Wednesday, April 30, 2008

May Day was a time, when people had little privacy, to go forth into the woods very early, so early it was late, and remind the plants to be fertile, through example. Later, that wasn't stated so much, but the idea was that the young people would go out early on May Day and gather beauties of plants to decorate the village. Maybe make some new people too.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare, has some of that spirit. Shake the spear, dance around the maypole, though midsummer is a different time than May Day early morning. Both are dark, sexy, and confusing. In the play, 4 young people with some love problems and some unrequited love problems go out into the woods at night, two to elope, two to prevent the eloping, and various things happen. Affections change, rules change, assumptions change. Sometimes in the night they look dumb and feel bad. Other times they are just really confused. Things look different in the middle of the night.

In the morning, it's all a okay and better than it was when the night began. The four people who had a painful lack of symmetry when night fell are sorted into two happy couples by morning, and inside the play, it seems like they'll be fine, and pretty happily living on for quite a while.