I prithee, gentle mortal, sing again

[moon_custafer]

 Lately I’ve been thinking about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and now I’ve begun wondering just why Titania reconciles to Oberon at the end, except that the plot requires it. I mean, if I had a fight with my husband, and his response was to cast a spell causing me to fall in love with someone else (never mind someone with an ass’s head), then wake me out of it — I’d be even angrier at him.

A glance at AO3 suggests others have asked this question; and a scholarly article on Shakespearean fanfic mentions a piece that was apparently up on fanfiction.net in 2001 that sounds wonderful and sad, but which no longer seems to be there.

(ok really I kind of want Titania to say “wait, the guy with the ass’s head treated me better than you, I’m out of here.”)

Comments

[batwrangler]

>scholarly article on Shakespearean fanfic

Link, please?

[moon_custafer]

http://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/spovsc/vol1/iss2007/6/

[batwrangler]

Was this the one you were interested in?
https://web.archive.org/web/20021021170950/http://www.angelfire.com:80/realm/arkaidy/autumn.html

Working links to all the parts:
https://web.archive.org/web/20021014101549/http://www.angelfire.com:80/realm/arkaidy/trilogy.html

[moon_custafer]

Yes! Thank you!

ETA --
Well that was rather satisfying, or at least as satisfying as it thematically could be (poor old Nick Bottom). I’m still unsure how I feel about the name “Talia Bertram,” but then the story follows the convention of the original play in making the setting Not Really Very Greek.

[sovay]

just why Titania reconciles to Oberon at the end, except that the plot requires it.

In the one incredible high school production I saw about seven years ago, it worked because Oberon and Titania were played so nonhuman: (a) that's my preferred interpretation of the fairies anyway (b) it made his ensorcellment of her much less spiteful to begin wth, more the rules of some game we don't play by. Waking clear-eyed to see the ass-headed human still asleep at her side, she exclaimed in disgust, then laughed as if it were truly, uncomplicatedly funny. She slanted a knowing look at Oberon on "With these mortals on the ground," as if confident that the four lovers had not been part of the original stratagem, and he looked a little awkward about that part. You imagined them both tricksters, and this the latest fair game. I've never seen that before or since, but I really liked it.

As to the other side, I once wrote this poem.

[conuly]

That's the way to make it work.

[heliopausa]

My answer was to find the missing scenes which explained it, and also the out-of-whack time-frame of the play.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/8115559/chapters/18601654

[moon_custafer]

"Natheless, heart up, Will! Sir G. has said that he will beg from his great Cousin that Place and Payment which his Fthr held, and we shall one day be in funds again, please Heaven and his Ldshp, to afford Storm-Engines, Bears, Flyings Aloft and I wot not else, and you shall then, an’t please you, write us such a Tempest as now we only dream of."

^ Love that bit.

[heliopausa]

That chapter was a lot of fun to write! Thank you for reading. :)

[sovay]

My answer was to find the missing scenes which explained it, and also the out-of-whack time-frame of the play.

I like that.

[heliopausa]

There was a lot to try to sort out! :)

[moon_custafer]

I don’t know if anyone still reads Robertson Davies, but there’s a great bit in Lyre of Orpheus where the characters, who have decided to reconstruct and mount a lost 19th-century opera, suffer a setback when they discover that a partial libretto exists, but that while the composer was trying to do a Romantic work about King Arthur, the librettist wanted a jolly panto and stuck Oberon, Titania, and Puck into the plot purely so that Puck could be played by an attractive young woman in tights. Oh, and Puck keeps irreverently referring to the fairy monarchs as “Tit and Nob.” It’s like Gilbert and Wagner in reverse:
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/rec.music.opera/QDIlXXHBsZQ/Ag7WTAPeoicJ

[batwrangler]

I'll have to try that. I'm currently listening to the audiobook IF WE WERE VILLIANS by M.L. Rio which is a love-letter to Shakespeare and a murder mystery set in a tiny art college....

[moon_custafer]

I should note there are also some things I strongly dis-like about The Lyre of Orpheus.