Chickens! Cultural Moment: Midsummer Night's Dream

Part 2 of this year's Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan festivities. One of the most commonly performed comedies of all time is Midsummer Night's Dream. It is not really known when exactly this play was first written but it was probably some time in the mid 1590's. The SotS took a 20s(ish) take on it with colourful suits and jazzy songs and all of the characters were in the military. Delightful.

This play features three interlocking plots sandwiched between opening and closing scenes relating to the celebration of the wedding of Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. Primarily, we have the love quadrangle between Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander are in love but Hermia's father Egeus wants her to marry Demetrius. Demetrius loves Hermia but she doesn't love him and Hermia's best friend Helena loves Demetrius but he doesn't love her. What jolly farce! We also have the story of Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen. They are in town for Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding but are estranged because Titania won't give her page-boy to Oberon to be his minion because the boy is the son of one of her peeps who died. Oberon wants to go upside her head for being so feisty so he gets his henchman Puck to get him a love flower so he can make Titania fall in love with something or other and become too distracted to care about her page-boy any more (and also to be used to sort out the four aforementioned fools who are by now chasing each other through the forest at night). This leads us to the third story, that of the "mechanicals" (laborer/peasant folk) who are to put on the play-within-a-play about Pyramus and Thisbe that is to be the entertainment at Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. While rehearsing, one of the mechanicals, Nick Bottom, shows himself to be an ass and Puck decides to transform Nick's outsides to reflect this and points him at Titania (who was hepped up on love flower by this point). And bestiality ensued. Eventually, once Oberon gets what he wants, he gets Puck to put everything back to normal except that Demetrius is now in love with Hermia so all is well and all the couples get married and the mechanicals perform their play (badly) and there is much rejoicing. The end.

Now, let's talk historical references shall we:

This play draws on both Greek (Theseus and Hippolyta) and Roman (Pyramus and Thisbe) mythology. He was fathered by the Athenian king Aegeus (as in Aegean Sea, see: Minotaur myth re: throwing himself into the ocean) and Poseidon. Interestingly, this idea reflects the Greek understanding of reproduction at the time as they believed the mixture of semen from the two fathers would give rise to a son with characteristics of both. Theseus is also featured in the lesser known Shakespearean play "The Two Noble Kinsmen". In mythology, Theseus does marry Hippolyta, the Amazonian queen he meets and kidnaps in while traveling with Hercules. However, in some stories it is not Hippolyta, but her daughter Antiope that he abducts and marries. Being an Amazonian gave Shakespeare licence to have Hippolyta talk back to Theseus so forcefully during the play (actually Midsummer Night's Dream is touted as having very strong willed female characters throughout). Anyway, of course this caused a big ol' war between the Amazons and the Athenians. The Amazonians lost because they failed to reckon with the fact the Athenians had two demigods on their side (Duh!). He later ditched Hippolyta (or she may have died) once he became King, for Phaedra who was the daughter of King Minos. Theseus is most famous for defeating King Minos' minotaur in Crete (with Phaedra's older sister Ariadne's assistance) when he was a princely whipper-snapper. But, Phaedra falls in love with her son-in-law Hippolytus, Theseus' son by Hippolyta. In Euripides' play "Phaedra", Phaedra sends her slave to tell Hippolytus how she feels, but he is shocked and appalled by the news (he's chaste don't you know). Phaedra then accuses Hippolytus of rape, Theseus has Hippolytus killed, and Phaedra kills herself not necessarily in that order, and in some versions of the story she doesn't commit suicide at all).

The story of the star-crossed lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, is from the Roman poet Ovid's epic narrative poem Metamorphoses (the 15 books of this collection of relatively unrelated tales of love, seduction, and history were completed in 8 AD). Among other things, this story explains why mulberries are red. Shakespeare liked this story so much he based Romeo and Juliet on it (which he is thought to have written around the same time as Midsummer Night's Dream). Shakespeare also took the name "Titania" from Metamorphoses, as it was the name given to the daughters of titans. Before this, traditional folklore held that the fairy queen remained nameless. Oberon, however, dates back to 13th century french literature as a fairy dwarf in the "chanson de geste" (transl. Old French - songs of heroic deeds) "Les Prouesses et faits du noble Huon de Bordeaux". As in many fairy tales, this one finds our hero charged with completing various impossible tasks for whatever reason (usually princess related), which he is only able to accomplish because early on in the story he was nice to a magical thing of some sort, in this case a magic dwarf. Other likely candidates for helpful things to befriend in such scenarios include: old people (especially crones), talking animals (also preternaturally smart but mute animals), things that are trapped inside of other things, water creatures that like music (only to be attempted if you have some sort of musical instrument handy), and deceptive earthly incarnations of deities. So keep an eye out for those.