A Midsummer Night's Dream

The night has ended and the dream is over.

This week I finished reading A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was great—it really was. I thoroughly enjoyed my reading of the play and read it faster than I have any Shakespeare work before (unless you count his sonnets, but that wouldn't be very fair). These are some of my initial thoughts on it.

First, I am glad that I read some of the information I found before I read the play as it gave me some distinct things to watch for as I went along. That proved very helpful. Specifically, reading that information gave me some specific ideas for some ways to approach my analysis and thoughts. I had decided to focus on the visual concept of balance. I am glad I did.

I was fascinated as I read by Shakespeare's composition of the play. I found it to be very visual—even more than usual for me, which is something, as I often think of most everything in visual terms. It starts in real life, in day time, falls to night and fantastic spectacle, only to reemerge in the final act in real life once more. I think the entire storyline of the play could be interpreted as an infographic, with areas following the different story lines of the different relationships in the play. Hmm...I may have to revisit this idea at some point.

Example of an infographic

Another example of the visual composition directly relates to my focus on balance. In the play there are four Athenian lovers: Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander. Lysander loves Hermia, as does Demetrius. Demetrius is favored by Hermia's father to be her husband. Hermia, however, loves Lysander and wants nothing to do with Demetrius. Helena, on the other hand, is in love with Demetrius who, before falling in love with Hermia, was in fact devoted to Helena. So, to put it simply, we have two men after Hermia and none after Helena, while each of the two women are after one of the men. The lack of balance is obvious. Later in the play, there is a mixup involving a sprite and some fairies and a love potion that results in both of the men falling in love with Helena and neither with Hermia—a direct opposite of what had been happening earlier. The balance completely switches! It is like a teeter-totter that is going back and forth before it finally finds its proper balance. In the end, of course, all is well, with Helena and Demetrius falling in love with each other and Hermia and Lysander being in love with each other. But I enjoyed the obvious, visual balance found in the four lovers.

Another visual element of balance that I enjoyed was that of Queen Titania falling in love with Bottom, a man from Athens who is an actor that has had his head turned into the head of an ass by the same sprite that mixed up the love potion and wreaked havoc on the Athenian lovers. Titania is queen of the fairies; Nick Bottom is an actor with a donkey's head. Here is some obvious lack of visual balance. I am imagine a great illustration of this, which I think I will use in some of my further analysis of the play later on.

Gotta love this presentation of Bottom, via www.shakespeare.cz

Besides these somewhat visual points, there were some interesting tidbits concerning language that I noticed. There were some particular parts in which a character would speak in short poetic phrases, which is quite different from most of the other Shakespeare I have been reading lately. For example, Bottom at one point says:

The raging rocks 
And shivering shocks 
Shall break the locks 
Of prison gates; 
And Phibbus' car 
Shall shine from far 
And make and mar 
The foolish Fates.

Some obvious rhyming and very established rhyming pattern in there. I will have to look more into that to see what its significance is.

Another example of language is that of Puck, the sprite that terrorizes the mortals of the play. He speaks in constant rhyme, sometimes in full lines, other times in short lines. For example:

On the ground 
Sleep sound: 
I'll apply 
To your eye, 
Gentle lover, remedy. 
[Squeezing the juice on LYSANDER's eyes] 
When thou wakest, 
Thou takest 
True delight 
In the sight 
Of thy former lady's eye: 
And the country proverb known, 
That every man should take his own, 
In your waking shall be shown: 
Jack shall have Jill; 
Nought shall go ill; 
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.

 To me, this emphasizes the mischievousness of Puck. Interesting though.

Well, that is probably good for now. Again, this play had great visual aspects of it. Besides those I mentioned, it really conjured up some great and fantastic imagery in my mind as I read. I look forward to expressing some of that in the future. As I didn't get a chance to document my reading process this week, I will be posting a few extra posts this week documenting my process a I further examine the play and look at some of the things that I noticed more in depth. I hope to accompany my posts with some original illustrations that I think help make my points about visual balance, etc. Hope you comment and enjoy!