"It's Behind You!"

In my previous post, “Reason and Rhyme,” (https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2022/06/reason-and-rhyme.html) I applauded Shakespeare’s use of rhyme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to lock in the deluded profession of love by Lysander for Helena. 

Today, I wish to go back a little bit earlier in the play. In Act II, Scene 1, Oberon, the King of the Fairies, has spotted Helena pursuing a disdainful Demetrius. He instructs Puck to anoint Demetrius’ eyes with a magic substance that will make him fall in love with Helena:

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.

Puck, trying to follow his master’s orders, is, however, at a loss:

Through the forest have I gone.

But Athenian found I none,

On whose eyes I might approve

This flower's force in stirring love.

Until he spots an Athenian male (recognized by his clothes) and a young woman (Hermia) sleeping nearby.

This is he, my master said,

Despised the Athenian maid;

And here the maiden, sleeping sound,

On the dank and dirty ground.

Pretty soul! she durst not lie

Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.

Churl, upon thy eyes I throw

All the power this charm doth owe.

When thou wakest, let love forbid

Sleep his seat on thy eyelid.

(Act II, Scene 2)

Puck is genuinely pleased with himself as he bounds off to report to Oberon of his success.

All well and good? Hardly. For the Athenian who was drugged by Puck was not Demetrius but Lysander. And now along comes Helena.

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All has gone wrong—but Puck doesn’t know this; Lysander doesn’t know this; Helena doesn’t know this (and eventually, neither Hermia nor Demetrius will know this).

But we know! We, the audience, sitting in our seats (or, in Shakespeare’s time, standing in the pit) have witnessed the action. And what is our reaction as we watch poor Puck approach sleeping Lysander—and then Helena tiptoe over to Lysander and nudge him awake?

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One of the classic scenes in British Christmas pantomimes is when a ghost appears behind the main characters and the audience (mainly children) scream out: “It’s behind you!” 

We (the adult audience of A Midsummer Night’s Dream), like the pantomime audience, can be said to be in a state of greater ironic awareness than Puck, Lysander, Helena, etc. 

Irony depends upon two levels of knowledge. The ironist deliberately over- or under-values what he believes in order to entrap his audience (the victim), to make him appear foolish or despicable. One example (rather harmless) of overvaluing would be the following:

Someone enters a room, tripping over his own feet. The ironist says, “Ah, here comes Fred Astaire.”

The word for this is sarcasm.

Most famous for the ironic stance of undervaluing is Socrates, who maintained that he knew nothing, and interrogated those who claimed to know about piety, justice, etc., eventually destroying their arguments.

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Back to our play:

With our greater knowledge of the wrong that Puck is about to do as he approaches Lysander—and the wrongness that will occur when Helena stirs Lysander—we, in our superiority, can first experience an expectation of mischief and then laugh at the results of that mischief. 

Here, the playwright allows us to be in cahoots with him, as we have the same knowledge as him. But it is not always the case that (a) the audience knows more than the characters or (b) the author has given us the information in real time (as it were) about the action that he intends to reveal later. The classic example is the whodunnit. Here the audience is completely in the dark until they can figure out by themselves or have the solution revealed to them at the conclusion by the detective or investigator. We may be on the same lower level of awareness of most of the characters (some of whom may be bumped off along the way); the murderer (and, of course, his creator) are on a superior level of ironic awareness; they know who dunnit.

The reverse of the whodunnit could properly be called the Columbo. In the “Columbo” crime series, we, the audience, know who the criminal is and how the crime was committed, as we are shown the act being performed. So we are on the same level of awareness as the miscreant, but on a superior level to that of the detective, Lieutenant Columbo. However, as Columbo works his way through the evidence, he moves closer to our level of awareness. The criminal, meanwhile, who has been on the same knowledge level as us, falls behind as he does not know that Columbo is inching closer to unveiling him. At the conclusion of the story, we and Columbo are now on the same superior level of ironic awareness. And the criminal is finished.

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There are a number of elements that contribute to the success of a play or a novel. Among them are the artist’s invention and development of interesting characters, the fashioning of a gripping narrative, a delightful command of language, etc. Add to the list his ability to exploit different levels of ironic awareness, so that the audience is in on the joke, an object of the joke, complicit with a criminal, or at one with his pursuer. As the artist deems fit.

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Perhaps the most famous quote emerging from the Nixon Watergate scandal was the line by Senator Howard Baker:

“What did the President know and when did he know it?”  

In many ways, slightly modified, those could be key questions when analyzing a literary work:

“What did the audience know, and when did it know it?”