I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight.[...]

A Midsummernight’s Dream (2.1.260-5)

To every thing, there is a season: Martinmas has the Ballad of Barbara Allen, Ash Wednesday has TS Eliot, Halloween has Poe, July 4th has Francis Scott Key, and Christmas has--well--everything. But Midsummernight is almost always misplaced. To be sure: Midsummernight has Shakespeare, infinitely, indelibly, regardless of what pagan poem originally acoompanied it, what St. John spoke on the day, or who else comes up with what else to celebrate it--June 23rd, Midsummernight, is perpetually tied to Shakespeare.

The problem is, of course, that Midsummernight seems to have all but forgotten its patron author. Shakespeare's work shows up in the oddest places--high school stages in the dead of winter, or stuffy Shakespeare repertory theaters far from the summer solstice.

How appropriate. Midsummernight seems to almost beg being forgotten, and ironically, Shakespeare seems to have remembered all this. Demetrius and Lysander both seem to forget, Titania too, a little, I suppose. Shakespeare too seems to wander (on purpose, no doubt--but it's fun to think otherwise) with a hackneyed version of Romeo & Juliet that forgets to be a tragedy and manages to wipe out any memory of the rest of the play and any remaining angst between the lovers and the respective parents. And if that weren't enough, Robin Goodfellow has some words to us, namely, that we should remember to forget all this (as if it were a dream). But only if it doesn't exactly agree with us.

Good. That's all easy enough to stomach, except that it's somehow hard to forget: here it is, roughly a month and a half past Midwinternight and I'm seated in a crowded auditorium remembering about being thirteen.

Adolescence was never so sweet. I'm stealing books out of my sister's room (a more brazen move than I probably thought at the time--) when I stumble on a tall, leggy, blonde of a volume of Shakespeare. Little did I know then, but I didn't stand a chance. And really, what more could I want? Shakespeare had it all, or at least it did then: ancient lore, the seductive mystery behind Elizabethan English and the wine-dark poetry to top it all off. Two weeks of wrestling with Shakespeare finally had me reading Puck's apology, only to repeat the process all over again (and, as it turns out, bits and pieces of it still again, again, and still--).

But never mind all that, and never mind that Midsummernight was a cool four months away while I was sitting in the crowded auditorium in the Boston Conservatory. Never mind also that Goldengrove had unleaved a long time ago (Cambridge and Boston too, as it turns out--pardon me while I fix my running mascara...) that the days were growing dark at four in the afternoon and heavy pea-coats were lining the backs of our seats.

Shakespeare has a way of making us remember all these things we're too quick to forget: here was Josh, whom I'm sure none of you know, sitting next to me and Brian, unknown (I'm sure), too and there was Gustavo, and heaven only knows who else, and, in the dead of winter when it's hard to remember there's anything at all magical about anything, there was William Shakespeare, this time with Benjamin Britten, this time with Jonas Laughlin, this time with Oberon, reminding an audience that had already forgotten (hauntingly, mystically, and--with that combination of authors and performers, could there be any doubt?--particularly beautifully) about georgic banks of wild thyme and nodding violet, of long summer evenings in the western suburbs of Chicago and, most poignantly, of being thirteen and falling hopelessly in love with a tattered, old edition of Shakespeare off my sister's bookshelf. We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

We have an excuse today. Today it's okay, maybe even encouraged, to forget all that, or at least remember it all as if it were a dream. Midsummernight is here. But it's starting to get late, and I should get home before it all begins.

Next week, Milbarge, PG, and I will be having a Slate-style blog-discussion about the Supreme Court's end of term cases. I'll put up a link to it next Monday.