“Oh my, oh my,” sighed Sharline.
“Huh?” said Hoppy. “I must be blind. I don’t see nothing but that lady and that word stuck there.”
But finally the music up and died. Hoppy let out a big sigh himself. The black screen had white letters on it: “Warner Brothers have the honor to present a Max Reinhardt production.”
And then the big letters of the title: “A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM by William Shakespeare.”
“I’ve heared tell of him,” Arlis said. “He wrote a whole bunch of stories.”
“Not as many as Clarence Mulford, I bet,” Hoppy said.
“Mulford’s was all about Hopalong Cassidy,” Arlis declared. “This gent’s stories was long ago and far away, in Old England.”
The screen declared that the music was done by a feller named Felix Mendelsohn, so at least Hoppy knew who he could blame for that Overture.
When the cast of characters came on the screen their names didn’t look like Old England at all. There was a Theseus and a Hippolyta and a Philostrate. There was stuff about “Lysander, who is in love with Hermia,” and “Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia,” and “Hermia, who is in love with Lysander,” and “Helena, who is in love with Demetrius.” Hoppy decided that all of that romance ought to please the womenfolk in the audience but he doubted the kids would take to it.
It was going to be a big cast. There would be a bunch of working folks, a carpenter named Quince and a bellows-mender named Flute—Hoppy never realized a feller could earn a living just from fixing up busted bellers—and a tinker named Stout, Snug a joiner, Starveling a tailor and Bottom, a weaver. Hoppy had thought of himself as a kind of weaver, a weaver of films through the projector, so he looked forward to seeing if this Bottom had any resemblance to himself.
Sharline began clapping her hands when the screen also announced that there would be a King and Queen of Fairies, as well as fairies named Puck, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed. If the screen really did show those fairies and not just more music, Hoppy could have a chance to see if they were accurate representations of the critters that Sharline had been meeting in the woods.
Next came on the screen a “PROCLAMATION,” some long and tedious written thing about the Duke of Athens getting married to the Queen of the Amazons, and Hoppy realized that Sharline would have a lot of reading-aloud to do for the folks in the audience who couldn’t read.
Then finally there was real pitchers: a line-up of fancy-dressed fellers a-tooting their trumpets, which put Hoppy’s bugle to shame and said, it seemed, With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling. There is this huge hall in a palace filled with hundreds of people, and this king and queen in their best outfits of armor marching in solemn procession while the trumpets blow. Hoppy knew from their outfits that the people in this pitcher show had never been west of the Atlantic Ocean, let alone the Mississippi, so this couldn’t possibly have nothing to do with cowboys. But everything was so grand and large and important that Hoppy was impressed with the sheer spectacle of it all. Then the King or Duke or whoever he is starts speaking, sweet-talking his lady, and pretty soon every other word is “thou” or “thee” or “thy” and he sounds more like the Bible than the way real folks talk.
Hoppy figured out that the main thing in this story was that the Duke is a-fixing to get hitched to the Amazon Queen, but she isn’t too happy with the idee, so the Duke is planning all these merriments to put her in the mood. Then there is some commotion because one of the lords wants his daughter Hermia to marry a certain feller but she has in mind to marry a different feller, which is against the law, to go against your daddy’s wishes, punishable by death. Well, the Duke tells her she has a third choice: she can stay a virgin all her life and become a nun, and he gives her a few days to think it over and decide which of those three choices she wants. The feller that she is supposed to marry has already fooled around with a friend of hers named Helena and took her virginity, and this Helena is crazy in love with him. But Hermia is in love with a different feller, named Lysander, who is in love with her, and next time they’re alone they talk about the hopeless situation. Lysander says that “The course of true love never did run smooth,” and Hoppy thought that any fool knew that to be the truth. The couple decides to meet the next night in the woods and then elope!
Then the working folk, who look like the ordinary folks you’d see anywhere, have a meeting, and this carpenter named Quince is the leader who is going to tell each of ’em what part they will play in a little skit they plan to put on for the entertainment of the Duke and his bride. The play is called “The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe.” Bottom the Weaver doesn’t look anything like Hoppy. He is this Hollywood gangster Cagney that Hoppy had seen a time or two in other pitcher shows, but here he is a clumsy, bumbling idjit who has in mind to play all the parts, and they have to hold him back. Quince tells ’em all to memorize their parts and they’ll meet in the woods the next night to rehearse.
Then the scene changes from the town to the woods at night, and those woods look just like what you’d see right here in the Ozarks, beneath a sliver of a moon. A kid wakes up buried in a pile of leaves, and Hoppy recognized Mickey Rooney, about the same age as Sammy McKim, who played young Kit Carson in “The Painted Stallion.” He’s got a pair of horn stubs growing out of his head, and just in case you think this is real, which it aint, along comes a donkey with one big horn growing out of his head. “A unicorn,” said Arlis Faught, a smart feller. Suddenly all the wisps of fog in the woods change into figures, and those figures are women in practically nothing, just garments that look like Sharline’s chiffon, and they commence running and dancing in unison. Hundreds of them, up and around some kind of ramp, and back down again and then all over.
Sharline squealed with joy. “My fairies!” she said. Hoppy peered closely at the fairy dance, wondering if these really were the same sort of critter that Sharline had been meeting in the dark woods of a night. Then we see the Queen of the Fairies, the most gorgeous woman Hoppy has ever laid eyes on, a tall blonde, and she has this little kid, not her own, but “a lovely boy stolen from an Indian king.” The kid doesn’t look like an injun to Hoppy, with his head in a fancy turban. Anyhow, along comes this big feller all in black atop a mighty black horse which must’ve been the horse the Stigler Brothers had told him about. But just in case you think he’s real, just as the young fairy named Puck or the unicorn has horns, he has antlers growing out of his head. And he growls, “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!” and he and his queen get in a terrible tussle because he wants that injun prince hisself. All the fairies run and hide in the bushes.
This Fairy King, name of Oberon, calls out of hiding Puck, played by little Micky Rooney, and commands him to run and fetch a certain plant called love-in-idleness which, “The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid will make or man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature it sees.” Hoppy had heard tell of such potions tried here in the Ozarks, although he’d never known of one that actually worked. The Oberon feller plans to use it on the Fairy Queen, whose name is Titania, so he can get that injun boy.
Just when you think you’re watching a whole different pitcher show that has completely forgot the folks who were in the first part, here comes that young couple from the first part, Demetrius and Helena, and Demetrius is trying to get away from her because, as he keeps telling her, he doesn’t love her. Oberon feels sorry for her so he decides to have Puck put the love-in-idleness juice on Demetrius’s eyes and he sends Puck off to find Demetrius and do that, but by mistake Puck finds Lysander, who has come into the woods with his ladylove Hermia and they have gone to sleep there. So of course when he wakes up and sees Helena first thing, he falls madly in love with Helena, but she thinks he’s just kidding and runs off.
By and by those working guys come into the woods to start rehearsing their little play. Puck comes along and watches them, and is bothered because they’re rehearsing their play right smack i
n the patch of woods that belongs to the Fairy Queen, so Puck decides to play a trick on them by giving Bottom the head of a donkey, or jackass, just in case you think this is real, which it aint. All the other working guys run away in fright. When we lay eyes on sleeping Titania the Fairy Queen again, who has had that love juice put in her eyes, we know that when she wakes up she’ll see that dumb donkey and dote on him.
All of these folks sleeping in the woods—Titania and Hermia and Lysander and Demetrius—has made Hoppy nod a bit himself, and once when his head drooped he looked down and saw that Sharline had gone sound asleep. His first notion was to nudge her awake, but she slept so deeply he got up and turned off the projector and lit the coal oil lamp. Arlis blinked his eyes and looked up at Hoppy to see what was up, and said, “Prithee, wherefore ceaseth thou?” and Hoppy inclined his head toward sleeping Sharline.
“I reckon she got bored with the show, and conked out,” Hoppy observed.
“Nay, ’twas but the favor of the several sleepers who hath inspired her into slumber,” said Arlis, and Hoppy figured he had been inspired into talking like the folks in the show.
“Maybe we ought to call it a night,” Hoppy suggested, “and watch the rest of it tomorrow night.”
But mayhap the sounds of their voices woke her. She came awake, and her eyes fell on Arlis, and her whole face lit up, and she held out her arms to him. “Awakest thou, faire lady,” said Arlis, but he didn’t grab her or nothing. Hoppy wondered if she really was under some kind of spell, because nobody had sprinkled no pansy-juice in her eyes.
“What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?” said Sharline. And hark! if ole Arlis didn’t commence singing:
“The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plain-song cuckoo gray,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay.”
Sharline said, “I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again: Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note; So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape…”
“I hate to interrupt you lovebirds,” Hoppy said, “but it’s near on to midnight and we’d better wait until tomorrow to watch the rest of the pitcher show.”
But the lovebirds wouldn’t hear of it, and both Arlis and Sharline protested so mightily in such fancy language that Hoppy was compelled to start the projector up again. He noted there were only three reels of film left.
Well, it seemed that there Fairy Queen has fallen head over heels for that jackass, or that weaver Bottom with the head of a jackass, and she gets her fairy servants to lead him off to her bower, or woodsy bedstead, where there’s no telling what they do for the rest of the night. It turns out that Oberon is happy with his queen’s infatuation, but he’s unhappy that Puck has squirted the love-juice into Lysander’s eyes by mistake, so he makes him correct that mistake by doing Demetrius, who sure-enough wakes later and falls for Helena. And then both of the men are fighting over Helena, and poor Hermia is bothered because her Lysander has told her he hates her, and poor Hoppy is bothered because he has got confused about all four of these lovers and who loves who.
Hermia and Helena are fighting, and Demetrius and Lysander are fighting, and Hoppy is wishing they all four had six-shooters so they could settle their arguments the way they ought to be settled in a good cowboy movie.
Puck sure is right when he says, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” But finally he puts them all to sleep again, and puts some kind of antidote in Lysander’s eyes so he will love Hermia again.
Oberon, who appears to be in charge of everything and has the little injun prince for his own at last, takes away the spell that Titania is in, and has Puck turn the jackass’ head back into Bottom’s.
Sharline spoke simultaneously with Titania, “What visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.”
All the fairies disappear and the night is over. The next day the Duke Theseus and his hunting party come across the lovers all asleep and wakes them. Lysander tries to explain everything to Hermia’s daddy, who is furious, but after Demetrius explains he is really in love with Helena, the Duke decides that the lovers can all be married at the same time as himself and that Amazon Queen. And everything looks like it’s going to be such happily-ever-after that Demetrius says “It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream.”
That ought to have put an end on it, but those working folk still have to perform their little play for the wedding ceremony, which turns out to be the funniest part of the whole show, although it’s downright ridiculous the way those actors make fools of themselves trying to do the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Arlis and Sharline were laughing their heads off, so Hoppy joined in too, and they had a lot of fun.
Sharline was real pleased because Oberon and Titania and all their fairies come back to bless the married couples as they head off for bed. And just in case any of us in the audience have wondered if the whole pitcher show is but a dream we’ve had, Mickey Rooney the Puck puts in one last speech: “If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended: that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear; and this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream!”
Pretty soon a word came on the screen that just said “finis.” Hoppy wasn’t sure what that meant. He knew a feller named Fenness up in Carroll County but it was spelled different. The word disappeared and was replaced by “Exit Music,” and Hoppy was pretty sure what “exit” meant. Sure enough, here come ole Felix again with his thousand fiddles and all. Apparently they was in a hurry to get out compared with how long it took to get in, so that Exit Music didn’t last nearly as long as the Overture did.
When Felix was done and the screen went blank, Arlis said, “Forsooth! Mine eyes ne’r beheld such enchantment, but now I am disenchanted back into my ordinary self.”
“Yeah,” said Sharline, “it’s real hard to be real again.” But Hoppy was glad that she was real again, because she stopped gazing so adoringly at Arlis and laid her eyes on Hoppy again. “What did you think, Landon?” she asked him.
“Well, I got to allow as how it’s the downright prettiest pitcher show I ever seen, as far as the pitchers are concerned, I mean, the camera was out of this world.”
“Incomparable cinematography,” said Arlis, and at least he wasn’t talking Shakespeare any more.
Chapter fifteen
Bright and early the next morning, despite getting less than a good night’s sleep (although Sharline was dead to the world before Hoppy got his pants off), Sharline put on her overalls and her sunbonnet and told Hoppy to make his own breakfast because she had to get on over to the Faught place. He asked her what in hell for, and she said she’d told Arlis she would come and help him hoe weeds out of his garden patch. “The thing I miss most,” she said, “being on the road and roaming from town to town, is my own little garden patch. I’m real keen on planting seeds and watching things come up, and taking gentle care of them till they’re growed and can be et.” She and Arlis had to tend his garden early in the morning before it got too hot. So Hoppy made his own breakfast for a change, just some leftover biscuits with jam on them, and half a pot of coffee. He was of a mind to go off by himself fishing, for a change. Although he was feeling kind of jealous, let alone suspicious, that Sharline wanted to spend so much time with Arlis, he was also a bit relieved to be free from her, a thing he’d noticed on the trip with Teal Buffum the day before: after being in her constant company all the time ever since she’d first come into his life as Carl, it was good, or at least different, to have a little time to himself. The trouble was, being up on the mountain, the town didn’t have a fishing creek running through it. The nearest spot, back down the road a ways, was the headwaters of the Little Buffalo River, hardly more than a trickle. But it was the same stream that ran through his home country of Stay More farther along down the valleys, and just the thought of that made him want to go there, fishing or not. He got his fishing pole and set out on foot, although it would be a mile or two to hike.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3 Page 16