Moon

“Saw it written and I saw it say/ Pink moon is on its way/And none of you stand so tall/ Pink Moon going to get you all/ And it’s a pink moon…”

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Ya8adXZJE)

( Nick Drake, “ Pink Moon”, Pink Moon, Island, 1972)

“…Four happy days bring

Another moon- but O, methinks how slow

This old moon wanes!

She lingers my desires…”

(1.1 2-4) William Shakespeare

“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night,

Four nights will quickly dream away the time;

And then the moon, like to a silver bow

New bent in heaven, shall behold the night

Of our solemnities”

(I.I 7-11) William Shakespeare.

With 356 years between them, two British poets, seek to capture the intangible feeling brought on by the shift in Moon Phase. What is it about that milk, dipped orb that is both so enchanting and essential to us as humans then and now? More so how do allusions to the moon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream used by Shakespeare to craft a reality of fantasy? Where anything is possible, where the head of an ass can replace that of a man’s, where mischievous Puck squeezes the Elizabethan version of love potion number nine into the eyes of mortals, and the mortals find the pluck to defy the conventions of their society.

The first words in a play literally set the stage for the play and cast hooks out to the sea of the audience. Whether the audience becomes attached to the play is easily determined by whether they take the bait of the opening scene. With this in mind, how exciting is within the first five lines of the play Shakespeare through Theseus begin the dissolve the boundaries of reality. Within the next eleven lines Hippolyta delivers her words cast a spell upon the audience setting them up to be introduced to the parallel world of the faye. Shakespeare doesn’t need to slap the audience in the face with this, instead he hands the audience the moon and a whole world opens up.

Unlike proving that using leeches to bleed someone or basing medical treatment based on a person’s humor, the moon during Shakespeare’s time was something, which could be concretely observed. When it shifted so did other things in nature. The moon brought on the changing of the ocean’s tides. Considering England’s status as an Island the change of tides must have been an event of significance to its occupants. Not just the alteration of the tide could be observed with the waxing and waning, but other natural happenings as well. There was and still is whole almanacs written chronicling and foreshadowing the shifts in the lunar cycle. Like the pink moon spoken about by Nick Drake the Elizabethans had their names for each moon phase. Midsummer would have been celebrated around the summer solstice. The old moon which Theseus is so anxious to be rid of could have been the flower moon (http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucapsj0/moon/index.html). The new moon, could have very well been the hay moon.

However perhaps more importantly than the occurrence of the time that would take place with its coming, is the passage of transition. The fours days which are spoken of the moon would have been visible. (http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=714&Itemid=40). The moon would not have been showing, it would have been with out a true phase a time when the strict structure of nature loosens and anything goes! This is reflected in the ethereal path the play takes. When the moon returns to its full phase so does the order. The nuptials ensue, lovers are re-matched, a father is reconciled to his daughter, an ass remains an ass but the literal sense is removed, and two equally matched forces lay down their quarrel. How could this be? Blame it on the moon.