"Cliff Notes - Midsummer Night's Dream, A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

^^^^^^^^^^A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: LINES 60-187

The chatter between Puck and the fairy is ended by the sudden appearance of Oberon at one end of the stage and Titania at the other. The mood, as suggested by Puck, is dark and angry. "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania" is Oberon's welcome. The moon's light, which is generally their natural accustomed light, has turned sour. This king and queen are in a mutual rage--his, a jealous one, as Titania points out. She is ready to leave immediately. Oberon upbraids her; is he not her lord? But Titania is not the kind of woman who can be easily pushed around. If he is her lord, she asks, why has he gone running around with Phillida (a familiar figure in romantic poetry)? And not only that--isn't the real reason he's come to Athens so that he can bless the union of Theseus and Hippolyta, his "former mistress" and "warrior love"? Obviously, the jealousy works both ways. Try to understand both of their sides. Is Oberon being too domineering? Is Titania neglecting her duties? Oberon and Titania are not nice "airy sprites" or tiny, funny elves. They are both mighty magical powers. They rule over an enchanted and mysterious realm, and they are filled with intelligence, passion, and cunning. They have the full range of human emotions, but their power is more than human. Oberon throws back his accusations: Titania is herself in love with Theseus and has previously caused the duke to break off with other of his affairs.

Titania, exasperated, replies that all of that has been concocted by Oberon's jealous imagination. Ever since the beginning of midsummer, Oberon has spoiled all their meetings with his jealous rages. More than that: this disturbance between them has set the whole natural world out of order. The primal forces themselves seem to be taking revenge on the king and queen who are so furiously at odds. The winds have sucked up fogs from the sea and overswollen the rivers with their contents. The ox and the farmer have labored in vain; the grain is rotting in the drowned field. The cattle are dead and the crows fat from feeding off them. The lovely English mazes and lawn games are full of mud. Even the moon is so angry that she spreads diseases through the air. The picture is absolutely frightening. It's almost as if biblical plagues have descended on England, corrupting its beauty. The very seasons are out of whack. Nobody can tell whether it's summer or winter. Frost falls on the new rose and spring buds burst through the snow and ice. And all of this, explains Titania, has occurred because she and Oberon have lost their harmony.

NOTE: This confusion in the natural world indicates how powerful Oberon and Titania are. You all know how difficult a family disturbance can be; sometimes it feels as if the whole world is breaking apart. But with Oberon and Titania it seems to be literally true. That their quarrel affects nature also displays the ways in which the different realms of the play affect each other. Each set of characters (the court, the lovers, the fairies, and the rustics) reflects and comments upon the others.

Titania's speech contains some of the most beautiful language in the play. Part of the excitement in experiencing Shakespeare is in noticing how rich his writing is, how fully he explores and expands his images and brings them to life. To really make the natural disasters vivid, he uses personification. All the forces of the world seem to act with will and emotion, just as people do. The wind sucks up water from the sea "as in revenge"; the rivers overflow because they are "proud"; the moon is "pale in her anger." The whole scene, then, is alive with feeling. And when things have feeling, don't you have stronger feelings for them?

Oberon tells Titania it's within her power to restore order to the world: all she has to do is give the changeling boy to him. Titania is not interested. She explains how close she was to the boy's mother, how they gossiped and played together. The woman unfortunately died in childbirth, and for her sake Titania plans to rear the boy.

How long does she plan to stay in the woods? Oberon wants to know. Perhaps till after Theseus's wedding day, she replies. If the king wants to dance in the moonlight with her, fine; if not, let them be. Oberon wants only the boy, "Not for thy fairy kingdom," cries Titania, and off she goes.

Oberon, a haughty and relentless presence, immediately plots his revenge. He calls Puck to his side, reminiscing about a time he heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back singing so beautifully that "stars shot madly from their spheres" to hear her music. (Scholars have pointed out the similarity between this image and some spectacular court entertainments for Queen Elizabeth in the late sixteenth century. This is sometimes used to help date the writing of A Midsummer Night's Dream.) That same time, adds Oberon, he saw Cupid flying, armed with arrows of love. He aimed an arrow at a virgin, but missed. (It has also been suggested that the virgin was a reference to Queen Elizabeth, known as the Virgin Queen.) Oberon, being sharp of eye as well as mind, marked exactly where the misdirected arrow fell. Do you get the feeling this jealous king doesn't miss a thing? He seems to have stored up potential magic charms the way a dog might store some bones. He knows they will come in handy some day.

The arrow fell on a flower, turning it from milk-white to purple. This startling sexual imagery makes us feel the dangerous and eerie power of Cupid's arrow. The wound it makes is "love's wound." The flower is called love-in-idleness; we know it today as a pansy. Filled with Cupid's magic, this transformed flower has the power to transform others. Its juice, squeezed on a sleeper's eyelids, will make that person fall in love with the next live creature he or she sees. Note Shakespeare's use of the word "creature" to indicate that the love object might not necessarily be human.

NOTE: SHAKESPEARE AND FLOWERS: In trying to give you a picture of the power of the fairy world, Shakespeare relies heavily on the use of flowers. They seem to stand as special signposts of magical transformation. Flowers and plants have traditionally been associated with magic, and in the case of certain herbs their curative medicinal powers are well-known. In Shakespeare's time, much scientific, philosophical, and magical investigation was devoted to the powers and properties of plants and flowers. But no matter how much scientific understanding we have of them, their colors and intricate forms still instill in us a sense of wonder.

Sometimes Shakespeare compares the fairies to flowers in terms of their height. This makes them seem as if they're part of another dimension, even if we can see that on the stage they're the size of people. Some of the fairies even have floral names, connecting them to some elemental mystery. Later, Oberon will repeat the names of flowers as if they were magical incantations.

Here the love-in-idleness plant is symbolic of the power in love to change people, altering their inner and outer natures. Swollen as it is with the "poison" of Cupid's arrow, the flower is the essence of the nature of love. And the nature of love is at the heart of this play.

Notice also the recurrent theme of eyesight. In this instance, the eyes of the sleeping lover-to-be are altered by the juice of the plant. What "creature" this person sees on awakening--worthy or not--will become the object of love.

Oberon commands Puck to get that flower. The spriteful Robin obeys quickly: He'll "put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes." Alone, Oberon tells us his secret plan. Titania is to be the victim upon whose eyes the charmed juice will work its magic. And don't expect kindliness from the king; he's not after a prince for his queen. Rather he hopes for something more grotesque: a lion, a bear, a wolf, a bull, or even a monkey. And she won't have her "real" eyes returned until she delivers up the changeling boy to Oberon! How does this nastiness make you feel about Oberon and his potential power? Watch how this edge of danger undercuts the comedy of transformation, keeping dramatic tension alive. With Oberon lurking in the unseen air, how safe would you feel?

^^^^^^^^^^A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: LINES 188-268

Approaching voices are heard. Oberon makes himself invisible as Demetrius and Helena enter. They are in the midst of a quarrel. Remember, Helena had told Demetrius of Lysander and Hermia's elopement plan. But he's interested in finding them, not in dealing with Helena. He'll kill the man; the woman is killing him. He commands Helena to go away; he is "wood" (mad) in the wood. But how can Helena go? She is drawn to him as though he were a magnet. If he could stop drawing her, she could stop being drawn. It's a double bind, appropriate to the topsy-turvy, blind nature of love.

Demetrius tells her in the plainest possible terms that he does not and cannot love her. But Helena even loves his honesty in telling her that! She's more than humble at this point--she's humiliated. She'll be his spaniel. He can do whatever he wants with her as long as he does something with her.

We're back to opposites in love. Demetrius becomes ill from looking at Helena; Helena becomes ill from not looking at Demetrius. He tries a new tack: she is seriously endangering her precious virginity by following him in the forest. Helena twists his words. She is very good at that--her literary cleverness rarely misses an opportunity to turn a phrase around. She explains that since he is all the world to her, she is not really alone with him in the woods.

Demetrius gives up. All he can think of now is to run away and leave her at the mercy of wild beasts. The wildest of those, Helena points out, is not as heartless as he. The tables will turn, she warns prophetically. Demetrius tells her once again to leave him alone, and exits. Helena declares she's not afraid of any harm to come at his hands; she's already been hurt. Poor Helena. Her situation is at once comic and tragic. Her desperate gropings for love are ridiculous, but painful. The whole reality of romance and the proper relations to it are being questioned by Shakespeare. Men are supposed to woo women, says Helena, but she finds herself in the opposite position. The way things should be and the way they shouldn't change places in this play. Good and bad, love, life and death are all mixed up for Helena. "I'll follow thee," she says, "and make a heaven of hell, / To die upon the hand I love so well."

Overseeing her predicament, Oberon decides to intercede. Puck arrives with the magic flower and gives it to his master. Oberon goes into a dreamy soliloquy, one of the most beautiful passages in all of Shakespeare's works, filled with glorious language and an almost sentimental remorse. He describes a favorite place of Titania's. It is a bank covered in flowers, and the Queen likes to sleep there, "lulled in these flowers with dances and delight." The snake sheds its skin there, and that skin is "wide enough to wrap a fairy in." Such delicate details give us more than an idea of the size of the fairy folk; they give us a feeling for the sweet enchantment of their world. But Oberon is not just having a sweet dream. He has a vengeful purpose. If that's where Titania is likely to be, that's where she will be given the magic love juice on her eyes. Oberon also commands Puck to put some juice on the eyes of the Athenian youth he has just seen. He cautions Puck to do it at just the right moment, so that the first thing the young man sees will be the lady who is in love with him. The king would see some things turn out right--or is he just as eager as Puck to turn the world upside down?

NOTE: TITANIA'S RESTING PLACE Does the way Shakespeare describe the favorite place of Titania make you want to sleep there yourself, surrounded by its beauty? Shakespeare entices you with great economy of language. The very names of the flowers seem to emit some special power. The thyme blows in the wind, sending its pungent scent around the bank. The violet nods its delicate head. The woodbine ("luscious" makes it seem good to eat as well as to see and smell) forms a canopy over it all, and the musk roses are sweet. To help feel the magic of this passage you might say these words aloud. "Wild thyme," "oxlips," "nodding violet," "luscious woodbine," "sweet musk roses," and "eglantine" roll across the tongue with what seems to be a magic power.

With a leap Puck is off on his mission. He'll be back before the first rooster can crow. By then, midsummer madness will be in full sway.

^^^^^^^^^^A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: LINES 1-83

Titania and her loyal group of fairies are in another part of the wood. The queen asks for a ring dance and a song, and then suggests they set about some of their regular fairy business. This includes killing cankers in the musk-rose buds (remember the "sweet musk roses" Oberon spoke of--this must be Titania's favorite resting place!), obtaining bat wings to make coats for her elves, and keeping the hoot owl quiet so it doesn't disturb them. You can see again how these nature-related details used by Shakespeare give us a special awareness of the dimensions of the fairies' world.

The fairies sing a lullaby for their queen. It is a charm that seeks to ward off creepy and crawly things from Titania: snakes, hedgehogs, newts, and worms. They ask for a little musical assistance from Philomele, the nightingale, to lull their lady to sleep. Try to imagine how this chorus of fairies might actually sound. As they repeat their magic syllables--"Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby"--feel the sweet drowsiness their birdlike voices induce. Again they warn off some disturbing things: spiders, beetles, worms, and snails. And again the nightingale's sweet song is called for. Shakespeare makes his fairies' natures apparent by the kind (and size) of animals he associates with them. Titania sleeps.