A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a
romantic comedy by
William Shakespeare written sometime in the mid-
1590s. It depicts the adventures of four young lovers and a group of amateur actors in a moonlit forest, and their interactions with the fairies who inhabit it. Today, the play is one of Shakespeare's most popular and is performed across the world.
It is not known exactly when
A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but it is assumed to be between 1594 and 1596. Some have theorized that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding; numerous such weddings took place in 1596, while others suggest it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John, but no concrete evidence exists to link the play with either of them. In either case, it would also have been performed at
The Theatre, and, later,
The Globe in
London.
There is no known source for the plot of
A Midsummer Night's Dream, although individual elements can be traced to classical literature; for example, the story of
Pyramus and Thisbe is told in
Ovid's
Metamorphoses and the transformation of Bottom into an
ass is descended from
Apuleius'
The Golden Ass; Shakespeare would have studied both texts at school. In addition, Shakespeare would have been working on
Romeo and Juliet at about the same time that he wrote the
Dream, and it is possible to see Pyramus and Thisbe as a comic reworking of the tragic play.A further, frequently ignored source is
The Knight's Tale in
Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales.
[1]*
Puck or Robin Goodfellow
*
Oberon, King of Fairies
*
Titania, Queen of Fairies
*
Lysander, in love with Hermia
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Demetrius, in love with Hermia
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Hermia, in love with Lysander
*
Helena, in love with Demetrius
*
Egeus, father of Hermia
*
Theseus, Duke of Athens
*
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and betrothed of Theseus
*
Nick Bottom, weaver
*
Peter Quince, carpenter
*
Francis Flute, bellows-mender
*
Robin Starveling, tailor
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Tom Snout, tinker
*
Snug, joiner
*
Philostrate, Master of the Revels
* Peaseblossom, fairy
* Cobweb, fairy
* Moth (sometimes rendered as 'Mote'), fairy
* Mustardseed, fairy
The play features three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke
Theseus of
Athens and the
Amazonian queen
Hippolyta.
In the opening scene, Hermia refuses to comply with her father Egeus's wish for her to marry his chosen man, Demetrius; in response, Egeus quotes before Theseus an ancient Athenian law whereby a daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her father, or else face death or lifelong chastity worshipping
Diana as a
nun. Hermia and her lover Lysander therefore decide to elope by escaping through the forest at night. Hermia informs her best friend Helena, but Helena has recently been rejected by Demetrius and decides to win back his favor by revealing the plan to him. Demetrius, followed doggedly by Helena, chases Hermia, who, in turn, chases Lysander, from whom she becomes separated.
Meanwhile,
Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen,
Titania, arrive in the same forest to attend Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her
Indian page-boy to Oberon for use as his 'Knight' or henchman', since the child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers. Oberon seeks to punish Titania's disobedience and recruits the mischievous
Puck (also called
Hobgoblin and
Robin Goodfellow) to help him apply a magical juice from a flower called "love-in-idleness," which makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing they see when they wake up. Oberon applies the juice to Titania in order to distract her and force her to give up the page-boy.
Things then become more complex when Oberon encounters the Athenian lovers and tells Puck to use the magic flower to help them too. Due to Puck's errors, Hermia's two lovers temporarily turn against her in favor of Helena. The four pursue and quarrel with each other all night, losing themselves in the dark and in the maze of their romantic entanglements.
Meanwhile, a band of 'rude mechanicals' (lower-class laborers) have arranged to perform a crude play about
Pyramus and
Thisbe for Theseus's wedding, and venture into the forest, near Titania's
bower, for their rehearsal.
Nick Bottom, a stage-struck
weaver, is spotted by Puck, who transforms his head into that of an ass (donkey). Titania is awoken by Bottom's singing, and she immediately falls in love with him. She treats him as if he is a nobleman and lavishes attention upon him. While in this state of devotion, she encounters Oberon and casually gives him the Indian boy.
Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania and orders Puck to remove the ass's head from Bottom. The magical enchantment is removed from Lysander but is allowed to remain on Demetrius, so that he may reciprocate Helena's love. The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene, during an early morning hunt. They wake the lovers and, since Demetrius no longer loves Hermia, Theseus over-rules Egeus's demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers decide that the night's events must have been a dream. After they all exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream "past the wit of man".
In Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the mechanicals perform 'Pyramus and Thisbe'. It is ridiculous and badly performed but gives everyone pleasure regardless, and after the mechanicals dance a '
Bergomask' (rustic dance), everyone retires to bed. Finally, as night falls, Oberon and Titania bless the house, its occupants, and the future children of the newlyweds, and Puck delivers an epilogue to the audience asking for applause.
After the English Renaissance,
A Midsummer Night's Dream was never performed in its entirety until the
1840s. Instead, it was heavily adapted in such forms as
Henry Purcell's musical adaptation
The Fairy Queen (1692), or in shortened versions that turned Bottom into the main character.
The Victorian Dream
In 1840,
Madame Vestris at
Covent Garden returned the play to the stage with a relatively full text, but padded it out greatly with musical sequences and balletic dances. Vestris took the role of Oberon, and for the next seventy years, Oberon and
Puck would always be played by women. After the success of Vestris' production,
nineteenth century theatre continued to treat the
Dream as an opportunity for huge spectacle, often with a cast numbering nearly one hundred. Huge, detailed sets were created for the palace and the forest, and the fairies tended to be envisaged as gossamer-winged ballerinas. The much-loved overture by
Felix Mendelssohn was always used throughout this period, with the text often being cut to provide greater space for music and dance.
Granville-Barker, Max Reinhardt and after
In the early
twentieth century, a reaction against this huge spectacle emerged. Innovative director
Harley Granville-Barker introduced in 1914 the modern way of staging the
Dream: he removed the huge casts and Mendelssohn, using instead Elizabethan folk music. He replaced the huge sets with a simple system of patterned curtains. He used a completely original vision of the fairies, seeing them as robotic insectoid creatures based on
Cambodian idols. This increased simplicity and emphasis on directorial imagination has dominated subsequent
Dreams on the stage.
Max Reinhardt staged
A Midsummer Night's Dream thirteen times between 1905 and 1934, introducing a revolving set. After he fled Germany he devised a more spectacular outdoor version at the
Hollywood Bowl, in September 1934. The shell was removed and replaced by a "forest" planted in tons of dirt hauled in especially for the event, and a trestle was constructed from the hills to the stage for the wedding procession inserted between Acts IV and V crossed a trestle with torches down the hillside. The cast included
John Lodge,
William Farnum,
Sterling Holloway, 18-year-old
Olivia de Havilland, and
Mickey Rooney, with
Erich Wolfgang Korngold's orchestrations of Mendelssohn. (The young Austrian composer would go on to make a Hollywood career.) On the strength of this production,
Warner Brothers signed Reinhardt to direct a filmed version, Hollywood's first Shakespeare event since Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford's
Taming of the Shrew (1929). Rooney (Puck) and De Havilland (Hermia) were the only hold-overs from the cast.
*
Los Angeles Philharmonic notes*
Notes, including production historyBrook and after
Another landmark production was that of
Peter Brook in 1971. Brook swept away every tradition associated with the play, staging it in a blank white box, in which masculine fairies engaged in
circus tricks such as
trapeze artistry. Brook also introduced the subsequently popular idea of doubling Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania, as if to suggest that the world of the fairies is a mirror version of the world of the mortals.Since Brook's production, directors have felt free to use their imaginations freely to decide for themselves what the play's story means, and to represent that visually on stage. In particular, there has been an increased amount of sexuality on stage, as many directors see the 'palace' as a symbol of restraint and repression, while the 'wood' can be a symbol of wild, unrestrained sexuality, which is both liberating and terrifying.
:''See also
Shakespeare on screen (A Midsummer Night's Dream)The Shakespeare play has inspired several movies. The following are the best known.
*
1935 - directed by
Max Reinhardt and
William Dieterle, produced by
Henry Blanke and adapted by
Charles Kenyon and
Mary C. McCall Jr.
** The cast included
James Cagney as
Bottom,
Mickey Rooney as
Puck,
Olivia de Havilland as
Hermia,
Joe E. Brown as
Francis Flute,
Dick Powell as
Lysander and
Victor Jory as
Oberon. Many of the actors in this version had never performed Shakespeare, and never would do so again, notably Cagney and Brown, who were nevertheless highly acclaimed for their performances in the film. All critics agreed that Dick Powell, who played Lysander, was horribly miscast, and Powell himself agreed.
**Much of Mendelssohn's music was used , but re-orchestrated by
Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The ballet sequences featuring the fairies were choreographed by
Bronislava Nijinska.
**
The film won two Academy Awards:***Best Cinematography -
Hal Mohr***Best Film Editing -
Ralph Dawson**
It was nominated for:***Best Picture -
Henry Blanke, producer
***Best Assistant Director -
Sherry Shourds***Notably, Hal Mohr was not nominated for his work on the movie; he won the Oscar thanks to a grass-roots write-in campaign. The next year the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences declared that it would not accept write-in votes for the awards.
***The film was first released at 132 minutes, but was edited to 117 minutes for its general release run. The full 132 minute version was not seen again until it turned up on
cable television in 1994. The film was then re-issued at its full length on
VHS (its first video release was of the edited version). Later showings on
Turner Classic Movies have restored the film's pre-credits Overture, and its Exit Music, neither of which had been heard since its 1935
road show presentations. But as of 2006, the film has not yet been issued on
DVD.
*
1968 - directed by
Peter Hall.
** The cast included
Paul Rogers as Bottom,
Ian Holm as Puck,
Diana Rigg as Helena,
Helen Mirren as Hermia,
Ian Richardson as Oberon, and
Judi Dench as Titania.
** This film is based on Hall's popular
Royal Shakespeare Company production, which was avant-garde at the time, but is looked back on as somewhat dated, with mini-skirts and 1960's psychedelic overtones. Titania and her fairies wore body suits.
*
1982 - (titled "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy") directed by
Woody Allen.
** The cast included
Woody Allen himself and wife
Mia Farrow.
** Not a spoof, it translates the action to a bucolic country holiday where the protagonist couples will see their liaisons put to a test, in an infrequent homage to
Shakespeare in Allen's work. However, it does not really use the original plot, nor any of Shakespeare's dialogue.
*
1996 - directed by
Adrian Noble.
** The cast included
Desmond Barrit as Bottom,
Finbar Lynch as Puck,
Alex Jennings as Oberon/Theseus, and
Lindsay Duncan as Titania/Hippolyta.
** This film is based on Noble's hugely popular
Royal Shakespeare Company production. Its art design is eccentric, featuring a forest of floating light bulbs and a giant umbrella for Titania's bower.
*
1999 - written and directed by
Michael Hoffman.
Here's the page**The cast included
Kevin Kline as
Bottom,
Rupert Everett as
Oberon,
Michelle Pfeiffer as
Titania,
Sophie Marceau as
Hippolyta,
Christian Bale as
Demetrius and
Calista Flockhart as
Helena.
**This adaptation relocates the play's action to
Tuscany in the late
nineteenth century.
*
1999 - written and directed by
James Kerwin.
**The cast included
Travis Schuldt as
Demetrius. Sets the Dream story against a surreal backdrop of techno clubs and ancient symbols.
*
2005 -
ShakespeaRe-Told BBC TV drama, adapted by
Peter Bowker.
** The cast includes
Johnny Vegas as Bottom,
Dean Lennox Kelly as Puck,
Bill Paterson as Theo {Egeus}, and
Imelda Staunton as his wife.
Lennie James plays Oberon and
Sharon Small is Titania.
Zoe Tapper and
Michelle Bonnard play Hermia and Helena.
** This is a modern adaptation, set in a contemporary holiday park playing host to the engagement party of Hermia and James (Lysander). It has the three parallel plots, plus the fairies, mischief, hallucinations and comedy of the original play. The dialogue is modern with allusions to Shakespeare's original lines.
Musical versions
Incidental music: An
overture and
incidental music for the play were composed by
Felix Mendelssohn in 1826 and were used in most stage versions through the nineteenth century. Mendelssohn composed the ballet version as well (which contains the famous
Wedding March (leaving of the church) performed at weddings around the world).
Opera: The
play was adapted into an opera, with music by
Benjamin Britten and libretto by Britten and
Peter Pears. The
opera was first performed on
June 1,
1960, at
Aldeburgh.
Semi-opera:
The Fairy-Queen by
Henry Purcell consists of a set of
masques meant to go between acts of the play, as well as some minimal rewriting of the play to be current to 17th century audiences.
Literary
*
Drama: Botho Strauß' play
Der Park (1983) is based on
characters and
motifs from
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
*
A Kidsummer Night's Dream is another adaptation of the play.
*
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Love and a Bit with a Donkey) is a gay version of the story adapted by
Stuart Draper and played at the
Greenwich Playhouse in Autumn
2004 Comics: *For his series
The Sandman,
Neil Gaiman included a fantastical retelling of the play's origins in the
graphic novel Dream Country. It won several awards, and is distinguished by being the only comic that has ever won a
World Fantasy Award.
*In 2006, web-comic artist
Brooke McEldowney, author of the web-comics
9 Chickweed Lane and
Pibgorn, adapted the story into a 20th-century setting using characters from both his web-comic series as part of the Pibgorn title.
A Midwinter Morning's Tale: A comic of the
Corto Maltese series by
Hugo Pratt.
Oberon,
Puck,
Morgan Le Fey and
Merlin appear in the comic as a representation of the
Gaelic and
Celtic fantasy beings. They choose Corto Maltese as their knight to fight for their sake against a possible German invasion in the context of
World War I.
Novels:Magic Street (2005) by
Orson Scott Card revisits the work as a continuation of the play under the premise that the story by Shakespeare was actually derived from true interactions with fairy folk.
A Midsummer Night's Gene (1997) by
Andrew Harman.
Faerie Tale, the 1988 fantasy novel by
Raymond E. Feist, contains many references to the mythical characters represented in
Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Film
Anime:In 2005,
xxxHOLiC - A Midsummer's Night Dream was released in theaters. It shared slight similarities with the play.
Disney shorts: A Midsummer Night's Dream was recently adapted into a Disney short starring Mickey Mouse as Lysander, Minnie Mouse as Hermia, Donald Duck as Demetrius, and Daisy Duck as Helena. Featured in Disney's "Mickey Mouse Works" and "House of Mouse"
Disney's animated series "Gargoyles" featured many characters from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, including Oberon, Titania, and, most prominently, Puck. In this series, Puck actually takes the form of Owen, loyal assistant to the main villain Xanatos. Later, Puck becomes the tutor for Xanatos' quarter-fae son, Alex. He is wily, sprightly, and willing to have fun at the expense of others.
Get Over It:The
2001 film stars Kirsten Dunst (Kelly Woods/Helena), Ben Foster (Berke Landers/Lysander), Melissa Sagemiller (Allison McAllister/Hermia) and Shane West (Bentley 'Striker' Scrumfeld/Demetrius) in a "teen adaptation" of Shakespeare's play. The characters are set in high school, and in addition to some similarities in plot, there is a sub-plot involving the main characters acting in a musical production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
Television
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody:There was an episode in the 2nd season called "A Midsummer's Nightmare", in which the title twins' school put on this play, but it ends up a wreck because some students' characters have to kiss another student's boyfriend/girlfriend.
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MIT html version.
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First Folio Facsimile - HTML diplomatic transcription of 1623 text.
*
Midsummer Night's Dream - plain vanilla text from
Project Gutenberg.
*
The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 1908 publication compiled by Frank Sidgwick, from
Project Gutenberg.
