2.24 Shakespeare, Queen Mab and Nightmares

A trip to London to see Romeo and Juliet, and some thoughts on bad dreams.

The Nightmare - Henry Fuseli 1781

I went to see a Shakespeare play last weekend. Romeo and Juliet at the Globe theatre on the bank of the River Thames in London¹. It was the first time I had seen a professional Shakespeare production live on stage since school trips to Stratford in the late 1970s. In the decades since then, I have seen Shakespeare at the cinema and on television. I have listened to Shakespeare on the radio, and I have also participated in group readings. But I had forgotten the absolute pleasure of seeing a live performance, where the actors are there in the flesh in front of you. There is something about the human interaction of live theatre that takes things to a different level.

I am no Shakespeare expert. Like many people, I don’t properly understand a large amount of the archaic language and a large proportion of the Shakespearian words and ideas are a mystery to me. It worries me that this will mean that I won’t understand what is going on, or that I will get bored and lose concentration. This does not happen in a good live production. You can trust the actors to make the meanings clear through their delivery, through their body language² and through their intonation and rhythm. You can let the language wash over you and just enjoy the performance. All will become clear enough. You will have a good time as long as you relax and enjoy.

Of course, I knew the outline of the story of Romeo and Juliet. The tragedy of two young lovers who had to conduct their affair in secret as they come from families who hate one another. I knew how it ends up. They both commit suicide after a mix up involving vials of deadly and non-deadly poisons. I imagined that because I knew it, the experience would be almost entirely predictable, and give me at best a worthy, scholarly sort of feeling. Mister know it all! It wasn’t like that at all. Instead I was completely drawn in by the characters and totally entertained. The production was fantastic in the way it presented the youth of the couple (both in their very early teens), the stubbornness of the families, the almost casual use of violence, the brutal deaths, the friendship between Romeo and his gang, the love of the nurse for Juliet and lots of other little nuances.

The nurse was particularly well played. Her first monologue, where she recalls Juliet’s early childhood was brilliantly acted.³ I decided that I had to use that or some other Shakespearian monologue in Sixty odd poems. I have written a couple of pieces about murder in recent weeks. How difficult would it be to find something that fits the theme?

It turned out to be exceptionally difficult. Away from the stage and the vibrant presence of the actress, the words of the nurse reverted to difficult and almost boring language. Looking through other speeches and pieces, I felt the same way. I have read a fair bit of Shakespeare this last week, all in a futile attempt the recapture the excitement of watching that live performance. I almost gave up on the idea, but eventually I found a monologue from earlier in Romeo and Juliet, in which, Mercutio, one of Romeo’s friends, is teasing him about Queen Mab.

I remembered the scene from the play. I remembered catching the words “Queen Mab” and thinking that I had heard of her, and that if I was a more educated poet or Shakespearean scholar, that I would know all about who she was. Re-reading the speech at home, I discovered that in this play at least, she was a tiny fairy figure, who drove a coach pulled by minuscule horses over the sleeping faces of people, and had something to do with influencing their dreams.

The origins of the character of Queen Mab are lost in the mists of early British folklore but she crops up every now and then in Literature, including in a long 1893 poem by Percy Shelley.

So, I thought, a fairy. A bit like Tinkerbell then, who is the main entry in the filing system of my brain headed “fairies” - which is placed in the general area which also contains pixies, gnomes, and goblins. Kids stuff, which I largely lost interest in when I stoped reading the works of Enid Blyton, back when my age was in single digits.

Mercutio’s Queen Mab monologue is more satirical than childish though, and very dark in parts. It is almost psychological in its concept of the character, feelings and desires of a person being consolidated or even created by some process that goes on during sleep. Mab is also nothing like as good natured and benign a fairy as Tinkerbell. She can be a wicked hag, who brings real pain to her victims.

I can remember being told as a chid that dreams are caused when your brain tries to sort out all the information that it has had to deal with during its waking hours, and put it into some sort of useful order. Well, perhaps it doesn’t do that task entirely unaided. Perhaps it has some supernatural assistance. Who knows? It’s quite comforting to imagine that it isn’t entirely alone in its endeavours. It is also quite comforting to think that all our dubious thoughts, desires and feelings are not entirely of our own making.

Thinking about this led me to a consideration of an article about nightmares that I had seen online recently. It claimed that the actual word nightmare refers to the horse which brings a supernatural being to the bedside of the dreamer, to disturb their sleep with terrible fantasies. These supernatural beings can be more fearsome than tiny Queen Mab. In the painting, The Nightmare, by Henri Fuseli⁴ (1781) it has brought an incubus who crouches on the chest of the sleeping woman. An incubus is an ugly, creature associated with sexual awakening and twisted desires. We are entering into Freudian territory here. Incubi largely prey on young women. The equivalent creature who preys on young men is the succubus, who may appear in their dreams as a beautiful woman, only to reveal herself as a wizened old hag at the point when things have gone too far, when the man has been seduced and is totally in their power. Perhaps this is some old fashioned folklorish way of coming to terms with disappointing relationships. The woman who finds herself married to a lazy, useless, but sexually demanding man, or the man who finds himself married to a cold, nagging woman, can claim that they were seduced by an incubus or succubus.

The part near to the end of Mercutio’s speech in the play, where Mab is described as a Hag who presses maids on their backs and learns them to bear (lovers)⁵ is very reminiscent of the Nightmare painting.

Perhaps what is at the heart of Mercutio’s teasing of Romeo is a premonition that his romantic dreams will lead him into a situation that will cause him great misery and distress. This is before he has even met Juliet. Here is the monologue. As I did with the Chaucer piece I wrote recently, I have provided my interpretation in more modern English underneath.

Queen Mab - from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;

Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:

Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep
Then dreams, he of another benefice:

Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. 

This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:

I talk'st of nothing? 
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy
Which is as thin of substance as the air

My Translation

I have taken a few small liberties with some lines and meaning in order to maintain some resemblance to iambic pentameter

Oh - I see that Queen Mab's been with you.
The Fairy midwife, helping dreams be born
She's smaller than a jewel set in gold
On the finger of a politician,

Pulled along by microscopic horses
She rides over mens noses whilst they sleep
Her carriage-spokes are made of spiders' legs,
The cover's made of wings of grasshoppers,
The horses' harnesses are spiders threads,
Their collars made of watery moonbeams
Her whip's a cobweb on a cricket bone
Her driver is a small grey-coated gnat,
Smaller than a tiny bead of blood
Prick'd from the finger of a lazy girl.

Her chariot's an empty hazelnut
Adapted by a squirrel and a fly,
Who have made fairy coaches many years.
In this carriage she gallops every night
Through lovers' brains to make them dream of love;
On servants knees, to make them dream of grace,
On grasping hands, to make them dream of cash,
On ladies' lips, to make them dream of kisses,
(Mab often brings out blisters on those lips
Because she is annoyed by their bad breath)

Sometimes she gallops on a sales rep's nose,
And then he dreams of sniffing out new deals,
Sometimes she brings along a piglets tail
To tickle sleeping vicars on the nose
And make them dream of being better paid,

Sometimes she drives over a soldier's neck,
And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats,
Of battles, ambushes and Spanish blades,
Of drinking from an endless glass of beer. 
Then she drums his ear to wake him up
And makes him swear in fear and say his prayers
Before he drops off back to sleep again.

She is a very wicked fairy, Mab
She plats the manes of horses in the night,
And tangles them in filthy, hairy knots
Which bring bad luck whenever they're combed out

She is a hag who pushes young girls down
When she finds them lying on their backs
Preparing them to bear a lover's weight,
And be able to bear children of their own

I talk of nothing? True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the products of an idle brain,
And come from nothing more than fantasy
Which is as insubstantial as the air

I couldn’t resist finishing with this version of the Nightmare by the American artist Robert Crumb, of Fritz the Cat fame.

1. The Globe is a 1995 reproduction of the original Globe Theatre which was built in Shakespeare’s lifetime. The production of Romeo and Juliet was set in the Wild West, a setting which worked surprisingly well.

2. When we went to Shakespeare productions at school, we would take bets on how soon one of the male actors would accompany some bawdy Elizabethan sex reference with vigorous pelvic thrusting. I remembered this last week at the Globe when one of Romeo’s gang did exactly that, about five minutes from the start.

3. Played by Sirine Saba, who has been on Doctor Who!

4. Fuseli is the only artist that I know of who shares his name with a type of pasta. He wasn’t even Italian, he was Dutch!

5. All those teachers who used to get hot under the collar when as kids, we said learn instead of teach. They should have been made to explain that line - who presses them and learns them first to bear. I don’t think my teachers learned me Shakespearian language proper at all.