127-483: Blood Royal is a 1929 novel by the English author Dornford Yates (Cecil William Mercer), the third in his Chandos thriller series. The story features the recurrent characters Richard Chandos (narrator) and George Hanbury, with their servants Bell and Rowley. Jonathan Mansel does not appear in this book. Chandos and Hanbury help Duke Paul to succeed as Prince of the fictional Principality of Reichtenburg in place of
254-424: A Rolls-Royce saying "We don't give advertisements". Yates' response was "..there are two kinds of automobiles - one is a Rolls and the other a motor-car. In Blood Royal I'm referring to a Rolls." The editor was reported to have laughed and conceded the point, but no serialisation of Blood Royal is known to have taken place. According to Mercer's biographer, AJ Smithers, the author's talent for this type of story
381-453: A "sexual radical", but that the play represented a "topsy-turvy world" or "temporary holiday" that mediates or negotiates the "discontents of civilisation", which while resolved neatly in the story's conclusion, do not resolve so neatly in real life. Green writes that the "sodomitical elements", " homoeroticism ", "lesbianism", and even "compulsory heterosexuality"—the first hint of which may be Oberon's obsession with Titania's changeling ward—in
508-420: A Marxist scholar and historian, writes that it is for the greater sake of love that this loss of identity takes place and that individual characters are made to suffer accordingly: "It was the more extravagant cult of love that struck sensible people as irrational, and likely to have dubious effects on its acolytes." He believes that identities in the play are not so much lost as they are blended together to create
635-496: A celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen Hippolyta . Most of the action occurs in the woodland realm of Fairyland , under the light of the moon. The play opens with Theseus and Hippolyta who are four days away from their wedding. Theseus is unhappy about how long he has to wait while Hippolyta thinks it will pass by like a dream. Theseus is confronted by Egeus and his daughter Hermia , who
762-470: A considerable store of imagination in his interaction with the representatives of the fairy world. He also argued that Bottom's conceit was a quality inseparable from his secondary profession, that of an actor. In 1872, Henry N. Hudson, an American clergyman and editor of Shakespeare, also wrote comments on this play. Kehler pays little attention to his writings, as they were largely derivative of previous works. She notes, however, that Hudson too believed that
889-580: A daughter to die if she does not do her father's will is outdated. Tennenhouse contrasts the patriarchal rule of Theseus in Athens with that of Oberon in the carnivalistic Faerie world. The disorder in the land of the fairies completely opposes the world of Athens. He states that during times of carnival and festival, male power is broken down. For example, what happens to the four lovers in the woods as well as Bottom's dream represents chaos that contrasts with Theseus' political order. However, Theseus does not punish
1016-696: A day pupil in 1899, his father selling his solicitor's practice in Kent and setting up office in Carey Street . Leaving Harrow in 1903, he attended University College, Oxford in 1904, where he achieved a Third in Law. At university, he was active in the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), becoming secretary in 1906 and president in 1907, his final year. He acted in the 1905 production of Aristophanes ’ The Clouds , of which
1143-462: A dream "past the wit of man". At Quince's house, Quince and his team of actors worry that Bottom has gone missing. Quince laments that Bottom is the only man who can take on the lead role of Pyramus. Bottom returns and the actors get ready to put on "Pyramus and Thisbe". In the final scene of the play, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the six workmen perform Pyramus and Thisbe in Athens. The mechanicals are so terrible at playing their roles that
1270-785: A final story from the Windsor of June 1919 in which the male characters have their story lines resolved in Salonika , during the Great War. The Interlude has a story entitled "And The Other Left", from the November 1914 Windsor , which is set on the Western Front with a unique set of characters. Book II returns to the 'Berry' characters, with two pre-war stories from the August and September 1914 Windsor , and three post-war stories from
1397-484: A liminal "dark of the moon" period full of magical possibilities. This is further supported by Hippolyta's opening lines exclaiming "And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities."; the thin crescent-shaped moon being the hallmark of the new moon's return to the skies each month. The play also intertwines the Midsummer Eve of the title with May Day , furthering
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#17327723850521524-572: A living as a dancer; this story never appeared in book form. Mercer decided not to return to the bar, and to concentrate on his writing. He and Bettine lived in Elm Tree Road, where their only child, Richard, was born on 20 July 1920. After the Great War, many ex-officers found that the rise in the cost of living in London precluded maintaining the style of life of a gentleman to which they had become accustomed; some looked beyond England. In 1922,
1651-466: A night of no Moon, but Lysander asserts that "there will be so much light in the very night they will escape that dew on the grass will be shining like liquid pearls." Also, in the next scene, Quince states that they will rehearse in moonlight, which creates a real confusion. It is possible that the Moon set during the night allowing Lysander to escape in the moonlight and for the actors to rehearse, then for
1778-585: A play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen, "the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe ". Quince reads the names of characters and bestows them on the players. Nick Bottom, who is playing the main role of Pyramus, is over-enthusiastic and wants to dominate others by suggesting himself for the characters of Thisbe, the Lion, and Pyramus at the same time. Quince insists that Bottom can only play
1905-484: A proper decorum . He found that the "more exalted characters" (the aristocrats of Athens) are subservient to the interests of those beneath them. In other words, the lower-class characters play larger roles than their betters and overshadow them. He found this to be a grave error of the writer. Malone thought that this play had to be an early and immature work of Shakespeare and, by implication, that an older writer would know better. Malone's main argument seems to derive from
2032-575: A secret plan to escape into the forest for Lysander's aunt's house, to run away from Theseus. Hermia tells their plans to Helena , her best friend, who pines unrequitedly for Demetrius, who broke up with Helena to be with her. Desperate to reclaim Demetrius's love, Helena tells Demetrius about the plan and he follows them in hopes of finding Hermia, his true lover. The mechanicals , Peter Quince and fellow players Nick Bottom , Francis Flute , Robin Starveling , Tom Snout and Snug plan to put on
2159-557: A sense of laying down individual identity for the greater benefit of the group or pairing. It seems that a desire to lose one's individuality and find identity in the love of another is what quietly moves the events of A Midsummer Night's Dream . As the primary sense of motivation, this desire is reflected even in the scenery depictions and the story's overall mood. In his essay "Preposterous Pleasures: Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night's Dream", Douglas E. Green explores possible interpretations of alternative sexuality that he finds within
2286-518: A series issued by J.M.Dent & Sons under the title Classic Thrillers . Further Yates' books in the series were Perishable Goods , with an introduction by Richard Usborne ; Blood Royal , with an introduction by A.J.Smithers; Fire Below ; She Fell Among Thieves , with an introduction by Ion Trewin ; Gale Warning ; Cost Price ; Red in the Morning ; An Eye For a Tooth ; and The Best of Berry , with an introduction by Jack Adrian. Following
2413-456: A simple family tree, showing them to be first cousins descended from two brothers and a sister. "Berry & Co." capture the English upper classes of the Edwardian era , still self-assured, but affected by changing social attitudes and the decline of their fortunes. As in many of Yates' books, grand houses, powerful motor cars, and foreign travel feature prominently in the 'Berry' stories. In
2540-411: A text and not acted on stage. In 1863, Charles Cowden Clarke also wrote on this play. Kehler notes he was the husband of famous Shakespearean scholar Mary Cowden Clarke . Charles was more appreciative of the lower-class mechanicals of the play. He commented favourably on their individualisation and their collective richness of character. He thought that Bottom was conceited but good natured, and shows
2667-513: A time when Shakespeare devoted primary attention to the lyricism of his works. The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers' Company on 8 October 1600 by the bookseller Thomas Fisher, who published the first quarto edition later that year. A second quarto was printed in 1619 by William Jaggard , as part of his so-called False Folio . The play next appeared in print in
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#17327723850522794-481: A type of haze through which distinction becomes nearly impossible. It is driven by a desire for new and more practical ties between characters as a means of coping with the strange world within the forest, even in relationships as diverse and seemingly unrealistic as the brief love between Titania and Bottom: "It was the tidal force of this social need that lent energy to relationships." The aesthetics scholar David Marshall draws out this theme even further by noting that
2921-422: Is a fantasy set in a lost realm, between Spain and France, where travellers encounter characters from nursery rhymes and fairy tales. A planned sequel, The Tempered Wind , is referred to in the quasi-autobiography, B-Berry and I Look Back , where Yates mentions abandoning the book as it failed to "take charge". This Publican features a scheming woman and her hen-pecked husband. Some critics have suggested that
3048-458: Is a group of characters in the satirical novel who style themselves as the 'Dornford Yates' club and who try to emulate the 'Master' in avoiding reality and a changing world. Sharpe was later hired by the BBC to adapt She Fell Among Thieves for television, and used the same satirical approach. In 1983 Sharpe wrote an introduction to a reprint of Yates' first Chandos thriller Blind Corner , one of
3175-601: Is guilty of "ungrateful treachery" to Hermia. He thought that this was a reflection of the lack of principles in women, who are more likely to follow their own passions and inclinations than men. Women, in his view, feel less abhorrence for moral evil , though they are concerned with its outward consequences. Coleridge was probably the earliest critic to introduce gender issues to the analysis of this play. Kehler dismisses his views on Helena as indications of Coleridge's own misogyny , rather than genuine reflections of Helena's morality. In 1837, William Maginn produced essays on
3302-432: Is in love with Lysander , and resistant to her father's demand that she marry Demetrius, whom he has arranged for her to marry. Enraged, Egeus invokes an ancient Athenian law before Duke Theseus, whereby a daughter needs to marry a suitor chosen by her father, or else face death. Theseus offers her another choice: lifelong chastity as a nun worshipping the goddess Diana , but the two lovers both deny his choice and make
3429-546: Is not a translation or adaptation of an earlier work, various sources such as Ovid 's Metamorphoses and Chaucer 's " The Knight's Tale " served as inspiration. Aristophanes ' classical Greek comedy The Birds (also set in the countryside near Athens) has been proposed as a source due to the fact that both Procne and Titania are awakened by male characters (Hoopoe and Bottom the Weaver) who have animal heads and who sing two-stanza songs about birds. According to John Twyning,
3556-423: Is their representation in art, where the action is self-reflective. Snider viewed Titania and her caprice as solely to blame for her marital strife with Oberon. She therefore deserves punishment, and Oberon is a dutiful husband who provides her with one. For failing to live in peace with Oberon and her kind, Titania is sentenced to fall in love with a human. And this human, unlike Oberon is a "horrid brute". Towards
3683-622: The Windsor Magazine , maintaining a relationship with this last until the end of the 1930s; after it closed he wrote for the Strand Magazine . He also assisted in the writing of What I Know (Mills & Boon, 1913) - US title King Edward As I Knew Him - the memoirs of C. W. Stamper, who had been motor engineer to King Edward VII . At the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Mercer was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in
3810-478: The 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters) , although his stories continued to appear in the Windsor until March 1915. In 1915, his regiment left for Egypt and, in November 1915 as part of the 8th Mounted Brigade, he was sent to the Salonika/Macedonian front where the war was in stalemate. Suffering severe muscular rheumatism he was sent home in 1917 and, although he was still in uniform,
3937-577: The First Folio of 1623. The title page of Q1 states that the play was "sundry times publickely acted" prior to 1600. According to Sukanta Chaudhuri, editor of the 2017 Arden edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, "The only firm evidence for the date of Dream is its mention in Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia, which appeared in 1598" (p. 283). Chaudhuri's exhaustive investigation of its original date of performance points to 1595 or 1596 (likely for
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4064-649: The Times reviewer said: " Among individual actors the best was Mr. C. W. Mercer, whose 'Strepsiades' was full of fun, and who possesses real comic talent. " After a small part in the 1906 production of Measure for Measure , in his final year, he appeared as 'Demetrius' in A Midsummer Night's Dream , and as 'Pedant' in The Taming of the Shrew , a production which included the professional actresses Lily Brayton as 'Katherine', and her sister Agnes as 'Bianca'. Among
4191-575: The War Office did not again post him. He eventually left the army in 1919. In June of that year the Windsor carried his first story since the end of the war. Since 1914, the Mercer family home had been Elm Tree Road, behind the north-west side of Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood , where his friends Oscar and Lily Asche were close neighbours. In autumn of 1919, he and Asche combined to write
4318-457: The classism of his era. He assumes that the aristocrats had to receive more attention in the narrative and to be more important, more distinguished, and better than the lower class. According to Kehler, significant 19th-century criticism began in 1808 with August Wilhelm Schlegel . Schlegel perceived unity in the multiple plot lines. He noted that the donkey's head is not a random transformation, but reflects Bottom's true nature. He identified
4445-530: The post-war Labour government ; the title derives from a description of members of the Conservative Party given in a 1948 speech by Labour Party MP and government minister Aneurin Bevan . Ne'er-Do-Well is a murder story narrated by Richard Chandos, with whom the investigating detective is staying. Wife Apparent was Yates's last novel, set in 1956. The 1919 musical play Eastward Ho!
4572-459: The "sexual blood shed by 'virgins'". While blood as a result of menstruation is representative of a woman's power, blood as a result of a first sexual encounter represents man's power over women. There are points in the play, however, when there is an absence of patriarchal control. In his book Power on Display , Leonard Tennenhouse says the problem in A Midsummer Night's Dream is the problem of "authority gone archaic". The Athenian law requiring
4699-415: The 1840s, found that there were many inconsistencies in the play, but considered it the most beautiful poetical drama ever written. In 1849, Charles Knight also wrote about the play and its apparent lack of proper social stratification . He thought that this play indicated Shakespeare's maturity as a playwright, and that its "Thesean harmony" reflects proper decorum of character. He also viewed Bottom as
4826-633: The 1950s, C.W. Mercer wrote two books of fictionalized memoirs, As Berry and I Were Saying and B-Berry and I Look Back , written as conversations between Berry and his family. They contain many anecdotes about his experiences as a lawyer, but are, in the main, an elegy for a past upper-class way of life. The 'Chandos' books, starting with Blind Corner , in 1927, marked a change in style and content, being thrillers set mainly in Continental Europe (often in Carinthia , Austria), wherein
4953-528: The County of Hampshire") and his family – his wife and cousin, Daphne, her brother, Boy Pleydell (the narrator), and their cousins Jonathan "Jonah" Mansel, and his sister, Jill. Collectively, they are "Berry & Co." Although all five appear in "Babes in the Wood", their precise relationships there are unstated, and Berry and Daphne are referred to as second cousins as late as Jonah & Co ; later stories feature
5080-567: The Mercers emigrated to France, where it was possible to live more cheaply, and where the climate was kinder to Mercer's muscular rheumatism . They chose the resort town Pau , in the western Pyrenees , in the Basses–Pyrénées département (now Pyrénées-Atlantiques ) – where lived a sizeable British expat colony, but when the Mercers moved in is unknown. In Dornford Yates – A Biography (1982), A.J. Smithers reports "exactly how he hit upon
5207-726: The United States four of his novels were serialized in Woman's Home Companion between 1933 and 1939, while others appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and Blue Book . His first story for The Windsor Magazine was "Busy Bees", in September 1911, and this and fourteen subsequent stories from that publication up to the July 1914 issue were republished in book form as The Brother of Daphne , in 1914. Some of
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5334-518: The basis of topical references and an allusion to Edmund Spenser 's Epithalamion , it is usually dated 1595 or early 1596. Some have theorised that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding (for example that of Thomas Berkeley and Elizabeth Carey ), while others suggest that it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John , but no evidence exists to support this theory. In any case, it would have been performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe . Though it
5461-442: The best-drawn character, with his self-confidence, authority, and self-love. He argued that Bottom stands as a representative of the whole human race. Like Hazlitt he felt that the work is best appreciated when read as a text, rather than acted on stage. He found the writing to be "subtle and ethereal", and standing above literary criticism and its reductive reasoning. Also in 1849, Georg Gottfried Gervinus wrote extensively about
5588-582: The caprices of superficial love, and they lack in intellect, feeling, and ethics. Gervinus also wrote on where the fairyland of the play is located. Not in Attica , but in the Indies . His views on the Indies seem to Kehler to be influenced by Orientalism . He speaks of the Indies as scented with the aroma of flowers, and as the place where mortals live in the state of a half-dream. Gervinus denies and devalues
5715-421: The child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers. Oberon seeks to punish Titania. He calls upon Robin " Puck " Goodfellow, his "shrewd and knavish sprite", to help him concoct a magical juice derived from a flower called " love-in-idleness ", which turns from white to purple when struck by Cupid's arrow. When the concoction is applied to the eyelids of a sleeping person, that person, upon waking, falls in love with
5842-442: The couples are married. Marriage is seen as the ultimate social achievement for women while men can go on to do many other great things and gain social recognition. In The Imperial Votaress , Louis Montrose draws attention to male and female gender roles and norms present in the comedy in connection with Elizabethan culture. In reference to the triple wedding, he says, "The festive conclusion in A Midsummer Night's Dream depends upon
5969-414: The divorce was made absolute in September 1933. In the event, she returned to her family in the U.S. Less than a year later, on 10 February 1934, at Chertsey Register office, Mercer married Doreen Elizabeth Lucie Bowie, whom he met on a cruise in 1932. She was the daughter of London solicitor David Mather Bowie of Virginia Water . Elizabeth was twenty years younger than her new husband, who felt he had met
6096-415: The end of the 19th century, Georg Brandes (1895–6) and Frederick S. Boas (1896) were the last major additions to A Midsummer Night's Dream criticism. Brandes' approach anticipates later psychological readings , seeing Oberon's magic as symbolic and "typifying the sorcery of the erotic imagination". Brandes felt that in the play, Shakespeare looks inward at the "domain of the unconscious". Boas eschews
6223-543: The engagement of Mrs Perin’s oldest daughter Miss Bettine Stokes Edwards. . . ." suggesting that her father either was dead or divorced; her remarried mother then lived in New York City. Mercer and Bettine married at St James's, Spanish Place , in the Marylebone district of London, on 22 October 1919. The month of October also marked the appearance of a story in the Windsor called Valerie whose female lead made
6350-457: The extraordinary effects of magic . Based on this reasoning, Dryden defended the merits of three fantasy plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream , The Tempest , and Ben Jonson 's The Masque of Queens . Charles Gildon in the early 18th century recommended this play for its beautiful reflections, descriptions, similes, and topics. Gildon thought that Shakespeare drew inspiration from the works of Ovid and Virgil , and that he could read them in
6477-580: The first living thing they perceive. He instructs Puck to retrieve the flower with the hope that he might make Titania fall in love with an animal of the forest and thereby shame her into giving up the little Indian boy. He says, "And ere I take this charm from off her sight, / As I can take it with another herb, / I'll make her render up her page to me." Helena and Demetrius enter, with her continuously making advances towards Demetrius, promising to love him more than Hermia. However, he rebuffs her with cruel insults. Observing this, Oberon orders Puck to spread some of
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#17327723850526604-474: The forest, near Titania's bower , for their rehearsal. Quince leads the actors in their rehearsal of the play. Bottom is spotted by Puck, who (taking his name to be another word for a jackass ) transforms his head into that of a donkey . When Bottom returns for his next lines, the other workmen run screaming in terror: They claim that they are haunted, much to Bottom's confusion. Determined to await his friends, he begins to sing to himself. Titania, having received
6731-479: The glade. Once they fall asleep, Puck administers the love potion to Lysander again, returning his love to Hermia again, and cast another spell over the four Athenian lovers, claiming all will be well in the morning. Once they awaken, the lovers assume that whatever happened was a dream and not reality. Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania and orders Puck to remove the donkey's head from Bottom. The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on
6858-401: The goddess Aphrodite . According to Ovid 's Metamorphoses , Aphrodite took the orphaned infant Adonis to the underworld to be raised by Persephone . He grew to be a beautiful young man, and when Aphrodite returned to retrieve him, Persephone did not want to let him go. Zeus settled the dispute by giving Adonis one-third of the year with Persephone, one-third of the year with Aphrodite, and
6985-428: The guests laugh as if it were meant to be a comedy, and everyone retires to bed. Afterwards, Oberon, Titania, Puck, and other fairies enter, and bless the house and its occupants with good fortune. After all the other characters leave, Puck "restores amends" and suggests that what the audience experienced might just be a dream. It is unknown exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but on
7112-427: The hero–narrator, Richard Chandos, and colleagues, including George Hanbury and Jonathan Mansel (who also featured in the 'Berry' books), tackle criminals, protect the innocent, woo beautiful ladies, and hunt for treasure. These were originally published by Hodder and Stoughton although later they were re-issued by Ward Lock. It is the 'Chandos' novels to which Alan Bennett especially refers in naming Dornford Yates in
7239-510: The idea of a confusion of time and the seasons. This is evidenced by Theseus commenting on some slumbering youths, that they "observe The rite of May". Maurice Hunt, former Chair of the English Department at Baylor University , writes of the blurring of the identities of fantasy and reality in the play that make possible "that pleasing, narcotic dreaminess associated with the fairies of the play". By emphasising this theme, even in
7366-489: The incarnation of his fictional "Jill Mansel", thus did he call her "Jill" for the rest of his life. For him, Villa Maryland had many memories of Bettine, so he and Elizabeth decided to build a new house, named "Cockade". They chose a spot twenty-seven miles south of Pau, a little north-west of Eaux-Bonnes , on the road to the hamlet of Aas; the project is related in The House That Berry Built , wherein
7493-422: The incumbent, in the face of resistance from Duke Johann and Major Grieg. Commenting in 1958 through his character Boy Pleydell, the author acknowledged resemblances between his work and Anthony Hope 's The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau , specifically citing this novel and Fire Below . Blood Royal was as well-received when it appeared in July 1929 as his earlier Chandos books had been, and
7620-660: The issues of July, August and September 1919. The book's final story, "Nemesis", was written for, but rejected by, Punch ; subsequently, it appeared in the Windsor in November 1919, with the main character named "Jeremy"; for the book he became "Berry". "Nemesis" was written to the Punch length, and so is much shorter than most of the other stories in The Courts of Idleness . The Berry books are semi-autobiographical, humorous romances, often in short story form, and, in particular, feature Bertram "Berry" Pleydell ("of White Ladies, in
7747-605: The juice to the sleeping Lysander. Helena, coming across him, wakes him while attempting to determine whether he is dead or asleep. Upon this happening, Lysander immediately falls in love with Helena. Helena, thinking Lysander is mocking her, runs away. Lysander follows her. When Hermia wakes up after dreaming a snake ate her heart, she sees that Lysander is gone and goes out in the woods to find him. Meanwhile, Quince and his band of five labourers ("rude mechanicals ", as Puck describes them) have arranged to perform their play about Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus's wedding and venture into
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#17327723850527874-590: The loss of identity reaches its fullness in the description of the mechanicals and their assumption of other identities. In describing the occupations of the acting troupe, he writes "Two construct or put together, two mend and repair, one weaves and one sews. All join together what is apart or mend what has been rent, broken, or sundered." In Marshall's opinion, this loss of individual identity not only blurs specificities, it creates new identities found in community, which Marshall points out may lead to some understanding of Shakespeare's opinions on love and marriage. Further,
8001-557: The love potion, is awakened by Bottom's singing and immediately falls in love with him. (In the words of the play, "Titania waked, and straightway loved an ass.") She lavishes him with the attention of her and her fairies, and while she is in this state of devotion, Oberon takes the changeling boy. Oberon sees Demetrius still following Hermia. When Demetrius goes to sleep, Oberon condemns Puck's mistake and sends him to get Helena while he charms Demetrius's eyes. Upon waking up, he sees Lysander and Helena and instantly falls for her. Now, under
8128-409: The lovers and by applying a love potion to Queen Titania's eyes, forcing her to fall in love with an ass. In the forest, both couples are beset by problems. Hermia and Lysander are both met by Puck, who provides some comic relief in the play by confounding the four lovers in the forest. However, the play also alludes to serious themes. At the end of the play, Hippolyta and Theseus, happily married, watch
8255-440: The lovers for their disobedience. According to Tennenhouse, by forgiving the lovers, he has made a distinction between the law of the patriarch (Egeus) and that of the monarch (Theseus), creating two different voices of authority. This can be compared to the time of Elizabeth I , in which monarchs were seen as having two bodies: the body natural and the body politic. Tennenhouse says that Elizabeth's succession itself represented both
8382-438: The loyalty of Titania to her friend. He views this supposed friendship as not grounded in spiritual association. Titania merely "delight[s] in her beauty, her 'swimming gait,' and her powers of imitation". Gervinus further views Titania as an immoral character for not trying to reconcile with her husband. In her resentment, Titania seeks separation from him, for which Gervinus blames her. Gervinus wrote with elitist disdain about
8509-468: The magical juice from the flower on the eyelids of the young Athenian man. As Titania is lulled to sleep by her fairies, Oberon sneaks up and places the flower juice on her eyes, exiting the stage afterwards. Lysander and Hermia enter, lost and exhausted from the journey. Hermia rejects Lysander's advances to sleep together, and the two lie down on different corners. Puck enters and mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, not having seen either before, and administers
8636-713: The many useful friends Mercer made in the OUDS were Gervais Rentoul , who asked him to be his best man, and Lily Brayton's husband, actor Oscar Asche , later producer of the play Kismet , and writer of Chu Chin Chow . After university, Mercer took a caravanning holiday in Hampshire , with Asche, Lily, Agnes, and another theatrical couple, Matheson Lang and his wife, Hutin Britton ; both Asche and Lang recall that holiday in their memoirs. Mercer's third-class Oxford law degree
8763-442: The mechanicals of the play and their acting aspirations. He described them as homely creatures with "hard hands and thick heads". They are, in his view, ignorant men who compose and act in plays merely for financial reward. They are not real artists. Gervinus reserves his praise and respect only for Theseus, who he thinks represents the intellectual man. Like several of his predecessors, Gervinus thought that this work should be read as
8890-403: The mechanicals understand this theme as they take on their individual parts for a corporate performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. Marshall remarks that "To be an actor is to double and divide oneself, to discover oneself in two parts: both oneself and not oneself, both the part and not the part." He claims that the mechanicals understand this and that each character, particularly among the lovers, has
9017-435: The meeting by telling his actors "At the Duke's oak we meet". In a parallel plot line, Oberon , king of the fairies, and Titania , his queen, have come to the forest outside Athens. Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until she has attended Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her Indian changeling to Oberon for use as his "knight" or "henchman" since
9144-626: The monthly magazines. His first known published work, Temporary Insanity , appeared in Punch in May 1910 – this is the first known occasion of his use of his pen name – and his second, Like A Tale That is Told appeared in the Red Magazine in July 1910. The first known 'Berry' story to be published, Babes in the Wood , appeared in Pearson's Magazine in September 1910. None of these early stories
9271-670: The name of the house is "Gracedieu" (God's Grace). They did not enjoy long residence in Cockade. With France falling to the Wehrmacht in June 1940, the Mercers hurriedly arranged caretakers for Cockade, and then escaped the country – in company of visiting friends, Matheson Lang and wife – and traversed Spain en route to Portugal. They subsequently took ship for South Africa, arriving in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, in 1941. C.W. Mercer
9398-429: The original Latin and not in later translations. William Duff , writing in the 1770s, also recommended this play. He felt the depiction of the supernatural was among Shakespeare's strengths, not weaknesses. He especially praised the poetry and wit of the fairies, and the quality of the verse involved. His contemporary Francis Gentleman , an admirer of Shakespeare, was much less appreciative of this play. He felt that
9525-424: The other in the relationship, that drives the rest of the drama in the story and makes it dangerous for any of the other lovers to come together due to the disturbance of Nature caused by a fairy dispute. Similarly, this failure to identify and to distinguish is what leads Puck to mistake one set of lovers for another in the forest, placing the flower's juice on Lysander's eyes instead of Demetrius'. Victor Kiernan,
9652-598: The place is not clear", but Pau figures several times in the memoirs he is presumed to have ghost-written for C.W. Stamper, and so that might be the answer – "anywhere good enough for King Edward VII was good enough for him". They rented the Villa Maryland, on Rue Forster, where Mercer proved an exacting husband, while Bettine was a social woman, and by 1929, the failure of their marriage was evident. Bettine had been indiscreet in her extra-marital romantic liaisons, and Mercer sued for divorce. Bettine did not defend, and
9779-429: The play Forty Years On (1972): "Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature." Yates also wrote other thrillers in the same style, but with different characters. Besides these two genres, some of Yates' novels do not easily fall into either the humorous or the thriller category. Anthony Lyveden
9906-407: The play about the unfortunate lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, and are able to enjoy and laugh at it. Helena and Demetrius are both oblivious to the dark side of their love, totally unaware of what may have come of the events in the forest. There is a dispute over the scenario of the play as it is cited at first by Theseus that "four happy days bring in another moon". The wood episode then takes place at
10033-543: The play as ethical treatise or psychological study and instead takes a more historicist and literal approach. To Boas the play is, despite its fantastical and exotic trappings, "essentially English and Elizabethan". He sees Theseus as a Tudor noble; Helena a mere plot device to "concentrate the four lovers on a single spot"; and the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-the-play a parody of a prominent topos of contemporary plays. Summing up their contributions, Kehler writes: "This
10160-499: The play is integrated with a historically specific upper-class celebration." Wiles argued in 1993 that the play was written to celebrate the Carey-Berkeley wedding. The date of the wedding was fixed to coincide with a conjunction of Venus and the new moon, highly propitious for conceiving an heir. David Bevington argues that the play represents the dark side of love. He writes that the fairies make light of love by mistaking
10287-454: The play should be viewed as a dream. He cited the lightness of the characterisation as supporting of his view. In 1881, Edward Dowden argued that Theseus and his reflections on art are central to the play. He also argued that Theseus was one of the "heroic men of action" so central to Shakespeare's theatrical works. Both Horace Howard Furness and Henry Austin Clapp were more concerned with
10414-402: The play which they are to perform before the wedding. Both groups find themselves in a forest inhabited by fairies who manipulate the humans and are engaged in their own domestic intrigue. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most popular and widely performed plays. The Athenians: The Mechanicals: The Fairies: The play consists of several interconnecting plots, connected by
10541-421: The play's plot of four lovers undergoing a trial in the woods was intended as a "riff" on Der Busant , a Middle High German poem. According to Dorothea Kehler, the writing period can be placed between 1594 and 1596, which means that Shakespeare had probably already completed Romeo and Juliet and was still in contemplation of The Merchant of Venice . The play belongs to the author's early-middle period,
10668-540: The play's quality. In 1887, Denton Jacques Snider argued that the play should be read as a dialectic , either between understanding and imagination or between prose and poetry. He also viewed the play as representing three phases or movements. The first is the Real World of the play, which represents reason. The second is the Fairy World, an ideal world which represents imagination and the supernatural. The third
10795-652: The play. He denied the theory that this play should be seen as a dream. He argued that it should be seen as an ethical construct and an allegory . He thought that it was an allegorical depiction of the errors of sensual love, which is likened to a dream. In his view, Hermia lacks in filial obedience and acts as if devoid of conscience when she runs away with Lysander. Lysander is also guilty for disobeying and mocking his prospective father-in-law. Pyramus and Thisbe also lack in filial obedience, since they "woo by moonlight" behind their parents' backs. The fairies, in his view, should be seen as "personified dream gods". They represent
10922-558: The play. He turned his attention to Theseus' speech about "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet" and to Hippolyta's response to it. He regarded Theseus as the voice of Shakespeare himself and the speech as a call for imaginative audiences. He also viewed Bottom as a lucky man on whom Fortune showered favours beyond measure. He was particularly amused by the way Bottom reacts to the love of the fairy queen : completely unfazed. Maginn argued that "Theseus would have bent in reverent awe before Titania. Bottom treats her as carelessly as if she were
11049-417: The poetry, the characterisation, and the originality of the play were its strengths, but that its major weaknesses were a "puerile" plot and that it consists of an odd mixture of incidents. The connection of the incidents to each other seemed rather forced to Gentleman. Edmond Malone , a Shakespearean scholar and critic of the late 18th century, found another supposed flaw in this particular play, its lack of
11176-403: The portrayal of the villainess represented a thinly-veiled attack on Mercer's first wife, although that could imply that the husband was a self-portrait, and as Smithers' states, "...he would hardly have held himself out in a character so feeble and flaccid." Lower than Vermin is a novel in which the author defends his views on social class, and criticises the path Britain was following under
11303-400: The problem of the play's duration, though they held opposing views. Clapp, writing in 1885, commented on the inconsistency of the time depicted in the play, as it should take place in four days and nights and seems to last less than two, and felt that this added to the unrealistic quality of the play. Furness, defending the play in 1895, felt that the apparent inconsistency did not detract from
11430-447: The proposition that although we encounter A Midsummer Night's Dream as a text, it was historically part of an aristocratic carnival. It was written for a wedding, and part of the festive structure of the wedding night. The audience who saw the play in the public theatre in the months that followed became vicarious participants in an aristocratic festival from which they were physically excluded. My purpose will be to demonstrate how closely
11557-613: The publication of Dornford Yates - A Biography in 1982, Smithers went on to write Combined Forces in 1983, subtitled "Being the Latter-Day adventures of Maj-Gen Sir Richard Hannay, Captain Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond and Berry and Co", which has the heroes (and some villains) of Buchan, Sapper and Yates meeting up after World War Two and having further adventures together. In 2015, Kate Macdonald published Novelists Against Social Change: Conservative Popular Fiction, 1920–1960 , which examines
11684-597: The remaining third where he chose. Adonis chose to spend two-thirds of the year with his paramour, Aphrodite. He bled to death in his lover's arms after being gored by a boar. Mythology has various stories attributing the colour of certain flowers to staining by the blood of Adonis or Aphrodite. The story of Venus and Adonis was well known to the Elizabethans and inspired many works, including Shakespeare's own hugely popular narrative poem, Venus and Adonis , written while London's theatres were closed because of plague. It
11811-768: The rest of his life. Mercer supervised the building of a replacement house for Cockade, another hillside venture, and, in 1948, they moved into "Sacradown", on Oak Avenue. The furniture in France was shipped to Rhodesia, as were the Waterloo Bridge balusters (see The House that Berry Built ), which had never reached Cockade, but had been stored in England during the Second World War . Cecil William Mercer died in March 1960. Mercer originally wrote short stories for
11938-413: The role of Pyramus. Bottom would also rather be a tyrant and recites some lines of Ercles . Bottom is told by Quince that he would do the Lion so terribly as to frighten the duchess and ladies enough for the Duke and Lords to have the players hanged . Snug remarks that he needs Lion's part because he is "slow of study". Quince assures Snug that the role of the lion is "nothing but roaring." Quince then ends
12065-493: The scene, during an early morning hunt. They find the lovers still sleeping in the glade. They wake up the lovers and, since Demetrius no longer loves Hermia, Theseus over-rules Egeus's demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers at first believe they are still in a dream and cannot recall what has happened. The lovers decide that the night's events must have been a dream, as they walk back to Athens. After they exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced
12192-413: The setting of the play, Shakespeare prepares the reader's mind to accept the fantastic reality of the fairy world and its happenings. This also seems to be the axis around which the plot conflicts in the play occur. Hunt suggests that it is the breaking down of individual identities that leads to the central conflict in the story. It is the brawl between Oberon and Titania, based on a lack of recognition for
12319-479: The spell, the two men have fallen for her. However, Helena is convinced that her two suitors are mocking her, as neither loved her originally. Hermia finds Lysander and asks why he left her, but Lysander claims he never loved Hermia, instead loving Helena. This soon turns into a quarrel between the two ladies, with Helena chiding Hermia for joining in the mockery session, followed by the latter furiously charging at her for stealing her true love's heart and blaming her for
12446-598: The stage show Eastward Ho! , but the production was not a great success and he did not again attempt to write for the stage. A frequent social – and then romantic – Elm Tree Road visitor was Bettine (Athalia) Stokes Edwards, an American girl who danced in Chu Chin Chow (and daughter of Robert Ewing Edwards of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) who became Mercer's first wife. The New York Times announcement of their engagement (28 August 1919) states: "Mr & Mrs Glover Fitzhugh Perin of 57 West Fifty-eight street have announced
12573-464: The stories were edited for the book, to eliminate events, such as marriage, for the leading characters – which suggests that, originally, he had not planned on using the same characters for a story series. The narrator – later identified as "Boy Pleydell" – marries in "Babes in the Wood" and possibly in "Busy Bees", which became chapter VIII "The Busy Beers" in The Brother of Daphne , with the end of
12700-417: The story altered to remove the hint of marriage. His second book, The Courts of Idleness , was published in 1920, containing material written before, during, and after the Great War. It was divided into three sections. In Book I Yates introduced a new set of characters similar to, but separate from, Berry & Co , in four stories that had appeared in the Windsor between December 1914 and March 1915, and
12827-430: The story must be considered in the context of the "culture of early modern England" as a commentary on the "aesthetic rigidities of comic form and political ideologies of the prevailing order". Male dominance is one thematic element found in the play. In A Midsummer Night's Dream , Lysander and Hermia escape into the woods for a night where they do not fall under the laws of Theseus or Egeus. Upon their arrival in Athens,
12954-500: The success of a process by which the feminine pride and power manifested in Amazon warriors, possessive mothers, unruly wives, and wilful daughters are brought under the control of lords and husbands." He says that the consummation of marriage is how power over a woman changes hands from father to husband. A connection is drawn between flowers and sexuality. Montrose sees the juice employed by Oberon as symbolising menstrual blood as well as
13081-495: The supposed 'mockery'. Oberon and Puck decide that they must resolve this conflict, and by the morning, none of them will have any memory of what happened, as if it were a dream. Oberon arranges everything so Helena, Hermia, Demetrius, and Lysander will all believe they have been dreaming when they awaken. Puck distracts Lysander and Demetrius from fighting over Helena's love by mimicking their voices and leading them apart. Eventually, all four find themselves separately falling asleep in
13208-461: The tale of Pyramus and Thisbe as a burlesque of the Athenian lovers. In 1817, William Hazlitt found the play to be better as a written work than a staged production. He found the work to be "a delightful fiction" but when staged, it is reduced to a dull pantomime . He concluded that poetry and the stage do not fit together. Kehler finds the comment to be more of an indication of the quality of
13335-408: The text of the play, in juxtaposition to the proscribed social mores of the culture at the time the play was written. He writes that his essay "does not (seek to) rewrite A Midsummer Night's Dream as a gay play but rather explores some of its 'homoerotic significations' ... moments of 'queer' disruption and eruption in this Shakespearean comedy." Green does not consider Shakespeare to have been
13462-422: The theatrical productions available to Hazlitt, rather than a true indication of the play's supposed unsuitability to the stage. She notes that prior to the 1840s, all stage productions of this play were adaptations unfaithful to the original text. In 1811–1812, Samuel Taylor Coleridge made two points of criticism about this play. The first was that the entire play should be seen as a dream . Second, that Helena
13589-609: The trial of the poisoner Hawley Harvey Crippen , when he returned from acting with the Old Stagers , at Canterbury , to have first look at the legal brief. Mercer is in a photograph of the Bow Street Court committal proceedings, published in the Daily Mirror of 30 August 1910. In his spare time, he wrote short stories that were published in Punch , The Harmsworth RED Magazine , Pearson's Magazine , and
13716-483: The views of Platonism . In his view, Shakespeare implied that human life is nothing but a dream, suggesting influence from Plato and his followers who thought human reality is deprived of all genuine existence. Ulrici noted the way Theseus and Hippolyta behave here, like ordinary people. He agreed with Malone that this did not fit their stations in life, but viewed this behaviour as an indication of parody about class differences. James Halliwell-Phillipps , writing in
13843-541: The voice of a patriarch and the voice of a monarch: (1) her father's will, which stated that the crown should pass to her and (2) the fact that she was the daughter of a king. Dorothea Kehler has attempted to trace the criticism of the work through the centuries. The earliest such piece of criticism that she found was a 1662 entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys . He found the play to be "the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life". He did, however, admit that it had "some good dancing and some handsome women, which
13970-403: The wedding of either William Stanley, sixth Earl of Derby to Elizabeth de Vere, or Thomas Berkeley, son of Henry Lord Berkeley, to Elizabeth Carey) (p. 284-5). Further consolidations of this late Elizabethan date are provided by "Oberon's unmissable compliment to Queen Elizabeth (2.1.155-164)" (Chaudhuri), and Titania's description of flooded fields and failed crops which occurred through England in
14097-431: The wench of the next-door tapster." Finally, Maginn thought that Oberon should not be blamed for Titania's humiliation, which is the result of an accident. He viewed Oberon as angry with the "caprices" of his queen, but unable to anticipate that her charmed affections would be reserved for a weaver with a donkey's head. In 1839, the philosopher Hermann Ulrici wrote that the play and its depiction of human life reflected
14224-450: The wood episode to occur without moonlight. Theseus's statement can also be interpreted to mean "four days until the next month". Another possibility is that, since each month there are roughly four consecutive nights that the Moon is not seen due to its closeness to the Sun in the sky (the two nights before the moment of new moon, followed by the two following it), it may in this fashion indicate
14351-486: The work of Buchan, Yates and Angela Thirkell . A Midsummer Night%27s Dream A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens , and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta . One subplot involves a conflict among four Athenian lovers. Another follows a group of six amateur actors rehearsing
14478-510: The works of Dornford Yates in Volume 3, Number 11 of The Windmill , a literary magazine. Yates was not pleased by the article, but nevertheless Usborne went on to write Clubland Heroes (1953; reprinted 1974 and 1983) in which he examined the work of Yates and two contemporary thriller writers, John Buchan and Sapper . The 1973 novel Indecent Exposure by Tom Sharpe plays up the 'Englishman' that Dornford Yates created in his novels. There
14605-463: The years 1594-1597/8 (2.1.84-121). The first court performance known with certainty occurred at Hampton Court on 1 January 1604, as a prelude to The Masque of Indian and China Knights . In Ancient Greece , long before the creation of the Christian celebrations of St. John's Day , the summer solstice was marked by Adonia , a festival to mourn the death of Adonis , the devoted mortal lover of
14732-483: Was Dornford Yates's first novel, telling the story of an impoverished ex-officer. Originally, it was published in monthly instalments in The Windsor Magazine , Valerie French , the sequel to Anthony Lyveden features mostly the same cast. At the start of the book Lyveden is suffering amnesia , and cannot recall the events of the previous book, leading to romantic complications. The Stolen March
14859-456: Was all my pleasure". The next critic known to comment on the play was John Dryden , writing The Authors Apology for Heroique Poetry; and Poetique Licence in 1677. He was preoccupied with the question of whether fairies should be depicted in theatrical plays, since they did not exist. He concluded that poets should be allowed to depict things which do not exist but derive from popular belief . And fairies are of this sort, as are pygmies and
14986-565: Was also used as the first episode of the US TV series Mystery! in 1980. An episode of the ITV Hannay series, "A Point of Honour", was based on the eponymous short story published in The Brother of Daphne , but the source was uncredited. An audiobook edition of Blind Corner , read by Alan Rickman , was produced by Chivers Audio Books . In 1948 Richard Usborne wrote an article entitled Ladies and Gentlemen v. Cads and Rotters about
15113-568: Was an English writer and novelist whose novels and short stories, some humorous (the Berry books), some thrillers (the Chandos books), were best-sellers during the Interwar Period . The pen name Dornford Yates , first in print in 1910, resulted from combining the maiden names of his grandmothers – the paternal Eliza Mary Dornford, and the maternal Harriet Yates. William (Bill) Mercer
15240-544: Was born in Walmer , Kent, the son of Cecil John Mercer (1850–1921) and Helen Wall (1858–1918). His father was a solicitor whose sister, Mary Frances, married Charles Augustus Munro; their son was Hector Hugh Munro (the writer Saki ); Bill Mercer is said to have idolised his elder cousin. Mercer attended St Clare preparatory school in Walmer from 1894 to 1899. The family moved from Kent to London when he joined Harrow School as
15367-510: Was ever included in his books. Many of his works began as stories in The Windsor Magazine , before being collected in book form by the Windsor 's publishers, Ward Lock . Between September 1911 and September 1939 he had 123 stories published in the Windsor , and after it closed, the Strand Magazine carried three of his stories in 1940 and 1941. Four of his novels were serialised in Woman's Journal between 1933 and 1938. In
15494-432: Was immense. The reader is kept on the edge of the chair, and the pace never flags. This article about a thriller novel of the 1920s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Specific suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . Dornford Yates Cecil William Mercer (7 August 1885 – 5 March 1960), known by his pen name Dornford Yates ,
15621-569: Was insufficient to gain him traditional access to the bar . However, in 1908 his father obtained his son a post as pupil to a prominent barrister, H. G. Muskett, whose practice often required his appearing in court on behalf of the police commissioner. As Muskett's pupil, Mercer saw much of the seedy side of London life, some of which is evident in his novels. In 1909, he was called to the Bar where he worked for several years. In his first memoirs, As Berry & I Were Saying , he recalls his involvement in
15748-552: Was published in 1593. The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta and the mistaken and waylaid lovers, Titania and Bottom, even the erstwhile acting troupe, model various aspects (and forms) of love. Both David Wiles of the University of London and Harold Bloom of Yale University have strongly endorsed the reading of this play under the themes of Carnivalesque , Bacchanalia , and Saturnalia . Writing in 1998, David Wiles stated that: "The starting point for my own analysis will be
15875-524: Was re-commissioned, this time in the Royal Rhodesian Regiment, and attained the rank of major. As the war concluded, the couple realised their plan of returning to Cockade – but were disappointed in the decrepitude of the house and the socially conscious, post-war attitude of their one-time servants . After some months, the Mercers obtained exit visas and returned to Umtali , Southern Rhodesia , (now Mutare, Zimbabwe), where they lived for
16002-574: Was re-printed four times within the first six months. Mercer hoped to run the story as a serial in the US publication The Saturday Evening Post , but flatly refused the Post' s demand that Chandos should be an American citizen. This was mentioned by Yates in As Berry and I were Saying , along with a discussion with an editor preparing a serialisation of Blood Royal who objected to the car being identified as
16129-534: Was written by Oscar Asche (author) with lyrics by Dornford Yates and music by Grace Torrens and John Ansell . It was produced by Edward Laurillard and George Grossmith Jr. , and opened at the Alhambra Theatre in London on 9 September and ran for 124 performances. The BBC produced an adaptation of She Fell Among Thieves in 1977, featuring Malcolm McDowell as Chandos, Michael Jayston as Mansel, and Eileen Atkins as Vanity Fair. This adaptation
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