It is a mistake to think that prose, in Shakespeare’s plays is simply the limited speech of uneducated or “low” characters. (Apart from Theseus, Hamlet, Prince Hal [in Henry IV, part i] and Romeo all speak sometimes in prose). The idea that prose is a homogeneous indicator of class is not supported by this play, where a great variety of prose forms is used. Interestingly, even the great Theseus, addressing the mechanicals at the end of their performance puts them at ease by speaking in sober but witty well-balanced prose: “Never excuse; for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed”. As the nobles watch Pyramus and Thisbe they engage in bewildering word games: “Not so, my lord, for his valour cannot carry his discretion; and the fox carries the goose”…”His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour; for the goose carries not the fox”, as well as plain comment: “This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.” Humorous errors arise out of misuse of language: “He goes but to see a voice…”, especially the malapropism: “there we may rehearse most obscenely” or “he comes to disfigure…the person of Moonshine”. But the theatrical possibilities of prose are best shown in Bottom’s soliloquy at the end of 4.1. In the confusion of Bottom’s attempt to explain his “vision” and his garbled allusion to St. Paul, as in his perfectly inappropriate idea that his “dream” will be written by Quince as a ballad, called “Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom”, even more inappropriately to be sung at Thisbe’s death – here Bottom achieves a fantastical lyricism which matches anything that has gone before, and, because he is attempting to describe what is deeply puzzling, the confusion of his account perfectly corresponds to the confusion of what he has experienced: “…man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had”.[9]
In the Dream Shakespeare makes frequent use of formal rhetorical devices. An extensive list of these with their names is found in the Arden edition (pp. xlv-li). As many of these are over-wrought they are often used as expressions of the young lovers’ exaggerated passion. Hermia’s vow (1.1, 169 and following) has a series of phrases beginning identically: “…by Cupid’s strongest bow,/By his best arrow with the golden head,/By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,/By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves…”
Repetition and inversion abound, and frequently one character picks up a key word from another’s speech: “You both are rivals and love Hermia/And now both rivals to mock Helena” (3.2, 155-6; “I would my father look’d but with my eyes.”…”Rather your eyes must with his judgement look” (1.1, 56-7). We have lines which begin and end with the same word: “Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh” (3.2, 131), puns “For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie” (2.2, 51) and aphorisms (pithy wise sayings): “Things base and vile, holding no quantity,/Love can transpose to form and dignity” (1.1, 232-3). The most highly-organized section of the play rhetorically may well be the lines following Lysander’s dictum that “the course of true love never did run smooth” (which looks like a wise proverb but is manifestly untrue). Here, Lysander proposes a reason why love does not run smooth (beginning “Or”) and Hermia glosses it (in lines beginning with “O”). The effect of the stichomythia is complex and shows the playwright’s sense of theatre. We are inclined to see how serious the lovers’ plight is, and to extend our sympathy, but the highly formal duet strikes us as slightly artificial: we feel they are making a melodrama out of a crisis. Patterning on a larger scale is to be found in the two speeches of Oberon which attend the giving of love-in-idleness see above). Though widely-separated each uses the same verse form, and an identical number of lines. Patterning in six-line stanzas appear in 2.2, 122 ff. and 3.2, 431 ff. and 442 ff. Each woman uses the word “weary”; Helena rebukes the Night’s; Hermia awaits the day. Some kinds of wordplay have already been considered above (malapropisms; misquotation of St. Paul; Lysander’s punning). One should also note the repeated use of motif words, words which express ideas or things present throughout the play. In her first two lines, Hippolyta refers to “days”, and to “Night’s” which will “dream away the time”. Day and Night’s, time and dreams are all key ideas in the play. The moon will measure the “four days” but there is also “fairy time” to contend with. The idea of the dream recurs with Hermia’s Night’smare of the serpent, but it is in Act 4 that is importance becomes clear, and the word is repeated frequently, as Titania, the young lovers and Bottom all refer to their dreams, while in the next act, Theseus attempts to explain these dreams (with barely more success than Bottom). Puck concludes the play with his excuse that we have “slumbered here/While these visions did appear” and we are enjoined not to “reprehend” what yields no more “but a dream”. We certainly do not reprehend, but we recognize that the modesty is false. If this is “but (only) a dream” it is a dream which “hath no bottom”. Other repeated motif words are those referring to the wood and to the moon. In the latter case, by making the moon the measure of time (according to Hippolyta), the source of light in the wood (but not much, as it has almost waned), a goddess or goddesses (Phoebe, Diana, the triple Hecate) to whom in classical Athens both serious and casual reference would naturally be made and a character in the mechanicals’ play (conceived as the man-in-the-moon with dog and thorn-bush or brush) Shakespeare makes possible a huge number of occasions when these words are used. When Oberon tells Puck to “overcast the Night’s” we may stop imagining the moonlight for a while! Characters in the wood (escaping or hunting or doing observance to a morn of May) may have reason to refer to the place. The audience is thus continually reminded that the bare stage is the Palace Wood. To add hunting hounds (offstage, of course, because in “the western valley”) to our idea of the wood is no problem at all. Also no problem is believing that Puck, with his fairy eloquence, can convincingly mimic the speech of other characters.
Chapter 3. Analysis of the main themes touched in the play
1.3.1 Order and disorder as the first major theme
General comments on some of these subjects follow. A word of caution is in order first. One can readily identify possible subjects for essay questions, and you should be prepared to answer on any of these. This is not the same as writing out an essay you have prepared before the exam (always a foolish idea). Questions will be worded so as to make this difficult, and to make it obvious if you do it: examiners like organized answers but dislike the “prepared essay”. Take your time to read both alternative questions carefully. It is very often the case that a question which looks hard, because of its wording, is straightforward in reality while a question which looks simple, rarely is! Order and disorder is a favourite theme of the playwright. In this play the apparently anarchic tendencies of the young lovers, of the mechanicals-as-actors, and of Puck are restrained by the “sharp Athenian law” and the law of the Palace Wood, by Theseus and Oberon, and their respective consorts. This tension within the world of the play is matched in its construction: in performance it can at times seem riotous and out of control, and yet the structure of the play shows a clear interest in symmetry and patterning. Confronted by the “sharp” law of Athens, and not wishing to obey it, Lysander thinks of escape. But he has no idea that the wood, which he sees merely as a rendezvous before he and Hermia fly to his aunt, has its own law and ruler. As Theseus is compromised by his own law, so is Oberon. Theseus wishes to overrule Egeus, but knows that his own authority derives from the law, that this cannot be set aside when it does not suit the ruler’s wishes. He does discover a merciful provision of the law which Egeus has overlooked (for Hermia to choose “the livery of a nun”) but hopes to persuade Demetrius to relinquish his claim, insisting that Hermia take time before choosing her fate. The lovers’ difficulties are made clear by the law of Athens, but arise from their own passions: thus, when they enter the woods, they take their problems with them. Oberon is compromised because his quarrel with Titania has caused him and her to neglect their duties: Oberon, who should rule firmly over the entire fairy kingdom cannot rule in his own domestic arrangements. We see how each ruler, in turn, resolves this problem, without further breaking of his law. In the love relationships of Theseus and Hippolyta, of Oberon and Titania and of the two pairs of young lovers, we see love which, in a manner appropriate to the status and character of the lovers, is idealized eventually. The duke and his consort have had their quarrel before the action of the play begins, but Shakespeare’s choice of mythical ruler means the audience well knows the “sword” and “injuries” referred to in 1.2; we see the resolution of the fairies’ quarrel and that of the lovers during the play, and all is happy at its end. But whereas the rulers resolve their own problems, as befits their maturity and status, the young lovers are not able to do so, and this task is shared by Oberon and Theseus. Oberon orders Puck to keep Lysander and Demetrius from harming each other, and Theseus confirms their wishes as he overbears Egeus’ will. He is not now breaking his own law, because Demetrius cannot be compelled to marry against his will. A ridiculous parallel case of young lovers so subject to passion that, after disobeying their parents’ law, they take their own lives, is provided by Pyramus and Thisbe. Lysander and Demetrius laugh at the mechanicals’ exaggerated portrayal of these unfortunates, but the audience has seen the same excessive passion in earnest from these two. If Lysander breaks – or evades – the Athenian law knowingly, then the mechanicals break the law of the wood unwittingly. Puck’s conversation with the first fairy in 2.1, makes clear that the wood is where Oberon and Titania keep their court, though they travel further afield. (Oberon, according to Titania, has come “from the farthest steep of India” because of the marriage of his favourite to Theseus, while the Fairy Queen has also been in India with the mother of her changeling.) When he finds the workmen rehearsing, Puck notes the impertinence of these “hempen homespuns” being so near the bower of the Fairy Queen. And when we see that bower, we see Titania with her attendant fairies, we hear the ceremonial etiquette of their speaking in turn, even to “hail” the ass-headed Bottom. The incursion of these mortals into the fairies’ domain may be somewhat of an impertinence, but Oberon lets there be no doubt that he is ruler here. The audience, taken into his and Puck’s confidence, may see the mortals in the wood as “fools”, subject to the power of the unseen spirits; but we also see how that power is exercised for the good of the uninvited guests. Bottom, in the arms of Titania, would seem to the Elizabethan audience to be playing with fire; and yet no harm comes to him. If the principal characters in the play serve to subvert or to restore order, how do we categorize Puck? By his own admission he is the most successful of all practical jokers. And his giving Bottom the ass’s head or his delight on discovering the results of administering the juice of love-in-idleness to the wrong person (“this their jangling I esteem a sport”) suggest that he is another representative of anarchy. But charged with a serious duty, he is perfectly obedient (“I go, I go, look how I go”) and he is taken into his master’s confidence. It is Puck who perfectly explains how order is to be restored to the young lovers’ confused relations:
“Jack shall have Jill/Naught shall go ill/The man shall have his mare again and all shall be well”.[10]
It is Puck who keeps the young men from harming each other, and it is Puck, with his broom, who leads the fairies in their blessing of Theseus’ house in the final episode of Act 5. Though the hard work of restoring harmony to his own relations with Titania, and among the young lovers is principally done by Oberon and Puck, Theseus also has a part to play. In the opening scene, he is clearly trying to calm heated passions and buy time for Hermia. He does not know how or why the four lovers are “fortunately met”, but he acts decisively in over-bearing Egeus’ will but compensates him for any loss of face with the honour of a joint wedding ceremony. In Act 5, we see how his own great happiness makes the Duke more, not less, eager to promote the happiness of the young lovers (“Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love/ Accompany your hearts”) and to show considerate approval of the efforts of the amateur performers of Pyramus and Thisbe. We do not see the threat to Athenian order posed by the incursion of the Amazons, but we do see, and enjoy with Puck, the confusion of the lovers and others in the wood, in the play’s middle scenes. Though Puck and Oberon will eventually succeed, their first efforts to help Helena lead to an aggravation of the lovers’ plight: Shakespeare contrives that each of the four, by the end of 3.2 will have a different perception (in every case wrong) of his or her situation. The serious disorder brought about in the natural world by the fairies’ quarrel cannot be shown directly, but is graphically described by Titania; what can be shown is the incongruous pairing of the Fairy Queen and ass-headed Bottom. A different kind of chaos is seen in the attempts of the mechanicals to perform a play. We actually see casting, rehearsal, revision of the text and eventual performance. The ineptitude of the actors counterpoints the virtuosity of Shakespeare’s control of the play proper. This is shown both on the small and the large scale. The linguistic variety of the play (see below) and the control of the four narrative strands are such that the play has enjoyed great success in performance. In the wood, Shakespeare will leave a group of characters alone for as long as he needs to, but we never lose touch with their story. It is typical of Shakespeare that the mortals we see first in the wood are Demetrius and Helena; at once the playwright shows us the cause of Demetrius’ rejection of Helena and lets us know that the other pair are also in the wood. We do not need to see Lysander and Hermia before they have lost their way, but we are ready for Puck’s mistake as he seeks one in “Athenian garments”.
For the proper view of their plight we should look to other characters in the play. We are invited to sympathize with their situation, but to see as rather ridiculous the posturing to which it leads. This is evident in their language which is often highly formal in use of rhetorical devices, and in Lysander’s and Hermia’s generalizing of “the course of true love” (the “reasons” they give why love does not “run smooth” clearly do not refer to their own particular problems: they are not “different in blood”, nor mismatched “in respect of years”). Pyramus and Thisbe is not only Shakespeare’s parody of the work of other playwrights but also a mock-tragic illustration of Lysander’s famous remark. This is evident in a number of similarities to the scenes in the Dream in which the young lovers are present. Before the play begins, and at its end, as Demetrius loves Helena, we see two happy couples; but Demetrius’ loss of love for Helena (arising from, or leading to, his infatuation with Hermia) disturbs the equilibrium. That Demetrius really does re-discover his love for Helena in the wood (as opposed to continuing merely in a dotage induced by the juice of love-in-idleness) is clear from his speech on waking. Unlike his “goddess, nymph, divine” outburst, this defence of his love and repentance for his infatuation with Hermia (likened to a sickness) is measured and persuasive. The critic who objects to the absence of any stage direction for the giving to Demetrius of Dian’s bud, the antidote to Cupid’s flower, can be answered thus: in a performance, the audience is not likely to detect the omission; we may suppose the effects of the flower to wear off over time, but Demetrius’ love does not; in any case, Puck could “apply” the “remedy” to the eyes of each “gentle lover”, at the end of Act 3, if the director is troubled by this seeming discrepancy. But the best reason is that Demetrius’s profession of his new-found love makes the antidote or its absence redundant in his case. Early in the play we laugh at what the young lovers say. Lysander is aware of his and Hermia’s sufferings, but to pontificate about “the course of true love” generally, to say it “never did run smooth”, is risible. The alternate lines in which Lysander proposes a reason why love does not “run smooth”, while Hermia comments on his statement, invite ridicule, as his “or” (leading to another reason) is followed by her “O”, bewailing the cause of the lovers’ suffering. In the same scene, we note how the same device (_tichomythia) is used rather differently, as Hermia and Helena expound Demetrius’ preferences: “I frown upon him, yet he loves me still”/”O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!”. Here the use of similar vocabulary with opposite meaning is made emphatic by the rhyming couplet. When Helena soliloquizes about love, at the end of the scene, she speaks wisely, in her general account, but her inability to be wise in her own situation is comic. Disclosing her rival’s flight to Demetrius, to enjoy his company briefly, seems perverse, but is wholly plausible: young people in love often do silly things. In the wood, we see the likely outcome of Oberon’s orders to Puck, as we know that a man in “Athenian garments” could be Lysander, who, according to Demetrius and Helena, is already in the wood. But the multiple confusion caused by the love-in-idleness among the four lovers is richly comic in its variety. Each has a different understanding of the situation.