The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.

Shakespeare’s Dog: Midsummer Night’s Dream

As big feet said, ‘Crooked knees — what hounds are these?’

Seems Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream features a scene that describes hounds — and wouldn’t you know it? They sound a lot like dachshunds. Even though it’s thought that dachshunds weren’t really around in the 1600s… Awoooo!

My vanity pushes me to think that the description refers to the noble badger hound. The line ‘Each under each,’ seems to me to point the dachshund-way. As does the description of these fine hounds as being ‘dew-lapped’ — being, as the dachshund is, so close to the ground, it’s belly in morning is always ‘dew-lapped’.

Awoof! What’s this?! Don’t believe me? Well, to all nay-sayers, and believers alike — I give you the passage (from Act IV Scene 1) in full, for you to make up your own mind.

THESEUS My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew’d, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee’d, and dew-lapp’d like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge when you hear.

Here Theseus, duke of Athens, is telling Hippolyta that his hounds sing melodiously as a choir… If not dachshunds, then our-near-cousins, the basset hound, or beagles — the so-called ‘melody makers of the meadow’….

Well — whatever you think, methinks that productions of this wonderous elfin- and spirit-rich Shakespearian play would only benefit from the boon of including a low-slung, long-eared, crooked-kneed bevy of dachshunds, held loosely in the wings (and kept quiet on a diet of treats and tasty sausages)!!

Awoof! Your faithful dew-lapp’d hound.

Archibald, Esquire

Posted 16 Jul 07

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