From the ridiculous to the sublime: Ovidian and Neoplatonic registers in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Publication: Early Modern Literary Studies

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2006 Matthew Steggle

From the ridiculous to the sublime: Ovidian and Neoplatonic registers in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Sarah Carter

Warwick University

sarah_carter78@yahoo.com

Carter, Sarah. "From the ridiculous to the sublime: Ovidian and Neoplatonic registers in A Midsummer Night's Dream". Early Modern Literary Studies 12.1 (May, 2006) 2.1-31 .



A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) is a play about love and the codification of desire. The text plays with the conventions of romantic love and desire as sexual partnerships are shown to be forged in battle, magically controlled, thwarted by social systems and potentially tragic. Intertextual influences are discernible from multitudinous systems of thought. Though these include the prominent philosophical consideration of love of the Renaissance Neoplatonists, the presence of Ovidian registers, widely considered to be counter-Plato',[1] establishes a conflict of ideals within the text. This essay explores the relationship between divine, Platonic love and Ovidian bestial love in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It will consider the philosophical intention and early modern reinterpretation of inspirational material, as well as the reappearance of common mythological signifiers in the less ambiguous text of Thomas Heywood's Love's Mistress (1636). Myths are of course responsive to the forms and pressures of the time of their reproduction, and therefore A Midsummer Night's Dream is interesting in its representation and interrogation of the heterosexual love-relationship within disparate constructs of the nature of love.

At first glance, both Neoplatonic and Ovidian aspects of A Midsummer Night's Dream can be noted. The fairies' represent the divine aspect of the play. They are ambiguous conglomerations of myth, demonstrated by the common Renaissance substitution of English folklore fairies for classical nymphs and goddesses. The communion of the divine with the mortal in the play points toward a demonstration of Neoplatonic philosophy. However, sexual infatuation of the divine for the mortal is common to Ovid's Metamorphoses, as is the peripheral setting of the forest. The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is taken from Ovid (Metamorphoses 4. 55-168), and rarely is love considered using the linguistic codes of Neoplatonic ideals.

The Neoplatonists place humanity between the divine and the bestial, between the extremities of sensual lusts and divine understanding. As Peter Bembo explains preceding his discourse on love in Baldassare Castiglione's Il libro del cortegiano (1528): . in our soule there be three manner waies to know, namely, by sense, reason, and understanding: of sense there ariseth appetite or longing which is common to us with brute beasts: of reason ariseth election or choice, which is proper to man: of understanding, by the which man may be partner with Angels, ariseth will.'[2] The aim of humanity should be to ascend to the divine and leave behind the sensual appetites associated with animals, and this is facilitated through love. The fourth book of The Courtier, based on Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium, explains that love is the desire for beauty. Earthly beauty is a refraction of Divine Beauty, so the desire for a beautiful person is a potential move toward communion with the Divine, the Platonic One'. The mediation between divine and earthly love and beauty is explained in an appropriation of classical myth with the creation of two versions of the goddess Venus, Venus Coelestis and Venus Vulgaris. According to Neoplatonic thought the celestial Venus stimulates divine love and the latter is concerned with earthly, corporeal love and procreation. However, another side of the earthly Venus exploits humanity's susceptibility to sensual desires. The two Venuses are attended by separate anthropomorphic Loves', amor divinus and amor vulgaris, both of which are, according to Ficino, virtuous and praiseworthy' in the pursuit of beauty.[3] There also exists, usually separated from ordinary amor vulgaris, bestial love, amor ferinus: purely physical, sensual desire .[4] The Neoplatonists thereby identify three ways of life, the chaste Contemplative Life, following divine love; the Active Life, following terrestrial vulgar' love; and the Voluptuous' Life, following bestial love, where contemplation or procreation is abandoned for sensual pleasure.[5]

It is easy to discern how Ovid's sexually liberal, sometimes facetious writings such as Amores, the Ars Amatoria and the Metamorphoses associate him with bestial love. Furthermore, many of the stories of the Metamorphoses literalise the metaphor of man's bestial nature in metamorphosis and sexual bestiality. The sixteenth-century moralisers of pagan myth attempted to reconcile the Metamorphoses with a more virtuous philosophy hidden in the fantastic fables. Arthur Golding writes in his 1567 translation's Introductory Epistle': For as there is no creature more divine than man as long

As reason hath the sovereintie and standeth firme and strong:

So is there none more beastly, vyle and devilish, than is hee,

If reason giving over, by affection mated be.' (565-8).[6]

However, this potential accordance with Neoplatonic theory remained secondary to Ovid's salacious reputation.

A Midsummer Night's Dream opens with Theseus reminding Hippolyta how he won thy love doing thee injuries' (1.1.16-17), and Egeus' anger at Hermia's disobedience in not loving the man he chooses. Rebellion against regulation of desire through the patriarch is evident. However, neither is the play full of unrestricted Ovidian desire. Lysander articulates a key Neoplatonic conceit, described above, when attempting to convince Helena his love has refocused. The will of man is by his reason swayed,' he claims, And, touching now the point of human skill, / Reason becomes the marshal to my will, / And leads me to your eyes' (2.2.121-126). Unfortunately, reason and will have nothing to do with his desire for Helena's beauty; he is drugged, as is Titania in her potentially Neoplatonic communion with Bottom. As Bottom later comments, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.' (3.1.127-8). Such light-hearted representations of Neoplatonism suggest a pastiche (rather than a mockery) of philosophical theory. The text could be said to be a dialogic exploration of the nature of love, and as such displays a range of style in both acknowledgment and repudiation.

The metamorphosis of Bottom has clear predecessors in Ovidian metamorphoses, including the ass ears of Midas (Metamorphoses 11. 173-94), and in Apuleius' second century novel, The Golden Ass. Apuleius' novel raises conflicting arguments. Apuleius was a Middle' Platonist, and an important source for western medieval Platonists. As a Platonic text, The Golden Ass moves from the narrator's amor ferinus with Fotis, the maid of a witch, through the transformation of Apuleius into an ass as a result of his curiosity concerning his lover's mistress, to divine communion with the goddess Isis, a version of the moon goddess' (188).[7] Isis releases Apuleius from his daily humiliation and maltreatment on the condition he become a priest. The narrator's bestial nature is literalised in his metamorphosis, and he ascends from being truly the humblest of beasts to a chaste life contemplating the divine by way of traditional physical torment and suffering. The turning point occurs when Apuleius, as an ass, is coerced into public sexual bestiality with a criminal. It should be noted that Apuleius is not perturbed by his private sexual gratification with a rich noblewoman, a situation which foresees Titania's adoration of Bottom, but the new proposal horrifies him, I was tempted to commit suicide rather than defile myself and be put to everlasting shame by bedding down with this wicked creature before the eyes of the entire amphitheatre' (184). The ass flees, and is finally susceptible to the goddess' first visitation.

It was in this Neoplatonic context that The Golden Ass was first published in England in 1469, as part of a compendium of Platonic philosophy, Lucii Apuleii Platonici Madaurensis...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.