Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  —Act III, scene i, lines 121-22

  Bottom, who, figuratively speaking, has proved himself all through the play to have an ass's head, now owns one literally; and he is as unaware of his literal ass's head now as he had been of his figurative one earlier.

  But he remains lovable in his folly even now. Titania, who has had the juice placed on her eyes, wakes at this moment and at once falls in love with Bottom in his grotesque disguise. She places her retinue of tiny fairies at his disposal, and Bottom, taking it all as his due, allows himself, most complacently, to be worshiped and adored.

  … the gun's report Delighted, Puck races to report the event to Oberon. He describes the scene when Bottom returns with his ass's head and the other workmen scatter and fly:

  As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,

  Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,

  Rising and cawing at the gun's report,

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 20-22

  Either Puck can foresee the future with remarkable clarity or this is a particularly amusing anachronism-guns in the time of Theseus.

  … th'Antipodes

  Oberon is pleased, but asks about the Athenian lovers, and Puck says he has taken care of that too.

  But in comes Demetrius. He has found Hermia, who is berating him bitterly for having killed Lysander. Only Lysander's death could explain his having left her while asleep. She would not for one moment accept the possibility that he had crept away from her willingly:

  /'// believe as soon

  This whole earth may be bored, and that the moon

  May through the center creep, and so displease

  Her brother's noontide with th'Antipodes.

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 52-55

  The ancient Greeks were the first to realize that the earth was spherical in shape. (To be sure, they were not the Greeks of Theseus' time. The first who thought so lived seven and a half centuries after Theseus.) They realized that people who lived on the other side of the globe from themselves would have their feet pointing upward, so to speak, in the direction opposite from that in which their" own feet pointed.

  The people on the other side of the globe would therefore be "antipodes" ("opposite-feet"). The name was applied to the other side of the globe itself as a result.

  … the Tartar's bow

  Demetrius desperately denies having killed Lysander, but Hermia scolds him fiercely and leaves. Demetrius, wearied, lies down to sleep. Oberon, seeing Puck's mistake, sends him angrily after Helena so that the mistake can be corrected. Puck, eager to calm his angry king, says:

  / go, I go; look how 1 go,

  Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow.

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 100-1

  Europe, through its ancient and medieval history, has been periodically plagued by nomadic horsemen thundering west from the steppes of central Asia. The Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Avars, and Magyars each in turn terrorized European territories. The nomads won their victories through superior mobility; through the dash of their swift and hardy horses, from whose backs the riders shot arrows that galled their slower-moving European adversaries.

  The last and most terrible of the nomadic invaders were the Tatars or Mongols, who in the first half of the thirteenth century conquered both China and Russia. In 1240 the speeding Mongol horsemen darted into central Europe, smashing every clumsy army of armored knights that was raised to stop them, and spreading ruin and desolation almost to the Adriatic.

  Far back in central Asia their ruler died and all the Mongol armies (undefeated) swept back to take part in the decision as to the succession. In 1241, therefore, the Mongols left and, as it happened, never returned.

  The Europeans, however, were long to remember the dreadful period of 1240-41. They called the horsemen Tartars, rather than Tatars, thinking of them not as men but as demons from Tartarus (see page 1-13). The Tartars' arrows remained in mind and Shakespeare could use them as a metaphor for speed (even though they had entered European consciousness twenty-five centuries after the time of Theseus).

  … high Taurus' snow

  Oberon places the juice on Demetrius' eyes and Puck brings back Helena as ordered. With Helena, however, is Lysander, still under the influence of the juice and still pleading love. Helena persists in thinking Lysander is making cruel fun of her. The noise they make wakes Demetrius, who is now also in love with Helena.

  Demetrius addresses her in the most elaborate lover's fashion, saying:

  That pure congealed white, high Taurus' snow,

  Fanned with the eastern wind, turns to a crow

  When thou hold'st up thy hand:

  O, let me kiss This princess of pure white…

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 141-44

  Helena is obviously a fair-skinned blonde, which in medieval times rep resented an ideal of beauty. Her skin is whiter than the snows of the Taurus Mountains, a range in southeastern Asia Minor.

  When the German tribes tore the western provinces of the Roman Empire apart, they established themselves as an aristocracy over a Celto-Roman peasantry. The Germans were taller than the Celto-Romans on the average, and faker. Over the centuries, therefore, fair skin, blond hah-, blue eyes, and tall stature came to be associated with aristocracy and beauty; the reverse with peasanthood and ugliness.

  Helena, completely confused, decides that both men have combined for some insane reason to make fun of her. Then, when Hermia enters and acts astonished, Helena maintains that her old girlfriend has also joined in the joke.

  … you Ethiope

  Poor Hermia can make nothing of what is going on. All she knows is that she has found Lysander again, but that Lysander is acting most peculiarly. She approaches Lysander timidly to find out what it is all about, but the erstwhile tender lover turns on the poor girl savagely and says:

  Away, you Ethiope!

  —Act III, scene ii, line 257

  The expression "Ethiopian" is from Greek words meaning "burnt faces"-faces that have been darkened by exposure to the sun. It was applied to the races living south of Egypt and was eventually used for African blacks generally.

  Here, then, the same principle that brings about praise for Helena's fair beauty brings contempt for poor Hermia's darker complexion.

  Hermia has trouble understanding this, but when she does she leaps at once to the conclusion that Helena has stolen her love. She cries out furiously about Helena:

  Now I perceive that she hath made compare

  Between our statures; she hath urged her height,

  And with her personage, her tall personage,

  Her height, forsooth, she hath prevailed with hint.

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 290-93

  She advances upon Helena, nails unsheathed, and Helena fearfully shrinks away as both men vie in protecting her.

  The exasperated Hermia accepts every remark as a reference to her plebeian shortness and Lysander, sensing her sensitivity, throws the fact of it in her face, saying:

  Get you gone, you dwarf;

  You minimus, of hind'ring knotgrass made;

  You bead, you acorn!

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 328-30

  Knotgrass, a common weed, was supposed to stunt growth if eaten.

  Lysander and Demetrius, angered with each other over their common love for Helena, as earlier they had been over their common love for Hermia, stride offstage to fight. At this, Helena, left alone with Hermia, flees, and Hermia follows.

  … as black as Acheron

  Oberon is terribly irritated and virtually accuses Puck of having done all this deliberately. Puck denies having done it on purpose, though he admits the results have turned out fun.

  Oberon orders him to begin mending matters:

  … Robin, overcast the night.

  The starry welkin cover thou anon

  With drooping fog, as black as Acheron;

  And lead these testy rivals so astray,

  As one comes not within anot
her's way.

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 355-59

  Acheron is the name of one of the five rivers which the classical writers described as encircling the underworld. For some reason, the name of this particular river came to be applied to the underworld generally, so that "Acheron" came to be a synonym for "Hades."

  Once the night is made dark, Puck is to mislead Lysander and Demetrius, weary them to sleep once more, rearrange their affections, entice them into considering it all a dream, and send all four safely back to Athens.

  … Aurora's harbinger

  Puck agrees, but urges haste:

  For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,

  And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;

  —Act HI, scene ii, lines 379-80

  Aurora (known to the Greeks as Eos) is the goddess of the dawn. She is the third child of the Titan Hyperion (see page I-ll), a sister of Helios, god of the sun, and Selene, goddess of the moon.

  Her harbinger is the planet Venus, shining as the morning star and rising only an hour or two before the sun and therefore not long before the dawn.

  Oberon agrees and Puck accomplishes the task, sending all four Athenians into a scrambling confusion that wearies them to sleep once more. He then anoints Lysander's eyes in such a way that when all four awake, all shall be straightened out. Or, as Puck says:

  Jack shall have Jill;

  Nought shall go ill;

  The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 461-63

  "Jack and Jill" is a stock phrase for a man and his sweetheart or wife. Jack is clearly a generic name for a man generally, since it is so common (a diminutive of Jacob, which in one form or another-James in England, Hamish in Scotland, Jacques in France, lago or Diego in Spam and Portugal, and Giacopo in Italy-was an extremely popular name all over western Europe).

  Jill is far less common and is usually considered a short version of Juliana. It was used, probably, because a one-syllabled girl's name starting with the J sound was needed, though it seems to me that Joan would have been more fitting. In any case, we ourselves know Jack and Jill primarily from the nursery rhyme that sends them to the top of a hill to fetch a pail of water.

  Nor is this the only complication unraveled. Oberon meets Titania, who, in her entranced adoration of the ass-headed Bottom, freely gives up her Indian boy. She then has Bottom sleep with his long-eared head in her lap, and Oberon finally takes pity on her. He releases her from her spell and orders Puck to remove the ass's head from Bottom and send him back to Athens too.

  And so at last are Oberon and Titania reconciled.

  … with Hercules and Cadmus…

  Now that the complications of the subplots are solved, Theseus and Hippolyta come on the scene again. They are following the hunt and Hippolyta says, in reminiscence:

  / was with Hercules and Cadmus once,

  When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear

  With hounds of Sparta.

  —Act IV, scene i, lines 115-17

  The world of orthodox Greek myth comes swimming back. Hercules was indeed a contemporary of Theseus and the two are made companions in several myths.

  Cadmus, in the legends, was a Phoenician prince. He had come to Greece in search of Europa, his sister. She had been kidnapped by Zeus in the shape of a bull and brought to Crete, where Minos was to reign and the Minotaur was to be found. As a matter of fact, Minos was the son of Europa.

  Cadmus never found Europa (so that it isn't quite right to place him in Crete). Wandering in Greece itself, he founded the city of Thebes. The Greek legend has it that it was Cadmus who taught the letters of the alphabet to the Greeks. This is interesting since the alphabet did, in actual fact, originate with the Phoenicians and it is entirely appropriate that the Greeks be taught it by Cadmus, a Phoenician prince.

  Sparta is mentioned in this passage too. In Theseus' time it was a city in southern Greece that was not particularly remarkable, though it was soon to become the home of Helen, whose beauty sparked the Trojan War. In later centuries Sparta was to become the most militarized and, for a time, the most militarily successful of the Greek cities.

  … Thessalian bulls

  Theseus says that his own hounds are of the same breed as the "hounds of Sparta" Hippolyta has mentioned:

  … their heads are hung

  With ears that sweep away the morning dew;

  Crook-kneed, and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;

  —Act IV, scene i, lines 123-25

  Thessaly is a fertile plain region in northeastern Greece, much different from the rocky, mountainous area to the south where Greece's most famous cities, including Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth, were located. It would be naturally a place where horses would be useful and where cattle would be profitably bred. A Thessalian bull would be larger and better than a bull bred elsewhere in Greece.

  The rite of May

  In the wood, the hunting party, which includes Egeus, the father of Hermia, comes upon the four young people, still sleeping where Puck had left them.

  Egeus frowns and begins to ponder on the meaning, but Theseus, depicted throughout the play as courtly and kind, quickly places a harmless interpretation on the matter. He says:

  No doubt they rose up early to observe

  The rite of May;

  —Act IV, scene i, lines 135-36

  May Day, the first of May, was a day of nature celebration in ancient times. Spring was definitely established by then; the greenery was growing; it was warm enough to spend the evening outdoors. It was a time for revelry and youth, and no doubt a time when the fertility of nature might best be imitated by the celebrants.

  The Maypole about which the young people danced may well be what was left of a phallic symbol. Indeed, earlier in the play, Hermia had made use of just such an implication, perhaps. When she was terribly irritated at being scorned for her shortness, she turned on Helena and said,

  How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak!

  —Act III, scene ii, line 296

  Not only does Hermia in this way refer disparagingly to Helena as tall and skinny (and perhaps with as little figure as a maypole), but she also implies that the men, Lysander and Demetrius, are dancing about her with immoral intent.

  Theseus' reference places the play well before Midsummer Day, by the way.

  … Saint Valentine …

  Perhaps Theseus is not unaware of the coarser ways of celebrating May Day, for as the hunting horns sound and the Athenian lovers rouse themselves, Theseus says, with light mockery:

  Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past:

  Begin these wood birds but to couple now?

  —Act IV, scene i, lines 142-43

  St. Valentine's Day is certainly past, for, as we all know, it falls on February 14. Valentine's Day commemorates the martyred death of St. Valentine on February 14, 270 (which makes it a terribly anachronistic comment in the mouth of Theseus)., The romantic symbolism of the day antedated the good saint. There is a folk belief that the birds began to mate on this day (which is what Theseus is referring to) and this may have initiated fertility rites in pagan days. The Church would attempt to transfer the rites to a Christian commemoration and soften them too, and the story arose that St. Valentine made anonymous gifts of money to help poor girls to a dowry that would find them husbands. Thus, he became the patron saint of romantic love.

  The ferocious Egeus, hearing Lysander confess he had intended to elope with Hermia, calls for his death and the marriage of Hermia to Demetrius. Demetrius, however, confesses that he now loves Helena. Theseus, listening politely, decides that each loving pair is now to be married, Lysander to Hermia, and Demetrius to Helena.

  Meanwhile Bottom also rouses himself, finds his natural head restored, dismisses his vague memories as a dream, and returns to Athens and to his mourning comrades. They are delighted to meet him and continue to prepare their play.

  "The battle with the Centaur
s…"

  The time of the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta is now at hand. Theseus has heard of the events of the magic night in the woods and dismisses them as fantasy. He turns to the list of entertainments proposed for the wedding feast and reads off the first item:

  "The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung

  By an Athenian eunuch to the harp."

  We'll none of that. That have I told my love,

  In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

  —Act V, scene i, lines 44-47

  Centaurs were common monsters of Greek myths, composite creatures with the head and torso of men affixed to the body of a horse. They were supposed to have been natives of Thessaly. Perhaps the notion originated with the first sight of men riding horses. The southern Greeks, in their narrow valleys, having been unused to horses for generations, would find men on horseback in the plains of Thessaly when they marched northward in battle and tales of centaurs would drift back to stay-at-homes.

  The centaurs were considered to be barbaric creatures of the senses, given to gross eating, to drunkenness and lechery. The chief tale in which centaurs are prominent involves the marriage of Pirithous, a friend of Theseus (he does not appear in this play but he has a minor role in The Two Noble Kinsmen, see page I-56).