a mid summer night dream tragedy in comic disguise

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A Midsummer Night's Dream: Tragedy in Comic DisguiseAuthor(s): Virgil HuttonReviewed work(s):Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 25, No. 2, Elizabethan and JacobeanDrama (Spring, 1985), pp. 289-305Published by: Rice University

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SEL 25(1985)

ISSN 0039-3657

A MidsummerNight's Dream: Tragedy in

Comic Disguise

VIRGIL HUTTON

Even though the seriousness of A MidsummerNightksDream has

long been getting its due, T. Walter Herbert is the only critic to

treat at length the metaphysical implications as the dominant con-cern of the play. A rapid survey of the criticism of the play reveals an

early concentration on the theme of love, which, with Barber's

rejection of love as the play's major motif, gradually yields to a

stress on the theme of art (perhaps climaxing with Young's view of

the play as Shakespeare's Ars Poetica), which in turn may, under the

provocation of Herberts study, shift to a probing of the play's meta-

physical dimensions.' Herbert opens an inviting prospect for crit-

ics by claiming to make statements not about Shakespeare's

intentions but only about a contemporary spectator's reactions tothe play. Through linking the theme of art with the metaphysicalissues raised by Herbert, I will argue that Shakespeare did deliber-

ately raise the philosophical and religious issues so perceptively

pondered by Herbert's spectator.Herbert's spectator sees two contrasting worlds in the play: the

comic animist world of Athens, under the guidance of the fairies,and the tragic nonanimist "Babylonian" world in the play-

within-a-play of "Pyramus and Thisby," where there is no guid-

Virgil Hutton is an Associate Professor of English at Illinois State University.

He has published articles on Shakespeare, Joyce, and Hemingway.

'Henry B. Charlton, Shakespearian Comedy (London: Methuen, 1938).

Charlton's chapter on the play represents an influential interpretation focusing

on the love theme. C. L. Barber, Shakespeare'sFestive Comedy:A Study of LDramaticForm and its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1959);

David P. Young, Something of Great Constancy: The Art of "A Midsummer Night'sDream"

(NewHaven: Yale Univ. Press,

1966);T. Walter Herbert, Oberon'sMazed

World(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1977). Quotations from the

play are from the text in Irving Ribner and George Lyman Kittredge, eds., The

Complete Worksof Shakespeare Waltham: Xerox, 1971).







A M I D S U M M E R N I G H T'S D R E AM

ance of any gods or spirits whatsoever. Because "Pyramus and

Thisby" is produced by citizen mechanicals, the spectator, with the

aid of Herbert's centuries of hindsight, links their soulless playworld with the future soulless world of commerce, industry, and

technology that they are to construct in real life. Thus, for him, the

play provides not merely a representation of contemporary cur-

rents of thought and belief but also a prophetic glimpse and warn-

ing of the "brave new world" to come. Though accepting some of

the premises of this new naturalistic world himself, and though not

being able to reconcile his religiously oriented beliefs in a benefi-

cent animist world with the actualities of life around him, Herbert's

spectator in the end rejects the Babylonian vision of the mechani-

cals' play and rests in the more comfortable world of the fairy King.

If one could choose which world to live in, one might certainly,

along with Herbert's spectator, prefer the world of benevolent fair-

ies to the fairyless world of"Pyramus and Thisby." But of course we

have no such choice. If our world is a world with fairies or gods,

none of our beliefs or actions can make it otherwise, any more than

Lysander's or Theseus's lack of belief in the fairies prevents them

fromexisting

andoperating.

And if our world is a world without

fairies or gods, no beliefs or actions of ours can make it otherwise,

just as the godless world of "Pyramus and Thisby" would not be

changed by any appeals for godly aid Pyramus or Thisby might

have made. The only choice we have is one of belief, and through A

Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare does seem to offer us this

choice, after hinting at his own belief concerning the reality.

For many critics, the choice offered by the play is either between

the rational and the irrational or between reason and the imagina-

tion. For those stressing the theme of love, rational love is said totriumph over irrational love as the young lovers, after their night of

irrationality, return to the bonds of rational love and marriage

exemplified by Theseus and Hippolyta. When linked to the theme

of art, however, "cool reason" usually loses out to the presumablywarmer imagination.2

Though both views suffer from the absence of a clear example of

2GeorgeA.

Bonnard, "Shakespeare's Purposein Midsummer-Night's Dream,"

Shakespeare ahrbuch 92 (1956):268-79; Paul A. Olson, "A Midsummer Night's

Dream and the Meaning of Court Marriage," ELH 24, 2 (1957):95- 119; Marjo-

rie B. Garber, Dream in Shakespeare:FromMetaphor to Metamorphosis (New Haven:

Yale Univ. Press, 1974), ch. 2.

290







V IR G I L HUTTONON

dramatized "reason" in the play, the rational-irrational love dichot-

omy is particularly vulnerable. First, the designation of Theseus as

the standard of rational love is unconvincing because Shakespearedoes not develop the quality of Theseus's love sufficiently for us to

apply any special label to it. Second, at the beginning of the playthe young lovers are endeavoring not to avoid marriage but to avoid

marriage to parties not of their choice, which seems quite rational.

Third, at the end of the play no difference in the quality of the

young peoples' love is portrayed. Those who claim that the juice of

"Dian's bud" represents rational love as opposed to the irrational

love induced by the flower "love-in-idleness" must, like Frank

Kermode, pass over with embarrassing silence the fact that Deme-trius's charmed eyes are never washed with the antidote.3

The dichotomy of reason and imagination also relies heavily on

linking Theseus to reason (often tagged "skeptical reason") in

opposition to the fairy realm of imagination. But, as some critics

have recently pointed out, Theseus represents reason in general no

better than he represents reason in love. Huston, for example,likens Theseus's behavior in the first scene of the play to that of an

irrational tyrant,4 and certainly one might easily view Oberon's

behavior toward the lovers as more reasonable than Theseus's blus-

tering threats. Even in the opening exchange of Act V, where The-

seus is usually labeled the defender of reason and Hippolyta of the

imagination, Hippolyta's openmindedness, as Herbert's spectator

observes (pp. 160-61), is more reasonable than Theseus's dogmatic

dismissal of the evidence.

Here we pause to note that Theseus's unreasonableness lies par-

ticularly in his refusal to grant any more reason to the poet's imag-

inings than to the lunatic's ravings. Hippolyta grants somecredibility to the lovers' stories because she discerns an order or

pattern in their account-that is, she finds some "reason" in

them-that differentiates them from "fancy's images." Shake-

speare's point seems to be that the poet's imaginings, unlike the

lunatic's, also contain an order or pattern as a result of being under

3Frank Kermode, "The Mature Comedies," in Early Shakespeare,ed. John R.

Brown and Bernard Harris, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 3 (New York: St.

Martin's Press, 1961), p. 218. An attack on Kermode's interpretation is offered

by R. W. Dent's "Imagination in A Midsummer NightnsDream,"SQ 15, 2 (Spring

1964): 115-29.

4J.Dennis Huston, "Bottom Waking: Shakespeare's 'Most Rare Vision,"' SEL

13, 2 (1973):217.

291







A MI D S UMMER NI G H T'S D K EAM

the guidance of reason, and therefore deserve some consideration

as purveyors of truth.

After Hippolyta's superior reasonableness here, however, The-seus, during the mechanicals' play, becomes the more reasonable in

his gracious tolerance and willingness to mend the mechanicals'

efforts with his imagination. No characters consistently embody

reason, just as no scenes illustrate a world of reason as opposed to a

world of imagination. And this deficiency is to be expected, since

Shakespeare's comedies, as well as his tragedies, are devoted to

showing that reason and people, like reason and love, in the words

of Bottom, "keep little company together now-a-days"

(III.i. 129-30). Only the play as a whole remains to exemplify that

necessary fusion of reason and imagination in art that Hippolyta's

speech and Shakespeare's arspoeticacall for.

But though the reconciliation of reason and imagination remains

an important theme, it is not the major concern of the play. In order

to be a complete embodiment of Shakespeare's arspoeticaas well as

his defense of poetry, the play would have to go beyond a presenta-tion of mere method. It would have to contain a discernible pattern

or order that would produce a meaning beyond "fancy's images.'7

That such a meaning arises from the worlds perceived by Herbert's

spectator appears likely not only because the worlds are concretely

dramatized within the play but because other interpretations cen-

tering on love or the imagination have not been able satisfactorily

to account for the carefully constructed parallels, antitheses, and

paradoxes generated by the mechanicals' play.

Through the mechanicals' rehearsal scenes, Shakespeare con-

fronts many of the problems and paradoxes arising from the art of

drama; I will concentrate on one problem slighted by critics. Oncein the first rehearsal scene and twice in the second the mechanicals

worry over how to keep their play from frightening the ladies. In

considering this worry, critics have largely concentrated on how

Shakespeare satirizes the mechanicals' overly literal-minded solu-

tion to the problem;5 but little attention has been devoted to the

problem itself, which, though raised so lightly and comically by the

mechanicals, is of fundamental importance to any artist.

Behind the mechanicals' concern for "the ladies," which is com-

parable in some respects to our modern expressions of concern for"the children," lies the general concern over how much should be

'Barber, pp. 148-51.

292







VIRGIL, HUTTON

shown to anyone. And the problem for artists, as with the mechani-

cals, becomes particularly pressing when their material is per-

ceived as being frightening or offensive. The mechanicals' worry istwofold: first, they fear the effect on the audience (that they will be

too frightened to continue watching the play); and second, theyfear the repercussions on themselves (that the ladies will have them

hanged).In relation to the first fear, a consideration of Hamlet's "Mouse-

trap" may prove instructive. There we see a clear example of the

audience (Claudius) being so upset by a performance that he can-

not see it through. When we ask why, we find that Hamlet's theory

of art is to blame. The mirror image he holds up to Claudius is too

exact, too close to Claudius's secret reality for him to bear. The

theory suits Hamlet's purposes, but it is not appropriate as a gen-eral theory of art; for if it succeeds splendidly in art's one tradi-

tional aim of instructing Claudius as to his faults, it fails miserablyin art's other aim of providing him with delightful entertainment.

The mirror must be sufficiently distorted to keep the audience's

shoe from pinching so tightly that they cannot enjoy the perfor-

mance. And even Hamlet's mirror is sufficiently distorted to allow

the more innocent spectators to enjoy the performance by prevent-

ing them from realizing its sinister purposes.

Hamlet's "Mousetrap" may also illustrate the mechanicals' fear

of repercussions. By making Claudius perceive that his crimes are

discovered, Hamlet rouses not only Claudius's conscience, but also

his determination to kill the one who has revealed knowledge of his

guilt. The real death Hamlet faces and the imagined death the

mechanicals predict are extreme but realistic manifestations of the

resentment aroused toward anyone who exposes the follies andcrimes of another too openly. Through censorship, society both

reveals where it is most vulnerably fearful and warns artists to

avoid portraying these subjects too openly. But of course artists are

most attracted to these forbidden subjects because it is obviously

just in these areas that society is most in need of enlightenment and

instruction. Thus, as many have pointed out, the artist must dis-

tort his mirror to penetrate the censorship shield of society just as

Freud's dreamwork distorts the dream content in order to deceive

the individual's internal censor.Since they are to provide entertainment for a marriage celebra-

tion, the mechanicals fear that the threat of violence, posed by the

lion, as well as the actual violence of the onstage suicides of Pyra-

293







A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

mus and Thisby will be too much for their audience's sensibilities.

Shakespeare must share this concern because, if scholarly conjec-

ture is correct, he too is preparing an entertainment to celebrate amarriage, and he would not wish to bathe both the stage and the

audience in a bloody tragedy. Yet the seemingly inept decision of

the mechanicals to entertain with a tragedy that they must then

sweat to divest of its tragic content is also Shakespeare's. And we

must ask what he had in mind.

Simply to entertain is the goal of the mechanicals, and, judgingfrom Theseus's assertion that "This palpable gross play hath well

beguil'd / The heavy gait of night" (V.i.356-57), they achieve this

aim brilliantly. But if we include instruction as a goal of art, their

play utterly fails, for, as many critics have observed, the audience

of newlyweds gives no indication of receiving any instruction what-

soever. They fail to perceive the parallels between themselves and

the story of Pyramus and Thisby. By a clumsy performance and by

striving to palliate everything unpleasing to their audience, the

mechanicals have so distorted their artistic mirror that the newly-weds do not recognize their own features in it.

Shakespeare's deliberate rather than unwitting decision to

include a tragic story within his comedy surely reflects his desire to

instruct as well as to entertain; for if a wedding celebration

demands entertainment, the newlyweds also need instruction as

preparation for sustaining their new commitments. As Hugh Rich-

mond notes, having our obtuse stage audience witness a play-

within-a-play is a device, used earlier in Love'sLabor'sLost, to incite

the theater audience to grasp meanings lost to the stage audience.+

In A MidsummerNight's Dream, the theater audience, including per-

haps a pair of newlyweds, should be able to observe the pertinentparallels overlooked by the stage couples and to apply to themselves

the clear warning of the tragic consequences that may result from

rash actions induced by passionate love. From their superior view-

point the theater audience can then smile at the stage audience,

and Shakespeare's instruction neatly gives rise to comic pleasure.

But since such instruction does not seem frightful enough either

to drive away the audience or to attract the wrath of society's

censorship - if we are to apply the mechanicals' fears over the effect

of their play to A MidsummerNight's Dream itself, as I believe we

bRugh M. Richmond, Shakespeare's exual Comedy:A Mirrorfor Lovers(Indianap-

olis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), p. 121.

294







V I R G I L H U T T O N

should-we must gaze more deeply into Shakespeare's distorted

mirror. Here we must return to the speculations of Herbert's spec-

tator over the "Babylonian," godless world of the mechanicals' play,for these speculations uncover strong reasons for Shakespeare's

having fears similar to those of the mechanicals concerning the

reaction to his play. After perceiving the parallels between the storyof Pyramus and Thisby and the adventures of the young lovers

watching the skit, Herbert's spectator, through induction, con-

cludes that the tragic outcome of the mechanicals' play can be

explained by the one major lack of parallelism: the absence of anybenevolent fairies or gods to protect Pyramus and Thisby from the

fatal consequences of their misguided assumptions.7 But Herbert's

spectator makes no attempt to decide where Shakespeare stands in

relation to the contrasting worlds in the play. We must still ask what

it is that Shakespeare tried so cunningly both to present and to

conceal.

Pursuing the reasoning of Herbert's spectator a bit further may

help. Though the absence of benevolent gods in the mechanicals'

play may account for the tragic deaths of the lovers, we need not

conclude that such a world of accident must always produce tragic

results, for there may be happy as well as unhappy accidents. The

crucial point being made is that tragedy can occur only in a world

not under the guidance of benevolent gods. Both the world of

Lysander and Hermia and the world of Pyramus and Thisby are

full of accidents, but the one pair of lovers is saved from their

unlucky accidents by the benevolent fairies, whereas the other pair

is not. And neither pair is more deserving of help than the other.

Which of these worlds does the play present as an image of real-

ity? If my reasoning in the preceding paragraph is correct, theanswer immediately becomes apparent. Our world of daily trage-

dies is more faithfully mirrored in the godless world of Pyramus

and Thisby than in the fairy world of the Athenian woods. C. L.

Barber, for instance, stresses the play's skeptical attitude toward

the existence of the fairies,8 and certainly the fanciful representa-

tion of the fairies is not calculated to instill belief in their literal

existence. Indeed, it is the presence of the fairies that creates the

dreamlike atmosphere of unreality in the play once we move into

the woods, and it is this air of fantasy that makes the contrasting

7Herbert, pp. 53, 143-44.

8Barber, pp. 123, 140-43.

295







A MIDSUMMER N I GHT7''S DREAM

tragedy of Pyramus and Thisby appear all the more shocking and

realistic.

Shakespeare also, I believe, uses the play's moon symbolism toreinforce the realism of the Pyramus and Thisby tragedy. The

opening speeches ofA MidsummerNights Dream reveal a moonless or

virtually moonless world as Theseus and Hippolyta await the new

moon's appearance in four days. This moonlessness emphasizes

the realism of the first scene, where the motifs of love and sex are

treated by government and parent with the heavy-handed obtuse-

ness so familiar in our society. When, upon the scene's shifting to

the woods, the moon, with comic inconsistency, shines brightly

overhead, it becomes apparent that Shakespeare is using the moonto signal, among other things, a fantasy world of wish-fulfillingdreams. In the mechanicals' play the moon also plays a singularly

important role, though it has not been overly commented on by

critics.

As in the main play, the moon makes its entrance when the scene

shifts to the night meeting place of the lovers fleeing their parents'cruelty. Ominous signs, however, accompany this moon. It enters

not with fairies but with a lion, and it shines not on palace woods

but on a tomb. Furthermore, this moon, instead of being associ-

ated with the magical moonlight of Act II, is linked to the waning

moon of Act I by two speeches of Theseus:

Theseus: but, 0, methinks, how slowThis old moon wanes!

(I.i.3-4)

Theseus: It appears, by his small light of

discretion, that he is in the wane.(V.i.242-43)

Still, the moon's dim presence preserves a faint atmosphere of

romance as it ironically provides just enough light for Pyramus to

spy the bloodstained mantle of Thisby. But even this faint glimmer

disappears when Pyramus, in the throes of death, orders the moon

to depart: "Pyramus:Moon, take thy flight. / Now die, die, die, die,

die!" (V.i.293-94). And in case the audience has overlooked the

moon's obedient departure, Shakespeare has Hippolyta ask "How

chance Moonshine is gone before Thisby comes back and finds her

lover?" We must supply the answer to Hippolyta's unanswered

296







VIRGIL HUTTO N

query. The moon's exit at the crucial moment of Pyramus's death

marks the turn to tragedy just as Mercutio's death performs the

same function in Romeo andJuliet. Here, of course, the multipledistancing of the action enables the comic tone to continue, but the

symbolic message is clear. The moonless conclusion of "Pyramusand Thisby" represents the intrusion of dark reality into the midst

of comic romance, and Pyramus's "now die, die, die, die, die!"

becomes the comic equivalent of Lear's "Never, never, never, never,never."

But Shakespeare is not yet through with this moon. At the close

of the mechanicals' play we are again reminded that their moon is

no longer creating a world of benevolent magic; Theseus pairs themoon with the lion to perform a ritual symbolizing not the joy of

restoration but the finality of death: "Moonshine and Lion are left

to bury the dead" (V.i.334). And following this symbolic return

from fantasy to reality brought about by the tragedy of Pyramusand Thisby, Shakespeare is ready to present the play's final imageof the moon-the cold, naturalistic moon that chilled Herbert's

spectator:9

Puck: Now the hungry lion roars,And the wolf beholds the moon.

(V.i. 354-55)

Our shock should double when we recall the play's opening promise

of a forthcoming new moon, a symbol of renewal suitable for the

traditional comic ending. The reversal is so extreme and unex-

pected that I don't believe it can be satisfactorily explained as

merely a foil to heighten our sense of joy. A consideration of Shake-

speare's technical strategy here may help.

By abruptly transferring the lion and moon from the play-

within-a-play to the main action, Shakespeare heightens the real-

ism of Puck's images through the seeming change from fiction to

"fact," from Snug's and Starveling's make-believe back to reality.

The use of Puck and then Oberon as spokesmen here further

strengthens our acceptance of the realities they describe; the fair-

ies, in contrast with the mechanicals and even with Theseus, give

the effect of a godlike chorus.

Comic distancing, however, continues to create the ambivalent

9Herbert, pp. 61-62. Here I follow, with Herbert, the Folio's "beholds."

297







A MIDSUMMER NIGH 7T'S D R EAM

tone oftragicomedy. If the fairies as spokesmen add a godlike credi-

bility to their images of disaster, their godlike status also adds cred-

ibility to their more happy promises of protection from thesedisasters, so that we can cheerfully leave our characters to the

comic fate of being happy ever after. But still our emotions at the

end must remain mixed. For though we can accept the happy

prophecies for the characters within the framework of the play, we

cannot convincingly apply those prophecies to ourselves within the

framework of reality, just as the newly married spectators could not

be certain that none of their children would ever suffer any "blots of

Nature's hand" (V.i.392). The images of surrounding threats and

potential disasters ultimately derive their powerful authority not

from the credibility of the speakers but from the everyday evidence

of experience, which, paradoxically, refutes the existence of the

godlike spokesmen.

For the theater spectators, then, the final effect should be the

mingling of comic delight with tragic instruction. Specifically to

the newlyweds Shakespeare's message, which of course applies to

all, seems clear: in order to have any chance of preserving your

marriageand some

degreeof

happiness youmust recognize and be

ready to meet and endure all sorts of possible calamities that may

occur in a world where one cannot count on the continual guidanceand aid of benevolent fairies or gods.

The stage spectators experience the delight but fail, for various

reasons, to receive the instruction. Distracted by the bungling per-

formance of the mechanicals and blinded by the desire to reinforce

their egos after their own recent follies, the stage lovers do not rec-

ognize even the most obvious instructive parallels with themselves.

But they cannot be faulted for snobbish obtuseness in missing theeven bleaker philosophical implications of the wedding entertain-

ment, since they are not in a position to be able to draw the infer-

ences open to Herbert's spectator and to us concerning the

presence and absence of the fairy gods in the two stories. Being

unaware of the presence of the fairies, the stage spectators cannot

perceive that their good fortune resulted from the aid of the fairies,

whereas the bad fortune of Pyramus and Thisby resulted from the

absence of any such aid. Why then shouldn't the stage lovers be

proud of their own sagacity in comparison both with the haplessPyramus and Thisby and with the clumsy actors portraying them?

Seeing the young lovers, even at the end of the play, so full of

ignorance, can we be at all hopeful that their present happiness will

298







VIRGIL HUTTON

outlast even the short night left after the "iron tongue of midnight"has spoken? We can, because, in lieu of the instruction they missed,

they have the fairies to protect them from the disasters so commonamong less fortunate married couples. The prognostication for the

newlyweds in the theater audience may be favorable to the extent

that they grasp and assimilate the play's instruction, which has

been generally neglected, perhaps, because it seems less appropri-ate to comedy than to tragedy.

In 1957 Frank Kermode was applauding the new seriousness

with which critics were approaching Shakespeare's comedies in

general and A MidsummerNight'sDreamin particular, '0and succeed-

ing critics have continued to call attention to the dark, nightmar-

ish, and potentially tragic undercurrents of the play. But to my

knowledge, Herbert, through his spectator, was the first to applythe term "cosmic comedy" to the play." The term is apt because it

recognizes the play's treatment of themes conventionally reserved

for tragedy: the nature of the universe; man's relation to the uni-

verse; the existence of the gods; man's relation to the gods if theyexist; human suffering; and death. Whether or not one wishes to

establish a separate genre for such plays, the label, as a working

hypothesis for the "intrinsic genre" of the play, to use the term of E.

D. Hirsch, Jr. ,12allows one to see and to take seriously many things

in the play that have been overlooked or dismissed because the play

is supposed to be merely a comedy.

Critics have seldom expressed difficulty over labeling A Midsum-

merNightksDreambecause they have apparently not been sufficiently

aware of the play's tragic content. It is time to observe that the

esthetic theory stated and exemplified in A MidsummerNight/sDream

is also operating in a "dark"comedy or "problem" play such as Mea-sure or Measure;only in the latter play there is not so great a dispar-

ity between the comic surface and the serious undercurrents-the

tragic content is not so cautiously disguised. Herbert's spectator

begins to suspect that A MidsummerNight's Dreammay be a cosmic

comedy when he hears Titania "bemoan the misplaced seasons and

the excessive rain.""3 By creating his fairies in the image of the

')Kermode, pp. 214, 220.

"Herbert, p. 153.

'2E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press,

1967), pp. 78-89.

"Herbert, p. 153.

299








Homeric gods, Shakespeare provides a broad clue that his play will

be cosmic in scope, just as the mechanicals' "Lamentable Comedy"

(I.ii.9) and "tragical mirth" (V. i.57)- labels that also fit A Midsum-merNight's Dream-point to the intrusion of tragic content. Let us

consider how the play's fairy world, which represents, I believe, an

approach to an ideal world for Shakespeare, contributes to a min-

gled effect of comic delight and tragic pathos.Some have seen the workings of Providence in the fairies,14 but

the fairies contrast rather than compare with the gods of conven-

tional Christianity. Most obviously, the fairies are sexual lovers,who, like any man and wife, are in the midst of a domestic quarrel,unlike Christian deities who are not susceptible to such mortal

antics. The fairies' susceptibility to sexual involvement with

humans is also, of course, Homeric rather than Christian, thoughthe New Testament stories of the virgin birth retain the motif in

spiritualized form. Of even greater importance is a difference sel-

dom if ever commented on: the fairies, unlike Christianity's God,do not hesitate to accept responsibility for some of the evils in the

world. After enumerating the recent disturbances in the order of

nature, Titania, instead of trying to blame "sinful" man, emphati-

cally places the responsibility on herself and Oberon:

Titania: And this same progeny of evils comesFrom our debate, from our dissension;We are their parents and original.

(II.i.115-17)

"Parents" is a key term here because it links the fairies to Egeus, the

parent of Hermia, and to the unseen parents of Pyramus and

Thisby. Through implication, Shakespeare places the burden of

responsibility for the potential tragedy of Hermia and the real trag-

edy of Pyramus and Thisby on the parents, those who, like the

gods, have the most authority and power. In taking responsibility,

the fairies further parallel the Homeric gods, who, as symbols of

forces beyond human control, are regularly assigned responsibility

for the behavior of nature and of humans.

As for lending aid to humans, the fairies, again unlike Christian-

'4John A. Allen, "Bottom and Titania," SQ 18 (1967):111; Stephen Fender,

Shakespeare:A Midsummer Nights Dream (London: Edward Arnold, 1968), pp.

48-49, 54-55.

300







VIRGIL HUTTO N

ity's God, are not deterred from preventing a fall into disaster bythe excuse that they would thereby be interfering with human "free

will." Shakespeare's fairy world humbly concedes that humans aremasters neither of their fate nor of their wills, although the charac-

ters retain the illusion that they are acting freely. And this situa-

tion, though an anathema to some peoples' notions of human

dignity and pride, seems to be presented as preferable to one in

which the gods, if they exist, sit idly by, for whatever excuses, while

Pyramus and Thisby, like Romeo and Juliet, blunder into death.

The Homeric gods too are not deterred from giving aid to

humans by any concerns over free will, but the fairies surpass both

Christianity's God and the Homeric gods in one important respect:selfless benevolence. The fairies are willing to go out of their way to

help hapless humans without first demanding belief or worship or

sacrifices. The lovers in A MidsummerNight'sDream, far from calling

upon the fairies for help, are wholly unaware of the fairies' exis-

tence. And the fairies, instead of showing any eagerness to be rec-

ognized and worshiped, provide their aid invisibly throughout,except for their appearance to Bottom, who provides no threat to

their secrecy. Such altruism sets an ideal standard for gods, who

surely should be kind enough to help suffering mortals without

prescribing any preconditions or demanding any succeeding

gratuities.

Kind as they are, however, the fairies, because they are not

omnipotent, cannot totally alleviate the sufferings of mortals, nor

can they be held responsible for all of the world's evils. Their sphere

of operation is limited both in space (wherever they happen to be)

and in time (largely the night). Similarly, the Homeric gods,

besides having to contend with each other's interference, suffer atcrucial times the limitations of Fate-as when Zeus cannot save his

son Sarpedon from being killed in battle-and therefore cannot

bear total responsibility for human suffering. Paradoxically, the

omnipotent, omniscient God of conventional Christianity, who is

most eligible to bear total responsibility for human suffering, is the

God who totally declines to accept such responsibility.

Curiously enough, the fairies' lack of omnipotence enhances

rather than diminishes the ideal status of their world. For one

thing, their world is not subject to the irreconcilable moral andlogical dilemmas that automatically arise whenever omnipotence is

assigned to any being. For another, the fairies exercise upon our

imagination a gentle charm that could not be attached to an omnip-

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otent figure, who must remain as unlovable as an unclimbable

cliff. But most importantly, the fairy world represents an ideal

because, as many have noted, it symbolizes, like the Homericworld, a union between man and nature. Since nature may be too

restrictively understood, however, we must add that the union is

between man and the gods, between man and the universe. In Sha-

kespeare's play, the parallels between the fairies and the mortals,like the anthropomorphism of the Homeric gods, establishes this

perception of unity, which is perhaps most unforgettably symbol-ized in the brief twining of Titania around Bottom. Add omnipo-tence to any of the characters, however, and the attractive vision of

unity is irrevocably contorted into absurdity.Herbert's spectator speculates on how the coming age of science,

business, industry, and technology was creating the godless Baby-lonian world of the mechanicals' play. But in a more fundamental

sense the gods had already been stripped away from man by Chris-

tianity, which, as it strove to distinguish itself from paganism and

as it became more and more rationalized and intellectualized, dis-

paraged the anthropomorphism of previous religions through

stressing the differences rather than the parallels between man and

God. The persistent belief in fairies, which Shakespeare lovingly

exploits, manifests the effort to bring the gods back to earth in an

understandable and meaningful relationship with humans, who

cannot psychologically sustain a position of isolation from the rest

of the universe. As the increasing remoteness of orthodox gods

induces a feeling of being unimportantly lost in an indifferent

abyss, people seek, by reverting to earlier beliefs or turning to new

ones, to re-establish their place in the universe, to re-establish

their union with the universe, to become part of things once more.Shakespeare's ideal world of Homeric fairies fits almost any

meaning of "dream" one might think of. It is certainly, to use

Freud's terminology, a wish-fulfillment dream that provides at

least temporary psychological solace to our waking frustrations. To

serve as meaningful wish fulfillment, however, the play must also

contain the nightmare world of Pyramus and Thisby, from which

we are psychologically protected by the play's equivalent of Freud's

dreamwork - the artistic triple distancing of the play-within-a-

play.The play's ideal world is also a dream in the sense of something

that in reality does not exist. At the play's end we are allowed to

wake up to the fact that the fairy world was but an artistic dream,

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and it is only then that the play's suppressed content of extreme

tragic pathos has a chance to surface. As in the opening of

Chaucer's Wife of Bath's tale and in Wordsworth's sonnet, "Theworld is too much with us," the displacement of the fairies and of the

Homeric gods by later beliefs is not seen as an improvement.

Rather, all three works, through a recreation of past worlds, stress

how much has been lost. Shakespeare's vision, however, may be the

bleakest, since it suggests that even these mourned lost worlds

never existed except in the mind of dreaming man. The classical

story of Pyramus and Thisby seems deliberately chosen to illus-

trate that the ancient gods were no more benevolent and protectivein reality than the more recent gods who presided over the destinyof Romeo andJuliet. And the supposed newly-married couples in

the audience will, like the couple in Arnold's "Dover Beach," have to

rely on their own resources of love and mutual support to maintain

their happiness in an unpromising world.

The final sense of dream I will treat is the one raised in the

epilogue - that a dream is something of such little value and signif-icance that one need not pay it serious attention:

Robin: If we shadows have offended,Think but this, and all is mended-That you have but slumb'red hereWhile these visions did appear.And this weak and idle theme,No more yielding but a dreamGentles do not reprehend.

The irony behind Shakespeare's belittling of his play has regularly

been noted, but its relation to the play's theory of art, whichdemands the employment of sufficient distancing devices to allow

the presentation of unsettling views without destroying the purvey-

ance of pleasure, has been overlooked. Under the conventional

concern that the performance has not been sufficiently pleasing lies

a more serious concern. For, if my reading of the play has any valid-

ity, there would be ample reason to fear that some of the audience

might be offended by its instruction, and we can recognize how the

word dream, from the title to the end of the play, serves as the last

layer of defense to ward off any who might be both perceptive

enough to grasp the play's serious implications and orthodox

enough to protest against them.

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A MIDSUM M E R NIGHT'S DREAM

Frequently A MidsummerNight's Dreamhas been interpreted as a

defense of the irrational and of the imagination against the attacks

of reason. Marjorie Garber, for instance, concludes: "But if illu-sion and the imagination are not without their dangers, they are

nonetheless, in the terms of this play, preferable to their radical

opposite, 'cool reason,' in Theseus's phrase." She sees Bottom's

efforts to avoid frightening the ladies as resulting from his being"aware of the dangers of imagination and illusion" and wanting to

protect the court audience from them just as dreamwork, she

claims, warns us "against the dangers of the irrational."15Certainlyboth illusion and the irrational may be dangerous if mistaken for

reality and reason, but Garber's analysis seems slightly awry.Dreamwork does not warn against the irrational; it protects the

mind from too direct a confrontation with unpleasant reality. Simi-

larly, Bottom and the mechanicals strive to protect their audience

not from illusion but from too clear a confrontation with the terrify-

ing realities of their story; and their imagination must be exercised

to discover means to avoid frightening their audience, just as

Shakespeare exercised his imagination to present unpleasant mes-

sages without frightening away his audience. Here again, reason

and the imagination should be seen not as opposing duellists in a

game of one-upmanship but as necessary partners in any artistic

enterprise.

Without "cool reason" the efforts of the imagination are apt to be

wasted, for the careful calculations of reason are needed not only to

produce artistic order and meaning out of chaos, but also to deter-

mine how much unpleasantness or strangeness an audience can

tolerate. In A MidsummerNightksDream, Shakespeare demonstrates

his understanding of the fragile human psyche by not only usingthe distancing device of a play-within-a-play but also by having

the players of this internal drama use distancing devices. But some-

what like the magician who pretends to reveal his secret while con-

tinuing to deceive his audience, Shakespeare has so artfully

exposed his secrets under the guise of farcical parody that few have

grasped what he was up to. In another way, however, Shakespeare's

employment of artistic illusion in A MidsummerNight's Dream is the

opposite of the magician's: the magician creates the illusion that

bodies are being cut in half and heads are being chopped off whilein reality no such things are happening at all; Shakespeare creates

'5Garber,pp. 82, 84.

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the illusion that all is well while in reality heads are rolling all over

the place. The magician presents comedy under the guise of trag-

edy; Shakespeare presents tragedy under the guise of comedy.

a mid summer night dream tragedy in comic disguise

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