Lisa Napell Dicksteen Due:
EGL 204: Drama Paper
Comedy, Farce, or Insult to the Intelligence?
The Problem Solving Skills of the Mechanicals’ in “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream”
According to Bente Viedbæk in The Stage Clown in Shakespeare’s Theatre, the costuming and presentation of the characters in the play “Pyramus and Thisbe” performed by the group of working men called “the mechanicals” in honor of the wedding of the Duke in William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” is so far over the “line between appealing to the audience’s imagination and insulting it,” that it’s a surprise when the members of the wedding party don’t have them all executed. But they don’t. Because the mechanicals are so bad, they’re good. They’re so ridiculous; they’re sublime – sublimely funny that is.
Once this troupe of would-be actors has procured a script, doled out the parts, and begun their secret rehearsal in the woods at the beginning of Act 3, Scene 1, the serious, and seriously funny, trouble begins. There are several things about the play that worry the actors: two suicides by sword, a ferocious lion, the need for moonlight on an indoor stage, and the necessity for a wall with a chink in it through which the leading players, Pyramus and Thisbe, can communicate. The first two are perceived as problems because the actors fear their skill on the stage will convince the ladies in the audience that they are truly dead and that there is a live lion loose in the ballroom. They worry that the Duke will have them killed for upsetting the ladies of the court. The latter two are matters of scenery requirements which, because of their desire for verisimilitude, present challenges they fear they cannot meet.
Even when he does not discover the problem on his own, Bottom is usually the one to propose, with ever wilder spurts of ingenuity and imagination, the ultimate solution. “All his problems stem from his and his friends expectations of their prospective audience… All the alterations proposed by Bottom aim for better reviews by having his audience truly understand that the play is a fiction, and so he leaves very little up to the imagination and simultaneously stretches it to the limit” Viedbæk, 43.
Bottom: There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself, which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?
Snout: By ‘r lakin, a parlous fear.
Starveling: I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.
Bottom: Not a whit. I have a device to make it all well. Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear. (Shakespeare, 3.1.8-17)
For some reason, the idea that Thysbe too must die a suicide by the same sword does not come up – perhaps the actors presume the one prologue will cover the two deaths.
The concern about the lion springs from the discussion of the problem and devising of the solution regarding the swordplay. While the concern is initially voiced by Snout, it is Bottom who conceives the agreed upon solution.
Snout: Will not the ladies be afeared of the lion?
Starveling: I fear it, I promise you.
Bottom: Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves to bring in – God shield us! – a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing. For there is not a more fearful wildfowl than your lion living; and we ought to look to ‘t.
Snout: Therefore another prologue must tell that he is not a lion.
Bottom: Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion’s neck, and he himself must speak through saying thus, or to the same defect: ‘Ladies’ – or ‘Fair ladies – I would wish you’ – or ‘I would request you’ – or ‘I would entreat you – not to fear, not to tremble; my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life. No, I am no such thing: I am a man as other men are.’ And there indeed let him name his name and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner. (3.1.21-35)
As Viedbæk explains on page 43, in his solutions “Bottom strives for two things that cannot be reconciled, total realism and total reassurance of his audience. The final combination becomes ludicrous.”
It is the play’s producer, Quince, who uncovers the latter problems. “There is two hard things: that is, to bring the moonlight into the chamber; for, you know, Pyramus and Thisbe meet by moonlight. … Then there is another thing: we must have a wall in the great chamber: for Pyramus and Thysbe, says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall. (3.1.35-37, 48-50)”
In the case of the moonlight, two solutions are discussed, opening a casement window in the great hall to let in the moonlight which will, according to the calendar they consult, most conveniently be shining on the night of their performance. This is a plausible solution, but not the one they settle on. Quince has another suggestion, which plays upon the popular belief at the time that the man in the moon carried a bundle of thornbush sticks. He suggests having someone enter upon the stage holding “a bush of thorns and a lantern.” That person, not someone in the troupe, but an outsider rounded up for this small task only, will be instructed to say he represents Moonshine.
Viedbæk says Bottom is impressed with Quince’s novel idea of having a person represent a thing. His ability to learn quickly and think on his feet is demonstrated immediately as the problem of the wall arises. Also demonstrated there is his talent for taking things beyond the reasonable and into the absurd.
The wall seems to present an insurmountable problem. Snout is ready to give up immediately in line 51 when he says simply, “You can never bring in a wall.” But he reconsiders; after all, the other huge problems seem to have evaporated. He turns to his friend the solver of problems and asks, “What say you, Bottom?” And Bottom doesn’t disappoint him. “Some man or other must present Wall,” he answers, quite pleased with his solution. “And let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some roughcast about him, to signify wall; or let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisbe whisper. (3.1.52-55)” This solution, absurd as it sounds to the audience, is approved by Quince and through him by all the other mechanicals.
While the accoutrements given to the actor playing Moonshine might be regarded by the audience as clearly symbols of the presence of the moon shining on the actors, Viedbæk argues on page 44 that the degree to which Bottom has loaded down the actor playing the Wall goes beyond symbolic. She notes that anyone wearing all that Bottom suggests might find it difficult even to get himself on and off the stage. “Bottom oversteps the line between appealing to the audience’s imagination and insulting it. (44)” This presents another problem of which none of the mechanicals are cognisant, that of angering their audience by implying the actors think they’re too stupid to understand that this is a fiction and that none of the things being acted out are really happening. The mechanicals are so impressed with their own abilities that they truly believe that any audience seeing their performance will require their elaborate explanations. This is one of the things that make their presentation so funny for both the audience in the palace of the duke and the audience watching or reading the entire play.
Luckily for the mechanicals, their audience is too happy and dazed with the anticipation of their wedding night, scheduled to begin after the evening’s entertainment, to take anything to heart. Also, Duke Theseus has been warned by the manager of the evening’s entertainment that this play, while only 10 words long, is 10 words too long. Theseus is intrigued by the idea of a play thus described, and so, aware that they may be in for a disasterous performance by inept and unschooled actors who wish only to honor their Duke’s wedding, the three newly married couples take their seats in the center of the great hall, their invited guests around them, and bid the performance begin.
Throughout the performance the newlyweds chat amongst themselves, commenting on the absurdity of the conceit, the actor’s paucity of talent despite their earnest desire to please, and the wonderful fun they’re having in spite of it all. For example, in Act 5, Scene 1, immediately following the explication by the Wall that he is, in fact, not an actual wall but rather Snout, a person dressed as a wall and using his fingers to represent the chink through which the lovers Pyramus and Thysbe converse, Theseus whispers to Demetrius, “Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?” To this rhetorical questions Demetrius answers, “It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse, my lord.”
They are enjoying themselves immensely and soon will remark again on something in the play, this time making a sarcastic joke suggesting an additional line for the Wall. This provokes Bottom to jump out of character and correct them. He is so immersed in being an actor that he rebukes the Duke, something the everyday Bottom would never even consider.
Pyramus: O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!
Cursed by thy stones for thus deceiving me!
Theseus: The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.
Pyramus: No, in truth sir, he should not. ‘Deceiving me’ is Thisbe’s cue: she is to enter now, and I am to spy her through the wall. You shall see, it will fall pat as I told you. Yonder she comes. (5.1.177-181)
The duke is so amused by his discovery of this hysterically terrible acting troupe that he defends them to his bride when she whispers, “This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard. (5.1.204)” He suggests that a little imagination is all that is needed to accompany a performance so eager to please. To this she replies, “It must be your imagination then, and not theirs. (5.1.207)” He agrees without disparaging the players. “If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men. (5.1.208-9)” This is true. The mechanicals think so highly of themselves that their audience need only enter into their enthusiasm a little in order to be carried off by it entirely.
The entrance of the man the mechanicals have roped into representing the moon is another cause for amused commentary among the newlyweds. He has been so laden with “symbols” of the moon he is meant to represent that he can barely move around on stage – another example of Bottom’s overly active imagination at work. The appearance and explanation of Snug the Lion causes the on-stage audience to comment on the valor and discretion of the beast. Attributes they note are rare in the lion in the wild.
The solutions the mechanicals have so painstakingly developed to add to the realism of their play, coupled with the presentations they have added to reassure their audience of its harmlessness, have made what might have been simply tediously poor acting into an almost interactive performance. “As a performance the play is as much a disaster as could be expected, and both audiences, the on-stage one and especially the one in the theatre, enjoy themselves to the full. (47)”
In the end, after Bottom has popped up from the dead to remind the duke that the Wall cannot help the lion and moonshine to bury the dead as he has suggested because it is well and truly down, he remains out of character to ask if the company would prefer an epilogue or a little dance to conclude their performance. The duke, eager to move from the theater to the bedroom, yet too much a gentleman to tell them to just get going, requests the dance. He knows it will be brief, and silent. “No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have a fine tragedy; and so it is, truly, and very notably discharged. (334-8)”
The duke and his party have enjoyed themselves despite the heavy-handed acting and the laughable moving scenery. They have entered the world of the earnest mechanicals’ making and found it an amusing way to spend the evening. One does not have the impression that they would like to make a habit of watching performances this awkward, but that they have been enchanted by the actor’s earnestness, their faith in their own work, their ingenuity and their sheer unconsciousness of how truly appalling they are. In the end, the mechanicals are a success, in spite of themselves.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. “A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.” An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan,
Barnet et al. 13th ed.
Videbæk, Bente. The Stage Clown in Shakespeare’s Theatre.