I recall seeing A Midsummer Night's Dream at Vizcaya in Miami when I was in high school and finding it delightful and mesmerizing. The theme of mistaken identity and the inclusion of magic are common tropes in Shakespearean comedy and their use by Puck in this marvelous work makes for great reading and unforgettable theatre. The bucolic countryside where most of the play occurs looks forward to the other pastoral works (As You Like It and The Tempest and is truly refreshing in this context. The play within a play and epilogue by Bottom are some of Shakespeare's highest moments of comedy (from the poor acting) and poetry (in the dreamlike ending). A truly extraordinary read to repeat over and over again.

Fino's Reviews of Shakespeare and Shakespearean Criticism
Comedies
The Comedy of Errors (1592-1593
The Taming of the Shrew (1593-1594)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594-1595)
Love's Labour's Lost (1594-1595)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-1596)
The Merchant of Venice (1596-1597)
Much Ado About Nothing (1598-1599)
As You Like It (1599-1600)
Twelfth Night (1599-1600)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600-1601)
All's Well That Ends Well (1602-1603)
Measure for Measure (1604-1605)
Cymbeline (1609-1610)
A Winter's Tale (1610-1611)
The Tempest (1611-1612)
Two Noble Kinsmen (1612-1613)

Histories
Henry VI Part I (1589-1590)
Henry VI Part II (1590-1591)
Henry VI Part III (1590-1591)
Richard III (1593-1594)
Richard II (1595-1596)
King John (1596-1597)
Edward III (1596-1597)
Henry IV Part I (1597-1598)
Henry IV Part II (1597-1598)
Henry V (1598-1599)
Henry VIII (1612-1612)

Tragedies
Titus Andronicus (1592-1593)
Romeo and Juliet (1594-1595)
Julius Caesar (1599-1600)
Hamlet (1600-1601)
Troilus and Cressida (1601-1602)
Othello (1604-1605)
King Lear (1605-1606)
Macbeth (1605-1606)
Anthony and Cleopatra (1606-1607)
Coriolanus (1607-1608)
Timon of Athens (1607-1608)
Pericles (1608-1609)

Shakespearean Criticism
The Wheel of Fire by Wilson Knight
A Natural Perspective by Northrop Frye
Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber
Shakespeare's Roman Plays and Their Background by M W MacCallum
Shakespearean Criticism 1919-1935 compiled by Anne Ridler
Shakespearean Tragedy by A.C. Bradley
Shakespeare's Sexual Comedy by Hugh M. Richmond
Shakespeare: The Comedies by R.P. Draper
Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

Collections of Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece and Other Poems
Shakespeare's Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint
The Complete Oxford Shakespeare

3.5 stars

Sometimes, I feel that I just do not get Shakespeare! This particular explanation, for its face value, is neutral in its tone and execution, for this play is so absurd, but it almost seems like it is trying to be as such. While Shakespeare has been known to borrow his plots, I would say that his tragedies are better than his comedies in the way that the elements to his tragedies are a bit more original (or is it the fact that we have seen elements of his comedies time and time again). In a way, this was original, but I feel that the structure of who loves who and who everyone wants who to be with is something I am way too familiar.

In this case, Lysander and Demetrius love Hermia, Hermia loves Lysander, Helena loves Demetrius, while Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and Egeus, Hermia's father, want Hermia to be with Demetrius. Meanwhile, Theseus turns to a group of workers, including Nick Bottom, to provide the entertainment. Bottom wants to play all of the parts in this play that they are planning to put on. There is also a group of fairies that mirror the participants in this play and Puck, who plays a key role in the many alterations of what takes place in this play.

This is by no means my favorite Shakespeare play, but it is certainly unique! It is as organized as an episode of The Muppet Show and just as insane, but if that's what you like, then this is the play for you!

You can find the Literary Gladiators discussion of this play (containing spoilers) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Dm9...

Just saw a performance of this and it has me all nostalgic. This has meddling fairies, ridiculous lovers and a donkey named Bottom. What's not to love?

Also fun fact, I played Titania once. I was volunteering as a stage hand when then original chick who was cast dropped out and so did her understudy and there I was organizing props back stage. (Was this my Disney-channel moment? Did I miss my cue??)

Oh yeah, it was also a Jersey Shore remix for some reason. ("A Midsummer Jersey" iirc)

So to this day when someone starts talking with a Jersey accent I have to fight the urge to panic and scream at Oberon.

I recommend this version a lot more.

n  n    “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” n  n

I became a fan of plays when I read a few of them in my English book. They were very good. I liked them. Ever since I wanted to read more of them and of course when I searched for them, Shakespeare’s name was on top.

A while ago I was afraid of reading them because of the classical English. But few days ago, I thought to try them and will use Google as a guide. And now I can’t explain how much happy I’m right now... Even though I faced difficulty to understand at first but with some help of Google, I enjoyed the play a lot. Now I’m getting a little bit used to of the writing.

By far the “weirdest” Shakespeare I have read so far. Psychedelic and dreamy are both perfect descriptions. I am not going through the plays in chronological order, and so the juxtaposition of King Lear and the Dream was interesting. With the first, we are dealing with progeny, filial loyalty, old age – in other words, topics with a bit of gravity. With the second? Love, fairies, a play within a play, and an ass. One thing that made for deeper meditation was the seeming randomness of the young people’s loves. Demetrius, Hermia, Helena, and Lysander had strong convictions about love prior to entering the magical forest. This may not have changed with their exiting the forest, but our good friend Puck had spun the Wheel of Fortune and switched some allegiances around. They wake as if from a dream and go about their merry way, as if their love had not been a matter of life and death. Hmmm. Random, or another piece of commentary by Shakespeare with a wink and a nudge? He did write R & J, after all.

Such a fun, whimsical, hilarious play full of meddling characters, mix ups, and clueless clowns who made me chuckle openly and scream when mischief ensued. I can’t believe it took me this long to read this play!

This is one of the most hilarious comedies of Shakespeare that I have read, even funnier than A Comedy of Errors . Combining fantasy and reality and setting in Athens at the time of the wedding of the Duke of Athens, Theseus to Hippolyta, the Queen of Amazon, the play revolves around the adventures of the four young Athenian lovers, a group of performers who plan to put on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen, and the meddling acts of fairies, especially those of the Fairy King's through Pluck, his most trusted "knavish" spirit.

The main theme of the play is love, and actions of jealousies and betrayals center upon that theme. The writing is beautiful; poetic and lyrical. This is the second time in my reading of Shakespeare that I came across such beautiful, poetic, and lyrical writing, the first time being in Romeo and Juliet. It is a real treat to read those poetic and lyrical verses as they tell this light hilarious story.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most creative and imaginative plays by Shakespeare. The fantasy element is brilliantly combined with reality and the play is cast by an interesting set of characters ranging from humans to fairies to human-animal forms! All these elements have contributed to making the play a very interesting read. I enjoyed it very much and had a good laugh all along. Shakespeare had done a great job with this play.

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;

The best of life is but intoxication:

Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk

The hopes of all men and of every nation;

Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk

Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:

But to return,—Get very drunk; and when

You wake with headache, you shall see what then.

~ Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto II, Stanza 179.


If we offend, it is with our good will.

That you should think, we come not to offend,

But with good will. To show our simple skill,

That is the true beginning of our end.

Consider then we come but in despite.

We do not come, as minding to content you,

Our true intent is. All for your delight

We are not here. That you should here repent you,

The actors are on hand; and, by their show,

You shall know all, that you are like to know.

~ (V.i.108-117)


n  The Lightweight Satiren



A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often viewed as a lightweight play, but it is much more than that. It is one of Shakespeare’s most polished achievements, a poetic drama of exquisite grace, wit, and humanity. It has perhaps become one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, with a special appeal for the young. But belying its great universal appeal it might be a stinging social satire too, glossed over by most in their dreamy enjoyment of the magnificent world Shakespeare presents and also by the deliberate gross-comedy in the end that hides the play from itself.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an Archetypal play where charm, innocence, violence and sexuality mix in giddy combinations. In this fantastic masterpiece, Shakespeare moves with wonderful dramatic dexterity through several realms, weaving together disparate storylines and styles of speech.

It offers a glorious celebration of the powers of the human imagination and poetry while also making comic capital out of its reason’s limitations and societies’ mores. It is also perhaps the play which affords maximum inventiveness on stage, both in terms of message and of atmosphere.



The Course of True Love

n  “The course of true love never did run smooth.”n

1. In some ways Lysander’s well-known declaration becomes one of the central themes, as the comedy interlocks the misadventures of five pairs of lovers (six if one counts Pyramus and Thisby) - and uses their tribulations to explore its theme of love’s difficulties.

2. Also central to the play is the tension between desire and social mores. Characters are repeatedly required to quell their passion for the sake of law and propriety.

3. Another important conflict is between love and reason, with the heart almost always overruling the mind. The comedy of the play results from the powerful, and often blinding, effects that love has on the characters’ thoughts and actions.

4. Third antipathy is between love and social class divisions, with some combinations ruled out arbitrarily, with no appeal to reason except for birth. This when combined with upward aspirations and downward suppressed fantasies form a wonderful sub-plot to the whole drama. Represented best by Bottom’s famous dream.

Each of these themes have a character representing them that forms the supporting cast to the lovers’ misadventures, defining through their acts the relationship between desire, lust and love and social customs:

1. The unreasonable social mores is represented by Egeus, who is one character who never changes. (Also perhaps by Demetrius who appeals to the same customs to get what he wants)

2. Unloving desire by Theseus who too never changes, and also perhaps by the principal lovers (H&L) in their original state. (Helena could be said to represent ‘true’ love but Shakespeare offers us nothing to substantiate this comforting assumption. It is also important that the women's loves not altered by the potion, which is very significantly dropped into the eyes, affecting vision - i.e. it can affect only superficial love.)

3. Lack of reason, though embodied in all the lovers, are brought to life by Puck as the agent of madness and of confusion of sight, which is the entry-point for love in Shakespeare.

4. Finally, class aspirations and their asinine nature by Bottom himself

Love, Interrupted

Out of all these, every character is given a positive light (or an extra-human light, in the case of the fairies) except Egeus, who is the reason for the night-time excursion and all the comedy. In fact, Shakespeare even seems deliberately to have kept the crusty and complaining Egeus out of the 'joy and mirth’ of the last celebrations - he disappears along with the over-restrictive society he is supposed to represent - of marriages, reasoned alliances and ‘bloodless’ cold courtships.

Hence, it is social mores that compel the wildness on love which is not allowed to express itself freely. When freed of this and allowed to resolve itself in a Bacchanalian night all was well again and order was restored to the world.



This reviewer has taken the liberty of assuming that this is the central theme of the play - which is also deliciously ironic since it is supposed to have been written for a wedding. What better time to mock the institution of marriage than at a wedding gala?

So in a way the four themes - difficulties of true love, restrictions by propriety and customs, and the comical unreason that beset lovers, and class differences that put some desires fully into the category of fantasies - are all products of social mores that impose artificial restrictions on love and bring on all the things mocked in this play by Shakespeare.



In fact this is one reason why Bottom could be the real hero of the play (as is the fashion among critical receptions of the play these days) - he was the only one comfortable in transcending all these barriers, at home everywhere and in the end also content with his dreams and in the realization that he would be an ass to try to comprehend what is wrong with the world.

The Subtle Satire

The lovers’ inversions of love could be taken to be a satire on the fickle nature of love but I prefer to see it as another joke at the expense of social mores - of the institution of marriage and courtship, in which each suitor professes undying love in such magnificent lines until he has to turn to the next and do the same. This is reinforced by allusion to how women are not free to ‘pursue’ their loves as men are since social mores allow only the man to pursue and the woman has to chose from among her suitors. It is quite telling that it was Bottom who accepted love and reason seldom go together and expresses the hope that love and reason should become friends. His speech echoes Lysander’s in the previous scene. Lysander, the aristocrat instead  is just another attempting to find a way to understand the workings of love in a rational way, the failures emphasize the difficulty of this endeavor. Lysander thus ends his speech by believing/claiming his newfound love for Helena was based on reason, quite absurdly, but yet quite convinced - representing most of mankind.



By taking the lovers to the enchanted forest of dreams, far from the Athenian social customs and into  land where shadows and dreams rule, and then resolving everything there, even allowing Bottom a glimpse of aristocratic love, Shakespeare seems to say that it is the society that restricts love and makes it artificial - all that is needed is  bit of madness, a bit of stripping away of artificiality - throughout he cupid’s potion. Again the need for a bit of madness (lunacy, mark the repeated moon ref). It is almost an appeal to the Dionysian aspects of life - see alternate review on Nietzsche for detail. (Also see these two Plato-based reviews for important and balancing takes on 'rational' love - Phaedrus & The Symposium



Puck Vs Quince (or) Diana Vs Cupid (or) Art Vs Entertainment

Significantly the final words of the play belong to the master of misrule, the consummate actor and comedian, Puck. In some sense, Puck, with his ability to translate himself into any character, with his skill in creating performances that seem all too real to their human audiences, could be seen as a mascot of the theater. Therefore, his final words are an apology for the play itself. Also mark how Puck courteously addresses the audience as gentlefolk, paralleling Quince's address to his stage audience in his Prologue.

Thus, the final extrapolation on the theme could be that Shakespeare ultimately points out that though a bit of madness and wildness is needed to bring love back into the realms of the truth, it can also be achieved through great art, through sublime theater - not by bad theater though! This could be a statement that Art and thus Theatre is a substitute for the madness of love that is needed to escape the clutches of society (and live the fantasies away from the constricting artificial 'realities') and find yourself, to rediscover yourself away from ‘cold reason’.

When the actor playing Puck stands alone on the stage talking to the audience about dreams and illusions, he is necessarily reminding them that there is another kind of magic - the magic of the theatre. And the magic it conjures is the magic of self-discovery. Continuing the play’s discourse on poetry, Puck defines the poetry of theater as an illusion that transports spectators into the same enchanted region that dreams inhabit. Thus the spectators have not only watched the dream of others but have, by that focus of attention, entered the dream state themselves.

This ‘finding yourself’ seems to be the most essential part of love and as long as you are constrained by imposed restrictions, this is impossible. That is why Shakespeare has made it easy for us and created an art-form of a play that allows us to dream-in-unreason and wake up refreshed. But there is a caveat too, highlighted by the parallel prologues of Puck and Quince - A ‘Crude’ entertainment like ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ might only allow one to while away an evening happily. It might not give the transport and release and inward-looking that is necessary to achieve the madness that true art is supposed to confer. So Shakespeare uses the play to educate us on what is needed to find ourselves and then the play-within-the-play to also show us what to avoid.

Lord, What Fools Mortals Be

“Art, like love, is a limited and special vision; but like love it has by its very limits a transforming power, creating a small area of order in the vast chaos of the world . . . . At the moment when the play most clearly declares itself to be trivial, we have the strongest appeal to our sympathy for it. . . .” ~ Alexander Leggatt

n  “I will get Peter Quince to write a ballet of this dream. It shall be call’d “Bottom’s Dream,” because it hath no bottom.”n

In one of the most philosophically transcendent moments in the play, Bottom wakes up from his grand aristocratic/magical dream and is disoriented. Bottom decides to title his piece “Bottom’s Dream” because it has no bottom - all literature and art are bottomless, in that their meaning cannot be quantified, cannot be understood solely through the mechanisms of reason or logic. Here it parallels life and love, both beyond reason, limited only by the imagination.



Of course, this is a very simplistic representation of a wonderfully complicated play. It can be read in many different ways based on the viewpoint you chose to adopt. I have tried out a few and felt the need to comment slightly at length on this viewpoint. This is not to diminish the play, which I fully concur with Shakespeare is indeed a ‘Bottom’s Dream’ since it has no bottom in the wealth of meaning to be mined from it.

Lord, what fools these mortals be, Puck philosophizes, mockingly. And perhaps we are indeed fools - for entering into the dangerous, unpredictable world of love or of literature; yet what fun would life be without it?

n  n

I couldn't even dream of seeing A Midsummer Night's Dream staged by Globus. The one. Shakespearean. However, it happened. No, no, not in London, and in good times I was not one of those who so easily travels abroad, hunting for cultural events, let alone "now". But there is a project "Theater HD", which allows you to watch original versions of performances from the world's leading stages on the big screen.

Solved in a minimalistic manner: from the scenery on the stage there are two columns and a portico with thick ropes hanging down, the costumes are very conventional, I don't remember any special effects at all - Dominic Dromgoole's performance creates the "same" impression of doubled, tripled magic. Everything is based on acting, the combination of mimicry, pantomime, magnificent stage movement, complex tricks, impeccable mise en scene captures and holds attention.

Cutting-edge techniques of acting and directing in an archaic entourage. "Theater HD" cancels the ephemerality of theatrical action, expands the boundaries of perception.

"Сон в летнюю ночь" от шекспировского театра "Глобус"
Если мы вам угодили
И злобных змей не разбудили,
То лучше все пойдет потом.
Я прочла ее в тринадцать, на летних к��никулах. То было лето Шекспира, жила у бабушки и читала у него все комедии подряд. Трагедий тогда не читала, время для "Гамлета", "Макбета", "Ромео и Джульетты" пришло позже, а комедии - до каких могла дотянуться.: "Двенадцатая ночь", "Комедия ошибок", "Виндзорские насмешницы". Все были хороши, эта лучше всех. Экранизации и театральные постановки, какие довелось видеть позже, казались ее бледными тенями, и в какой-то момент сказала себе: "Эта пьеса лучше в формате "свое кино"."

Я ошибалась. Но это потому, что даже мечтать не могла, увидеть "Сон в летнюю ночь" в постановке "Глобуса". Того самого. шекспировского. Однако свершилось. Нет-нет, не в Лондоне, я и в хорошие времена не была из тех кто так вот, запросто, ездит по заграницам, охотясь за культурными событиями, что уж говорить о "теперь". Но есть проект "Театр HD", позволяющий на большом экране смотреть оригинальные версии спектаклей с ведущих мировых сцен. При всех мерзостях нынешнего времени, мы живем в уникальную пору, когда гора приходят к Магомету не имеющему ресурса, чтобы пойти к ней (надеюсь, ничьих чувств не оскорбила?)

Итак, сюжет: афинский герцог Тезей женится на королеве амазонок Ипполите, подготовка к свадебным торжествам идет полным ходом, когда к нему обращается почтенный гражданин с просьбой принудить свою дочь Гермию выйти замуж за Деметрия - жениха, которого он ей назначил. Девушка же влюблена в другого - молодого Лизандра, да к тому же ее лучшая подруга Елена была обольщена Деметрием и брошена им, что не добавляет желания сделаться женой такого человека. Тезей дает ей на раздумье время до своей свадьбы, а там - либо замуж за Деметрия, либо в монастырь, либо она будет казнена.

Лизандр предлагает девушке бежать и обвенчаться за пределами Афин, молодые люди решают встретиться ночью в лесу, и, желая ободрить Елену, раскрывают ей свой план - коль скоро Гермия покинет город, Деметрий снова обратит взоры на нее. Но безнадежно влюбленная Елена, в тщетной надежде заслужить признательность любимого, рассказывает ему о побеге. Той же ночью, в том же лесу, пятерка афинских мастеровых собирается, чтобы отрепетировать постановку "Пирама и Фисбы", которой хотят развлечь герцога во время свадебных увеселений, надеясь снискать славу и награду - такой себе прообраз социального лифта. И в том же месте сталкиваются королева фей Титания в сопровождении свиты с королем Обероном - между монаршей четой разлад, они чинят друг другу каверзы, оттого в мире все идет наперекосяк.

Собрание столь различных и преследующих такие разные интересы персонажей в сочетании времени и места, ожидаемо ведет ко многим коллизиям: печальным, смешным, пугающим. Полностью пересказывать не буду - рассказать об этом лучше автора никому не удастся, Шекспир прекрасен. Почти так же прекрасен и до сих пор актуален канонический перевод Татьяны Львовны Щепкиной-Куперник Скажу о спектакле. Решенный в минималистической манере: из декораций на сцене две колонны и портик со свисающими толстыми канатами, костюмы весьма условны, спецэффектов вовсе не припомню - спектакль Доминика Дромгула создает "то самое" впечатление удвоенного, утроенного волшебства, какого не удалось достичь звездной голливудской экранизации.

Все строится на актерской игре, сочетание мимики, пантомимики, великолепного сценического движения, сложных трюков, безупречных мизансцен захватывает и удерживает внимание. Еще о минимализме: ведущие роли в постановке сдвоены, так чудесная Мишель Терри одновременно Титания и Ипполита, брутальный Джон Лайт Оберон и Тезей, а обольстительный андрогин Мэтью Теннисон - Пэк и Филострат. Костюмы и грим: по мере блужданий героев по ночному лесу одежды на них остается все меньше, она упрощается - вместо фижм и буфов простые сорочки и кюлоты, почти подштанники. Ноги и руки в царапинах и грязных потеках, эта деталь создает более мощный эффект присутствия-вовеченности. чем можно было бы добиться сложными декорациями.

Сверхсовремые техники актерской игры и режиссуры в архаичном антураже
дарят уникальное зрелище, а проект "Театр HD" отменяет эфемерность театрального действа, расширяет границы восприятия.

if i had a professor who actually talked about this and made it interesting then im sure i wouldve liked it more but i was just like ?????????

Από τα πιο διασκεδαστικά έργα του Shakespeare! Οι πρώτες 4 πράξεις είναι ατόφιες πεντάστερες, γεμάτες με αστεία, ευφάνταστες παρεξηγήσεις, μερικές από τις ωραιότερες εκφράσεις που έχω διαβάσει ποτέ σχετικά με τον έρωτα και τα αντικείμενα των ερώτων μας και χαρακτήρες πολλούς, διαφορετικούς και ενδιαφέροντες. Αριστοκράτες, φτωχοί πλην τίμιοι θεατρόφιλοι εργάτες, νεράιδες και ξωτικά με φόντο την αρχαία Αθήνα. Να προσθέσω ότι σε ένα έργο γεμάτο λογοπαίγνια και δυσκολίες η μετάφραση του Ρώτα ήταν εξαιρετική.

Κόβω μισό αστεράκι διότι η 5η πράξη τράβηξε περισσότερο απ' ότι χρειαζόταν και με ψιλοκούρασε. Συνολικά το απόλαυσα και είναι από τα έργα που θα ξαναδιαβάσω πολλές φορές!!

how to flirt, shakespeare style, a midsummer nights dream edition:

- elope with your love in a fairy wood

- follow your friends into the fairy wood with your ex-fiancé, who you still pine over even though he loves another woman

- become entranced by magic flower juice and chase after the wrong girl until you fall over with exhaustion

- call your girl an acorn

- realise your ex-fiancé is truly the one you love, even though you ditched her once you got to the woods

- have a double wedding with your lover, your friend, and the f-boi who used to love you

i guess its true what they say - the course of true love never did run smooth.

↠ 3.5 stars