OK, after the behemoth act 3 yesterday, I'm going to try and make act 4 a little more short and sweet.
Act 4 starts with Bottom and the fairies. I will unabashadly say
that I don't think I can cut any of Bottom's lines. I love them all. On
that note- can anyone tell me if "neaf" is a real word? And if so what
it means? It doesnt come up in my dictionary and every time we have been
in this scene the actors playing bottom and mustardseed just make up
some humorous miscommunication.
After Bottom and Titania fall asleep, Oberon shows up and talks to
Puck about how he stole Titania's changeling child while she was under
the influence of the love juice. This is another LONG speech which I
have never seen/heard make it to performance in its entirety. Once
oberon gloats about this victory which he clearly did not achieve
fairly, he uses the magical remedy flower to make Titania recover from
the love juice and wakes her. This is where we get what i consider false
ending #1 Instead of leaving the stage to explain what happened- Oberon
calls for music and they do a dance- tell me this is not an expected
end to a show! Jig- curtain. scene. but no. we are only in act 4.and
once the dance is done they awkwardly leave the stage because the sun is
up- even though Oberon just told Puck that the sun doesnt matter and
they can work in day or night . I'm going to guess its just toeep all the
"dreamlike" aspects confined to night, but still.... you could use this to they really are all demons instead of non-damnable fairies... if that's your thing.
DIRECTOR NOTE: If/when I direct this play (spoiler alert: odds are
VERY good that will happen soon) I intend to cut this dance. someone
give me a good reason to think about not doing it. Go. Seriously though
if they just leave without this dancing bit I think it would feel more
like we are still in the middle of a story instead of an endless series
of wrapping up loose ends...
This seems like a good time to address my views on cuts in
general- I think Shakespeare was brilliant but I don't think the
complete works is equivalent to a theatral Bible. We have good reason to
believe that shows were cut and changed in performance and four touring
all the te in the early modern period and I think there's no reason
that just because they are formally printed and bound now that we should
never cut a line again. I DO think that some cuts re better than others
and that what you cut definitely affects the way you tell the story or
even whose/what kind of story you are telling but we can argue that on a
case by case basis.
So the fairies leave and on comes Thesues who is basically telling
Hippolyta that he's going ot make her "echo his hounds" -creeepy but
kind of hot, and what is her response?
"I was with Hercules and Cadmus once" and then she starts talking
about the beautiful sounds of thee hounds that belong to these other
men. Nothing like bringing up the men you've been with before on your
wedding day. Fun fact: Cadmus killed a dragon. He also married a goddess
and I could not find any accounts of him raping women. THIS is where
there is a payoff to playing up what a jerk Theseus is. Theseus is in
the midst of awkwardly responding with how his hounds are really good
too when they stumble upon the sleeping lovers. Everyone re-caps and
explains how strange it is that now the two couples are happy and so
Egeus' threat from the beginning of the play does not stand. I think Theseus taking the lovers part here gives an opportunity for Hippolyta to reconcile with the fact that she has to marry this guy...
This leaves
only Bottom sleeping onstage. His glorious soliloquy is the greatest. I LOVE IT!!!!
I would pick this speech as a teaching moment in both theater and
English classes. This speech has ruined the hymn "eyes have not seen" for me- I
literally lose it in a fit of giggles any time that song is played at
mass.
4.2
This short and sweet mechanicals scene tells the audience we aren't
done yet. It gets everyone pumped about the play within a play to come
and it has the really lovely moment when Bottom is reunited with his
acting troupe. "Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?"
Aside from that, the debate Bottom seems to be have with himself
between telling them what happened to him in the woods and keeping it to
himself is SO GOOD!
One act to go and I am going to try and write up the post for that tonight and post it in the morning since I am leaving for Tucson tomorrow right after work. Why you ask? So I can meet up with the guy who literally wrote the book on scansion. Dr. George Ted Wright. I will let you know how it goes!
... today's picture is of when I played Snug the joiner in a makeshift/lumpy fat suit. Enjoy.
I love the Cadmus stuff, by the way. I'm all about acknowledging the creep factor - the only real argument against it is that audience "want a happy ending", which, as per my Much Ado soapbox, is bullshit.
ReplyDeleteAlso, want to skype and hear all about George T. Wright.
BUT, here is a reason I think the dance should be left in - also the full length of that speech. Because, this is where you get what I actually see as a defense of Oberon's actions. In their fight, he says, "Do you amend it then, it lies in you." At first this seems like they're both just placing blame - she defenses everything with that truly beautiful speech, but then, once she has Bottom, she is fine with giving up the changeling boy - and she doesn't demand him back.
So, why? What was making her hold on to the boy so hard that having Bottom soothed so she didn't need him? We don't quite know (although the devil in me suspects there might be a heteronormative lesson going on in there somewhere if you want to look at it like that) what made Titania willing to, as she so eloquently describes, throw the entire world into confusion for one boy (nor do we know beyond the basic jealousy and stubborness stuff what Oberon's deal is, of course) but we DO know that her devotion to Bottom can take care of it.
I think you need the dance because it shows that everything is truly in harmony between them. It's always bizarre - because we expect her to be damn well pissed when she wakes up, but instead she is at peace. She has purged something, somehow. And hell, maybe seeing the lovers tearing each other's eyes out is what made Oberon more willing to take the love juice off Titania - I think it's better if he WASN'T planning to do that until the whole adventure changed him as well.
So if you have those two transformations, you really need a dance to show that the world is going to come back into balance - and, ideally, that they've found a new, better way to be together. I know we see them come back later to bless everything, but I think you really need to establish that everything is now okay between Oberon and Titania. Both of their issues have somehow, mysteriously (hey, fairies are weird) worked out their issues.
Kind of like how Demetrius is going to.
Also, my thoughts on the play are on my blog: http://prosebeforeho.blogspot.com/2012/10/theatre-as-compensation.html