Raspberry

In our garden, raspberries correspond to dewberries in Shakespeare.  In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the fairy queen, Titania, falls in love with a weaver named Bottom, who has been transformed and given a donkey’s head while rehearsing a play in the forest.  Titania tells her fairies to “be kind and courteous with this gentleman.  Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes/ Feed him on  apricots and dewberries.”  Bottom’s experience of transformation and contact with the divine, spirit, or more-than-human world seems connected with his roles as actor, weaver, and earnest enthusiastic engagement with everything.  He speaks of his experience with Titania saying “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was” (4.2).  He mixes up the senses as he misquotes the Bible, celebrating an indescribable experience.