How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare Read Online Free PDF Page B

,
the ear of man hath not seen ,
man’s hand is not able to taste ,
his tongue to conceive ,
nor his heart to report
what my dream was .
    Obviously, Bottom is getting mixed up: An eye cannot hear, and an ear cannot see. A hand cannot taste, a tongue cannot think, and a heart cannot talk. While Bottom is getting the words mixed up in part because he’s groggy, he is also trying to be profound. We know this because Bottom’s words echo a passage in the Bible that he is trying to quote. In 1 Corinthians (2:9–10), Saint Paul says:
The eye hath not seen, & the ear hath not heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.… For the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
    My children have always loved Bottom’s speech, and we came up with an easy way to learn it—by using hand gestures. If you do this with your children, no matter what age they are, it will help them enormously in learning the passage.
     
Say
Touch

The EYE of man hath not
eye
HEARD,
ear
the EAR of man hath not
ear
SEEN,
eye
man’s HAND is not able to
(gesture forward with hand)
TASTE,
lips
his TONGUE
lips
to conceive,
temple
nor his heart
heart
to report
(gesture forward with hand)
what my dream was.
    In our house, the hand gestures became a game, with all of us competing to see who could say the passage fastest. The kids won, of course, and after ten minutes we all knew the passage cold.
    The final two sentences of the passage are straightforward and declarative.
I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream .
    Peter Quince is one of Bottom’s friends. (A quince is also a pear-shaped fruit.)
It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom .
    Here Shakespeare is punning again. Bottom is the character’s name; and the dream is bottomless, which suggests that it is deep and profound. Bottom is once again echoing 1 Corinthians: “For the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”
    For Shakespeare, Bottom’s dream is deep. It is a dream about imagination and the possibilities of mankind. In this dream, a simple tradesman is the object of a queen’s adoration. He accepts the role and becomes her consort for a night. And remember, Bottom is the only mortal in the entire play who ever sees any of the fairies. He gets to see worlds that no other mortal in the play gets to see. His dream has no bottom indeed.
    Review the speech one last time with your children, and then we can put it into context.
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.… The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom .

Bottom’s Story
    Bottom is at the center of the third plotline of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , and his story is simple. He and his friends, with the colorful names Peter Quince, Francis Flute, Tom Snout, Snug, and Robin Starveling, decide to put on a play called Pyramus and Thisbe during the wedding celebrations of the Duke of Athens. The six friends are Athenian craftsmen (a carpenter, a weaver, a bellows mender, etc.) and are known in the world of Shakespeare as the “rude Mechanicals” (or humble workmen), a name that Puck gives them. We meet them in the second scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream when their leader, Peter Quince, is passing out the parts for the play. They will need to rehearse, of course, and they decide to meet the following night in the Wood near Athens—yes, that’s right, the samewoods to which the lovers are fleeing, which is also the woods where the fairies live.
    One of the great charms of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is watching these honest, unaffected men trying to put