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.
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