A Midsummer Nights Dream #1

The Plan
Self-reflexivity (self-reflexive = the play talks about itself as a play; note
plays-within-plays-within-plays in MSND; self-reflexive is a key term)
Key facts
Genre: pastoral and comedy (other key terms for this week)
Comedy as NOT tragedy (binary opposites: another key term)
Problematic genre: somethings wrong in both real and fairy worlds
The cause: Oberon and Titanias quarrel (Chain of Being: another key
term)
Violence:
a) Tiffs, humphs, and fights (caesura: another key term)
b) Assification of Bottom
Pyramus and Thisbe and the court masque
Happy ending? (dream or nightmare?)



Self-reflexive: How many plays?
Play #1 = Organising the revels to celebrate
the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta
Play #2 = Oberon and Titanias argument, and
its effects (lots of little plays? e.g. Titania and
Bottom)
Play #3: Pyramus and Thisbe
Key Facts
Date: Mentioned in Francis Meres 1598 list of
Shakespeares plays. Reference in Act 1 scene 2 to
courtiers being afraid of a stage lion may allude
to an incident in Scotland in August 1594. Strong
stylistic resemblances to other lyrical plays of
Shakespeares high Elizabethan period, such as
Richard II and especially Romeo and Juliet: this
group of plays is traditionally dated to 1595-96.

Linguistic Medium: 80% verse, 20% prose
(Ed. Bate and Rasmussen, p. 17)
Key Facts
Sources: The main plot is apparently without
a direct source, which is unusual for
Shakespeare. The tale of Pyramus and Thisbe
is derived principally from Ovids
Metamorphoses, book 4. It also has strong
structural resemblances to the Romeo and
Juliet story, which Shakespeare dramatized
around the same time (Ed. Bate and
Rasmussen, p. 17)
Key Facts
Sources: Shakespeares eclectic reading

Ovidian mythology (notable, The Metamorphoses, in which humans are
transformed into animals because of bestial desires; Ovid was a Roman
poet, born 43 BCE)
Sir Thomas Norths translation of Plutarchs Lives (Theseus and Hippolyta)
John Lylys comedies (for dreaming and interplay of aristocrats and
artisans: ie the mechanicals Bottom etc)
Chaucer (lovers at the court of Theseus, dream of sleeping with an elf
queen)
Apuleius The Golden Ass (? for Bottoms transformation)

(Ed. Bate and Rasmussen, p. 17)

Key Facts: Major Parts

Bottom: 12%
Theseus: 11%
Helena: 11%
Robin Goodfellow
(Puck): 10%
Oberon: 10%
Lysander: 8%
Hermia: 8%



Titania: 7%
Demetrius: 6%
Quince: 5%
Flute: 3%
Egeus: 3%
Hippolyta: 2%
(Ed. Bate and
Rasmussen, p. 17)
The Mythical Theseus

The Mythological Hippolyta: Queen of
the Amazons

Hippolyta (and all other female characters) would have
originally been played by a boy actor

MSND and the Pastoral Tradition

a deliberately conventional poem
expressing an urban poets nostalgic
image of the peace and simplicity of the
life of shepherds and other rural folk in
an idealized natural setting. ... Classical
poets often described the pastoral life
as possessing features of the mythical
golden age. Christian pastoralists
combined the golden age of pagan
fable with the Garden of Eden in the
Bible ... To give many pastoral poems a
Christian range of reference. In the
Renaissance the traditional pastoral
was also adapted to diverse satirical
and allegorical uses (Abrams 202)
Titian and Giorgione: The
Pastoral Concert (c. 1508)

Pastoral Romance
As You Like It


... set in the forest of Arden, a
green refuge from the trouble
and complications of ordinary
life where all enmities are
reconciled, all problems
resolved, and the course of
true love made to run
smooth (Abrams 203)
Matisse: Pastoral (1905)

Comedy
In the most common literary application, a comedy is
a fictional work in which the materials are selected and
managed primarily in order to interest and amuse us:
the characters and their discomfitures engage our
pleasurable attention rather than our profound
concern, we are made to feel confident that no great
disaster will occur, and usually the action turns out
happily for the chief characters. The term comedy is
customarily applied only to plays for the stage or to
motion pictures; is should be noted, however, that the
comic form, so defined, also occurs in prose fiction and
narrative poetry (Abrams 38)
Sir Philip Sidney
Comedy is is an imitation of the common errors
of our life, which [the poet] representeth in the
most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be, so
as it is impossible that any beholder can be
content to be such a one (Apology for Poetry
117).
Romantic Comedy
Romantic comedy was developed by Elizabethan
dramatists on the model of contemporary prose
romances such as Thomas Lodges Rosalynde
(1590), the source of Shakespeares As You Like It
(1599). Such comedy represents a love affair that
involves a beautiful and engaging heroine
(sometimes disguised as a man); the course of
this love does not run smooth, yet overcomes all
difficulties to end in a happy union (Abrams 38).
Romantic Comedy continued
In The Anatomy of Criticism
(1957) Northrope Frye points
out that some of
Shakespeares romantic
comedies manifest a
movement from the normal
world of conflict and trouble
into the green worldthe
Forest of Arden in As You Like
It, or the fairy-haunted wood
of A Midsummer Nights
Dreamin which the
problems and injustices of the
ordinary world are dissolved,
enemies reconciled, and true
lovers united (Abrams 38)

Movement of Comedy

the action of comedy begins in a world
represented as a normal world, moves into
the green world, goes into a metamorphosis
there in which the comic resolution is
achieved, and returns to the normal world
(Frye qtd in Bate and Rasmussen, p. 8)




Good comedy is tragedy narrowly
averted...


(Bate and Rasmussen, p. 4)
Binary Oppositions
In critical theory, a binary opposition (also
binary system) is a pair of related terms or
concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary
opposition is the system by which, in language
and thought, two theoretical opposites are
strictly defined and set off against one
another.

It is the contrast between two
mutually exclusive terms, such as on and off,
up and down, left and right.



The first term is privileged over the
second
Tragedy / comedy
Man / woman
Man / animal
Light /dark
Right / left
White / black
Duty / pleasure
West / east
Country / city
Rational / emotional
Rational/ imaginative
Rationality / dream


Potential for tragedy: all is not quite right in either
the real world or in fairyland
Titania:
These are the forgeries of jealousy,
And never since the middle summers spring
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead.
By pavd fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beachd margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea
Contagious fogs, which falling in the land
Hath every petty river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents. (2.1.82-93)
Chain of Being
God
Angels
Man
Animals/Beasts
Hierarchically arranged (= an ideal of order)
Man is fallen, therefore imperfect. Between
angels (able to perceive with his Rational Soul)
and beasts (must try to govern his passions)

The Renaissance inherited the concept of scala naturaethe ladder
of Nature, or Chain of Being. According to this, all things in Creation,
from highest to lowest, are linked in a continuous series. In the divinely
ordered universe, everything has its proper place and its proper
relations to other things. . . . At the head of the Chain of Being comes
God, the first Mover and Maker of all things. Angels make up an order
of being between God and man and are themselves subdivided by rank
[Seraphins, Cherubim, Archangels etc) . . . Just as angels are midway
between God and man, so man is midway between angel and beast. . .
. *Mans+ higher, Rational Soul, allows him to perceive divine
perfection. But in his fallen state, man cannot always govern his
passions with his Rational Soul, and so he equally has much in
common with the beasts. This is the duality of human nature
expressed by Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and
moving how express and admirable, in action
how like an angel, in apprehension how like a
godthe beauty of the world, the paragon of
animals! And yet to me, what is this
quintessence of dust? (2.2.284-87)
Chain of being cont.
Below man come beasts, plants and inanimate
objects. These in turn are subdivided into
categories: the lion, the dolphin and the eagle
are the princes of animals, fish and birds,
respectively. The oak is supreme among trees,
and gold is at the top of the scale of minerals.
Everywhere the material world indicates a
cosmos ordered by rank (Hebron 20-22)

The Quarrel
Oberon:
Do you amend it then, it lies in you.
Why should Titania cross her Oberon?
I do but beg a little changeling boy
To be my henchman.
.....
Titania:
And for her sake *the boys dead mother+ do I
rear up her boy;
And for her sake I will not part with him .
.....
Oberon:
Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.
Titania:
Not for the fairy kingdom. Fairies, away.
We shall chide downright, if I longer stay.
(2.1.119--147)

Sir Joseph Paton: The Quarrel of
Oberon and Titania (1846)

The Quarrel
Oberon:

Ill to my queen and beg her Indian boy;
And then I will her charmd eye release
From monsters view, and all things shall be
peace.
(3.2.388-90)

When I had at my pleasure taunted her [Titania],
And she in mild terms begged my patience,
I then did ask of her her changeling child,
Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent
To bear him to my bower in fairy land.
And now I have the boy, I will undo
This hateful imperfection of her eyes.
(4.1.57-63)

Violence
1. Theseus to Hippolyta (1.1.17-20)
2. Egeus to Hermia (1.1.40-46)
3. Theseus backs Egeus (1.1.67-80)
4. Oberon will torment Titania (2.1.148-150, 180-
89)
5. Pucks pranks (2.1.43-58)
6. Puck gets it wrong (squeezes juice on Lysanders
eyes rather than Demetrius eyes: 2.2.78)
7. Tiffs Humphs Fights
8. Assification of Bottom (3.1.99)
Tiffs
Helena: Lo, she [Hermia] is one of this confedracy!
Now I perceive they have conjoined all three
To fashion this false sport in spite of me.
Injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid,
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived
To bait me with this foul derision?
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us O, is all forgot?
............................... So we grew together
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet a union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem,
. . .
And will you rent our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend? (MSND 3.2.193-217)
Humphs
(more serious than a tiff)

Helena: Fine, ifaith!
Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,
No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear
Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?
Fie, fie! You counterfeit, you puppet, you!
Hermia: Puppet? Why so? Ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures, she hath urged her height,
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevailed with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak!
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.
Helena: I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,
Let her not hurt me; ...
............... (MSND 3.2.292-308)

Tiff Humphs Fight
Hermia: . . .
Let me come to her.
Lysander: Get you gone, you dwarf,
You minimus of hindring knot-grass made!
You bead, you acorn.
Demetrius: You are too officious
In her behalf that scorns your services.
Let her alone. Speak not of Helena,
Take not her part. For if thou dost intend
Never so little show of love to her,
Thou shalt abide it.
Lysander: Now she holds me not.
Now follow, if thou darst, to try whose right,
Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.
Demetrius: Follow? Nay, Ill go with thee, cheek by jowl. (MSND 3.2.337-351)
Exeunt Lysander and Demetrius
Metamorphosis: The Assification of
Bottom

The play-within-a-play (within a play)
Masque
The masque (a variant spelling of
mask) was inaugurated in Renaissance
Italy and flourished in England during
the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and
Charles I. In its full development, it was
an elaborate form of court
entertainment that combined poetic
drama, music, song, dance, splendid
costuming, and stage spectacle. A
plotoften slight, and mainly
mythological and allegoricalserved to
hold together these diverse elements.
The speaking characters, who wore
masks (hence the title), were often
played by amateurs who belonged to
courtly society (Abrams 153)
Eric Rousset: Masques de Venise

Court Masque versus Pyramus and
Thisbe

Plot: tragedy
Actors : mechanicals
Sets: rudimentary / basic;
someone has to play
the wall
Verse: bad / clunky
Reception: mocked

The theatrical style of their performance is pointedly
outmoded, just as the subject of the story they enact
displays a more primitive violence than the actions of the
Shakespearean drama within which it is set. . . . the
Ovidian tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, of filial disobedience,
elopement and death casts a retrospective darkness over
the preceding action of the play. Even if the onstage
audience thinks the Ovidian drama presided over by
Bottom is hopelessly outmoded, the offstage audience
might see that the whole play is haunted by an ancient,
threatening presence of Ovid which it is labouring very
hard to turn into comedy. (Burrow 308)



Happy Ending?
[FAIRIES sing] The Song
Now until the break of day
Through this house each fairy stray.
To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessd be;
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate.
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be.
And the blots of Natures hand
Shall not in their issue stand.
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despisd in nativity,
Shall upon their children be. (MSND 5.1.398-411)
Perhaps *Shakespeare+ is taking dark subject-
matter violence, illicit desire, monstrous births
and transforming it into something life-
affirming, emptying it of all sinister content, just
as the play performed by Peter Quince and
friends takes another tragic tale from classical
mythology, that of Pyramus and Thisbe, and fills it
with mirth. Or perhaps he is suggesting that,
however joyous comedys climactic festivity may
be, it offers only a momentary suspension of lifes
complications (Ed. Bate and Rasmussen 7).

Mondays lecture (4 August)
The close reading passage from A Midsummer Nights
Dream.

We shall be discussing the passage in a number of
contexts: e.g. difference between prose and verse;
types of verse (especially iambic pentameter);
poetic/literary techniques such as personification,
alliteration, enjambment; key concepts in Renaissance
literature such as the Chain of Being and decorum.

You MUST bring a copy of the passage (available on
MyUni) and a copy of the play.
List of Works Cited
MSND by William Shakespeare. RSC Edition. Ed.
Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 2008.
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7
th
Ed.
Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace College
Publishers, 1999.
Hebron, Malcolm. Key Concepts in Renaissance
Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008.
Sidney, Sir Philip. An Apology for Poetry. Ed.
Geoffrey Shepherd. London: Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1965.