Midsummer Night's Dream pt. 2

Lecture structure 1. Theseus/Hippolyta 2. Oberon/Titania 3. Hermia/Lysander, Helena/Demetrius Theseus and Hippolyta Hippolyta: Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow New bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities (Act 1, scene 1, lines 7-11) Theseus is saying time is dragging because he wants to get married. Hippolyta thinks time is passing too quickly. Doesn't want to get married. "And then the moon, like to a silver bow" Hippolyta is likening herself to the goddess Diana Diana is the goddess of chastity not the goddess of love and marriage. Hippolyta is reluctant. Theseus: Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword, And won thy love doing thee injuries; But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling. (Act 1, scene 1, lines 16-19) You are left wondering if she's being forced into this marriage. Shakespeare got the story idea of Theseus and Hippolyta from: Philochorus, and some other, hold opinion, that [Theseus] went thither with Hercules against the Amazons, and that to honour his valiantness, Hercules gave him Antiopa , the Amazon. (Antiopa = Hippolyta) But the more part of the other historiographers, [...] do write that Theseus went thither alone after Hercules' voyage, and that he took this Amazon prisoner , which is likeliest to be true [...] Bion also, the historiographers, this notwithstanding, sayeth, that he brought her away by deceit and stealth. [Plutarch, 'Lie of Theseus', in the Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes Compared , trans. Thomas North (London, 1579),p. 14] What happened next? 1. Hippolyta and Theseus have a son called Hippolytus 2. Hippolyta dies 3. Theseus gets remarried to a woman called Phaedra 4. Phaedra tries to seduce Hippolytus 5. Theseus banishes Hippolytus 6. Hippolytus is torn to pieces as he flees. Oberon: Now, until the break of day Through this house each fairy stray. To the best bride-bed will we, Which by us shall blessed be; And the issue there create Ever shall be fortunate So shall all the couples three Ever true in loving be. (Act 5, scene 1, lines 387-94) Mortals speak in iambic pentameter. Fairies speak in a more fairy rhyme type of way. The letter b is constantly repeated which drags you into linking best bride-bed to blessed be. Oberon and Titania (married love?) What is going on here? Is this what we want for the young lovers? Is this married love? What, in the end, is love? Titania is absolutely humiliated by her husband. It's all about punishment. (He makes her fall in love with a man with a donkey's head) Social humiliation, basically. When she falls out of the enchantment, Oberon points out that "there lies your love" rather nastily. The Young Lovers Lysander: For aught that I could ever read . Could ever hear , by tale , or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. (Act 1, scene 1, lines 132-134) Everything Lysander knows about love is from what he's read. [Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella , was a famous example of this kind of tale of thwarted love.] Astrophil likes Stella but Stella is uninterested. Woman put on a pedestal. Lysander is thinking about this where the woman is completely unavailable, some impediment to keep them from getting together. If he believes the course of true love never did run smooth, does that mean you can only have true love if there is some kind of impediment? How much of real emotion does he have? Hermia is 'unavailable' because her father won't let them be together. What is love? Friedrich Nietzsche: What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate - and immediately forget we have done so. Beyond Good and Evil (1973 [1886-7]), p. 83 He is saying that when you're dreaming and when you're awake, you're creating an illusion in your mind about who that person might be. Attributed to the ideal love that we read about. Raises some profoundly philosophical questions: who are we? how do we know?Is love less about the loved object, than about the person doing the loving? Theseus: Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.The lunatic, the lover, and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen s beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet s penTurns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name. (5.1.4-17) How a lover constructs a beautiful woman in his mind. Outpouring of imagination. You fabricate the people in your environment. Comes from you and your understanding. What is the fundamental thing that we call love? Lovers interchangeable: Demetrius used to love Helena but stopped because she's poor and will have no dowry. Switches his love to Hermia Demetrius is the only one that remains under the spell. So...how far can we say that A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy whose central theme is love and marriage? One final pair of lovers we have forgotten... What exactly are you laughing at, really? Pyramus and Thisbe (The play in a play) 1. Comments on theater as illusion; 2. Comments on social class; 3. Reveals a darker more tragic, side to the play's love stories You have a tragedy within a "comedy" A cross violence happening. Play wants you to laugh at mechanical characters. Reveals a much more tragic side to Lysander and Hermia: They are separated by a wall, and they ride away into the woods. But instead of running into fairies and whatnot, Pyramus thinks Thisby has been killed, he kills himself, Thisby comes in, sees he's died, and killes herself. It's about disaster and cruelty and violence. Modern movie version: Everyone assumes this is meant to be humorous. They're laughing and laughing, and then suddenly,the boy actor realized he is being mocked. He stops trying to act the woman, and is embarrassed so shows his pain. Puck: If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did apear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream. (5.1.409-14) He's saying, if you didn't enjoy it, pretend it was a dream. A frivolous bubble of entertainment. Tries to make you think of it as comic fluff. But if you think about all the questions that are brought up by the play, you can't break think of it as simply an allusion. It deals with much more tragic themes.