Prelapsarian Myth/ Cowboys in the Green World

I was excited to hear the term "prelapsarian" in class today (even more so to hear the word 'cowboy') as it was one of the first things I learned about in another Lit class this semester, Regional/Western Lit.  In that context, the Western is all about returning to the purity and savagery of the unsettled West before it is destroyed by the industrialization and domesticity of the East (a symbolic Eden separate from the knowledge that followed the fall). The western hero knows that nature is the best teacher for how to be a man rather than "book learning." This got me thinking about the "green world" and how Shakespeare uses the woods/edenic scenery as a mode for restoration for his characters as well as a place of mystery (and danger if you are a maid traveling alone).  The woods in MSND caused all of the lover's problems but ended up solving them too, acting as a Puck-esque mischievous role in the story.  So far in As You Like It, the woods have served to reveal to Duke Senior that the pastoral (maybe Western?) life is what he prefers, reminding me of how the Western myth insists that nature is where one must return to be pure and to escape the wrongs he has been dealt or has committed outside of the woods. 

As far as other mythical references go, James mentioned Cain and Abel but I was thinking more of the story of Jacob and Esaul in which Rebecca tricks her husband Isaac into giving the wrong son the birthright. No, Duke Senior was not tricked out of his position, but you get the idea.  Celia reminds me of Ruth, in that she is a faithful friend who goes with Rosalind to her exile like Ruth followed Naomi: "And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, [or] to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people [shall be] my people, and thy God my God."

The moral of the story is that the story is all that matters.

Act five to me is an epilogue. It's a chance to catch up with characters you had forgotten about until that point because they vanished from the plot. Like the extra scenes that appear during the credits of a movie, the end of MSND continues the story of the mechanics where it left off, the preparations for the play.  This play within a play acted out by Bottom and his merry men acts as a foil with which the audience can reflect upon the inverse story of the four lovers and the role that magical interference and coincidence play in the making of their happy ending. 

But why go to all of that trouble to tie up loose ends when you could simply have someone from Theseus and Hippolyta's court come out and tell you that they all lived happily ever after?I think that Shakespeare saw this as a chance to address his audience (us) directly; especially with Puck's final monologue.  The moral of the story is that the story is all that matters.  If you take away all of the myth, the fairies, the magical love potions, the Athenian Law, you are left with the same drama that saturates modern reality television.  It is the obsession with Myth that makes Shakespeare's treatment of the story  so that it needs to be seen both in the form of MSND AND Pyramus and Thisbe so that we can understand that it is all the same story. It is all part of the same myth, it has just been given different details. 

And like Puck says, if you didn't like it, just pretend it is a dream, because chances are you will see the same story again in a different form.