DEEP ECOLOGY AND SELF-REALIZATION IN SHAKESPEARE’S

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

A Thesis

Presented

to the Faculty of

California State University Dominguez Hills

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

in

Humanities

by

Swetlana Nasrawi Schmidt

Spring 2019

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Dedicated to my Bella. Now let’s go places.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Daniel Greenspan who continued to

challenge my thinking by asking the tough questions and encouraging deeper reflection.

His feedback and wisdom have broadened my own thinking, and for that I am indebted. I

would also like to thank Dr. Matthew Luckett for cleaning up my little messes along the

way, as well as his tireless dedication to the program; and also to Dr. Debra Best, who

has demonstrated generosity of her time and expertise. Finally, I would like to give

special thanks to my personal Jack Bottom, a true ecological artisan: a warm thank you

for our three years in the dream, and your willingness to talk this out with me.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………………… ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………... iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………………iv

ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................v

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………... 1

2. TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL IDENTITY…………………………………………..11

3. 1595: CONTEXT, TRANSITION, AND ALLEGORY IN

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM..................................…...……………………..20

4. JACK BOTTOM: PEASANT, ARTISAN, AND THE DILEMA

OF ECOLGICAL IDENTITY……………..………………..……………………… 32

5. PUCK AS MASTER OF REVELS………………….…………………….………….. 45

6. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………….…………… 61

WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………....... 64

ABSTRACT

If it is the role of the humanities is to interpret the expressions of human

experience over time, what exactly can Shakespeare offer in response to critical

environmental concerns? How can an ecological reading of Shakespeare serve to inform

humanity’s role in the health of ecological systems? This paper presents an ecological

reading of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, bridging allegorical

interpretation with the principles of deep ecology, a philosophy founded by mountaineer

Arne Naess. Specific to the philosophy are concepts which promote wider identification

with nature. Deep ecology is predicated on the idea that non-human living beings have an

equal right to live as humans. My discussion elucidates the connection between deep

ecology and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, beginning with its fundamental precepts,

moving into the ecological history of Elizabethan England, and finally into an allegorical

interpretation of Jack Bottom and Puck, the intermediaries between nature and social

order.

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Many of the world’s great literary luminaries have mourned the loss of our

“organic” world, where our species lived in close relation with nature and upon which

our sustenance so heavily relied. From transcendentalist to existentialist, dystopias to

post-colonialists, humankind’s estrangement from nature is trope that, through the lens of

ethics, can contextualize one’s responsibility to the environment.

It is possible that William Shakespeare had the prescience to create fantastic

characters whose relationships and antics reflect the modern, anthropocentric tendency to

dominate nature. However most critics traditionally do not read Shakespeare from the

standpoint of ecological ethics. We might look to contemporary writers like Wendell

Berry, Rachel Carson, Kim Stanley Robinson, E.O. Wilson, or Octavia Butler to address

the environmental crisis facing the modern world, but not so much Shakespeare. Instead,

we remember Shakespeare plays for the more magical portrayals of the natural world--the

witches of Macbeth upon the heath, the echoes of animal imagery juxtaposed with life

and death, the mysterious creatures of forsaken islands in The Tempest and King Lear,

and of course, woodland sprites of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Yet no writer has been

more widely read than Shakespeare. In these fantastical settings, Shakespeare invites

audiences into the natural world that has become so distant, our species can only fully

comprehend its power with a belief of magic and earthly transcendence.

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Our current anthropocentric and even shallow ecological attitudes toward the

environment necessitates alternative readings of traditional and classic works. We can

stand to learn much about ecological ethics if we reexamine works produced during times

of revolution--age of rule, machine, industry--the moments in which civilization departed

from the natural world of trees, rivers, and animals, departed from a time when the

human species may have “co-existed with nature,” when the human species began to

move into to city-states and commodify natural resources. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

is such a text.

This paper will demonstrate the connections between Shakespeare’s play, A

Midsummer Night’s Dream and deep ecology, both a philosophy and a movement

pioneered by environmental ethicist and mountaineer, Arne Naess, and why our current

environmental crisis necessitates such a reading in the humanities. To be true to form,

this paper will not only identify aspects of deep ecology in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,

but present an ecosophic reading of Shakespeare, one which justifies our identification in

nature for the benefit of the world. The character relationships in A Midsummer Night’s

Dream express the western world’s movement away from nature-aligned identity toward

one aligned with technological and social advancement, and the subsequent dreamlike

confusion that results correlates to a culture alienated from the natural world. However it

is Nick Bottom and Robin Goodfellow, known as “Puck,” who most closely embody the

“realization of the ecological self,” as discussed by Arne Naess.

There are inherent problems in language when discussing ecosophy, deep

ecology, and ecological ethics. Terms like “nature,” for example, assume social

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constructions that can have any number of connotations. It will be necessary to

deconstruct both contemporary and Elizabethan interpretation of nature1 while also

providing a tentative framework for the tenants of long-range, deep ecology prior to

discussing the specifics of the “ecological self.”

We can begin with the definition of ecology. Webster’s Third New International

Dictionary proved three definitions:

1. A branch of science concerned with the interrelationship of organisms and

their environments.

2. The totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment.

3. Human ecology, that is, a branch of sociology that studies the relationship

between a human community and its environment; specifically, the study of

the spatial and temporal interrelationships humans and their economic, social,

and political organization.

In the introduction to Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited, authors

William Ophuls and A. Stephen Boyan, Jr. interpret these definitions: the first describes

the work of professional ecologists; the second they deem as more general, as in, the

“ecology of peasant life” or the “ecology of a mountain pine”; but it is the third definition

that most concerns this discussion, as well as the authors’: “one would indeed expect

human ecology to concern itself with the totality of the relationship between a human

1 Both Pierre Hadot in the chapter “The Promethean Attitude” of The Veil of Isis and Carolyn Merchant in

The Death of Nature both discuss the domination of nature during the transition time between Queen

Elizabeth and King James, which is specifically the period A Midsummer Night’s Dream addresses

thematically. Based on the history outlined in these texts, I will use “nature” to mean “ecology”--the

interaction of living organisms, or, the “rich variety of the spectacle presented to us by the living world and

universe” (Hadot 34); but there remains, even in the philosophy of the Middle Ages, the Platonic

understanding of nature as an “intelligent force, called the soul” (Hadot 25). This becomes relevant as we

investigate how this period of transition restructures the human’s relationship with ecology.

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community and its environment,” they write. “Unfortunately, as the second part of the

third definition reveals, the purview of human ecology has in practice been rather limited,

so that at present there exists no genuine science of human ecology in the full sense. It is

such a science that environmentalist wish to create. Meanwhile, they are trying to

broaden the meaning of the term human ecology to embrace the totality of people’s

relationship with their physical and living environment, and it is this sense that we shall

use the word ecology” (Ophuls and Boyan 6).

What we can do as humanists in this interdisciplinary field is create a true, human

ecological lens through our interpretations of poetry, art, and literature, and to see our

“ecological selves” in such readings. The human-turned-animal Jack Bottom, for

example, will be the quintessential model of an ecological self--a being which represents

how we can view the depth our own interrelatedness to the natural world, while Robin

Goodfellow, as an embodiment of nature, ushers the ecological initiate into spontaneous

experience, a gateway to nature identification.

Naess posits ontology to proceed ethics and encourages a personal ecosophy

through spontaneous experience and what he calls “total view.” By this he means a

philosophical worldview that includes “the non human natural world . . . the environment

or the ecosphere in its normative understanding and value commitments” (Katz et al. xii).

It is a position or point of view that concentrates on human relationship with the natural

world. In Beneath the Surface, Critical Essays in the Philosophy of Deep Ecology, the

editors delineate six central points essential to the philosophy:

1. The rejection of strong anthropomorphism

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2. Replacing anthropocentrism with ecocentrism

3. Identification with all forms of life

4. The sense that caring for the environment is part of individual human self-

realization

5. A critique of instrumental rationality (the idea that quantifiable thinking or

results is the goal of all human activity)

6. Personal development of a total world view, which suggests that deep ecology

is not only a social philosophy but one that is developed by the individual;

Naess illustrates how this works in his personal “Ecosophy T” explanation.2

To explain the relationship between the movement and philosophy further, Naess

tells us that there is a “difference between a movement which is concerned with

ecological problems because of their effects on people in the developed world, and one

which is more deeply concerned with such issues as biospherical equality and our basic

relationship with nature.” Deep ecology rejects the “man-in-environment” image in favor

of the relational, total-field image. Our identity as a species is in relation to nature, so

that one ceases to be the same without the other. Deep ecology is also biospherical

egalitarian in principle. The equal right to live and blossom is an obvious value axiom

that should not be reserved for humans alone. Because of our dependency on natural

2 Arne Naess elaborates: “We study ecophilosophy but to approach practical situations involving ourselves,

we aim to develop our own ecosophies. In this book, I introduce one ecosophy, arbitrarily called ecosophy

T. You are not expected to agree with all of its values and paths of derivation, but to learn the means for

developing your own systems or guides, say Ecosophies X, Y, or Z. Saying ‘your own’ does not imply that

the ecosophy is in any way an original creation by yourself. It is enough that is a kind of total view which

you feel at home with, ‘where you philosophically belong.’ Along with one’s own life, it is changing”

(Drengson 32).

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resources, we have established a master-slave relationship3 with the ecosphere, which

has, in turn, contributed to the alienation of human from themselves. Deep ecology

favors, instead, a relationship with the ecosphere that calls forth the principles of

diversity and symbiosis (Naess,“The Shallow and the Deep” 20). Ideally, this translates

into cooperative models in culture, economies, and occupations, rather than social

hierarchies. As discussed in Chapter 2, the human will toward upward mobility not only

exploits others, but exploits non-human beings, as well. However the equal right to live

and flourish is not a value axiom accorded to the latter. We see this anthropocentric

hierarchy play out in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Theseus and Egeus’ condemnation of

Hermia is a caricature of class stratification in the age of machine, and a symbolic

domination of female archetypes expressed through social rules and constructions. Jack

Bottom’s group of low-ranking artisans seek to claim dignity in a society defined by

power structures that simultaneously ridicule them and profit from them. Shakespeare’s

audience are meant to perceive this condemnation as an injustice and that is how we can

begin the discussion on anti-class posture, another prevailing tenant in the deep ecology

movement. In addition, there is a link between domination and the exploitation of

resources that is fundamentally driven by power over the female, which Carolyn

Merchant addresses in The Death of Nature, as we will see in the ecofeminist movement,

3 This is a figurative expression that implies commodification of nature, such as mining timber and coal,

monoculture farming, monopolizing seeds, or any mode that exploits nature in favor of regenerative

models. Discussed in Merchant’s book, in the chapters “Dominion over Nature” and “The Mechanical

Order.”

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an offshoot of the deep ecology movement, and often expressed through a revival of

primitive and pagan practices.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream illuminates a new understanding on the

anthropocentric views on nature and ecological ethics. Drawing a comparison between

the marital relationship of the nature fairies Titania and Oberon and the courtly love of

mythic warriors Theseus and Hippolyta, as well as an investigation of Robin Goodfellow

and Nick Bottom as the intermediaries between two worlds, A Midsummer Night’s

Dream provides the symbols and themes that can deepen our understanding of “self-

realization,” as Naess would call it, a form of identification that extends beyond the

“isolated ego striving for material gratification or individual salvation,” to one which

includes identification with the non-human living world (Devall and Sessions 67).

One of the functions of the humanities is preserve art, history, and the

philosophical thoughts that have defined our culture. It is necessary now that we read

classics from a new lens so that we can redefine “humanity” to include not just man, but

the natural world. The tenant of self-realization in the deep ecology movement asks us to

perceive ourselves as parcels of ecological systems. Self-realization is imperative to the

planet’s salvation. During each age of human progress, developing societies have

stepped further away from recognizing themselves as part of the ecological systems and

instead, we have found ways to “use” nature, more recently to dominate, and finally to

exhaust the planet’s resources, ironically at the cost of many human lives. We rely on the

humanities to be the artistic and historic expression of ourselves throughout time, as well

as to change paradigms when needed. In the crisis of our ecosphere, humanity must

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begin to look to art through a new lens. A deep ecology lens. In literature, we have

feminist interpretation, classical interpretations, Freudian interpretations, but we have not

yet created enough space for ecological interpretations of our classics. Based on the

notion of inclusivity of the deep ecology movement, it is time to include critical

interpretations through an ecological lens, as one more way to integrate the story of

humankind and its relationship with the natural world.

I would like to address why connecting Shakespeare to a relatively young and

radical form of environmental philosophy is even meaningful in the first place. It may be

redundant to point out just how much the human race has ravaged the planet’s resources;

scientists have been warning us of humanity’s suicidal tendencies for decades. The

effects of fracking, drilling, mining, the gutting of major environmental regulations, the

world’s dependencies on petroleum, fossil fuels, fast food and fast clothes and a system

designed to profit off of such dependencies, has left future generations of even the

wealthiest nations to shoulder the consequences for worldly carelessness. Carolyn

Merchant claims that modern civilization has long forgotten the earth as a living

organism. Only in the last thirty years have we given any scientific or philosophical

credence to the notion that the earth is indeed an organism, and human population and

consumer waste is literally an attack on the self-regulating system.4 Myths and folkloric

4 A theory proposed by chemist James Lovelock, Gaia Hypothesis, or Gaia Theory posits that “the Earth’s

surface is maintained in a habitable state by self-regulating feedback mechanisms involving organisms

tightly coupled to their environment” (T Lenton, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Edinburgh, UK

Copyright 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All Rights Reserved). In his book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia,

Lovelock maintains that the earth’s homeostasis has reached its limit with the rise of human population and

depredation, and while the earth will continue to support life, it may not be in concord with sustaining

human life.

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traditions, however, many on which Shakespeare based his plays, have often personified

nature’s connection to humankind. Personifying is inherently anthropocentric, but this

was how Elizabethans and earlier civilizations understood their relationship with the

natural world. Chapter 2 will delve into what Naess calls a “total view” approach to the

environmental crisis and clarify the role of arts and culture in resolving the environmental

crisis.

Therefore, this paper will first summarize Naess’s tenant of “self-realization” and

its place in ecological ethics. Naess challenges us to re-define the “self” to extend

beyond one’s body, one’s limited identification with the individual self, so that the “self”

also means the collective self, or the anima mundi. I will often use “nature

identification” interchangeably with self-realization, although it will hopefully be made

clear that self-realization is the result of having identified deeply with nature--what Naess

would call spontaneous experience.

In Chapter 3, I will also provide necessary historical context of Elizabethan views

on nature, drawing from Carolyn Merchant’s work as well as Pierre Hadot’s in-depth

analysis of the history of nature. Both authors pinpoint the Middle Ages as a period in

which western civilization moved away from agricultural models to the capitalistic

models that would detrimentally set in motion the ecological devastation we are

witnessing today. It is this ecological context that is often overlooked in the study of

Shakespeare, but the social implications of nature-alienation becomes no less apparent in

the play when we view it from this lens. In Chapter 4, I will demonstrate how Jack

Bottom represents the effects of nature-alienation on the social hierarchy and the

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“wholeness” he regains from his spontaneous experience. Finally, I will analyze Robin

Goodfellow as the “master of ceremonies” who orchestrates the experiential guide toward

self-realization. My hope is that such a reading broadens our definition of the humanities

to include the totality of people’s relationship with their physical and living environment

(Ophuls and Boyan 6).

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CHAPTER 2

TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL IDENTITY

To achieve deep, long range ecological progress and sustainability, Naess

suggests we begin with deep reflection and reassess our human relationship with the

environment. Those of us who study the humanities are keepers of a rich range of

knowledge. We study the humanities to preserve the array expressions of human

experience over time. But where exactly does ecology fit in the study of the humanities?

For our own western civilization, capitalist, post-industrial economic models, progress,

urbanization, and growth have taken us further and further away from any sort of

identification with nature. To remediate the symptoms of our ecological alienation and

subsequent environmental crisis, Naess advocates a “total view” approach. What this

means is, rather than view environmental problems as merely technical, and rather than

resolve them with a single traditional discipline, a “total view” approach invites us to

address the cultural, personal, social, and global implications of our actions and evaluate

how our ecological and human communities can function together harmoniously

(Drengson 27). In addition to science and ethics, literature, history, philosophy,

anthropology, and performance also have an important place in ecology by giving way to

more depth, insight, and wisdom with respect to ecological systems and improved quality

of life--and that is why “Naess feels that major interdisciplinary efforts are needed to

study the ecology and evolution of human and other communication systems of cultures

in their home places” (Drengson 3). Therefore, we will begin with an examination of two

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specific concepts of deep ecology: self-realization and spontaneous experience, both of

which will be relevant to an ecological reading of Shakespeare’s play.

Deep ecology is a movement and a philosophy that claims that if we are to create

radical shifts in environmental ethics, we need to move from anthropocentric view of

how we relate in the ecosystem to an eco-centered view of integration (Drengson 27).

Most would agree that the bulk of the western world views environmental

conscientiousness in a pragmatic terms. We recycle plastic bottles, we vote on

environmental regulation, we operate and support companies that develop with

sustainable materials, and so on. What we would call “reform ecologists” are those who

advocate taking the necessary steps to our ecological problems (Devall and Sessions 2).

Recycling, sustainable building material, energy efficiency, etc., are all pragmatic

solutions to critical environmental needs. However, deep ecology postulates that this is

not enough. Deep ecology asks individuals and communities to engage in deeper

questions regarding environmental concerns (Devall and Sessions 2). For example, while

the reformists may respond to soil depletion or plastic waste by calling for improved

farming models or recycling plastic bottles, deep ecologists claim these measures may

not be enough because even organic farming can encroach upon wilderness areas and

recycling does not remedy the consumption of petroleum-based products which could be

avoided in the first place. Naess argues that we need to engage more fully by questioning

all of our actions more deeply. Science alone, according to Naess, can not sufficiently

respond to ethical questions on how we should live. In the tradition of Western

philosophy, such deep questioning encourages us to go beyond pragmatic approaches to

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our environmental crisis and ask questions about the individual in relation to the whole

ecological system (Devall and Sessions 65). Environmental ethicist, Warwick Fox,

provides the following example:

If an industrial pipeline is polluting a bay or if a factory smokestack is

polluting the surrounding area, one response would be to say, for example,

why don’t you just build a longer pipeline out to sea or build a higher

smokestack and thereby remove the problem from the immediate area? In

contrast, the response of the deep ecology movement is the more radical one

of asking searching questions about the situation and looking for solutions to

what is causing the problem in the first place rather than simply responding to

the symptoms of the problem.

Deep questioning is a contemplative experience in which an individual may come to see

themselves as part of the organic whole. As long as we perceive our “selves”5 as isolated

from nature, as human separate from and superior to nature, as long as we continue to

value nature only in so far as it benefits us, we diminish the right for all living beings to

live and flourish. The practical solutions of reform ecologists are well-intended and serve

an immediate response to environmental crisis, but we need radical change in our

thinking to create deeper, long range solutions.

We might find it ethically questionable to cut off our own hand, for example, or to

knowingly give poisonous food to our own child, or to take advantage of our family

5 Naess emphasizes selves to refrain from the confusion of “self” as the narrow ego.

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members in order to serve our immediate needs. Yet we do this every day to the planet

we inhabit because we have created the myth that our species, as intelligent, social

creatures, have the right to dominate it at will. It is only when we see our water bill go up

that we are willing to invest in turning our green lawns into a drought resistant gardens.

We might make the effort because it will eventually be a cost savings to us. But this type

of valuation of resources reaches its limit, as does sacrificing to show one’s love for

nature. The most critical ecological solutions will not be based on how it may be a

benefit to consumers: “When people feel that they unselfishly give up, or even sacrifice,

their self-interest to show love for nature, this is probably, in the long run, a treacherous

basis for conservation. Through identification, they may come to see that their own

interests are served through conservation, through genuine self-love, the love of a

widened and deepened self” (Naess, Ecology of Wisdom 85). Deep ecology requires a

shift in how we identify with the land as part of its many integrated, ecological systems.

Simply put, deep ecology is radical because it requires us to develop a wider sense of self

as part of the earth’s ecosystem rather than as a superior species. It requires strong

identification with nonhuman living beings. For Arne Naess, a value axiom is: “All life

has intrinsic value, irrespective of its value to humans” (Naess, “The Shallow and the

Deep” 19). Its ethics is in the egalitarian approach to the relationship. The question is

how may we begin to create that shift in identifying with the ecological self?

Before we can address the pragmatics of ecological salvation, Naess suggests we

establish a wider identity. Deep ecology as both a movement and a philosophy has

multiple facets that begin with platform principles from which individuals can develop

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their own ecosophy and groups can develop organizations toward ecological justice. An

example of deep ecology as a movement in practice can be viewed in developing a sense

of “land stewardship,” what Naess calls a sense of place. Eco-spiritualism, for example,

represents a wide range of philosophies and belief systems with the common notion that

plants and animals live alongside us, that all sentient beings have a right to live and exist

as much as we do, that the earth is a living organism of which we are part. For many eco

spiritualist, adopting anti-capitalist models, regenerative farming methods, or developing

homesteading communities are practices that have its beginning in identification with the

place, and subsequently the land itself. Like pre-colonial, indigenous peoples, revering

the relationship to land and animal is a cornerstone of ecological ethics. Arne Naess took

this to heart in own home. In his own experiment with living in his mountain hut in

Tvergastein, he took the time to develop relationships with every species of flower that

grew on that rocky terrain, no matter how diminutive, to understand how it grew and

seeded; he observed and came to know the animals, such as the house mice that he saw as

cohabitants. He understood that if we come to understand the world and see ourselves as

a community member within our space, that we would be less inclined to cause it harm.

“Through identification,” Naess writes, one “may come to see that their own interests are

served by conservation, through genuine self -love, a love for a widened and deepened

self” (Drengson 85). This is the long range solution to saving the planet from further

ecological devastation.

However, a lifestyle in which one eliminates air travel, conventional toilets,

consumer goods, and any other radical lifestyle shifts, is not one that urbanized and

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centralized people would be comfortable with. At the same time, those who, as Naess

would say, are “self-realized,” see their entire being as nature--and these types of

conservationists are beginning to create the models that bridge reform ecology and deep

ecology. The average Californian, for example, uses 80-100 gallons of water a day (and

despite the inaccessibly to clean water in a great part of the world, most urbanized people

still defecate in perfectly potable water). If we were to visit a spring and collect water for

bathing, drinking, and cooking, we might be much more conscientious about our water

usage. This is the most radical form of understanding its value. We understand its

scarcity, all the plants and animals that also rely up on it, understand where the water

comes from, and perhaps develop more reverence toward it. But there is more we can do

on a systemic scale rather than troubleshooting one environmental concern at a time, like

water scarcity. Researchers through University of California Natural Reserve System, for

example, propose a variety of land-projects that experiment with county-wide land

restoration which includes not just water harvesting, but staging grazing patterns in order

to naturally rebuild the soil, feed local, healthy livestock for food consumption, and

dramatically reduce the amount of waste water that drains out into the oceans by slowing

its flow through building swale and sinking the water back into the land (Institute for the

Study of Ecological and Evolutionary Climate Impacts). The benefit will be for the

preservation of the local ecosystem itself, but results will also function as a model that

serves reform environmental interests of counties and one that can be replicated all across

the United States. However, how is one to go about convincing a small county council to

adopt new methods of land tending? The cities, counties, mayors, and council members

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may speak the language of self-interest: economic savings, tourism, reelections, and laws.

Still, the idea of instilling pre-industrial grazing models, swale-building, and water

solution came from individuals who began with a strong sense of identity with nature,

who understood their sense of place enough to recognize that its organic ecological

systems could eventually be reproduced to fit the greater concern for non-human life

forms.

I suppose it will take a very long time to shift our cultural identity, as well. But a

wider identification is the necessary bridge between reform ecology and deep ecology.

An ecological identity is predicated first, on self-reflection relative to the environment,

and second, on the intrinsic value of non-human living beings. Let us first begin with the

value axiom. Questioning one’s place in the environment in relation to surrounding

ecosystems, Naess argues, is in itself environmental advocacy.

Naess argues that “weak identification with nonhumans is compatible with

maturity in some other major sets of relationships” such as those with family and friends

(Naess, “Ecology of Wisdom” 81). Therefor, through strong identification with nature

and nonhuman living beings, one “may come to see their own interests are served by

conservation, through genuine self love, the love of a widened and deepened self” (Naess,

“Ecology of Wisdom” 85), what Naess calls the ecological self. Naess draws upon

inspiration from Spinoza and Eric Fromm and answers the question, what is considered

“self-interest” and how can it be compatible with the ecocentrism? He quotes Fromm:

To [Spinoza], self interest or the interest to “seek one’s profit” is identical

with virtue.

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“The more,” he says, “each person strives and is able to seek his profit, that is

to say, to preserve his being, the more virtue does he possess; on the other

hand, in so far as each person neglects his own profit he is impotent.”

According to this view, the interest of humans is to preserve their existence,

which is the same as realizing their inherent potentialities.” (Fromm, qtd. in

Naess, “Ecology of Wisdom” 86)

Naess also adds that “preserve his being” is better than “preserve his existence”

because the latter implies the struggle for survival: “survival is only a necessary

condition, not a sufficient condition of continued self-realization” (Naess, “Ecology of

Wisdom” 86). Self-realization removes moral compulsion; it transcends altruism. We

need not act out of duty; we make moral, conscientious choices because of the favorable

effect of kindness on us, which makes our choices not obligatory, but joyful (Naess,

“Deep Ecological Attitudes” 31). Because of an inescapable process of identification

with others, Naess argues:

With increasing maturity, the self is widened and deepened [and] our self-

realization is hindered if the self-realization of others, with whom we identify, is

hindered. Our self-love will fight this hindrance by assisting in the self-

realization of others according to the formula “Live and Let Live!” Thus,

everything that can be achieved by altruism--the dutiful, moral consideration for

others--can be achieved by the process of widening and deepening ourselves.

(Drengson 82)

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The most obvious means to this end is developing a sense of place, such as living

in deeper awareness and relationship with nonhuman environment and its living systems.

But we can learn to identify with the extended, ecological self in the area of the

humanities and literature. Storytelling (in our case, Shakespeare and performance), for

example, also communicates meaning of human existence. From storytelling, we can

extrapolate cultural norms, interactions, beliefs around nature and immerse ourselves in

the narrative, thereby widening identification. Let us now turn to Shakespeare and the

history of agrarian society, and, as an expression of deep questioning, ask, “What does it

mean to be an individual? How can the individual self maintain and increase its

uniqueness while also being an inseparable aspect of the whole system?” (Devall and

Sessions 65). A closer at the literary and historical context during the Middle Ages to the

Renaissance will set the foundational understanding for literary reflection on A

Midsummer Night’s Dream.

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CHAPTER 3

1595: CONTEXT, TRANSITION, AND ALLEGORY

IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

At the time of the play’s performance, the agrarian landscape of England and

Western Europe had been evolving, from peasant-subsistence farming to a capitalist,

mass-agricultural system (Overton 2). The characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

can be read as an allegory for the ecological and socio-economical transition that

occurred in Western Europe between the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. This

chapter will qualify Shakespeare’s use of the allegorical traditions borrowed from his

literary predecessors, who explained the mysteries of nature through poetry, and

demonstrate Shakespeare’s aim to do emulate these traditions. By exploring the

intersections of power, class, and gender during the Elizabethan Era, this play can be read

as a timely observation on the effects that a capitalist agricultural model had on the

relationship between humans and ecology.

Drawing on familiar Greek myths and English fairy lore, as well as a variety of

narrative traditions including Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Medieval romances,

Shakespeare displayed a colorful palette of characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

These characters move through two primary settings: the centralized, civilized, law and

order city-state of Athens, and the fantastical, wild and sensuous woods. This serves as a

backdrop to investigate ecological theme of self-realization and nature-identification.

But it is just as important to understand Shakespeare’s use of allegorical language to

unveil these themes, applicable for both his time and our own.

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In our time, allegory is literary commonplace. But the ancient Greeks had

particular impetus to use this method of hiding meaning, and Shakespeare, who borrowed

heavily from the Classical Greeks, often communicated a Hermetic worldview in his

plays (Hammond 5). Beyond the play’s whimsical narrative exists the Greek poetic

tradition of what Pierre Hadot calls the “allegorical exegesis”--“allegorein means to

make someone understand something other than what is said” (Hadot 41). Allegorical

exegesis came out of the need to remedy the controversy in poetical theology6 that had

reduced Nature and God to fiction and social convention. Hadot explains the dilemma of

theolgia, or discourse of the gods, versus physiologia, discourse on nature that occurred

during a critical time of scientific revolution in ancient Greece:

Philosophers of the Platonic and Stoic traditions gradually developed a kind of

doctrine of double truth. On the one hand, poetic and religious traditions were left

intact since they were useful to the people, as forming the basis of education of

children and of the official religion of the city-state. On the other hand, these

philosophers considered that the poets of yesteryear had, in an enigmatic way,

taught an entire science of nature beneath the veil of myth. (Hadot 41)

6 Poetic theology can best be described as a cipher used by political philosophers during the Renaissance

who attempted to revive ancient ways of knowing independent of Christian doctrine. As Hadot explains,

the word theology, for the Greeks, meant “discourse of the gods” and exemplified by poets like Homer and

Orpheus who used myths, handed down by tradition, to explain the genesis of things. Thus, “rituals and

myths contained a hidden teaching on the subject of nature” (Hadot 40). Knowledge was “hidden” in

poetry and myths.

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Thus, the allegorical exegesis, was born; the belief that hidden philosophical

meaning could be discovered beneath a text would have been a familiar concept to

Shakespeare whose plays were often inspired by traditional myths, poetry, and histories.

Consequently, characters like Nick Bottom, Robin Goodfellow, and Titania can

be read as contemporary allegorical figures of nature-identification in a time when

Christian doctrine would have shunned such beliefs and social thought favored growth in

the arts, commerce, and technology, with human potential as its focus. As a result,

England and the rest of the civilized world witnessed the final vestiges of “human-in-

nature” relationship. To clarify: the pagan practice of human beings co-existing with

nature and yielding to the often unpredictable characterizations of nature gods and

goddesses gave way to Christian humanism which in part, emphasizes culture as contrary

to nature; humans, as rational beings making headway on scientific discoveries and

technology, can subjugate nature and utilize it for cultural and economic advancement

(Rüsen 267). If that is the case, we should explore the ways in which Elizabethans

viewed nature and the historical context that would make A Midsummer Night’s Dream a

plausible allegory communicating the consequence of humans’ alienation from nature.

What exactly was the human view of nature in Shakespeare’s time and what

influence did patriarchal rule have on human ecology? Though it is uncertain exactly

when A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written, historians have guessed its first

performance around 1595. This was a remarkable era for the human species and their

relation to the non-human living world, which had lasting effects as a result of dynamic

changes in leadership, market economy, and modes of thought across the western world.

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In England, Queen Elizabeth, a patron of the arts, reigned, but the threat of new rule had

been palpable for decades. King James IV of Scotland, son of Queen Elizabeth’s rival

and cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, would come to succeed her throne six years

later and bring with him a fierce edict against women in the form of witch-hunts and anti-

feminist literature.7 By the time the play had been performed, the “Virgin Queen” had

already executed her cousin and successor’s mother, Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587, but

not without years of challenging and complex circumstances involving these royal

families. Meanwhile, northern Europe began expanding its market economy and

heightened capitalist models of production and economic behavior (Merchant 51). The

emergence of city-states, quickening of trade and production, along with rapidly

changing relations between landlords and land-tenders may have put the proverbial nails

in the coffin for agrarian life and shatter pre modern ecosystem for good. Up until the

fifteenth century, agrarian ecosystems relied on “territorial communes”, those in which

families tended their own farm plots and shared other resources like water, wood, and

animal sources collectively: “the peasant community produced a level of subsistence by

following traditional patterns of cooperation upheld by powerful cultural norms”

(Merchant 49). Identification with nature was palpable and indicative in cultural

practices. However this way of living in relation with the land is “the dream” deep

7 It is generally accepted that, as a gift for his coronation, Shakespeare composed Macbeth King James I

coronation. Knowing his fascination with witchcraft, the demonic arts, and its association with the “evils

of women,” it is little wonder that Shakespeare would add all the flair of three witches and a depiction of

the dangerously powerful Lady Macbeth (Asimov 151).

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ecologist and eco spiritualists would say we have lost.8 To add, an overarching theme of

Western humanism, with its emphasis on “all those attributes and qualities of man by

which he or she is essentially differ(s) from nature” arguably fomented the subjugation of

nature. By emphasizing the dignity of man, humanism “renounces an acceptable

relationship of man and nature.” As Jorn Rüsen points out, it was Descartes who

expressed the idea that man is master and owner of nature (Rüsen 266-267).

Subsequently, it was also during the sixteenth century that England developed the

application of organic fertilizers, forced monoculture farming, and agricultural

improvements for the sake of market profits which ultimately culminated in the type of

agribusiness techniques we know today. Tension from the top down in governance, the

rise of artisans to produce the type of machinery necessary for higher crop yields, the

subsequent peasant revolts against the regulation of common land--by the time of its

performance, audiences of A Midsummer Night’s Dream must have enjoyed the

comedy’s dreamy, sexual exploits as a cathartic narcotic from much of the political and

cultural tension.

But the effects and public consensus of female rulers must not be underscored,

especially when we view nature as the controlling metaphor for the female, as Carolyn

Merchant argues. The sixteenth century also happens to coincide with advancements in

technology that enabled western world powers to commodify nature, introducing a

patriarchal-capitalist paradigm, further supported by Christian doctrine and useful in

8 More recently, restorative agriculturalist have revived these models in favor of monoculture farming,

which is called rotational grazing, or prescribed herbivory, based on the Spanish “dehesa” style of grazing

(as described in the introduction).

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defending the subjugation of women (although that particular end did not require much).

This trope is implied in the play with the depiction of Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding,

as well as Egeus’ fiat to marry off his daughter according to his ownership of her as well

as Athenian law, which will also be addressed. Accordingly, we can also look at the

play, because of its date of composition, as a meditation on the shifting course of pagan

mythology during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It is here where we can continue

our contextual discussion and view this as an “allegorical” play that reflects the changing

relationship between human and non-human living forms in nature and civilization.

Titania is one such allegorical figure in which Shakespeare personifies as Gaia, or

Earth Mother, to represent the subtle relationship between the earth and earth-tenders.

During the Middle Ages and into the height of the Renaissance, which sought a revival of

Latin and Greek literature, it had generally been accepted that it was necessary to use

myths in order to speak of nature, as Hadot notes: “Pagan myths were thus used to

describe physical phenomena” (77), and Shakespeare makes use of this tradition, as seen

in Titania’s Act I monologue. Titania is the fairy queen whose name comes from Ovid’s

Metamorphoses, a moniker given to the daughters of Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus

(Father Sky). The Titans were part of the pantheon of Greek gods during the Golden

Age. Pierre Hadot observes that “the gods that correspond to the various powers of nature

absolutely insist on being honored according to the traditional cult as practiced in the

city” (67). In the play, Titania was such a goddess.9 She finds herself in a fight with her

9 In the play, Titania is never referred to as a goddess, but the “fairy queen”, nor was her husband a god, but

king of the fairy realm. However, her name presumably comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a source that

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husband and fairy king, Oberon, over a changeling child whose mother was a devotee of

what is presumably her mystical cult:

TITANIA: The fairy land buys not the child of me.

His mother was a votaress of my order:

And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,

Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,

And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,

Marking the embarked traders on the flood,

When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive

And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;

Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait

Following,—her womb then rich with my young squire,—

Would imitate, and sail upon the land,

To fetch me trifles, and return again,

As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.

But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;

And for her sake do I rear up her boy,

And for her sake I will not part with him.” (2.1.491)

Reflected in these lines are the mystery cult practices of the ancient world--the

Indian votaress or devotee, who comes to Titania bearing “trifles” and sharing intimacies.

had previously inspired Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus. Ovid uses the name Titania for the moon, a

reference to Phoebe, a goddess (Asimov 15).

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This hints at the mystery cult, most famously celebrated at Eleusis where goddesses were

seen as the embodiment of nature and where initiates shrouded themselves in sacred

sacraments to play out the dramas of agricultural rites. One of the most famous rites at

Eleusis was the worship of the agricultural deities Demeter and her daughter Persephone,

who have come to represent the cycles of nature. In a similar vein, Titania’s fight with

her husband wreaks havoc on farmers. In the following speech, Titania admonishes

Oberon for their quarreling, and describes the effect of their fighting on human ecology:

These are the forgeries of jealousy:

And never, since the middle summer's spring,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,

By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. (2.1.84-90)

Here, Titania laments the joy she once shared with her husband, the “ringlet”

dances that they no longer perform. Earlier in the same act, a fairy describes her duties to

Titania: “to dew her orbs upon the green” (2.1.8-9). To contemporary readers, these

ringlet orbs are not magic, but a common phenomenon visible to the eye on something as

unremarkable as a front lawn. The orbs are the result of mushroom activity, or

mycelium, the vegetative parts of fungus which shoot out in a network of white

filaments; this becomes the darker circles of grass, seen here as fairy rings (Asimov 15).

This nugget of contemporary mycology provides some dimension as to how those who

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lived more closely to the land explained such a phenomenon and illustrate how lore had

been used by Elizabethans, despite science or Christianity. Instead of dancing, Titania

and Oberon spend their time fighting. As such, the elements respond:

... the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Have every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents. (2.1.91-95)

The effect of their matrimonial disputes now extends to human ecology, specifically

agrarians, those who would have depended not only upon favorable weather, but also

retained some of their pagan beliefs. Additionally, the final lines bridge both human

ecology with non-human ecology, when the “angry” moon, personified as Diana, affects

both the waters, climate, and humankind, compromising all of nature’s order:

The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

For lack of tread are undistinguishable:

The human mortals want their winter here;

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No night is now with hymn or carol blest:

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound:

And through this distemperature we see

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension;

We are their parents and original.” (2.1.96-120)

Titania labels herself and Oberon as their parents and originals--those who birthed

not only the elements, but also humans, seeing all as interrelated and interdependent, as

well as claiming her responsibility to their disease. While interrelatedness of all things is

foundational tenet of deep ecology, it is countered by the humanist ideals pervading

Elizabethan culture. Reading this play from a contemporary, ecological vantage point,

Titania’s declarations challenges the anthropocentric thought of the time. Additionally,

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the speech reveals the basis of ecological systems theories--the symbiotic relationship

between all living beings--through the imagery of language, specifically, personification.

Hadot explains that for Neoplatonists, personification became a necessity to philosophers

and poets who, on the one hand needed to speak of nature “while conserving the names

of gods traditionally linked to the elements and powers of nature and, on the other, that to

renounce traditional cults, as the Christians do, [meant] prohibiting oneself from knowing

Nature” (67). Would it be a leap to suggest that Shakespeare employed this Neoplatonic

approach to nature discourse (which was common to the poets of the Middle Ages) and

portrayed Titania as the nature-goddess metaphor in order to retain elements of nature

identification? Hopefully not; we now have a reasonable explanation for personification

as a traditional strategy to depict nature and can return to Arne Naess’ discourse on self-

realization which is to see ourselves in others and in this case, our extended selves in

nature.

Additionally, we can pull back the proverbial lens even further to see “nature as

female” as a controlling metaphor, and the domination of Hermia and Hippolyta extends

this metaphor to the domination of nature. Here we will turn to Carolyn Merchant.

Merchant posits that in Western and non-Western cultures, nature10 had been traditionally

female. Central to the organic, (or organized structure of living beings) was the

“identification of nature, especially the earth, with the nurturing mother”--that is to say,

the benevolent provider, the nurturer, the giver of life. And the earth was seen as a living

10 A note from Merchant’s introduction: “Nature in ancient and early modern times had a number of

interrelated meanings. With respect to individuals, it referred to the properties, inherent characters, and

vital powers of persons, animals, or things, or more generally to human nature” (xxiii).

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organism. Conversely, nature, as female, was also seen as tempestuous and wild, capable

of inflicting drought, storms, and chaos. But in the sixteenth century, the dominant image

of earth as nurturing mother began to wane in the face of the Scientific Revolution which

brought forth mechanization, tools, and machines that would be used to commodify

nature. A new image of nature would emerge, that of domination and power over nature

which became the core concepts of the modern world: “as Western culture became

increasingly mechanized in the 1600s, the female earth and the virgin earth spirit were

subdued by the machine” (Merchant 2). If we view this play allegorically, then A

Midsummer Night’s Dream reflects “the changes in human attitudes and behavior toward

the earth” that is indicative of its time, which we can now explore more deeply with Nick

Bottom in Chapter 4.

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CHAPTER 4

JACK BOTTOM: PEASANT, ARTISAN, AND THE

DILEMA OF ECOLOGICAL IDENTITY

Jack Bottom most closely resembles the ecological identity crisis we face as a

social species. Bottom, the Weaver, is an artisan, but he also represents the archetype of

shapeshifter, one who, in this case, not only changes physical form, but also transitions

from the material, social world to the fantastical, natural world. Evaluating this

archetype can help the ecological reader see Jack Bottom in several transitory positions,

both as a cultural representative in the age of work and machine and as a literary symbol

for the “human as nature” paradigm implicit in the deep ecology philosophy. Insight

into his character reveals the effects that the emerging market economy of the Middle

Ages had on agrarian society of bygone years. It confirms a world in transition--from

agrarian peasantry to “lesser-folk” laborer--one in which those who were once connected

to the land attempt to find value in a plutocratic model. As such, we will explore how

Jack Bottom represents civilization’s disorienting departure from the natural world, what

he gains from a “return” to the deepest parts of that realm, and the social psyche that has

been disrupted by the shift away from ecological identification.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream reveals the significant role that the worker had on

the increasingly mechanized culture of the Middle Ages and subsequent “female earth

and virgin earth spirit [that] were subdued by machine” (Merchant 2). The play

introduces six men of the working class: a carpenter, a joiner, a bellows-mender, a tinker,

a tailor, and, of course, the weaver, Jack Bottom. Puck refers to these craftsmen as a

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“crew of patches, rude mechanicals” (3.2.9), a reference that suggests a particularly

negative timber for these players and had two underlying implications. First, in The

Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, the adjective form of the word mechanical is defined

as “of or pertaining to machines,” or, from mechanic (adj.), of persons or human actions,

“resembling machines, automatic” (646). Mechanical appears only to be used as an

adjective in the fifteenth century; the noun form was not common usage, however Puck

uses the word as a noun. If Puck echoes the consensus sentiment of Elizabethans,

“mechanicals” effectively reduces the artisan’s humanity to that of machine and of

functionality. The artisan’s value, therefore, is a label, based on what he can produce and

the extent in which his skill contributes to the wealth of an orderly society.

In his historical exploration of European labor, James R. Farr notes that people

who lived in the countryside were often referred to as peasants. When scholars wrote

about society, they were “invariably dismissive of the peasantry, treating it as an

indistinguishable lot, scarcely more sophisticated than animals and often worthy of even

less attention” (Farr, The Work of France 5). In the play, Philostrate, master of events to

the Duke, echoes this sentiment when he describes the mechanicals as “Hard-handed men

that work in Athens here, which never labour’d in their minds till now” (5.1.76-77).

Philostrate places value on what the artisan is able to make through their toil and

dismisses their intellect all together. Shakespeare additionally makes the social

stratification clear, as he distinguishes class by way of language: the nobility speak in

rhymed, blank verse while mechanicals speak in simple prose.

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Additionally, the play deals with societal fixation on hierarchy and social order

which was codified in the Middle Ages for both class and gender. For example, in Act I,

Theseus, Duke of Athens, defers to Athenian law when he offers Hermia the ultimatum

to either submit to her father’s will, “die the death,” or live the remainder of her years a

virgin in a convent, “chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon” (1.1.67,75).

Egeus’ control over his daughter is the representation of a well-ordered family,

disciplined by the father. Farr views the hierarchy implicit in the independent family as a

microcosm of the social order, where father acts as governing head.

But more on this when we get to Merchant’s topic of “nature as disorder.” Let us

return now to the country folk--former peasants who, according to Farr, were those who

worked closely with the land, “their labor turned mere earth into valuable crop producing

fields” (Farr, Artisans in Europe 17). The play marks the cultural transition for the

country folk--from earth-tending agrarians to earth-using artisans, and with it, movement

up the social ladder. The hierarchical model had been around for some time, when in

1159 John of Salisbury articulated the ideological social structure as a “person-writ-

large,” each part of functional society was a part of the whole and expressed as the

metaphoric human body. At the head was reason, in the form of the prince. Together

with his clergy, they functioned as his soul. The “sense organs” were governors, judges,

or any entity who communicated the social dictates, like the Duke of Athens had done for

Hermia, for example. These were the eyes, ears, and tongue of society--and they all

functioned as one. At the feet, of course, were the crafts people: “the medieval theory of

society thus stressed the whole before the parts, while emphasizing the inherent value of

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each particular part” (Merchant 71). Identity shifted from one in association with earth to

one in association with machine, technology, or craftsmanship.

Knowing one’s status in the overarching system became a matter of personal

identity, sense of self, and self-worth. The identification with work is explicit, as the

artisans are articulated through their respective monikers: Nick Bottom “the weaver,”

Snug “the joiner,” Francis Flute “the bellows-mender,” Peter Quince “the carpenter,” and

so on. These same country folk, represented in Jack Bottom, worked their way up the

first rung of the social hierarchy by becoming a master artisan. While peasantry had no

ranking and were therefore devoid of noble recognition, artisans possessed highly

specialized expertise. This, coupled with supply and demand economics, gave the artisan

access to social mobility. The artisan signaled status (Farr 4).

This is not to say that artisans were revered as noble men. One might say they

were neither here nor there. As the Salisbury model dictates, they were respected in so

much as their craft was necessary for technological and economic advancement.

Bottom’s name, for example, can be associated with his lowly position in the social

order, “to his social baseness” (Montrose 181). However artisans were the first step up

the ladder of social advancement, the first step up from peasantry, but they were still

consigned to the bottom of the hierarchy. They had the potential to be respected, as well

as the desire to be recognized as a “nobler men.”11 This is communicated in the

interaction between Jack Bottom and Peter Quince in Act II. When the artisans meet for

11 Farr describes the noble homme as another rung in the social ladder, but not the same as a noble man or a

gentleman, pointing to the fundamental determinant of dignity was the absence of manual labor (6).

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the first time to rehearse “The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of

Pyramus and Thisbe,” the self-aggrandizing Bottom behaves, in every way, the fool: he

believes the audience will not be able to tell that Snout is not a real lion, he over acts, he

overestimates his knowledge and ability, he mispronounces words and insists on playing

every part in the play. There is nothing remotely dignified about Bottom in this scene.

He is demonstrably “an ass.” Peter Quince, however, aware that performing this play

before the Duke will earn them a pension of sixpence as well as the dignified recognition

to “been made men” (4.1.17), sets Bottom’s focus aright: “You can play no part but

Pyramus, for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man, a proper man as one shall see in a summer’s

day, a most lovely gentlemanlike man. Therefore you must needs play Pyramus” (I.2.91-

85). Either Quince recognizes the need for the artisan to project worthiness on their

behalf, or his lines foreshadow the “dignity” Bottom will come to find when he

metaphorically “returns” to the virgin earth to be adored and served in the likeness of a

god.

The second implication of the word “mechanical” refers to the actual age of

machine during the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution--the age of commodification

and industrialization; the mining, deforestation, and drainage; the technologies of gears,

windmills, flaps and pulleys, bellows and bucket chains, ratchets, wrenches, treadles,

levers (all parts of a weaving loom) that altered humanity’s attitude toward the earth.

Timber exploitation and coal mining rose exponentially during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Machinery is correlated with subduing the disordered and chaotic realm of “wild,

uncontrollable nature.” If nature is female, as Merchant asserts, the subjugation of

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women in the play can be seen as a domination metaphor. As an example, one version of

the myth of Theseus, a known abductor of women, posits that in his expedition to the

land of warrior women, he captures their queen, Hippolyta. Shakespeare confirms this

version: “Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword and won thy love doing thee injuries”

(I.1.17-18). His romantic pursuit was one of violence and domination, affirming the

gender hierarchy. Hippolyta’s tone does not echo Theseus’s eager desire for that “nuptial

hour” when she references the ceremony of their wedding night as “solemnities” (I.1.11).

While one image of nature was characterized as nurturing earth mother, there was also

another image, that of wild and uncontrollable nature (identified also in Titania’s speech

in Act II, scene 1). Hippolyta, a fierce Amazonian warrior and queen of a matriarchal

society is now the “projection of human perception onto the external world” (Merchant

2), her capture by Theseus reflects the domination and mastery over disordered nature

and reinforces a society of order, with rulers, workers, and women in their proper place,

and powerful men at the helm. Bottom’s transformation, then, comes to symbolize the

human’s return to self--the wild and the chaotic, even if for a brief moment, it represents

a remembering. It will appear as a dream because it is the final vestige before humankind

transitions from organicism to mechanism.

The discussion of the work practices of and cultural attitudes toward artisans

during the Middle Ages is essential to understanding Jack Bottom as an intermediary

between the natural world and the world of commerce. On one level, his movement from

man-in-city to beast-in-woods is symbolic of how nature “reveals herself” through this

allegorical image. Bottom, as “lesser folk,” is born into rural life (when human co-exited

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with nature); as artisan, works his way into commerce (when human used nature for

economic advancement); then finds his way into the wild--as nature embodied. It is

finally a world that will remain to him, by the end of the play, little more than a dream he

must ultimately keep secret, or “hidden” as he absolves himself to the new world.

Let us begin with the image of the Jack Bottom as historic intermediary: by this I

mean, a figure who emulates the transition between the pastoral and the commercial, as

well as orderly society and the fantastical woodlands. In Act III, Bottom meets the other

tradesmen in the woods to rehearse, where a “green plot” of grass will be their stage and

a “hawthorn brake” their dressing room (3.1.4-5). Here, Shakespeare may have reached

back to poetry, prose, and narratives of Irish and Scottish pagan mythology for the

liminal nature symbols that transport Bottom to the fairy realm.12 First, the “green plot”

can be interpreted as the sidhe in Irish lore, which is a green mound visible to the human

world but also portal to the fairy realm. The sidhe has also been associated with liminal

seasons, including midsummer festivals. In many of these tales, the people of the sidhe

were associated with the changeling myth, the fairy child who is left in place of a human

child (Ellis, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology 197-198). In the play, Titania’s changeling

child is central to the plot. It is the cause of Oberon’s jealousy, and it is Bottom who, near

12 Asimov writes: “In earlier centuries fairies were taken much more seriously, and well they might be, for

they originated in part out of a dim memory of the pagan sprites of the woodlands: the fauns, satyrs, and

nymphs of the Greco-Roman mythology, together with the gnomes, elves, and kobolds of the Teutonic

imaginings and the sorcerers and ‘little folk’ of Celtic tales. They were the mysterious forces of nature,

usually capricious, often malevolent. The vague old beliefs clung among the country folk and became old

wives' tales, while the Church, recognizing their pagan origins, strove against them” ( Historian Marie

Henri d’Arbois de Jubenville details exhaustive connections between Celtic and Greek Parthenon as well as

pre-Christian Irish legends in The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology.

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the green plot behind a hawthorn tree, replaces the changeling child and turns Titania’s

obsession away from the child and toward him.

Likewise, the hawthorn shrub, or Maytree, also known by its botanical genus,

Crataegus, in the family Rosaceae, is also a liminal symbol. In the Celtic calendar, it

blooms in Beltane, which would be the beginning of May, and fruits in Samhain, at the

end of October. Both of these times are traditionally seen as liminal period (Suler 4). In

folkloric traditions, hawthorn is the tree of the otherworld. According to folklorist John

Gregorson Campbell, Gaelic folklore are rife with characters falling asleep under a

hawthorn tree only to wake up in the “otherworld.” The thirteenth-century Scottish

mystic and poet, Thomas the Rhymer, recites in his famous ballad the meeting of the

fairy queen by the hawthorn tree. Hawthorn, like the seasons in which it flowers and

fruits, is considered a liminal herb, one that cues a “threshold”--as asserted by

anthropologists Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner. Liminals signal a rite of passage,

where participants “stand at the threshold” (as Bottom does) between their old structures

of identity and a new one, where hierarchies may be reversed, dissolved, or thrown into

doubt (Thomassen 2). Hawthorn shrubs often grow at the edge of a forest; they have

thorns and craggy or twisty roots and branches of archetypal, “otherworld” appearance.

Since Shakespeare borrowed from Celtic and Scottish folklore and poetry (Thomas the

Rhymer, I would argue is explicitly borrowed from), both these nature elements signal

Bottom’s transportation to another world, be it actual or subconscious. It is behind the

hawthorn shrub that Bottom makes an exit and return, where Puck transforms him into an

ass.

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Transformed, Bottom’s friends abandon him in fear of his appearance. That his

friends can see him is significant, but it is unclear if they see him as an ass-head. They

describe him as “monstrous,” “strange,” and believe they are “haunted” (3.1.105). They

realize he is transformed, but he is still recognizable enough for them to call him by his

name. What they believe actually happened to Bottom remains vague. In Act IV, Scene

2, they wonder if he has returned to him home, and Snout believes, “Out of doubt, he is

transported” (4.2.4), which can translate both as transformed or carried away. Bottom’s

transformation leaves a veil of obscurity.

Alone and to make the best of his situation, Bottom amuses his time by singing a

rhyming song, an allusion to the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer who, as mentioned, meets

the fairy queen at the hawthorn tree from which a cuckoo sang. Likewise, in the play,

Bottom receives the attention of Titania when he sings a song about a variety of birds and

curiously wonders why any man would “give a bird the lie though he cry ‘cuckoo’”

(3.1.137-138); the cuckoo hints at a reference to Oberon, who acquiesces his part as

“cuckold” by allowing his wife to sleep with another being.

But in this otherworld, Bottom’s dignity is immediately restored. The hierarchy

common in Athens is in the woods, reversed. Titania, under the spell of the herb nectar,

finds Bottom beautiful. She does not see him as a beast, but as a man. She calls to him,

“gentle mortal, sing again/Mine ear is much enthralled of thy note/So is mine eye

enthralled to thy shape” (3.1.139-141). In addition, Shakespeare does not alter Bottom’s

speech in this realm. He does not speak in iambic pentameter verse like the nobility, nor

in catalectic trochaic tetrameter, like Oberon and Titania. He continues to speak in

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regular prose. Still, in this realm, Titania views Bottom as complete, as a gentle mortal of

the woods--not as the bumbling ruffian of Athens. She also calls him “wise,” “beautiful,”

and a “gentleman.” She does not notice his beastly form, or if she does, the blend of

animal and human makes him more complete. To her, he is perfection, and she promises

to purge him of his “mortal grossness,” which is to say, to free him from the linear

confines of death as a finite end, and instead, make him a part of the regenerative life-

cycle of nature. This can be no less than self-realization in one’s identification with

nature.

Bottom’s experience in the woods can be viewed as a journey to what Celtic

folklore refers to as the otherworld, which in other folkloric traditions, is associated with

dream world, nature, or the underworld, accessed through dreams, shamanic visioning,

trance, psychotropic medicine, music, trauma, sex, and so on (Moore 49-54) . However,

for Bottom, it is accessed by none of these. Rather, he is inducted by more traditional

means of shapeshifting in Greek mythology when Puck, through his inventive trickery,

changes his form. When beautiful Titania demands that Bottom stay with her, he is

neither combative, nor overly-concerned, but typifies the noble fool who, in traditional

archetypes, goes with the flow. He only questions Titania’s reason once, in matter of

casual conversation, when she insists she loves him: “Me thinks, mistress, you should

have little reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company

together nowadays” (3.1.144-146).

Bottom quickly acquaints himself with the fairies and while embodied as a non-

human living being, immediately changes his perception of nature. When he meets the

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fairy called Mustardseed, for example, he connects to a pastoral memory: “Good master

Mustardseed, I know your patience well. That same cowardly, giantlike ox-beef hath

devoured many a gentlemen of your house.” Mustard, of course, is a nutritious and

edible weed. Bottom recognizes the ox’s affinity for its flavor and sympathizes with

Mustardseed, in essence, feels for nature in his endearing yet noble expression against the

giant, “cowardly” ox. Later, he admits that while mustard caused for him an allergic flare

up, “your kindred had made my eyes water ere now,” he wishes to know her, or bond

with her, even more (3.1.198-203). This is an example of nature identification, what we

will later address as “spontaneous experience” in Chapter 4. Bottom demonstrates a

relationship with Mustardseed, by extension, the mustard plant, which alters his view of

nature. Even a Christian interpretation functions here. The parable of the mustard seed

communicates the message that the kingdom of heaven comes from small, or humble,

beginnings. This would be true of a simpleton like Bottom who, through his

transformation, becomes self-actualized. It is also noteworthy that mustard grows most

prolifically not when it is cultivated, but sowed wild.

Titania continues to charge her retinue of attendees upon Bottom, who has grown

quite comfortable in this role as nobleman. He calls on each fairy to make special

biddings, from retrieving honey sacks to scratching his head, but he properly respects

each fairy as he makes his indulgent requests. Bottom is at ease, in the bliss entwined

with Titania and her honeysuckle, even if Oberon views him as a “hateful imperfection.”

Bottom’s experience is nothing short of lovely. He is complete, falls asleep, and “wakes

up” fully realized. But the experience, like many who have felt such sublime kindred with

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nature, effectively transforms one’s consciousness; it transcends reason. Bottom says

that he has had the “most rare vision.” That one would be “an ass if he go about to

expound on this dream” (4.1.215-216). How does a one go about explaining such a

transcendent experience with nature? One does not. He leaves it to a poet, who through

art, can give form to experience without impunity: “I will get Peter Quince to write a

ballad of this dream. It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’ because it has no bottom”

(4.1.223-225). The laws of nature are impotent to explain the experience of nature. Only

myth, poetry, and art can articulate the expressions of the sublime.

All returns to normal, Athenian order. But Bottom remains both gentle and

loveable. He is regarded as essential not only in his craft, but also in his art. The

tradesmen recognize that no other can play the part of Pyramus. While the audience may

see Bottom as nothing more than a bumbling fool, his friends truly believe that there is

none more suitable to play the part: “You have not a man in all Athens able to discharge

Pyramus but he” (4.2.8-9). They also laud his “sweet voice” and wit, which is the best of

“any handi-craftmen in Athens” (4.2.9-12). They equate his craft with true artistry--

perhaps the dignity it had always deserved, as projected by Peter Quince in Act I, scene

2. Bottom is further dignified when Theseus calls the performance, “A notable

discharge” (5.1.77).

This is Bottom’s dream, an initiatory experience; a rite of passage which will

eventually move him from psychological displacement to self-realization in his

connection to nature. Even though he returns to the material world to submit once again

to the societal order, he can not un-remember his experience. His deep bonding with

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other beings of nature deepen his identification with all life forms, he discovers Naess’s

proverbial “ecological self.” His life as man-animal-in-nature and the subsequent reward

he receives from his performance in “The Most Lamentable Tragedy and Most Cruel

Death of Pyramus and Thisbe” in the material realm makes him self-realized.

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CHAPTER 5

PUCK AS MASTER OF REVELS

How does one come to realize their ecological identity, as Jack Bottom does in his

brief sojourn into the depths of the forest? Bottom’s transformation can be seen as a rite

of passage wherein the initiate moves from one identity to another. But, as Turner

suggests, every liminal rite has two groups of performers: those who are transformed and

those who affect the transformation. In life, the latter usually hold the position of priest,

shaman, rabbi, officiant, or, as is the case in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, master of

ceremonies. This is the role of Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck. If Nick Bottom

symbolizes the initiate in the self-realization process, it is Puck who propels the

transformative experience for both Bottom and the audience. This chapter will explore

the role of Robin Goodfellow as “master of revels,” who orchestrates Bottom’s

transformation toward ecological identity.

As the title of the play suggests, characters ebb and flow in dreamlike states.

Bottom’s transformation occurs in a liminal state, an experience that has been structured

by Robin Goodfellow. Since Bottom’s transformation is predicated on his sojourn to the

“magical woods,” it is helpful to explore the role of experience itself. Even Bottom has

the wisdom to know that his experience can easily be dismissed as a whimsical

daydream, a purely subjective enterprise that others will not understand. What is to keep

anyone who experiences spontaneous intimacy with nature from shrugging it off as “a

trip”? In order to explore the ways in which experience can expand our concern for non-

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human life, we will look to the philosophical approaches of Arne Naess and

anthropologist Victor Turner.

Arne Naess advocates a phenomenological approach to garner a comprehensive,

total view of the natural world--one that includes human as part of ecological systems.

This total view of ecology begins with a spontaneous experience, which identifies a

moment in which one “feels a strong sense of wide identification with what we are

sensing . . . involv[ing] a heightened sense of empathy and an expansion of our concern

with non-human life. Obligation and coercion to protect human life become

unnecessary” (Harding 1). Naess, for example, writes of his own spontaneous experience

in his meeting with a flea. While looking under a microscope and examining the

interaction of two different chemicals, a flea jumped into the middle of the acid

chemicals just at the point where the two drops met. He witnessed what he describes as a

“dreadfully expressive” death and felt a painful sense of compassion and empathy for the

non-human life form (Dregson 83). While this interpretation of “pain” may be his human

projection onto a non-human form, what is important is that something about the death of

the flea--perhaps it was the writhing legs, or the inability of a skilled jumper to use its

skill to escape its own death--was enough to conjure identification and elicit empathy. It

triggered deeper reflection for Naess. But not all spontaneous experiences have to be as

dramatic. In the prologue to The Way to Rainy Mountain, Native American writer N.S.

Momaday describes his identification with the land as spontaneous experience which

occurred simply through witness: “All things in the plain are isolate; there is no confusion

of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon that landscape in

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the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your

imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun” (43). The

tendency in Western Culture is to see objects as isolated entities; Momaday bears witness

to the landscape, and while he does see the individuality of each object, the process

communicates inter-relatedness of all things (the paragraph describes the seasonal

ecological systems of the Wichita plain) and perspective inspires awe. Momaday’s

spontaneous experience is formed through the “perception of gestalts, or network of

relationships” (Harding 2), whereby he establishes a relationship with the land. Even

here, Momaday attempts to give form to the experience using language: the last phrase,

“where Creation was begun” presents unusual verb tense. It is neither past perfect nor

present continuous but a combination of both--suggesting the regenerative quality of

creation, beginning again (and again) with each spring. As Harding explains, “When

such deep experience occurs, we feel a strong sense of wide identification with what we

are sensing” (2) Spontaneous experience proceeds reflection, where one may come to

feel deeper identification with non-human life forms and respond to the ethical questions

on how we are to live.

Bottom also encounters a spontaneous experience and is transformed. His

interaction with Mustardseed, for example, is specifically a spontaneous experience,

where he comes to realize her value in the world and feels the compulsion to defend her

from the ox. Nor does he suppress nor deny his experience in the woods, but realizes he

is impotent to explain it in reasonable terms. The best that he can offer is to call the

experience a dream. He looks to the poet or playwright to give it form, however crude,

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and communicate the depth and subtlety of feeling in the transformative experience.

Similarly, Naess communicates the limits of scientific reasoning to express one’s deep

relationship with nature. Naess, for example, views the mountain upon which he lived

his father--a surrogate since his own father passed in his infancy. Tvergastein is the name

he has given the mountain. This might seem odd to many of us who live in modern

western civilization. Maybe we are more inclined to regard the mountain in scientific

terms: a mountain is the result of volcanic activity, made up of eroded minerals and

magma. But is this all? In Chapter 1, we have already established the ways in which

humans live in terms of symbols, specifically, how metaphor is “the vehicle of an entire

set of images, feelings, and inner dispositions which have unconscious influence on

consciousness” (Hadot 76). We would be hard-pressed to find any land-based or

mountain-dwelling culture that reduces a mountain to just minerals. On the contrary,

myths and cultural stories equate the tops of mountains to reaching the realms of heavens

and gods. While we can dismiss this type of thinking as primitive, we need only

remember that mountains still provide the streams that feed the plants and animals to

sustain communities, they still have the ability to protect communities against destructive

elements, and they still have the capacity to destroy communities with volcanic eruptions;

in short, mountains have meaning beyond scientific reductionism because they are an

aspect of community identity.

Hadot’s explanation of allegorical exegesis is compatible with Naess’s

phenomenological approach. To validate Bottom’s experience and make it relatable to

our own, and if we choose to respond adequately to our ecological crisis, we need a

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method “capable of grasping our concrete experience within nature that … on the one

hand, [should be able] to overcome the domain of the merely subjective impressions and,

on the other, to avoid the risk of taking personal experiences as mere opinions,

irremediably linked to the idiosyncrasy of the individual’s perceptual performances”

(Valera 2). How can Momaday’s experience in the Wichita Plains, or Naess’s experience

with the ant be a genuine source of knowledge of reality and deepen our understanding of

nature? Naess’s approach may defend Bottom’s experience as more than mere subjective

impression into one that is “rich in complexity of concrete phenomena and to deepen the

analysis of our being-in-nature, without falling into reductionist abstractions or

generalized points of view” (Valera 4). To further support an explanation of Bottom’s

spontaneous experience, I will turn to Van Gennep and Turner who identify the structure

of rites of passage to responded to the perceived “problem” of mere subjective

experience. Both have identified “liminal states” as one of the three stages of transition:

the first is separation from the known world, the second is the middle or liminal phase,

and third is the re-aggregation phase (Turner, Liminal to Liminoid 57-59). Shakespeare

presents Bottom’s rite of passage in the most archetypal sense, moving from childlike

existence to manhood. On two occasions, the mechanicals refer to themselves as “every

mother’s son” (1.2.75; 3.2.71-72), and later hope “to be made men” (4.2.18). However

the whole of the three-part schema is depicted in Bottom’s struggle to establish dignity in

the social hierarchy as a lesser-folk artisan, his transition into a liminal otherworld where

he sheds part of his human form and intimately communes with nature, and his

emergence as a new man, self-realized, with honors bestowed upon him. This, coupled

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with allegorical characterization and the stage performance itself, is how the play gives

structure to Bottom’s spontaneous experience.

We can now turn to the conductor of such rites. Robin Goodfellow, “that shrewd

and knavish sprite” (2.1.34). Puck is the embodiment of the feeling and inspiration that,

when present in nature, may move one to ecological self-realization. While Bottom looks

to Peter Quince to explain the experience in ballad form, we can look to Shakespeare,

who as a playwright, utilizes the structure of stage performance and Robin Goodfellow as

“master of revels” to mirror sublime experience. Robin Goodfellow represents the

harbinger of spontaneous experience. Like Jack Bottom, Robin Goodfellow (Puck) also

moves and interacts between the hidden fairy realm and the domestic realm of mortals.

Louis Montrose describes Puck as “The Master of Revels to Oberon,” his antithesis being

Philostrate, master of revels to Theseus (Montrose 200). Indeed, Puck “stages” the

experiences for not just Bottom, but also Titania, the lovers, and the audience. The stage

itself is a mimicry of the liminal states within which Puck transforms Bottom and the

lovers. I will explain this further in the examination of Puck’s epilogue, but first, a brief

investigation at Puck and his relationship to liminality.

Puck has been characterized as a shapeshifter, trickster, shaman, threshold

guardian, hobgoblin, devil, and possibly, a satyr, to name a few. Much in the same way

Bottom is the human representation of a time in ecological transition, Puck is the non-

human living being who represents the catalyst for transformation, ultimately guiding the

individual, in his deliberately chaotic way, into ecological self-realization. While the

play does not have a central hero, most readers would consider Puck to be the closest

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resemblance to a protagonist that the play has. This is because he is the character who

makes things happen. He finds the Love-in-Idleness, he intervenes in the affairs of the

lovers, he disrupts the mechanicals, and, most importantly, he stages the trick on Titania

by transforming Bottom into an ass. It is this aspect of transformation which makes Puck

more than mere protagonist, but also the key element in Bottom’s self-realization,

elucidating the quality of nature-identification upon the audience.

Montrose collectively calls the characters in the play “Shakespeare’s

mythopoeia,” implying that the playwright borrows from various traditions of myth and

folklore. His version of Theseus can be identified in Plutarch, his characterization of

Titania, from Ovid. But Puck’s derivation is more vague. As a figure of folklore and

village life, most scholars concede that Shakespeare did not follow any particular literary

model when creating Puck (Schleiner 66). At least one historical references exists as to

his import in village life: in 1608, King James I permitted a charter for the Puck Fair in

what is now Killorglin, Ireland. It is Ireland’s oldest celebrated festivals, but fair

commissioners contend that there is evidence to prove its celebration long before any

written records. The Welsh version is a Pwca, and so similar are his actions to Puck that

“some Welsh people have claimed that Shakespeare borrowed him from stories told by

his friend Richard Prince of Brecon, who lived near Cwn Pwca, one of the Pwca’s

favorite haunts” (qtd. in Schleiner 66). Some artwork depicts Puck as half goat with

horns. He resembles a satyr, a woodland god in Roman and Greek tradition, with notably

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familiar tropes communicated in Piero di Cosimo’s “Sileneus on a Donkey” (c. 1500).13

Still, other explanations define him as a devil,14 or a goblin, also called hob (perhaps the

diminutive of Robin), which is a hairy sprite, much like a brownie in the Scottish

tradition. Many variances allude to Welsh, Celtic, and Norse mythology. Who or what

exactly is Robin Goodfellow? While there are many influences of a puck, folklorist

Katharine Mary Briggs notes that Shakespeare has given Puck an individual character: “it

no longer seems natural to talk as Robert Burton does in the Anatomie of Melancholy of a

puck instead of ‘Puck’” (qtd. in Schleiner 66). Still, examining the possible inspiration

for Puck can qualify his ecological function in the play. He is immortalized in the

folktales of the tradition-bearing lesser folk like the peasantry or artisans; he is embodied

as a satyr in Greek mythology. However varied the “species” of Puck is iterated across

cultures, the themes that surround him are common: he moves through the material and

the magical and assists in the transformation of fools. It is significant that a puck-

likeness should span a bit haphazardly across western cultural traditions because as an

13 The painting depicts the myth of a drunk Silenus, known as the wisest follower of Dionysus, being

carried home by a donkey. It is possible that Shakespeare may have, again, looked to Ovid, who twice

briefly references satyrs as silinus. The satyr plays, which have its origins in traditional Greek theater, are

most notable for their bawdiness (like many Shakespeare comedies, including A Midsummer Night’s

Dream) and satirical elements. In addition, it was Silenus who dispensed to King Midas, this kernel of

wisdom: “but for humans, the best for them is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature's excellence; not

to be is best, for both sexes” --Aristotle, Eudemus (354 BCE), surviving fragment quoted in Plutarch,

Moralia, Consolatio ad Apollonium, sec. xxvii (first century CE) (S.H. transl.). Interestingly, one of the

principles Naess articulates in the deep ecology platform is “it would be better for humans if there were

fewer of them, and much better for other living creatures.” (Drengson 28).

14 Piers Plowman: “It is a precious present,” quoth he, “as the puck it hath attacked, And me therewith,”

quoth that wight, “may no wed us quit, Nor no berne be our borgh, nor bring us from his danger; Out of the

puck’s poundfold no mainprise may us fetch Till he come that I carp of: Christ is his name” Passus

XVI.261-265.

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embodiment of nature, he does not have a specific cultural identity; nature itself

transcends the grouping of people based on human-made laws and social values.

Puck, existing beyond the laws of human, can be described as the energy present

in the woods that inspires spontaneous experience--the whims, the fears, the stir we feel

as we move into the threshold of a forest--when one is close enough to home, but just

deep enough to the edge of the wilderness to be lost. This is a space that separates the

material realm from the “otherworld.” It is the space of liminality. This is where one

may feel the likes of a puca,15 a domestic nature sprite, who often intercedes on behalf of

the shepherd, or pranks the gossip to make her aware of her foolishness. “I am feared in

field and town,” boasts Puck in Act III. Between the material and the fantastical is where

he dwells, to help us, torment us, transform us--or, as the case goes with tricksters, all of

the above.

An extended discussion on liminality will solidify concepts of transitions, as

discussed in Chapter 3, and clarify its function in the experience ecological self-

realization. As mentioned earlier, Shakespeare makes use of several liminal symbols to

mark Bottom’s transportation between worlds (recall the hawthorn tree and the sidhe).

The word liminal, while not completely lost to other disciplines, is mostly used in

anthropology, explored by folklorist Arnold van Gennep in the nineteenth century, then

by anthropologist Victor Turner between 1960s to 1980s, and reiterated by contemporary

sociologist Arpad Szakolczai. From the latin word limen meaning “a threshold,”

15 Irish moniker

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liminality is characterized as the disorienting space that occurs during moments of

transitions, also described as a margin, where “subjects pass through a period and area of

ambiguity, a sort of social limbo which has few (though sometimes these are most

crucial) of the attributes of either the preceding or subsequent profane social statuses or

cultural states” (Turner 57). What is called “the dream” in this play is the liminal state,

as well as that which is necessarily ambiguous in order force the initiate into

disorientation and dissolve their identity, in hopes to re-calibrate new perspectives. This

is what happens to Bottom, and by extension, the audience, if they are to read Bottom’s

spontaneous experience allegorically.

Van Gennep’s Rites de Passage identifies several types of liminal phases. These

include the changing seasons, critical cultural transitions, and passage of people from one

status to another. In the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, points of liminality

include the midsummer solar holiday; for Elizabethans, the transition between

agricultural society and mechanistic society as described by Farr and Merchant; the rites

of marriage for Theseus, Hippolyta, and the lovers; and Bottom’s transformation.

Szakolczai turns to the work of Wilhelm Dilthey, who, he says, had the right idea when

he “attempted to understand the very structure of experience” (Szakolczai 5). As

mentioned, Naess’ interpretation of the ant’s painful death is not “provable” by scientific

method. However Dilthey viewed the study of the humanities as a study of the

expression of experience (Makkreel 12), Naess may have identified with the expression

of the ant’s entrapment. This is what Dilthey calls verstehen, a special kind of

understanding or perspective one has from an experience. In the case of the ant or any

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experience relating to non-human living forms, Naess would call into question any

perceived limits of nature, or even the view that nature can solely be appreciated and

determined by one’s own culture. If we reject spontaneous experience in favor of facts,

as in the mountain is only magma, and the “heart of the forest” is only a matter of

distances between points, we fall into a belief that there is nothing in nature in itself--not

shapes, or colors, or impressions, nor anything subjective. This view would effectively

disallow the deeper, wider nature-identification that deep ecology calls for. Szakolczai

qualifies the importance of Dilthey’s work in its intent focus on experience, especially

social action. Bottom is unable to construct order to his dream experience, but he is

willing to accept the structure of his experience as liminal. He opts to give form to his

experience through poetry. Building on this idea, Szakolczai turns to social theory in

order to conceptualize experience through moments of transition. One can consider any

critical moment in history, like the French Revolution, for example, or the Communist

Revolution, transitions into democracy during World War II, or, in Merchant’s view of

Elizabethan society, the gradual loss of the organic world to be the structured expressions

of cultural experiences (Szakolczai 144). In the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we

can use Shakespeare’s play to interpret the effects of western world’s departure from

agrarian life, on the one hand. On the other hand, we can also use his play as an

interpretation of Bottom’s re-aggregation into the social order, after becoming fully

realized in nature. By extension, his rite of passage is also an experience that has a

structure, whereby Bottom enters as one person and re-integrates into society as another.

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We should now return to the examination of Puck and his role in the structured

experience. Turner reflects on the archetype of the “trickster” in the exploration of

liminality. As outsiders, tricksters are “incapable of close, emotional involvement . . .

[they] can easily preserve their calm under liminal conditions and thus conjure up a

cunning and calculative--thus formally ‘rational’ strategy” by which people can be

hooked into transformational states (Szakolczai 15). We can probably conjure many

trickster figures in history, who, through demagoguery, pomp and pageantry, or cult of

personality, influenced popular belief during moments of cultural vulnerability, for better

or worse. But this also applies to Shakespeare’s characterization of Puck. His role is to

make the initiate’s experience so disorienting, that the mortals are spun into restructuring

old perceptions: “Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down. I am feared

in field in town. Goblin, lead them up and down” (3.2.418-421). Puck is a trickster

archetype. As a domestic nature sprite, he dwells at the threshold between domestic life

and the spirit realm; in most cases, it would be the peasant and working class to

experience the likes of Puck. In this scene, he so disorients Demetrius and Lysander in

the woods that they eventually relinquish the masculine identity to which they had clung

in their hot pursuit of Hermia. He then has the wherewithal to rearrange the youthful

lovers and re-order the marriage arrangement better than it had been before.

Szakloczai’s defines the trickster as “an obscure, ambivalent, shadowy figure …

always marginal characters: outsiders, as they cannot trust or be trusted … they are not to

be taken seriously, given their affinity with jokes, storytelling, and fantasizing,”

(Szakolczai 155). How well does Puck match this description? A shadowy figure he

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readily admits to in the epilogue, “if we shadows have offended” (5.1.440) and also

references his liege Oberon, “King of Shadows” (3.2.368). In Act II, scene 1, Puck

introduces himself to a fairy, describing himself as “that merry wanderer of the night,”

reiterating his shadow element; and he most certainly has an affinity with jokes: “jest(s)

to Oberon and make(s) him smile” (2.1.46-47). He continues to proudly catalogue

menacing acts, such as “lurking in a gossip’s bowl,” compelling her to spill her ale on

herself; or shapeshifting into a stool, so that in the most opportune time of an old woman

“telling the saddest tale” sidles out “from her bum, down topples she” (2.1.44-60).

Indeed, Puck is certain to make a fool’s foolishness known. According to Szakolczai,

tricksters and liminality are closely related. To add, as Van Gennep classifies rites, he

articulates the following example:

for a man to pass from group to group--for example, for a peasant to become an

urban worker … he must fulfill certain conditions, all of which have one thing in

common: their basis is purely economic or intellectual. On the other hand, for a

layman to enter the priesthood or for a priest to become unfrocked calls for

ceremonies, acts of a special kind, derived from a particular frame of mind. So

great is the incompatibility between the profane and the sacred worlds that man

cannot pass from one to another without going through an intermediate stage (Van

Gennep 1).

The “dream” is the intermediate stage for Bottom’s self-realization. Szakolczai

also contends that liminal rites must be done “under the authority of a master of

ceremonies” who helps the initiate pass through the threshold. This would be Puck, who

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at the threshold, signified by the hawthorn tree, ushers Bottom into the middle stage--a

place where his friends could still witness him in fear, but also where he could be

adorned by fairies. As with the male lovers in Act III, Bottom is thrusted in the liminal

phase in the deep woods where he settles into being-in-the-world and his relationship

with his surroundings.

For Shakespeare, the stage itself is a space of liminality and Puck indeed

functions as the “master of ceremonies” in Van Gennep’s terminology, or “master of

revels” in Montrose’s. Consider Puck’s address to the audience, where, in the epilogue,

he unconventionally “moves across” from the action on the stage, through the proverbial

“fourth wall,” as they say in theater, in order to speak directly to the audience. He

reminds the audience that however deeply transported they were over the course of the

play, “it was no more yielding but a dream” (5.1.445). The final monologue can refine

the connections to ecology.

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,

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If we have unearned 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 (4.1.440-455)

Puck’s reference to “we shadows” not only refers to the mysterious and vague

embodiments of nature, as in Titania and the fairies, but also the actors who performed

the play. There is a sense of inclusivity and egalitarianism in these words. He equates

the nature spirits with the actual actors. At the same time, the audience must calibrate

their own subjective experience--one’s imagination so commits to the drama, that by the

close, they have to reintegrate back into material world. Spontaneous experience

proceeds reflection, but it is not enough to simply stay in reflective moment forever, or

the experience will be nothing more than “a weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a

dream”; we must internalize our experience and live as interrelated beings with non-

human life forms. A call to egalitarianism is reiterated when Puck implores of the

audience to “Give me your hands, if we be friends/And Robin shall restore amends”

(4.1.454-455). Montrose suggests the egalitarian decorum of the playhouse, where the

actors entertained customers of all ranks, not just royal subjects (Montrose 202). We are

also reminded of the first principle of deep ecology, that of biocentric egalitarianism

which holds that non-human living beings have equal intrinsic value to humans. Deep

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ecology denies differential valuation of organisms (Devall and Sessions 67-69). Perhaps

these lines hint at inquisition to the hierarchical structures that are not only prevalent in

the play but allegorical to Elizabethan society. Puck’s final words can therefore be

interpreted as a call to action to deepen our ecological identity.

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CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

It can be said that the works of William Shakespeare have managed to endure

over 400 years, not only because the universal themes of his plays still speak to the

human heart, but also because readers and actors sought to find contemporary relevance

in his work. It has been my hope that this paper could expand ecological awareness

beyond the field of science and environmental ethics. It is an attempt to broaden the

ways in which we respond to the ecological crisis, not just through direct action and

policy, but also through the humanities.

When we consider our environmental crisis, there are usually three disciplines to

which we turn: science, ethics, and law. Environmental science informs discussions

around environmental ethics, which prepares reform ecologist to implement policy.

Certainly we need laws and other observations of regular patterns in the world. But part

of Naess’ advocacy is studying our place in the Earth household by studying ourselves as

part of the organic whole (Devall-Sessions 66). Is it not one of the aims of the

humanities, as well, to study conscious experience of cultures and society, to be more

fully developed human beings? In the last chapter, I mentioned Wilhelm Dilthey, who

championed the idea of the humanities as a service to the world; that it offers a wide

realm of possibilities to experience what we usually are unable to within the limits of our

own lives. So it is that this paper communicates the experience of being ecologically

realized and communicating an understanding of nature-based expressions.

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This is the special role of the humanities. There is a certain level of import to be

able to witness our ecological selves within the disciplines of the humanities. The beauty

of Shakespeare is that his works are “open-ended.” The history of humans’ relationship to

the environment is not new, but exploring this history through Shakespeare with an

ecocritical lens, is. The humanities also has a responsibility to respond to the problems of

climate crisis and environmental conflicts, in deeper, more expansive ways.

1

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