William Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
In my book, Theatre Is My Life! Thoughts on Play Quotes, the following is the entry for November 15. I thought I would use it as today’s biweekly blog. When I was a mere 26 years old, we produced A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the opening show of the Leslie Stephen Wright Fine Arts Center at Samford University, where I taught and designed costumes from 1975 to 2001. The photos for this blog are some of my costume designs for the show. The production was an enormous undertaking, and was pretty much wildly successful. We rehearsed it for so long that many of the lines from the show come up frequently in my daily life, and I ponder them. Such as the following:
“I am amazed and know not what to say.”
Hermia in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 2
Student actors Ginny Vickers as Puck and Gran Wilson as Oberon in Samford University Theatre’s 1976 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A strong female character in this fairy play, Hermia stands up for herself in a patriarchal society. Her first gutsy move is to tell her father just exactly who she wants to marry, Lysander and not his preferred Demetrius — and she says so right in front of Duke Theseus. Thereafter, she flees to the forest with her beloved Lysander, but boldly, and for chastity’s sake, won’t let him settle down anywhere near her for their evening of sleep.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is known for Shakespeare’s intertwining of four related plots: the preparations for the marriage of Duke Theseus to Hippolyta, the enchanted adventures of two sets of young lovers in the woods, the rehearsing of a crude play by some comical mechanicals, and the magical meddling of the fairies in the affairs of all these humans.
Hermia's line is said soon after her best friend Helena refuses to trust her anymore and her beloved Lysander calls her names. Well, what he actually says is, “Get you gone, you dwarf, You minimus of hindering knotgrass made, You bead, you acorn!” What a great putdown, and in itself worthy of memory to spout to someone at some point. However, these words are not what you want to hear from your sweetheart. The young lovers, all of them, are bewitched by the fairies, and when Helena and Lysander run away from her, Hermia cries, “I am amazed and know not what to say.”
Of all the verbiage I have and will cite in this book, this quote is one of the most useful! We all have embarrassing moments every now and then. Some of us, every month (or week) or so. We knock on the wrong door in the condo when going to deliver a meal to a sick friend. Our mother bumps into a bundle of balloons at a restaurant birthday party and says, “Oh, excuse me, hon!” The cleaning lady, peering at the thin, blousy disguise of our overweight belly, exclaims, “Oh, I know what carrying a baby is like. Bless your heart!” My personal recent favorite was running into a glass wall that I thought was a free clear space. What to say when this happens is always a conundrum. Consider these possibilities:
Your coworker texts you, thinking you are his boyfriend. Just message back: “I am amazed and know not what to say.”
You are checking out with a full buggy at the grocery store and realize you left your debit card at home by the computer while purchasing something online: “I am amazed and know not what to say.”
At a function, the host is excited to introduce you to her guest of honor. You round the corner with her, and it is your ex: “I am amazed and know not what to say.”
The imbroglio might not go away immediately, but at least you won’t be at a loss for words. And, you are quoting Shakespeare!