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nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq Reply for ACT IV:

> imagery of spring, fitting with when the play takes place and with the lunar/solar theme in connection to love.

I think this is spot on. It also ties back to how the Fairy King and Queen’s conflict was causing the seasons to be messed up. With the dissolution of Demetrius’s love for Hermia, we also have the “correct” seasons back

When Demetrius says

>But like a sickness did I loathe this food.

it reminded me of when Helena was saying she wished that Hermia’s looks could be contagious, so that she could catch them too and thereby catch Demetrius

635bea4c... 2y ago

nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 ACT V

>That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow!

>What are they that do play it?

Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,

Which never labored in their minds till now,

And now have toiled their unbreathed memories

With this same play, against your nuptial.

i think often one who hasn't labored in one's mind might produce something more wonderful than one who spends all their time doing nothing but that. it can be that labor stops one from becoming neurotic; what they produce will certainly be more innocent and genuine in a sense:

>I will hear that play,

For never anything can be amiss

When simpleness and duty tender it.

also, something that's 'so bad it's good' can never come from a cynical place or one where to be seen as bad is the intended effect. it has to be a completely genuine failure to achieve that.

>O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans

For parting my fair Pyramus and me.

My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones,

Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.

they really really love this wall.

>O Pyramus, arise!

Speak, speak. Quite dumb?

Dead? Dead? A tomb

Must cover thy sweet eyes.

the quality of this play-within-a-play's writing contrasted with the quality of the rest of the play reminds me of reading an excerpt from a gnostic text and contrasting that with the bible

>For when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine tragedy

oh wow.

>So shall all the couples three

Ever true in loving be,

And the blots of Nature’s hand

Shall not in their issue stand.

though the world often tries to prevent love from taking its course, in the end things tend to work out.

>That you have but slumbered here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend.

nicely tying into the name and general themes of the play. all fiction is a dream that we use to distract ourselves and enjoy the feeling of these stories playing out, things we'd rarely or never experience firsthand. and when they do happen, life itself starts very much start seeming like a dream. a very sweet conclusion to the play.

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⚗️alchemist⚗️ 2y ago

nostr:npub1vdd75n9nzj09xp4z95xcw6gq7fjqr2m666tqkkphhf5cmpw6e8wscjtkfq Reply for ACT V:

How nasty of Theseus to say those nice words about duty and then make fun of their play the whole time. But then, it was truly a terrible play. Alack, alack, alack! It would be a better world if everyone said “die die die die die” at the moment of their death.

I found it poignant how Robin ends the play. It parallels the humorous “disclaimers” of the play-within-a-play, but it’s serious. Not “forgive me for roaring too loud” but “forgive me if I’ve wasted your time.” The parallel makes you wonder if we, too, are just a make-believe audience in another play.

It reminds me of Zhuangzi’s parable of hunting a beautiful bird in a forest and then feeling like, even as he is aiming at the bird, something else might be aiming at him. And the way in which House of Leaves and other books like that try to evoke “textual horror” by portraying a monster which breaks out of a narrative-within-a-narrative.

With this play, I feel like the comedic torturing of the characters (at the hands of the fairies or their own incompetence) also tortures us because it shows us the arbitrariness of our own fates. Like, say you fell in love tomorrow. Who’s to say it’s not more arbitrary than when Robin fucked up with his love potion? Say you want to hang out with your friends but they’re avoiding you. How can you be sure you’ve not been arbitrarily changed (into an ass)?

In Pyramus and Thisbe, the comical Moonshine and Wall meddle in the lovers' lives, showing or hiding them from each other. In the play itself, Diana and Cupid and all the fairies meddle in the lives of ancient Greek nobility. The play is a comedy to us only because we are granted the ability to see what lurks in the characters' dreams. So, too, is Pyramus and Thisbe a comedy because the audience's discernment so exceeds the players' own. Being trapped in the waking light of my own life, the light of consciousness, must make it seem more tragic than it really is. And I wonder who meddles in it.