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Songs from the Robber

The trickster is an evasive and morphing creature that does essentially what it pleases because of the quality of its voice: It is cunning: It is masked.  One of the most commonly known tricksters is Hermes of the Greek pantheon.  Now, there are some very easily made comparisons between the character of Puck and Hermes such as the fact that they can shape-shift or encompass the globe in only forty minutes, but the role of the trickster in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the other possibly less known, or less thought out, comparisons can literally go much further.  

When Hermes is born of Maia And Zues the cave where Maia is dwelling is described as shadowy, and the first descriptions of Hermes, in the Homeric Hymns, translated by Sarah Ruden, are:  "Endowed with wheedling ways, twists, and connivance;/ A bandit, cattle-rustler, dream-commander,/ Gate-lurker, and nocturnal spy, designed/ To flash flamboyant deeds among immortals."  All of these seem to be attributes of Puck.  He for example is not seen or heard of until the very beginning of Act 2.  He is on the very threshold, at his first appearance, between the physical presence of the acts in the play, and in the imagined setting of Quince's house and a wood near Athens allowing him the title of Gate-lurker, for the imagination must cross a threshold and the first character we see is Puck.  

In Hermes' story, he sets out from his mother's cave (womb) to go find Apollo's cattle, but along the way he finds a tortoise and makes the first musical instrument out of its shell.  It is called a "lyre" pronounced "liar".  Here Hermes is also referred to as "Zues's son, the helper" just as Puck is a servant to Oberon.  The story goes that Hermes leads Apollo's cattle away from his field to his own hiding spot.  Eventually Apollo finds out, wishes to gain his cattle back, and wants to throw Hermes into Tartarus.  However, this does not happen because Hermes is a trickster!  All he has to do is play the lyre.  Music has a voice of its own and merely by playing an instrument, especially one that is not played with breath (I say this for the sake of Improve Jazz Horn Players, but will not exclude it from the comparison completely), is an external voice therefore masking what is behind its true emotion or motives, even if the voice means well or harm; it is another way to seduce and lie, if you are capable.  The same is of vocal chords (what is behind it?).  When Hermes plays the lyre what else should Apollo feel but "Divine noise!  Sweet lust seized his heart".  There is a power in music.  Apollo says about music:  “A thrill for the day and night alike.  Whoever/ Pursues this art with talent and discretion/ Will from its voice learn everything to please him./ Just play it lightly, gently, intimately./ It dodges dismal work.”  Again, there is a power in music.

(stick with me)

Zues says, when Hermes and Apollo take the problem of the stolen cattle to him, "Hermes the guide could lead them,/ Cutting out all this nonsense" to wherever he hid the cows.  A narrator is a guide and can add or cut as much nonsense as necessary.  When Hermes makes the "Divine noise!" on the lyre "He sang about the deathless gods and dark earth,/ How they were born, what portion each was granted./ The first son of Maia was Memory,/ The Muses' mother--he was one of hers".  This exact statement is precisely what homer is doing in Homeric Hymns.  He is singing songs of the gods!  This conclusion adds a new and particularly tasty new level.  Homer is a trickster telling stories (lies) behind his voice.  Homer is creating illusions out of words that hypnotize imaginations while attempting to explain the ways of the world.  And his presentation would be beguilement or a trick, because he, like Hermes, owns the powers of speech to gather the masses like cattle and herd them.  Great storytellers have great power: do politicians tell stories? And of course, the first homage given is to memory. 

So now back to MSND and the parallels drawn between Puck and Hermes.  Puck beginning on the threshold, jingles the third time he speaks that he is “jest to Oberon” and goes on to explain his jesting of all people: when you spill a drink on yourself or when your bottom misses a chair (or so you think).  He is a trickster in the shadows and he says it.  It is obviously hard to get through MSND and not look into dreams and music.  Both are qualities of a trickster.  When Puck speaks his longer lines they contain meter and rhyme.  Both are qualities of music.  Apollo, the god of poetry and music, says, “What art, what anguish healing music is this?/ Where does it come from?  Really it has three things/ At once to choose from: fun, and love, and sweet sleep”.  The phrase “anguish healing music” is an important one especially in connection with comedies, because there is always mending, a weaving of hearts.  And also the three qualities that Apollo gives to music “fun, and love, and sweet sleep” are all a quantitative part of MSND.  We as readers (I guess I assume) that we have fun when we read this play! and love and sleep show themselves everywhere.  So, if the parallels between Hermes and Puck are strong enough, and Hermes is called a guide multiple times throughout his hymn, then I will draw another line and say that puck is not only the guide of the lovers in the play, Lysander, Hermia, Helena, and Demetrius, but he is our guide through the play, because the play could not be what it is if it wasn’t for shadows watching, and a quality of a narrator is to conduct and watch from the side or the shadows.  Puck is the herder of these fools and the “dream-commander”.  He puts them all to sleep to make amends.  Of course it all works out for the lovers.

When the rude mechanicals have finished their play, the mortals have a dance to conclude the nuptial day of Theseus and Hippolyta.  Immediately after puck enters with a broom and speaks yet again in rhyme and time as if he is cleaning up a mess with his voice.  At the end of the fairy reunion there is song and dance.  By having the mortals merely just dance and allowing the fairies to have song and dance, Shakespeare gives music its divine quality.

There is something called a Hermetic Seal.  Essentially it is an air tight seal.  A still place where what is inside is sealed off from the world.  If Puck comes from Hermes and is our guide through the story he has the ability to withhold information or release it from its hiding place.  The dream-commander Puck is the last character in the play that speaks or is seen.  He tells the withdrawn but engaged audience that this entire bustle was just a dream or else you can all him a liar.  He uses the word mend twice and the word amend twice in his last soliloquy as if we should believe him, as if he is leaving nothing out.  This is a character we cannot trust.  Just as we cannot trust Shakespeare because he is also the crafty weaver of this story and characters.  It has all been a dream… and what do we do when we wake up after dreams and the sandman has come?  We rub our eyes and sweep away the dust.

Vaughan:  You can play faster, why don’t you?

King:  It’s not always about what you play, it’s about what you don’t play.

What is outside history is just as important as what is, and possibly even of greater importance.  My questions I have left after this blog is what does Puck withhold from us?  What is the significance of Hermia’s dream in the woods and what is her connection to the character Hermes?  Look at the names.  That is where ill lead my next blog, maybe.

Lunatics, Lovers, and Poets

This is a poem by Robert Lowell.  It is titled "To Speak of Woe that Is in Marriage".
If this poem does not encompass all three of these categories--Lunacy, Love, and Poetry--than I do not understand any of them.  And why not have a dark sonnet, love isn't always that great...

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .
It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust--
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick?Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant." 

From top to bottom

So here is the first video that you find when you search a midsummer's night dream in you tube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1wMfOwlAZ8

And here is the last on page 37!:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InNQXbQWgpM