TODAY'S CLASS
THEMES
Toxic love:
Hermia and Lysander: Does Lysander love Hermia or he
wants to show Demetrius that he has power over her?
Hermia and Demetrius: Demetrius thinks he has the right
to marry Hermia
Helena and Demetrius: She is obsessed with him and has
a very low self-esteem.
Titania and Oberon
Hippolyta and Theseus
Power:
Patriarchal power >
Egeus thinks his daughter belongs to him and should die if she doesn’t follow
his orders.
>
Theseus is a patriarchal ruler. He doesn’t pay attention to his wife’s opinion. He "wooed" her with "his sword".
> Women as servants to men.
The test will cover:
1) character analysis
2) themes
3) quotes analysis
SHAKESPEARE'S TIMES
POWER AND AUTHORITY
If we take the example of Midsummer Night's Dream, a play surely characteristic of
Shakespeare's romantic comedies, we can see that the problem which authority
has to master is a problem with authority itself, authority grown archaic. At
the outset, the law seems to serve only the will of the father. A comedic
resolution obviously requires either the independence of the law or the generosity
of the father. It requires, in other words, a more inclusive order. Given that
romantic comedy invariably poses this problem, only one form of resolution will
do, the formation of an authority figure who overrules the existing law of the
father. Oberon represents the traditional alternative to patriarchal law. He is
the figure of carnival, and the introduction of this principle into the play triggers
a series of inversions. As if Titania's playing the role of an unruly woman was
not enough to tell what this is all about, Puck reproduces similar forms of
inversion among the Athenians – both lovers and mechanicals - who have wandered
into the woods. Such inversions - of gender, age, status, even of species -
violate all the categories organising Elizabethan reality itself. This
Renaissance nightmare can occur precisely because patriarchal law is initially
so closely identified with political authority that to violate the will of the
father is to return to what Hobbes would later represent as the horrors of a
state of nature.
The figures of festival operate to break
down the hierarchical distinctions organising Elizabethan society, only - in
the end - to be taken within the social order where they authorise a new form
of political authority.5 This mutually transforming exchange places disorder
within the framework of festival and displaces it on to art, as illustrated by
'the story of the night told o'er', Bottom's 'dream', as well as the
mechanicals' production of the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. When Theseus and
his party come upon the sleeping couples lying intermingled on the ground, the
Duke surmises, 'No doubt they rose up early to observe I The rite of May . . .' (IV.i. 1 3 2-3 ).
By identifying the lovers as revellers, Theseus does more than decriminalise their transgression of the
law; he identifies their state of disarray with the order of art. 'I know you
two for rival enemies,' he says to the young men, 'How came this gentle concord
in the world .
. . ?' (IV.i. 1 4
2-3 ). At the same time, however, the inclusion of filial disobedience within a
field of permissible illegalities, changes the construction of political
authority. What had been a violation of the father's law, in other words, thus
becomes a scene of harmony. Indeed, when Egeus presses Theseus to punish the
youthful offenders, the Duke overrules the father.
But if Theseus authorises certain
inversions of power relations by situating them within the framework of
festival and art, then it is also true that the introduction of disorder into
the play ultimately authorises political authority. Once Theseus
includes the rites of May within the domain of the permissible, the revellers
in turn fall on their knees before him. Thus brought together, revellers and
Duke can comprise a harmonious political body
where the juridical power of the monarch exists independently from that of the
patriarch. When Theseus overrules the angry father, juridical power can no
longer be identified with patriarchal power. A new
set of political conditions appears where competing bases for authority are
held in equipoise by the Duke. That is, his ideal role is an improvement, in
terms of the play, over the punitive power he
threatened to exercise at its opening. The entire last act of the play
consequently theorises the process of inversion whereby art and politics end up
in this mutually authorising relationship. This process is then
reproduced on the stage in the form of an Elizabethan tragedy which has been
converted into comedy as rude mechanicals play a range of parts from those of noble
lovers to the creatures and objects of the natural world.
The popularity of such inversions becomes
clear when we see how Elizabeth herself used various forms of authority against
one another. It is not enough to say that the transfiguration of authority in
romantic comedy resembles Elizabeth's actual style of exercising power. To be
sure, she used her power as a patron to affect the power of the ruling families
and thus set economically-based political authority in opposition to that based
on blood. Yet this strategy was more than personal ingenuity on her part, for
her characteristic strategies for expressing power were
just as dependent upon the political conditions of the time as the form of a
comedy such as Midsummer
Night's Dream.
MARRIAGE AS COMIC CLOSURE
The most outstanding feature of
Shakespearean comedy is its pervading obsession
with marriage. In many instances single
or multiple marriages are used to
provide comic closure, as in As You Like It and Love’s Labour’s
Lost, in which
four couples marry or are expected to
marry, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream and
Twelfth Night, in each of
which three couples marry, and Much Ado About
Nothing and Two Gentlemen of Verona, in each of
which two couples marry.
In other examples the very fact of
marriage is used as the mainspring of the
comedy, as in The Merry Wives of
Windsor, where the very
title of the play
indicates the importance of marriage,
or, to a lesser extent, The Comedy of
Errors, The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the
Shrew, in each of
which
a marital relationship plays a central
part. Indeed, marriage is so central a topic
in Shakespearean comedy that it is the
presence of marriages in their plots
which has problematised the genre
classifications of both the late romances
and the two ‘dark’ comedies, Measure for
Measure and All’s Well that
Ends Well,
and which provides the main
justification for whatever claim they are accorded
to be treated as comedies.1 We know,
moreover, that many of Shakespeare’s
comedies bear clear marks of having
been written expressly for performance
as part of the celebrations
surrounding the solemnisation of actual marriages,
so that the connection would have been
still more obvious to their original
audiences.
But for all that the plays can indeed
be grouped together with reasonable
accuracy into these broad
classifications, to do so obscures both some significant
and some interesting differences
between them, and also the problematic
36 Genre
ways in which marriage is generally
treated in these plays. For one thing,
despite the traditional view that
marriage provides comic closure, this is,
in fact, very rarely achieved.2 The idea is of
course drawn on – the audience is
repeatedly encouraged to expect that
the proceedings will be appropriately
closed with a wedding – but these
expectations are then either disappointed,
or gratified in such a way that the
spectator will be forced to question both
the meaning of the events he or she
has witnessed and also the assumptions
underlying his or her response to the
events.
Marriage is appropriate as a provider
of closure for comedy because it
focuses primarily on the experience of
the group, as opposed to the individualist,
isolationist emphasis of tragedy. The
tragic hero lives and dies a
fundamentally lonely figure,
traumatically separated from his God, his society
and his surroundings. Marriage both
counters this element of separation by
showing humans in a relationship which
is, in theory at least, one of indissoluble
bonding, and also holds out the
promise of renewed life in the birth
of offspring (referred to both in the
words of the marriage ceremony and in
Elizabethan wedding customs, and
assumed to be the inevitable product of all
heterosexual intercourse).3 The ultimate
polar opposite of the tragic closure
provided by death would of course be
birth itself, which is indeed sometimes
used in this symbolic sense (All’s Well that
Ends Well may be taken as
an
example of this); but birth, too,
places primacy on the experience of the isolated
individual, and the social ritual of
marriage, with its stress on continuity
and group survival, therefore provides
a more effective counterbalance to the
finality implied in the death of the
tragic individual.
Such an emphasis on continuity is
undoubtedly present in much of
Shakespeare’s work. It can be traced
explicitly through the first 18 of his
sonnets, and it can also be detected
in Oberon’s blessing of the bridal bed in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and in Rosalind’s
reference to Orlando, almost
as soon as she sees him, as ‘my child’s
father’.4 It is also
possible to discern in
Shakespeare’s comedies clear signs of
the conservatism which is so often felt
to flourish in comedy: the lovers in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream may flee from
Athens at the outset of the play in
rebellion against the patriarchal order articulated
by Theseus and Egeus, but they do so
only to find themselves in a wood
ruled by a patriarch just as powerful
(a point neatly made by the theatrical
tradition of using the actor who plays
Theseus to double Oberon), and at the
end of the play the two couples
willingly return to the society from which they
had fled to take their allotted parts
as leading members of it and, no doubt,
to assist in its perpetuation.
(...)
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the difference in the nature of the experiences
offered by marriage to men and to women is signalled right at the outset, in
the opening dialogue between Theseus and Hippolyta. The couple seem to be
united in their eagerness for the approach of their ensuing wedding:
Theseus: Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
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.16
In fact, Hippolyta’s lines are susceptible of a very different interpretation, as
was shown by the way that Penny Downie played the role at Stratford-upon-
Genre 43
Avon in 1982. Her Hippolyta was a deeply reluctant, indeed sullen, bride: her
statements that the time would pass quickly were motivated not by joy but by
a disempowered acceptance of the inevitable, and her flat future tenses, without
any use of the optative, reflected this sense of despairing entrapment.
Such a reading also serves to highlight the fact that Theseus insistently
perceives all the blocking figures to their marriage as female. He alludes, in
turn, to the moon (most usually figured in Elizabethan discourse in her classical
personae as Cynthia, Diana, Dictynna or Artemis, and as such associated
with the Virgin Queen herself ), a step-dame and a dowager.17 Hippolyta, in
marked contrast, concurs in imaging the moon as female, but views it as a
symbol of empowerment, a representation of the ‘bow’ (I. i. 9) which was once
her weapon. Theseus’ assumptions are even more remarkable in a play where
the blocking figures are in fact uniformly male – Egeus, who objects to his
daughter’s marriage, and, arguably, Oberon, though, like Theseus, he himself
constructs the cause of the quarrel between the fairies as the opposition of
Titania – and where the women tend to be unusually powerless for representatives
of the comic feminine.18 But if the plot of the play minimises the power
of women, its imagery maximises it, and concomitantly figures men as weakened,
clearly suggesting a deep-rooted fear, as in Titania’s elegiac comment
that ‘the green corn / Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard’ (II. i. 94–5).
Even the play-within-the-play may encode a fearful female. ‘Ninny’s tomb’
may be funny, but it also memorialises Ninus, King of Assyria, whose wife, as
Sir David Lindsay of the Mount recorded in his attack on female rulers, was
the ‘proude and presumptious’ Semiramis,19 who is one of the examples
Lindsay cites to prove the innate unfitness of women to occupy posts of power.
The idea briefly indicated in Hippolyta’s speech that women may be unwilling
to marry recurs throughout the play.20 In many of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies, the women are seen as being very actively in search of a husband:
Viola has barely landed in Illyria before she is enquiring about Orsino’s marital
status, Olivia rapidly proposes marriage to the supposed Cesario, and Feste is
able to tease Maria by alluding to the possibility of Sir Toby marrying her;
both Julia and Silvia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona actively seek their lovers
out, and Rosalind in As You Like It effectively engineers her own marriage when
Orlando, blinded by her male disguise, does not take the initiative. In A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Helena does indeed actively pursue Demetrius,
but whereas the other heroines who do this are presented as spirited and
determined, and invariably preserve their dignity and their self-respect, she is
seen as merely ridiculous:
I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
44 Genre
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love –
And yet a place of high respect with me –
Than to be used as you use your dog?
(II. i. 203–10)
Titania, who (although for very different reasons) similarly pays court to the
man of her choice, is equally seen as a butt of jokes. Far more popular, both
with the men of the play and generally with audiences and critics, is Hermia,
who, unlike the majority of Shakespeare’s heroines, shows a distinct concern
for propriety – ‘Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear, / Lie further off
yet; do not lie so near’ (II. ii. 42–3). In fact, if Hermia and Lysander had
decided to perform a contract of per verba de futuro in front of a witness such
as Helena and had then consummated their marriage in the woods, it would
have become immediately legal; but that is never suggested, and Hermia’s
behaviour is presented instead as the polar opposite to Helena’s. When
attitudes such as this are highlighted, the decision to set the opening scene of
the 1982 Stratford-upon-Avon production in the Victorian period becomes a
highly suitable one.
Hermia’s concern to protect her virginity had previously gone even further,
when, unamazed by the choice she is offered between enforced marriage,
execution, and the cloister, she unhesitatingly chooses the lifelong chastity of
sisterhood rather than marriage with Demetrius.21 Here, of course, her decision
is perfectly understandable, since the partner offered her is one she has
no liking for; but taken along with other instances of women not wishing to
marry or to live within marital relationships in the play, it may nevertheless be
seen as significant.Titania may be eager enough for Bottom, but she is undergoing
what seems to be an effective separation from her ‘lord’ Oberon; and
whatever Hippolyta’s feelings for Theseus may be now, we are told clearly
enough what they must have been initially when Theseus reminds her ‘Hippolyta,
I woo’d thee with my sword, / And won thy love doing thee injuries’
(I. i. 16–17). Moreover, the play even includes more or less direct reference
to that ultimate refuser of marriage, ‘the imperial votress’ (II. i. 163) herself,
Elizabeth I, whose decision to remain single had given rise to the cult of the
Virgin Queen.22
As if this were not enough, the play clearly warns of the possible dangers
of marriage: a wife risks quarrels and the curbing of her will, such as occurs in
the relationship of Titania and Oberon, and death in childbirth, as happens
to the mother of the changeling boy; or her children may be deformed –
although the fairies promise that this will not happen to any of the couples in
the play, their mere mention of deformity nevertheless serves to confirm it as
Genre 45
a real possibility.23 This last is an issue that would affect the husband too, and
the death of both Pyramus and Thisbe in the mechanicals’ playlet could
perhaps serve as a reminder that love offers perils for both sexes. Nevertheless,
neither Demetrius nor Lysander is threatened with anything like the
dreadful choice that is offered to Hermia, and both Theseus and Oberon end
the play with very much the upper hand in their relationships:Titania has been
thoroughly humiliated by the discovery of her love for an ass (an ironic and
radically reductive rewriting of Theseus’ much more heroic adventures with
the Minotaur), and Theseus at the banquet firmly overrules Hippolyta’s
distaste for the mechanicals’ play with her first lesson in theatre criticism and
public behaviour (V. i. 89–105).
Moreover, in this play too the marriages do not provide closure by occurring
at the end of the play.24 Almost all the plot material has been used up
by the opening of Act V: Titania and Oberon are reconciled, the lovers have
come together in mutually agreeable couples, returned to the city and been
reconciled with Theseus and Egeus, Bottom has been transformed back to
his normal shape, and all that remains is for the mechanicals to perform their
play. We may perhaps wonder to what extent the fairies Titania and Oberon
can be considered bound by the human rite of marriage at all – especially
since each accuses the other of having effectively conducted an open
relationship. As for the marriages of the mortals, they appear to have taken
place between Act IV, scene 1 and Act V, scene 1: in the first of these scenes
Theseus announces that ‘in the temple by and by with us / These couples
shall eternally be knit’, and in the second all are looking forward to the advent
of the evening which will allow them to consummate the marriages. It would
in fact be perfectly possible in narrative terms to end the play after Act IV,
scene 1.
What comes after that point is obviously important in terms of providing
a suitably celebratory finale, but it offers too a comment on what has occurred.
The tragic story of Pyramus and Thisbe may serve to remind us how very
easily the events of the play could have developed along the lines of Romeo
and Juliet; the fairies’ final benediction can be seen as indicating how much
such a blessing may be needed. Marriage then is not seen as some sort of transcendental
signifier which automatically confers meaning on events: its own
meaning is open to probing and exploration. Even when closure does finally
occur, its meaning is unmade even as it is made:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
46 Genre
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call.
So, goodnight unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
(V. i. 409–24)
Puck’s paradoxes both return the play to the real world and, at the same
time as they offer a final comment on the play, they deny the possibility of
making any such comment at all, since the making of meaning must finally be
in our hands. In offering itself for approval the play finally abdicates control
over its own authority; and thus, although it has been careful to present itself
as an ostensible celebration of marriage, the diametrical antithesis of the ‘some
satire, keen and critical, / Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony’ (V. i. 54–5)
which Theseus fears, it ultimately acknowledges that the meaning-making
audience is equally free to construct out of it as potentially subversive a critique
as it wishes of contemporary marriage, and, above all, of the role of
women within it. As Christopher Brooke, in his history of marriage, observes
of the idea that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was an occasional play feting an
actual wedding, ‘I am glad it was not my wedding it celebrated, for it proceeds
by showing us the lowest view of human marriage we have so far
encountered.’25
If both As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream seem to offer sympathy
for the position of women within marriage, it must not be forgotten that
the issue of men’s role within marriage has, even if only marginally, also been
addressed in them.26 In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as later in The Merry
Wives of Windsor where Herne the Hunter functions as a recuperative figure
in exactly the same way as the horn song does, this becomes of far greater
importance.
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