Shakespeare Project 2020
I've visited the Athens' woods of Midsummer on more than one occasion and enjoy it every time I'm there!
Rereading/listening to a familiar play with new insight allows you to discover something new each time. The Shakespeare Project introduction to Midsummer alerted the reader to be aware of character's consent or lack thereof throughout the play. (With everyone's eyes doused with love juice how can there be consent?)
From the beginning, Hermia is not permitted to marry Lysander, whom she loves as she is her father's property:
I.1.
Egeus: "As she is mine I may dispose of her;
Which shall be either to this gentleman [Demetrius]
Or to her death, according to our law.."
Lysander tells Hermia not to worry with one of the Bard's most famous lines:
I.1.
Lysander: "The course of true love never did run smooth;"
The fairies (Titania & Oberon) lament the human mortals and climate change:
II.1.
Titania: "Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Hath every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.
***
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic disease do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The season alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world
By their increase, now knows not which is which."
Helena meanwhile is pursuing a disinterested Demetrius:
II.2.
Helena: "The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy has I am, to follow you."
And the insults, whew! They were fast and furious:
III.2.
Lysander: "thou cat, thou burr; vile thing, let loose,...
Out, tawny Tartar, out!
Out, loathed med'cine! O hated potion, hence!"
Hermia: "...you juggler! you cankerblossom!
You thief of love!...
thou painted maypole"
Lysander: "Get you gone, you dwarf;
You minimus, of hind'ring knot-grass made;
You bead, you acorn."
Theseus sums up what we've been discovering all along (and as Bottom says to Titania:III.1. "reason and love keep little company together now-a-days")
V.1
Theseus: "Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's' pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imaging some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear?"
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