Text commentary II.1. 121-175

(oral presentation by Jérôme Quintana)

 

Intro

- Excerpt : part of opening scene of Act II ? new setting: from Athens to the wood.
- Brief reminder: II.1. starts with Robin Goodfellow, “the merry wanderer of the night”, speaking with a fairy, then moves on to present Oberon and Titania, respectively King and Queen of Fairies.
- Present excerpt: divided between Titania and Oberon’s sentimental conflict and fight over a little changeling boy – or mortal child - and Oberon’s mischievous plan to avenge himself with the love-in-idleness, or love juice.
- So not just a change of setting, but a change of world -> material / immaterial, earthly / celestial, mortal / immortal
- One is immediately struck not just by the contrast between the two worlds, but perhaps more so by the parallels which can be drawn, almost blurring at times the boundaries. An analysis of the symmetries, and the contrasts between these worlds, will have to be made, and the question of how central this excerpt is in connecting two apparently opposed worlds will have to be addressed as well.

 

I) MATERIALITY – THE CHILD AS AN OBJECT OF MERCHANDISE / A TRADE-OFF

The changeling boy is at the heart of the unfolding dispute.
Yet right from the start one senses a dichotomy between the world of fairies and the symbolic scope that this child bears for Titania:
(121) “the fairyland buys not the child of me”, as if she herself somehow, by raising a mortal child, were not a part and parcel of the fairyland.
The materialistic overtone of the verb “buy” comes in sharp contrast with the immateriality of the world it is supposed to represent, and at the same time thrusts the poor child forward as an object of transaction – a mere merchandise.
This leads us to the circumstances of the boy’s birth and his mother’s death, which are extremely vague and murky, but which nonetheless revolve around the world of merchants: “the embarked traders” (127) and the dead woman’s returns from her obscure wanderings, “rich with merchandise” (134), all emphasize the trade-off with the child between the lovers, further reinforced by Oberon’s words (143) “Give me that boy and I will go with thee”, whose spondaic rhythm and monosyllabic words indicate that the transaction should be interpreted as final. Very down-to-earth, indeed!

 

II) REVERSAL OF ROLES

a. The human(e) Fairies

Yet the down-to-earth aspect of the transaction has another side to it: it makes the characters look more human, which may be surprising coming from the King and Queen of Fairies.
Upon close examination, the two lovers’ quarrel has all the characteristics of an ordinary male / female argument, with all the usual tactics: from Oberon’s coaxing ways right before the beginning of this excerpt (119-120): “Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy” to his abrupt and final words line 143. Note also the double entendre in Oberon’s question (138): “How long within this wood intend you stay?” which can be interpreted both literally, but also figuratively: indeed, “wood” is also this intricate situation, echoing the expression “be out of the wood”. But the polysemy of “wood” can also be heard as meaning “wooed”, or “courted” ? How long will I have to woo you until you finally give yourself over to me?”
Titania’s answer is startling, as her words seem to run the whole gamut of emotions, from seduction, as when she says (140-141): “If you will patiently dance in our round : And see our moonlight revels, go with us” ? note how she uses the 1st person plural possessive adjective “our” and object pronoun “us”; note also how the rhythm, which had heretofore remained very regular and iambic, experiences variations here: “patiently dance in our round” indicate two anapests / x x / x x / which break up the regularity of the rhythm and almost send the lovers twisting around in a dance.
So from seduction, no doubt, to absolute firmness and inflexibility. Oberon’s final plea is met with adamant resolution, l. 144-145: “Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away! / We shall chide downright, if I longer stay” ? note how she once again excludes herself from fairyland, speaking of “thy fairy kingdom” and how the rhyming verse in [ei], the only one in this passage in fact, gives dramatic effect to Titania’s words, and her exit from stage, or possibly from a world she seems to harshly reject.
Of course the quarrel is evocative of the power struggle, almost the tug-of-war that love may entail, and echoes the war that Theseus had to wage on Hippolyta to conquer her, as Theseus indicated in the opening scene of Act I : “I wooed thee with my sword”. A further parallel can be drawn by looking at the verse used here. It is blank, or unrhymed verse, in iambic pentameters, just like Theseus and Hippolyta’s. Titania and Oberon’s verse thus has all the characteristics of human language and contrasts with that of other fairies –> cf. trochaic verse or rhymed verse used by Puck and a Fairy at the beginning of II.1

b. From earthly to sensual and immaterial

Titania’s fondness for the human world, which is now unquestionable, is rooted in her friendship with the child’s dead mother, which is here recounted at the beginning of the extract:
In Titania’s account of a very exotic world with the “spiced Indian air” (124), the topic of water and the sea is prevalent: the “flood” (127), the “sails” (128), the “swimming gait” of the woman, “sailing upon the land” (132) and returning from a sea “voyage”(134).
The language conjures up mythological images, as when she tells of how she “sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands” (126) and is abundantly metaphorical: (128-129) “the sails conceive / And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind” echo the woman’s pregnancy of l. 131 “her womb then rich with my young squire” ? note the bond, the instant connection between the woman’s pregnancy and the child which Titania makes her own: “my young squire” It is as if she and her friend were one, each a representative of their own respective world, but here mingled together through the birth of the child. Their friendship is of a higher essence, it transcends the mere borders of mortal and immortal, material and immaterial.
It is epitomized in Titania’s words l. 136-137:
“And for her sake do I rear up her boy;
And for her sake I will not part with him.”
? note the anaphora : “And for her sake” repeated at the beginning of each line, to give more power and magnitude to this transcendental bond.

 

III) The king of Fairies strikes back

After what seemed like a fairly ordinary lovers’ fight, with all the expected power struggle and tug-of-war, Oberon is left alone to ponder his revenge and hatch his mischievous plan. The reader, who was up until now just reliving extremely familiar emotions and sensations, is suddenly caught off guard. Oberon strikes back using all the might and power that his status as King of Fairies confers upon him. We’re back to a world of celestial beings, with mythological and legendary figures aplenty.
One is struck by the parallels between Oberon’s account of the “mermaid on the dolphin’s back” (150) and Titania’s account of “Neptune’s yellow sands”. The imagery of the sea is here again prevalent. Not to mention the metaphorical ingredients? note how the sea is personified (152: “That the rude sea grew civil at her song”. Note also how the celestial elements come alive, in accordance with the tradition of mythological tales: (153) “And certain stars shot madly from their spheres / To hear the sea-mermaid’s music?”. The list seems endless: then it is “Cupid, all arm’d” (157) who “flying between the cold moon and the earth” (156), takes an aim at a “fair vestal” and loosens his “love-shaft” (159, and again 161 “fiery shaft”) from his bow. The simile “as it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts” (160) is almost redundant as the sexual connotations of the “love-shaft” are all evident to contemporary as well as Elizabethan readers! The shaft is “quenched in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon” (162) ? note here the hypallage “chaste beams” / “wat’ry moon” where “wat’ry beams / chaste moon” are expected, which adds force to an already highly sexual line. In a way, the sexuality of these lines is in keeping with Titania’s bond with the mortal world. Humans are sexual, not fairies.
See the parallel again with Titania’s vot’ress and Oberon’s vot’ress, who’s “fancy-fee” (164) just asTitania’s vot’ress wandered about fetching trifles.
But Oberon’s story takes on a more dramatic turn: he is bent on using the magic power of the love-in-idleness, the flower which, when the juice of it is laid on someone’s eyes, (172-173) “will make or man or woman madly dote / Upon the next living creature that it sees”.
Note the balance achieved by the use of “or man or woman”, where each term is on an equal footing, so here already the idea of reuniting man and woman is paramount, in spite of Oberon’s initial plan to avenge himself.

 

IV) Conclusion: function of blurred boundaries

By blurring the boundaries between the mortal and immortal worlds, Shakespeare is making it both more fun and entertaining to read, and also more complex. It is the art of the writer here at play. It would be very dull if it were just a story of fairies coming to the help of unfortunate lovers and bringing order back, albeit through disorder. The constant parallels, symmetries and echoes found here bring out the constant internal mirroring of the play, where one scene or set of characters echoes or reflects another.
This probably lays the ground for the metamorphoses that will ensue, the constant going back and forth between mortal and immortal, loved and unloved, seen and unseen, actor and spectator, tragedy and comedy and the way in which the “language code” is here switched around. It all contributes to making this excerpt central. It is the human bond that connects the multifarious aspect of the world. From here on, the world will never be the same, but certainly not a predictable one, and the enchantment lies not necessarily in the magical power of the fairies, but in the very humaneness that lies at the heart of the worlds depicted here: from earth to heaven, and back again.