Appreciation: Pennington on Dream

Michael Pennington's "User's Guide" to Midsummer Night's Dream, didn't read as easily as his guide to Hamlet. Perhaps inevitably: Dream is a wonderful play but it isn't as rich or complex as Hamlet--what is? Also, Dream has some scenes of elegant near-choreography which require (and from Pennington, receive) the kind of careful explication that Pennington provides, and that may leave the non-techie reader a bit short of breath. Still, it is a rewarding book that offers any number of useful insights on the play likely to have escaped the eye of even repeat viewers.

Pennington also offers an instructive account of Dream spinoffs, from Mendelssohn through Britten to Kevin Kline (to whom Pennington is a good deal more charitable than I am). Through it all, Pennington leaves no doubt that Dream deserves recognition as Shakespeare's first masterpiece. But he ends with this tantalizing suggestion:

[T]he play remains a little remote and complete to itself. This is not the Shakespeare from which people quote a therapeutic line in daily life ... . In the Shakespearian community, Hamlet can be imagined having an interesting talk about life and death with Feste; Queen Margaret might discuss with Cleopatra how to reconcile love and power; Gertrude could advice Romeo. but there is realy no character in Dream who could sustain such a conversation. ... However, the play is very good for the health. Best of course to watch it among strangers in the special intimacy of a theatre; but it is also possible to sit by an open window, watching a honeysuckle circling an elm tree, and marvel at what Shakespeare made of such things in this play.

Yowp Yowp Yowp Yowp Yowp Yowp Yowp

We spent the weekend in the company, inter alia, of four beagles. I rather liked them, actually: they were good-natured beasts, cheerful and easy-going. One of them did betray a serious Jones for artisan bread: he broke into Mrs. B’s suitcase and gobbled up a half a loaf we were counting on for breakfast. In the end, I think he suffered more than we did, and it wasn’t a big deal.

But they did holler. Man, did they ever holler. I suppose like this:

Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester
For now our observation is perform'd;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds. 1660
Uncouple in the western valley; let them go:
Dispatch, I say, and find the forester.
[Exit an Attendant]
We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion 1665
Of hounds and echo in conjunction

Hippolyta. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding: for, besides the groves, 1670
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung 1675
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, 1680
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge when you hear. …

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act IV Scene 1