Midsummer Night's Dream part 2

[watervole]

Oberon is a bastard.  Discuss.

It seems to me that one's view of Oberon has to hinge to a large extent on what age Titania's Indian boy is.  In this version, he's young enough for Titania to be carrying him everywhere.  So, Oberon is seeking to take an infant away from the only mother figure he has...

Now, admittedly, Titania for all her love of the boy's mother, still stole him away from the boy's father, but she still clearly loves him.

However, the original text, as far as I can tell, gives no clue as to the boy's age.  Is he old enough for Oberon to be jealous?  His behaviour to Titania (making her fall in love with someone else) would seem to make a bit more sense in this regard - or at least to cast Oberon in a slightly better light.

This vindictiveness of Oberon's stands in odd contrast to his desire to help the young lovers (and also to bless Theseus's household on the day of his wedding).

Puck, who is cheerfully mischevious, is far more consistent in his approach to life.  Indeed, I caught myself wondering if he deliberately found the wrong Athenian - certainly, it didn't distress him when he found out.

Oberon, in this production, has the feel of a Red Indian to him.  Probably the hair style and something about his costume.  He feels close to nature, far more so than Titania.  When he talks about knowing a bank where the wild primrose grows, it feels very right.

I wasn't so keen on the children used for the other fairies - they felt rather static and emotionally neutral.

The 'rude mechanicals' and their play were excellent.  Indeed, the best scene in the play was probably the last one where the wedding guests are watching the play, with the reaction of the guests nicely woven in;  though when the actors danced a 'bergomask' - an Italian dance - what they actually did was a morris (Cotswold style - you really wanted to know that, didn't you...).

Overall, this was  good production, although the scenes in the forest felt short compared with those at the end in the palace.

As always, the folklorist in me is intrigued by the man in the moon with his dog and his thornbush (a combination which also appears in The Tempest).  I did a quick bit of hunting around (a lot of the links on Google are simply the same bit of text copied around), but there are apparently references to the thornbush as far back as 1157 and this reference places both dog and thornbush back in the reign of Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377)  well before Shakespeare's time.

So, I can't tell you what the dog means, but he's certainly been around for a long time!

Maybe, if you use your imagination, you can see a man carrying a bundle of sticks with a dog chasing round his feet?

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Fairies steal children. It doesn't really matter how old the child is now, but it would have been stolen from the cradle if Shakespeare was following folklore, and he usually did.

Faires are also capricious. They are cruel or kind on a whim. Shakespeare always seems to me to picture them as squabbling children, which seems fair enough.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that they are capricious and also about changelings. Yet it still seems oddly inconsistent.

Why does Oberon want the boy so badly?

And why does Titania not seem bothered at all by his loss - she doesn't reproach Oberon at all for what he did while she was bewitched. Is it possible that the boy had reached an age where her feelings were no longer parental and her infatuation with Bottom cured her of that emotion?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

She may have forgotten about him. Again, she isn't human, and Shakespeare does not portray any of his fairies as human. Gaiman picked up on this in the A Midsummer Night's Dream episode of Sandman. It was an obsession - now it isn't.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

Thank you, all is interesting, and no one has ever tried to offer such an interesting approach. Apart from Mr.Hilsky, who re-translated almost the whole S. work into Czech - and he is a PERSONALITY and a big scentist and artist. For his work, he was invited to meet the Queen and became a memeber of the Order of British Empire... I met him for about two minutes and he shook my hand and smiled at me!!! :-)

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I always think that people are lucky to have Shakespeare translated into their own language. You get him in modern Czech, wheras we have to content with Elizabethan English. I can get my ear around it reasonably well now, but I've had practise.

Also, Shakespeare is loaded with mythological and cultural references which have dated very badly. Most of the puns and jokes do not work for the modern ear until you have translated them.

Who is the man in the moons dog

[sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com]

Sirius - the dogstar?

Im saying that as the Tom ballads are full of astrological/astronomical references and hints that the fool of the title is not as foolish as he seems eg:

I know more than Apollo
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at bloody wars
and the wounded welkin(=sky) weeping

The moon embrace her shepherd
and the queen of love her warrior
while the first doth horn the star of the morn
and the second the heavenly farrier

Apollo, as sun god would sleep at night. Also as he is the god of wisdom if Tom is wiser than him he must be pretty wise indeed.

I don't know if this is a reference to an actual astronomical event ( an eclipse of the moon, or a conjunction in astrological terms) but the characters involved are moon, the shepherd who I think is Endymion in the Greek myths; the queen of love is Venus, the warrior Mars. There is a reference to cuckolding here in "horn" which is also the same pun as in the Bard, on the crescent moon. Venus is cuckolding Hephaestus, who is the Blacksmith in the Greek myths.

I dont know which star the dawn star was in that century - have to look that up. Unless of course, it is Sirius ...

There may be alchemical reference here as well - especially in the embracing(marriage) of Mars by/and Venus. Alchemical symbolism would explain the tumults in the heavens which could be allegorical langauge for describing processes in the alchemcial vessel.

Tom is full of arcane stuff - its almost like a game to see how much of it you can pack in. Its anon, so god knows where it came from.

Re: Who is the man in the moons dog

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Sirius has been dawn star in Egypt, but I don't know about England in the past. Precession does tend to throw these things out over time, as you say.

Interesting that the moon is female in the ballad.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Aside from Shakespeare characterizing fairies as generally capricious, as was said above, and cruel and kind on a whim (hence Oberon helping Helena is not inconsistent with him tricking Titania), I think it's also a matter of different sociological background. For the Elizabethans, boys would didn't belong with their mothers anymore after they made it beyond toddler stage. But I agree that's no help in a current stage production, but then they don't have to show the Indian boy at all if they don't want to.

Remember when we saw it coupled with the Barrie play? With the motif of the lost child and the separated couple given a very different twist there.

I've seen Oberon played as anything from Satanic and male oppressor to bark-worse-than-bite, it really depends on the production. Most that I've seen, btw, go for letting him and Titania played by the same actors who play Theseus and Hyppolita, which in one production made for a powerful moment when Hyppolita almost seems to recognize Bottom later.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I remember the Barrie play very well. It gave a very different slant to the relationship between Oberon and Puck.

I've never quite understood the reason for pairing Theseus and Oberon (apart from saving on actors)

What's the rationale for doing it that way?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Aside from saving actors, I think it's the concept of the two royal couples supposedly mirroring each other.

Speaking of mirroring: when I was at the university, one of my professors had us write a paper of compare and contrast of Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, specifically Oberon versus Prospero, Puck versus Ariel, and how the whole thing worked as a theatre metaphor (i.e. both Oberon/Puck and Prospero/Ariel making other characters act out plays of their devices).