A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Acts 2 & 3 & Chapter 4, Natural & Supernatural

Helena saved Act II of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for me. Honestly, I found reading the first half of the act very tiring, as I was constantly looking at the notes to try to understand what the hell the fairies were saying. So, I thought that was difficult, but reading Helena’s lines, I couldn’t help but get into the act. I couldn’t help but think about the acting part of class and how much fun it’d be to play out these lines:

And even for that do I love you the more.
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,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in you love –
And yet a place of high respect with me –
Than to be used as you use you dog? (II.i.202-10)

OK, so it’s kind of messed up if you take it seriously. But all I can see is how funny it would be to stage these lines, especially how funny the use of one’s body could be as these lines are spoken. I’d love to see someone getting down on all fours and pretending to be Demetrius’ dog, and saying that they do it out of love for him. Hilarious.

I also thought the use of animal imagery was really striking in this act. There were hedgehogs, newts, spiders, beetles, worms, snails, and more. Above all, though, I thought the serpent imagery was really striking. We get conflicting metaphors, too. In scene one, in the fairy world, the snake imagery is seen as very positive. Indeed, a snake skin is Titania’s place of rest:

There sleep Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enameled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. (II.i.253-6)

Later, though, we get a more disturbing snake image, and this time in the human world. Hermia cries,

Help me, Lysander, help me! Do thy best
To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!
Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here!
Lysander, look how I do quake with fear.
Methought a serpent ate my heart away,
And you sat smiling at his cruel prey. (II.ii.151-6)

So, in the first of these two images, we see a very positive, protective snake. If I remember correctly, I had a teacher once who explained that Zeus was first depicted as a snake rapped around the mouth a large jar used to store food. As such, he was understood as the protector of life, which could certainly be understood here, as Titania sleeps and is protected in the shed skin of a snake. But in the human world of the play, the serpent is seen in its usual negative, Christian stereotyped light. I’m not certain of the meaning of Hermia’s dream, but I thought the contrast was interesting. We also get a snake when Titania’s fairies sing her to sleep:

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blindworms, do no wrong;
Come no near our Fairy Queen. (II.ii.10-13)

Why is the snake, here, in the fairy world, now perceived—like all the other animals in the song—as a threat to sleeping Titania? That I don’t understand.

In Act II, we also get the dialogue between Lysander and Hermia about lying together or not. Lysander vehemently argues for it, and Hermia against. And eventually, they decide to sleep, according to the stage direction, “separated by a short distance” (37). This dialogue, though, culminates in Act III when Hermia says, “Since night you loved me; yet since night you left me” (III.ii.275). I don’t know why but I read into this and see that Hermia attributes her not sleeping with Lysander as the reason for his abandoning her for Helena. Something about that really struck me as a read, especially thinking about modern day stereotypes about men and women, and the sexual expectations forced on women. I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing to this, but I thought about.

In terms of acting out parts of Act III, especially after we’ve been working on master/servent relationships, I was struck by the way Puck speaks to Oberon, his master:

Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.
Did you tell me I should know the man
By the Athenian garments he had on? (III.ii.347-9)

When I read this, I scribbled in the margin “challenges master,” which Puck certainly does. His words go so far as to blame his master for the mix-up. I just thought this interesting to note, especially with an eye on staging the play.

As for our reading in Chapter 4, Natural and Supernatural, I thought there were some interesting things. I especially like the discussion of weather, Bad Weather and Dearth. It was very reminiscent of today’s world, as we are struggling with climate change, and I thought the ties made between the weather and the unrest of English society were key. But the play offers its audience a way out of the bad weather: “Let us pretend, suggests the play, that bad weather is created by a fierce domestic quarrel among fairy rulers about the custody and rearing of a foster child” (268).

The section of fairy lore was also quite striking. I was especially intrigued by The Remains of Gentilism and Judaism, particularity when it was explained “That the fairies steal away young children and put others in their places: verily believed by old women in those days and by some yet living” (311). I can remember, when I was in a class on Christian mythology, my teacher explained that children who were misbehaving were sometimes believe to have been stolen and replaced by an evil version of themselves. They were stolen and replaced by fairies, as this source suggests. Rather than beating the changeling, as this source suggests, though, an exchange took place. For the return of your child, you would give the fairies pots. Not real pots, though. Instead, you would crack eggs in half, which provided two fairy-sized pots. You would place the allotted amount of pots around your fire place, and in the night, whilst asleep, the fairies would come for their pots and leave your good child.