25 May 2005 Wednesday

Oberon

the Oberon poem from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream I know a bank where the while thyme blows is a terrible thing to impose upon a 7th grader to memorize. What kind of 7th grade boy wants to be reciting a poem with the word “eglantine” in it to his class? What the hell is “eglantine”!?

Eglantine is apparently a type of rose, of all the nonsenses. Shakespeare didn’t know how to say “rose”. it has to be “musk-rose” or “eglantine”. grr to him for 7th graders everywhere.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:
A sweet Athenian lady is in love
With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;
But do it when the next thing he espies
May be the lady: thou shalt know the man
By the Athenian garments he hath on.
Effect it with some care, that he may prove
More fond on her than she upon her love:
And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.
~ William Shakespeare