, we come not to offend,
But with good will. To show our simple skill,
That is the true beginning of our end.
Consider then we come but in despite.
We do not come as minding to contest you,
Our true intent is. All for your delight
We are not here. That you should here repent you,
The actors are at hand and by their show
You shall know all that you are like to know.
If the role of a comic actor was, and has always been, to mistake the words in such a
way as to say offending matters under the guise of blunder, truly offensive lines in a
play at the time of Shakespeare could entail imprisonment… Here, Quince is not
performing as a comic actor but as a very serious one. But the actor performing Quince
is a professional one who perfectly masters his part as a clumsy mechanical playing the
actor before a fictitious audience. So who is to be offended after all?

Theseus’ comments on the role of the spectators is also instructive: the spectators within
the “spectacle” – within the show – have to use their knowledge and imagination to the
best to give some substance to the play.

Thus, even before the mechanicals’ performance starts, Theseus answers Hippolyta’s
fear that the play may be bad indeed with these words:
“The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.
Our sport shall be to take what they mistake.
And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect
Takes it in might, not merit.”

Once the mechanicals have started performing, Theseus similarly continues suggesting
that the audience is in part responsible for the quality of the play, as the audience should
be capable of compensating for the lacks in it.

To Hippolyta again, who remarks “ This is the silliest stuff that I ever heard”
Theseus replies: “The best, in this kind, are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if
imagination amend them.
Hippolyta – It must be your imagination then; and not theirs.”
Theseus – If we imagine no worse of them, than they of themselves, they may pass for
excellent men.”

Then further, when Hippolyta is “aweary of this Moon. Would he would change”,
Theseus requests that they be patient: “It appears, by his small light of discretion, that
he is in the wane; but yet in courtesy, in all reason, we must stay the time.”

When Bottom comes back on stage to suggest they present the epilogue or a Bergamask
dance, the Duke answers:
“No epilogue, I pray you […which we might take to be a sign of impatience or
boredom… The Duke trying to get to the end of the whole thing as soon as possible, as
we remember how eager he was to see time pass fast… However, he rather kindly carries
on :] for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse: for when the players are all dead,
there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus, and hang’d
himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine tragedy: and so it is truly, and very
notably discharged. But come, your Bergamask…”

Theseus’ impatience has in fact been relieved by the mechanicals’ performance: “This
palpable-gross play has well beguiled/ The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.”
This is possibly how Shakespeare might expect his own audience to behave and react….
The indulgence required on the part of the audience, should anyone feel like criticizing
the whole play, is thus included within the play. The whole time of the play has been
entertainment. Remember Theseus’ impatience at the beginning of the play – remember
Philostrate’s appearance, disappearance and reappearance as if “nothing” had happened
in between Act 1 and Act 5. But this “nothing” has been the play performed before our
eyes, similar in scope to the play performed before the characters’ eyes: much ado about
nothing: much indeed to be done about it.

It is interesting to note that when it comes to the encapsulation of drama within drama
for the sake of dramatic form, the suspension of disbelief only affects the secondary
level of reality, not the third.
It is fairly easy for us to conventionally forget the actor playing the part of Theseus.
It is even possible to see the “translation” of Bottom into an ass. We are aware of a mask
being put on his head, but we are aware that we must imagine that he has been turned
into an ass, and we take it for granted. But when we see the mechanicals performing
their interlude so poorly and we laugh, we laugh at the poor performance – which is not
that of the actors performing the parts of the mechanicals. Food for thought…