Helena - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Oh spite, oh hell – to the Hell in my own name too! The hell in love, the hell in romance, the hell of all men! He being in my name as well of course… as if I’m made of men! Do they control me? Na… funnily enough the sound of my name’s conclusion… and what (no doubt) a modern man would say at my fawning Aside: What Demetrius feels about me without love’s potion. for them. My name; partly made up of them all - Hel e na. He created me. Created my name. This man who shook history, shakes the vast fields of stages still: created language, created insults and idioms, created footlickers and scullions and loons. Aside: What Demetrius calls me, no doubt. What if though, we were thrown into modern day - we four tangled lovers? Our forest now a cobbled city street, our names a hashtag or blend or portmanteau of #Demena or #Hermander… Aside: or #paintedmaypolegetsherman …how my old Bard would laugh and we would be his self-coined ‘laughing stock’. I’ve been in ink and upon folio paper. Aloft a stage and before groundlings: photographed on set, reviewed in magazines, photoshopped Aside: False imitation! Spurious image! for internet trolls - a word with a very different meaning to the faeries I’ve met. How language adapts! But what, pray tell, stays? Intrigue. Love. Summer seasons and shows, his words, his characters - us and you and your interest in him: a roundel we return to even in his words we unknowingly use… I should know of course… He made me after all… Hel e na… and you, in your hands and seats and voices, still make me feel that same love and spite and Hell. Neither of us are likely to be forgotten soon… na.