"The course of true love never did run smooth;" is a famous, often-quoted line - a truism throughout all ages and cultures. Where does it come from? It is spoken by a character called Lysander, in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, and articulates possibly the play's most important theme.A Midsummer Night's Dream is a fanciful tale, full of poetry and beautiful imagery, such as,"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:"and,"Weaving spiders, come not here;Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence!Beetles black, approach not near;Worm nor snail, do no offence."It is thought that A Midsummer Night's Dream was written between 1595 and 1596, probably just before Shakespeare wrote "Romeo and Juliet", although both underwent many revisions, both on-stage and off. And as with all Shakespeare's plays, it is impossible to be sure of any dates or an exact order. Unusually, the main plot seems to have been entirely his own invention, although some characters are drawn from Greek mythologies. Theseus, for instance, the Duke whom we learn at the start of the play is to marry the Amazon queen Hippolyta, is based on the Greek hero of the same name. Plus there are many references to Greek gods and goddesses in the play. The play is set in Athens, and there is a "play within a play" (a theme to which Shakespeare returned time after time) which is based on an epic poem by the Roman poet Ovid.The play also includes many English fairy characters such as "Puck" - or "Robin Goodfellow", to give him his alternative name. "Robin Goodfellow" is a particularly English figure, who was very popular in the sixteenth-century. Fairies had been very much respected and feared for time immemorial. People were in awe of their magical powers. They were believed to often be mischievous at the very least, if not positively malignant, and names such as "Goodfellow" were meant to appease or pacify them, so as not to incur their vengeance. The moon was a source of myth and mystery, to be wondered at and its influence possibly feared. Oberon's,"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania"And Puck's,"Now it is the time of night,That the graves, all gaping wide,Every one lets forth his sprite,In the church-way paths to glide:"are indicative of the audience's superstitions and the common beliefs of the time. Many such elements in Nature were viewed as supernatural; what we now term "pagan" was the norm, and although people were fascinated by the fairies and "little people", they also feared them. Puck's comment,"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"could be voiced by any fairy up to mischief. The woodland at night would be both enchanting and thrilling to an Elizabethan audience - an unpredictable place of danger and possible bewitchment. The fantastical atmosphere, and the magic of the surreal fairy sphere which Shakespeare conjures up, are important and unique elements of this play.The third component is the depiction of ordinary working trade and craftsmen in London of the time, and the theatrical conventions such as men playing the roles of women. The scenes where these foolish and absurd characters are involved provide much of the humour. They often make laughing stocks of themselves via Shakespeare, for our entertainment, and although much of this play seems strange and whimsical to a modern audience, it is classed as one of his comedies. It is completely different from any other of the plays which Shakespeare had written up to that point, although some of the themes present themselves again in "Romeo and Juliet", but given an entirely different emphasis and dramatic intent.One such theme is the ownership of females by their father. The play opens with Egeus asking for Theseus's support, in insisting that Hermia (Egeus's daughter) should marry whom he chooses,"As she is mine, I may dispose of her:Which shall be either to this gentlemanOr to her death, according to our law" (The third choice, if his daughter refuses to do her father's bidding, is for her to live a life of chastity as a nun, worshipping the goddess Diana.) This was the prevailing ethos in Elizabethan times, and there is no question that a daughter was the legal property of her father. Additionally, a common justification for choosing a future husband for his daughter could be summed up in the idea that "love is blind". Egeus is not merely insisting on his rights as a father, but wants the best for his daughter, and according to the Elizabethan view, thinks that an arranged marriage is the best way of protecting her from any irrational romantic nonsense. Hermia herself is refusing to submit to her father's demands, as she is in love with Lysander. This theme, of a young girl's rebellion against her father, is against all conventions of the time, and is taken up with a devastating conclusion in "Romeo and Juliet." Shakespeare's own views on the power of love are unclear. Helena says,"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:"which could easily be the author's voice, and tends towards the opposite view. Perhaps one could speculate that this could have been the reason why he developed the idea further, to make a much more serious statement in his tragic play."A Midsummer Night's Dream", however, is a much more frivolous and fanciful affair. Not one love affair but three are intertwined throughout the play. Demetrius, whom Hermia has been commanded to wed, is in turn loved by Helena. So Hermia loves Lysander, and Lysander loves Hermia. Helena loves Demetrius - but Demetrius also loves Hermia rather than Helena. So one young woman has two suitors, the other none, but since four are involved the audience are hoping for a traditional "happy ending". In the meantime, there are plenty of chances for misunderstandings. As the play proceeds we are invited to laugh at this hapless group, in their lovelorn afflictions, rather than feel any true sympathy, because the whole affair is portrayed in such a light-hearted way, as opposed to the tragic story of young love, "Romeo and Juliet", which has probably not yet been completed. In that play there is tension throughout, and the sure knowledge, (as the audience had been told in the prologue) that there would be no happy outcome. Here we are free to poke fun at the young lovers' "torments", as we are fairly sure of everything ending happily.Other characters who become involved in the confusion are "Titania", queen of the fairies, and "Oberon" king of the fairies. Shakespeare has taken the character of "Titania" from Ovid's "Metamorphoses", and his "Oberon" may have been taken from the medieval romance "Huan of Bordeaux", translated by Lord Berners in the mid-1530s. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Oberon is jealous of Titania's favourite, a changeling Indian child. She is keeping the child as a page, but Oberon wants to train him as a knight. All the young lovers from Athens, plus the main fairy characters, are in the woodland for various reasons at the same time. The woodland of course being also the realm of the fairies, much confusion is bound to follow. The audiences of the time will have greatly anticipated and appreciated this devilment, as "Robin Goodfellow"'s pranks and tricks will have been well known to them. To a modern audience, the events seem farcical, and the play does require quite a leap of faith to enjoy the fairytale whimsy of the woodland scenes. Nevertheless, the scenes of passion between the beautiful, graceful Titania and the clumsy Bottom, with a grotesque ass's head, are so incongruous that its humour is timeless and crosses any boundaries with ease.There are other "opposites" which tickle our funnybones even after so many centuries. Helena is tall, a "painted maypole", whereas Hermia is short, "though she be but little she is fierce," and both their scuffles and the enchanted lovers' declarations seem deliberately ridiculous in this context. They are overly earnest and serious - and followed immediately by joking, merry, clumsy workmen. All the fairies are ethereal, Titania being particularly beautiful; all the craftsmen earthy and clumsy, Bottom being particularly grotesque. Puck plays pranks, whereas Bottom is an easy and natural victim. Puck uses his magic with ease, whereas the craftsmen's attempts to stage their play is laborious and ridiculous by contrast. The incompetent acting troupe's enactment of the "play within a play", "Pyramus and Thisbe", is still humorous even now. Juxtaposing these extraordinary differences to exaggerate the contrast, meant that Shakespeare ensured laughs from his audience, while heightening the surreal fantastical elements. The idea of dreams is perhaps the central pivot of the play. Events happen in a haphazard fashion, and time seems to lose its normal motion and progress. No one in the woodland scenes is ever in control of their environment - even Puck makes mistakes with his love potions. He gleefully revels in such mistakes,"Lord, what fools these mortals be!..."Then will two at once woo one, - That must needs be sport alone; And those things do best please methat befall preposterously." Yet Theseus and Hippolyta are always entirely in control of their rational world. The audience is given no explanation for the fantastical woodland sphere, with its illusions and fragile grip on reality. Shakespeare is clearly manipulating our sense of understanding throughout, inducing a dream-like feeling to the action.The love potions are magical or supernatural symbols of the power of love itself, inducing the same symptoms that true romantic lovers exhibit in their natural state, of unreasoning, fickle and erratic behaviour. No one who has been given a love potion in the play is able to resist it, much as falling in love appears to others to be inexplicable and irrational.Towards the end of the play we have a delightful rendering of the bumbling tradesmen's attempts to stage "Pyramus and Thisbe," which Shakespeare has taken from Ovid's epic poem "Metamorphoses". He also incidentally uses the plot again for "Romeo and Juliet", which seems quite bizarre, given the way it is used as a ludicrous farce here. Theseus and Hippolyta are well aware that the enactment of this play may be farcical and clumsy. They have been warned by Philostrate that the production is by "hard-handed men", (or as Puck calls them "rude mechanicals") and that their production is,"Merry and tragical! tedious and briefThat is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow"and this adds to their anticipation. And Theseus will welcome the diversion of such fancies. His wise words earlier, about his world of the rational,"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends"could refer both to the action which we have seen so far, and the workmen's play we are about to see.The audience views this absurd little play through the eyes of Theseus and Hippolyta. The young Athenian lovers are also present, having been satisfactorily paired off, as we suspected they would be. Everyone is relaxing and poking fun at the hapless players, "This is the silliest stuff I ever heard"protests Hippolyta, but Bottom, the bumbling buffoon, breaks out of character every now and then, to earnestly assure his audience that all is as it is meant to be - they merely need to keep watching and they'll understand... Shakespeare has written their performance as a delicious satire of the overly melodramatic earlier actions of the young lovers, and recognising this makes it even more hilarious to the audience. The young Athenians' overpowering emotions are made to seem even more ridiculous by virtue of these clumsy actors and this provides a comic ending to the play. Since the Pyramus and Thisbe of the craftsmen's play were themselves facing parental disapproval, it encapsulates and echoes the whole play within which it is set.The final speech by Puck highlights the thematic idea of dreams. If the audience does not care for the play, he says, or if we have been offended by it, then he suggests it should be considered as nothing but a dream. It is interesting that the fairies are all still present as the wedding are about to take place. Shakespeare's message is not entirely clear here; it is as if he is merging the fairies and their magic with Theseus and Hippolyta's rational world. Perhaps it is to convey that we will never be free of the irrationalities and unpredictabilities of romantic love; either that or that the fairy folk will always be around us to create havoc. The workmen's play was mocked by Theseus and Hippolyta, perhaps the message is that human behaviour and ceremonies of the larger play, that is the real rational world, are unknowingly mocked by the fairy folk. Who knows?A Midsummer Night's Dream is not one of Shakespeare's greatest masterpieces. Although it remains popular and is staged quite regularly, this may be down to imaginative staging and the exceptional production values we now have. On the page it reads as an inconsequential play, all whimsy, candyfloss and fluff. It is both significant and noticeable, how Shakespeare revisited some of the themes here, in "Romeo and Juliet," but in that play he used them with such skill that he created an abiding and deeply tragic drama. In both plays we have the intoxicating and overwhelming influence of romantic love, the powerlessness of young women to rise up against their families and conventions, and the "potions" to influence a particular course of events; all those elements are here too, but combined to make a fantastical, frivolous, illusory bit of nonsense. However there is much beautiful poetic imagery in this play, such as,"My soul is in the sky""Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;""...by thy gracious, golden, glittering streams" and,"O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!" (even if this last is to an ass...)Yes, A Midsummer Night's Dream does provide a few smiles even now. And if your taste runs to flights of fancy; if you like to read tales of fairies such as Peas-Blossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustard-Seed, using language and imagery such as,"Those be rubies, fairy favours,In those freckles live their savours:" "[I] heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back..." or"Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:It fell upon a little western flower,Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,And maidens call it love-in-idleness"if you are attracted by gauzy fragility and a sense of illusion, then you may enjoy the fantasy and whimsy of Shakespeare's play. For as "The Bard" says,"... as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name."
To celebrate William Shakespeare on his birthday in April, my plan is to locate a staging of six plays. I'll listen to and watch these on my MacBook, following along to as much of the original text as is incorporated by the production. Later, I'll read the entire play in the modern English version. A good friend I've had since high school recommended this system to me and it's been a very good system for delighting the mind in Shakespeare.First up, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Written in 1595 and published five years later, some historians believe that this comedy may have been commissioned for an important wedding of the time. Within the play, the Peter Quince Players and their performance of Pyramus and Thisbe for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta would seem to be a commentary on this. It's also one of the few plays that Shakespeare wrote as an original piece rather than reworking an older play or story already in print.I found two film versions. Both are faithful to the text, magical and harmless fun. The first was a 1996 adaptation distributed by Miramax Films featuring the Royal Shakespeare Company, a revival that closed quickly on Broadway with some of the same cast members. It was adapted and directed by the former artistic director of the RSC, Adrian Noble, and though the film was not shot in front of an audience, it remains heavily theatrical.The second was a visually splendid 1999 adaptation from 20th Century Fox starring Kevin Kline as Nick Bottom, Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania, Calista Flockhart as Helena, Christian Bale as Demetrius, Anna Friel as Hermia, Dominic West as Lysander, Sam Rockwell as Francis Flute and Stanley Tucci as Puck. This lavish version was directed and adapted by Michael Hoffman, who relocated the action to the 19th century Italian countryside. The play opens with Theseus, duke of Athens, preparing for his wedding to Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. The duke's instructions to raise the youth of Athens in festivity get off to a foul start when one of his constituents, Egeus, enters with his daughter Hermia and her two suitors, Lysander and Demetrius. The old man has arranged for Hermia to marry Demetrius, but her love knows only Lysander, whose plea to the duke that he's just as rich as Demetrius and loves Hermia more falls on deaf ears. Theseus finds it troubling that Demetrius was engaged to Hermia's friend, Helena, and dumped her to take a better offer from Egeus. But the duke is bound by Athenian law, which gives Hermia the choice of obeying her father, accepting a life of chastity as a nun, or death. He gives her until the new moon to choose. Hermia & Lysander instead make plans to flee Athens and marry outside the law. They share their secret with Helena, who still grieves with her unrequited love to Demetrius. Hoping it will bring them closer together, she conspires to tell her beloved of Hermia & Lysander's plan.Meanwhile, a group of "hard-handed" Athenian men led by the carpenter Peter Quince make preparations to perform a play for the duke and his bride on their wedding day. This troupe includes the weaver Nick Bottom and the bellows mender Francis Flute, who are to portray the lead roles in what Quince calls A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth. Bottom, considered to be the epitome of "Athens Got Talent", pleads with Quince to let him play all the parts in the play, but eventually settles on the "tragical" Pyramus. To rehearse, the men set off into the wood.In the wood, the fairy kingdom has erupted in a civil war between Oberon, king of the fairies and his queen, Titania, who has enraged her husband by taking custody of a good-looking boy, referred to either as a "plaything" or "page" depending on who's telling the story. Oberon summons his jester Puck to get revenge on his wife by procuring a milk-white poppy whose juice -- when laid upon the eyelids of one asleep -- prompts them to fall in love with the first creature they lay eyes on when they wake. By this time, Hermia & Lysander and Helena & Demetrius have stumbled into the wood.Puck reports to Oberon that after filling Titania's eyes with the love potion, he encountered a group of simpletons rehearsing a play. Puck chose "the shallowest thick skin of that barren sort" and while separated from the others, transformed the simpleton's head into a donkey's. Unaware he's been changed into an ass, Nick Bottom spends a wild night with the queen of the fairies. Instructed to imbibe the youth of Athens in love, Puck drops some love potion in the eyes of Lysander and Demetrius, who upon waking from a nap, both see Helena. Hijinks ensue throughout the wood, with the wedding of the Theseus & Hippolyta fast dawning.A Midsummer Night's Dream has been called one of most accessible of Shakespeare's plays, maybe for the same reason that The Nutcracker has been called one of the most accessible ballets. The presence of fairies and the antics of Nick Bottom, with the pomposity of a jackass and later the head of one, give the play a strong visual element and doesn't require a command of Elizabethan verse to be totally charmed by. This isn't one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, but I did enjoy it much more than I thought that I would, for two reasons.1) I loved the juxtaposition between illusion and reality. Supernatural elements are common to Shakespeare but more than any other of his plays I can think of, this is one with the greatest number of characters who share an encounter with the unknown. Today, it would be aliens, but at the time the play was written, it was fairies. There are a lot of references to sleeping and dreaming, to trying to interpret the great enigmas of the universe, all wrapped up in an amusing lark.2) Like a master, Shakespeare juggles four separate stories and weaves them together wonderfully. I liked the way that Hippolyta studied her groom out of the corner of her eye as he officiated a domestic dispute between his subjects. I liked the earnestness of Nick Bottom, who proves that talent is always secondary to persistence, and the conceit of a group of tradesmen putting on a show. I liked how underneath all the characters was an invisible world of "dreams" giving them inspiration and wisdom.Joe's Current Ranking of Shakespeare Plays (From Best to Worst):1) Much Ado About Nothing2) Twelfth Night3) Macbeth4) The Merchant of Venice5) A Midsummer Night's Dream6) King Lear7) The Tempest
Do You like book A Midsummer Night's Dream (2004)?
Oh, I loved this so much. It's charming and fun and hilarious and silly but it has a lot of heart- it's not just an empty comedy. There's wit and some really great observations on flights of fancy and the ridiculous things humans will do (with or without the help of forest nymphs) in the name of love. Also, an enchanted forest has got to be one of my favourite settings of all time, the heady summer air and a sense of magic really seeped through the pages.Two of my favourite quotes, both by Robin Goodfellow a.k.a. Puck (and I'm reciting from memory here, so bear with me):"If we shadows have offended,Think but this, and all is mended.That you have but slumbered hereWhile these visions did appear,And this weak and idle theme;No more yielding but a dream...""Captain of our fairy band,Helena is here at handAnd the youth, mistook by mePleading for a lover's fee.Shall we their fond pageant see?Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
—Mia
This play was whimsical, fun and a bit magical, complete with fairies and all. It made me chuckle at times; I got a kick out of the fairy queen, Titania, falling head-over-heels in love with Bottom after he was transformed to a ludicrous creature with the head of an ass. The play was not hard to digest, aside from the language of course. However, I did have to pause and sort out the various love relationships after the love potions were applied, and havoc was wreaked amongst the mortals. Puck was very naughty and seemed to take such delight from his silly mistake in meting out these potions. I found this to be lightly entertaining, but otherwise I did not really take away much more from this play. I think it would be enjoyable to see this on stage, and I would most definitely do so if the opportunity ever presents itself. One more note here, my kindle version included some very delightful illustrations which really may have been my favorite part of my first experience with this less serious of Shakespeare’s famous plays.
—Candi
My high school English teacher called this "the perfect play." He meant that in terms of it being performed. He would use it with new groups of drama students, because there was absolutely no possible way for them to screw it up. And now, close on 10 years later, I can't yet prove him wrong. I've been in this play twice (Hermia), I've seen it performed countless times by good groups of actors, mediocre ones, and one cast that was mostly pretty bad, I've seen it done in traditional Shakespearean costumes, modern day, Edwardian, 1950s, and one time a psychadelic 60s show, and I've still not yet had a bad evening at the theatre with it yet.The text speaks for itself, I think. The first conversation is the perfect thing to draw in adults and giggly twelve year olds alike. Repressive fathers, good boys and mean boys, the pathetic boy-crazy friend with a weird obsessions... etc.Even in the hands of average actors, I think the text just catches people up into it. You can almost act this one on instinct. You can do it with half remembered intonations and gestures from sitcoms, and people will laugh. For some characters, the direction for what to do is implied in the lines. Bottom, for instance, while he's trying to ensure that he plays every part in the play so no one interferes with his spotlight- the mousy sounds, the roaring, the pompous hero, the woman. Anyone who likes a bit of attention can get into that- as I say, the thing sort of just pulls you along with it. The last time I was in it, one of my best friends played Helena, and we were tearing each others hair out by the middle of the first rehearsal like it was the most natural thing in the world.I still really enjoy Bottom and Titania and the play within a play at the end, and I still think Act III, Scene II confusion can be one of the funniest sequences in Shakespeare (topped only by the Twelfth Night girl on girl/duel bits and a couple of scenes from Much Ado). After all that, I should probably also tell you that I'm incredibly biased: this was the first Shakespeare play that I ever read, and it was through reading this that I became close to some of the girls who are still my best friends, and its responsible for leading me to the rest of the Shakespeare plays that I came to love. Yeah, probably should've said that first, but whatever. I think if anything it strengthens my case, so oh well.
—Kelly
