One of Shakespeare’s favorite literary devices was to assign verse to noble characters and the villains while the more plebian characters in a story spoke in prose. This made the immediate nature of each character easily recognizable as soon as they began to speak. This is one of the literary devices employed in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” When the play opens the noble characters of Theseus and Hippolyta are on the stage and they speak in verse. Theseus concludes his speech to Hippolyta in Act I Scene I with the well known lines:
Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,
And won thy love doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.
As other characters enter and speak it is easy to discern their social status by their speech. This is evident when Egeus, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius enter. Each in turn speaks in verse and it is easy to discern they are all noble characters by this manner of speaking.
This literary device holds true for the plebian characters as well, they all speak in prose. As we are introduce to the misbegotten members of the poor makeshift theater troupe of Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, Quince and Starveling there is no rhyme or rhythm to their speech, it is just simple prose. When Bottom argues that he wants to play a tyrant it is not verse at all just spoken prose:
That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms; I will condole in some measure. To the rest:--yet my chief humour is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.
The fairies, as representatives of the divine, all speak in verse, even the little unnamed wandering fairy who opens Act II Scene I with Robin starts her speech with:
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire.
In Act III Bottom is not transformed into someone noble by Tatiana’s love, and does not speak in verse to her. At the same time, Tatiana is not debased by loving Bottom, even though he started out as one of the lower characters and went down from there. However, when the troupe takes to the stage to perform the play Pyramus and Thisbe in Act V Scene I they make the transformation to noble verse so that the Lion’s speech reads:
You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear
The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here,
When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am
A lion fell, nor else no lion's dam:
For, if I should as lion come in strife
Into this place, 'twere pity on my life.
Although it is not the finest verse and receives the comment “ a very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.” from Theseus. It is a transformation, Shakespeare’s’ way of speaking to the ennobling effect of the stage upon the players.
References
Shakespeare, William. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The Gutenberg Project. http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1445972&pageno=1 (accessed 2 12, 2012).
