Breakups of Shakespearean Proportion
Here she comes, cursed and sad...
“Here she comes, curst and sad. Cupid is a knavish lad thus to make poor females1 mad.” — A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 2, Lines 466-470.
We all have that one friend constantly at the whim of relationship melodrama. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that role shifts from Helena to Hermia thanks to some fairyland hijinks. They both could’ve benefited from a friend taking their phones away and telling them to “Forget it. He toxic.” Instead, they got the authoritarian fairy king and his impish right hand. At least neither one ended up with a donkey head… I guess? Seriously ladies, invest in female friendships or you may find ourself wandering through a forest begging a jerk to use you as his spaniel.
The Shakespeare Sitch
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play with which most of us are probably at least passingly familiar. It’s so often chosen as the Shakespeare play to be performed by high schoolers as to become a referential joke (my high school included). While there are arguments that the play has darker, sexual themes (shocking for Shakespeare, I know2), it is one of the easiest to adapt to a G rating, leading to even Mickey Mouse providing an adaptation. Ubiquity aside, a summary of the plot will lend itself to a discussion of this quote.
Midsummer Night’s Dream was written around 1595-1596 and is categorized as one of his “comedies.” The First Folio published in 1623 uses three categories: comedy, history, and tragedy. A general rule of thumb is: (1) if it ends in one or more marriages, it’s a comedy, (2) if it ends in one or more deaths, it’s a tragedy, BUT (3) regardless of how it ends, if it involves a monarch of Britain, it’s a “history.” However, these categories tend to collapse if looked at too closely. For instance, King Lear was an ancient British monarch, but his play is considered to be a tragedy rather than a history. Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Antony & Cleopatra are based on historical figures (and probably as likely to be true as any of the “histories”), but are tragedies. And Measure for Measure may end in marriage but is not necessarily a “happy” ending (more on that later). However, realizing that these comedies must end in a marital resolution often explains the dogged determination of the playwright to bring about such ending.
Which brings us to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We have four Athenian youths. Hermia is in love with Lysander and Lysander is in love with Hermia. Perfect! Off to the chapel. But wait, here comes Helena who is in love with Demetrius, and Demetrius who once “hailed down oaths that he was only [Helena’s].” Perfect again! So we can all just have that marriage now and… Oh, wait… Demetrius changed his mind like the inconstant [expletive] he is. Now he’s also in love with Hermia, and, to make matters worse, Hermia’s dad is #TeamDemetrius. How on earth is Will going to get these wacky kids out of this impossible situation?
With an elixir made from a white flower turned purple with “love’s wound” because of Cupid’s “shaft,” of course.3
Enter Puck, also called Robin Goodfellow,4 the right-hand fairy of the king of the fairies, Oberon. Oberon commands Puck to enchant Demetrius into falling in love with Helena. Unfortunately, there’s another fair Athenian youth wandering about… Lysander, and Puck gets the two nearly identical characters mixed up and causes Lysander to fall in love with Helena (which some scholars argue is intentional, thus making the shifting love triangles potentially a satirical commentary of romantic love itself — Shakespeare and I will let you be the judge).
But fear not! Puck discovers his mistake and enchants Demetrius to fall in love with Helena and everyone lives happily ever… wait. Nope. Now both men are wooing and fighting over Helena. Having royally mixed everything into chaos, Puck/Robin gathers all the youths, puts them to sleep (actual sleep, not euphemism sleep), and removes the enchantment from Lysander. So Hermia has Lysander and Lysander has Hermia. Helena has Demetrius. And Demetrius is still under the spell but kind of deserves it for being an inconstant jerk who led some poor girl on… right?
And, as Puck mops up the mess of his and Oberon’s making, Puck utters this week’s quote, blaming poor cupid for making Hermia mad… even though it’s his negligence that caused the whole melee to begin with. But hey… satire. Am I right?
Speak the Speech, I Pray You
Bring Shakespeare’s words into your own life by:
Mocking a melodramatic friend engrossed in a love conundrum of her own making;
Blaming Cupid for messy emotional situations caused by your own negligence;
And… helping a friend mourn reaching the bottom of the Cheetos bag.
I promise not all of these will be about food and eventually I’ll lure a few fellow improvisers to play with me, but for now… Mmmm Cheetos.
Additional Resources
Find a copy of the entire play here.
Listen to a fantastic lecture on the darker sexual themes of the play here.
Watch a brilliant and hilarious adaptation starring Rachel Leigh Cook and Fran Kranz.
Bonus Quote: “Me thought I was enamored of an ass.”
Sometimes in life, we are the Helena. Helena’s love, Demetrius, was no prince (he was fickle and rude and frankly, she deserved better), but he was still superior to the pompous Athenian diva whose head was changed into that of an ass (probably a donkey unless you’re watching Casey Wilder Mott’s hilarious and delightful 2017 adaptation). Poor Titania, queen of the fairies and girl-boss extraordinaire, wakes to find she’s been tricked into falling in love with that creature, and utters this (honestly relatable) line. Frankly, I think we’ve all ended relationships and been struck with the realization that love or lust (or booze) had tricked us into falling for an ass.
The phrase is especially ironic, and potentially further evidence of Dr. Emma Smith’s argument that the play is satire, as it is the male characters of Lysander and Demetrius who lose their common sense due to the juice of the arrow-tainted flower. And, as is typical for the comedies, we are once again left to wonder if Shakespeare was a feminist sardonically confronting social mores, or one rubber-stamping those same norms without critical thought.
This is a joke, just to be clear.
Feel free to read heavily into this. As we’ve discussed, Shakespeare was made for the bawdy groundlings, not the pearl-clutching pilgrims.
I once had an acting teacher tell me of the theory that the sprite is called “Puck” when he’s making a mess of things and “Robin” when he’s fixing them. It’s a fun dichotomy to consider.
Very fun analysis!