☃️merry chrimist☃️ on Nostr: ren Reply for ACT V: How nasty of Theseus to say those nice words about duty and then ...
ren (npub1vdd…tkfq) Reply for ACT V:
How nasty of Theseus to say those nice words about duty and then make fun of their play the whole time. But then, it was truly a terrible play. Alack, alack, alack! It would be a better world if everyone said “die die die die die” at the moment of their death.
I found it poignant how Robin ends the play. It parallels the humorous “disclaimers” of the play-within-a-play, but it’s serious. Not “forgive me for roaring too loud” but “forgive me if I’ve wasted your time.” The parallel makes you wonder if we, too, are just a make-believe audience in another play.
It reminds me of Zhuangzi’s parable of hunting a beautiful bird in a forest and then feeling like, even as he is aiming at the bird, something else might be aiming at him. And the way in which House of Leaves and other books like that try to evoke “textual horror” by portraying a monster which breaks out of a narrative-within-a-narrative.
With this play, I feel like the comedic torturing of the characters (at the hands of the fairies or their own incompetence) also tortures us because it shows us the arbitrariness of our own fates. Like, say you fell in love tomorrow. Who’s to say it’s not more arbitrary than when Robin fucked up with his love potion? Say you want to hang out with your friends but they’re avoiding you. How can you be sure you’ve not been arbitrarily changed (into an ass)?
In Pyramus and Thisbe, the comical Moonshine and Wall meddle in the lovers' lives, showing or hiding them from each other. In the play itself, Diana and Cupid and all the fairies meddle in the lives of ancient Greek nobility. The play is a comedy to us only because we are granted the ability to see what lurks in the characters' dreams. So, too, is Pyramus and Thisbe a comedy because the audience's discernment so exceeds the players' own. Being trapped in the waking light of my own life, the light of consciousness, must make it seem more tragic than it really is. And I wonder who meddles in it.
How nasty of Theseus to say those nice words about duty and then make fun of their play the whole time. But then, it was truly a terrible play. Alack, alack, alack! It would be a better world if everyone said “die die die die die” at the moment of their death.
I found it poignant how Robin ends the play. It parallels the humorous “disclaimers” of the play-within-a-play, but it’s serious. Not “forgive me for roaring too loud” but “forgive me if I’ve wasted your time.” The parallel makes you wonder if we, too, are just a make-believe audience in another play.
It reminds me of Zhuangzi’s parable of hunting a beautiful bird in a forest and then feeling like, even as he is aiming at the bird, something else might be aiming at him. And the way in which House of Leaves and other books like that try to evoke “textual horror” by portraying a monster which breaks out of a narrative-within-a-narrative.
With this play, I feel like the comedic torturing of the characters (at the hands of the fairies or their own incompetence) also tortures us because it shows us the arbitrariness of our own fates. Like, say you fell in love tomorrow. Who’s to say it’s not more arbitrary than when Robin fucked up with his love potion? Say you want to hang out with your friends but they’re avoiding you. How can you be sure you’ve not been arbitrarily changed (into an ass)?
In Pyramus and Thisbe, the comical Moonshine and Wall meddle in the lovers' lives, showing or hiding them from each other. In the play itself, Diana and Cupid and all the fairies meddle in the lives of ancient Greek nobility. The play is a comedy to us only because we are granted the ability to see what lurks in the characters' dreams. So, too, is Pyramus and Thisbe a comedy because the audience's discernment so exceeds the players' own. Being trapped in the waking light of my own life, the light of consciousness, must make it seem more tragic than it really is. And I wonder who meddles in it.