Monday, May 24, 2010

Bottom's Dream

I've been thinking about A Midsummer Night's Dream for several days. I don't know why I started thinking about it, except that maybe I was anticipating summer. I love spring, but in my mind's eye, paradise is summer. It smells like newly mown grass, with a dollop of suntan lotion, and it tastes like sweet iced tea and homemade ice cream. There might even be fairies, feuding lovers, and mischief afoot by moonlight.

It didn't feel like summer when I got up this morning. Thunderstorms cleared the air Friday night (and made for great sleeping weather), and yesterday was bright and pleasant . . . but a feeling of winter persisted. Certainly, we had a long winter here, of which most everyone complained, and it hung on for a long time. Maybe the cold and rainy weather earlier this week was too reminiscent of the gray season we had trouble shaking off.

This afternoon, I hauled my copy of Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings over 5,000 Years down to the cafe, where I planned to finish the chapter I was struggling with yesterday. As soon as I walked outside, the warmth hit me -- no longer the balminess of spring, but a palpable, pleasant heat, like a day in June. I got in the car and searched for the right music. That's when the first good thing happened. I've been sad about the station I found recently that played such great music until they changed their format. By some miracle, it was back today to the way it had been . . . Percy Sledge was singing when I tuned in. Maybe things weren't so bad after all.

Then, another miracle. I was driving down the street when suddenly it happened, just like that: Something about the intense blue of the sky and the angle of light, and boom, I passed through an invisible portal from winter to summer. Some combination of Motown, sunlight, my summer sandals, and the leisurely afternoon ahead, and I popped right out of Lapland and onto the beach.

At the cafe, I sat by the window and despite the distractions of the passing scene and the uptempo jazz they were playing, managed to concentrate on my book and get deeper into it than I've been able to for the last couple of weeks.

I then remembered that the summer movie series is getting ready to start downtown, so I swung by to get a calendar. This Wednesday, the season opener: Raiders of the Lost Ark, a summer movie if there ever was one. When I got home, I was feeling playful, so while the water was boiling for a pitcher of tea, I opened my Pelican Shakespeare to A Midsummer Night's Dream, flipped through the pages, and let my finger fall at random. When I opened my eyes, my finger was on this passage, a speech of Oberon's to Titania:

How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, 
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigenia, whom he ravished?
And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa?

I had forgotten all about the connection of the play to Theseus, whose impending marriage to Hippolyta is the springboard for the plot. Ariadne, the Minotaur, and the labyrinth are all mentioned in the notes. It was a nice bit of synchronicity to be reminded of all this, and it might even be important for my research.

This play is my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, the lightest, dreamiest, most summery one of all. My imagination has been reaching for summer. When things veer too much toward Hamlet, it's time for some fun in the woods, where things come out all right in the end, and what seemed like tragedy is revealed by a sudden sleight of hand to be comedy instead. As for Puck, I think he's been hanging around for quite some time anyway.