a midsummer night's dream

The internet suggested Lee Pace as Oberon and Tom Hiddleston as Puck to me today.

...

I'm in.

So in.

 But i'm not sure i'll ever get over the perfection of Stanley Tucci as my favourite mischief maker though.

He was too perfect.

Just look at that little face.

if we shadows have offended

ROBIN: Now the hungry lion roars

 And the wolf behowls the moon,

 Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,

 All with weary task fordone.

 Now the wasted brands do glow,

 Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,

 Puts the wretch that lies in woe

 In remembrance of a shroud.

 Now it is the time of night

 That the graves all gaping wide,

 Every one lets forth his sprite,

 In the churchway paths to glide.

And we fairies, that do run

 By the triple Hecate’s team

 From the presence of the sun,

 Following darkness like a dream,

 Now are frolic. Not a mouse

 Shall disturb this hallowed house.

 I am sent with broom before

 To sweep the dust behind the door.

Enter OBERON and TITANIA, King and Queen of Fairies, with all their train

OBERON: Through the house give glimmering light,

By the dead and drowsy fire.

Every elf and fairy sprite

Hop as light as bird from brier.

And this ditty, after me,

Sing and dance it trippingly.

TITANIA: First, rehearse your song by rote,

To each word a warbling note.

Hand in hand with fairy grace

Will we sing and bless this place.

OBERON, TITANIA, and the FAIRIES sing and dance

OBERON: (sings)

 Now until the break of day,

 Through this house each fairy stray.

 To the best bride bed will we,

 Which by us shall blessèd be.

 And the issue there create

 Ever shall be fortunate.

 So shall all the couples three

 Ever true in loving be.

 And the blots of Nature’s hand

 Shall not in their issue stand.

Never mole, harelip, nor scar,

 Nor mark prodigious, such as are

 Despisèd in nativity,

 Shall upon their children be.

 With this field dew consecrate,

 Every fairy take his gait.

 And each several chamber bless

 Through this palace with sweet peace.

 And the owner of it blessed

 Ever shall in safety rest.

 Trip away. Make no stay.

 Meet me all by break of day.

Exeunt all but ROBIN

ROBIN: If we shadows have offended,

 Think but this, and all is mended—

 That you have but slumbered here

 While these visions did appear.

 And this weak and idle theme,

 No more yielding but a dream,

 Gentles, do not reprehend.

 If you pardon, we will mend.

 And, as I am an honest Puck,

 If we have unearnèd luck

 Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,

 We will make amends ere long.

 Else the Puck a liar call.

 So good night unto you all.

 Give me your hands if we be friends,

 And Robin shall restore amends.

Exit

- William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Act V, Scene I)



If anyone dares to tell you not to love this play because it's the 'obvious choice', punch them in the face and dance like a fairy around their bleeding, whimpering, empty shell of a body.

eurydice

Still from Sarah Ruhl's, Eurydice

'I

So you have swept me back,

I who have walked with the live souls

above the earth,

I who have slept among the live flowers

at last;

so for your arrogance

and your ruthlessness

I am swept back

where dead lichens drip

dead cinders upon moss of ash;

so for your arrogance

I am broken at last,

I who had lived unconscious,

who was almost forgot;

if you had let me wait

I had grown from listlessness into peace,

if you had let me rest with the dead,

I had forgot you

and the past.

II

Here only flame upon flame

and black among the red sparks,

streaks of black and light

grown colorless

why did you turn back,

that hell should be reinhabited

of myself thus

swept into nothingness?

why did you turn back?

why did you glance back?

why did you hesitate for that moment?

why did you bend your face

caught with the flame of the upper earth,

above my face?

what was it that crossed my face

with the light from yours

and your glance?

what was it you saw in my face?

the light of your own face,

the fire of your own presence?

what had my face to offer

but reflex of the earth,

hyacinth colour

caught from the raw fissure in the rock

where the light struck,

and the colour of azure crocuses,

and the bright surface of gold crocuses

and of the wind-flower,

swift in its veins as lightning

and as white.

III

Saffron from the fringe of the earth,

wild saffron that has bent

over the sharp edge of earth,

all the flowers that cut through the earth,

all, all the flowers are lost;

everything is lost,

everything is crossed with black,

black upon black

and worse than black,

this colourless light.

IV

Fringe upon fringe

of blue crocuses,

crocuses, walled against blue of themselves,

blue of that upper earth.

blue of the depth upon depth of flowers,

lost;

flowers, if I could have taken once my breath of them,

enough of them,

more than earth,

even than of the upper earth,

had passed with me

beneath the earth;

If I could have caught up from the earth,

the whole of the flowers of the earth,

if once I could have breathed into myself

the very golden crocuses

and the red

and the very golden hearts of the first saffron,

the whole of the golden mass,

the whole of the great fragrance,

I could have dared the loss.

V

So for your arrogance

and your ruthlessness

I have lost the earth

and the flowers of the earth,

and the live souls above the earth,

and you who passed across the light

and reached

ruthless;

you who have your own light,

who are to yourself a presence,

who need no presence;

yet for all your arrogance

and your glance,

I tell you this:

such loss is no loss,

such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls

of blackness

such terror

is no loss;

hell is no worse than your earth

above the earth,

hell is no worse,

no, nor your flowers

nor your veins of light

nor your presence,

a loss;

my hell is no worse than yours

though you pass among the flowers and speak

with the spirits above the earth.

VI

Against the black

I have more fervour

than you in all the splendour of that place,

against the blackness

and the stark grey

I have more light;

and the flowers,

if I should tell you,

you would turn from your own fit paths

toward hell,

turn again and glance back

and I would sink into a place even more terrible than this.

VII

At least I have the flowers of myself,

and my thoughts, no god

can take that;

I have the fervour of myself for a presence

and my own spirit for light;

and my spirit with its loss

knows this;

though small against the black,

small against the formless rocks,

hell must break before I am lost;

before I am lost,

hell must open like a red rose

for the dead to pass.'

- Hilda Doolittle

Eurydice

rosencrantz and guildenstern

Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?

Guildenstern: No, no, no… Death is “not.” Death isn’t. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not be on a boat.

Rosencrantz: I’ve frequently not been on boats.

Guildenstern: No, no… What you’ve been is not on boats.

- Tom Stoppard

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

under milk wood

'FIRST VOICE [Very softly]

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfounded town are sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jolly, rodgered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.

Only your eyes are unclosed, to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.

And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.'

- Dylan Thomas

Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices

(Pages 1-2)

There was an unbroken vocal murmuring at the back of my mind whilst reading Under Milk Wood:

'It was half-past seven in the evening. At half-past seven it is dark, the lamps are lighted, the houses huddle together in groups. They have secrets to tell as soon as it is dark. Ah! If you knew the secrets that houses are telling when the shadows draw them so close together! But you never will know. They close their eyes and they whisper.'

This is the opening passage to E. Temple Thurston's, The City of Beautiful Nonsense and it's a mingling of words i've treasured for years.

I've used it in my artwork.

In my observations of suburbia - more specifically my own neighbourhood.

And it was to be the genesis of my Final Year Project at DOJ.

(until i fled, that is...damn you, sanity)

Something about the sentience Thurston gave to the mundanity of the suburbs resinated with me.

It still does and now having read UMW i feel as if Dylan Thomas took that last line, 'They close their eyes and they whisper', and finally let me in on the big secret.

Those whispers suddenly became an overheard conversation, an admittance, a plea, a vocalised private thought that i was now permitted to know.

Their secrets became my secrets.

And i'll only ever share them with another who's lounged on the grassy peak of Llareggub Hill and drowned their unspoken sorrows at The Sailors' Arms.

This is why he remains my favourite of all poets.

drip drip drop

It's like recreating the 'little april showers' scene in Fantasia =]