Bottom's Fluid Ontology

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems at first to be a simple romantic comedy with simultaneous subplots of star-crossed lovers escaping a strict patriarchal rule (Hermia and Lysander against Egeus and the old Athenian law), of unrequited love eventually turned right (Helena and Demetrius), of a lover’s spat resolved in the end, with a little bit of revenge thrown in (Oberon and Titania, Titania and Bottom), of two nobles marrying (Theseus and Hippolyta), and of rude Athenians preparing and performing a play for the nobles’ wedding day. Some critics, like G.K. Hunter, see the play as “a pattern of attitudes, none of which is central and all of which cast light on the others” and as “two-dimensional” in contrast to Shakespeare’s later comedies (Hunter, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” 14, 19). Critic Madeleine Forey also sees that none of the characters are central in the play and thus turns to Shakespeare’s source, Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, for a unifying meaning, stating that Shakespeare has put Golding’s anxiety over his translation into the Mechanicals’ anxiety over their play for Theseus (Forey, “Bless Thee, Bottom, Bless Thee! Thou Art Translated!”, 323); but in doing so, the play, and the characters in action in the play, disappear. Others reinstate the play as the locus for meaning, but with Theseus and Hippolyta as the central subplot, as asserted by David Lowenthal, Northrop Frye, and Harold Goddard. Some, like John Mebane, see the young lovers’ pattern of confusion in the woods as the central subplot, a pattern of “discordia concors” which works its way out in “mathematical regularity” (Mebane, “Structure, Source, and Meaning in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” 258-59). But again, the humanity of these characters is lost.

Ironically, the humanity of the characters becomes restored in looking at the fairy world of Oberon and Titania, especially with Bottom, the only mortal who sees the fairies. Critic John Allen analyzes Bottom and Titania’ relationship as the human intersecting the divine (Allen, “Bottom and Titania,” 109) and Marjorie Garber sees the fairy world as metaphor for the dream state as imagination (Garber, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” 59). As seen in Allen and Garber, the fairy night world gives meaning to the human day world, but the awareness of the human day world to this night world lies in Nick Bottom the Weaver, who is also Actor, Creator, Pyramus, Ass, Beloved, Believer, Lover-Pyramus, and Actor-Teacher of Love. In the Bottom episodes in the play, Bottom’s roles, i.e., his ontology, changes many times; in essence, Bottom’s ontology is fluid, even before his literal transformation into an Ass, and after his encounter with divinity, Bottom’s ontology, although still fluid, becomes more meaningful with the self-knowledge of what lies beyond the human day world and, thus, what lies beyond merely “mortal grossness.” In other words, Bottom’s fluid ontology allows him to have a better understanding of what it means to be Man in relation to the transcendental realm; with this self-knowledge he is able to convey some of that meaning to other mortals, i.e., Theseus, Hippolyta, and the young lovers, who can only react to the unknown, invisible, and (for Theseus) unbelieved forces of transcendence upon the mortal, as seen in the metaphor of erotic Love.

One first sees Bottom in Act I.ii as Nick Bottom the Weaver, an Actor in Quince’s company. Although Bottom is only one actor among actors, and Quince is the director, it is Bottom who gives Quince directions: “First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on, then read the names of the actors, and so grow to a point” and then “A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.” (I.ii.7-9, 13-15). Bottom is being a weaver, who weaves together the company, actor and director, into one man, i.e., himself. As Quince assigns the roles of “The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby” (I.ii.11-12), he gives Bottom the role of Pyramus, the lover. Bottom the Weaver, however, does not want to be merely a lover: he wants to be a tyrant, Thisby, and the lion, too (I.ii.24, 45, 64). Thus, in this introduction to Bottom, one sees that Bottom is undifferentiated Man, or an Everyman, who is open to all roles in the mortal world – lover, tyrant, woman, even beast. Although Quince insists that Bottom, and only Bottom, can play Pyramus, the lover, Bottom is reluctant to align himself with that one role, as seen in the dispassionate word “well” which prefaces his acceptance: “Well, I will undertake it” (I.ii.81). Bottom even has a last directorial tone to the scene when he dismisses Quince with “Enough. Hold, or cut bowstrings” (I.ii.99). Bottom’s arrogance in this scene is the arrogance of an Adam (but without the Eve) who is in charge of all of Creation but is not exactly sure who he is or what he is supposed to be doing as the pinnacle of Creation.

One next sees Bottom in Act III.i, in the woods just outside of Athens, at night. During that time, the young lovers have been confused with the Oberon’s love-juice, and Titania sleeps, anointed with the love-juice. Bottom still continues his roles as Actor/Pyramus/Director, but now he has added Creator, who creates additional scenes for Pyramus and Thisby in order to clarify and show the interrelation of the world of day reality and the world of night imagination for the audience: “Write me a prologue… tell them that I Pyramus am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver” and “[Y]ou must name his [Snug’s] name, and half his face must be seen through the lion’s neck” and “Some man or other must present Wall; and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some roughcast…; and let him hold his fingers thus” (Act III.i.15-19, 36-37, 68-71). Although Miller suggests that Bottom’s concern for adding these scenes shows that “Bottom acts as if the imagination did not exist at all” (Miller, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” 261), Bottom, as Creator, actually shows in this scene that the division between day reality and night imagination is illusory and that products of the imagination, e.g., the play Pyramus and Thisby, can be more powerful than the Theseus’ “cool reason” and Lysander’s “Reason,” images from day reality. Also, Bottom’s grammatical mood and diction, “Write me,” “You must,” and “Let him,” are in the imperative mood and are commands, creating something out of nothing (to use Theseus’ phrasing from Act V.i.16), which is reminiscent of God the Creator’s fiat lux.

But lest Bottom’s role as a God-like Director gets to his head (to use a bad cliché), Puck puts an Ass-head on him as a visceral reminder that Man is not God. But Bottom already knows that he is not a God, but only an Ass – but being an Ass seems to be a very rich role for Man:

Bottom: I see their knavery. This is to make an ass of me, to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can. I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid. (Act III.i.104-11)

Many critics have commented on Bottom’s transformation into an Ass. Says Allen, “Bottom as ass is the epitome of common sense” (Allen, 107). Says Garber, “Bottom is metaphorically an ass, a fool or buffoon. His ‘translation’ is therefore in other terms a kind of identity, bringing the hidden to the surface through a literal symbol, the ass’s head” (Garber, 69). Jan Kott states that the ass “is the ritualistic and carnivalesque mediator between heaven and earth” (Kott, “The Bottom Translation,” 74). Bottom’s asshood does literally ground Bottom the Man, lest he rise too far in his creative powers into hubris. But it is Man’s desire to rise beyond himself, while realizing that he cannot possibly do so by himself, which suggests that Man by himself is merely a fool, an ass. But an ass also serves as a beast of burden for a greater being, such “as the ass on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem for the last time” (Kott, 74), which is the origin of the ass as a mediator between heaven and earth. Metaphorically speaking, the Ass becomes the symbol for Man as divided being, immortal soul and mortal body. In his translation into a literal ass, Bottom’s previous roles (Weaver/Actor/Pyramus/Director/Creator) fall away, and he is left ontology naked, thus ontology open, for Titania, an immortal, to find him.

Titania gives her irrational divine love to an undeserving Bottom, and Bottom is very much aware that he is indeed undeserving:

Bottom: Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and

What Bottom becomes, in relation to Titania, is a Beloved, which is usually a woman’s role in romantic comedy, as stated by Helena; women “should be woo’d, and were not made to woo” (II.i.242). Bottom becomes metaphorically Thisby, just as he has become literally a beast (although not a lion). He is the beloved of a divinity, and the literal erotic love between Bottom the Beloved and Titania the Lover serves as an allegory for the metaphysical love between Man and God. Man, because of his folly, his sins, his mortal grossness, does not deserve the love, mercy, and forgiveness that God gives him; nevertheless, God continues to give. In the scene in which Bottom asks Titania’s fairies’ names, and he expounds upon their names, it is reminiscent of Milton’s Adam, first awakening from his creation and then naming the animals around him. Miller has commented that Bottom does not stand in awe of the fairies because he is a “literalist” whose “failure to grasp the wonder and opportunity of his predicament reflects our common failure to prevent worldliness from dimming our vision and blunting our hopes” (Miller, 262). What Miller fails to grasp is that Bottom’s common sense reaction to Titania and the fairies is because he does not have the artificial, rational division of fairy and “worldliness;” fairies and the divine are real as much as he and oats are real. He is ontologically open, and he accepts his lover as is, not as an opportunity for him to ask for grand and wonderful things. As the Believer as Beloved, he accepts the gifts of the Lover and does not ask for anything higher beyond his own station: As one sees in Act IV.i, he does not ask for ambrosia; he asks for “a peck of provender…good dry oats…a bottle of hay…[and] a handful or two of dried pease” (IV.i.31-37).

Before this scene, Oberon and Puck have righted the young lovers to their respective mates, have created concord out of discord. After Bottom sleeps, Oberon removes the love-juice from Titania’s eyes and she and Oberon are similarly reconciled. Although Titania now looks upon Bottom with “eyes [that] loathe” (IV.i.79), her change does not cancel the gifts which Bottom has received from her, as seen in his waking:

Bottom receives what Titania has given him – the knowledge that Man is at the bottom of his ontology an Ass and yet is still beloved by God the Lover – as a dream, but it is the kind of dream the faithful have, “a most rare vision.” In the human day world, such a vision seems incredible because it is past reason, “past the wit of man,” and any man who would speak of this dream directly would be “an ass” and “a patched fool.” As one has seen in Bottom’s transformation (literal and spiritual), man at the bottom of his being is an ass, but the perception of an ass in the human day world is not as Beloved but as “patched fool.” In trying to express his ineffable transformation, Bottom garbles St. Paul, which, as Garber notes, “is not only a sign of his ignorance but also, and more importantly, of his radical wisdom” (Garber, 79). This “radical wisdom” is, as critic Helen Peters states, the “knowledge of the transformational quality of love which had been revealed to him in his dream” (Peters, “Bottom: Making Sense of Sense and Scripture,” 47). Bottom garbles St. Paul’s ordered senses because his senses cannot comprehend the knowledge that he has received from Titania, and the vision that he received is not the kind that can be perceived through the “mortal grossness” of bodily senses. Only in the daylight does Bottom feel awe towards the night vision such that he cannot express it in rational terms. Says Harold Goddard, Bottom’s waking is “the awakening of spiritual life in the animal man” (Goddard, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” 80). But the need to express it is there, as seen in his desire to have “Peter Quince write a ballet of this dream.” Says Peters, “with his earthy common sense and showmanship, [his knowledge would] be a suitable vehicle for revealing the truth about love’s power even if he were unable to discuss the details of the experience itself” (Peters, 46). Out of awe, which no reason can comprehend, faith gives rise to the creative imagination, and his Creator role, which one has seen earlier before Bottom’s transformation, is also transformed, aligned with this higher vision. Says critic J. Dennis Huston, “Bottom will have his dream transformed into art,” (Huston, “Bottom Waking,” 213), which is the only form the day reality will accept such a vision, as one will see in the court’s reception – especially Theseus, who distrusts the imagination with his “cool reason” (V.i.6) -- of Pyramus and Thisby.

In Act V.i, we see the Mechanicals perform their play before Theseus and his court. As Quince says in his prologue, they are there not “to content you” but “by their show, /You shall know all” (V.i.113,116-17), i.e., they are there to teach. Says Peters, “Bottom may, or may not, have wanted to instruct Theseus and his Court in the fact that love may have brought the lovers perilously close to death, as the ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ plot points out anyway, but he does want to inform them that reconciliation has been achieved through love by stating, ‘the wall is down that parted their fathers’” (Peters, 47). Having been the Beloved, Bottom becomes Pyramus the Lover as teacher of the creative imagination – including the levels of reality found in art – and of Love, which transcends those levels. As the Lover who transcends the levels of art, Bottom is able to cross the imaginative barrier between actor and audience, speaking freely to Theseus out of his Pyramus character: “You shall see it will fall pat as I told you” (V.i.84). In fact, the Mechanicals do seem to sway Theseus’ initial mistrust of imagination:

What Theseus may realize in Pyramus and Thisby is that star-crossed love, unlike what has happened in his own dukedom by his own decision to allow the lovers to marry whomever they want, always ends in death, but the imaginative world that is the little play becomes the scapegoat of the tragic elements of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As Garber suggests, “The play-within-a-play thus absorbs and disarms the tragic alternative, the events which did not happen. Art becomes a way of containing and triumphing over unbearable reality” (Garber, 81). Art, like Titania, has the power of purging the “mortal grossness” of human day reality. But as Mebane suggests, “[t]o affirm beauty and creativity is at times more difficult in life than in art. It requires an act of faith which Shakespeare associates with the visionary imagination…. [B]eauty and order are everywhere if we exert an imagination informed by love” (Mebane, 264). The assertions Theseus makes to Hippolyta, as seen above, not only apply to how one perceives and reacts to art but also how one perceives and reacts to one’s life. This importance of man’s “imagination informed by love” is Bottom’s lesson to the Court party, a lesson learned under Titania’s tutelage, culminating in his “rare vision.”

To review, Bottom’s ontology is fluid, even before his literal transformation into an Ass; and after his encounter with divinity, Bottom’s ontology, although still fluid, becomes more meaningful with the self-knowledge of what lies beyond the human day world and, thus, what lies beyond merely “mortal grossness.” Bottom’s fluid ontology allows him to have a better understanding of what it means to be Man in relation to the transcendental realm and to the everyday, mortal realm, as seen in the metaphor of Lover and Beloved. With this self-knowledge he is able to convey some of that meaning to other mortals, e.g. Theseus, Hippolyta, and the young lovers, who interact with the unknown and the invisible in their relationships with one another and in their relationship as audience and actor in the dream transformed into art, Pyramus and Thisby and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bottom, far from being a minor character in one pattern of a multi-pattern play, becomes the intermediary between the mortal and immortal and is the humanus genus, the Everyman, in the play, wherein the audience member see him and end up seeing themselves and their relation to God. Says Mebane, “Human life is a dream of God’s, and human dreams may touch upon the highest spiritual truths” (Mebane, 261). Thus, this seemingly simple play touches upon the highest spiritual truth.

Works Cited

Allen, John A. “Bottom and Titania.” Shakespeare Quarterly 18.2 (1967): 107-17.

Forey, Madeleine. “ ‘Bless Thee, Bottom, Bless Thee! Thou Art Translated!’: Ovid, Golding, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The Modern Language Review 2 (1998): 321-29.

Frye, Northrop. “The Bottomless Dream.” Northrop Frye on Shakespeare. Ed. Robert Sandler. New Haven: Yale Univ Press, 1986. 34-50. Rpt. In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 117-32.

Garber, Marjorie B. “Spirits of Another Sort: A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Chapter 2. In Dream in Shakespeare: From Metaphor to Metamorphosis. By Marjorie B. Garber. New Haven: Yale Univ Press, 1974. 59-87.

Goddard, Harold C. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Chapter 11. In The Meaning of Shakespeare, Vol 1. By Harold C. Goddard. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1951. 74-80.

Hunter, G. K. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Chapter 1. In Shakespeare: The Late Comedies. By G. K. Hunter. London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1962. 7-20.

Huston, J. Dennis. “Bottom Waking: Shakespeare’s ‘Most Rare Vision.’” SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 13.2 (1973): 208-22.

Kott, Jan. “The Bottom Translation.” Trans. Daniela Miedzyrzecka. Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts Vol 1. Ed. Peggy A. Knapp and Michael A. Sturgin. Pittsburgh: Univ of Pittsburgh, 1981. 117-49. Rpt. In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 73-85.

Lowenthal, David. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Chapter 8. In Shakespeare and the Good Life: Ethics and Politics in Dramatic Form. By David Lowenthal. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefied, 1997. 259-271.

Mebane, John S. “Structure, Source, and Meaning in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 24.3 (1982): 255-70.

Miller, Ronald F. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Fairies, Bottom, and the Mystery of Things.” Shakespeare Quarterly 26.3 (1975): 254-68.

Peters, Helen. “Bottom: Making Sense of Sense and Scripture.” Notes and Queries 35 (233).1 (1988): 45-7.

[1] “Bottom’s exposition of his ‘most rare vision’ … is a garbled rephrasing of 1 Corinthians 2:9 ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.’ In the 1557 Geneva Bible’s version of the passage, Shakespeare would have found a sentence in the following verse that may have been a factor in the choice of ‘Bottom’ as his name for the sublimest bumpkin of them all: ‘But God hath opened them unto us by his Spirite, for the Spirite searcheth all things, yea, the bottom of Goddes secrets.’ Bottom’s epiphany… also calls to mind such biblical passages as Psalm 8:2, Matthew 21:16, and especially 1 Corinthians 1:19,25-31, where we read that ‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to nought things that are.’” (Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Everyman edition, 120)

Bottom’s Fluid Ontology Towards a Better Understanding of Man in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Works Cited