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.

Property & Desire

I was immediately intrigued by the male/female relationships in the opening scenes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream because they illustrate the hierarchy of the power relations in Athens while serving as example with which to contrast the homosocial bonds. The play begins with Theseus expressing his impatience for his wedding day. His fiance, Hippolyta, expresses the exact opposite feelings, and understandably so, since she has in effect been coerced into the marriage: she is basically one of the spoils of Theseus’s victory over the Amazons, which reminds me of King Henry V and his courtship of Catherine. He has “wooed” her through violence, and she is an extension of his military political conquest. I noticed that Quince refers to the wedding as “his,” and not “theirs,” which emphasizes that it is a fulfillment of his desires, not hers. The other male/female relationships mirror this one; this may be because Theseus is the Duke, the ultimate authority, and so in a process of hegemony, or “the revels of power,” the morals/beliefs of his subjects echo his own. Egeus considers his daughter to be his property, as evidenced when he says “She is mine.” His language is rampant with evidence of his almost capitalistic (?) relationship to Hermia, who he only understands in terms of worth: her obedience is “due” to him, Lysander has “stol’n” her love and “filched” her heart. He dehumanizes Hermia by saying that he wishes to “dispose” of her, which distances him from the ontological implications of his request. He reminds me of Shylock, who trades in flesh as a capitalistic venture, as do Bassanio and Portia’s father in The Merhcnat of Venice. It is ironic that he says Lysander “filched” Hermia’s heart because the OED defines the word as “to steal something, especially of small value.” It’s no surprise that he would think Hermia’s heart is of small value, (Hermia as a person is so inconsequential in his eyes that he considers Lysander to have filched her heart from him, not from her) but it is what is causing problems for him. Her heart - her desire - is what is allowing her to be able to exert some agency and challenge his authority, which is something that Hippolyta does so hesitatingly that Theseus doesn’t even respond to it, and she remains mute for the rest of the 2 acts. Perhaps if Hippolyta’s desires were positive, in that they were more than not wanting to marry Theseus, if they could be realized in the form of another person, she would be more able to test her situation. Theseus, meanwhile, upholds this system of dehumanization through determining worth by telling Hermia that Demetrius is the “worthier” suitor because Egeus approves of him. So the men in the play are subject to the same rules of valuation: however, the system is made more complex beacause it is the richer men who make the rules (the Duke) and the less rich who must abide by them (Demetrius.)

Of course, all this is disrupted by the fairies, but I thought it was interesting that Titania attributes her taking the Indian boy (also a trade in human flesh) to the homosocial bond she had with his mother while Oberon maintains he had been “stol’n” (again) by her.These observations aside, I don’t think Shakespeare is depicting a thoroughly patriarchal world. After all, the word most said is “moon” and they all escape into the woods, both of which are always associated with women.