Nondual Shakespeare? A Few Quotes & Notes from A Midsummer Nights Dream

1.

Out of this wood do not desire to go;

Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.

I am a spirit of no common rate,—

The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee: therefore, go with me,

I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee;

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

And sing, while thou on pressèd flowers dost sleep:

And I will purge thy mortal grossness so

That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.—

~WS (MND, 3.1: 129-138)

2.

"I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.—Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,— but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen; man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was."

~WS (MND 4.1: 204-213)

3.

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, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

~WS (MND 5.1: 14-22)

Some random notes

so i'm currently watching 3 midsummer night dreams while slow reading it. 1968 hall. 1981 bbc. 1996 noble. in the 1968, a 22 year old helen mirren is hermia and very good. but the play is of its time. i've just begun the 1981. but i'm really liking the 1996 after forgiving its conceit of being about a macaulay-culkin-like boy and his miraculous dream. it's contemporary without being too dated, like the hall. and the cast is really good without being too starry. tho' there's kevin doyle from downton.

as to the play itself, at the half-time intermission, and considering shakespeare is a great mystic putting on a show, it is deconstructing romantic love (or robin goodfellow is) while positing the fact of non-doing. but robin/puck steals the show. although apparently the tool of oberon, this trickster spirit loves to improvise. and oberon loves the improvisation and so on. there's something about titania though.

being that its philosophy in places appears to be nondual, it's curious all the transformation revolves around an indian boy. oberon wants him and titania will not give him up, 

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, / Because that she, as her attendant, hath / A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king; / She never had so sweet a changeling: / And jealous Oberon would have the child / Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild: / But she perforce withholds the lovèd boy,/  Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: / And now they never meet in grove or green, / By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, / But they do square; that all their elves for fear / Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there. ~WS (MND 2.1: 20-31)

so he drugs her with some flowery eye drops, and for a lark, the athenian men. and so begins the reverie.

In reviewing these quotes and notes, I’ve concluded there is an important speech here from three of the four groups represented in the play. There is Titania to represent the fairy world. There is the mechanical, Bottom. Lastly, there is Theseus of the court nobility. But I am missing something of the lovers themselves. Ah but here is Helena on the subject of love:

4.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity, 

Love can transpose to form and dignity. 

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; 

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste; 

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: 

And therefore is love said to be a child, 

Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d. 

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere:

~WS (MND 1.1: 236-245)

So in the end, there are 4 segments in the play that point to some kind of wisdom, each representing a group in the play: love, spirit, dream, and imagination. What does it mean? It is past my wit to say.