Two Queens , a King and a Duke walk into a discotheque. One King and one Queen are fairies, the other Queen is dressed like Wonder Woman and the Duke is wrapped in a toga. The Queen of the Fairies, dressed in a pink tutu, drags behind her a muscular “boy” clad in a gold lame g-string and turban. The King of the Fairies is not happy with this situation. The other Queen and Duke seem nervous and excited, in alternation. The music thumps in the background, throbbing as if to set the mood. Reality, like the strobe lights, pulses.
This oddly painted scene is either the set up for a bad joke, or some warped mental variation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Since bad jokes and Shakespeare just do not go together, obviously the latter is true. Of course, this textual cavatina is a production of the mind just a little beyond the text. But the quest, the search for those moments that do live just beyond the text, yet are still indicated by it, can be one of the most rewarding aspects of reading and/or critiquing a work of art like A Midsummer Night's Dream --and differently angled views are abundant in literary criticism. In his article “ A Midsummer Night's Dream : Anamorphism and Theseus' Dream,” James L. Calderwood postulates--via the art of Hans Holbein and a particular Renaissance painting device, anamorphism--a slightly altered view of the play (409-10). Employing Calderwood's use of anamorphism as a touchstone, the best texts and criticisms for me are those exploring the unexplored, finding new views beyond even Calderwood's anamorphism, ultimately uncovering, via a totality of critical and individual responses, fantastic and metamorphic readings of the play. That metamorphic quality, the ability to take on subtexts, is essential for my reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a reading as fluid as--and part my invention in--this essay's opening pastiche.
Indeed the opening pastiche asks of the reader something not unlike what Calderwood asks of those examining Shakespeare's play, chiefly to view the play differently by exploring new angles. Calderwood invokes Han Holbein's The Ambassadors directly, inviting a speculation upon A Midsummer Night's Dream using the painting as a text to unlock new meanings (409-10). Calderwood notes the anamorphism in Holbein's painting, which casts a seemingly obscure bit of white paint into a skull when viewed from another angle--thus the skull stares resolutely at the (initially) unaware viewer (409). Presuming a doubling of the cast in Shakespeare's play, Calderwood then links (through this new angle) Oberon and Titania to Theseus and Hippolyte. This link is not just in characteristics, however, for Calderwood merges Oberon and Titania into Theseus and Hippolyte, and thus the fairies become dreamlike representations of the Duke and his bride-to-be, carrying their concerns about the impending marital situation with them (413). Calderwood declares early in the article that “It's all Athens in another key or mode” (411).
Through the course of the article, Calderwood follows psychological, feminist and even Marxist underpinnings, almost simultaneously as when he notes “a feminine world rich with all the mysteries of fertility [. . .]” but such a world “can be conveyed to Oberon only through imperfect analogies to masculine trade and moneymaking.” (416). Calderwood even pins down some deconstructionist notions, reminding readers through this anamorphic scheme of Theseus' out-of-text tussle with the Minotaur (419), or reminding them of the potential for confusion in evoking Egeus as a homophonic equivalent to Theseus's mythical father Aegeus (427). Yet throughout the article, Calderwood refers back to Holbein and the anamorphic qualities of the Holbein painting, structuring the entire article via this cultural documentation, and revealing how viewing a painting in light of the play affects a view of the play. This structure is what remains so useful in my own reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream . To be sure, Calderwood evokes the double view of anamorphism yet proceeds to present a multiplicity of views in keeping with my multiple incarnations of the play, and Calderwood's use of The Ambassadors as a document mirrors my use of songs in a Marxist reading of the play. Calderwood's use of the painting further mirrors another of my thought patterns when I first read the play, for that initial reading was influenced by Henry Fuseli's painting Nightmare and, upon further recollection, his Titania and Bottom (A Midsummer Night's Dream, IV, 1) . H.W. Janson and Robert Rosenblum note in the latter picture “a gravity-defiant world presided over by Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, who has just conjured up an ectoplasmic whirlwind of her elves, sprites and gnomes to attend to Bottom” (56). The notion of the “ectoplasmic whirlwind” is not unlike Calderwood's invocation of anamorphism, and thus via two paintings (from two distinct historical periods) the play conjures its “murky, fluid world" (Rosenblum and Janson 57).
The anamorphic/ectoplasmic angle is useful in examining other views of the play, even through other plays, and Kim H. Noling generates a view angled toward feminism in her essay “Grubbing Up the Stock: Dramatizing Queens in Henry VIII .” In an article that also invokes Marxist and psychological forces, Noling begins by building a case for Katherine as a feminist in the play, ultimately suggesting that “It is by interrupting ceremonies to turn them to her own purposes, or by creating alternative ceremonies, that Katherine most clearly distinguishes herself as having an independent will able to challenge for a time the patriarchal ideology dominating the play” (295). Yet the play takes a turn, and Anne's “visibility, unlike Katherine's, comes not from positions that she assumes according to her own will, but from positions determined for her by other characters” (299). Even without the device of anamorphism a balance has shifted, and the feminist point of view is clear.
This feminist look is highly applicable to A Midsummer Night's Dream , which begins with Hippolyte in a form of submission, something like Theseus' battle-earned bride. Titania, formerly the presiding fairy in Fuseli's painting, and Hippolyte with anamorphic glance, begins with a challenge to the patriarchy, and ends in submission to Oberon. Feminism adds a dimension to the play that also exists outside of the text, for Hippolyte never expresses real concern about where her Amazons are (are they all dead?) and Titania never laments Oberon's trickery. These concerns also shaped my reading of the play, particularly in relation to Hippolyte early in the work. Besides that relationship to the play, Noling's article would have me fearing the charge of plagiarism, had I read it before adopting my own feminist criticism. This fear has its origin in Noling's notation that “the future Queen Elizabeth does not satisfy the patriarch's urge for a male successor, nor does her birth alleviate his anxiety about depending on the female as a means to male heirs” (292). My feminist reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream was built around a similar fear of Oberon's. Thus a similar view emerges in two plays--the anamorphism has spread in all directions, perhaps a “multi-anamorphism.”
All directions, and perhaps none. Critical texts are typically easy to recognize, but sometimes a different critical direction can emerge, a direction not always readily apparent--but, by this point, what is readily apparent? Peter Greenaway's film variation of The Tempest , Prospero's Books , exists as a work in its own right, yet it also serves as an interesting deconstructive criticism of the play. Throughout the film, Prospero is given the text, emphasizes the text, and ultimately makes the text…and he later unmakes it. Found outside the text are the qualities of the Island spirits, pulled out of air and given sumptuous nudity that, through repetition, emphasizes a sameness, and yet also serves as a variation and thereby pun on Nuditas naturalis , man's “natural” state as expressed by George Ferguson in Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (49). The dark, vulgar, yet somehow alluring modern dance of Caliban, and even Ariel's appearance as three different ages, from youth to young man, are also readings outside of the text, yet somehow there as well by virtue of high definition film modification of the text (sometimes, ironically, by insistent inclusion). Viewers are left with a literal deconstruction when Prospero returns his books to the waters he has lurked in through portions of the film.
The fluidity I see in A Midsummer Night's Dream is thus expressed and realized, perhaps more fully by Greenaway's subtitling and luscious imagery. Still, Prospero's literal deconstruction of knowledge in Greenaway's direction recalls Puck's out of bounds appeal to the audience, his “apologia” at the end of the “dream.” Indeed, Puck could, by virtue of textual ambiguities, be adopted by the range of ages Greenaway gives Ariel, or even be given Oberon's voice by virtue of being his “servant.” The fairies might likewise inhabit their space with Nuditas naturalis , and, given the right discotheque, such nude escapades would surely invite the deconstructive tendencies (in a different way) of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who might “fix” the play. But, if metamorphism, further, ectoplasmic metamorphism “fixes” my reading in an “unfixed” capacity, deconstructions of this sort are the ultimate realization, an anamorphism in extreme, rendering the world with a wonderfully confusing purpose. The world of A Midsummer Night's Dream shatters into ripples on the water, text floating away in ambiguity.
It might seem, at this point, anything goes in my reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and readers and viewers might as well get ready for a Cole Porter Shakespearean Revival, and any frivolity to ensue. But there are checks and balances in this mad art, to keep a semblance of order even while the view askew is fully explored. The checks and balances are provided by something like a textual governmental authority: New Criticism. Prizing the text as an individual piece of art able to sustain itself fully, New Criticism (at times maddening to me, given my passionate embrace of deconstruction) does offer a stable balance, a place to return when the fluidity becomes molten hot. So, an article titled “ ‘Multiformitie Uniforme': A Midsummer Night's Dream ,” by Andrew D. Weiner, would appear to calm the tempest, and solidify the sea, reclaiming the text. Weiner begins with a promising title that illustrates the conventions of New Criticism, and stakes out an ultimate conclusion that “Although each of the elements of the play, taken out of context, may give rise to its own set of visions, those elements are firmly linked together through the structure, which relates our reactions to the parts to our comprehension of the whole” (349).
This conclusion amounts to a near manifesto of New Critical thought, as earlier in the play Weiner notes a Shakespeare “fulfilling all of his obligations as he entrances his audience, shows them how to respond to his play, and at the same time justifies the demands that it makes upon them” (330). Yet, if Weiner proposes these two New Critical bookends, he spends some time in the Elizabethan era, staking a few historical claims and inserting something of a sermon on the value of marriage by noting a Biblical parody in the text (343). Weiner proposes that Shakespeare has provided the structure to understand the play completely, even as he strays outside the text somewhat. But Weiner's warnings remain, that inevitably “we cannot know what the play is about until we understand the principle by which is it structured [. . .]” (329). In turn, “we cannot understand the play's structure until we have grasped the attitudes about poetry that seem to underlie much of the play but particularly the fifth act” (329). Everything we need is inside the play, not outside--indeed, right inside the fifth act.
So, by virtue of New Criticism everything that has gone before it in this text suddenly becomes useless and, ultimately, fatally, wrong. I could hardly agree with such a statement, even while recognizing the value of New Criticism in reminding a reader of basic forms that create a foundation for further exploration. However, in the midst of three criticisms I celebrate, and one article the utility of which is important in theory, though the individual article is somewhat weak, there is one failing among them all. None of the articles (and the film as criticism) do much to “rehabilitate” the mechanicals. Calderwood deals with Bottom in relation to Titania, but not the other players in any detail. There must be some Marxist defenses of the workers who are players, but in the context of my explorations I did not find any with great utility for my reading of the players in my own device, the “Wal-Mart check out line aesthetic.” Ultimately the articles have been futile in fully supporting my attempts to reconcile the meanings of these men, who perhaps by virtue of their status and class do not get to revel in the liquid proceedings as much as the other characters. Only Bottom tastes that nectar, but such a taste is brief and he is during that time one-half an ass, less a man.
Returning to this essay's opening, by New Critical standards the ridiculousness of inserting a barely clad muscular boy-toy, a pink tutu-ed Titania, and a comic book Hipployte are apparent. But two of those aspects, the boy toy and the tutu (on a transgendered, black Titania) were part of a production which Margo Hendricks critiques in “ ‘Obscured by dreams': Race, Empire, and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream ,” pulling from it a reinforcement of colonial views of race and India , a post-colonial attitude strikingly absent from most discourse (60). Further the play has been set in a gay bar (Watson), not too far from my own synthetically a-musing world of ravers. Even given my own mental insertion, the pop culture reading of Hippolyte dressed in the garb of her daughter, a well known Wonder Woman in the comic book variation of the mythology, some critics could find meaning. After all, Les Daniels notes in Wonder Woman: The Golden Age, an exploration of this star spangled Amazon, that she was sent to man's world to fight for both democracy and equal rights for women (30). What ideas might recasting her mother in that role in the light of a current Democracy's notion of “preemptive strikes” and the road to new Empires generate? Could Theseus' preemptive strike, his “wooing”of a harbinger of democracy and feminine liberation provide some new meanings inside and outside the context of the play?
Perhaps the ridiculous would yield nothing at all, but something like Calderwood's proposed anamorphism given over to a “metamorphic uniformity” could turn that ridiculous handmirror of current events into a realistic symbolism. Then again, perhaps few would get the joke. Art would have undone itself, and the critics might howl. Those howls might, in turn, become the art. The play (to round out this essay in New Critical “uniformity') is a play-dough factory of ectoplasmic intent--molded, but not inalterably cast in iron. Every howl is liquid.
Calderwood, James L. “ A Midsummer Night's Dream: Anamorphism and Theseus' Dream.” Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 42, Issue 4 (Winter, 1991): 409-430. 23 Nov. 2002 . <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037- 3222%28199124% 2942%3A4%3C409%3AAMNDAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J>
Daniels, Les. Wonder Woman: The Golden Age . San Francisco : Chronicle Books. 2001.
Ferguson, George. Signs and Symbols in Christian Art . Oxford University Press: New York . 1961.
Greenaway, Peter, dir. Prospero's Books . Miramax Films. 1991.
Hendricks, Margo. “ ‘Obscured by dreams':Race, Empire and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream .” Shakespeare Quarterly . Volume 47, Issue 1 (Spring 1996): 37-60. 23 Nov. 2002 . <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-3222%28199621%2947%3A1% 3C37 %3A %22BDREA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O>
Noling, Kim H. “Grubbing Up the Stock: Dramatizing Queens in Henry VIII .” Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 39, Issue 3 (Autumn, 1988): 291-306. 23 Nov. 2002 . <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-3222%28198823%2939%3A3%3C291%3AGUTS DQ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z>
Rosenblum, Robert and H.W. Janson. 19 th Century Art . New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1984.
Watson, Shawn. Lecture in Theoretical Approaches to Literature, English 3300. UTPB, Texas . 4 Dec. 2002.
Weiner, Andrew D. “ ‘Multiformitie Uniforme': A Midsummer Night's Dream .” ELH , Volume 38, Issue 3 (Sep., 1971): 329-349. 23 Nov. 2002 . <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-8 304%28197109%2938%3A3%3C329%3A%22UAMND%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S>