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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 Nothing
2) Twelfth Night
3) Macbeth
4) The Merchant of Venice
5) A Midsummer Night's Dream
6) King Lear
7) The Tempest
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 Nothing
2) Twelfth Night
3) Macbeth
4) The Merchant of Venice
5) A Midsummer Night's Dream
6) King Lear
7) The Tempest
