Chapter Nine
BOTTOM
An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too, I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.
'Thisne, Thisne;' 'Ah, Pyramus, lover dear! thy Thisby dear, and lady dear!'
QUINCE
No, no! you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisby.
BOTTOM
Well, proceed.
—Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c.1595)
With such a momentous decision, it was natural that the party could talk of nothing else the rest of the day.
And though they were prevented from beginning to study their parts by the fact that they had only the Greenwood Hall copy, there were myriad other tasks.
There was the long gallery to be measured and the carpenter consulted.
There was the entire house to be explored, that furniture suitable for scenery, properties and goods might be made note of.
“As for costumes, we leave those decisions to you ladies,” Mr. Midgecomb addressed Mrs. Eveleigh, “unless you do not mind us in coat, waistcoat and trousers.”
“Athenians in coat, waistcoat and trousers?” laughed Frances.
“And fairies in the same? No, sir. You must allow us robes for the Athenians (they might be secondhand servitor robes, perhaps, trimmed with gold ribbon), tinsel and gauze for the fairies, and baize for the mechanicals. You may wear whatever you like underneath such items, of course, but to the outward appearance you must not dispel the dream-like setting, which workaday wear would certainly do.”
He bowed. “As queen of the fairies, your word is law ‘in the wood, a league without the town’; therefore, Miss Barstow, you must set the fashion.”
“Is that bit about the wood a line from the play, Mr. Midgecomb?” asked Miss Jarvis.
“I thought so. I must make a confession now, though perhaps I should hold my tongue. I did think of saying nothing and simply staying awake all through the night to read it when I had a copy, but then I thought we might be sharing them, and my ignorance would be exposed before anything could be done to rectify it!”
“Do you mean you are unfamiliar with the play?” interposed Mr. Hearne, with his beatific smile.
“Yes,” admitted Miss Jarvis, shamefacedly.
“That’s it. I daresay even the children know more about it than I do.
I know only what you all have said: that there are Athenians and fairies and mechanicals, and that I’m to quarrel with Miss Maria here.
Oh—and from last night’s reading I also know Titania and Oberon quarrel as well. ”
“You don’t know the play!” scoffed Peter, features twisting in amazement.
“We must remedy that at once,” said Mr. Hearne. He snapped his fingers. “Ah! I have an idea: why don’t you tell her the story of it, Peter?” Plumping himself down on a nearby chair, he pressed his hands to his knees and fixed his eyes expectantly on the boy.
Peter flushed, caught in his own boast. At school they had divided up the plays, with each pupil delivering an oral summary of his assigned one and reciting a telling passage.
Strongly preferring tragedies, however, Peter had not actually paid much attention when Alistar Craik took his turn, and thus A Midsummer Night’s Dream was almost as unknown to him as to Miss Jarvis.
“Well, there’s Athenians and fairies and mechanicals, see,” he began at last, “and the king and queen of the fairies are at odds.”
“Yes, yes. Very well put, but Miss Jarvis knows that much. Do go on.”
“And—er—it all has to be straightened out after some misunderstandings and such.”
“Exactly!” cried Mr. Hearne, slapping his knee. “So succinct! How precisely like the structure of every comedy. You are so clever to point that out, Peter. Now tell Miss Jarvis all about Helena and Flute so she can begin to think about her roles.”
Gordon, who had been lying on the carpet reading The Gentlemen’s Magazine, rolled onto his back and folded his hands behind his head, grinning knowingly at his friend.
“Yes,” said Peter. “Well, then. It’s like this…
” Tossing the cricket ball he still held from hand to hand, he peered upward, frowning, as if putting his thoughts in order.
“There’s the Athenians and the fairies and the mechanicals…
Athenians are people from Athens, you know, and fairies come from—er—they inhabit fairyland—and uh—and uh…
” Missing a catch, the ball rolled away, and he had to go after it, but when it was secured again he was no further along.
“So there are these misunderstandings, as I was saying, between the characters, and—well—”
Thinking this had gone on long enough, Frances’ lips parted to intervene, but Mr. Hearne forestalled her with a sigh.
“There. That’s just it, isn’t it, Peter?
I know just how you feel. I, too, go to say something I think I know very well, and then it all…
evaporates into the ether!” He fluttered his long, elegant fingers above his head.
“I must say, I am relieved to learn I am not the only person such things happen to.”
“I peeked into Lord Dere’s Shakespeare volumes when I was at Perryfield, Miss Jarvis,” Frances took charge, “because I needed to review the plot myself. So perhaps I might assist Peter in telling it. You see, in the play there are two worlds existing in parallel. One in Athens, where the Duke Theseus will be married to Hippolyta the queen, and where some rude mechanicals intend to stage ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ for the festivities. The second world is the wood, ruled by the king and queen of the fairies, though, as you recall, the fairy kingdom is in uproar because Oberon and Titania are fighting over a changeling child.”
“But tell her about Hermia and Helena,” urged Maria.
“Yes, I was getting to that. These two worlds—Athens and the wood—might never have come together, except for a problem in the Athenian world. You see, a man named Egeus complains to the duke that his daughter Hermia will not marry the man he has chosen for her, Demetrius. By law Hermia must obey her father or die, but Hermia loves Lysander. She and Lysander plan to run away to the woods to be secretly wed. In the meantime, her friend Helena is heartbroken because Demetrius once loved her before he transferred his affections to Hermia. Helena and Demetrius follow Hermia and Lysander into the wood.”
“Where they will all be thrown into confusion!” cried Maria eagerly.
“Yes,” agreed Frances. “Everything and everyone will be thrown into confusion because of a love charm. Both Lysander and Demetrius are made to Helena instead of Hermia, and Titania thinks she loves Bottom, the mechanical, whom mischievous Puck has given an ass’s head.
But, as Peter said, it all comes right in the end. ”
“I see,” said Miss Jarvis with an attempt at a smile. “And—who is Flute?”
“Flute is one of the mechanicals,” explained Frances.
“A bellows-mender. The mechanicals rehearse in the wood, which is how they become involved in the mischief, and they then perform ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ at the end, to great comic effect. Flute plays Thisbe. So you will be Miss Jarvis, playing a rustic workman, who plays in turn the young lady Thisbe.”
Miss Jarvis wrung her hands. “My, my. And that is when I am not playing Helena, running around and quarreling? How complicated this sounds! I am afraid you have overestimated me, Mr. Midgecomb. Perhaps it would be better if I were to exchange roles with another person? I would be happiest with the smallest of parts.”
Mr. Midgecomb glanced at Mr. Hearne, as he seemed to do quite often when applied to, but it was Mr. Tilson who stepped in.
“Have no fear, Miss Jarvis!” he encouraged her.
“We are all amateurs here, and we will be performing only for friends. Your roles may sound complicated—and they are, a little—but you will gain confidence as we begin to rehearse. Indeed, by the end you might tell Mr. Midgecomb you wished, like Bottom, that you might take all the parts.”
Miss Jarvis’s unpatched eye continued to roll about, distressed, and Frances felt obliged to interject again.
“My sister-in-law Sarah has the two smallest parts of the fairy Cobweb and Robin Starveling, another mechanical, but I am afraid that is because she has a young son and will not have as much liberty to spend at Greenwood Hall. You might, perhaps, exchange with Maria, but I suspect Hermia and Snug the Lion’s speeches might be equal in number. ”
“Not to mention, Hermia must be smaller in frame than Helena,” Mr. Hearne remarked to the wall sconce. “Hermia says as much.”
“That is so,” conceded Frances. “But then possibly you might exchange with Jane, Miss Jarvis, for she is mostly Puck. Philostrate does not make above five short speeches.”
But Mr. Midgecomb had no desire to spend all his rehearsal time with Miss Jarvis in the place of the lovely Miss Eveleigh, and he hastened to say, “That is so, Miss Barstow, but Puck, like Hermia, must be small and spritely. Miss Jarvis’s height would not do at all for either.”
“I agree,” put in Mrs. Eveleigh hastily. “Annabel, a tall Puck is not to be thought of.” What was Miss Barstow about? Did she hope to prevent Mr. Midgecomb and Jane from becoming better acquainted?
“Well, then,” said Frances, beginning to be irked, “I might exchange with you, Miss Jarvis. We are both tall, and I daresay Titania and Helena have an equal number of speeches, and Hippolyta likely has fewer than Flute, without the complication of being Thisbe as well.”
To her surprise, Mr. Hearne said, “I could see that.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, indeed. In my mind’s eye I can see Miss Jarvis glittering with tinsel and spangles, flitting through the forest and cooing and showering love upon an ass’s head.”