Seven
months ago…
…Diane
Reynolds and I had a brief, profitable exchange regarding the veiled allusion to
A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I see
in Pride & Prejudice, and I
focused in that post on the darker side of Darcy as a disturbingly resonant Regency
Era version of the cad Demetrius in Shakespeare’s at times dark comedy.
And I
have more recently posted at length about Mr. Elton as a representation of
Bottom from Dream, layered right on
top of an allusion via Mr. Elton to James Stanier Clarke when he was
sadistically punked (after first getting him drunk with something like
spruce-beer) at Egmont by the Prince and his cronies putting a live donkey in
his bed….
…and in
that same post, I mentioned in passing that I also saw Mr. Collins as a version
of Bottom.
Well,
by an unexpected twist in my research, I was able, today, to weave (pun
intended) both of those strands together, and am ready now to place before you
the intellectual sweetmeats I’ve discovered, and display to you THE definitive
textual evidence which establishes that Mr. Collins was indeed intended by JA
to be seen as a fully-fleshed-out version of Bottom!
Specifically,
the scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream which
JA chose as the centerpiece of her Bottom-FUL allusion in P&P is when Puck first
turns Bottom into a jackass, and then Puck sprinkles fairy dust on Titania so
that she will fall in love with the ass-headed Bottom when she awakens.
Now,
think about Mr. Collins as a kind of Regency Era Bottom, a nobody from nowhere
doing nothing until he suddenly finds himself the beneficiary of an unexpected
windfall of good fortune when a great lady—a kind of queen, if you will, Lady
Catherine de Burgh, inexplicably bestows her largesse on him. Even without any
textual support at all, the allusion seems intentional to me. But wait till you
see all the textual evidence that materialized before me in less than two hours
of research!
First,
I’ve put in ALL CAPS the excerpts from P&P which point to Collins as
Bottom, and also to Lady Catherine as Titania:
P&P
Chapter 15: “Mr. Collins was NOT A
SENSIBLE MAN, and the deficiency of nature had been but LITTLE ASSisted by
education or society; the greatest part of his life having been spent under the
guidance of an illiterate and miserly father; and though he belonged to one of
the universities, he had merely kept the necessary terms, without forming aT IT
ANY useful acquaintance. The subjection in which his father had brought him up
had given him originally great humility of manner; but it was now a good deal
counteracted by the self-conceit of A WEAK HEAD, living in retirement, and the
consequential feelings of early and UNEXPECTED PROSPERITY. A fortunate chance
had recommended him to Lady Catherine de Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was
vacant; and the respect which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for
her as HIS PATRONESS, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his
authority as a clergyman, and his rights as a rector, made him altogether a
mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.
Having
now a good house and very sufficient income, he intended to marry; and in
seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had a wife in view, as he
meant to chuse one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable
as they were represented by COMMON report. This was his plan of amends -- of
atonement -- for inheriting their father's estate; and he thoughT IT AN Excellent
one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and
disinterested on his own part. “
Now,
that all would be enough if that were all there was in P&P, to establish
that JA wishes us to see Collins as Bottom. But it is actually only the
appetizer, the main course is in two parts, both of them in Chapter 29,
describing scenes at Hunsford and Rosings, after Mr. Collins is fully ensconced
in his Kentish “bower of bliss”, oblivious to the profound incongruity of this
imbecilic impostor of a clergyman basking in the reflected glow of the “queen”
who has taken him into her “court”—indeed, has made him the principal courtier
there (shades of James Stanier Clarke in a similar role vis a vis the Prince
Regent!- which only makes Lady Catherine’s scandalized exclamation about the
pollution of “the shades of Pemberley” by Lizzy’s relations, when Lady
Catherine herself has admitted an utterly common man into her own inner sanctum):
P&P
Chapter 29: “ Mr. Collins's triumph, in consequence of this invitation, was
complete. The power of displaying THE GRANDEUR OF HIS PATRONESS to his
wondering visitors, and of letting them see her civility towards himself and
his wife, was exactly what he had wished for; and that an opportunity of doing
it should be given so soon, was such an instance of Lady Catherine's condescension,
as he knew not how to admire enough.
"I
confess," said he, "that I should not have been at all surprised by
her ladyship's asking us on Sunday to drink tea and spend the evening at
Rosings. I rather expected, from my knowledge of her affability, that it would
happen. But who could have foreseen such an attention as this? Who could have
imagined that we should receive an invitation to dine there (an invitation,
moreover, including the whole party) so immediately after your arrival!"
"I
am the less surprised at what has happened," replied Sir William,
"from that knowledge of what the manners of the great really are, which my
situation in life has allowed me to acquire. ABOUT THE COURT, SUCH INSTANCES OF
ELEGANT BREEDING ARE NOT UNCOMMON."
Scarcely
anything was talked of the whole day or next morning but their visit to
Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing them in what they were to
expect, that the sight of such rooms, so many servants, and so splendid a
dinner, might not wholly overpower them.
…
After
sitting a few minutes, they were all sent to one of the windows to admire the
view, Mr. Collins attending them to point out its beauties, and Lady Catherine
kindly informing them that it was much better worth looking at IN THE SUMMER.
The
dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were ALL THE SERVANTS AND ALL THE
ARTICLES OF PLATE which Mr. Collins had promised; and, as he had likewise
foretold, he took his seat AT THE BOTTOM of the table, BY HER LADYSHIP’S DESIRE,
and looked as if he felt that life could furnish nothing greater. He carved, AND
ATE, AND PRAISED WITH DELIGHTED ALACRITY; and EVERY DISH WAS COMMENDED, first
by him and then by Sir William, who was now enough recovered to echo whatever
his son-in-law said, in a manner which Elizabeth wondered Lady Catherine could
bear. But LADY CATHERINE SEEMED GRATIFIED by their excessive admiration, and
gave most gracious smiles, especially when any dish on the table proved a
novelty to them. “
There
is so much there to notice in thos passages, besides the astonishing
condescension of Lady Catherine towards Collins and his entourage, a realistic
parody of the Titania-Bottom drug-induced connection. To help you better hear
the echoes to the alluded-to scene in Dream,
I now reproduce those passages from Dream
below, similarly putting in ALL CAPS the echoed excerpts, beginning with
the first three lines, which are exactly what Lady Catherine, in effect, is
saying to Lizzy as well, when she tells Lizzy that Mrs. Bennet can spare Lizzy
for another six weeks:
TITANIA
OUT
OF THIS WOOD DO NOT DESIRE TO GO:
THOU SHALT REMAIN HERE, WHETHER THOU WILT OR NO.
I am a spirit of NO COMMON RATE;
THE SUMMER still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.
Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!
THOU SHALT REMAIN HERE, WHETHER THOU WILT OR NO.
I am a spirit of NO COMMON RATE;
THE SUMMER still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.
Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!
Be
kind and courteous to this gentleman;
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries…
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries…
Then
later…
BOTTOM Truly, a peck of provender: I could
munch your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a
bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.
I have a venturous fairy that shall seek
The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.
The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.
BOTTOM I had rather have a handful or two of dried
peas. But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.
Exeunt
fairies
So
doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!
They
sleep
Just
think of the feast at Rosings vis a vis the feast in the Athenian forest—what rich
rich irony!
And the
scandalous suggestion of Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins sleeping together,
which is suggested by extending the parallels to their logical conclusion, is a
hilarious conceit of no common rate!
And, speaking
of uncommonness, it is no accident that much later in P&P, in Ch. 55—which
is, curiously, RIGHT BEFORE Lady Catherine shockingly shows up at Longbourn, we
read the following about the Bennet family’s joyous reaction to Bingley’s
proposal to Jane:
“It
was an evening of NO COMMON delight to them all…”
An
intentional echo to Titania’s regal pronouncement of being “a spirit of no
common rate”? I think so, and perhaps so also did Deborah Moggach, the
screenwriter of the 2005 MacFayden/ Knightley Pride & Prejudice film adaptation, when Moggach put the
following words in Bingley’s mouth at exactly the right moment, when he was
about to propose to her: “First, I must
tell you I've been the most unmitigated and comprehensive ASS.”
But
my favorite out of all of this, is a cluster of textual winks in P&P which was
what first got me looking at all of the above. By itself, this cluster would
have been speculative at best on my rating scale of Austenian allusions to Shakespeare,
but with the corroboration of the above, it is clear to me that the following
was also an intentional allusion by JA to Shakespeare. And the best part is,
perhaps you already noticed it, above, because I hid my discovery in plain
sight (i.e., in ALL CAPS) in two snippets from the two paragraphs from Chapter 15
of P&P that I quoted, above, which I now repeat below:
“…though
[Collins] belonged to one of the universities, he had merely kept the necessary
terms, without forming aT IT ANY useful acquaintance…”
“…[Collins]
meant to chuse one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable
as they were represented by COMMON report. This was his plan of amends -- of
atonement -- for inheriting their father's estate; and he thoughT IT AN Excellent
one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and
disinterested on his own part. “
Of
course, you see now that JA has hidden “TITANY” and “TITANE” in these two
passages in consecutive paragraphs, and each of these coded versions of “Titania”
not only pertain to Mr. Collins, they are thematically meaningful. I.e., in the
first, it is beyond obvious that his “Titania”, i.e., Lady Catherine, is a VERY
“useful acquaintance” to him; and in the second, we hear his self-aggrandizing
fantasy of being an eligible and suitable husband for one of the Bennet girls!
And….as some reasonable skeptics among you might wonder---these also just
happen to be two (i.e. HALF) of the total of four
such
syntactical constructions which occur in the six Austen novels combined!
And…last
but not least, I have long believed that the double acrostic of “Lamb” (first
discovered in 2005 by Colleen Sheehan) that appears in the long charade in Emma was in some way a tip of the hat to
the acrostic first discovered nearly a century ago by a Baconian Bardolater
named William Stone Booth…
…which
was ALSO hiding in plain sight earlier in this post, and which I now show you
again:
O ut of
this wood do not desire to go:
T hou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
T he summer still doth tend upon my state;
AN d I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I 'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
A nd they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
T hou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
T he summer still doth tend upon my state;
AN d I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I 'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
A nd they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
I.e.
O, TITANIA--which just happens to be the same name that JA hid twice in the
text of Chapter 15!
If all
of THAT is not sufficient to convince you that this is not a coincidence, then
you may be beyond the reach of any literary sleuthing “sermon” of mine! ;)
And with
that, I believe the BOTTOM of this post has now finally been reached, all “jewels”
having been “fetched” by me from “the deep”, i.e., the Shakespearean subtext, of
P&P and A Midsummer Night’s Dream!
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
P.S.:
All of the above makes the following coincidence all the more extraordinary,
regarding the 2011 season of the Orlando, Florida Shakespeare Theater:
“A Midsummer Night's Dream is performed
on the same unit set as Pride and Prejudice,
a two-story country-house facade painted to look like a summer sky that
overlooks a wide-open playing area. Not only is it acted by the same group of
players, but both shows have been cast similarly. Michele Vazquez and Courtney
Moors, for instance, play Elizabeth and Jane in Pride and Prejudice and Hermia and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, WHILE MICHAEL DALY DOES DOUBLE DUTY AS
MR. COLLINS AND BOTTOM. This approach gives a strong feeling of unity to the
season: You immediately see the artistic point of presenting the two shows in
tandem.”
If
they only knew how much more of an artistic point there really was in this
particular casting of the two tandem productions of Austen and Shakespeare!
P.P.S:
For the lover of the truly out-there allusion, I suggest to you that the
surname “Collins” may just have been a sly tweaking by JA of “Corinthians” from
the Christian Bible! I thought of this because of the veiled allusion by JA to 1
Corinthians 9:14 which JA clearly did (as discovered by a good friend of mine) hide
in plain sight in her April Fools letter to James Stanier Clarke, her real life
Mr. Collins:
Just
as Mr. Bennet points out the perverse twistedness of Mr. Collins’s idea of
Christian forgiveness, in that letter JA in effect points out the perverse
twistedness of JS Clarke’s interpretation of St. Paul’s admonitions about
compensation to God’s messengers on earth.
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