An evening wander through Shakespeare

Something happened.

I was just reading, and found someone…

myself.

Well, three versions of myself, actually: the past me, the present me and, perhaps, the future me.

Let us dive into this adventure: *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*. And go back to where it started — when things begin getting a little wobbly.

Nick Bottom is a mechanic and one of a group of ordinary men who decide to put on a play. He believes he is everything at once: a great dramatic lead, a comic genius and a wonderful lover. At one point he announces:

> “Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar that I will make the Duke say, ‘Let him roar again, let him roar again!’”

So, is Bottom a good egg?

Yes. I think he is. He has honest vibes, a touch of innocence, and a simplicity that is strangely disarming.

And, well, he is me.

Not the present me.

The future me.

Then there is Titania, Queen of the Fairies. She is speaking to her fairy attendants, telling them how to pamper and entice Bottom:

> “Pluck the wings from painted butterflies, to fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.”

Titania is gorgeous, and very much a “I go with it” kind of person. She also has, let’s be honest, rather terrible taste in friends and partners. Here she gets drugged, falls in love with a half-human, half-donkey creature — who happens to be Nick Bottom — and then, when the spell wears off, more or less shrugs and moves on.

She is in a flow.

Bad decisions? So what. Move on.

And she is me, too.

Not the present me, but the past me — the version of me that simply entered an experience without asking too many questions. The version of me that, as a child, could just go along with things and see what happened.

And then there is Puck.

Puck has done it. Bottom has the head of a donkey. Titania is in love with him. Two other people are in love with the wrong person. Everything has become gloriously chaotic.

And Puck is delighted.

> “Captain, our fairy queen is matched with a monster. […] Those things please me best that happen most topsy-turvy. […] What fools these mortals be!”

Puck is the spectator. The commentator. The one standing just outside the mess, watching everything unfold and saying:

*Look at these fools.*

And I can relate to that.

Unfortunately.

I can sit back, watch other people make a mess of things, analyse it, make a clever comment — and feel, for a moment, that I am above it all.

Puck feels safe because he isn’t really involved.

Interesting.

But the joke may be the other way round.

He gets to watch the adventure.

He doesn’t get to have it.

And at some point I thought: I’ve had enough of being Puck.

So how do I get out of this one?

And say hello to future me?

For that, I think Nick Bottom has something to teach me — although “teach” is probably already too serious a word.

The next morning, Bottom wakes up. Titania has left him. The whole strange love affair is over. The donkey’s head is gone.

And what does Bottom do?

He turns it into a dream.

> “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was…”

I love that.

And I missed something about it on my first reading. Bottom doesn’t just describe a wonderful dream. He turns the senses themselves around: the eye has not *heard*, the ear has not *seen*, the hand has not *tasted*.

It is strange, tender and magical.

For me, that is close to the emotional core of *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*.

And there is something else.

If Puck wanted to play a cruel joke on Bottom and Titania, he would probably expect chaos and humiliation.

But he doesn’t get it.

Bottom simply carries on.

He talks to everyone more or less as he did before. He doesn’t seem particularly traumatised by the whole business. There is something wonderfully simple about it.

You could almost say that Bottom wins against Puck.

Or that simplicity beats mischief.

There is some kind of life craft in that.

I just haven’t quite worked out what to call it yet.

It is amazing what Nick Bottom can do.

Unfortunately I can’t.

Not yet.

First, I’ve got a few things to take care of.

After a strange dream one night, I found something scribbled on a piece of paper. It was called the **Fairy Shoulders Formula**:

> Fairy shoulders-factor = subscribers × forest nights cowboy camping ÷ moonbeam angle × 0.42

Apparently, the weight of every subscriber and every like brings you back down to earth. Under-the-stars camping grants you a decent-sized donkey head. And if a beam of moonlight hits your forehead, you freeze into a motherboard.

There was something about a safety window, too.

The rest didn’t come through.

Oh my god.

I need to wear something on my head.

At this point, I am completely lost.

What is the bottom line here?

I need to get to the bottom of this.

Actually, I think I may have hit rock bottom.

Anyway, what does Nick Bottom have to say?

At the end of the play, he decides to have his strange experience turned into a song:

> “I will get my friend to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’ because it hath no bottom.”

That is funny.

I expected: *because it has a bottom.*

But Shakespeare turns it around.

*Bottom’s Dream — because it hath no bottom.*

And I think perhaps that is where I can start, too.

Just start.

Get into the groove.

Say hello to dream logic.

And perhaps even: let us be in love.

Because that is how the idea for the little ballad at the end of the video came about.

The three of us — my past self, my present self and my future self — are already becoming friends.

This is what we got up to.

A collaboration.

A little ballad inspired by Titania, Puck and Nick Bottom:

> *I read of old knights*
> *in an age built of glass,*
> *give away my crown*
> *to kiss my own past.*
>
> *Let the hardware grow cold,*
> *and the motherboard fry,*
> *I’ll sit on my bottom*
> *and learn how to sigh.*
>
> *And when the analytics fall,*
> *embrace feeling small,*
> *who’s there? —*
> *that one mortal soul*
> *to love most of all.*

What do you think?

Has it got the speed of moonbeams, divided by 0.42?

Is it a safety window divided by… well, I have absolutely no idea.

I guess it is a start.

And perhaps that is enough.

Maybe that’s one of the things I found in *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*: you don’t always have to understand the dream before you can enter it.

Sometimes you just have to follow it.

And perhaps that is why, after all this time, I found three versions of myself hiding in the same play.

The child who simply enters.

The adult who watches.

And the person I might still become — if I can stop watching for a moment and join the adventure.

So, if you have ever been reading something and suddenly thought:

**“Oh my God. Oh, my dear Bottom. This was written for me.”**

— I’d love to hear about it.