"ONE OF THIS CONFEDERACY" Reconsidering Athenian Stage Commentar y by Rob McClung No moment in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream provokes more laughter than the Rude Mechanical’s rendition of Pyramus and Thisbe. Penned by the play’s carpenter, Peter Quince, for the wedding entertainment of the King of Athens, it’s an interesting choice. The play tells the story of the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe who, just like Romeo and Juliet, kill themselves in the end. If you’re wondering why anyone would adapt that story for a wedding occasion, you’ve caught one of the many questionable choices made by the earnest actors in Midsummer. For over 400 years, audiences have laughed with the Athenians by delighting in the awkward script and acting of “hard-headed men who never labored in their minds till now.” The remark is Hippolyta’s, and it is one of the many witticisms that embellish the comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. The Athenians’ commentary makes audiences laugh; and by laughing with them, Shakespeare lures audiences to collectively identify with the Athenians. This is problematic when we interrogate their behavior and language because, simply put, the Athenians are bullies. Any form of intentionally harmful, repeated behavior constitutes bullying. This includes harassment, unwelcome conduct, and targeted attacks on gender, race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and language proficiency, among others. Bullies exploit the power imbalances between the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the native and the foreigner, the insider and the outsider. Bullying comes in many forms, but in all cases, victims are never capable of defending themselves. There is no question that the Athenians would find themselves in their school guidance counselor’s office were they enrolled as students today; they are all guilty of exploiting their elite status to denigrate the far less powerful Rude Mechanicals. 22
Remember that in the fictional world of ancient Athens there exists a fixed and grossly unequal social hierarchy. The Athenians belong to the class of the privileged, educated lawmakers, the ruling elite. The Rude Mechanicals fall under a decidedly less privileged group: the working class. “Rude” does not mean impolite, it simply means uncultured or unpolished; “Mechanicals” refers to their modest occupations as artisans. Snug, for example, is a joiner (akin to a carpenter); Snout is a tinker, (rather like a repairman). There is no question that the Athenians carry a prejudiced disdain from that sense of difference. Hippolyta utters the above line before even meeting her guests. Were the Mechanicals to hear that remark—or any subsequent during the performance—there would be no chance of objection or self-defensive action because the laws of Athens protect the king and his bride against acts of insubordination. All of the Mechanicals are targets of ridicule during the performance of Pyramus, but in the Britten-Pears libretto, the worst served is poor Robin Starveling, the tailor. Cast as “Moonshine,” Starveling has done his best with the materials he has found to represent his character: a lantern, a dog, and a thornbush. Starveling is perhaps the weakest because he most overtly suffers from stage fright. As he begins to stutter, Lysander, Demetrius, Theseus, and Hippolyta offer uninvited criticism. Lysander remarks that Starveling “should have worn the horns on his head,” teasing Starveling’s pronunciation of lantern as “lant-horn.” It would not be unlike a student teasing a peer who mispronounces an unfamiliar word in class due to a difference in culture, dialect, or vocabulary. With his words, Lysander openly ridicules Starveling. Starveling gets flustered; the text leaves no question about that. He restarts his line twice before giving up and improvising the rest: “All that I have to say is to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon, I the man I’ th’ moon, this thornbush my thornbush, and this dog my dog.”