Transcript Theseus Slide Show

MSND: Theseus Slide Show
ENGL 640
Dr. Fike
Montrose on Theseus
“Shakespeare uses Plutarch as his major source of Theseus-lore
but does so highly selectively, excluding those events ‘not sorting
with the nuptial ceremony’ (v.1.55) nor with a comedy. … Thus,
sedimented within the verbal texture of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
are traces of those forms of sexual and familial violence which the
play would suppress: acts of bestiality and incest, or parricide,
uxoricide, filicide, and suicide; sexual fears and urges erupting in
cycles of violent desire—from Pasiphae and the Minotaur to
Phaedra and Hippolitus. The seductive and destructive powers of
women figure centrally in Theseus’ career; and his habitual
victimization of women, the chronicle of his rapes and disastrous
marriages, is a discourse of anxious misogyny which persists as an
echo within Shakespeare’s text, no matter how much it has been
muted or transformed” (493-94).
Theseus in the Renaissance
My major source, which qualifies
Montrose’s wholly negative view of
Theseus:
D’Orsay W. Pearson, “‘Unkinde’ Theseus:
A Study in Renaissance Mythography.”
English Literary Renaissance 4 (1974):
276-98.
Positive View of Theseus
• Theseus dealt with villains in ways that
mimicked their own unjust treatment of
others (e.g., the Procrustean bed, named
after Procrustes, a mythical giant who
shortened or stretched people to fit his
bed).
More Positives
• Theseus defeated the Minotaur (King
Minos + taur or bull of Minos) in the Cretan
labyrinth.
– Minos, the King of Crete, exacted a toll of
Athenian young people for the death of his
son in Athens.
– Labyrinth parallels the woods.
– Minotaur parallels Bottom-as-ass.
The Minotaur
Images of the Minotaur
• http://images.google.com/images?q=Minot
aur&hl=en&lr=&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title
Still More Positives
• Theseus was a great civic leader who
established democracy in Athens and
gave the city a name, a currency, and a
class system.
• He was a friend to Oedipus, Hercules,
Jason, and Pirithous.
• He was the husband of Hippolyta/Antiope
(same person, different names).
The Point So Far
• Theseus was an emblem of friendship,
virtue, and reason’s triumph over
sensuality.
Negative View of Theseus
• Infidelity: He abandoned Ariadne on Naxos.
Later he married her sister, Phaedra.
• While Theseus was away, Phaedra hit on her
stepson, Hippolytus, in a letter. He rejected her
and destroyed her letter. She later told Theseus
that the young man had tried to rape her. As a
result, Theseus had Poseidon destroy his son
(chariot accident on the beach).
See the handout from FQ I.v.36ff.
• What connection can you make between
this passage and MSND?
The Point
• Hippolytus is the “issue” of Theseus’s
marriage to Hippolyta: MSND 5.1.400-1:
“And the issue they create / Ever shall be
fortunate.” Not so much!
Moreover…
• Theseus was responsible for his father Aegeus’s
suicide—Theseus did not change sails before returning
from Crete, and his father assumed the worst.
• Also, he and his buddy, Pirithous, decided to “get them”
a couple of wives. Theseus wanted Helen, so they
abducted her when she was 10 years old.
• Pirithous wanted Persephone, so while they were
sojourning in hell, they left Helen with Theseus’s mother.
Helen’s people rescued her and enslaved Theseus’s
mother. Meanwhile, Hades trapped the two guys in
chairs of forgetfulness (the model for C.S. Lewis’s silver
chair in The Silver Chair, FYI). Hercules, while in hell to
deal with Cerberus, rescued Theseus but not Pirithous.
And the point is…
• Theseus is responsible for his mother’s
abduction and slavery and for the loss of
his friend Pirithous in hell. Theseus is a
failed harrower of hell.
Virgil’s Theseus
• Virgil places Theseus among the
monstrous criminals in Hades—those
characterized by unkind and unnatural
behavior.
AND…
• Theseus was an absent leader who lost
the throne to a usurper named
Menestheus.
• Theseus was ultimately a murder victim—
Lycomedes pushed him off a cliff.
Summary
• On the one hand, Theseus is a crime
fighter, monster slayer, civic leader, friend,
and good husband.
• On the other, he is a poor husband, an
unfaithful lover, an abandoner of women,
an unnatural father, a lousy son, and a sex
offender.
What about Theseus in MSND?
• Theseus’s opening speech—impatience
for sex like a greedy son who wants the
last third of his inheritance.
• Emphasis on law over compassion.
• The marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta
will NOT live up to Oberon’s blessing.
Further Points
• Tension between surface and depth.
• Bedford 162: Re. the principle of
“complementarity”: “Shakespeare seems
to have been drawn to stories and persons
that were susceptible to plural and even
contradictory readings.”
• Theseus is a good example of this
principle.
Discussion
• Let’s read together what Theseus says
about the imagination.
• See questions on next slide.
Theseus and Hippolyta Discuss the
Imagination at 5.1.1-27.
• What is Theseus’s basic point in response to Hippolyta’s
statement?
• Are there differences between the poet and the lunatic or
the lover?
• What does the poet DO?
• How does Theseus contradict himself?
• What is his attitude toward art, as manifested in his
selection of playlet?
• What is Hippolyta’s attitude toward art? Toward the
story that the lovers have told about their night in the
woods?
• What is the role of imagination in viewing the playlet?
Pyramus and Thisbe
• Why does Theseus choose P&T?
• How does the playlet comment on the story of
the young lovers? What does it teach us about
romantic love?
• How do we view the wedding party?
• P&T:court characters::court
characters:audience::audience:_______?
• Whose dream IS it?
• Is there a connection to Puck’s epilogue?