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

And now it's Oberon's moment. He squeezes the juice from the charmed flower onto Titania's eyelids and requests a different kind of spell. He asks that Titania love whatever she first sees on awakening, and he hopes that will be some "vile thing" like a lynx, cat, bear, leopard, or boar. Again, he reinforces the eyesight theme: "In thy eye that shall appear, / When thou wak'st, it is thy dear." Can you hear Oberon's malicious chuckle as he leaves?

NOTE: The fairies' magic is associated with natural imagery, and like the natural world it can be good or bad, sweet or scary. Titania and her fairies call up the images of small animals and insects. They seem frail (as their potential enemies are small), and their magic spell seeks protection from harm. Oberon, on the other hand, is working a nastier magic. He is causing trouble, not seeking protection from it. Accordingly, the animals he wishes for are more frightening, indicating his more dangerous spell.

Lysander and Hermia enter, exhausted from wandering through the wood. It seems Lysander has lost his way. You can guess that these lovers will be losing more than this particular way. Hermia chooses a soft bank for her bed and suggests Lysander find one for himself. Note that all the while the two are speaking the rhymed poetry of romantic lovers, a courtly and civilized kind of dialogue. But Lysander is suggesting something a little less genteel. He proposes that one "turf" is good enough for both of them. He tries an elaborate sort of poetic seduction. He says that his heart is knit to hers so that they have but one heart and that their lives are pledged together with but one love, so why not share one bed? Hermia agrees his "riddles" are clever, but evades their answer. Modesty decrees they must sleep apart. Hermia here, as usual, retains her feisty independent spirit. The two sleep apart, Lysander pledging eternal loyalty to Hermia and wishing that sleep give her rest. For her part, Hermia wishes Lysander's eyes get half that wish for rest. We will see in a moment just what kind of challenge his lover's eyes receive. Note how Shakespeare has utilized his plot devices. Lysander needs to be alone so he can be mistaken by Puck, and Shakespeare creates this comic scene to support it.

Puck arrives, having scoured the forest for the proper Athenian on whom to lay the love charm. He notices Lysander and Hermia, assumes incorrectly they are Demetrius and Helena, and anoints Lysander's eyes with the magic juice. When he wakes, says Puck, there will be no more simple sleep for the eyes of Lysander!

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As Puck exits, Demetrius and Helena arrive, running. The pace of the plot has picked up now; it's in full farcical swing. Like the Marx brothers or Laurel and Hardy, who go in and out of trick revolving doors in search of each other, these lovers are hot on one another's heels, but always missing each other. A true comedy of errors has begun. Demetrius and Helena are still arguing--one is fleeing, the other pursuing. Finally Demetrius makes his getaway, and Helena is left out of breath.

Helena moans how much better off Hermia is; the latter's eyes are "blessed and attractive," but they didn't get so bright from being washed with tears. If so, Helena's would be brighter. Helena feels sorry for herself. Everyone (in other words, Demetrius) runs away from her. She must be really ugly. How could she presume to match her eyes with Hermia's? This is Helena's lowest point in the play. She knows the power of the eyes of love and feels she just doesn't have it. In this play of transformations (and split-second timing) what do you think is needed at a character's low point? Of course, a magic charm. Awaking, and rhyming Helena's lament ("Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake"), Lysander leaps up and tells Helena he would "run through fire" for her "sweet sake." For Helena's? Yes. The love juice is working its magic. Lysander is ready simultaneously to love Helena and to kill the vile Demetrius for her sake.

Helena thinks Lysander is angry because Demetrius loves Hermia. She tells him to be content; Hermia still loves him. But that's not the way things are going. It's "not Hermia but Helena I love," vows Lysander. Duped Lysander makes claims for reason. While speaking the most flowery poetry, he says only now reason has led him to Helena's eyes to read the true story of love.

NOTE: Shakespeare really drives home his message. Lysander is completely bewitched by magic, yet claims to be speaking with total reason. How do we know what we know? Have you ever been in, then out of love, and seen with different eyes what you saw before? Shakespeare is telling us there is no reason in love. There may be magic in a lover's eyes, but reason? Look again.

Helena feels she is being cruelly mocked and has done nothing to deserve such treatment. It's bad enough to be unloved; does Lysander have to rub it in? She leaves, exasperated. Lysander turns his wandering attentions to the sleeping Hermia. He is sick of her sweetness and ashamed of having been duped by her. From now on, all the love and honor of this noble knight will be directed toward Helena. He leaves to pursue her. Shakespeare's mockery of heroic illusion rubs Lysander's eyes and tongue in the mud. This is a lover truly lost in love.

Hermia awakes from a bad dream, screaming for Lysander to help her. She has dreamed a serpent was eating her heart while Lysander smiled. She goes in search of either death or her false lover.

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As Titania lies asleep nearby on her bank of flowers, the workingmen arrive in the wood to rehearse "Pyramus and Thisby." Quince finds the spot suitable enough, and they plan to enact the play just as they will perform it later before the duke. But first Bottom has a question: If in this comedy Pyramus must draw a sword and kill himself, wouldn't that unnecessarily scare the women?

Snout and Starveling agree; maybe it would be better to leave the killing out. But Bottom has a better plan. Why not write a prologue that explains that the sword is not real, that Pyramus is not really dead, and, what's more, that Pyramus is actually Bottom the weaver! Bottom's plans always enlarge the role for himself. Though he seems to have the welfare of the whole company in mind, he's always looking out for some special effect for himself.

NOTE: THEATRICAL CONVENTIONS Remember how the theater itself is connected to the tension between illusion and reality? It's funny to think Bottom might be worried about people's believing that he (as Pyramus) is really dead. The conventions of theater make it easy for us to believe in some things and not in others. But the interplay is very subtle. In some way we "believe" in Bottom, that these words and thoughts are his. And yet, keeping in mind that, ideally, we'd be watching the play performed, we know the words would actually be spoken by an actor who certainly is not Bottom. And even beyond that, the words are actually Shakespeare's. While we may laugh at Bottom for thinking the audience takes his killing as real, Shakespeare slyly laughs at us for taking his character Bottom as real. A great artist makes us believe in his characters and events. An even greater artist can show us his conventions--the strings that hold up the puppet--and still make us believe, laughing at the power of our imaginations. Watch how this tension is heightened by challenging other conventions. What element of theater, for instance, might the discussion of the man in the moon and his lantern be pointing to?

Quince agrees to the prologue. Then Snout brings up the problem of the lion: mightn't it be too frightening as well? Bottom agrees, characteristically showing off his ignorance with a verbal flourish, calling the lion a "fearful wild fowl." Foul he may be, but fowl, no. (Scholars often use the somewhat similar appearance of a lion before an Elizabethan court performance to help date this play.) Bottom really gets into it now, making sure no spectator will miss the difference between theatrical illusion and reality. He suggests that the lion wear only a partial mask and give a short explanation to the audience (Bottom offers four different ways to begin this short apology, resourceful as always) that reveals the lion to be none other than an actor--Snug, to be precise. Can you feel Shakespeare's tease? He's really stretching the limit of what we might believe "before our eyes." Quince nicely agrees to that suggestion too and adds a problem of his own. What will they do about moonlight, which shines when Pyramus and Thisby meet? Consulting a calendar, the rustics find that the real moon will be shining the night of the performance. If they leave a casement window open, it will shine for their play. Then the real moon will also be the theatrical moon. Bottom suggests a person might play the man in the moon, with his legendary Elizabethan properties (firewood and a lantern). And since Pyramus and Thisby converse through a chink in a wall, they'll need someone to represent a wall, too. You can see how far this absurd play between illusion and reality could go. All that taken care of, they begin to rehearse.

Suddenly Puck appears. He can't resist playing with the players. Bottom begins his flowery speech, using the word "odious" instead of "odors," then exits. Thisby (Flute) hesitatingly begins his poetic call to Pyramus, a ridiculous, confused bit of poetic language. Like the contradictory "lamentable comedy," Pyramus is described as both "lily-white of hue" and colored "like the red rose." Like Bottom, Flute also mispronounces a word. (Ninus's tomb--Ninus was a legendary hero, founder of the Biblical city Nineveh--becomes Ninny's tomb.) In addition, he's jumped his cue: he's added the wrong line at the wrong time. When he repeats the correct cue line, Bottom appears, sporting an ass's head the mischievous Puck has placed on him. The company flees in terror. Puck swears to follow them around the forest, appearing in the forms of various animals. He knows he has them scared at night in the woods and is going to have some fun. Bottom's reply is touching: "Why do they run away?" He's left alone, transfigured but unaware of it.

NOTE: Now all the interplay between illusion and reality, and the metamorphosis from one to the other, begins to compound. The fairy magic moves from realm to realm. The themes of illusion in love and illusion in the theater begin to interweave. And in case we were taking comfort that the character Bottom at least was real, he too is changed. Is he really an ass, or does he just appear that way in one light? In another light, especially to Titania, he will appear differently, indeed. Bottom seems to act like an ass at times. Yet his simple, well-meaning ignorance in a way makes him lovable; he's really not such an ass. If you feel that way--and Shakespeare surely leads us toward that sympathetic feeling--how far are your eyes from Titania's? Shakespeare's comedy mercilessly attacks all the conventions by which we measure and establish someone's beauty and lovability.

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Snout reappears. "O Bottom," he says, "thou art changed! What do I see on thee?" Bottom replies that it's an ass head of Snout's own, again pointing to the responsibility in the seer for what he's seeing. Bottom, of course, doesn't know what his own head looks like. Quince takes another look and flees again. Bottom thinks he sees their jest; they are making fun of him. (Helena has this same feeling when love is turned her way.) But he won't fall for their trick and get scared. He'll hold his ground and sing to pass the time.

He sings a little nature tune about birds, and you can imagine what Bottom might sound like singing a sweet little folk melody, and how he'd look with his new head. But to Titania, awaking from sleep, there is nothing silly about it. "What angel wakes me from my flow'ry bed?" is her classic question. Angel? Looking at Bottom and hearing that word, suddenly we know the terrible and ridiculous power of Cupid's dart. How easily our eyes can be fooled!

Bottom breaks off his song, questioning the meaning of a line. Titania, entranced with the music, begs him to continue. She's in a dreamy, swoony delight. See how our very language fools us--she's awake, but her mind's eye is still dreaming. And that same "eye" is "enthralled" by the sight of Bottom, enough so that--on first sight--she must say to him, "I love thee." It's the kind of remark that should make anyone who's ever been in love wince. If you could see yourself as others see you, how would you look with your arms entwined around an ass?

Bottom takes her declaration in stride, questioning the aptness of that statement. "And yet," he adds, "to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays."

Remember, Lysander claimed to be speaking out of reason when he proclaimed his charmed love for Helena. Bottom's statement couldn't be more basic to the play.

But such reasoning doesn't unhook Titania; it drives her into deeper trouble. In fact, it makes Bottom seem "deep" to her. Now she thinks he is wise, not just beautiful. She wants him to stay with her. Queenlike, she commands him, though it's also the command of seduction. She will give him fairies to attend to his needs. They'll bring him jewels and sing to him while he sleeps on a bed of flowers, and she will give his mortal body the lightness of a spirit. She calls four fairies and instructs them in their fairy duties with characteristic Shakespearean detail, the kind of minute and magical descriptions that make us believe--or want to believe--that a fairy world might be real. They'll feed him little fruits and berries, steal honey bags from the bees, and "pluck the wings from painted butterflies / To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes." Noticing these tiny things opens up a new perspective on the world for us, and through that opening Shakespeare lets his fairies flit through.