➥ 4 Stars *:･ﾟ✧

“O, is all forgot?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds
Had been incorporate. So we grew together
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted
But yet an union in partition.
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So with two seeming bodies but one heart,
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest."

━━━━━━━━━━━ ♡ ━━━━━━━━━━━

This might just be the gayest thing. Ever? Bye I actually started giggling while reading Shakespeare, as if I were reading something like a sapphic romcom? That's...basically what this was if we unpretentious it. Like...I could not believe my eyes reading this insane level of angst:

n  Helena: Your hands than mine are quicker for fray;
My legs are longer, though, to run away!

(Then more toward the end:)

Hermia: Never so weary, never so in woe,
Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briars –
I can no further crawl, no further go;
My legs can keep no pace with my desires.n

I WAS YELLING AT MY COPY OF THE TEXT THAT I PRINTED AT HOME, I WAS YELLING "YOU'RE HER DESIRE" because my poor sweet Helena kept getting rejected left right and center. Bless her, casually dropping a n  “I evermore did love you, Hermia”n...messy, messy sapphics as we always have been and forever shall remain

n  3 1/2 starsn
3 3/4
Upped the rating when I realized that I'd given 3 1/2 to King John, Pericles, and The Taming of the Shrew


Been a while since I've visited this review. This play was the first I read in a project to read all the Bard's plays before I kicked the proverbial bucket wherever you're supposed to kick it. I'm probably behind on this goal by now (of reading/reviewing four plays a year). Ah well.

There are multitudes of rather innocuous comments inside this spoiler. It can safely be skipped.


Here I've decided to add some comments about this project, finding myself about 30 months into it.
- I've read 10 of the plays so far, so I'm on schedule; all but one (The Tempest) reviewed; I trust I'll get to that one soon.
- The plan outlined below has been altered some, which can be seen by taking a look at some of my more recent reviews. I've tried to just go where I please instead of being rigid.
- I've tried different strategies for ordering the reading list. For whatever reason, the ten plays I've read are five comedies, three histories, and two - Pericles & The Tempest - well, what the heck are they? See my reviews if you care what I thought.
- I've added links to the plays I've reviewed inside my review of the Complete Works (link below, right under Resources.)
- The bit about watching a movie of the play didn't last too long, since I found it difficult to find a movie for some.
- Making up for that, I'm now seeing at least three plays a year on stage.
- I'm still kickin'. I guess that's the best part. 8 )



I made a plan in early 2014 to read all of Shakespeare’s plays. Not in 2014, but in the rest of my days.

Naturally this plan relied on some assumptions.

First, all plays would be treated as if I’d never yet read them (which was true for most of them).

Second, I assumed that reading one play every three months would be reasonable. There are 37 plays, hence a little over nine years. I would be 78. Seems okay.


Problems

1. What order to read the plays in?

A. Best guess as to the order they were written?
A’. The order that they appear in my Complete Shakespeare? (close to the same thing)
B. By sets of the types of Play? (comedy, history, tragedy, problem plays)
C. Random?
Wresting with this question occupied me until about August. NO, NO JUST KIDDING
I randomly selected MND to start with.

2. I only got one play read.

Okay, this is not huge. I now have 36 to go. An even nine years? Perhaps this is a very favorable, even unrealistic? assumption. Yet …
anyway. So I’ll be 79. Seems okay.

3. My answer to 1, and the fact of 2, may be related.

I’ve never much enjoyed reading plays that are comedies. Seems to me that they’re much more fun to watch than to read. There’s not much to engage the mind in a comedy, nor is there anything to learn from them (like there is from a history, for example). Okay, you can learn about human nature from a good comedy, just like you can learn about human nature from any well-written fiction. But in my experience a comedy is pretty much pure entertainment, like a musical. If it goes beyond entertainment, then it goes beyond comedy.


Resources

The edition of Shakespeare’s works that I have is this one.

The books of commentaries that I have are The Wheel of Fire, Shakespearean Tragedy and Coleridge’s Writings on Shakespeare.

WoF contains analyses of seven of the plays, together with other essays.

ST (Bradley) contains very lengthy pieces on four of Shakespeare’s play, with some other lectures.

The Coleridge book discusses to varying degrees many of the plays.

I have one other book, Engagement with Knavery by Robert Jones, which deals with only one of the plays, Richard III. This book seems to be unheard of on GR. (Duke Univ. press, 1986)

For movies, I have Netflix.

This Plan of attack was my answer to all the above scratching my head. These following sections used to be in spoilers, but I've revealed this stuff else there wouldn't be much showing.

n  Read the introductionn

I noted the sources listed: Chaucer (the opening of the play has similarities to the beginning of the Knight’s Tale; Plutarch’s “Life of Theseus”; and of course Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe.

Naturally the Faeries are found in folklore. “Belief in faeries, which had been fairly strong some generations before, was dying out except among the ignorant … Among educated men and women fairies had become a picturesque fantasy, and a topic for pretty verse and Courtly entertainment.”Spencer’s The Faerie Queen, written just a few years before this play, has nothing to do with Shakespeare’s use of faeries here. Spencer’s work was a vast and serious allegory related to contemporary political and religious affairs in England, not a light entertainment. His “Faerieland” is peopled with Arthurian knights representing various virtues, not with folkloric pixies.

Puck was modelled on a well-known character of country tales named Robin Goodfellow. Shakespeare appears to be the first to have conferred the name “Puck” to this good fellow.

There are also links to three earlier plays by Shakespeare: Two Gentleman of Verona (the cross-wooing of two pairs of lovers), Love’s Labor’s Lost (amateurs producing a drama for royalty) and Romeo and Juliet (fairy pranks).Who says GoodRead reviewers are the only ones to re-use material?


n  Read the playn
If you’ve never read the play, and want a synopsis, look elsewhere.

Well okay, here’s a synopsis.

Athens: Theseus and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta are preparing to be wed. Young Athenians Lysander & Demetrius are both in love with Hermia, who loves the first & loathes the second, whom her father insists she must wed. A second Athenian lass, Helena, does love Demetrius, but is spurned by him.

A group of comedic blue collars is preparing to present Pyramus & Thisbe following the wedding ceremony; chief among these is Bottom, a bombastic buffoon. Meanwhile the king and queen of the faeries (Oberon & Titania) are preparing for the midsummer night’s faerie revelries in the woods outside Athens, but are locked in a caustic argument about Titania’s young “changeling”, a boy “stolen from an Indian king”. (II.i.21-23)

Oberon commands his mischief-maker Puck to gather a weed that, when sprinkled on the eyes of a sleeper, will cause them to fall madly in love with the first live being they see on awaking. Puck is to sprinkle this on Titania and arrange that she will see something or someone ridiculous when she awakes Oberon will only allow the spell to be removed when she agrees to give him her boy. Mix this in with Lysander and Hermia deciding to flee from Athens, and sleeping in the woods when they tire; Demetrius searching for Hermia; Helena moping about in the same woods; the play actors rehearsing in the same environs; Puck wreaking planned and unplanned havoc on various characters, including giving Bottom the head of an ass; Titania falling for this ass-headed one; lovers reversing the object of their desires, spurning those whom they formerly loved; and soon only Oberon is left with any knowledge of what’s going on, trying to instruct Puck on how to straighten everything out.

Eventually, all’s well that ends well. It is good fun.


n  Watch a movie of the playn
Recently I've been reading plays that the Chesapeake Shakespeare Theatre has been putting on, before seeing their production. SO I'm not feeling a need to also see a movie of the play. However, back when I started I wasn't seeing live productions. Thus the following words on movies of Midsummer Night's Dream.


Several versions of the play have been filmed, the earliest in 1909 with Charlie Chaplin. I chose to watch the 1935 film. This movie features extensive use of Felix Mendelssohn's beautiful music which he wrote for the play – first the 1826 Overture, and then the 1842 incidental music.

The film features the debut of Olivia de Haviland as Hermia; James Cagney as Bottom (his only Shakespearean role, for which he got a lot of deserved praise); and a thirteen year old Mickey Rooney as Puck.

The wording and cadence of Shakespeare is fairly well preserved in the movie, though extensive editing chops out much of the text. I felt it was a good production, and I was certainly more entertained by the movie than by the play.

Mendelssohn’s music was wonderful, and the fairie sequences which were all accompanied by this music were inspired magic. The ballet done in these scenes was gorgeous, and the way the fairies glided through the air was beautiful. The costuming of the female faeries, including that of Titantia, surprised me by its very suggestive, almost salacious, design. And Victor Jory as Oberon lent that role a dark creepiness which I found very appealing. All in all, these dreamlike scenes were for me the highlight of the movie.




The Theatrical release poster



n  Read any commentaries on the play that I haven

The only small bit on this play was the following note in the Coleridge book, which is taken from marginalia he wrote at I. i. 246 ff, where Helena betrays Hermia. Since it’s all I’ve got, I’ll quote the whole thing:

I am convinced that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of the play in his own mind as a dream throughout, but especially (and perhaps unpleasingly) in this broad determination of ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this too after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act is very natural; the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold that principles have on the female heart when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men, because they feel less abhorrence of moral evil in itself and more for its outward consequences, as detection, loss of character, etc., their natures being almost wholly extroitive. But still, however just, the representation is not poetical; we shrink from it and cannot harmonize it with the ideal …

”extroitive?” From thefreedictionary.com: Ex`tro´i`tive a.1.tSeeking or going out after external objects.
“Their natures being almost wholly extroitive.”
- Coleridge.
Another sight gives the same definition and example. Is Coleridge the only person who ever used this word?


Write a review.
You just read it. Thanks.




. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Coleridge on Shakespeare
Next review: 2014 on Goodreads a Goodreads imaginary book
Older review: Firing Offense Pelecanos

Previous library review: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
Next library review: The Life and Death of King John

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

I’m sure there’s some keyboard commando all primed and ready just waiting for a chance to chime in about how “this isn’t Facebook” or “talk about books and don’t post stupid pictures.” To him/her/them I shall quote ol’ Bill himself and say . . . .

n  Fucketh off with thee!n

Because I have read A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I’ve read it more than once. Originally I read it back in the stone age as a high schooler who opted for additional literature classes as electives rather than other selections such as “Home Ec” and asked for things like this for Christmas, which although unattractive still holds a prime location on the ‘puter desk . . . .

n  n

I’ve re-read it occasionally over the years because I enjoy the Shakespeare comedies *cough supernerd cough*. But I never loved it as much as I loved it last night when this happened . . . .

n  n

And my baby boy made his acting debut as Francis Flute in a modernized in music/wardrobe, but not in content version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Yeah, this is a post that should probably go on Facebook, but I deleted that motherfucker and never looked back so you’re getting my proud momma moment here. Haters can eat a bag of weiners.

(Additional tidbit: Robin Goodfellow (a/k/a “Puck” to those of you in the know) was played by a girl and she kicked allllllllllllllllllllllllllllll of the ass.)

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends."



One of William Shakespeare's most famous comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream, delights in gorgeous language, clever plot twists, fairies and whimsy. I'd read this before, but it felt like the right time to get it out and read it again. While it doesn't have the emotional grip on the reader (or playgoer) that Hamlet, Henry II or several of his tragedies have, it was fun to revisit this and experience it again! 4.5 stars


...............

شکسپیر را به دلایل بسیار متفاوت و گاه متناقضی می‌ستایند. مثلن شاعر نئوکلاسیک قرن هجدهمی (الکساندر پوپ) می‌گوید شکسپیر تنها نویسنده‌ی واقعن اصیل تاریخ است. بقیه (حتا هومر)، هر اندازه چیره‌دست، باز هم از دیگران گرته‌برداری کرده‌اند و این را می‌شود از شخصیت‌هایشان فهمید که نسخه‌هایی دست چندم‌اند. اما شکسپیر، با اینکه از بسیاری الهام گرفته، شخصیت‌هایش را چون انسان‌هایی واقعی متمایز از هم آفریده است. تنها چند سال بعد، دیگر نویسنده‌ی هم‌مسلک پوپ (ساموئل جانسون) درباره‌ی رویای نیمه‌شب تابستان می‌گوید که هنر شکسپیر این است که شخصیت‌هایش واقعن شخصیت نیستند! یعنی قبل از اینکه کاراکتری منحصربه‌فرد در اثر باشند، نمادی از گونه‌ی انسانی‌اند و به همین خاطر است که هر کس می‌تواند با آنها همدل شود. چند دهه بعد، شاعر رمانتیک (ویلیام هزلیت) شکسپیر را به این خاطر ستایش می‌کند که این نمایشنامه آنقدر آن‌جهانی و خیال‌انگیز است که هر اجرایی خیانتی‌ست به آن، چون این‌جهانی‌اش می‌کند. اما آقای شاعر فکر این را نکرده بوده که علت جذابیت برای مخاطبان دو و نیم قرن بعد، همین کیفیت این‌جهانی و بازی آگاهانه با مدیوم تئاتر است.

به‌گمانم آدم‌های بزرگ یک ویژگی مهم‌شان همین است که هر کسی از ظن خود یارشان می‌شود و شکسپیر هم مستثنا نیست از این قانون نانوشته. اما رویای نیمه‌شب تابستان واقعن درباره‌ی چیست؟

قرار است تسئوس پادشاه آتنی و نامزدش هیپولیتا با هم ازدواج کنند. اژئوس —مردی شناخته‌شده در آتن— برای دخترش هرمیا شوهری برگزیده به‌نام دمتریوس، اما هرمیا عاشق لیساندر است و دمتریوس هم خودش معشوق هلنا. به این‌ها اضافه کنید پادشاه و ملکه پریان را که چند وقتی‌ست سر موضوعی میانه‌شان شکرآب است و همچنین گروهی بازیگر آماتور که قصد دارند در مراسم ازدواج تسئوس و هیپولیتا نمایشی اجرا کنند. نمایشی که مثل پادشاه آتن و همسرش از دل اساطیر یونان بیرون آمده‌ (و مورد علاقه‌ی کلاسیسیست‌هاست) و پیوند خورده با فولکلور پیشامسیحی انگلستان (که مخاطبان هم‌عصر شکسپیر آن را خوب می‌شناسند). این همه شخصیت، سه خط داستانی در‌هم‌تنیده و دو زمان‌مکان ظاهرن بی‌ربط در کنار هم. توصیفات خیال‌انگیز از طبیعت و آوردن جادو به زندگی بی‌روح روزمره (که رمانتیک‌ها بپسندند) و نمایش در نمایش (که جا را برای تحلیل‌های مدرن باز کند). بنظر می‌آید که رویای نیمه‌شب تابستان درباره‌ی همه‌چیز هست. اما به‌نظر من بیشتر از همه درباره‌ی یک چیز: آنچه را که می‌بینید باور نکنید. 

غرش شیر و لباس خونی؟ باور نکنید.
یار قدیمی که دشمن خونی شده؟ باور نکنید.
دشمن خونی که ادعای یاری دارد؟ باور نکنید.
و بلاخره تمام این نمایش را؟ شک دارم اما محض احتیاط باز هم باور نکنید.
-----------------------------------------
بیشتر کتاب‌های انتشارات نورتون متون دانشگاهی ادبیات انگلیسی‌اند، اما گزینه‌ی مناسبی هم هستند برای کسی که بخواهد ته‌ و توی متن را دربیاورد. اینجا هم علاوه بر مقدمه و متنِ پانویس‌دار، متن‌های دست اولی که الهام‌بخش شکسپیر بوده‌اند (نوشته‌ی اووید، چاسر و دیگران) و نقدهای مختلف (از آن‌هایی که اول متن آوردم تا بررسی‌های معاصر مثل خوانش تیره و اروتیک و در عین حال بسیار تأثیرگذار یان کات) در نیمه‌ی دوم کتاب آمده‌اند.

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 here
While 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 hand
And the youth, mistook by me
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

"...as pessoas apaixonadas veem o que imaginam, não o que seus olhos enxergam e, portanto, o Cupido alado é pintado com vendas nos olhos..."

willy spit legendary fire in this one

Эта пьеса достаточно легка, свадебно-любовная тема, очевидно, была уместной на свадьбе заказчика (кто он - ответа не нашлось). В пьесе много любовных пар, но конфликт строится вокруг отношений Гермии и Лизандра и посягающего на их разрыв Деметрия. Герои пьесы заимствованы из совершенно не связанных между собой источников - античные герои встречаются на одной сцене с героями английского фольклора и "Метаморфоз" Овидия. Но Гермия, Елена, Лизандр и Деметрий выдуманы Шекспиром.
Веселая путаница забавляет, но не более того.

I’m glad I decided to do a reread of this.. I always thought this play was a lot of fun, and who doesn’t love some Fae trickery and drama?

The moon methinks looks with a wat’ry eye;
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower”
(Titania)

Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass.

So quick bright things come to confusion
(Lysander)

Night and the ocean are the depthless things of the earth, where bright things come to confusion, become “undistinguishable, Like far-off mountains turned to clouds”. The unconscious, the sleep-world, the dream-world. Everywhere throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream the moon and water rule. Oberon’s world glimmers with moonstruck dew and the night’s wet flowers, dripping with the stuff of irreality- its residue permeates the stage. And what else sends a plague of fantasies across our minds? Love, jealousy, madness. “More strange than true”. “The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.” Because works of literature too are dreams, are fevered fantasies we inhabit strangely and temporarily like the other plane of the sleep-world. All of this is awaiting, well-prepared, as we enter A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Shakespeare has composed a universe with depths as deep-reaching as the Atlantic, the great Bottomless expanse to the west, over which Oberon once watched Cupid’s arrow arc.

The lights come down in the theater. We are momentarily encapsulated in complete dusk. Before sleep our eyes are shuttered completely, and what power draws us into that black? Like a fairy’s flower working its magic. Our still bodies become vessels of the visions of that other world, and what happens there, on the stage, of little consequence to our physicality, an animated vision drawn and protracted out in rhythms, figures, symbols as old as language itself. The dream of the stage, the dream of the novel, dream of life.

That the primary concerns of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are love, confusion, jealousy, and agency, are uniquely appropriate to this fantasy. Strong desire creates another irreality, unrequited desire creates distorted reality, jealousy tells its horrible lies to us, and our thoughts and bodies seem animated by some will other than our own. Is passion but a spell cast on us, twisting reason and sense, where we pursue our desired object astonished and half-blind, like in a dream? And the absurdities of our delusions in desire, are they not but the stuff of the utmost comedy?

The influence of the full moon is the stuff of legend, myth, but also of proven fact. Agency. Magic. The moon exerts itself on the earth’s bodies of water, pulling them inland and out. The moon-mad howl in the bright night. In the forests shapeless things delineate themselves by the watery light of the moon. The glitter of dew on leaves glimmers like ice. Fairies carry little lights in the palms of their hands and lay us down to sleep on thyme and eglantine covered bowers. Love-in-idleness is dripped across the sleeping lovers’ brows. When Cupid’s potion has been administered, the love-mad are sent into frenzies at their waking sight.

Men are the clowns of this earth, so all of this is very funny. All of this is very gentle and star-light and ephemeral and fleeting. As dew dries quickly once the morning has ascended, our dreams dissipate, and only through great effort do we keep them. Love too is brief and comes quickly to confusion, and our mercurial love that one day seems the direst need soon seems the most innocent delusion. As if we were players in a ridiculous play. A farce or satire of something more serious. Nick Bottom and Francis Flute and Tom Snout and Snug and Robin Starveling make a foolish thing of a deadly serious affair in their play within this play- they do no less than satirize one of their Master’s own masterworks, Romeo and Juliet. And the ass-headed weaver Nick Bottom, dreamer so deep that his body is lost, lover of the Faerie Queene, is the hammiest actor of them all. Those who fall deepest into their fantasies are the most foolish. But also the most fun to watch because they are, at least for the moment, other than us.

In the end Puck sweeps away the dream dust. The dew-soaked stage by morning light is littered with the debris of the night’s phantasmagoria. The motes of man’s dreams of love are scattered and dispersed, and from the forest they have come to be with their true lovers, the events of the midsummer’s night dimly recalled as chimeras. The tragedy of love, love-in-death, the sorrows of Romeo and Juliet, are far from here; in A Midsummer Night’s Dream they are only the fools’ ill-prepared debacle of a play. Here there is no death, all is life, all is dream, the human comedy playing itself out, swimming before our slumbering eyes.

Oberon.
Thou rememb’rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid’s music?

Robin.
I remember.

"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 gentleman
Or 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 me
that 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 brief
That 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 apprehend
More 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 forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."