“For this activity, you’ll break something as an act of literary analysis. Choose a selection of words from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and rearrange them into something else. You can use any or all of the words as many or as few times as you’d like. What you build from them can take any shape: text, image, video, a collage, a poem, a pile, digital, physical, sense-making or otherwise… For this assignment, you will borrow ideas but you should also make them truly your own—by playing with, manipulating, applying, and otherwise turning them on their head.”
A love story that is NOT a love story, turned on its head, is a love story. Thus, this is my version of “breaking stuff”:
PROLOGUE
Shakespeare tells a tale of woe –
Of betrayal, hate, confusion, and spite.
This story of love is but a farce,
For love is made a mockery of:
Unrequited, illusioned, forbidden in the night.
Here protest I in love’s favor!
Not a comedy, but a tragic labor:
So go!
Hence you be soothed
In fairies’ soft light.
ONE
Fickle Demetrius proclaims, “I cannot love you” to fair Helena,
Yet she, in earnest, doth proclaim “I love you the more”
I will fawn on you, give me only leave to follow you.”
“How can dost love Hermia whilst you gave your love to me?
I shall change the story, as the dove now pursues the griffin.
The wildest creature doth not compare to thee or have your heart
As you have mine.”
Oh, the forgeries of jealousy!
When true lovers have ever been star-crossed,
Is it destiny or some other force,
Playing a scene on the stage of life?
Lysander, in defiance of gentle Hermia’s tyrannical father’s wishes
Asks “May I Marry Thee?”
“Steal forth from thy father’s home, into the wood.”
Hermia doth swearest her deepest vow:
“By Venus’ doves, by Cupid’s bow,
By all the vows which knitteth souls and prospers loves –
Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.”
Oh, the night approaches…
And Hermia recalls to Lysander,
“In the wood where you and I
Were wont to lie
Upon faint primrose beds,
We shall meet,
Until then, we starve our sight
Till morrow deep midnight.”
TWO
In the darkest hours, the fairies play,
In forests, and meads, by paved fountains,
By rushy brooks – where there is nature, there are fairies.
“Let us dance our ringlets in the whistling wind and
Sing our sweet lullabies:
Lulla, lulla, lullaby,
Come not near our Fairy Queen
Never harm, nor spell or charm,
Our lovely lady, have thee peaceful slumber,
Lulla, lulla, lullaby,
Good night, sweet Queen,
This melody spells good night.
Waxen in their mirth,
The fairies away…
And that knavish sprite,
Robin Goodfellow, known as Puck,
Creates mischief in the woods.
“I, a merry wanderer of the night,
Jest to Oberon and attest to make things right.”
Asleep in the woods,
Lysander and his beloved, hiding from the Court,
Helena and her prey, the man who once loved her.
“These human mortals fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
Sweet summer buds adorn the couples
As the moon washes the air of this ‘mazed world.”
Robin reflects, “This flower’s force in stirring love, long forgotten…
But here lies the maiden, sleeping sound on the dank and dirty ground.
Pretty soul, this charm doth owe…”
Sweet Puck anoints the eyelids of Demetrius, to right the wrong he committed.
THREE
Awake, they all, as daylight abates.
“Sweet Helena,” Demetrius praises.
My goddess, my love, divine and rare!”
“Do you mock me? To proclaim love to the unloved?” Helena asks with disdain.
Demetrius begs at her feet, “Tis you, my love, that I hast forgot…
Tender me, forsooth, with affection!
My heart is yours; one heart we can make of it
If we shall be interchained with an oath.”
“How I do quake with fear, if this but be a dream… I swoon with fear!” Helena exclaims.
“Heavens shield us gentle lovers with the break of day,” pleads Hermia.
“Alak, Lysander, where are you? No sound, no word?”
“Fear not, my precious Hermia.
Take thee at my innocence, for I was lost in the woods.”
By Nature’s hand, dew drops rest on crimson petals
And daylight shines through the forest canopy.
Nymphs and fairies hide away to sleep soundly.
From his palace, the Duke brings sweet peace.
With Demetrius desirous of Hermia no more,
Lysander is free to marry his beloved with blessings of the Court.
This eve, they shall blessed be,
And ever true in loving be.
EPILOGUE
All is mended, and tragedy avoided, which is a lover’s dream intended.
*This poem, though an original work of my own, borrows many lines, verbatim, from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare. The lines have been altered in context, and in some cases, spoken by different characters, but nevertheless, the lyrical language is owed only to the great Bard.
*I read from the Folger Shakespeare Library for this edition of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”:
literaryfaerie 