Summary Of Pyramus And Thisbe

On April 28, 1964, the most famous band in the history of popular music taped a television receiver special at Wembley Park Studios in London. The show was called Around the Beatles, and it followed hard on the heels of the Beatles' legendary first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show less than 3 months earlier. This fourth dimension, though, the grouping's appearance did not begin with a rock and roll song, but rather with the performance of something quite different: the "Pyramus and Thisbe" episode from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Equally the circulate begins, we see three silhouetted trumpeters, followed by an creative person's rendering of the Globe Theatre, setting the scene for an Elizabethan performance. Ringo then appears in period dress, hoisting a flag begetting the proper name of the program and firing a cannon to slap-up comedic upshot. Shortly thereafter, the trumpeters are revealed to be John, Paul, and George, who enter onto the thrust stage to the please of the screaming fans surrounding it. The whole thing has the experience of a Beatles concert stadium and an early modern playhouse all at once, its full general raucousness and unruliness bringing those 2 venues into unexpected alignment.

The English language actor Trevor Peacock, who would later go on to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, introduces the players: Paul and John play the star-crossed lovers Pyramus and Thisbe; George plays Moon, while Ringo takes the office of the Lion. The ring members appear exceedingly well cast, even in ways that may not have been apparent at the time. Paul and John's separation at the easily of the Wall almost seems to foreshadow their divisions in the years ahead; George takes on the role of the quiet, thoughtful graphic symbol who shines light on the others. And and then there'southward Ringo hamming it upwardly as the Lion: he stands onstage with the other three, simply he never quite seems to be at the eye of the action, as when he fires the cannon alone—or when he sits behind them at his drum kit.

Moon i.e. Robin Starveling, the tailor, in the play of Pyramus and Thisbe. Early 20th-century pen and ink cartoon past Louis Rhead. Folger Shakespeare Library Art Box R469 no.52 (size S)

Panthera leo i.e. Snug, the joiner, in the play of Pyramus and Thisbe. Early 20th-century pen and ink drawing by Louis Rhead. Folger Shakespeare Library ART Box R469 no.65 (size S)

At times, the iv cast members look somewhat bewildered, a fiddling like the footage of them stepping off the plane at JFK for the showtime time. Although by this bespeak they were no strangers to variety shows, i gets the feeling that they're thinking to themselves: What exactly are nosotros doing hither? The framework is decidedly Shakespearean—although the script is liberally cut, they retain much of Shakespeare's linguistic communication. The fab four are not wearing their matching suits; their mop tops are partially obscured by imitation-Elizabethan headwear. (Although as Wes Folkerth observes, they are still sporting their "trademark Beatle boots.")

Yet the whole performance is notwithstanding a distinctly Beatles affair, and even though they mainly stick to Shakespeare'southward script, the moments when they play with the text stand out. When Pyramus suggests to Thisbe that they meet at Ninny'southward tomb, John, in his characteristically jokey tone, imagines the place as a club: "Ninny'due south tomb—is that all the same open?" A few moments later, Shakespeare's text demands that the Lion assure the audience that he is only an actor—"Then know that I, as Snug the joiner, am / A king of beasts fell"—simply in the Beatles' version, this becomes: "Then know that I one Ringo the drummer am." And when Pyramus meets his untimely death, Paul comforts the distressed members of the audience: "It's all right, it's all right." (I immediately thought of the bizarre episode a few years afterwards when Paul, fighting a pervasive conspiracy theory, would once more reassure his doting fans that he was not dead.) At the terminate of his speech, Paul begins with a faithful recitation of Shakespeare's script, "Moon, take thy flight," before adding his own farewell: "Run into ya, George!"

As Louise Geddes writes, the operation represents a "high/depression cultural clash": a band rapidly moving to the center of the 1960s counter-cultural move performs a scene from United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland'southward most approved playwright. It seems on the surface a hit contradiction, one that the Beatles themselves seem tickled past as they announced to lean into the notion, ridiculous as it is, that they are somehow interim above their station. There are even hecklers planted in the audience—well-dressed boys with posh accents who were, in reality, friends and boyfriend musicians—who remind the Beatles throughout the operation of their supposed social inferiority, much in the fashion that the members of the Athenian court ridicule the then-called "rude mechanicals" in Shakespeare's play. "Go back to Liverpool!" they shout at one point, reminding the band members of their northern, working-course roots. The irony, of form, is that the Beatles' newfound wealth and fame directly challenged these classist attitudes. Later revealing himself to be "Ringo the drummer," the percussionist gleefully tells the audition, "If I was really a king of beasts, I wouldn't be making all the money I am today, would I?"

At 1 indicate, Pyramus, upon finding Thisbe'due south bloody cloak, cries out, "O prissy duck, O dear!" Immediately later Paul delivers the line, the hecklers yell "Curl over Shakespeare!" The allusion is to Chuck Berry's "Coil Over Beethoven," a song that the Beatles covered in their early years; the implication is that Shakespeare would ringlet over in his grave to see their Midsummer operation. Just the irony is that the alliterative line that prompts their taunt—while it might sound more than like a McCartney lyric than a Shakespearean i—is in fact a line from the play. It isn't the amateur thespians who get the script wrong. It's the well-dressed hecklers who don't know Shakespeare when they hear information technology.

This moment encapsulates precisely why "Pyramus and Thisbe" is perfect for the occasion. As Folkerth observes, nosotros're not watching four actors playing Lesser, Flute, Starveling, and Snout as they perform in a play; we're watching the Beatles perform the play equally themselves. This allows them a layer of comic remove that Shakespeare's characters lacked. The Beatles slip in and out of character in a way that recalls Shakespeare'due south original, only unlike the characters in Midsummer, they're in on the joke. If the Athenian court's mockery of the rude mechanicals makes united states uncomfortable—the social elite taunting a group of laborers who have come up together to perform a play—here the Beatles triumph. They even have the last word: every bit the operation concludes, John exclaims, "Enough of this rubbish!"

The 1964 "Pyramus and Thisbe" performance is a remarkable standoff of two British cultural icons: one whose 400^th birthday was being celebrated that year, some other which had just recently come into existence. That standoff, however, was not unique in the Beatles' career. Village is quoted in the Beatles' first picture, A Hard 24-hour interval's Night; at the end of the studio track of "I Am The Walrus," in that location are audible portions of a BBC performance of King Lear. In The Lyrics, Paul McCartney's 2021 volume exploring his songs through discussions with the Irish gaelic poet Paul Muldoon, the songwriter speaks extensively of his literary influences—Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Dylan Thomas, and Oscar Wilde, among many others—every bit well equally his debt to his loftier school English teacher, Alan Durband, to whom he attributes his "love of reading." The volume'due south lone epigraph is fatigued from Hamlet: "To thine own self exist true."

Shakespeare makes a number of appearances in The Lyrics, merely nearly prominently in McCartney'south commentary on ii songs released in the late stage of the Beatles' career. The first, "With a Little Assistance From My Friends," contains a line from Julius Caesar in its opening verse: "lend me your ears." "The Bard's four hundredth birthday had fallen in April 1964," McCartney recalls—the aforementioned month they taped Around the Beatles—"and there'd been a product of Julius Caesar on television that year. Information technology was still fresh in our minds." The pb-in to the track, too, references the fictional "Billy Shears," whose name bears a conspicuous resemblance to William Shakespeare. In discussing the 2d vocal, "Let It Be," McCartney reminisces nearly reading Hamlet with Durband at the Liverpool Plant High School for Boys, noting the song's echo of Hamlet as he nears death: "O, I could tell you — / But let it exist." "I doubtable those lines," McCartney muses, "had subconsciously planted themselves in my retention."

One could exist forgiven for thinking that there's an element of self-mythologizing going on here as McCartney, now the elder statesman of popular music, aligns his ain writing with that of England'south national poet. But the "Pyramus and Thisbe" performance is an especially bright instance of how Shakespeare has been part of that history virtually since the ring's germination. In so many means, the Beatles turned popular culture on its caput, and along the way they reimagined Shakespeare—equally and so many great artists have done, and continue to practice—for a new generation.