A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 5 – “The lunatic, the lover and the poet; Are of imagination all compact…”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 5 – “The lunatic, the lover and the poet; Are of imagination all compact…”

In Shakespeare’s time, love stories were categorized as Comedies and inevitably ended in a wedding (or multiple weddings), some comic interludes and often a dance. For an Elizabethan audience, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ doesn’t disappoint.

In the final act we return to Theseus’ palace where the triple wedding has taken place and he has three hours to burn until his wedding night. He expresses his opinion that the young Athenian lovers probably imagined all that they said had happened in the forest:

“The lunatic, the lover and the poet

Are of imagination all compact…”

The ever-thoughtful and intelligent Hippolyta (now his bride but with all the attributes which would make her an excellent cop on CSI or any other cop program) points out that if they dreamed all these events, that it is strange that all their stories have the same details told in the same way with “great constancy”.

Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena enter and Theseus plays the good host  calling for his “usual manager of mirth” Philostrate to tell them what entertainments are on offer. After rejecting a couple of contenders, Theseus settles on the play of the Pyramus and Thisbe story performed by “… hard headed men that work in Athens…” even though Philostrate (who you would never chose as a theatrical agent) implores Theseus not to see it. no matter how poor the performance.

The Athenian audience take their seats and Peter Quince presents a very apologetic and hesitant Prologue. The audience derision starts slowly indicating that this performance will prove a humorous springboard. The characters of Moonshine and The Wall enter giving their speeches to more mockery and puns from Theseus and Demetrius. The action of the play continues. Bottom enters as Pyramus overacting with numerous ominous ‘O’s’ and oxymorons and horrendous hyperboles. Pyramus and Thisbe talk through the chink in the Wall as represented by Snout’s fingers. The story is as clumsy as the acting and the verse shown in statements like those made by Bottom as Pyramus who declaims:

“I see a voice: now will I to the chink…

I can hear my Thisbe’s face.”

The sight of Bottom as Pyramus and the young Flute as Thisbe, speaking through Snout’s body as the Wall and looking through his fingers representing a chink in the wall is so bizarre and humorous that even Hippolyta starts join the audience’s running commentary. Snug’s Lion roars and utters his speech to assure the ladies that he is not a real lion:

“Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am

A lion-fell, nor else no lion’s dam…”

Chaos then reigns as Pyramus finds a bloodied mantle and thinks Thisbe is dead and commits suicide (in Bottom’s melodramatic performance he takes a considerable amount of stage time to die) and then Thisbe also commits suicide upon finding the dead Pyramus. Is this the end? The audience sure hopes so but Bottom asks if they would like an epilogue or a bergamask dance. Theseus takes command:

“No epilogue… your play needs no excuse…”

Theseus decides that a dance is in order and after that calls all the lovers to bed and declares that a fortnight of “nightly revels and new jollity” will take place.

Although the Athenians see no Epilogue, we are given one by Puck. But this is quickly prefaced by Oberon and Titania briefing their fairies before they all go throughout the house to bless the couples and their various bridal beds. Oberon and Titania and their train of fairies exit and Puck directly addresses the audience and questions the divisions between dreams and reality. Puck offers us a commentary, apology and an out-clause to the strange dream-like events encountered:

“If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended

That you have but slumbered here,

While these visions did appear.”