Class 7th. The Play 'A Midsummer Night's Dream

 

The Play 'A Midsummer Night's Dream: Act 3, Scene 1. by William Shakespeare

Summary

A group of artisans-Bottom, Quince, Flute, Snout and Starveling-are planning to enact the play 'Pyramus and Thisby' at the wedding of Theseus, the duke of Athens. They gather inside a wood to rehearse the play.

Inside the wood, there is another world of creatures-magical creatures, whose king is Oberon and queen is Titania. Oberon has asked his handyman Puck to play a trick on Titania. Puck is to put the juice of a magical flower on Titania's eyelids, which will make her fall in love with whomever she sees first. Titania is sleeping near the spot where the artisans are rehearsing, but they have not seen her.

The actors start rehearsing. They are anxious to not scare the ladies in the audience, and that makes them wonder how to show Pyramus killing himself with a sword or how to bring a lion on to the stage. Bottom, who is playing Pyramus, suggests reading out a prologue to explain that the sword is not to be feared; Pyramus will not be killed; he is not really Pyramus. As for the lion, the actor playing the lion could peep through the costume and explain that he is a man and not really a lion.

They also decide that they shall incorporate moonlight by keeping a window open or with the help of someone representing moonlight with a lantern and a bush. A wall can be represented by putting plaster on someone's clothes and asking him to hold up and separate his fingers to indicate a chink in the wall. These matters settled, they begin speaking their lines. Sometimes, they confuse some of the words and sometimes they speak all their lines at once. Meanwhile, Puck enters the scene, unobserved, and is amused to see their humble and unusual efforts.

When Bottom moves away as per his stage directions, Puck changes his head into the head of a donkey. When Bottom reappears among his companions, they are scared and run away. Bottom is alarmed at their reaction, but he is determined not to act scared, so he stays there and begins singing.

His song wakes up Titania, who has had the magical juice put on her eyelids. Therefore, as she sees Bottom, she falls in love with him. As she declares her love, Bottom says that she has little reason to fall for him, yet admits that love seldom follows reason. Under the effect of the magic, Titania finds everything Bottom says or does wonderful, so when he expresses a wish to leave the wood, she tells him that he must stay there, with her, and tells him how her fairy attendants can pamper him. She summons four of them-Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed-and asks them to attend to Bottom. As they greet Bottom, he shows off his wit by making puns with their names-Peaseblossom sounds like the blossom or flower of a pea plant; cobweb is used as a bandage; and mustard is a popular and pungent seasoning. Titania thinks it is about to rain, and orders them to move to her bower.

The comedy of this scene stems not only from the actors' unusual decisions and simple-minded mistakes, but also from Puck's mischievous tricks and the absurdity of the events that follow-Bottom walking about with a donkey's head and Titania falling promptly and madly in love with the transformed Bottom. Bottom's wordplay also adds to the humour. Titania's speech, on the other hand, has a musical quality, especially in para 47, where her lines rhyme with each other. She is a fairy, she is a queen and she is in love; that may be why her lines have been made particularly beautiful.

This text features three kinds of characters and events, that add to the complexity of the narrative: there are the real people and events-the actors rehearsing the play; there are the actions and the eponymous characters in the play of 'Pyramus and
Thisby'; last but not the least there are the fairy creatures-Oberon, Puck, Titania and her fairy attendants, whose encounter with the real, mortal characters create so much comic confusion.
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