Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “I kissed thee ere I killed thee,” he whispered, sinking on the bed beside his dead wife, “no way but this, killing myself, to die upon a kiss.”

  Iago looked on, seemingly unmoved. “To you, Lord Governor,” said Lodovico to Cassio, “remains the censure of this hellish villain: the time, the place, the torture—O enforce it!”

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Hermia, who was small, dark and perfect, loved Lysander; and Lysander loved Hermia. What could have been better than that? At the same time, Helena, who was tall, fair and tearful, loved Demetrius.

  But Demetrius did not love Helena. Instead he, too, loved Hermia . . . who did not love him. What could have been worse than that?

  Now although Lysander and Demetrius were both young, handsome and rich, so that, to the untouched heart and the uncomplicated eye, there was nothing to choose between them, Hermia’s father had made a choice. He had chosen Demetrius; and such was the harsh law of Athens, where they all lived, that Hermia had to obey her father and marry Demetrius, or be shut up in a nunnery for the rest of her life.

  So Hermia was in despair, Lysander was in torment, Demetrius was triumphant, and Helena, loving and unloved, wept like a willow over a stream of her own making. It was a pitiable state of affairs, and it could not have been better put than by Lysander, who declared that:

  “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

  But nonetheless, run it did, on eager, fearful feet, to a certain wood not far from the town. There, in the moon washed time of night, Lysander and Hermia planned to meet and fly to some distant place where they would be safe from the cruel Athenian law.

  All would have been well had not Hermia, warm-hearted, confiding Hermia, told Helena, who was her longest, dearest friend. Helena, more doleful than ever, and hoping for no more than a glance of gratitude and a rag of his company, played the tell-tale and told Demetrius of the flight. Demetrius was outraged. He rushed off to the wood, meaning to win Hermia’s heart by plunging his sword into Lysander’s. And after him went Helena, in despairing pursuit.

  Nor were these love-tangled four the only ones who went to the wood upon that Midsummer’s night; for no man, not even a lover, can have the world to himself. Six good men and true, six solid workmen of Athens, engaged to meet there in secret. They were to rehearse a play for the festivities of Duke Theseus’s marriage to Hippolyta, once his enemy but soon to be his love.

  Very serious was their business, for if their play was chosen, they would all be given pensions and stand high in the esteem of their fellow workmen in the town. The play, as was right for a wedding, was of lovers; so the six good men and true, with their heads full of passions and pensions, went to the wood, where already, in thicket and clearing, there was love in earnest and love in despair.

  It was a strange wood, as huge, dark and mysterious as a man’s mind. It was haunted—and by more than spinning spiders, beetles, hedgehogs and softly gliding, spotted snakes. There were other personages who flickered among the shadows, darted across moonbeams, hung in the beating air and pursued mysterious affairs of their own.

  “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!”

  Oberon, dread King of the night! Shadowy, formidable, with train of goblins, sprites and elves; and with Puck, his grinning, mocking henchman by his side; stepped suddenly into the moonshine and stood, a dark threat in a silver world.

  Over and against him, caught in brightness with delicate foot unplaced, Titania, his queen, drew back with hands upraised in anger.

  “What, jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence! I have forsworn his bed and company!”

  Strange quarrel between these powerful rulers of the night time world! Titania had as her attendant a changeling Indian boy that Oberon desired for himself. But Oberon’s request had been denied, and his command scorned. So there was discord in the world of spirits no less than in the world of men. In consequence, the very seasons had been disturbed: killing frosts and drowning floods had spoiled the spring and bewildered the summer, for a quarrel between so dangerous a King and so wild a Queen, made a sickness in Nature herself.

  “Do you amend it then; it lies in you,” accused Oberon. “I do but beg a little changeling boy . . .”

  “Not for thy fairy kingdom!” vowed Titania. And, with her gossamer train attending, swept from the glade, leaving her shadowy lord to brood angrily on his disappointment.

  “Well, go thy way,” he murmured at length. “Thou shalt not from this grove till I torment thee for this injury.”

  Presently the notion of a strange revenge came into his ranging thoughts. There was, he knew, a certain purple flower that grew, far, far away in the west, that was possessed of an uncanny power. If the juice of this flower was dropped upon sleeping eyelids, then the sleeper, on awakening, would fall wildly, madly in love with the very next living creature—be it lion, bear, wolf or monkey, no matter how vile—that the magically anointed eyes beheld.

  “Fetch me this herb,” commanded Oberon to Puck, his lurking henchman, “and be thou here again ere the leviathan can swim a league.”

  “I’ll put a girdle round about the earth,” promised Puck, a prickeared child with a crooked grin, whose chief delight was fright and confusion, “in forty minutes!” And off he sped, like a wicked arrow, from his dread master’s side.

  Lost in thought, the King awaited his servant’s return until suddenly, the murmuring quiet of the wood was disturbed. There came a violent crashing, and rending, and gasping, and panting, as of wild beasts lost and confused. At once the brooding King drew the night about him, like a cloak, and became no more than the shadow of a shadow . . .

  The commotion burst out into the pooled moonlight and made it shake.

  “I love thee not, therefore pursue me not!” It was the furious Demetrius with Helena wailing hopelessly in his wake. “Hence, get thee gone and follow me no more!”

  Her tale-bearing had done her no good. Instead of her lover’s company, she’d gained only the sight of his avoiding back; and instead of his gratitude, she’d had only his shoulder-flung abuse. But still she pursued him, weeping and sobbing her love.

  “I am your spaniel,” she wailed; “and, Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn on you. Use me but as your spaniel,” she pleaded. “Only give me leave, unworthy as I am, to follow you!”

  “I am sick when I do look on thee!” shouted Demetrius, feeling unwanted love at his heels like a stone in his shoe.

  “And I am sick when I look not on you!” sobbed Helena.

  “Let me go!” cried Demetrius, wild only to find Hermia and kill Lysander. “Or if thou follow me do not believe but I shall do thee mischief in the wood!”

  But Helena was past caring. So far gone was she in love that custom, modesty, and maidenly restraint were but as specks on the horizon, and remembered only with a pang.

  “We should be woo’d,” she wept, “and were not made to woo!”

  Demetrius escaped, and Helena, with a doleful cry, plunged after. The glade stood empty of all save moonlight and the memory of distress. Then Oberon became visible, as if in the thinning of a mist.

  “Fare thee well, nymph,” he murmured, gazing after the brokenhearted lady. “Ere he do leave this grove, thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love.”

  As he stood meditating on how this reversal might be brought about, Puck returned breathlessly to his side, holding out the little purple flower. Oberon’s eyes glittered mysteriously as he took it.

  “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,” he whispered, as his fancy brought it before his mind’s eye. “There sleeps Titania some time of the night.” Dreamily he crushed the flower between his pale fingers so that its liquor ran into a cup, held out by the eager Puck. “And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes, and make her full of hateful fantasies . . .”

  He smiled vengefully; and then, remembering the distress that had passed so recently before his invisible eyes, he bade Puck take a little of the juice and anoint t
he eyes of the scornful youth so that, when he waked, he should dote to distraction on the tall, fair, tearful lady who had so unavailingly pursued him.

  “Thou shalt know the man,” he instructed, “by the Athenian garments he hath on.”

  “Fear not, my lord,” assured Puck; “your servant shall do so.”

  Now the wood was quiet, and folded in night; and the moon’s dream self drifted, among mirrored branches, in stream and pool. The two wanderers, dark master and quick servant, crept among the shadowy trees, each with his portion of the charmed liquor: the one to make love run mad, the other to make love run smooth and prosperous to life’s end.

  First Oberon found what he sought, and while Titania slumbered, and her drowsy sentinels nodded at their posts, he streaked her sleeping eyes with the purple flower’s juice.

  “What thou seest when thou dost wake,” he breathed; “do it for thy true love take . . . Wake when some vile thing is near.”

  He left her sleeping and so cloaked and canopied in the garments of nature that the youth and the girl who came into the glade soon after saw nothing but leaves and flowers. But then they never looked to see a sleeping queen, for they had eyes only for each other.

  Hermia and Lysander, those dear lovers in perfect accord, were weary from walking, and were lost.

  “We’ll rest us, Hermia,” proposed Lysander, “if you think it good.”

  “Be it so, Lysander,” agreed small, dark Hermia, with a downward cast of her eyes; “find you out a bed, for I upon this bank will rest my head.”

  “One turf shall serve as pillow for us both,” said Lysander, with a tenderness that filled sweet Hermia with grave misgivings.

  “Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear, lie further off yet; do not lie so near.”

  Fervently Lysander protested that his intentions were most honourable and urged his lovely Hermia to reconsider her unkind decision. But Hermia shook her head.

  “Lie further off, in human modesty,” she insisted with gentle reproach. “Such separation as may well be said becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid. So far be distant; and good night, sweet friend.”

  Lysander sighed but, deferring to his lady, found himself a bed some little way removed; and presently the lovers, united in spirit though divided in flesh, closed their eyes in sleep.

  So they lay when Puck found them and, surprised and vexed to see so much distance between them, instantly took them for the youth and girl he had been told to find.

  “This is he my master said despised the Athenian maid . . . and here the maiden sleeping sound, on the dank and dirty ground!” the goblin cried indignantly. “Pretty soul! she durst not lie near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy!”

  Straightway and without another thought, he anointed Lysander’s closed eyes with the charmed juice, and returned to Oberon, well pleased with his success.

  No sooner had he departed than calamity came into the glade. It came with a rush and a cry and a moan and a wail. It came in the shape of doleful Helena. Chivvied by bush and fingered by briar, with her gown in as many tatters and shreds as her heart, she paused, panting for breath. She had lost Demetrius and knew not where to turn.

  “But who is here?” she cried. “Lysander on the ground?”

  She rushed and knelt beside him, hanging her anxious face above his, like a sad moon with lips, eyes and streaming silken hair. “Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake!”

  He awoke, opened his bewitched eyes, saw Helena (for there was little else within his scope!) and loved her madly, as he had never loved before!

  Shocked beyond measure, Helena drew back, reminded Lysander that it was Hermia he loved—

  “Not Hermia but Helena I love!” cried Lysander. “Who will not change a raven for a dove?” And he poured out so wild a torrent of passion that Helena quailed before it and thought herself to be most unkindly mocked.

  “O that a lady of one man refused,” she sobbed, “should of another therefore be abused!” And she fled from the clearing, dismayed.

  Lysander, seeing the sleeping Hermia, wondered how he could ever have loved her.

  “Hermia,” he cried—but softly for he did not want to awaken her, “sleep thou there, and never mayest thou come Lysander near!”

  Then off he rushed in pursuit of Helena, who pursued Demetrius, who, in his turn, pursued Hermia, who laying sleeping and abandoned, with nothing for company but troubled dreams.

  She awoke and called out for Lysander. There was no answer. She looked: the glade was empty. She called again:

  “Lysander! lord! What, out of hearing? Gone? No sound, no word?”

  She trembled, she shook, she cried out in terror; and then, like Helena before her, fled from the clearing, dismayed!

  The glade was still and the troubled moonlight calm again; so that the disturbed bushes and shaken leaves were restored to skilful silverware. Oberon’s queen still slept upon her secret couch; her magically anointed eyes had yet to open . . .

  “Are we all met?” came a plain, sturdy voice.

  “Pat, pat,” came another; “and here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal.”

  The six good men and true, the six worthy workmen of Athens, clumped into the moonlight glade, paused and peered thoughtfully about them.

  “This green plot shall be our stage,” decided Peter Quince, a carpenter by trade. He was the most scholarly of the company and was to produce the play.

  The parts had been given out and all was now to go forward, exactly as it would be before the Duke. That is, if their play was chosen.

  “Peter Quince!”

  Nick Bottom, the weaver, spoke up, and everybody paid attention. Among every company of men there is always one to be reckoned with, one that it is good to have on your side, one whose abilities mark him out as a mine of intellect and a tower of strength.

  Such a man was Bottom the weaver: large, big-faced and with little eyes ringed round with red, as if to emphasize their importance. He was down for Pyramus in the play, which was the lover’s part and the most important; for none but Bottom could have undertaken it. He might have played Thisbe, the lady, with equal success; he might have played the Lion, who frightened poor Thisbe away; he might have played any or all of the other parts—for he had a genius for each of them, as everyone agreed—but he had to play Pyramus, for none but Bottom could have undertaken it. Without Bottom there could be no Pyramus; and without Pyramus there could be no play. The whole enterprise was founded on Bottom; and without a Bottom it would have fallen through.

  “Peter Quince!”

  “What sayest thou, bully Bottom?”

  Bottom had a great deal to say, and all of it good sturdy sense. He had discovered that Pyramus, in the play, was to kill himself, which would distress the ladies in their audience to such an extent that the hoped-for pensions might well be in peril. Everyone nodded wisely and looked to Bottom for a solution. They were not disappointed.

  “Write me a prologue,” said Bottom, “to say we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed. Tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.”

  He smiled, and everyone looked relieved. Truly was Bottom a man of infinite resource, and a very presant help in time of need.

  So the rehearsal went forward, with tireless assistance from Bottom, who was never at a loss to improve the play. With all solemnity the six good men and true transformed themselves into ardent lovers, a ravening lion and a patient wall (for a wall was required and there was none nearby); and Peter Quince, with book in hand, sometimes admiring, sometimes critical, guided the progress of the play.

  But Peter Quince was not the only auditor; or, for that matter, the only critic of the proceedings.

  “What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, so near the cradle of the Fairy Queen?”

  Puck, lurking among leaves, peered out at the worthy workmen’s solemn antics. He grinned crookedly, and his eyes glittered li
ke spots of dew.

  “I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb,” announced Francis Flute, the bellows-mender, who, though he had a beard coming, and was bashful about it, played the lady Thisbe.

  “Ninus’ tomb, man!” cried Peter Quince, crossly. “Why you must not speak that yet; that you answer to Pyramus.” Then, losing patience with Flute, who, though earnest, was slow of learning, accused him bitterly: “You speak all your part at once, cues and all.” He shook his head and sighed. Come what would to try him, the play must go on. “Pyramus, enter!” he called. “Your cue is past . . .”

  Bottom, who had retired within a hawthorn brake, stepped forth with that mixture of modesty and expectation that marks the well-graced actor who knows that all eyes will be upon him, and the rest of the company ignored. His expectations were answered. All eyes were most certainly upon him—and to a bulging extent.

  His companions stared, glared, shook, trembled, turned white, turned grey . . . and most precipitantly fled! Bottom, surprised, could make nothing of it. He shook his head. Peter Quince returned, briefly and timorously. He stared at Bottom, appalled.

  “Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated.”

  Then he retired again in melancholy terror. Bottom frowned and looked down upon himself to see what cause there was for dismay. None. There were his own stout arms, his own good stomach, his own sturdy legs that ended up, as might have been expected, in his own large, familiar boots. All that he could see was as it should have been, and proper to Bottom. It was only what he saw with that was not. From the neck down he was Bottom the weaver; from the neck up he was—a monster!