Full disclosure: I was not enthused about going into Midsummer before this week began. I fell into the trap of believing it was, as Queen Hippolyta aptly says, “the silliest stuff that I ever heard.” I always set it aside in my mind as a masturbatory and zany piece of faery fluff and Renaissance Faire fodder. But shortly after reading the first few scenes, I discovered that this one is a pure pleasure to read (especially out loud). The language is mellifluous and enchanting, the plot is expertly laid out, and the characters are all at least tolerable and harmless if not amusingly endearing. Well, I mean, Puck is a little dick, but he’s just doing what Oberon says.
This is truly Shakespeare hitting his stride. While Love’s Labour’s Lost is essentially garish braggadocio, Midsummer is an elegant, graceful, and refined display of playwriting kung-fu. The Athenians and the faeries speak with a charming lilt and marvelous vocabulary as compared to Bottom and his rustic mates, who have a rough but not rude lexicon amongst them.
Midsummer is an example of a pseudo-pastoral-comical work, as it contains “marriages” in a forest and happy endings. It’s bucolic, anyway.
In Old William’s more conventionally pastoral plays (As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale), courtly “city-slickers” enter the world of the simple, farmer folk, in search of the romantic ideal of a “simple life,” encounter a frisson of romance, and emerge from the fields with greater insight into the realities of life. These plays, though examples of typical pastoral storytelling, tended to parody that formula as well. For as long as there have been cities dense with populace, there have been people who just “want to get away from it all.” As a man of two worlds himself, Shakespeare was well aware of both the popularity of this concept as well as the potential for entertainment. Placing lords and ladies in a world free of pretence and full of humble commoners is always a hoot. If the blue bloods get knocked down a peg or two and then learn something from the whole ordeal, then all the better.
Our play is set in Athens, and we begin at the famous Duke Theseus’ palace, where he has just returned victorious in battle against the Amazons. And as one does when they decimate a people, Theseus is about to wed the Amazonian Queen Hippolyta and have a big soiree. Egeus of Athens comes in with his daughter Hermia to convince Theseus to force Hermia to get married to Demetrius (because this tack always goes well for fathers). Hermia, of course, has already given her heart to Lysander (which, IMHO, is one of the prettiest names in all of Shakespeare). Egeus begs permission to kill his daughter if she doesn’t do as he says. Theseus says to Hermia “Alright, bitch, you have until I get married to Hippolyta to make up your mind about whether to die or get married to this guy you don’t even like.”
Lysander argues that he’s just as good as Demetrius, so why can’t he marry Hermia like she wants? “And Demetrius already promised to marry Helena because he’s a manwhore!” Theseus shrugs and says “It’s the law that a father can make his daughter do his bidding.”
Frustrated, Lysander tells Hermia they should just run off into the countryside, where Atehenian law has no sway over them, and he knows an aunt with a house in the woods where they can elope in peace. Hermia is all for it and like a dumbass, tells her best friend Helena about the plan. Helena is smitten over Demetrius and hates that he’s pining for Hermia in a lukewarm way. She decides to tattle on them to Demetrius in the pathetic hope that this will win his favor.
Elsewhere, a smattering of craftsmen aka “rude mechanicals” meet up to rehearse a play they wish to perform for Duke Theseus’ wedding reception. Quince wrote the play’s script and he assigns roles as he sees fit, giving the hero Pyramus to Bottom the weaver (who would prefer to play every role himself). They make jokes about who is going to play the woman and then agree to practice out in the woods the next evening so no one can get a sneak preview of their play.
Next evening arrives in the enchanted forest, and Puck (aka Robin Goodfellow) meets up with a fairy and asks what’s up. The fairy says that Titania, Queen of the Faeries, is on her way to the same place where Oberon, King of the Faeries, wants to have a party. Puck informs her that the couple are having a row over the changeling boy Titania adopted from India. Titania and Oberon meet up and waste no time getting back into their argument about the boy and who cheated with whom. Titania says she absolutely won’t give up her boy to Oberon to become one of his “henchmen” because the boy’s mother was one of her votaresses and she died giving birth to him and it’s the least she can do to watch over the child.
Oberon sends Puck to find flowers that he will use to basically poison Titania into falling in love with some creature:
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:
A sweet Athenian lady is in love
With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;
But do it when the next thing he espies
May be the lady: thou shalt know the man
By the Athenian garments he hath on.
Effect it with some care, that he may prove
More fond on her than she upon her love:
And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.
While she’s embarrassing herself, Oberon plans to take the boy for himself. Oberon spots Demetrius walking in the woods with Helena on his heels as they search for Lysander and Hermia, and Oberon thinks it would be a great idea to tell Puck to put some flower juice in Demetrius’ eyes so he falls for Helena.
Titania falls asleep to faery songs and Oberon drips the poison into her eyes. Lysander and Hermia appear nearby and promptly pass out. Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, so he pours the flower juice in his eyes. Demetrius is somewhere else and he finally manages to lose Helena. She sees Lysander sleeping in the weeds and thinks he’s dead. She wakes him and he instantly falls for her. She is appalled at his behavior and insists that he is making fun of her. She leaves and he follows, abandoning Hermia, who wakes up alone and starts searching for her lover.
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Meanwhile, Bottom and his buddies settle in to rehearse right beside Titania’s bower. They fret about scaring off the ladies with the scary lion and assign parts for “the wall” and “moonshine” (perhaps to get friends on the payroll?). Puck sneaks around and sprinkles his magic on Bottom, whose head morphs into that of an ass, terrifying his friends. Bottom is none the wiser, and thinks his castmates are nuts. He sits down and sings to himself, which wakes Titania, who promptly fawns over him. He scoffs and tries declining her advances, but then she orders her faeries to help seduce him.
Puck finds Oberon and reports on Titania’s latest hairy love interest, which Oberon finds hilarious and awesome. Puck adds that he dumped the juice into the Athenian man’s eyes, but Demetrus and Hermia enter with all awkwardness, proving that Puck fucked this up. Hermia shakes Demetrius and falls asleep again, to dream of Lysander. Demetrius sleeps as well, Oberon fumes, and Puck shrugs, claiming that Oberon was vague about the details of which Athenian to fuck with. Oberon puts more juice in Demetrius’ eyes as Helena and Lysander enter, wake Demetrius, who falls for Helena. She is mucho pissed at both of them and concludes that Hermia must be behind all this chicanery. Hermia comes in and is offended that Lysander isn’t pining after her anymore. She blames Helena, and a very polite catfight ensues. Lysander and Demetrius leave to duel over this mess and the ladies head off in the other direction.
Oberon tells Puck to fix this massive pooch-screw. Puck distracts the guys and administers more love juice when they fall asleep. The ladies fall asleep nearby.
Titania and her faeries are doting on Bottom, who is craving oats and hay and a shave. They fall asleep to faery music and head scratches. Oberon spies them and giggles to himself and admits that he already used this opportunity to steal the changeling boy from his wife. The task done, he removes the enchantment from Titania and Puck turns Bottom back to a human. Titania is disgusted at her “dream” and reconciles with Oberon. They decide that they will bless Theseus’ wedding together.
All the faeries disappear as the four lovers awaken from Theseus’ hunting horns. Theseus laughs at them and wonders why the hell they’re all suddenly so happy. The lovers have no clue and just think everything they remembered was a wild (drug-induced) dream. Theseus says there will be no punishment for any of them and they head back to the court for party time. Bottom wakes up and thinks he dreamt about being an ass. He nods and says he’ll have Quince write a song about it.
At Quince’s house, the cast are in a tizzy, worried about what happened to Bottom in the forest. Just when they think all is lost, Bottoms shows up to tell them that they’ve been chosen to put on their play for Theseus.
In what feels like a Lord of the Rings extraneous ending, Act V is tacked on for pure merriment. It’s all one scenes in which everyone sits around after their day of celebration and debauchery, wondering what do do before bedtime. Theseus recites one of my favorite curmudgeonly speeches:
More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are 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 fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
Seething brains and shaping fantasies indeed.
Someone reads off a list of possible activities for the evening and of all of them they choose Bottom’s company of rascals to put on Pyramus and Thisby. Hippolyta rolls her eyeballs and says this will probably suck but the Duke thinks it will be a hoot. Unlike King Navarre watching the play-within-a-play in LLL, Theseus appreciates the hard work put into such a presentation, despite its camp.
The actors keep apologizing to the audience throughout, which makes the play unintentionally hilarious and everyone is tickled and delighted. Eventually, they conclude with a dance and it’s suddenly MIDNIGHT! Such late partiers, them.
As soon as all the humans leave the stage, Puck comes in with Oberon and Titania. All their faeries pour in to bless the entire place and all the marriages of the day. Puck wraps everything up in a sparkly bow with apologies for any offenses that they may have committed. I wish certain actors in this world would do the same every time they do a movie, honestly.
The 1935 film version of Midsummer is excellent in almost every way. It’s very true to the source material, pulls out all the stops in set design, props and sparkly costumes, and it’s full of solid performances. The unforgettable young Mickey Rooney, despite his ultra annoying laugh, is perfection as Puck, and a soft-shoeing James Cagney as Bottom is awesome as well. Olivia deHavilland, in her film debut no less, is a beautiful Hermia. My other favorite is Joe E. Brown (best remembered perhaps as the man Jack Lemmon seduces in Some Like It Hot) portrays Flute’s reluctant Thisby like a comic pro, even though the actor said he’d never do Shakespeare again. Oh well.
Fast forward to the BBC’s 2016 production written by none other than Russell T. Davies, our holy brother of Doctor Who reboots. As is his wont in this world, he injects some G-rated homosexuality into the already sexually-charged material and it makes almost no notable difference to the plot or quality of the story. People still fall in love with the “wrong” person, people still get re-drugged to fall for the “right” person.
Ironically, it’s the choice to portray Theseus as a total dick (by John Hannah of all people!), treating Hippolyta like Hannibal Lecter and giving her magic powers that disrupts the natural order of things the most. Otherwise, the entire film feels like a Tolkienesque episode of Doctor Who, which is absolutely fine with me. There are a few BBC regulars (Richard Wilson of One Foot In The Grave and Merlin fame, Matt Lucas of the more recent series of Doctor Who) and to give us anglophiles those warm and fuzzy feelings of comfort, as well as a bubbly cast of new faces all surrounded by fancy sets and wrapped in elaborate costumes and makeup. Sure, the ending was tweaked but it’s ultimately fresh and endearing, heart-warming fun times.
Well, that's it for this week. I am taking a week off (for Passover? Easter? Just because I'm getting a little run down with the state of the world these days and I've given myself extra projects around the house to stay sane while working from home? All of the above). we will return with the problematic The Merchant of Venice and after that, we finally get into the HENRIAD. Oh baby. We're going there.