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THE MOTIF OF THE NIGHT IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM" Martynenko V. (Republic of Kazakhstan) МОТИВ НОЧИ В ПЬЕСЕ ШЕКСПИРА «СОН В ЛЕТНЮЮ НОЧЬ» Мартыненко В. А. (Республика Казахстан)
Мартыненко Вероника Анатольевна /Martynenko Veronika - преподаватель, кафедра русского и иностранного языков, Карагандинский государственный технический университет, г. Караганда, Республика Казахстан
Abstract: this article deals with the characteristics of night in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. The appeal to different elements of night runs throughout the entire play. Thus the concept of night is examined and its principal meanings are hypothesized. The meanings of sexuality and dreams are defined as the most significant and functional elements within the play. Dreams and night are the key elements of the play that are used by Shakespeare to represent his idea. Author's ideas were new in his time, but are still of current interest.
Аннотация: в данной статье рассматриваются характеристики ночи в пьесе Шекспира «Сон в летнюю ночь». Обращение к различным элементам понятия «ночи» просматривается на протяжении всей пьесы. Также исследуется понятие ночи и её основные коннотации. Значения сексуальности и снов определяются как наиболее значимые и функциональные элементы мотива ночи в пьесе. Сны и ночь являются ключевыми элементами рассматриваемой пьесы и используются Шекспиром для выражения своей мысли. Идеи Шекспира были новы для того времени, однако являются актуальными сегодня.
Keywords: night motif, Shakespeare, sexuality, dreams. Ключевые слова: мотив «ночи», Шекспир, сексуальность, сны.
Much of the action in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream takes place at night: the meetings of lovers, the rehearsal of a play by craftsmen, the metamorphosis and magical events. Moreover, the lovers assert several times that they are looking at the stars, drawing reader's attention to the night-time setting. The nocturnal universe of shadowy strangeness is further evoked in the play's imagery [1, 434].
The appeal to different elements of night runs throughout the entire play. All the characters find something that attracts their attention at night, nevertheless that understanding of it completely differs. Night serves as a magnet of this charming atmosphere and life. It is interesting to see at the way Shakespeare describes the protagonists and their connections to the night and how their behavior change depending on what time of the day something happens.
The theme of love is always inseparably linked with sexuality, and this connection finds itself in A Midsummer Night's Dream. A variety of events that confirm the idea and the importance of sexuality occur throughout the play. It is not only in the scenes of love and madness of love, but in the speeches of the characters and their behavior that the signs of sexuality are seen. The majority of the love scenes take place at night and/or in the darkness, as exactly at night the sexual feelings of human are at their peak.
Sexuality is highly significant in plays because it structures gender and power relations amongst characters and serves as an indicator of relationship between men and women. A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is often thought of as a comedy of young love that eventuates the marriage, at the same time reminds its audience of the dark underside of human sexuality in which danger and violation lurk [2, 45]. Throughout the play characters allude to sexual violence and death.
The presence of Cupid in Shakespeareans plays highlights the importance of relationships between adult men and women and Cupid's actions are generally designed to stimulate heterosexual lust [3, 141]. Cupid is often cited when the love's power of love over humans is tested and its potential registered. As Chedgzoy points out, Cupid in A Midsummer Night's Dream is summoned to the aid of the erotic and romantic passions of the young, in opposition to patriarchal imposed marital arrangements, when Oberon calls the alliance of Venus and Cupid to assist his intervention in the affairs of the human lovers [3, 148]. The Cupids of Renaissance drama and Shakespeare inscribe adult fantasies about the erotic, drawing on literary and visual traditions in which the figure of Cupid invoked a range of qualities. Moreover, this image of Cupid helps to explore how gender and sexuality are at stake in the experience and construction of adolescence, and how the variables of age and gender shape representation [3, 157]. It is clearly seen that one of the meanings of night in the play is to show all aspects of sexuality, ranging from the obvious sexualised behaviour of heroes and sexually charged scenes at night to the hidden elements of sexuality in the language and images.
Moreover, night is also a time for relaxation and dreams, and its first necessity is sleep. A widespread and time-honored tradition regards dreams as purveyors of secret information, engineered externally or from the self and which require ingenious decoding [4, 331]. The world of fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream might be regarded as a bright example full of metamorphoses that could occur only within a dream. Thus, Watson points out that A Midsummer Night's Dream- with its small and benign fairies presents us a world of mostly tiny or invisible entities that sort out our mating and our feeding, patch our wounds, help us sleep and wake, and continually help us to fight off the demon of death [5, 36]. Catherine Belsey, for example, underlines the fact that Shakespeare's fairies talk like no others: their voices assume a direct access to a more vital world [6, 96].
Though mechanicals that have rehearsals in the wood are real human beings, they are also elements of something unreal. First of all, it is a metamorphosis that occurs in the case Bottom, who is tricked by Puck and receives a donkey's head and then meets Titania and spends night with her. This is the only scene within the play where two worlds - real and unreal - meet so closely. The next morning Bottom forgets almost everything and doesn't realize whether everything that has happened to him is the truth, as it appears more like a dream. In part it is a dream, as the readers can hardly believe in all these creatures and transformations.
However, on the other hand, the craftsmen accept only the real world; therefore, they try to make their production of the play "Pyramus and Thisbe" as realistic as possible. Victor Cahn states that reality and illusion are separate entities for this group of people and that they do not grasp how the world of dreams and imagination can have any relation to reality [7, 591]. At the same time accepting only the real world these craftsmen have a rather creative imagination. Even such objects as a moon and a wall in their play are played by real men. More importantly, one theme of Shakespeare's play is the power of imagination to assert itself with in reality.
In the wondrous world of the fairies that is so powerful, but so hard to locate or define, Shakespeare codes the world we do not know, but could not live without [5, 36]. Shakespeare's fairies are composed of many elements amongst which are native folk beliefs and poetry; the fairies derive characteristics from Spencer and Lyly, from medieval narrative and Chaucer [6, 95]. Fairyland in a play is intelligible as not quite solid fact, yet also not as pure fiction [6, 95]. Reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, we immerse in the world of our imagination, the world of our dreams. The play calls into question the boundary between fiction and reality and it is difficult to find a clear distinction between them. According to Catherine Belsey, this play invites a range of different interpretations and crates a space for the audience to exercise its own imagination [6, 107].
A Midsummer Night's Dream of William Shakespeare is the story of the night that is strange but certainly admirable. It is full of actions and characters. We witness the miracles and the metamorphosis within the play; we observe the adventures of young lovers and night rehearsals in the woods.
One key notion that unites everything is the night, as most events take place after the sun sets. Night is intentionally implicated and has its purposes and functions. The concept of night is used to indicate the sexuality of the characters, to show the world of dreams and miracles.
References
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