If thou
lovest me, then,
Steal
forth thy father’s house to-morrow night;
-Lysander
A Midsummer’s Night Dream Act
I, scene i Line 163, 164
So finally one you’ve all heard of! A Midsummer’s Night
Dream. Albeit one I’ve never been very fond of. It’s a comedy and a bit of a
fantasy. In this line Lysander is talking to Hermia, the girl he loves, and
telling her to sneak out from (steal forth thy) her father’s house tomorrow to
meet him. There’s nothing too difficult with the language in this line, so I
probably won’t spend too much time with it. It’s got the ‘t’ on the end of the
verb, ‘lovest’, and some thy and thou’s, but overall it’s pretty
understandable, n’est pas? I kind of like the ‘lovest’ thing. It reminds me of
‘whilst’ instead of ‘while’ which I’ve been doing my best to get back into the
language (with a lot of resistance). I just think it sounds nice. And what
about the content. ‘If you love me, sneak out of the house to meet me tomorrow
night.’ I wonder how many times that line has been spoken in one form or
another by a young lover in the history of humankind? Perhaps the first time it
was used it was ‘sneak out of the cave’? So not a tremendous amount of
creativity on the part of Will with that one. In fact, maybe it’s a line that
he himself used earlier in his life with Anne Hathaway (we’ll never know). And
nowadays it’s a line that will show up being texted on the cellphone. And in
some cases we end up hearing about it on the news with tragic consequences. But
let’s not go there right now. This is a comedy, and a light-hearted one at
that.
And speaking of the play in general, I have to say that this
is one play that I’ve read, and I’ve seen versions of, and I really don’t much
care for it. I’m not exactly sure why but I think it’s just because it’s kind
of goofy. I know, seems like I’d be all over it, doesn’t it? It’s got the goofy
actors with the goofy names scene, and it’s got the guy getting his head turned
into a donkey’s head, and of course the clandestine lovers Hermia and Lysander.
What’s not to like? Sometimes there’s just no accounting for taste. The last
time I saw it was in the movie theater and Kevin Kline was playing the guy who
gets his head turned into a donkey’s head and I think he was riding a bicycle
(pretty sure Will didn’t have a bicycle in the original). Perhaps we’ll run
into it again and maybe then spend a little more time on it. It takes up about
22 pages of the 1,252 pages of my compilation book, so we’ll see.
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