George Washington University
A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Fairies, Bottom, and the Mystery of Things
Author(s): Ronald F. Miller
Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Summer, 1975), pp. 254-268
Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University
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A
The
Midsummer
Fairies,
Night's
and
Bottom,
of
Dream:
the
Mystery
Things
RONALD F. MILLER
I
HE complex and subtle intellectuality of Shakespeare'scomic
art was never better illustratedthan by A Midsummer Night's
Dream and, in particular, by Shakespeare's employment of
the fairies in that play. Not only are they obviously the most
striking feature of the comedy; intellectually they are the
most provocative,too. By intruding the fictive worlds of Ovid
and English folklore into the doings of the nobles and the workmen of
Athens, they pose open-ended questions about illusion and reality, existence
and art to, those willing to press beyond the older interpretation of the play as
a charming theatrical fantasy or a comic medley or a burlesque. Such puzzles
have occupied so much recent critical attention that this comedy, once rather
generally dismissed as a piece of fluff, is now more likely to 'beread as a study
in the epistemology of the imagination.1
And this tendency seems justified. The fairies are a continual and unavoidable reminder of a certain indefiniteness in the world of the play-an
indefiniteness culminating in the suggestion by the fairy prankster Puck that
the play itself may have only been a dream: "If we shadows have offended, /
Think but this, and all is mended, / That you have but slumb'redhere / While
these visions did appear"(V. i. 430-33) 2 With that final insinuation, the frame
I Instrumental in putting to rest the old pixie-dust trivialization of the play and establishing
its intellectual substance have been (among others) C. L. Barber, "May Games and Metamorphoses
on a Midsummer Night" in Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its
Elizabeth
pp. ii9-62;
Relation to Social Custom (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, i959),
Sewell, The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1960),
passim; Frank Kermode, "The Mature Comedies," Early Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon
R. W. Dent, "Imagination in A Midpp.
2I4-20;
Studies 3 (New York: St. Martin's, i96i),
David P. Young, Something of Great ConII5-29;
summer Night's Dream," SQ, i5 (i964),
stancy: The Art of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, i966),
pp. iII-66; and James Calderwood, "A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Illusion of Drama," MLQ,
reprinted with alterations as "A Midsummer Night's Dream: Art's Illusory Sacri506-22,
26 (i965),
pp. I20-48.
fice" in Shakespearean Metadrama (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, I971),
The precise tack of these critics varies, of course, from Barber's subtle and sensitive analysis of the
epistemology of the imitative act to Calderwood's attempt to untangle the ontological mare's
nest within the play. Young's entire book provides the most ambitious attempt to come to grips
with the intellectual breadth of A Midsummer Night's Dream. All seem persuaded that the
fairies possess what can only be called metaphysical implications.
2 The tendency of this and surrounding passages to expand the world of the stage to encompass the world of the audience is explored by Paul N. Siegel, "A Midsummer Night's Dream
The text cited here and throughout is that of
and the Wedding Guests," SQ, 4 0953),
I43-44.
W. A. Neilson and C. J. Hill (Cambridge, Mass: Houghton Mifflin, I942).
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A MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM
255
of dramatic illusion is irreparably compromised, and little remains besides a
series of tantalizing riddles. Are the fairies real or unreal? Are the spectators
no less than the Athenians subject to Puck's and Oberon's magic? How can
we assign precedence to the various levels of reality-including our ownunder the sway of Shakespeare's art? Such doubts tease us into abstract
thoughts as inescapable as their conclusions are elusive and uncertain.
The intellectual implications of the fairies, however, have scarcely been exhausted once the puzzle of their metaphysical status has been explored. No
doubt there is a certain fugitiveness to these beings. Shakespeare lets us have
our fairies and doubt them too. Yet beyond these'formal uncertainties lie other
uncertainties residing not in the world of the stage but in the world of ordinary
human experience to which every dramatic representation, no matter how
sophisticated, must ultimately refer. As theatrical immanences-ambulatory
metaphors, if you wish-who secretly manipulate affections, cause transformations, and bring good luck, the fairies obliquely hint that our own offstage
existence may be touched by mysteries no less genuine than those that disrupt
the world of Theseus, Hermia, Bottom, and the rest. I would not, however, go
so far as Harold C. Goddard, who speaks of the fairies as unequivocally representing "a vaster unseen world by which the actions of men are affected and
overruled." Shakespeare's art is surely not so blatantly allegorical. It is not
so much the fairies per se as the mystery of the fairies-the very aura of
evanescence and ambiguity surrounding their life on stage-that points to a
mysteriousnessin our own existence, and specifically in such ambivalent earthly
matters as love, luck, imagination, and even faith. These are the elements of
human experience with which the fairies are again and again associated. As
Shakespeare plays his sly games with the insubstantial fairies, we are forced by
the ambivalence in their status to ask questions, ultimately unanswerable,about
the substance of those mortal experiences with which they are linked.
This suggestiveness can best lbeillustrated by looking at the crucial exchange
between Theseus and Hippolyta about the experiences of the lovers in the
forest, a locus classicus for every study reading the play in terms of the themes
of illusion, art, or the creative imagination.4 Certainly Theseus touches these issues when he cautions against the fantasies created by the seething brains of the
lunatic, the lover, and the poet:
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehendsome joy,
It comprehendssome bringerof that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos'da bear!
(V. i.
I8-22)
By such explanation this advocate of daytime reason wishes to dismiss the
reports of strange events in the midsummer night. Hippolyta objects by raising
a question that asks more than merely whether fairies can truly be found
wandering in the woods nearby:
The Meaning of Shakespeare(Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1951), I, 74. See also pp. 78-79.
The opposition between the positions of Theseus and Hippolyta has engendered much
critical activity, some critics championing one side and some the other. Young discusses the
issues very interestingly,pp. 137-41.
3
4
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SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY
256
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur'dso together,
More witnesseththan fancy'simages,
And grows to somethingof great constancy;
Yet howsoever,strange and admirable.
(V. i. 23-27)
Naturally, upon hearing this we comfortably assure ourselves of the secret
presence of the fairies, and, if we are alert, we may also enjoy the fine irony
that those fairies-and Theseus, too, and his speech-are all products of the
seething brain of a poet. But this does not really exhaust the suggestiveness of
the exchange. Behind Hippolyta's observation lies the question whether the
"olde daunce" of love so brilliantly represented by the round in the nighttime
woods does not reveal something orderly and purposeful behind its apparent
chaos. The fairies are (among other things) the metamorphic agency of love
personified, pansy-juice and all;5 and an ambivalence in the status of the fairies
implies an ambivalence in the status of love. In the language of Theseus'
rationalistic analysis, love is an apprehended joy and the fairies are the comprehended bringers of that joy. That defines the fairies' function fairly well, but
literary symbols are not so easily separated from the realities to which they
point. If the fairies are complete delusions, then love itself will seem a delusion;
if the fairies are real, then love, however incomprehensible to daytime reason,
will seem something of great constancy, substantial, strange, and maybe even
admirable. Shakespeare's puzzle goes beyond the puzzles of art: the greatest
mystery is not that of the fairies but of life.
The immediate subject of the exchange between Theseus and Hippolyta, the
adventures of the lovers in the forest, exhibits rather fully the way Shakespeare
uses uncertainties in the frame of imitation to suggest more fundamental
ambivalences. Soon after going into the woods, the four Athenian youths become subject to the magic of the fairies. A literalist of the imagination-one
of Bottom's cousins, say-might confidently explain the mad pairings of
Demetrius, Helena, Lysander, and Hermia as a result of their intercession. No
doubt the play can so be read. Yet the magical aspect of love itself is pointedly
impressed upon us before the fairies troop onto the stage with their charms.
In the first scene of the first act Egeus accuses Lysander of having "bewitch'd"
the bosom of his child:
Thou, thou, Lysander,,thou hastgiven her rhymes
And interchang'dlove-tokenswith my child.
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung
With faining voice versesof faining love,
And stol'nthe impressionof her fantasy
With braceletsof thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks,trifles,nosegays,sweetmeats,-messengers
Of strong prevailmentin unhard'nedyouth.
(I. i. 28-35)
5 The important theme of metamorphosisin the play has been discussed by Sewell, pp.
and Barber,pp. I35-37.
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139-41,
A MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM
257
The connection between the moon (that magic planet), witchery, fancy, fantasy,
and love is here made explicit. Significantly, Egeus treats the paraphernaliaof
young love and courtship as though these were charms no less occult than
Oberon's pansy. The effect of this is double. First, it provides an excuse for
seeing the fairies as a mere objectification of the well-known irrationalities of
love. What could be more silly than a spell provoked by the geegaws and
gestures traditionally associated with courtship? Puck's tricks are but an extension of this perspective. Secondly, Egeus's connection of love with magic
tends to make the audience look upon love as a mystery beyond explanation
by the orderly processes of cool reason. So when at the end of the play we
comprehend that fairy magic is both purposeful and good, then the charms
of love-bracelets of hair, rings, gawds, and so on-may be seen as mysteriously
beneficent, too.
This ambivalence is continued at the end of the first scene. Helena, excusing
her betrayal of her dear friend Hermia, discusses the arbitrarinessof Demetrius'
choice of a love-object.She moves from her own dilemma to a few generalizations about love: "Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can
transpose to form and dignity" (I. i. 232-33). Here love itself is said to effect
such magical transformations as we later see the fairies effect; yet before we
accept this vision too complacently, Helena joins hands with that Renaissance
psychologist Theseus in viewing this magic as the product of a seething brain:
"Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, / And therefore is wing'd
Cupid painted blind" (I. i. 234-35). The uncertainty, then, is whether the "form
and dignity" seen by love is the effect of hallucination or of a sight transcending the physical. When the lover, as Theseus says, "Sees Helen's beauty in a
brow of Egypt" (V. i. ii), is that act of imaginative faith a piece of intoxicated
folly? One answer is given by Titania's infatuation with ass-headed Bottom,
another by the lovers' discovery upon waking that their pairings-off have
happily ended in a combination fortunate for them all.
When the fairies come on stage themselves, their status is immediately called
into question. Puck's first extended speech is full of what C. L. Barber calls
"a conscious double vision": "The plain implication of the lines, though Puck
speaks them, is that Puck does not really exist-that he is a figment of the
naive imagination, projected to motivate the little accidents of household life."6
Though finely said, this is incomplete. Theseus in emphasizing the delusions
of the imagination might interpret Puck's words in such a way. Puck's words
do assure us that his deeds can all be explained away as accident by those
who are so inclined. But Hippolyta might as easily observe that the little
accidents of household life are here being shown to suggest something of great
constancy, though that something may only work for rustic joie de vivre:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likenessof a roastedcrab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her withereddewlappourthe ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddesttale,
6 Barber, p. I43.
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258
SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY
Sometime for three-footstool mistaketh me.
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And "tailor"cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrierhour was never wastedthere.
(II. i. 47-57)
Such a passage, as Thersites once said of opinion, a man may wear on both
sides, like a leather jerkin. Paradoxically,the fairies are both real and imagined;
life provides its little accidents which are at one and the same time pure
chance and the work of an immanence bent upon fostering good fellowship
and laughter.
A similar paradox characterizesthe presentation of the other fairies. We are
given to understand in most mannered verse that they are vegetation spirits
whose quarrel explains the chaotic effects of bad weather. The very artificiality
of their language keeps us from ever becoming truly caught up in Titania and
Oberon as dramatic characters.They are stage-figures whose artful speech suggests that they are literary ornamentation.' Surely Oberon says a lot when he
informs Puck that, though they are not damned spirits that love the night, they
are spirits who cannot withstand the full light of day (III. ii. 388-95). From
this perspective they are seen as fanciful entities embodying the chance of
agricultural misfortune: an actual reference to the year I594 has been detected
by some scholars.8Yet there they are. Visible. Audible. On stage. Has anyone
ever found a more believable explanation for climatic vicissitudes? And the
fairies do make up at the end, promising a return to good harvests. I assume
that if the weather had improved the year A Midsummer Night's Dream was
produced, the existence of the fairies would have seemed to be confirmed.
Thus when these elusive beings begin to interfere with the lovers and their
pairings-off, we have been prepared to interpret the comic transformations
effected by their magic in two contradictory ways: first, as a natural disorder
mythologized and, second, as the working of some immanence behind events. In
defiance of all logic, neither alternative is rejected; both coexist in the complex
comic vision. The whirligig in the woods is, no doubt, a fine extended image
of the irrationality and arbitrarinessof young love, in and out of affection with
this or that member of the opposite sex according to availability and chance.
The startling result of the juice from a magic plant seems as descriptive a
metaphor as any for the ordinary inclination of youth to dote and dote utterly
upon one out of a set of apparentlyinterchangeablepersons of the opposite sex.
Our knowledge of the way of the world and our familiarity with Puck's
activities work in concert to underscore the irony of Lysander's speech upon
waking to discover his affections changed:
The will of man is by his reasonsway'd;
And reasonsays you are the worthiermaid.
7 Barber develops this point at some length, pp. 147-48.
8 The rainy summer of 1594
has traditionally been used to date the play in i595. Madeleine
Doran, in her introductoryremarks to the play in the Penguin edition, ed. Alfred Harbage (Baltimore: Penguin, i969), p. 146, notes that the next two summers were also unseasonable.
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A MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM
259
Things growing are not ripe until their season,
So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason;
And touchingnow the point of human skill,
Reason becomesthe marshalto my will
And leads me to your eyes, where I o'erlook
Love's storieswritten in Love's richestbook.
(II. ii. 115-22)
So much for reason in love, on or off stage.
Nonetheless, the confusions of the night do ultimately work for the good,
whatever the intermediate delight Puck takes in the agitations of the mortals.
Judging by the results, the events seem to have been governed by an effective
albeit inefficient benevolence. Though all seemed chaotic at the time, in the
end (as Puck promises) "Jackshall have Jill; / Nought shall go ill; / The man
shall have his mare again, and all shall be well" (III.ii 46i-63). There is
something profoundly suggestive in the reverent mix of wonder and joy the
lovers convey when they wake to find themselves blessed with an end to their
tribulations. They are not unlike Milton's Adam, waking to find his dream was
real:
Demetrius.These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-offmountainsturnedinto clouds.
Hermia. MethinksI see these things with partedeye,
When every thing seems double.
So methinks;
Helena.
And I have found Demetriuslike a jewel,
Mine own, and not mine own.
[But] are you sure
Demetrius.
That we are [now] awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream.
(IV. i. i9-i98)
Something approaching religious awe is revealed in this bewildered recognition
of their mysterious good fortune. So moving is this association of the fairies
with immanent benevolence that, for a moment, all formal ambiguities-all
questions of the reality of the fairies-fade to insignificance before the greater
mysteries underlying all mortal existence.
II
Waking at the same moment is another dreamer, Bottom, who also rises
temporarily bewildered by the wonders of the past night. The slightest uncertainty or hesitation on the part of Bottom is truly noteworthy, for he has
previously shown himself to be overwhelmingly matter-of-factabout everything.
The anomalies of fairy magic have as little immediate appeal to him as they
do to Theseus-but with a difference. Theseus is a conscious rationalist; in
his famous speech at the beginning of Act V he condescendingly explains away
the inexplicable events of the night as "airy nothings," as the psychological deception of the "strong imagination." Theseus consistently embodies this skeptical
side of the dialectic of the play, just as our visual and aural experience of the
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260
SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY
fairiesembodiesthe credulousside. Even when TheseusdefendsPyramusand
Thisbyfrom attackby Hippolyta("This is the sillieststuff that ever I heard"
[V. i. 2I2]),
he does so with an urbane assurancethat all works of the
imagination are harmless,airy fantasies: "The best in this kind are but
shadows;and the worst are no worse,if imaginationamendthem" (V. i. 2I3I4). In his attitudehe is no less condescending
towardthe dramatistthan he
is toward the lunatic,the lover, or the poet. If (as now seems conventional)
we wish to invert Theseus'statementto affirmthe genuine creativityof the
imaginativeresponse,we may find justificationin the play as a whole, but
certainlynot in Theseus'own intent.
Bottom, on the other hand, does not representa position so much as a
problem,in particularthe characteristic
problemof men-all men-immersed
in an ambivalentreality.In his own benightedway he, more than any other
figure on stage, must confrontthe centralintellectualissue of the play. He is
consistentlyshown encounteringmysteries,the mysteryof the mimeticact, the
mysteryof love, and (aboveall else) the mysteryof the fairies;and his comic
struggleswith the complexitiesof experienceare Shakespeare's
primarymeans
of exploringthe dilemmapresentedby a worldcharacterized
by what Norman
Rabkin would call "complementarity,"
a world in which realityis necessarily
perceivedin terms of opposingand apparentlycontradictorymodesof being.9
As the "bottom"of mankind,Bottom'ssolution for the irreduciblecomplementarityof things is really quite simple: ignore the problem.He sees the
mysteriousand acceptsit as perfectlyordinary;he behavesas though the inexplicableand the explicablewere simplyno differentat all. The centralambiguities of the play are hidden from him becauseall experiences,irrationalor
rational,magicalor mundane,are of the same orderin his sight.
Considerfor a moment his attitudetowardthe drama.The world of the
stage bearsa significantresemblanceto the world of the fairies.Both define a
mode of existenceseparatefrom but interactingwith quotidianexistence;both
challengean outsidereither to rejectionor to a tentativesurrenderingof his
skepticalinstincts.An intelligencecapableof understandingthat fairiesmay
be realon one level and be metaphorson anotheris alsoneededto comprehend
that a man may be both an actoron the literallevel and a lover or a tyranton
stage.SuchsubtletiesarequitebeyondBottom.Accordingto his understanding,
either a lion on stagemust be acceptedby the spectatorsas a genuine lion or
else the audiencemust remaincontinuouslyawarethat the beastis in fact an
actor-a specificactor-impersonatinga lion. "That willing suspensionof disbelief . . which constitutesthe poetic faith"is for Bottom indistinguishable
from mere credulity,so he must assumethat a spectatorseeing a lion in the
world of the stagemust fear for his safetyin his own sphereof existence:
Bottom.Masters,yououghtto considerwith yourselves.
To bringinGod shieldus!-a lion amongladies,is a most dreadfulthing;for there
is not a morefearfulwild-fowlthan yourlion living;and we ought to
lookto't.
Snout.Thereforeanotherprologuemusttell he is not a lion.
Bottom.Nay, youmustnamehis name,andhalfhis facemustbe seen
9Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: Free Press, i967),
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pp.
19-28.
A MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM
26i
through the lion's neck; and he himself must speak through, saying thus,
or to the same defect, "Ladies,"or "Fair ladies, I would wish you," or
"I would requestyou,"or "I would entreatyou, not to fear, not to tremble:
my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my
life. No, I am no such thing; I am a man as other men are;" and there
indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainlyhe is Snug the joiner.
(III. i. 30-47)
Theseus denies the validity of the works of the strong imagination; Bottom
acts as if the imagination did not exist at all.
Of course this is rollicking good fun, and Shakespeare repeats the joke
several times over for good measure. The crudities of the actual presentationof
Pyramus and Thisby are so great that Bottom triumphantly attains his goal of
having spectators ever aware of the actors qua actors. No one is ever allowed
to escape into the state of mind which tentatively accepts as true that which is
untrue from a strictly mundane perspective. Bottom is even willing to converse directly with the audience if his commitment to the literal truth seems
to demand it:
Pyramus.Thanks, courteouswall; Jove shield thee well for this!
But what see I? No Thisbydo I see.
0 wickedwall, throughwhom I see no bliss!
Curs'dbe thy stonesfor thus deceivingme!
Theseus.The wall, methinks,being sensible,should curseagain.
Pyramus.No, in truth, sir, he should not. "Deceivingme" is Thisby's
cue. She is to enter now, and I am to spy her throughthe wall. You shall
see it will fall pat as I told you. Yondershe comes. (V. i. 179-89)
Nothing could better exhibit his willingness to run roughshod over the
boundaries between different modes of existence, his tendency to impose a
prosaic uniformity upon a many-faceted reality.
Not that Bottom is unique in this assault upon the dramatic illusion. The
court party and the other players join in. Shakespeare is obviously having his
fun creating what Anne Righter has called "an essay on the art of destroying
a play."'0 Bottom's approach to the drama deserves special notice, however, because it is of a piece with his approach to other works of the imagination; all
the mysteries of life, which certainly include the epistemological mysteries of
the drama, are as vulnerable to his literalism as they are to Theseus' rationalism.
Yet Bottom's stupidity is actually suggestive, whereas Theseus' attitude, for all
its wisdom, is ultimately reductionistic. By not detecting complexities that are
obvious to the audience, Bottom puts these complexities into bold relief and
makes us more, not less, conscious of the myriad-mindedness necessary for
men to confront experience whole. As has often been remarked, the various
aspects of this play are linked together by the common theme of the imagination, but it is Bottom's undiscriminating desire to treat all products of the
imagination as quotidian reality which provides this linkage.
This thematic significance is evident if we look at the havoc wrought by
Bottom when he turns his brutal literalism upon the fanciful world of the
10 Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (London: Chatto and Windus,
i962),
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p.
io8.
SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY
262
fairies.As the very embodimentof a sensibilitythat finds nothingmysterious
either in art or in life, as the negative image of that pluralisticintellectual
comedymoves, Bottomis bound to prove
vision towardwhich Shakespeare's
himself inadequateto the encounter.A lesserartistmight have made Bottom
symbolicallyblind to the fairies; in a masterstrokeShakespearechoosesthe
witty opposite.While the court party sees the fairiesonly indirectlythrough
their effectsand throughthe intimationof patternsseeminglytoo constantto
be explainedas merechance,Bottom,literalistthathe is, meetsthe fairiesfaceto-face.
The meeting of coursedoes not work solely to Bottom'sdisadvantage.His
equanimitybeforethe airy nothingsof Titania'spassionlets us appreciatethe
sillinessof the agitationsof all the lovers,fairy and mortalalike. Titania infatuatedwith ass-headedBottomprovidesa perfectimage of love'sirrational
frenzy, and Bottom'sprosaicskepticismmakes him tellingly superiorto this
general madness,just as his obtusenesshad made him immune to the airy
nothingsof the stage:11
Titania.I praythee,gentlemortal,sing again.
Mine ear is much enamour'dof thy note;
So is mine eye enthralledto thy shape;
And thy fair virtue'sforceperforcedoth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.
Bottom. Methinks,mistress,you should have little reasonfor that; and
yet, to say the truth, reasonand love keep little companytogethernow-adays; the more the pity that some honest neighbourswill not make them
friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.
Titania.Thou artas wise as thou art beautiful.
Bottom.Not so, neither;but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood,
I have enough to serve mine own turn. (III. i. 140-54)
His plain good sense surely triumphs here; yet here is a mortal, transported
into the lap of the fairy queen-that sanctum sanctorum of an imaginative
(and imaginary?) world sustaining and informing the world of common reality
-and all he can do is think in terms of country proverbs and homespun experience. Offered any blessing from the rich store of a world freed from the
limitations of reason and likelihood, he desires nothing more than a scratch on
his head and a peck of provender. If, as suggested, Bottom is a comic image of
ourselves, Everyman-as-Fool, then his failure to grasp the wonder and opportunity of his predicamentreflectsour common failure to prevent worldliness
from dimming our vision and blunting our hopes. Observing Bottom ask for
a handful or two of dried peas, I am forcefully reminded of Emerson's "Days":
11 Coming at the ambiguities of love in the play from a different direction, John Russell
Brown makes a similar connection between these aspects of the comedy: "The play's greatest triumph is the manner in which our wavering acceptanceof the illusion of drama is used as a kind
of flesh-and-blood image of the acceptancewhich is appropriateto the strange and private 'truth'
of those who enact the play of love" (Shakespeareand his Comedies, 2nd. ed. [London: Methuen,
1926],
p. 90).
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Daughtersof Time, the hypocriticDays,
Muffledand dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread,kingdoms,stars,and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleachedgarden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departedsilent. I, too late,
Under her solemnfillet saw the scorn.12
One has only to compare the relative simplicity of Emerson's message with
the complex countercurrents of irony, metaphysics, and broad humor in Bottom's request for provender to recognize that Shakespeare is not only the
best but, in this comedy at least, also one of the most intellectually vigorous of
our poets.
Still, for a comic routine, the dissonance between Titania's passion and
Bottom's obliviousness is hilariously deflating. For just a moment Bottom's
imaginative fundamentalism asks us to take the fairies literally and to observe
how much these airy, symbolic creatures suffer by the touch of the earthy and
the actual. That stroke of making love and reason country neighbors is a
triumph of the same literal-mindedness that allows Bottom to treat Cobweb,
Peaseblossom, and Mustardseed as a physical cobweb, peaseblossom, and
mustardseed, thus reducing personification to vulgar fact:
Bottom. I cry your worshipsmercy, heartily.I beseech your worship's
name.
Cobweb. Cobweb.
Bottom. I shall desireyou of more acquaintance,good MasterCobweb.
If I cut my finger,I shall make bold with you. (III. i.
182-87)
On one level, of course, this is simply the play's most vivid realization of
that double vision which has characterized everything having to do with the
fairies. In the comic encounter, extremes meet and coexist: imagination and
love and magic at their most entrancing in Titania, philistine realism at its
most appealingly vulgar in Bottom. But Shakespeare does not exhaust the suggestiveness of this pairing when he sets these two off against each other.
Ironically, Bottom's unblinking acceptance of the fairies provides these metaphoric beings with a solidity that nothing else, not even their presence on stage,
can provide. As I have indicated, the fairies are almost always presented in
a context that suggests that they could be explained away. The fact that not one
of the court party sees them is certainly suggestive. Were it not for Bottom, the
fairies might be passed off as simply a personification of the providence that
governs, or seems to govern, or we would like to have govern, events.
But Bottom is of all men the least prone to the delusions of the imagination,
and when he confronts transcendenceface-to-face,transcendenceitself takes on
a certain matter-of-factness.If we have become too complacent in viewing the
12
Centenary edition
(Boston:
Houghton
Mifflin,
1903-04),
IX,
228.
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SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY
264
mysteriesof the worldof the play and the mysteriesof our own worldin terms
of a neatly compartmentalized
vision, Bottom'sstumblingacrossthe line into
the fairy world gives us a jolt. In other words, the weaver'sunimaginative
literalismgives Shakespearea perfectopeningto expandthe intellectualscope
of the play to suggestnot just the mysteryof our experiencein this world,but
alsothe mysteryof our experiencewith someotherworld.
At the level of pure fun, Bottom'sacquisitionof an ass'snoll may simply
be a metaphorobjectified,perhapsthe only naturalway for such a thoroughgoing imaginativefundamentalistto provehimself an ass; but since the other
rude mechanicalssee what JamesCalderwoodcalls "thegenuineapple-munching ear-twitchingarticle,"13
the existenceof the supernaturalis stronglyindicated. Though in the widest perspectivefalling in love may be as magicala
metamorphosisas becomingpart beast, Theseus would have a hardertime
explainingthe latter away. The interconnectionbetween actualityand transcendenceis palpablein all matterstouching Bottom. This is dramatically
illustratedby the great parallelwaking sceneat the end of Act IV. When the
lovers awake from the night, they can only speakdistractedlyaboutthe halfglimpsedwondersthey have "dreamed";
they find themselvesblessed,but they
know not how. Bottom knows, though he finds his languageinadequateto
describehis "vision":
I havehad a mostrarevision.I havehad a dream,pastthe wit of man
to say whatdreamit was. Manis but an ass, if he go aboutto expound
this dream.MethoughtI was-there is no man can tell what.Methought
I was,-and methoughtI had,-but man is but a patch'dfool, if he will
offerto say whatmethoughtI had. (IV. i. 208-15)
Shakespeare's
art achievesa densityand complexityherethatevenhe seldom
attained.The passageis of coursefunny. To find garrulousBottomat a loss
for wordsis delightful.His apparentlyunconsciousreferenceto his pastcondition in "Manis but an ass"is sure to draw a laugh from the groundings.His
waking reverenceclashespointedlywith his phlegmaticapproachto the events
when he was actuallyexperiencingthem. This humor,however,does not prevent Shakespearefromtouchingdeeperchords.By speakingso,generallyof man
and human capacities,Bottom reconfirmshimself as a comic mirrorfor the
generalhuman condition.Bottombecomes any man awakingfrom a visionary
glimpseinto ordersotherthan thoseof his workadayworld.What Bottomhas
seen is of course hardly ineffable-inexpressibleby him though it be-yet
Shakespearegives him languagethat echoesthe traditionalhumbleadmission
of the mystic that the substanceof his visions is beyond recountingby the
tonguesof men. For Bottomafterhis earthyfashionis a mysticof sorts;in his
flatfootedway he has truly enteredinto a transcendentexistencewhich has
has also
been closed to the rest of the mortalsupon whom the transcendence
impinged.
A suggestiveanalogyis thus being established:as Bottomis to the worldof
the fairies,so man in the height of his powersis to-is to what? If Bottom,
the least perceptiveof men, can glimpseinto the shadowyworld of the fairies,
13
Calderwood, p.
I 29.
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265
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
what do we who masterBottom'sconfusionsglimpsein our own momentsof
unarticulatedwonder?Here Shakespearebrilliantlyreversesthe age-oldcomic
tactic of correctionthroughdiminution;the comic mirroris here being employednot to belittlethat which is reflectedbut to show by associationand suggestionthe potentiallatenteven in the lowly imageof man we see.A theatrical
coup, a witty toying with the levels of realityin the world on stage, comes
very close to becominga parodyof mankindcaught up in a religiousvision
of worlds beyond the physical.Amid all the laughter there is something
touchinglypitiful in watching poor, stammeringBottom admit his inability
to seize and hold in languagethat fleetingmomentwhen he too saw beneath
the surfaceof things.And that pity is not just for Bottom.
To redoublethese associations,Shakespearehas Bottom babbleon about
his vision. He speaks,of course,only of those mysteriousfairies,but in his
speechhe risesto an echoof St. Paul:
The eye of man hath not heard,the ear of man hath not seen, man's
handis not ableto taste,his tongueto conceive,nor his heartto report,
what my dreamwas. I will get PeterQuinceto write a balladof this
Dream,"becauseit hathno bottom....
dream.It shallbe called"Bottom's
(IV. i.
2I5-21)
The settingfor the correspondingPaulinepassageneeds to be quotedat some
length.I cite Tyndale'sversion:
That we speakeof, is wysdomeamongethem that are perfecte:not the
wysdomeof this worldenetherof the rularsof this worlde(whichgo to
nought) but we speakethe wysdomeof God, which is in secreteand
liethhyd, whichGod ordeynedbeforethe worldevntooureglory;which
wysdomenone of the rularsof the worldeknewe.For had they knowen
it, theywoldenot havecrucifiedthe Lordeof glory.But as it is written:
The eye hathnot sene,and the earehathnot hearde,netherhaveentred
into the herteof man, the thingeswhich God hath preparedfor them
thatlovehim.
ButGodhathopenedthemvntovs byhissprete.Forthespretesearcheth
ii. 6-Io)14
all things,ye the bottomeof Goddessecretes.(I Corinthians
14I have chosen Tyndale (The New Testament: Translated by William Tyndale, I534, ed.
N. Hardy Wallis [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, I9381, p. 349) because Tyndale's translation, like other early versions, retains the phrase "the bottome of Goddes secretes" as opposed
to the later Authorized Version's familiar "the deep things of God." Tyndale seems preferable to
because in this case his version seems grammatically closer
the alternative Geneva Bible (1557)
to Shakespeare:
Bottom: "The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen,
man's hand is not able to taste.
Tyndale: "The eye hath not sene, and the eare hath not hearde,
nether have entred into the herte of man...
Geneva: "Things we eye hath not sene, &eare hath not hearde,
nether haue entred into mans mynde.
For comparison, here is the Authorized Version: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
Coverdale is practically identical to Tyndale in
have entered into the heart of man...."
this passage. The Geneva Version of i560 alters the 1557 phrase "the bottome of Goddes secretes"
to "the deepe things of God."
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266
SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY
Here St. Paul, like his comicavatarBottom,speaksas a visionaryin avouching
an insight into a transcendentrealitywhich cool reasoncannotcomprehend.
Throughoutthe early chaptersof I CorinthiansPaul relatesagain and again
his centraldistinctionbetweenthe wisdomof the world and the foolishnessof
God, bearingwitness to the mysterythat fools for Christ'ssake know truths
unfathomableto those wise after the flesh. Shakespearemust surelyhave expected his Bible-readingpatrons to recall amid their laughter at least the
generaldrift of the contextwhereinSt. Paul speaksof God's strangeand admirable choice of foolish things to confound the certitudesof the material
world.15In the twinkling of an eye and the turn of a phraseShakespearehas
associatedthe fairies, howeverfugitively,with other realitiesapartfrom but
informingmortalexistence.
To elaborateupon this connectionbetweenSt. Paul and Bottompresentsa
distinctrisk for the critic,and yet an attemptmust be made, for this passage
representsthe provocativeclimax to Shakespeare'suse of the mysteryof the
fairiesto suggestothermysteriesin the worldoffstage;it also marksthe culmiman confrontedby an ambivalent
nation of Bottom'srole as a representative
reality.Obviously,the problemis how to explorethe rich implicationsof the
echo without overdoing it, without becoming tendentiousor converting
fugitive associationsinto a ponderousaffirmationof Christiandoctrine.The
irony with which the fairieshave been presentedthroughoutwill embarrass
any solemn designs.Howeverrich the suggestivenessof the passage,the play
will simply not hold still long enough to be read allegoricallywith Bottomas
the Fool of Faith,the worldof the fairiesas eternity,and Theseusas a princeof
this world wise after the flesh-though the travestyinevitablyteasesus with
just such associations.
As a matterof fact,thoughmost readerswill grantthat Bottom'sechoof St.
Paul is one of the suprememomentsin the play, and indeed in all of Shakespeareandrama,therehas been surprisinglylittle convergencetowarda general
agreementaboutits exactsignificance.FrankKermodegives a valuablereading
by linking this passage to the venerabletraditionof the visionarydream,
"ambiguous,enigmatic,of high import."What the importis he does not say.
In his indispensablearticleon the play,R. W. Dent connectsthe Paulineechoes
with the fairy grace of love, but exploits the parallelsno further.A recent
critic makes the institutionof marriageat least one of the blessingsobliquely
referredto.16Most criticsseem to find connectionseven less immediate.The
problemconfrontinganyone who would discoverin Bottom'swords intimations of some specificinsight-whether into love or into the imaginationor
into some transcendentorder-is that he must covertly or overtly make
weighty symbolsof the fairies and so run roughshodover the delicatedistinctionswhich havecharacterized
the modeof existenceof theseelusivebeings.
The moment he becomestoo precisein identifyingthe fairies,the criticmight
well recall the exampleof Bottomand his desireto tell everyoneplainlythat
15 I Corinthians i. 28 gives this dichotomy in a particularly striking form: "And base things
of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to
bring to nought things that are...."
(Authorized Version).
16 See Kermode, p. 2I9;
Dent, p. i2i; and Andrew D. Weiner, "'Multiformitie Uniforme':
A MidsummerNight's Dream," ELH, 38 (I97I), 343-49.
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A MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM
267
the lion is no lion at all, but Snug the joiner. As Bottom says, "Man is but an
ass, if he go about to expound this dream."
What seems to me most important about Bottom's echo is not so much the
higher meanings of the dream-if there are any-as the nimble play of the
mind reflected in the conjunction between Bottom and St. Paul, the fairies and
the objects of faith. Whether the topic be fairies or love or drama, throughout
the play Shakespeare has given with the right hand and taken away with the
left. In Bottom's remarks upon waking he gives us a fleeting glimpse into St.
Paul's vision of the foolishness of faith, and then takes it away by jumbling the
words and putting them into the mouth of no holy fool but a fool natural.
This playfulness is no different in kind from that which Shakespearehas shown
toward the uncertain fairies and the ambiguous human experiences with
which the fairies are linked. The important thing is the multivalency of the perspective. In Bottom's speech faith itself is subsumed into the catalog of ambiguities with which the fairies are associated-and in fact there is a kind of
startling propriety to the association: the play has consistently encouraged a
complementary vision in which credulity and skepticism, acceptance and rejection can coexist, and Bottom speaking of his experiences hints at what is
surely the most provocative complementary vision of all, St. Paul's paradox
that faith is both folly and the highest wisdom. As Reinhold Niebuhr has
pointed out, in I Corinthians St. Paul explores the metaphysics of faith by detailing a whole series of dichotomies, balancing that which seems true to the
eye of the flesh against that which is true indeed.17 To draw an analogy to
the mortal-fairydichotomy in A Midsummer Night's Dream seems very tempting, to say the least. No one's eye is more fleshly than Bottom's, and yet in
spite of his childish intellectual limitations-and perhaps because of themhe catches a glimpse into a genuine extra-physical order. The mysteriousness
of the fairies momentarily becomes linked with the highest mystery of all.
Bottom and St. Paul: here indeed "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, /
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven"-and winks. The
sheer breadth of Shakespeare'sdaring is almost overwhelming.18
17
"As Deceivers, Yet True," Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of His-
tory (New York: Scribner's,1937),
pp.
3-24.
A provocatively similar connection is made by Erasmus at the very last of his Moriae Encomium. At the culmination of Stultitia'spraise of folly is a discussion of the folly and madness of
the mystical rapture. She cites I Corinthiansii. 9 ("was neuer mans eie sawe . . .") and elaborates:
18
Who so euer thereforehaue suche grace (whiche sure is geuin to few) by theyr life tyme
to tast of this saied felicitee, they are subiecte to a certaine passion muche lyke vnto
madnesse or witrauyng, when rauisshedso in the sprite, or beyng in a traunce, thei doo
speake certaine thynges not hangyng one with an other, nor after any earthly facion, but
rather dooe put foorth a voyce they wote neuer what, muche lesse to be vnderstode of
others: and sodeinely without any apparentcause why, dooe chaunge the state of theyr
countenaunces.For now shall ye see theim of glad chere, now of as sadde againe, now
thei wepe, now thei laugh, now they sighe, for briefe, it is certaine that they are wholy
distraught and rapte out of theim selues. In sort that whan a little after thei come againe
to their former wittes, thei denie plainly thei wote where thei became, or whether thei
were than in theyr bodies, or out of theyr bodies, wakyng or slepyng: remembring also
as little, either what they heard, saw, saied, or did than, sauyng as it were through a
cloude, or by a dreame: but this thei know certainely, that whiles their mindes so roued
and wandred, thei were most happie and blisfull, so that they lament and wepe at theyr
retourne vnto theyr former senses, as who saieth, nothyng were leefer vnto theim than
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268
SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY
But Bottom's provocative hint of higher meanings remains no more than
a hint, perhaps even a trap for the unwary. His dream "hath no bottom" in it
both because the dream has lifted Bottom for once out of his lowly self and
because the fairy world is still far from a vision of (as Tyndale phrases it) "the
bottome of Goddes secretes."For all the resonances,the world of comedy cannot
really assimilate the mysteries of faith, nor is the gift of an acquaintance with
the fairy queen quite the same thing as grace; so Bottom must relapse from
a dream that "hath no bottom" into his usual Bottom-y self, ready to make
Pyramus alnd Thisby an even more lamentable comedy with his stupidity. But
for an instant we are given another perspective,one in which Bottom's simplemindedness seems enviable rather than ludicrous, and literalism and faith seem
impossible to tell apart. A play which has consistently encouraged a pluralistic
vision for a moment lets us see that even sophistication can have its disadvantages.
Having made the point, Shakespeare moves on. Perhaps this is the most
frustrating aspect of Shakespeare'scomic art. The intellectual content is never
labored, never ponderous, and always there to belie those who would treat the
plays as frivolous and to lure those who would analyze them into pompous
terms and academic abstractions.So especially in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Philosophical distinctions and metaphysical terminology seem absurd before the
easy grace of the play, and Pauline discourses on faith seem a far cry from
a production full of low comedy and Ovidian fancies. Yet the critic must inevitably risk bringing up such concepts and such discourses if he is to discuss
the intellectual complexities of a comedy ending with Puck's suggestion that
the play itself may be no more-or less-than another fairy-induced vision.
And that may be Shakespeare'sultimate ironic insight: it is your loss if you
think fairies simply unreal or their works mere disorder, but as soon as you
try like Bottom to capture them in words and treat them as if they were
literally there, they will be off in another wood dancing.
The University of West Florida
continually to raue and be deteigned with suche a spece of madnesse. And this is but a
certainesmackeor thinne taste of theyr blisse to come.
I cite the Chaloner translation,The Praise of Folie (1549; ed. ClarenceMiller [London: Oxford
Univ. Press, i965], pp. I27-28). The scene imagined, the references to sleeping, waking, and
dreaming suggest that Shakespearemay have been remembering this passage.
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