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A Midsummer Night's Dream

April 20, 2023

This article is about Shakespeare's play. For other uses, see A Midsummer Night's Dream (disambiguation).
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A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare c. 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict among four Athenian lovers. Another follows a group of six amateur actors rehearsing the play which they are to perform before the wedding. Both groups find themselves in a forest inhabited by fairies who manipulate the humans and are engaged in their own domestic intrigue. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular and is widely performed.[1]

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing by William Blake, c. 1786
Written byWilliam Shakespeare
Date premiered1 January 1605 (1605-01-01)
GenreComedy
SettingAthens

Characters

Plot

 
Hermia and Helena by Washington Allston, 1818

The play consists of five interconnecting plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, which are set simultaneously in the woodland and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon.

Act 1

Act 1 Scene 1

The play opens with Theseus and Hippolyta who are four days away from their wedding. Theseus is not happy about how long he has to wait while Hyppolyta thinks it will pass by like a dream. Theseus is confronted by Egeus and his daughter Hermia, who is in love with Lysander, resistant to her father's demand that she marry Demetrius, whom he has arranged for her to marry. Enraged, Egeus invokes an ancient Athenian law before Duke Theseus, whereby a daughter needs to marry a suitor chosen by her father, or else face death. Theseus offers her another choice: lifelong chastity as a nun worshipping the goddess Diana, but the two lovers both deny his choice and make a secret plan to escape into the forest for Lysander's aunt's house, in order to run away from Theseus. Hermia tells their plans to Helena, her best friend, who pines unrequitedly for Demetrius, who broke up with her to be with Hermia. Desperate to reclaim Demetrius's love, Helena tells Demetrius about the plan and he follows them in hopes of finding Hermia.

Act 1 Scene 2

The Mechanicals, Peter Quince and fellow players Nick Bottom, Francis Flute, Robin Starveling, Tom Snout and Snug plan to put on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen, "the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe". Quince reads the names of characters and bestows them on the players. Nick Bottom, who is playing the main role of Pyramus, is over-enthusiastic and wants to dominate others by suggesting himself for the characters of Thisbe, the Lion, and Pyramus at the same time. Quince insists that Bottom can only play the role of Pyramus. Bottom would also rather be a tyrant and recites some lines of Ercles. Bottom is told by Quince that he would do the Lion so terribly as to frighten the duchess and ladies enough for the Duke and Lords to have the players hanged. Snug remarks that he needs the Lion's part because he is "slow of study". Quince assures Snug that the role of the lion is "nothing but roaring." Quince then ends the meeting telling his actors "at the Duke's oak we meet".

Act 2

Act 2 Scene 1

 
The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Joseph Noel Paton, 1849

In a parallel plot line, Oberon, king of the fairies, and Titania, his queen, have come to the forest outside Athens. Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until she has attended Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her Indian changeling to Oberon for use as his "knight" or "henchman", since the child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers. Oberon seeks to punish Titania's disobedience. He calls upon Robin "Puck" Goodfellow, his "shrewd and knavish sprite", to help him concoct a magical juice derived from a flower called "love-in-idleness", which turns from white to purple when struck by Cupid's arrow. When the concoction is applied to the eyelids of a sleeping person, that person, upon waking, falls in love with the first living thing they perceive. He instructs Puck to retrieve the flower with the hope that he might make Titania fall in love with an animal of the forest and thereby shame her into giving up the little Indian boy. He says, "And ere I take this charm from off her sight, / As I can take it with another herb, / I'll make her render up her page to me." Helena and Demetrius enter, with she continuously making advances towards Demetrius, promising to love him more than Hermia. However, he rebuffs her with cruel insults. Observing this, Oberon orders Puck to spread some of the magical juice from the flower on the eyelids of the young Athenian man.

Act 2 Scene 2

As Titania is lulled to sleep by her fairies, Oberon sneaks upon her and places the flower juice on her eyes, exiting the stage afterwards. Lysander and Hermia enter, lost and exhausted from the journey. Hermia rejects Lysander’s polite, yet pushy advances to sleep together, and the two lie down on different corners. Puck enters and mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, not having actually seen either before, and administers the juice to the sleeping Lysander. Helena, coming across him, wakes him while attempting to determine whether he is dead or asleep. Upon this happening, Lysander immediately falls in love with Helena. Helena, thinking Lysander is mocking her for losing Demetrius, runs away with Lysander following her. When Hermia wakes up after dreaming a snake ate her heart, she sees that Lysander is gone and goes out in the woods to find him.

Act 3

Act 3 Scene 1

 
A drawing of Puck, Titania and Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream from Act III, Scene II by Charles Buchel, 1905

Meanwhile, Quince and his band of five labourers ("rude mechanicals", as they are described by Puck) have arranged to perform their play about Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus' wedding and venture into the forest, near Titania's bower, for their rehearsal. Quince leads the actors in their rehearsal of the play. Bottom is spotted by Puck, who (taking his name to be another word for a jackass) transforms his head into that of a donkey. When Bottom returns for his next lines, the other workmen run screaming in terror: They claim that they are haunted, much to Bottom's confusion. Determined to await his friends, he begins to sing to himself. Titania, having received the love-potion, is awakened by Bottom's singing and immediately falls in love with him. (In the words of the play, "Titania waked, and straightway loved an ass.") She lavishes him with the attention of her and her fairies, and while she is in this state of devotion, Oberon takes the changeling boy.

Act 3 Scene 2

Oberon sees Demetrius still following Hermia. When Demetrius goes to sleep, Oberon condemns Puck's mistake and sends him to get Helena while he charms Demetrius' eyes. Upon waking up, he sees Lysander and Helena and instantly falls for her. Now, under the spell, the two men have fallen for her. However, Helena is convinced that her two suitors are mocking her, as neither loved her originally. Hermia finds Lysander and asks why he left her, but Lysander claims he never loved Hermia, instead loving Helena. This soon turns into a quarrel between the two ladies, with Helena chiding Hermia for joining in the mockery session, followed by the latter furiously charging at her for stealing her true love’s heart and blaming her for the supposed ‘mockery’. Oberon and Puck decide that they must resolve this conflict, and by the morning, none of them will have any memory of what happened, as if it were a dream. Oberon arranges everything so Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander will all believe they have been dreaming when they awaken. Puck distracts Lysander and Demetrius from fighting over Helena's love by mimicking their voices and leading them apart. Eventually, all four find themselves separately falling asleep in the glade. Once they fall asleep, Puck administers the love potion to Lysander again, returning his love to Hermia again, and cast another spell over the four Athenian lovers, claiming all will be well in the morning. Once they awaken, the lovers assume that whatever happened was a dream and not reality.

Act 4

Act 4 Scene 1

Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania and orders Puck to remove the donkey's head from Bottom. The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene, during an early morning hunt. They find the lovers still sleeping in the glade. They wake up the lovers and, since Demetrius no longer loves Hermia, Theseus over-rules Egeus's demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers at first believe they are still in a dream and cannot recall what has happened. The lovers decide that the night's events must have been a dream, as they walk back to Athens.

Act 4 Scene 2

After they exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream "past the wit of man". At Quince's house, he and his team of actors worry that Bottom has gone missing. Quince laments that Bottom is the only man who can take on the lead role of Pyramus. Bottom returns, and the actors get ready to put on "Pyramus and Thisbe".

Act 5

The final scene in the play, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the six workmen perform Pyramus and Thisbe in Athens. The Mechanical performers are so terrible playing their roles that the guests laugh as if it were meant to be a comedy, and everyone retires to bed. Afterwards, Oberon, Titania, Puck, and other fairies enter, and bless the house and its occupants with good fortune. After all the other characters leave, Puck "restores amends" and suggests that what the audience experienced might just be a dream.

Sources

It is unknown exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but on the basis of topical references and an allusion to Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion, it is usually dated 1595 or early 1596. Some have theorised that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding (for example that of Elizabeth Carey, Lady Berkeley), while others suggest that it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John, but no evidence exists to support this theory. In any case, it would have been performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe. Though it is not a translation or adaptation of an earlier work, various sources such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" served as inspiration.[2] Aristophanes' classical Greek comedy The Birds (also set in the countryside near Athens) has been proposed as a source due to the fact that both Procne and Titania are awakened by male characters (Hoopoe and Bottom the Weaver) who have animal heads and who sing two-stanza songs about birds.[3] According to John Twyning, the play's plot of four lovers undergoing a trial in the woods was intended as a "riff" on Der Busant, a Middle High German poem.[4]

According to Dorothea Kehler, the writing period can be placed between 1594 and 1596, which means that Shakespeare had probably already completed Romeo and Juliet and was still in contemplation of The Merchant of Venice. The play belongs to the author's early-middle period, a time when Shakespeare devoted primary attention to the lyricism of his works.[5]

Date and text

 
The title page from the first quarto, printed in 1600

The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers' Company on 8 October 1600 by the bookseller Thomas Fisher, who published the first quarto edition later that year.[6] A second quarto was printed in 1619 by William Jaggard, as part of his so-called False Folio.[6] The play next appeared in print in the First Folio of 1623. The title page of Q1 states that the play was "sundry times publickely acted" prior to 1600.[7] The first performance known with certainty occurred at Hampton Court on 1 January 1604, as a prelude to The Masque of Indian and China Knights.[8]

Themes and motifs

Lovers' bliss

In Ancient Greece, long before the creation of the Christian celebrations of St. John's Day, the summer solstice was marked by Adonia, a festival to mourn the death of Adonis, the devoted mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite. According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, Aphrodite took the orphaned infant Adonis to the underworld to be raised by Persephone. He grew to be a beautiful young man, and when Aphrodite returned to retrieve him, Persephone did not want to let him go. Zeus settled the dispute by giving Adonis one-third of the year with Persephone, one-third of the year with Aphrodite, and the remaining third where he chose. Adonis chose to spend two-thirds of the year with his paramour, Aphrodite. He bled to death in his lover's arms after being gored by a boar. Mythology has various stories attributing the colour of certain flowers to staining by the blood of Adonis or Aphrodite.

The story of Venus and Adonis was well known to the Elizabethans and inspired many works, including Shakespeare's own hugely popular narrative poem, Venus and Adonis, written while London's theatres were closed because of plague. It was published in 1593.[9]

The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta and the mistaken and waylaid lovers, Titania and Bottom, even the erstwhile acting troupe, model various aspects (and forms) of love.

Carnivalesque

Both David Wiles of the University of London and Harold Bloom of Yale University have strongly endorsed the reading of this play under the themes of Carnivalesque, Bacchanalia, and Saturnalia.[10] Writing in 1998, David Wiles stated that: "The starting point for my own analysis will be the proposition that although we encounter A Midsummer Night's Dream as a text, it was historically part of an aristocratic carnival. It was written for a wedding, and part of the festive structure of the wedding night. The audience who saw the play in the public theatre in the months that followed became vicarious participants in an aristocratic festival from which they were physically excluded. My purpose will be to demonstrate how closely the play is integrated with a historically specific upper-class celebration." [11] Wiles argued in 1993 that the play was written to celebrate the Carey-Berkeley wedding. The date of the wedding was fixed to coincide with a conjunction of Venus and the new moon, highly propitious for conceiving an heir.[12]

Love

 
Hermia and Lysander by John Simmons (1870)

David Bevington argues that the play represents the dark side of love. He writes that the fairies make light of love by mistaking the lovers and by applying a love potion to Queen Titania's eyes, forcing her to fall in love with an ass.[13] In the forest, both couples are beset by problems. Hermia and Lysander are both met by Puck, who provides some comic relief in the play by confounding the four lovers in the forest. However, the play also alludes to serious themes. At the end of the play, Hippolyta and Theseus, happily married, watch the play about the unfortunate lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, and are able to enjoy and laugh at it.[14] Helena and Demetrius are both oblivious to the dark side of their love, totally unaware of what may have come of the events in the forest.

Problem with time

There is a dispute over the scenario of the play as it is cited at first by Theseus that "four happy days bring in another moon".[15] The wood episode then takes place at a night of no Moon, but Lysander asserts that there will be so much light in the very night they will escape that dew on the grass will be shining like liquid pearls.[16] Also, in the next scene, Quince states that they will rehearse in moonlight,[17] which creates a real confusion. It is possible that the Moon set during the night allowing Lysander to escape in the moonlight and for the actors to rehearse, then for the wood episode to occur without moonlight. Theseus's statement can also be interpreted to mean "four days until the next month". Another possibility is that, since each month there are roughly four consecutive nights that the Moon is not seen due to its closeness to the Sun in the sky (the two nights before the moment of new moon, followed by the two following it), it may in this fashion indicate a liminal "dark of the moon" period full of magical possibilities. This is further supported by Hippolyta's opening lines exclaiming "And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities."; the thin crescent-shaped moon being the hallmark of the new moon's return to the skies each month. The play also intertwines the Midsummer Eve of the title with May Day, furthering the idea of a confusion of time and the seasons. This is evidenced by Theseus commenting on some slumbering youths, that they "observe The rite of May".[18]

Loss of individual identity

Maurice Hunt, former Chair of the English Department at Baylor University, writes of the blurring of the identities of fantasy and reality in the play that make possible "that pleasing, narcotic dreaminess associated with the fairies of the play".[19] By emphasising this theme, even in the setting of the play, Shakespeare prepares the reader's mind to accept the fantastic reality of the fairy world and its happenings. This also seems to be the axis around which the plot conflicts in the play occur. Hunt suggests that it is the breaking down of individual identities that leads to the central conflict in the story.[19] It is the brawl between Oberon and Titania, based on a lack of recognition for the other in the relationship, that drives the rest of the drama in the story and makes it dangerous for any of the other lovers to come together due to the disturbance of Nature caused by a fairy dispute.[19] Similarly, this failure to identify and to distinguish is what leads Puck to mistake one set of lovers for another in the forest, placing the flower's juice on Lysander's eyes instead of Demetrius'.[19]

Victor Kiernan, a Marxist scholar and historian, writes that it is for the greater sake of love that this loss of identity takes place and that individual characters are made to suffer accordingly: "It was the more extravagant cult of love that struck sensible people as irrational, and likely to have dubious effects on its acolytes."[20] He believes that identities in the play are not so much lost as they are blended together to create a type of haze through which distinction becomes nearly impossible. It is driven by a desire for new and more practical ties between characters as a means of coping with the strange world within the forest, even in relationships as diverse and seemingly unrealistic as the brief love between Titania and Bottom: "It was the tidal force of this social need that lent energy to relationships."[21]

The aesthetics scholar David Marshall draws out this theme even further by noting that the loss of identity reaches its fullness in the description of the mechanicals and their assumption of other identities. In describing the occupations of the acting troupe, he writes "Two construct or put together, two mend and repair, one weaves and one sews. All join together what is apart or mend what has been rent, broken, or sundered."[22] In Marshall's opinion, this loss of individual identity not only blurs specificities, it creates new identities found in community, which Marshall points out may lead to some understanding of Shakespeare's opinions on love and marriage. Further, the mechanicals understand this theme as they take on their individual parts for a corporate performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. Marshall remarks that "To be an actor is to double and divide oneself, to discover oneself in two parts: both oneself and not oneself, both the part and not the part."[22] He claims that the mechanicals understand this and that each character, particularly among the lovers, has a sense of laying down individual identity for the greater benefit of the group or pairing. It seems that a desire to lose one's individuality and find identity in the love of another is what quietly moves the events of A Midsummer Night's Dream. As the primary sense of motivation, this desire is reflected even in the scenery depictions and the story's overall mood.[22]

Ambiguous sexuality

 
The Awakening of the Fairy Queen Titania

In his essay "Preposterous Pleasures: Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night's Dream", Douglas E. Green explores possible interpretations of alternative sexuality that he finds within the text of the play, in juxtaposition to the proscribed social mores of the culture at the time the play was written. He writes that his essay "does not (seek to) rewrite A Midsummer Night's Dream as a gay play but rather explores some of its 'homoerotic significations' ... moments of 'queer' disruption and eruption in this Shakespearean comedy."[23]

Green does not consider Shakespeare to have been a "sexual radical", but that the play represented a "topsy-turvy world" or "temporary holiday" that mediates or negotiates the "discontents of civilisation", which while resolved neatly in the story's conclusion, do not resolve so neatly in real life.[24] Green writes that the "sodomitical elements", "homoeroticism", "lesbianism", and even "compulsory heterosexuality"—the first hint of which may be Oberon's obsession with Titania's changeling ward—in the story must be considered in the context of the "culture of early modern England" as a commentary on the "aesthetic rigidities of comic form and political ideologies of the prevailing order".[24] Aspects of ambiguous sexuality and gender conflict in the story are also addressed in essays by Shirley Garner and William W.E. Slights albeit all the characters are played by males.[25][26]

Feminism

 
Midsummer Eve by Edward Robert Hughes c. 1908

Male dominance is one thematic element found in the play. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lysander and Hermia escape into the woods for a night where they do not fall under the laws of Theseus or Egeus. Upon their arrival in Athens, the couples are married. Marriage is seen as the ultimate social achievement for women while men can go on to do many other great things and gain social recognition.[27] In The Imperial Votaress, Louis Montrose draws attention to male and female gender roles and norms present in the comedy in connection with Elizabethan culture. In reference to the triple wedding, he says, "The festive conclusion in A Midsummer Night's Dream depends upon the success of a process by which the feminine pride and power manifested in Amazon warriors, possessive mothers, unruly wives, and wilful daughters are brought under the control of lords and husbands."[28] He says that the consummation of marriage is how power over a woman changes hands from father to husband. A connection is drawn between flowers and sexuality. Montrose sees the juice employed by Oberon as symbolising menstrual blood as well as the "sexual blood shed by 'virgins'". While blood as a result of menstruation is representative of a woman's power, blood as a result of a first sexual encounter represents man's power over women.[29]

There are points in the play, however, when there is an absence of patriarchal control. In his book Power on Display, Leonard Tennenhouse says the problem in A Midsummer Night's Dream is the problem of "authority gone archaic".[30] The Athenian law requiring a daughter to die if she does not do her father's will is outdated. Tennenhouse contrasts the patriarchal rule of Theseus in Athens with that of Oberon in the carnivalistic Faerie world. The disorder in the land of the fairies completely opposes the world of Athens. He states that during times of carnival and festival, male power is broken down. For example, what happens to the four lovers in the woods as well as Bottom's dream represents chaos that contrasts with Theseus' political order. However, Theseus does not punish the lovers for their disobedience. According to Tennenhouse, by forgiving the lovers, he has made a distinction between the law of the patriarch (Egeus) and that of the monarch (Theseus), creating two different voices of authority. This can be compared to the time of Elizabeth I, in which monarchs were seen as having two bodies: the body natural and the body politic. Tennenhouse says that Elizabeth's succession itself represented both the voice of a patriarch and the voice of a monarch: (1) her father's will, which stated that the crown should pass to her and (2) the fact that she was the daughter of a king.[31]

Criticism and interpretation

Critical history

17th century

 
Samuel Pepys, who wrote the oldest known comments on the play, found A Midsummer Night's Dream to be "the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life".[32]

Dorothea Kehler has attempted to trace the criticism of the work through the centuries. The earliest such piece of criticism that she found was a 1662 entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys. He found the play to be "the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life".[32] He did, however, admit that it had "some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure".[32]

The next critic known to comment on the play was John Dryden, writing in 1677. He was preoccupied with the question of whether fairies should be depicted in theatrical plays, since they did not exist. He concluded that poets should be allowed to depict things which do not exist but derive from popular belief. And fairies are of this sort, as are pygmies and the extraordinary effects of magic. Based on this reasoning, Dryden defended the merits of three fantasy plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, and Ben Jonson's The Masque of Queens.[32]

18th century

Charles Gildon in the early 18th century recommended this play for its beautiful reflections, descriptions, similes, and topics. Gildon thought that Shakespeare drew inspiration from the works of Ovid and Virgil, and that he could read them in the original Latin and not in later translations.[32]

William Duff, writing in the 1770s, also recommended this play. He felt the depiction of the supernatural was among Shakespeare's strengths, not weaknesses. He especially praised the poetry and wit of the fairies, and the quality of the verse involved.[32] His contemporary Francis Gentleman, an admirer of Shakespeare, was much less appreciative of this play. He felt that the poetry, the characterisation, and the originality of the play were its strengths, but that its major weaknesses were a "puerile" plot and that it consists of an odd mixture of incidents. The connection of the incidents to each other seemed rather forced to Gentleman.[33]

Edmond Malone, a Shakespearean scholar and critic of the late 18th century, found another supposed flaw in this particular play, its lack of a proper decorum. He found that the "more exalted characters" (the aristocrats of Athens) are subservient to the interests of those beneath them. In other words, the lower-class characters play larger roles than their betters and overshadow them. He found this to be a grave error of the writer. Malone thought that this play had to be an early and immature work of Shakespeare and, by implication, that an older writer would know better. Malone's main argument seems to derive from the classism of his era. He assumes that the aristocrats had to receive more attention in the narrative and to be more important, more distinguished, and better than the lower class.[34]

19th century

 
William Hazlitt preferred reading A Midsummer Night's Dream over watching it acted on stage.

According to Kehler, significant 19th-century criticism began in 1808 with August Wilhelm Schlegel. Schlegel perceived unity in the multiple plot lines. He noted that the donkey's head is not a random transformation, but reflects Bottom's true nature. He identified the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe as a burlesque of the Athenian lovers.[34] In 1817, William Hazlitt found the play to be better as a written work than a staged production. He found the work to be "a delightful fiction"[34] but when staged, it is reduced to a dull pantomime. He concluded that poetry and the stage do not fit together.[34] Kehler finds the comment to be more of an indication of the quality of the theatrical productions available to Hazlitt, rather than a true indication of the play's supposed unsuitability to the stage. She notes that prior to the 1840s, all stage productions of this play were adaptations unfaithful to the original text.[34]

In 1811–1812, Samuel Taylor Coleridge made two points of criticism about this play. The first was that the entire play should be seen as a dream. Second, that Helena is guilty of "ungrateful treachery" to Hermia. He thought that this was a reflection of the lack of principles in women, who are more likely to follow their own passions and inclinations than men. Women, in his view, feel less abhorrence for moral evil, though they are concerned with its outward consequences. Coleridge was probably the earliest critic to introduce gender issues to the analysis of this play. Kehler dismisses his views on Helena as indications of Coleridge's own misogyny, rather than genuine reflections of Helena's morality.[35]

 
William Maginn thought Bottom a lucky man and was particularly amused that he treats Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, "as carelessly as if she were the wench of the next-door tapster".[36]

In 1837, William Maginn produced essays on the play. He turned his attention to Theseus' speech about "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet"[a] and to Hippolyta's response to it. He regarded Theseus as the voice of Shakespeare himself and the speech as a call for imaginative audiences. He also viewed Bottom as a lucky man on whom Fortune showered favours beyond measure. He was particularly amused by the way Bottom reacts to the love of the fairy queen: completely unfazed. Maginn argued that "Theseus would have bent in reverent awe before Titania. Bottom treats her as carelessly as if she were the wench of the next-door tapster."[36] Finally, Maginn thought that Oberon should not be blamed for Titania's humiliation, which is the result of an accident. He viewed Oberon as angry with the "caprices"[36] of his queen, but unable to anticipate that her charmed affections would be reserved for a weaver with a donkey's head.[36]

In 1839, the philosopher Hermann Ulrici wrote that the play and its depiction of human life reflected the views of Platonism. In his view, Shakespeare implied that human life is nothing but a dream, suggesting influence from Plato and his followers who thought human reality is deprived of all genuine existence. Ulrici noted the way Theseus and Hippolyta behave here, like ordinary people. He agreed with Malone that this did not fit their stations in life, but viewed this behaviour as an indication of parody about class differences.[36]

James Halliwell-Phillipps, writing in the 1840s, found that there were many inconsistencies in the play, but considered it the most beautiful poetical drama ever written.[32]

In 1849, Charles Knight also wrote about the play and its apparent lack of proper social stratification. He thought that this play indicated Shakespeare's maturity as a playwright, and that its "Thesean harmony"[38] reflects proper decorum of character. He also viewed Bottom as the best-drawn character, with his self-confidence, authority, and self-love. He argued that Bottom stands as a representative of the whole human race. Like Hazlitt he felt that the work is best appreciated when read as a text, rather than acted on stage. He found the writing to be "subtle and ethereal", and standing above literary criticism and its reductive reasoning.[39]

 
Georg Gottfried Gervinus thought Hermia lacking in filial piety and devoid of conscience for running away with Lysander, himself not a shining beacon of virtue (here seen wooing Helena).[38]

Also in 1849, Georg Gottfried Gervinus wrote extensively about the play. He denied the theory that this play should be seen as a dream. He argued that it should be seen as an ethical construct and an allegory. He thought that it was an allegorical depiction of the errors of sensual love, which is likened to a dream. In his view, Hermia lacks in filial obedience and acts as if devoid of conscience when she runs away with Lysander. Lysander is also guilty for disobeying and mocking his prospective father-in-law. Pyramus and Thisbe also lack in filial obedience, since they "woo by moonlight"[38] behind their parents' backs. The fairies, in his view, should be seen as "personified dream gods".[38] They represent the caprices of superficial love, and they lack in intellect, feeling, and ethics.[38]

Gervinus also wrote on where the fairyland of the play is located. Not in Attica, but in the Indies. His views on the Indies seem to Kehler to be influenced by Orientalism. He speaks of the Indies as scented with the aroma of flowers and as the place where mortals live in the state of a half-dream. Gervinus denies and devalues the loyalty of Titania to her friend. He views this supposed friendship as not grounded in spiritual association. Titania merely "delight in her beauty, her 'swimming gait,' and her powers of imitation".[38] Gervinus further views Titania as an immoral character for not trying to reconcile with her husband. In her resentment, Titania seeks separation from him, which Gervinus blames her for.[38]

Gervinus wrote with elitist disdain about the mechanicals of the play and their acting aspirations. He described them as homely creatures with "hard hands and thick heads".[38] They are, in his view, ignorant men who compose and act in plays merely for financial reward. They are not real artists. Gervinus reserves his praise and respect only for Theseus, who he thinks represents the intellectual man. Like several of his predecessors, Gervinus thought that this work should be read as a text and not acted on stage.[38]

 
Charles Cowden Clarke appreciated the mechanicals, and in particular found Nick Bottom conceited but good-natured and imaginative.

In 1863, Charles Cowden Clarke also wrote on this play. Kehler notes he was the husband of famous Shakespearean scholar Mary Cowden Clarke. Charles was more appreciative of the lower-class mechanicals of the play. He commented favourably on their individualisation and their collective richness of character. He thought that Bottom was conceited but good natured, and shows a considerable store of imagination in his interaction with the representatives of the fairy world. He also argued that Bottom's conceit was a quality inseparable from his secondary profession, that of an actor.[40]

In 1872, Henry N. Hudson, an American clergyman and editor of Shakespeare, also wrote comments on this play. Kehler pays little attention to his writings, as they were largely derivative of previous works. She notes, however, that Hudson too believed that the play should be viewed as a dream. He cited the lightness of the characterisation as supporting of his view.[41] In 1881, Edward Dowden argued that Theseus and his reflections on art are central to the play. He also argued that Theseus was one of the "heroic men of action"[41] so central to Shakespeare's theatrical works.[41]

 
Horace Howard Furness defended A Midsummer Night's Dream from claims of inconsistency, and felt this did not detract from the quality of the play.[32]

Both Horace Howard Furness and Henry Austin Clapp were more concerned with the problem of the play's duration, though they held opposing views.[41] Clapp, writing in 1885, commented on the inconsistency of the time depicted in the play, as it should take place in four days and nights and seems to last less than two, and felt that this added to the unrealistic quality of the play.[32] Furness, defending the play in 1895, felt that the apparent inconsistency did not detract from the play's quality.[32]

In 1887, Denton Jacques Snider argued that the play should be read as a dialectic, either between understanding and imagination or between prose and poetry. He also viewed the play as representing three phases or movements. The first is the Real World of the play, which represents reason. The second is the Fairy World, an ideal world which represents imagination and the supernatural. The third is their representation in art, where the action is self-reflective. Snider viewed Titania and her caprice as solely to blame for her marital strife with Oberon. She therefore deserves punishment, and Oberon is a dutiful husband who provides her with one. For failing to live in peace with Oberon and her kind, Titania is sentenced to fall in love with a human. And this human, unlike Oberon is a "horrid brute".[41]

Towards the end of the 19th century, Georg Brandes (1895–6) and Frederick S. Boas (1896) were the last major additions to A Midsummer Night's Dream criticism.[41] Brandes' approach anticipates later psychological readings, seeing Oberon's magic as symbolic and "typifying the sorcery of the erotic imagination".[42] Brandes felt that in the play, Shakespeare looks inward at the "domain of the unconscious".[42] Boas eschews the play as ethical treatise or psychological study and instead takes a more historicist and literal approach. To Boas the play is, despite its fantastical and exotic trappings, "essentially English and Elizabethan".[42] He sees Theseus as a Tudor noble; Helena a mere plot device to "concentrate the four lovers on a single spot";[42] and the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-the-play a parody of a prominent topos of contemporary plays. Summing up their contributions, Kehler writes: "This is recognizably modern criticism."[42]

20th century

The 20th century brought new insights into the play. In 1961, Elizabeth Sewell argued that Shakespeare aligns himself not with the aristocrats of the play, but with Bottom and the artisans. It is their task to produce a wedding entertainment, precisely the purpose of the writer on working in this play.[43] Also in 1961, Frank Kermode wrote on the themes of the play and their literary sources. He counted among them fantasy, blind love, and divine love. He traced these themes to the works of Macrobius, Apuleius, and Giordano Bruno. Bottom also briefly alludes to a passage from the First Epistle to the Corinthians by Paul the Apostle, dealing with divine love.[43][b]

In 1964, R.W. Dent argued against theories that the exemplary model of love in the play is the rational love of Theseus and Hippolyta. He argued that in this work, love is inexplicable. It is the offspring of imagination, not reason. However the exemplary love of the play is one of an imagination controlled and restrained, and avoids the excesses of "dotage".[43] Genuine love is contrasted with the unrequited love (and dotage) of Demetrius for Hermia, and with the supposed love (and dotage) of Titania for an unworthy object.[44]

Dent also denied the rationality and wisdom typically attributed to Theseus. He reminded his readers that this is the character of Theseus from Greek mythology, a creation himself of "antique fable".[43] Theseus' views on art are far from rational or wise. He cannot tell the difference between an actual play and its interlude. The interlude of the play's acting troop is less about the art and more of an expression of the mechanicals' distrust of their own audience. They fear the audience reactions will be either excessive or inadequate, and say so on stage. Theseus fails to get the message.[44]

Also in 1964, Jan Kott offered his own views on the play. He viewed as main themes of the play violence and "unrepressed animalistic sexuality".[45] Both Lysander and Demetrius are, in his view, verbally brutal lovers, their love interests are exchangeable and objectified. The changeling that Oberon desires is his new "sexual toy".[45] The aristocrats of the play, both mortal and immortal, are promiscuous. As for the Athenian lovers following their night in the forest, they are ashamed to talk about it because that night liberated them from themselves and social norms, and allowed them to reveal their real selves.[45] Kott's views were controversial and contemporary critics wrote, either in favour of or against Kott's views, but few ignored them.[45]

In 1967, John A. Allen theorised that Bottom is a symbol of the animalistic aspect of humanity. He also thought Bottom was redeemed through the maternal tenderness of Titania, which allowed him to understand the love and self-sacrifice of Pyramus and Thisbe.[45] In 1968, Stephen Fender offered his own views on the play. He emphasised the "terrifying power"[45] of the fairies and argued that they control the play's events. They are the most powerful figures featured, not Theseus as often thought. He also emphasised the ethically ambivalent characters of the play. Finally, Fender noted a layer of complexity in the play. Theseus, Hippolyta, and Bottom have contradictory reactions to the events of the night, and each has partly valid reasons for their reactions, implying that the puzzles offered to the play's audience can have no singular answer or meaning.[46]

In 1969, Michael Taylor argued that previous critics offered a too cheerful view of what the play depicts. He emphasised the less pleasant aspects of the otherwise appealing fairies and the nastiness of the mortal Demetrius prior to his enchantment. He argued that the overall themes are the often painful aspects of love and the pettiness of people, which here include the fairies.[47]

In 1970, R.A. Zimbardo viewed the play as full of symbols. The Moon and its phases alluded to in the play, in his view, stand for permanence in mutability. The play uses the principle of discordia concors in several of its key scenes. Theseus and Hippolyta represent marriage and, symbolically, the reconciliation of the natural seasons or the phases of time. Hippolyta's story arc is that she must submit to Theseus and become a matron. Titania has to give up her motherly obsession with the changeling boy and passes through a symbolic death, and Oberon has to once again woo and win his wife. Kehler notes that Zimbardo took for granted the female subordination within the obligatory marriage, social views that were already challenged in the 1960s.[47]

In 1971, James L. Calderwood offered a new view on the role of Oberon. He viewed the king as specialising in the arts of illusion. Oberon, in his view, is the interior dramatist of the play, orchestrating events. He is responsible for the play's happy ending, when he influences Theseus to overrule Egeus and allow the lovers to marry. Oberon and Theseus bring harmony out of discord. He also suggested that the lovers' identities, which are blurred and lost in the forest, recall the unstable identities of the actors who constantly change roles. In fact the failure of the artisans' play is based on their chief flaw as actors: they can not lose their own identities to even temporarily replace them with those of their fictional roles.[48]

Also in 1971, Andrew D. Weiner argued that the play's actual theme is unity. The poet's imagination creates unity by giving form to diverse elements, and the writer is addressing the spectator's own imagination which also creates and perceives unity. Weiner connected this unity to the concept of uniformity, and in turn viewed this as Shakespeare's allusion to the "eternal truths"[49] of Platonism and Christianity.[49]

Also writing in 1971, Hugh M. Richmond offered an entirely new view of the play's love story lines. He argued that what passes for love in this play is actually a self-destructive expression of passion. He argued that the play's significant characters are all affected by passion and by a sadomasochistic type of sexuality. This passion prevents the lovers from genuinely communicating with each other. At the same time it protects them from the disenchantment with the love interest that communication inevitably brings. The exception to the rule is Bottom, who is chiefly devoted to himself. His own egotism protects him from feeling passion for anyone else. Richmond also noted that there are parallels between the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, featured in this play, and that of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.[49]

In 1971, Neil Taylor argued that there was a double time-scheme in the play, making it seem to last a minimum of four nights but to also be timeless.[32]

In 1972, Ralph Berry argued that Shakespeare was chiefly concerned with epistemology in this play. The lovers declare illusion to be reality, the actors declare reality to be illusion. The play ultimately reconciles the seemingly opposing views and vindicates imagination.[49] Also in 1972, Thomas McFarland argued that the play is dominated by a mood of happiness and that it is one of the happiest literary creations ever produced. The mood is so lovely that the audience never feels fear or worry about the fate of the characters.[50]

In 1974, Marjorie Garber argued that metamorphosis is both the major subject of the play and the model of its structure. She noted that in this play, the entry in the woods is a dream-like change in perception, a change which affects both the characters and the audience. Dreams here take priority over reason, and are truer than the reality they seek to interpret and transform.[51] Also in 1974, Alexander Leggatt offered his own reading of the play. He was certain that there are grimmer elements in the play, but they are overlooked because the audience focuses on the story of the sympathetic young lovers. He viewed the characters as separated into four groups which interact in various ways. Among the four, the fairies stand as the most sophisticated and unconstrained. The contrasts between the interacting groups produce the play's comic perspective.[51]

In 1975, Ronald F. Miller expresses his view that the play is a study in the epistemology of imagination. He focused on the role of the fairies, who have a mysterious aura of evanescence and ambiguity.[51] Also in 1975, David Bevington offered his own reading of the play. He in part refuted the ideas of Jan Kott concerning the sexuality of Oberon and the fairies. He pointed that Oberon may be bisexual and his desire for the changeling boy may be sexual in nature, as Kott suggested. But there is little textual evidence to support this, as the writer left ambiguous clues concerning the idea of love among the fairies. He concluded that therefore their love life is "unknowable and incomprehensible".[51] According to Bevington, the main theme of the play is the conflict between sexual desire and rational restraint, an essential tension reflected throughout the play. It is the tension between the dark and benevolent sides of love, which are reconciled in the end.[51]

In 1977, Anne Paolucci argued that the play lasts five days.[32]

In 1979, M. E. Lamb suggested that the play may have borrowed an aspect of the ancient myth of Theseus: the Athenian's entry into the Labyrinth of the Minotaur. The woods of the play serve as a metaphorical labyrinth, and for Elizabethans the woods were often an allegory of sexual sin. The lovers in the woods conquer irrational passion and find their way back. Bottom with his animal head becomes a comical version of the Minotaur. Bottom also becomes Ariadne's thread which guides the lovers. In having the new Minotaur rescue rather than threaten the lovers, the classical myth is comically inverted. Theseus himself is the bridegroom of the play who has left the labyrinth and promiscuity behind, having conquered his passion. The artisans may stand in for the master craftsman of the myth, and builder of the Labyrinth, Daedalus. Even Theseus' best known speech in the play, which connects the poet with the lunatic and the lover may be another metaphor of the lover. It is a challenge for the poet to confront the irrationality he shares with lovers and lunatics, accepting the risks of entering the labyrinth.[52]

Also in 1979, Harold F. Brooks agreed that the main theme of the play, its very heart, is desire and its culmination in marriage. All other subjects are of lesser importance, including that of imagination and that of appearance and reality.[53] In 1980, Florence Falk offered a view of the play based on theories of cultural anthropology. She argued that the play is about traditional rites of passage, which trigger development within the individual and society. Theseus has detached himself from imagination and rules Athens harshly. The lovers flee from the structure of his society to the communitas of the woods. The woods serve here as the communitas, a temporary aggregate for persons whose asocial desires require accommodation to preserve the health of society. This is the rite of passage where the asocial can be contained. Falk identified this communitas with the woods, with the unconscious, with the dream space. She argued that the lovers experience release into self-knowledge and then return to the renewed Athens. This is "societas", the resolution of the dialectic between the dualism of communitas and structure.[53]

Also in 1980, Christian critic R. Chris Hassel, Jr. offered a Christian view of the play. The experience of the lovers and that of Bottom (as expressed in his awakening speech) teach them "a new humility, a healthy sense of folly".[53] They realise that there are things that are true despite the fact that they can not be seen or understood. They just learned a lesson of faith. Hassel also thought that Theseus' speech on the lunatic, the lover, and the poet is an applause to imagination. But it is also a laughing rejection of futile attempts to perceive, categorise, or express it.[53]

 
Alex Aronson considered Puck a representation of the unconscious mind and a contrast to Theseus as a representation of the conscious mind.[54]

Some of the interpretations of the play have been based on psychology and its diverse theories. In 1972, Alex Aronson argued that Theseus represents the conscious mind and Puck represents the unconscious mind. Puck, in this view, is a guise of the unconscious as a trickster, while remaining subservient to Oberon. Aronson thought that the play explores unauthorised desire and linked it to the concept of fertility. He viewed the donkey and the trees as fertility symbols. The lovers' sexual desires are symbolised in their forest encounters.[54] In 1973, Melvin Goldstein argued that the lovers can not simply return to Athens and wed. First, they have to pass through stages of madness (multiple disguises), and discover their "authentic sexual selves".[54] In 1979, Norman N. Holland applied psychoanalytic literary criticism to the play. He interpreted the dream of Hermia as if it was a real dream. In his view, the dream uncovers the phases of Hermia's sexual development. Her search for options is her defence mechanism. She both desires Lysander and wants to retain her virginity.[54]

In 1981, Mordecai Marcus argued for a new meaning of Eros (Love) and Thanatos (Death) in this play. In his view, Shakespeare suggests that love requires the risk of death. Love achieves force and direction from the interweaving of the life impulse with the deathward-release of sexual tension. He also viewed the play as suggesting that the healing force of love is connected to the acceptance of death, and vice versa.[55]

In 1987, Jan Lawson Hinely argued that this play has a therapeutic value. Shakespeare in many ways explores the sexual fears of the characters, releases them, and transforms them. And the happy ending is the reestablishment of social harmony. Patriarchy itself is also challenged and transformed, as the men offer their women a loving equality, one founded on respect and trust. She even viewed Titania's loving acceptance of the donkey-headed Bottom as a metaphor for basic trust. This trust is what enables the warring and uncertain lovers to achieve their sexual maturity.[56] In 1988, Allen Dunn argued that the play is an exploration of the characters' fears and desires, and that its structure is based on a series of sexual clashes.[56]

In 1991, Barbara Freedman argued that the play justifies the ideological formation of absolute monarchy, and makes visible for examination the maintenance process of hegemonic order.[56]

Performance history

 
The first page printed in the Second Folio of 1632

17th and 18th centuries

During the years of the Puritan Interregnum when the theatres were closed (1642–1660), the comic subplot of Bottom and his compatriots was performed as a droll. Drolls were comical playlets, often adapted from the subplots of Shakespearean and other plays, that could be attached to the acts of acrobats and jugglers and other allowed performances, thus circumventing the ban against drama. When the theatres re-opened in 1660, A Midsummer Night's Dream was acted in adapted form, like many other Shakespearean plays. Samuel Pepys saw it on 29 September 1662 and thought it "the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw ..."[57]

After the Jacobean / Caroline era, A Midsummer Night's Dream was never performed in its entirety until the 1840s. Instead, it was heavily adapted in forms like Henry Purcell's musical masque/play The Fairy Queen (1692), which had a successful run at the Dorset Garden Theatre, but was not revived. Richard Leveridge turned the Pyramus and Thisbe scenes into an Italian opera burlesque, acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1716. John Frederick Lampe elaborated upon Leveridge's version in 1745. Charles Johnson had used the Pyramus and Thisbe material in the finale of Love in a Forest, his 1723 adaptation of As You Like It. In 1755, David Garrick did the opposite of what had been done a century earlier: he extracted Bottom and his companions and acted the rest, in an adaptation called The Fairies. Frederic Reynolds produced an operatic version in 1816.[58]

The Victorian stage

In 1840, Madame Vestris at Covent Garden returned the play to the stage with a relatively full text, adding musical sequences and balletic dances. Vestris took the role of Oberon, and for the next seventy years, Oberon and Puck would always be played by women.[59]

After the success of Madame Vestris' production, 19th-century theatre continued to stage the Dream as a spectacle, often with a cast numbering nearly one hundred. Detailed sets were created for the palace and the forest, and the fairies were portrayed as gossamer-winged ballerinas. The overture by Felix Mendelssohn was always used throughout this period. Augustin Daly's production opened in 1895 in London and ran for 21 performances.[60]

20th and 21st centuries

 
Vince Cardinale as Puck from the Carmel Shakespeare Festival production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, September 2000
 
Performance by Saratov Puppet Theatre "Teremok" A Midsummer Night's Dream based on the play by William Shakespeare (2007)

In 1905 Oscar Asche staged a production at the Adelphi Theatre in London with himself as Bottom and Beatrice Ferrar as Puck.[61]Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged a 1911 production which featured "mechanical birds twittering in beech trees, a simulated stream, fairies wearing battery-operated lighting, and live rabbits following trails of food across the stage."[62]

 
A 2010 production of the play at The Doon School, India

Max Reinhardt staged A Midsummer Night's Dream thirteen times between 1905 and 1934,[63] introducing a revolving set.[64] After he fled Germany he devised a more spectacular outdoor version at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1934.[63] The shell was removed and replaced by a forest planted in tons of dirt hauled in especially for the event, and a trestle was constructed from the hills to the stage.[65] The wedding procession inserted between Acts IV and V crossed the trestle with torches down the hillside.[66] The cast included James Cagney,[67] Olivia de Havilland,[68] Mickey Rooney,[69] Victor Jory and a corps of dancers that included Butterfly McQueen. [70] The play was accompanied by Mendelssohn's music.[71]

On the strength of this production, Warner Brothers signed Reinhardt to direct a filmed version, Hollywood's first Shakespeare movie since Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford's Taming of the Shrew in 1929.[72] Jory (Oberon), Rooney (Puck) and De Havilland (Hermia) reprised their roles from the Hollywood Bowl cast.[73] James Cagney starred, in his only Shakespearean role, as Bottom.[74] Other actors in the film who played Shakespearean roles just this once included Joe E. Brown and Dick Powell.[75] Erich Wolfgang Korngold was brought from Austria to arrange Mendelssohn's music for the film.[76] He used not only the Midsummer Night's Dream music but also several other pieces by Mendelssohn. Korngold went on to make a legendary career in Hollywood, remaining in the United States after Nazi Germany annexed Austria.[71]

Director Harley Granville-Barker introduced in 1914 a less spectacular way of staging the Dream: he reduced the size of the cast and used Elizabethan folk music instead of Mendelssohn. He replaced large, complex sets with a simple system of patterned curtains. He portrayed the fairies as golden robotic insectoid creatures based on Cambodian idols. His simpler, sparer staging significantly influenced subsequent productions.[citation needed]

In 1970, Peter Brook staged the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company in a blank white box, in which masculine fairies engaged in circus tricks such as trapeze artistry. Brook also introduced the subsequently common notion of doubling Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania, as if to suggest that the world of the fairies is a mirror version of the world of the mortals. British actors who played roles in Brook's production included Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley, John Kane (Puck) and Frances de la Tour (Helena). Recordings documenting this production survive.[77]

A Midsummer Night's Dream has been produced many times in New York, including several stagings by the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park and a production by the Theatre for a New Audience, produced by Joseph Papp at the Public Theater. In 1978, the Riverside Shakespeare Company staged an outdoor production starring Eric Hoffmann as Puck, with Karen Hurley as Titania and Eric Conger as Oberon, directed by company founder Gloria Skurski. There have been several variations since then, including some set in the 1980s.[citation needed]

The Maryland Shakespeare Players at University of Maryland staged a queer production in 2015 where the lovers were same-sex couples and the mechanicals were drag queens.[78]

The University of Michigan's Nichols Arboretum's programme Shakespeare in the Arb has presented a play every summer since 2001. Shakespeare in the Arb has produced A Midsummer Night's Dream three times. These performances take place in a 123-acre (50 ha) natural setting, with lush woods, a flowing river, and steep hills. The performance takes place in several places, with actors and audience moving together to each setting. "As one critic commented, 'The actors used the vastness of its Arb[oretum] stage to full advantage, making entrances from behind trees, appearing over rises and vanishing into the woods.'"[79]

Artistic director Emma Rice's first production at Shakespeare's Globe in 2016 was a version of the play. While not "a production to please the purists", it received praise. A contemporary reworking, it included gender switched characters and Bollywood influences.[80]

Adaptations and cultural references

Plays

Absurda Comica, oder Herr Peter Squentz by Andreas Gryphius which was probably written between 1648 and 1650 and was published in 1657 is evidently based on the comic episode of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Ken Ludwig's 2003 comic play, Shakespeare in Hollywood, is set during the production of the 1935 film. Oberon and Puck appear on the scene and find themselves cast as—themselves.[81][82]

Literary

W. Stanley Moss used the quotation "Ill met by moonlight" as the title of his Ill Met by Moonlight (1950), a non-fiction book about the kidnap of General Kreipe during WWII.[83] The book was adapted into a film with the same name in 1957.[84]

Botho Strauß's play The Park (1983) is based on characters and motifs from A Midsummer Night's Dream.[85]

Neil Gaiman's comic series The Sandman uses the play in the 1990 issue "A Midsummer Night's Dream". In this story, Shakespeare and his company perform the play for the real Oberon and Titania and an audience of fairies. The play is heavily quoted in the comic, and Shakespeare's son Hamnet appears in the play as the Indian boy. This issue was the first and only comic to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, in 1991.[86]

Terry Pratchett's book Lords and Ladies (1992) is a parody of the play.[87]

Bernard Cornwell's novel Fools and Mortals (2017) is about the creation and first performance of the play, as seen by the young actor, Richard Shakespeare, brother of the playwright.[88]

Musical versions

The Fairy-Queen is an opera from 1692 by Henry Purcell, based on the play.[89][90]

Main article: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn)

In 1826, Felix Mendelssohn composed a concert overture, inspired by the play, that was first performed in 1827. In 1842, partly because of the fame of the overture, and partly because his employer King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia liked the incidental music that Mendelssohn had written for other plays that had been staged at the palace in German translation, Mendelssohn was commissioned to write incidental music for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that was to be staged in 1843 in Potsdam. He incorporated the existing Overture into the incidental music, which was used in most stage versions through the 19th century. The best known of the pieces from the incidental music is the famous Wedding March, frequently used as a recessional in weddings.[91]

Between 1917 and 1939 Carl Orff also wrote incidental music for a German version of the play, Ein Sommernachtstraum (performed in 1939). Since Mendelssohn's parents were Jews who converted to Lutheranism, his music had been banned by the Nazi regime, and the Nazi cultural officials put out a call for new music for the play: Orff was one of the musicians who responded. He later reworked the music for a final version, completed in 1964.[citation needed]

In 1949 a three-act opera by Delannoy entitled Puck was premiered in Strasbourg.

"Over Hill, Over Dale", from Act 2, is the third of the Three Shakespeare Songs set to music by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. He wrote the pieces for a cappella SATB choir in 1951 for the British Federation of Music Festivals, and they remain a popular part of British choral repertoire today.

The play was adapted into an opera, with music by Benjamin Britten and libretto by Britten and Peter Pears. The opera was first performed on 11 June 1960 at Aldeburgh.[92]

In 1964 a musical adaptation debuted on Broadway as Babes in The Wood.

Progressive Rock guitarist Steve Hackett, best known for his work with Genesis, made a classical adaptation of the play in 1997. Hans Werner Henze's Eighth Symphony is inspired by sequences from the play.[citation needed]

The theatre company Moonwork put on a production of Midsummer in 1999. It was conceived by Mason Pettit, Gregory Sherman and Gregory Wolfe (who directed it). The show featured a rock-opera version of the play within a play, Pyramus & Thisbe, with music written by Rusty Magee. The music for the rest of the show was written by Andrew Sherman.[93]

The Donkey Show is a disco-era experience based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, that first appeared off Broadway in 1999.[94]

The Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts Theatre Department presented the show as a musical adapted/directed by Beverly Blanchette (produced by Marcie Gorman) using the songs of The Moody Blues. The show was called Midsummer and was subsequently performed at Morsani Hall/Straz Performing Arts Center in Tampa, at the Florida State International Thespian Society Festival. Text/Concept Copyright, 9 December 2011.[citation needed]

In 2011, Opera Memphis, Playhouse on the Square, and contemporary a cappella groups DeltaCappella and Riva, premiered Michael Ching's A Midsummer Night's Dream: Opera A Cappella.[95]

In 2015, the plot of Be More Chill included a version of the play called A Midsummer Nightmare (About Zombies).[96][97]

Ballets

  • Marius Petipa made a ballet adaptation for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg with additional music and adaptations to Mendelssohn's score by Léon Minkus. The revival premiered 14 July 1876.
  • George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, his first original full-length ballet, was premiered by the New York City Ballet on 17 January 1962. It was chosen to open the NYCB's first season at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center in 1964. Balanchine interpolated further music by Mendelssohn into his Dream, including the overture from Athalie.[98] A film version of the ballet was released in 1966.[99]
  • Frederick Ashton created The Dream, a short (not full-length) ballet set exclusively to the famous music by Félix Mendelssohn, arranged by John Lanchbery, in 1964. It was created on England's Royal Ballet and has since entered the repertoire of other companies, notably The Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theatre.[98]
  • John Neumeier created his full-length ballet Ein Sommernachtstraum for his company at the Hamburg State Opera (Hamburgische Staatsoper) in 1977. Longer than Ashton's or Balanchine's earlier versions, Neumeier's version includes other music by Mendelssohn along with the Midsummer Night's Dream music, as well as music from the modern composer György Ligeti, and jaunty barrel organ music. Neumeier devotes the three sharply differing musical styles to the three character groups, with the aristocrats and nobles dancing to Mendelssohn, the fairies to Ligeti, and the rustics or mechanicals to the barrel organ.[100]
  • Elvis Costello composed the music for a full-length ballet Il Sogno, based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. The music was subsequently released as a classical album by Deutsche Grammophon in 2004.

Film adaptations

See also: List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations § A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream has been adapted as a film many times. The following are the best known.

TV productions

Astronomy

In 1787, British astronomer William Herschel discovered two new moons of Uranus. In 1852 his son John Herschel named them after characters in the play: Oberon, and Titania. Another Uranian moon, discovered in 1985 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, has been named Puck.[109]

Gallery

See also

Notes and references

All references to A Midsummer Night's Dream, unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Arden Shakespeare 2nd series edition.[110] Under their referencing system, which uses roman numerals, III.i.55 means act 3 (Roman numerals in upper case), scene 1 (Roman numerals lower case), line 55.

Notes

  1. ^ Theseus' "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet" speech is in A Midsummer Night's Dream V.I.2–22.[37]
  2. ^ Specifically, Bottom alludes to I Corinthians 2:9.[43]

References

  1. ^ Kopf, Dan (22 September 2016). "What Is Shakespeare's Most Popular Play?". Priceonomics. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  2. ^ Brooks 1979, p. lix.
  3. ^ Kimura （木村マリアン）, Marianne. "The sun, the moon, and two new sources for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'". Retrieved 30 July 2021.
  4. ^ Twyning 2012, p. 77.
  5. ^ Kehler 1998, p. 3.
  6. ^ a b Brooks 1979, p. xxi.
  7. ^ Brooks 1979, p. lvii.
  8. ^ Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 83.
  9. ^ Venus and Adonis
  10. ^ Wiles 2008, pp. 208–23.
  11. ^ Wiles 2008, p. 213.
  12. ^ Wiles 1993
  13. ^ Bevington 1996, pp. 24–35.
  14. ^ Bevington 1996, p. 32.
  15. ^ A Midsummer Night's Dream, I.I.2–3.
  16. ^ A Midsummer Night's Dream, I.I.208–13.
  17. ^ A Midsummer Night's Dream, I.II.90–9.
  18. ^ A Midsummer Night's Dream, IV.I.131–5.
  19. ^ a b c d Hunt 1986.
  20. ^ Kiernan 1993, p. 212.
  21. ^ Kiernan 1993, p. 210.
  22. ^ a b c Marshall 1982.
  23. ^ Green 1998, p. 370.
  24. ^ a b Green 1998, p. 375.
  25. ^ Garner 1998, pp. 129–30.
  26. ^ Slights 1988, p. 261.
  27. ^ Howard 2003, p. 414.
  28. ^ Montrose 2000, p. 65.
  29. ^ Montrose 2000, pp. 61–69.
  30. ^ Tennenhouse 1986, p. 73.
  31. ^ Tennenhouse 1986, pp. 74–76.
  32. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Kehler 1998, p. 6.
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Sources

Editions of A Midsummer Night's Dream

Secondary sources

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  • Green, Douglas E. (1998). "Preposterous Pleasures: Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night's Dream". In Kehler, Dorothea (ed.). A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Essays. Garland reference library of the humanities. Vol. 1900 (reprint ed.). Psychology Press. pp. 369–400. ISBN 978-0-8153-3890-1.
  • Halliday, F. E. (1964). A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore: Penguin.
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  • "The Donkey Show: A Midsummer Night's Disco". Internet Off-Broadway Database. n.d. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
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  • MacQueen, Scott (2009). "Midsummer Dream, Midwinter Nightmare: Max Reinhardt and Shakespeare versus the Warner Bros". The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. University of Minnesota Press. 9 (2): 30–103. doi:10.1353/mov.2010.0012. eISSN 1542-4235. ISSN 1532-3978. JSTOR 41164591. S2CID 191461112.
  • Mancewicz, Aneta (2014). Intermedial Shakespeares on European Stages. Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-36004-5.
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  • Marshall, David (1982). "Exchanging Visions: Reading A Midsummer Night's Dream". ELH. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 49 (3): 543–75. doi:10.2307/2872755. eISSN 1080-6547. ISSN 0013-8304. JSTOR 2872755. S2CID 163807169.
  • Montrose, Louis (2000). "The Imperial Votaress". In Brown, Richard Danson; Johnson, David (eds.). A Shakespeare Reader: Sources and Criticism. London: Macmillan Press. pp. 60–71. ISBN 978-0-312-23039-5.
  • O'Donovan, Gerard (30 May 2016). "Russell T Davies made Shakespeare engaging, fresh and funny". The Telegraph. from the original on 5 August 2016. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
  • Reynolds, Norman (14 July 2006). [A Midsummer Night's Dream]. Ballet.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 11 May 2014.
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  • Slights, William W. E. (1988). "The Changeling in A Dream". SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. Rice University. 28 (2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama): 259–72. doi:10.2307/450551. eISSN 1522-9270. ISSN 0039-3657. JSTOR 450551.
  • Tennenhouse, Leonard (1986). Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres. Routledge library editions: Shakespeare. Vol. 48 (reprint ed.). New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-35315-1.
  • Twyning, John (2012). Forms of English History in Literature, Landscape, and Architecture. New York: Springer Nature. ISBN 978-1-137-28470-9.
  • "Planet and Satellite Names and Discoverers". USGS. n.d. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
  • Waleson, Heidi (25 January 2011). "A Remarkably Inventive A Cappella Premiere". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. OCLC 781541372.
  • Watts, Richard W. (1972). "Films of a Moonstruck World". In Eckert, Charles W. (ed.). Focus on Shakespearean Films. Film focus. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-807644-3.
  • Whittall, Arnold (1998). "Midsummer Night's Dream, A". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Vol. 3 (8 ed.). Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 0-333-73432-7. Retrieved 31 March 2017 – via Grove Music Online.
  • Wiles, David (2008). "The Carnivalesque in A Midsummer Night's Dream". In Bloom, Harold; Marson, Janyce (eds.). A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism. pp. 208–23. ISBN 978-0-7910-9595-9.
  • Wiles, David (1993). Shakespeare's Almanac: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Marriage and the Elizabethan Calendar. Woodbridge: D.S.Brewer. ISBN 0859913988.

Further reading

External links

 
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream at Standard Ebooks
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  • A Midsummer Night's Dream Navigator: annotated, searchable text (HTML) with scene summaries.
  • Formatted text (HTML) of the play
  • No Fear Shakespeare parallel edition 6 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine: original language alongside a modern translation
  • Clear Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: a word-by-word audio guide through the play
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream 2016 Internet Movie Database
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream – 90-Minute abridgement by Gerald P Murphy
  • A Thirty Minute Dream: Abridgement by Bill Tordoff, Shakespeare's text reduced to the length of a school lesson.
  •   A Midsummer Night's Dream public domain audiobook at LibriVox

April 20, 2023
midsummer, night, dream, this, article, about, shakespeare, play, other, uses, disambiguation, amnd, redirects, here, chemical, known, amnd, aminomuconate, deaminase, mustardseed, redirects, here, seed, mustard, plants, mustard, seed, comedy, written, william,. This article is about Shakespeare s play For other uses see A Midsummer Night s Dream disambiguation AMND redirects here For the chemical known as amnd see 2 aminomuconate deaminase Mustardseed redirects here For the seed of mustard plants see mustard seed A Midsummer Night s Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare c 1595 or 1596 The play is set in Athens and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta One subplot involves a conflict among four Athenian lovers Another follows a group of six amateur actors rehearsing the play which they are to perform before the wedding Both groups find themselves in a forest inhabited by fairies who manipulate the humans and are engaged in their own domestic intrigue The play is one of Shakespeare s most popular and is widely performed 1 A Midsummer Night s DreamOberon Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing by William Blake c 1786Written byWilliam ShakespeareDate premiered1 January 1605 1605 01 01 GenreComedySettingAthens Contents 1 Characters 2 Plot 2 1 Act 1 2 1 1 Act 1 Scene 1 2 1 2 Act 1 Scene 2 2 2 Act 2 2 2 1 Act 2 Scene 1 2 2 2 Act 2 Scene 2 2 3 Act 3 2 3 1 Act 3 Scene 1 2 3 2 Act 3 Scene 2 2 4 Act 4 2 4 1 Act 4 Scene 1 2 4 2 Act 4 Scene 2 2 5 Act 5 3 Sources 4 Date and text 5 Themes and motifs 5 1 Lovers bliss 5 2 Carnivalesque 5 3 Love 5 4 Problem with time 5 5 Loss of individual identity 5 6 Ambiguous sexuality 5 7 Feminism 6 Criticism and interpretation 6 1 Critical history 6 1 1 17th century 6 1 2 18th century 6 1 3 19th century 6 1 4 20th century 7 Performance history 7 1 17th and 18th centuries 7 2 The Victorian stage 7 3 20th and 21st centuries 8 Adaptations and cultural references 8 1 Plays 8 2 Literary 8 3 Musical versions 8 4 Ballets 8 5 Film adaptations 8 6 TV productions 8 7 Astronomy 9 Gallery 10 See also 11 Notes and references 11 1 Notes 11 2 References 12 Sources 12 1 Editions of A Midsummer Night s Dream 12 2 Secondary sources 13 Further reading 14 External linksCharacters EditTheseus Duke of Athens Hippolyta Queen of the Amazons Egeus father of Hermia Hermia daughter of Egeus in love with Lysander Lysander in love with Hermia Demetrius suitor to Hermia Helena in love with Demetrius Philostrate Master of the Revels Peter Quince a carpenter Nick Bottom a weaver Francis Flute a bellows mender Tom Snout a tinker Snug a joiner Robin Starveling a tailor Oberon King of the Fairies Titania Queen of the Fairies Robin Puck Goodfellow a mischievous sprite with magical powers Peaseblossom Cobweb Moth and Mustardseed fairy servants to Titania Indian changeling a ward of TitaniaPlot Edit Hermia and Helena by Washington Allston 1818 The play consists of five interconnecting plots connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen Hippolyta which are set simultaneously in the woodland and in the realm of Fairyland under the light of the moon Act 1 Edit Act 1 Scene 1 Edit The play opens with Theseus and Hippolyta who are four days away from their wedding Theseus is not happy about how long he has to wait while Hyppolyta thinks it will pass by like a dream Theseus is confronted by Egeus and his daughter Hermia who is in love with Lysander resistant to her father s demand that she marry Demetrius whom he has arranged for her to marry Enraged Egeus invokes an ancient Athenian law before Duke Theseus whereby a daughter needs to marry a suitor chosen by her father or else face death Theseus offers her another choice lifelong chastity as a nun worshipping the goddess Diana but the two lovers both deny his choice and make a secret plan to escape into the forest for Lysander s aunt s house in order to run away from Theseus Hermia tells their plans to Helena her best friend who pines unrequitedly for Demetrius who broke up with her to be with Hermia Desperate to reclaim Demetrius s love Helena tells Demetrius about the plan and he follows them in hopes of finding Hermia Act 1 Scene 2 Edit The Mechanicals Peter Quince and fellow players Nick Bottom Francis Flute Robin Starveling Tom Snout and Snug plan to put on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe Quince reads the names of characters and bestows them on the players Nick Bottom who is playing the main role of Pyramus is over enthusiastic and wants to dominate others by suggesting himself for the characters of Thisbe the Lion and Pyramus at the same time Quince insists that Bottom can only play the role of Pyramus Bottom would also rather be a tyrant and recites some lines of Ercles Bottom is told by Quince that he would do the Lion so terribly as to frighten the duchess and ladies enough for the Duke and Lords to have the players hanged Snug remarks that he needs the Lion s part because he is slow of study Quince assures Snug that the role of the lion is nothing but roaring Quince then ends the meeting telling his actors at the Duke s oak we meet Act 2 Edit Act 2 Scene 1 Edit The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Joseph Noel Paton 1849 In a parallel plot line Oberon king of the fairies and Titania his queen have come to the forest outside Athens Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until she has attended Theseus and Hippolyta s wedding Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her Indian changeling to Oberon for use as his knight or henchman since the child s mother was one of Titania s worshippers Oberon seeks to punish Titania s disobedience He calls upon Robin Puck Goodfellow his shrewd and knavish sprite to help him concoct a magical juice derived from a flower called love in idleness which turns from white to purple when struck by Cupid s arrow When the concoction is applied to the eyelids of a sleeping person that person upon waking falls in love with the first living thing they perceive He instructs Puck to retrieve the flower with the hope that he might make Titania fall in love with an animal of the forest and thereby shame her into giving up the little Indian boy He says And ere I take this charm from off her sight As I can take it with another herb I ll make her render up her page to me Helena and Demetrius enter with she continuously making advances towards Demetrius promising to love him more than Hermia However he rebuffs her with cruel insults Observing this Oberon orders Puck to spread some of the magical juice from the flower on the eyelids of the young Athenian man Act 2 Scene 2 Edit As Titania is lulled to sleep by her fairies Oberon sneaks upon her and places the flower juice on her eyes exiting the stage afterwards Lysander and Hermia enter lost and exhausted from the journey Hermia rejects Lysander s polite yet pushy advances to sleep together and the two lie down on different corners Puck enters and mistakes Lysander for Demetrius not having actually seen either before and administers the juice to the sleeping Lysander Helena coming across him wakes him while attempting to determine whether he is dead or asleep Upon this happening Lysander immediately falls in love with Helena Helena thinking Lysander is mocking her for losing Demetrius runs away with Lysander following her When Hermia wakes up after dreaming a snake ate her heart she sees that Lysander is gone and goes out in the woods to find him Act 3 Edit Act 3 Scene 1 Edit A drawing of Puck Titania and Bottom in A Midsummer Night s Dream from Act III Scene II by Charles Buchel 1905 Meanwhile Quince and his band of five labourers rude mechanicals as they are described by Puck have arranged to perform their play about Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus wedding and venture into the forest near Titania s bower for their rehearsal Quince leads the actors in their rehearsal of the play Bottom is spotted by Puck who taking his name to be another word for a jackass transforms his head into that of a donkey When Bottom returns for his next lines the other workmen run screaming in terror They claim that they are haunted much to Bottom s confusion Determined to await his friends he begins to sing to himself Titania having received the love potion is awakened by Bottom s singing and immediately falls in love with him In the words of the play Titania waked and straightway loved an ass She lavishes him with the attention of her and her fairies and while she is in this state of devotion Oberon takes the changeling boy Act 3 Scene 2 Edit Oberon sees Demetrius still following Hermia When Demetrius goes to sleep Oberon condemns Puck s mistake and sends him to get Helena while he charms Demetrius eyes Upon waking up he sees Lysander and Helena and instantly falls for her Now under the spell the two men have fallen for her However Helena is convinced that her two suitors are mocking her as neither loved her originally Hermia finds Lysander and asks why he left her but Lysander claims he never loved Hermia instead loving Helena This soon turns into a quarrel between the two ladies with Helena chiding Hermia for joining in the mockery session followed by the latter furiously charging at her for stealing her true love s heart and blaming her for the supposed mockery Oberon and Puck decide that they must resolve this conflict and by the morning none of them will have any memory of what happened as if it were a dream Oberon arranges everything so Helena Hermia Demetrius and Lysander will all believe they have been dreaming when they awaken Puck distracts Lysander and Demetrius from fighting over Helena s love by mimicking their voices and leading them apart Eventually all four find themselves separately falling asleep in the glade Once they fall asleep Puck administers the love potion to Lysander again returning his love to Hermia again and cast another spell over the four Athenian lovers claiming all will be well in the morning Once they awaken the lovers assume that whatever happened was a dream and not reality Act 4 Edit Act 4 Scene 1 Edit Having achieved his goals Oberon releases Titania and orders Puck to remove the donkey s head from Bottom The fairies then disappear and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene during an early morning hunt They find the lovers still sleeping in the glade They wake up the lovers and since Demetrius no longer loves Hermia Theseus over rules Egeus s demands and arranges a group wedding The lovers at first believe they are still in a dream and cannot recall what has happened The lovers decide that the night s events must have been a dream as they walk back to Athens Act 4 Scene 2 Edit After they exit Bottom awakes and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream past the wit of man At Quince s house he and his team of actors worry that Bottom has gone missing Quince laments that Bottom is the only man who can take on the lead role of Pyramus Bottom returns and the actors get ready to put on Pyramus and Thisbe Act 5 Edit The final scene in the play Theseus Hippolyta and the lovers watch the six workmen perform Pyramus and Thisbe in Athens The Mechanical performers are so terrible playing their roles that the guests laugh as if it were meant to be a comedy and everyone retires to bed Afterwards Oberon Titania Puck and other fairies enter and bless the house and its occupants with good fortune After all the other characters leave Puck restores amends and suggests that what the audience experienced might just be a dream Sources Edit Titania and Bottom Henry Fuseli c 1790 It is unknown exactly when A Midsummer Night s Dream was written or first performed but on the basis of topical references and an allusion to Edmund Spenser s Epithalamion it is usually dated 1595 or early 1596 Some have theorised that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding for example that of Elizabeth Carey Lady Berkeley while others suggest that it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St John but no evidence exists to support this theory In any case it would have been performed at The Theatre and later The Globe Though it is not a translation or adaptation of an earlier work various sources such as Ovid s Metamorphoses and Chaucer s The Knight s Tale served as inspiration 2 Aristophanes classical Greek comedy The Birds also set in the countryside near Athens has been proposed as a source due to the fact that both Procne and Titania are awakened by male characters Hoopoe and Bottom the Weaver who have animal heads and who sing two stanza songs about birds 3 According to John Twyning the play s plot of four lovers undergoing a trial in the woods was intended as a riff on Der Busant a Middle High German poem 4 According to Dorothea Kehler the writing period can be placed between 1594 and 1596 which means that Shakespeare had probably already completed Romeo and Juliet and was still in contemplation of The Merchant of Venice The play belongs to the author s early middle period a time when Shakespeare devoted primary attention to the lyricism of his works 5 Date and text Edit The title page from the first quarto printed in 1600 The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 8 October 1600 by the bookseller Thomas Fisher who published the first quarto edition later that year 6 A second quarto was printed in 1619 by William Jaggard as part of his so called False Folio 6 The play next appeared in print in the First Folio of 1623 The title page of Q1 states that the play was sundry times publickely acted prior to 1600 7 The first performance known with certainty occurred at Hampton Court on 1 January 1604 as a prelude to The Masque of Indian and China Knights 8 Themes and motifs EditLovers bliss Edit In Ancient Greece long before the creation of the Christian celebrations of St John s Day the summer solstice was marked by Adonia a festival to mourn the death of Adonis the devoted mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite According to Ovid s Metamorphoses Aphrodite took the orphaned infant Adonis to the underworld to be raised by Persephone He grew to be a beautiful young man and when Aphrodite returned to retrieve him Persephone did not want to let him go Zeus settled the dispute by giving Adonis one third of the year with Persephone one third of the year with Aphrodite and the remaining third where he chose Adonis chose to spend two thirds of the year with his paramour Aphrodite He bled to death in his lover s arms after being gored by a boar Mythology has various stories attributing the colour of certain flowers to staining by the blood of Adonis or Aphrodite The story of Venus and Adonis was well known to the Elizabethans and inspired many works including Shakespeare s own hugely popular narrative poem Venus and Adonis written while London s theatres were closed because of plague It was published in 1593 9 The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta and the mistaken and waylaid lovers Titania and Bottom even the erstwhile acting troupe model various aspects and forms of love Carnivalesque Edit Both David Wiles of the University of London and Harold Bloom of Yale University have strongly endorsed the reading of this play under the themes of Carnivalesque Bacchanalia and Saturnalia 10 Writing in 1998 David Wiles stated that The starting point for my own analysis will be the proposition that although we encounter A Midsummer Night s Dream as a text it was historically part of an aristocratic carnival It was written for a wedding and part of the festive structure of the wedding night The audience who saw the play in the public theatre in the months that followed became vicarious participants in an aristocratic festival from which they were physically excluded My purpose will be to demonstrate how closely the play is integrated with a historically specific upper class celebration 11 Wiles argued in 1993 that the play was written to celebrate the Carey Berkeley wedding The date of the wedding was fixed to coincide with a conjunction of Venus and the new moon highly propitious for conceiving an heir 12 Love Edit Hermia and Lysander by John Simmons 1870 David Bevington argues that the play represents the dark side of love He writes that the fairies make light of love by mistaking the lovers and by applying a love potion to Queen Titania s eyes forcing her to fall in love with an ass 13 In the forest both couples are beset by problems Hermia and Lysander are both met by Puck who provides some comic relief in the play by confounding the four lovers in the forest However the play also alludes to serious themes At the end of the play Hippolyta and Theseus happily married watch the play about the unfortunate lovers Pyramus and Thisbe and are able to enjoy and laugh at it 14 Helena and Demetrius are both oblivious to the dark side of their love totally unaware of what may have come of the events in the forest Problem with time Edit There is a dispute over the scenario of the play as it is cited at first by Theseus that four happy days bring in another moon 15 The wood episode then takes place at a night of no Moon but Lysander asserts that there will be so much light in the very night they will escape that dew on the grass will be shining like liquid pearls 16 Also in the next scene Quince states that they will rehearse in moonlight 17 which creates a real confusion It is possible that the Moon set during the night allowing Lysander to escape in the moonlight and for the actors to rehearse then for the wood episode to occur without moonlight Theseus s statement can also be interpreted to mean four days until the next month Another possibility is that since each month there are roughly four consecutive nights that the Moon is not seen due to its closeness to the Sun in the sky the two nights before the moment of new moon followed by the two following it it may in this fashion indicate a liminal dark of the moon period full of magical possibilities This is further supported by Hippolyta s opening lines exclaiming And then the moon like to a silver bow New bent in heaven shall behold the night of our solemnities the thin crescent shaped moon being the hallmark of the new moon s return to the skies each month The play also intertwines the Midsummer Eve of the title with May Day furthering the idea of a confusion of time and the seasons This is evidenced by Theseus commenting on some slumbering youths that they observe The rite of May 18 Loss of individual identity Edit Edwin Landseer Scene from A Midsummer Night s Dream Titania and Bottom 1848 Maurice Hunt former Chair of the English Department at Baylor University writes of the blurring of the identities of fantasy and reality in the play that make possible that pleasing narcotic dreaminess associated with the fairies of the play 19 By emphasising this theme even in the setting of the play Shakespeare prepares the reader s mind to accept the fantastic reality of the fairy world and its happenings This also seems to be the axis around which the plot conflicts in the play occur Hunt suggests that it is the breaking down of individual identities that leads to the central conflict in the story 19 It is the brawl between Oberon and Titania based on a lack of recognition for the other in the relationship that drives the rest of the drama in the story and makes it dangerous for any of the other lovers to come together due to the disturbance of Nature caused by a fairy dispute 19 Similarly this failure to identify and to distinguish is what leads Puck to mistake one set of lovers for another in the forest placing the flower s juice on Lysander s eyes instead of Demetrius 19 Victor Kiernan a Marxist scholar and historian writes that it is for the greater sake of love that this loss of identity takes place and that individual characters are made to suffer accordingly It was the more extravagant cult of love that struck sensible people as irrational and likely to have dubious effects on its acolytes 20 He believes that identities in the play are not so much lost as they are blended together to create a type of haze through which distinction becomes nearly impossible It is driven by a desire for new and more practical ties between characters as a means of coping with the strange world within the forest even in relationships as diverse and seemingly unrealistic as the brief love between Titania and Bottom It was the tidal force of this social need that lent energy to relationships 21 The aesthetics scholar David Marshall draws out this theme even further by noting that the loss of identity reaches its fullness in the description of the mechanicals and their assumption of other identities In describing the occupations of the acting troupe he writes Two construct or put together two mend and repair one weaves and one sews All join together what is apart or mend what has been rent broken or sundered 22 In Marshall s opinion this loss of individual identity not only blurs specificities it creates new identities found in community which Marshall points out may lead to some understanding of Shakespeare s opinions on love and marriage Further the mechanicals understand this theme as they take on their individual parts for a corporate performance of Pyramus and Thisbe Marshall remarks that To be an actor is to double and divide oneself to discover oneself in two parts both oneself and not oneself both the part and not the part 22 He claims that the mechanicals understand this and that each character particularly among the lovers has a sense of laying down individual identity for the greater benefit of the group or pairing It seems that a desire to lose one s individuality and find identity in the love of another is what quietly moves the events of A Midsummer Night s Dream As the primary sense of motivation this desire is reflected even in the scenery depictions and the story s overall mood 22 Ambiguous sexuality Edit The Awakening of the Fairy Queen Titania In his essay Preposterous Pleasures Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night s Dream Douglas E Green explores possible interpretations of alternative sexuality that he finds within the text of the play in juxtaposition to the proscribed social mores of the culture at the time the play was written He writes that his essay does not seek to rewrite A Midsummer Night s Dream as a gay play but rather explores some of its homoerotic significations moments of queer disruption and eruption in this Shakespearean comedy 23 Green does not consider Shakespeare to have been a sexual radical but that the play represented a topsy turvy world or temporary holiday that mediates or negotiates the discontents of civilisation which while resolved neatly in the story s conclusion do not resolve so neatly in real life 24 Green writes that the sodomitical elements homoeroticism lesbianism and even compulsory heterosexuality the first hint of which may be Oberon s obsession with Titania s changeling ward in the story must be considered in the context of the culture of early modern England as a commentary on the aesthetic rigidities of comic form and political ideologies of the prevailing order 24 Aspects of ambiguous sexuality and gender conflict in the story are also addressed in essays by Shirley Garner and William W E Slights albeit all the characters are played by males 25 26 Feminism Edit Midsummer Eve by Edward Robert Hughes c 1908 Male dominance is one thematic element found in the play In A Midsummer Night s Dream Lysander and Hermia escape into the woods for a night where they do not fall under the laws of Theseus or Egeus Upon their arrival in Athens the couples are married Marriage is seen as the ultimate social achievement for women while men can go on to do many other great things and gain social recognition 27 In The Imperial Votaress Louis Montrose draws attention to male and female gender roles and norms present in the comedy in connection with Elizabethan culture In reference to the triple wedding he says The festive conclusion in A Midsummer Night s Dream depends upon the success of a process by which the feminine pride and power manifested in Amazon warriors possessive mothers unruly wives and wilful daughters are brought under the control of lords and husbands 28 He says that the consummation of marriage is how power over a woman changes hands from father to husband A connection is drawn between flowers and sexuality Montrose sees the juice employed by Oberon as symbolising menstrual blood as well as the sexual blood shed by virgins While blood as a result of menstruation is representative of a woman s power blood as a result of a first sexual encounter represents man s power over women 29 There are points in the play however when there is an absence of patriarchal control In his book Power on Display Leonard Tennenhouse says the problem in A Midsummer Night s Dream is the problem of authority gone archaic 30 The Athenian law requiring a daughter to die if she does not do her father s will is outdated Tennenhouse contrasts the patriarchal rule of Theseus in Athens with that of Oberon in the carnivalistic Faerie world The disorder in the land of the fairies completely opposes the world of Athens He states that during times of carnival and festival male power is broken down For example what happens to the four lovers in the woods as well as Bottom s dream represents chaos that contrasts with Theseus political order However Theseus does not punish the lovers for their disobedience According to Tennenhouse by forgiving the lovers he has made a distinction between the law of the patriarch Egeus and that of the monarch Theseus creating two different voices of authority This can be compared to the time of Elizabeth I in which monarchs were seen as having two bodies the body natural and the body politic Tennenhouse says that Elizabeth s succession itself represented both the voice of a patriarch and the voice of a monarch 1 her father s will which stated that the crown should pass to her and 2 the fact that she was the daughter of a king 31 Criticism and interpretation EditCritical history Edit 17th century Edit Samuel Pepys who wrote the oldest known comments on the play found A Midsummer Night s Dream to be the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life 32 Dorothea Kehler has attempted to trace the criticism of the work through the centuries The earliest such piece of criticism that she found was a 1662 entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys He found the play to be the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life 32 He did however admit that it had some good dancing and some handsome women which was all my pleasure 32 The next critic known to comment on the play was John Dryden writing in 1677 He was preoccupied with the question of whether fairies should be depicted in theatrical plays since they did not exist He concluded that poets should be allowed to depict things which do not exist but derive from popular belief And fairies are of this sort as are pygmies and the extraordinary effects of magic Based on this reasoning Dryden defended the merits of three fantasy plays A Midsummer Night s Dream The Tempest and Ben Jonson s The Masque of Queens 32 18th century Edit Charles Gildon in the early 18th century recommended this play for its beautiful reflections descriptions similes and topics Gildon thought that Shakespeare drew inspiration from the works of Ovid and Virgil and that he could read them in the original Latin and not in later translations 32 William Duff writing in the 1770s also recommended this play He felt the depiction of the supernatural was among Shakespeare s strengths not weaknesses He especially praised the poetry and wit of the fairies and the quality of the verse involved 32 His contemporary Francis Gentleman an admirer of Shakespeare was much less appreciative of this play He felt that the poetry the characterisation and the originality of the play were its strengths but that its major weaknesses were a puerile plot and that it consists of an odd mixture of incidents The connection of the incidents to each other seemed rather forced to Gentleman 33 Edmond Malone a Shakespearean scholar and critic of the late 18th century found another supposed flaw in this particular play its lack of a proper decorum He found that the more exalted characters the aristocrats of Athens are subservient to the interests of those beneath them In other words the lower class characters play larger roles than their betters and overshadow them He found this to be a grave error of the writer Malone thought that this play had to be an early and immature work of Shakespeare and by implication that an older writer would know better Malone s main argument seems to derive from the classism of his era He assumes that the aristocrats had to receive more attention in the narrative and to be more important more distinguished and better than the lower class 34 19th century Edit William Hazlitt preferred reading A Midsummer Night s Dream over watching it acted on stage According to Kehler significant 19th century criticism began in 1808 with August Wilhelm Schlegel Schlegel perceived unity in the multiple plot lines He noted that the donkey s head is not a random transformation but reflects Bottom s true nature He identified the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe as a burlesque of the Athenian lovers 34 In 1817 William Hazlitt found the play to be better as a written work than a staged production He found the work to be a delightful fiction 34 but when staged it is reduced to a dull pantomime He concluded that poetry and the stage do not fit together 34 Kehler finds the comment to be more of an indication of the quality of the theatrical productions available to Hazlitt rather than a true indication of the play s supposed unsuitability to the stage She notes that prior to the 1840s all stage productions of this play were adaptations unfaithful to the original text 34 In 1811 1812 Samuel Taylor Coleridge made two points of criticism about this play The first was that the entire play should be seen as a dream Second that Helena is guilty of ungrateful treachery to Hermia He thought that this was a reflection of the lack of principles in women who are more likely to follow their own passions and inclinations than men Women in his view feel less abhorrence for moral evil though they are concerned with its outward consequences Coleridge was probably the earliest critic to introduce gender issues to the analysis of this play Kehler dismisses his views on Helena as indications of Coleridge s own misogyny rather than genuine reflections of Helena s morality 35 William Maginn thought Bottom a lucky man and was particularly amused that he treats Titania the Queen of the Fairies as carelessly as if she were the wench of the next door tapster 36 In 1837 William Maginn produced essays on the play He turned his attention to Theseus speech about the lunatic the lover and the poet a and to Hippolyta s response to it He regarded Theseus as the voice of Shakespeare himself and the speech as a call for imaginative audiences He also viewed Bottom as a lucky man on whom Fortune showered favours beyond measure He was particularly amused by the way Bottom reacts to the love of the fairy queen completely unfazed Maginn argued that Theseus would have bent in reverent awe before Titania Bottom treats her as carelessly as if she were the wench of the next door tapster 36 Finally Maginn thought that Oberon should not be blamed for Titania s humiliation which is the result of an accident He viewed Oberon as angry with the caprices 36 of his queen but unable to anticipate that her charmed affections would be reserved for a weaver with a donkey s head 36 In 1839 the philosopher Hermann Ulrici wrote that the play and its depiction of human life reflected the views of Platonism In his view Shakespeare implied that human life is nothing but a dream suggesting influence from Plato and his followers who thought human reality is deprived of all genuine existence Ulrici noted the way Theseus and Hippolyta behave here like ordinary people He agreed with Malone that this did not fit their stations in life but viewed this behaviour as an indication of parody about class differences 36 James Halliwell Phillipps writing in the 1840s found that there were many inconsistencies in the play but considered it the most beautiful poetical drama ever written 32 In 1849 Charles Knight also wrote about the play and its apparent lack of proper social stratification He thought that this play indicated Shakespeare s maturity as a playwright and that its Thesean harmony 38 reflects proper decorum of character He also viewed Bottom as the best drawn character with his self confidence authority and self love He argued that Bottom stands as a representative of the whole human race Like Hazlitt he felt that the work is best appreciated when read as a text rather than acted on stage He found the writing to be subtle and ethereal and standing above literary criticism and its reductive reasoning 39 Georg Gottfried Gervinus thought Hermia lacking in filial piety and devoid of conscience for running away with Lysander himself not a shining beacon of virtue here seen wooing Helena 38 Also in 1849 Georg Gottfried Gervinus wrote extensively about the play He denied the theory that this play should be seen as a dream He argued that it should be seen as an ethical construct and an allegory He thought that it was an allegorical depiction of the errors of sensual love which is likened to a dream In his view Hermia lacks in filial obedience and acts as if devoid of conscience when she runs away with Lysander Lysander is also guilty for disobeying and mocking his prospective father in law Pyramus and Thisbe also lack in filial obedience since they woo by moonlight 38 behind their parents backs The fairies in his view should be seen as personified dream gods 38 They represent the caprices of superficial love and they lack in intellect feeling and ethics 38 Gervinus also wrote on where the fairyland of the play is located Not in Attica but in the Indies His views on the Indies seem to Kehler to be influenced by Orientalism He speaks of the Indies as scented with the aroma of flowers and as the place where mortals live in the state of a half dream Gervinus denies and devalues the loyalty of Titania to her friend He views this supposed friendship as not grounded in spiritual association Titania merely delight in her beauty her swimming gait and her powers of imitation 38 Gervinus further views Titania as an immoral character for not trying to reconcile with her husband In her resentment Titania seeks separation from him which Gervinus blames her for 38 Gervinus wrote with elitist disdain about the mechanicals of the play and their acting aspirations He described them as homely creatures with hard hands and thick heads 38 They are in his view ignorant men who compose and act in plays merely for financial reward They are not real artists Gervinus reserves his praise and respect only for Theseus who he thinks represents the intellectual man Like several of his predecessors Gervinus thought that this work should be read as a text and not acted on stage 38 Charles Cowden Clarke appreciated the mechanicals and in particular found Nick Bottom conceited but good natured and imaginative In 1863 Charles Cowden Clarke also wrote on this play Kehler notes he was the husband of famous Shakespearean scholar Mary Cowden Clarke Charles was more appreciative of the lower class mechanicals of the play He commented favourably on their individualisation and their collective richness of character He thought that Bottom was conceited but good natured and shows a considerable store of imagination in his interaction with the representatives of the fairy world He also argued that Bottom s conceit was a quality inseparable from his secondary profession that of an actor 40 In 1872 Henry N Hudson an American clergyman and editor of Shakespeare also wrote comments on this play Kehler pays little attention to his writings as they were largely derivative of previous works She notes however that Hudson too believed that the play should be viewed as a dream He cited the lightness of the characterisation as supporting of his view 41 In 1881 Edward Dowden argued that Theseus and his reflections on art are central to the play He also argued that Theseus was one of the heroic men of action 41 so central to Shakespeare s theatrical works 41 Horace Howard Furness defended A Midsummer Night s Dream from claims of inconsistency and felt this did not detract from the quality of the play 32 Both Horace Howard Furness and Henry Austin Clapp were more concerned with the problem of the play s duration though they held opposing views 41 Clapp writing in 1885 commented on the inconsistency of the time depicted in the play as it should take place in four days and nights and seems to last less than two and felt that this added to the unrealistic quality of the play 32 Furness defending the play in 1895 felt that the apparent inconsistency did not detract from the play s quality 32 In 1887 Denton Jacques Snider argued that the play should be read as a dialectic either between understanding and imagination or between prose and poetry He also viewed the play as representing three phases or movements The first is the Real World of the play which represents reason The second is the Fairy World an ideal world which represents imagination and the supernatural The third is their representation in art where the action is self reflective Snider viewed Titania and her caprice as solely to blame for her marital strife with Oberon She therefore deserves punishment and Oberon is a dutiful husband who provides her with one For failing to live in peace with Oberon and her kind Titania is sentenced to fall in love with a human And this human unlike Oberon is a horrid brute 41 Towards the end of the 19th century Georg Brandes 1895 6 and Frederick S Boas 1896 were the last major additions to A Midsummer Night s Dream criticism 41 Brandes approach anticipates later psychological readings seeing Oberon s magic as symbolic and typifying the sorcery of the erotic imagination 42 Brandes felt that in the play Shakespeare looks inward at the domain of the unconscious 42 Boas eschews the play as ethical treatise or psychological study and instead takes a more historicist and literal approach To Boas the play is despite its fantastical and exotic trappings essentially English and Elizabethan 42 He sees Theseus as a Tudor noble Helena a mere plot device to concentrate the four lovers on a single spot 42 and the Pyramus and Thisbe play within the play a parody of a prominent topos of contemporary plays Summing up their contributions Kehler writes This is recognizably modern criticism 42 20th century Edit The 20th century brought new insights into the play In 1961 Elizabeth Sewell argued that Shakespeare aligns himself not with the aristocrats of the play but with Bottom and the artisans It is their task to produce a wedding entertainment precisely the purpose of the writer on working in this play 43 Also in 1961 Frank Kermode wrote on the themes of the play and their literary sources He counted among them fantasy blind love and divine love He traced these themes to the works of Macrobius Apuleius and Giordano Bruno Bottom also briefly alludes to a passage from the First Epistle to the Corinthians by Paul the Apostle dealing with divine love 43 b In 1964 R W Dent argued against theories that the exemplary model of love in the play is the rational love of Theseus and Hippolyta He argued that in this work love is inexplicable It is the offspring of imagination not reason However the exemplary love of the play is one of an imagination controlled and restrained and avoids the excesses of dotage 43 Genuine love is contrasted with the unrequited love and dotage of Demetrius for Hermia and with the supposed love and dotage of Titania for an unworthy object 44 Dent also denied the rationality and wisdom typically attributed to Theseus He reminded his readers that this is the character of Theseus from Greek mythology a creation himself of antique fable 43 Theseus views on art are far from rational or wise He cannot tell the difference between an actual play and its interlude The interlude of the play s acting troop is less about the art and more of an expression of the mechanicals distrust of their own audience They fear the audience reactions will be either excessive or inadequate and say so on stage Theseus fails to get the message 44 Also in 1964 Jan Kott offered his own views on the play He viewed as main themes of the play violence and unrepressed animalistic sexuality 45 Both Lysander and Demetrius are in his view verbally brutal lovers their love interests are exchangeable and objectified The changeling that Oberon desires is his new sexual toy 45 The aristocrats of the play both mortal and immortal are promiscuous As for the Athenian lovers following their night in the forest they are ashamed to talk about it because that night liberated them from themselves and social norms and allowed them to reveal their real selves 45 Kott s views were controversial and contemporary critics wrote either in favour of or against Kott s views but few ignored them 45 In 1967 John A Allen theorised that Bottom is a symbol of the animalistic aspect of humanity He also thought Bottom was redeemed through the maternal tenderness of Titania which allowed him to understand the love and self sacrifice of Pyramus and Thisbe 45 In 1968 Stephen Fender offered his own views on the play He emphasised the terrifying power 45 of the fairies and argued that they control the play s events They are the most powerful figures featured not Theseus as often thought He also emphasised the ethically ambivalent characters of the play Finally Fender noted a layer of complexity in the play Theseus Hippolyta and Bottom have contradictory reactions to the events of the night and each has partly valid reasons for their reactions implying that the puzzles offered to the play s audience can have no singular answer or meaning 46 In 1969 Michael Taylor argued that previous critics offered a too cheerful view of what the play depicts He emphasised the less pleasant aspects of the otherwise appealing fairies and the nastiness of the mortal Demetrius prior to his enchantment He argued that the overall themes are the often painful aspects of love and the pettiness of people which here include the fairies 47 In 1970 R A Zimbardo viewed the play as full of symbols The Moon and its phases alluded to in the play in his view stand for permanence in mutability The play uses the principle of discordia concors in several of its key scenes Theseus and Hippolyta represent marriage and symbolically the reconciliation of the natural seasons or the phases of time Hippolyta s story arc is that she must submit to Theseus and become a matron Titania has to give up her motherly obsession with the changeling boy and passes through a symbolic death and Oberon has to once again woo and win his wife Kehler notes that Zimbardo took for granted the female subordination within the obligatory marriage social views that were already challenged in the 1960s 47 In 1971 James L Calderwood offered a new view on the role of Oberon He viewed the king as specialising in the arts of illusion Oberon in his view is the interior dramatist of the play orchestrating events He is responsible for the play s happy ending when he influences Theseus to overrule Egeus and allow the lovers to marry Oberon and Theseus bring harmony out of discord He also suggested that the lovers identities which are blurred and lost in the forest recall the unstable identities of the actors who constantly change roles In fact the failure of the artisans play is based on their chief flaw as actors they can not lose their own identities to even temporarily replace them with those of their fictional roles 48 Also in 1971 Andrew D Weiner argued that the play s actual theme is unity The poet s imagination creates unity by giving form to diverse elements and the writer is addressing the spectator s own imagination which also creates and perceives unity Weiner connected this unity to the concept of uniformity and in turn viewed this as Shakespeare s allusion to the eternal truths 49 of Platonism and Christianity 49 Also writing in 1971 Hugh M Richmond offered an entirely new view of the play s love story lines He argued that what passes for love in this play is actually a self destructive expression of passion He argued that the play s significant characters are all affected by passion and by a sadomasochistic type of sexuality This passion prevents the lovers from genuinely communicating with each other At the same time it protects them from the disenchantment with the love interest that communication inevitably brings The exception to the rule is Bottom who is chiefly devoted to himself His own egotism protects him from feeling passion for anyone else Richmond also noted that there are parallels between the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe featured in this play and that of Shakespeare s Romeo and Juliet 49 In 1971 Neil Taylor argued that there was a double time scheme in the play making it seem to last a minimum of four nights but to also be timeless 32 In 1972 Ralph Berry argued that Shakespeare was chiefly concerned with epistemology in this play The lovers declare illusion to be reality the actors declare reality to be illusion The play ultimately reconciles the seemingly opposing views and vindicates imagination 49 Also in 1972 Thomas McFarland argued that the play is dominated by a mood of happiness and that it is one of the happiest literary creations ever produced The mood is so lovely that the audience never feels fear or worry about the fate of the characters 50 In 1974 Marjorie Garber argued that metamorphosis is both the major subject of the play and the model of its structure She noted that in this play the entry in the woods is a dream like change in perception a change which affects both the characters and the audience Dreams here take priority over reason and are truer than the reality they seek to interpret and transform 51 Also in 1974 Alexander Leggatt offered his own reading of the play He was certain that there are grimmer elements in the play but they are overlooked because the audience focuses on the story of the sympathetic young lovers He viewed the characters as separated into four groups which interact in various ways Among the four the fairies stand as the most sophisticated and unconstrained The contrasts between the interacting groups produce the play s comic perspective 51 In 1975 Ronald F Miller expresses his view that the play is a study in the epistemology of imagination He focused on the role of the fairies who have a mysterious aura of evanescence and ambiguity 51 Also in 1975 David Bevington offered his own reading of the play He in part refuted the ideas of Jan Kott concerning the sexuality of Oberon and the fairies He pointed that Oberon may be bisexual and his desire for the changeling boy may be sexual in nature as Kott suggested But there is little textual evidence to support this as the writer left ambiguous clues concerning the idea of love among the fairies He concluded that therefore their love life is unknowable and incomprehensible 51 According to Bevington the main theme of the play is the conflict between sexual desire and rational restraint an essential tension reflected throughout the play It is the tension between the dark and benevolent sides of love which are reconciled in the end 51 In 1977 Anne Paolucci argued that the play lasts five days 32 In 1979 M E Lamb suggested that the play may have borrowed an aspect of the ancient myth of Theseus the Athenian s entry into the Labyrinth of the Minotaur The woods of the play serve as a metaphorical labyrinth and for Elizabethans the woods were often an allegory of sexual sin The lovers in the woods conquer irrational passion and find their way back Bottom with his animal head becomes a comical version of the Minotaur Bottom also becomes Ariadne s thread which guides the lovers In having the new Minotaur rescue rather than threaten the lovers the classical myth is comically inverted Theseus himself is the bridegroom of the play who has left the labyrinth and promiscuity behind having conquered his passion The artisans may stand in for the master craftsman of the myth and builder of the Labyrinth Daedalus Even Theseus best known speech in the play which connects the poet with the lunatic and the lover may be another metaphor of the lover It is a challenge for the poet to confront the irrationality he shares with lovers and lunatics accepting the risks of entering the labyrinth 52 Also in 1979 Harold F Brooks agreed that the main theme of the play its very heart is desire and its culmination in marriage All other subjects are of lesser importance including that of imagination and that of appearance and reality 53 In 1980 Florence Falk offered a view of the play based on theories of cultural anthropology She argued that the play is about traditional rites of passage which trigger development within the individual and society Theseus has detached himself from imagination and rules Athens harshly The lovers flee from the structure of his society to the communitas of the woods The woods serve here as the communitas a temporary aggregate for persons whose asocial desires require accommodation to preserve the health of society This is the rite of passage where the asocial can be contained Falk identified this communitas with the woods with the unconscious with the dream space She argued that the lovers experience release into self knowledge and then return to the renewed Athens This is societas the resolution of the dialectic between the dualism of communitas and structure 53 Also in 1980 Christian critic R Chris Hassel Jr offered a Christian view of the play The experience of the lovers and that of Bottom as expressed in his awakening speech teach them a new humility a healthy sense of folly 53 They realise that there are things that are true despite the fact that they can not be seen or understood They just learned a lesson of faith Hassel also thought that Theseus speech on the lunatic the lover and the poet is an applause to imagination But it is also a laughing rejection of futile attempts to perceive categorise or express it 53 Alex Aronson considered Puck a representation of the unconscious mind and a contrast to Theseus as a representation of the conscious mind 54 Some of the interpretations of the play have been based on psychology and its diverse theories In 1972 Alex Aronson argued that Theseus represents the conscious mind and Puck represents the unconscious mind Puck in this view is a guise of the unconscious as a trickster while remaining subservient to Oberon Aronson thought that the play explores unauthorised desire and linked it to the concept of fertility He viewed the donkey and the trees as fertility symbols The lovers sexual desires are symbolised in their forest encounters 54 In 1973 Melvin Goldstein argued that the lovers can not simply return to Athens and wed First they have to pass through stages of madness multiple disguises and discover their authentic sexual selves 54 In 1979 Norman N Holland applied psychoanalytic literary criticism to the play He interpreted the dream of Hermia as if it was a real dream In his view the dream uncovers the phases of Hermia s sexual development Her search for options is her defence mechanism She both desires Lysander and wants to retain her virginity 54 In 1981 Mordecai Marcus argued for a new meaning of Eros Love and Thanatos Death in this play In his view Shakespeare suggests that love requires the risk of death Love achieves force and direction from the interweaving of the life impulse with the deathward release of sexual tension He also viewed the play as suggesting that the healing force of love is connected to the acceptance of death and vice versa 55 In 1987 Jan Lawson Hinely argued that this play has a therapeutic value Shakespeare in many ways explores the sexual fears of the characters releases them and transforms them And the happy ending is the reestablishment of social harmony Patriarchy itself is also challenged and transformed as the men offer their women a loving equality one founded on respect and trust She even viewed Titania s loving acceptance of the donkey headed Bottom as a metaphor for basic trust This trust is what enables the warring and uncertain lovers to achieve their sexual maturity 56 In 1988 Allen Dunn argued that the play is an exploration of the characters fears and desires and that its structure is based on a series of sexual clashes 56 In 1991 Barbara Freedman argued that the play justifies the ideological formation of absolute monarchy and makes visible for examination the maintenance process of hegemonic order 56 Performance history Edit The first page printed in the Second Folio of 1632 17th and 18th centuries Edit During the years of the Puritan Interregnum when the theatres were closed 1642 1660 the comic subplot of Bottom and his compatriots was performed as a droll Drolls were comical playlets often adapted from the subplots of Shakespearean and other plays that could be attached to the acts of acrobats and jugglers and other allowed performances thus circumventing the ban against drama When the theatres re opened in 1660 A Midsummer Night s Dream was acted in adapted form like many other Shakespearean plays Samuel Pepys saw it on 29 September 1662 and thought it the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw 57 After the Jacobean Caroline era A Midsummer Night s Dream was never performed in its entirety until the 1840s Instead it was heavily adapted in forms like Henry Purcell s musical masque play The Fairy Queen 1692 which had a successful run at the Dorset Garden Theatre but was not revived Richard Leveridge turned the Pyramus and Thisbe scenes into an Italian opera burlesque acted at Lincoln s Inn Fields in 1716 John Frederick Lampe elaborated upon Leveridge s version in 1745 Charles Johnson had used the Pyramus and Thisbe material in the finale of Love in a Forest his 1723 adaptation of As You Like It In 1755 David Garrick did the opposite of what had been done a century earlier he extracted Bottom and his companions and acted the rest in an adaptation called The Fairies Frederic Reynolds produced an operatic version in 1816 58 The Victorian stage Edit In 1840 Madame Vestris at Covent Garden returned the play to the stage with a relatively full text adding musical sequences and balletic dances Vestris took the role of Oberon and for the next seventy years Oberon and Puck would always be played by women 59 After the success of Madame Vestris production 19th century theatre continued to stage the Dream as a spectacle often with a cast numbering nearly one hundred Detailed sets were created for the palace and the forest and the fairies were portrayed as gossamer winged ballerinas The overture by Felix Mendelssohn was always used throughout this period Augustin Daly s production opened in 1895 in London and ran for 21 performances 60 20th and 21st centuries Edit Vince Cardinale as Puck from the Carmel Shakespeare Festival production of A Midsummer Night s Dream September 2000 Performance by Saratov Puppet Theatre Teremok A Midsummer Night s Dream based on the play by William Shakespeare 2007 In 1905 Oscar Asche staged a production at the Adelphi Theatre in London with himself as Bottom and Beatrice Ferrar as Puck 61 Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged a 1911 production which featured mechanical birds twittering in beech trees a simulated stream fairies wearing battery operated lighting and live rabbits following trails of food across the stage 62 A 2010 production of the play at The Doon School India Max Reinhardt staged A Midsummer Night s Dream thirteen times between 1905 and 1934 63 introducing a revolving set 64 After he fled Germany he devised a more spectacular outdoor version at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1934 63 The shell was removed and replaced by a forest planted in tons of dirt hauled in especially for the event and a trestle was constructed from the hills to the stage 65 The wedding procession inserted between Acts IV and V crossed the trestle with torches down the hillside 66 The cast included James Cagney 67 Olivia de Havilland 68 Mickey Rooney 69 Victor Jory and a corps of dancers that included Butterfly McQueen 70 The play was accompanied by Mendelssohn s music 71 On the strength of this production Warner Brothers signed Reinhardt to direct a filmed version Hollywood s first Shakespeare movie since Douglas Fairbanks Sr and Mary Pickford s Taming of the Shrew in 1929 72 Jory Oberon Rooney Puck and De Havilland Hermia reprised their roles from the Hollywood Bowl cast 73 James Cagney starred in his only Shakespearean role as Bottom 74 Other actors in the film who played Shakespearean roles just this once included Joe E Brown and Dick Powell 75 Erich Wolfgang Korngold was brought from Austria to arrange Mendelssohn s music for the film 76 He used not only the Midsummer Night s Dream music but also several other pieces by Mendelssohn Korngold went on to make a legendary career in Hollywood remaining in the United States after Nazi Germany annexed Austria 71 Director Harley Granville Barker introduced in 1914 a less spectacular way of staging the Dream he reduced the size of the cast and used Elizabethan folk music instead of Mendelssohn He replaced large complex sets with a simple system of patterned curtains He portrayed the fairies as golden robotic insectoid creatures based on Cambodian idols His simpler sparer staging significantly influenced subsequent productions citation needed In 1970 Peter Brook staged the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company in a blank white box in which masculine fairies engaged in circus tricks such as trapeze artistry Brook also introduced the subsequently common notion of doubling Theseus Oberon and Hippolyta Titania as if to suggest that the world of the fairies is a mirror version of the world of the mortals British actors who played roles in Brook s production included Patrick Stewart Ben Kingsley John Kane Puck and Frances de la Tour Helena Recordings documenting this production survive 77 A Midsummer Night s Dream has been produced many times in New York including several stagings by the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park and a production by the Theatre for a New Audience produced by Joseph Papp at the Public Theater In 1978 the Riverside Shakespeare Company staged an outdoor production starring Eric Hoffmann as Puck with Karen Hurley as Titania and Eric Conger as Oberon directed by company founder Gloria Skurski There have been several variations since then including some set in the 1980s citation needed The Maryland Shakespeare Players at University of Maryland staged a queer production in 2015 where the lovers were same sex couples and the mechanicals were drag queens 78 The University of Michigan s Nichols Arboretum s programme Shakespeare in the Arb has presented a play every summer since 2001 Shakespeare in the Arb has produced A Midsummer Night s Dream three times These performances take place in a 123 acre 50 ha natural setting with lush woods a flowing river and steep hills The performance takes place in several places with actors and audience moving together to each setting As one critic commented The actors used the vastness of its Arb oretum stage to full advantage making entrances from behind trees appearing over rises and vanishing into the woods 79 Artistic director Emma Rice s first production at Shakespeare s Globe in 2016 was a version of the play While not a production to please the purists it received praise A contemporary reworking it included gender switched characters and Bollywood influences 80 Adaptations and cultural references EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed April 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message Plays Edit Absurda Comica oder Herr Peter Squentz by Andreas Gryphius which was probably written between 1648 and 1650 and was published in 1657 is evidently based on the comic episode of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night s Dream Ken Ludwig s 2003 comic play Shakespeare in Hollywood is set during the production of the 1935 film Oberon and Puck appear on the scene and find themselves cast as themselves 81 82 Literary Edit W Stanley Moss used the quotation Ill met by moonlight as the title of his Ill Met by Moonlight 1950 a non fiction book about the kidnap of General Kreipe during WWII 83 The book was adapted into a film with the same name in 1957 84 Botho Strauss s play The Park 1983 is based on characters and motifs from A Midsummer Night s Dream 85 Neil Gaiman s comic series The Sandman uses the play in the 1990 issue A Midsummer Night s Dream In this story Shakespeare and his company perform the play for the real Oberon and Titania and an audience of fairies The play is heavily quoted in the comic and Shakespeare s son Hamnet appears in the play as the Indian boy This issue was the first and only comic to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction in 1991 86 Terry Pratchett s book Lords and Ladies 1992 is a parody of the play 87 Bernard Cornwell s novel Fools and Mortals 2017 is about the creation and first performance of the play as seen by the young actor Richard Shakespeare brother of the playwright 88 Musical versions Edit The Fairy Queen is an opera from 1692 by Henry Purcell based on the play 89 90 Main article A Midsummer Night s Dream Mendelssohn In 1826 Felix Mendelssohn composed a concert overture inspired by the play that was first performed in 1827 In 1842 partly because of the fame of the overture and partly because his employer King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia liked the incidental music that Mendelssohn had written for other plays that had been staged at the palace in German translation Mendelssohn was commissioned to write incidental music for a production of A Midsummer Night s Dream that was to be staged in 1843 in Potsdam He incorporated the existing Overture into the incidental music which was used in most stage versions through the 19th century The best known of the pieces from the incidental music is the famous Wedding March frequently used as a recessional in weddings 91 Between 1917 and 1939 Carl Orff also wrote incidental music for a German version of the play Ein Sommernachtstraum performed in 1939 Since Mendelssohn s parents were Jews who converted to Lutheranism his music had been banned by the Nazi regime and the Nazi cultural officials put out a call for new music for the play Orff was one of the musicians who responded He later reworked the music for a final version completed in 1964 citation needed In 1949 a three act opera by Delannoy entitled Puck was premiered in Strasbourg Over Hill Over Dale from Act 2 is the third of the Three Shakespeare Songs set to music by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams He wrote the pieces for a cappella SATB choir in 1951 for the British Federation of Music Festivals and they remain a popular part of British choral repertoire today The play was adapted into an opera with music by Benjamin Britten and libretto by Britten and Peter Pears The opera was first performed on 11 June 1960 at Aldeburgh 92 In 1964 a musical adaptation debuted on Broadway as Babes in The Wood Progressive Rock guitarist Steve Hackett best known for his work with Genesis made a classical adaptation of the play in 1997 Hans Werner Henze s Eighth Symphony is inspired by sequences from the play citation needed The theatre company Moonwork put on a production of Midsummer in 1999 It was conceived by Mason Pettit Gregory Sherman and Gregory Wolfe who directed it The show featured a rock opera version of the play within a play Pyramus amp Thisbe with music written by Rusty Magee The music for the rest of the show was written by Andrew Sherman 93 The Donkey Show is a disco era experience based on A Midsummer Night s Dream that first appeared off Broadway in 1999 94 The Alexander W Dreyfoos School of the Arts Theatre Department presented the show as a musical adapted directed by Beverly Blanchette produced by Marcie Gorman using the songs of The Moody Blues The show was called Midsummer and was subsequently performed at Morsani Hall Straz Performing Arts Center in Tampa at the Florida State International Thespian Society Festival Text Concept Copyright 9 December 2011 citation needed In 2011 Opera Memphis Playhouse on the Square and contemporary a cappella groups DeltaCappella and Riva premiered Michael Ching s A Midsummer Night s Dream Opera A Cappella 95 In 2015 the plot of Be More Chill included a version of the play called A Midsummer Nightmare About Zombies 96 97 Ballets Edit Marius Petipa made a ballet adaptation for the Imperial Ballet of St Petersburg with additional music and adaptations to Mendelssohn s score by Leon Minkus The revival premiered 14 July 1876 George Balanchine s A Midsummer Night s Dream his first original full length ballet was premiered by the New York City Ballet on 17 January 1962 It was chosen to open the NYCB s first season at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center in 1964 Balanchine interpolated further music by Mendelssohn into his Dream including the overture from Athalie 98 A film version of the ballet was released in 1966 99 Frederick Ashton created The Dream a short not full length ballet set exclusively to the famous music by Felix Mendelssohn arranged by John Lanchbery in 1964 It was created on England s Royal Ballet and has since entered the repertoire of other companies notably The Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theatre 98 John Neumeier created his full length ballet Ein Sommernachtstraum for his company at the Hamburg State Opera Hamburgische Staatsoper in 1977 Longer than Ashton s or Balanchine s earlier versions Neumeier s version includes other music by Mendelssohn along with the Midsummer Night s Dream music as well as music from the modern composer Gyorgy Ligeti and jaunty barrel organ music Neumeier devotes the three sharply differing musical styles to the three character groups with the aristocrats and nobles dancing to Mendelssohn the fairies to Ligeti and the rustics or mechanicals to the barrel organ 100 Elvis Costello composed the music for a full length ballet Il Sogno based on A Midsummer Night s Dream The music was subsequently released as a classical album by Deutsche Grammophon in 2004 Film adaptations Edit See also List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations A Midsummer Night s Dream A Midsummer Night s Dream has been adapted as a film many times The following are the best known A 1925 German silent film Wood Love directed by Hans Neumann 101 A 1935 film version was directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle The cast included James Cagney as Bottom Mickey Rooney as Puck Olivia de Havilland as Hermia Joe E Brown as Francis Flute Dick Powell as Lysander Anita Louise as Titania and Victor Jory as Oberon 102 Sen noci svatojanske 1959 directed by Czech animator Jiri Trnka is a stop motion puppet film that follows Shakespeare s story simply with a narrator The English language version was narrated by Richard Burton citation needed A 1968 film version was directed by Peter Hall The cast included Paul Rogers as Bottom Ian Holm as Puck Diana Rigg as Helena Helen Mirren as Hermia Ian Richardson as Oberon Judi Dench as Titania and Sebastian Shaw as Quince This film stars the Royal Shakespeare Company and is directed by Peter Hall citation needed A 1969 film version was directed by Jean Christophe Averty The cast included Jean Claude Drouot as Oberon Claude Jade as Helena Christine Delaroche as Hermia Marie Versini as Hippolyta Michel Modo as Flute Guy Grosso as Quinze citation needed A Midsummer Night s Sex Comedy 1982 was written and directed by Woody Allen The plot is loosely based on Ingmar Bergman s Smiles of a Summer Night with some elements from Shakespeare s play 103 Bottom s Dream 1983 was an animated short directed by John Canemaker showing events of the play from the point of view of Bottom The film uses selections of Mendelssohn s music lines from the play and surreal imagery to convey Bottom s experience citation needed Dead Poets Society features the play as a production for which Neil Perry tries out for and wins the role of Puck in spite of his father s disapproval of his acting aspirations citation needed A 1996 adaptation directed by Adrian Noble The cast included Desmond Barrit as Bottom Finbar Lynch as Puck Alex Jennings as Oberon Theseus and Lindsay Duncan as Titania Hippolyta This film is based on Noble s Royal Shakespeare Company production Its art design is eccentric featuring a forest of floating light bulbs and a giant umbrella for Titania s bower citation needed A 1996 French film The Apartment L Appartement directed by Gilles Mimouni has many references to the play A 1999 film version was written and directed by Michael Hoffman The cast includes Kevin Kline as Bottom Rupert Everett as Oberon Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania Stanley Tucci as Puck Sophie Marceau as Hippolyta Christian Bale as Demetrius Dominic West as Lysander Anna Friel as Hermia and Calista Flockhart as Helena This adaptation relocates the play s action from Athens to a fictional Monte Athena located in Tuscany Italy although all textual mentions of Athens are retained citation needed A 1999 version was written and directed by James Kerwin The cast included Travis Schuldt as Demetrius It set the story against a surreal backdrop of techno clubs and ancient symbols citation needed The Children s Midsummer Night s Dream 2002 directed by Christine Edzard was produced by Sands Films at their studio in Rotherhithe London using 350 school children from Southwark between the ages of eight and eleven all theatrically untrained The sets and costumes were designed to scale and made on site citation needed A Midsummer Night s Rave 2002 directed by Gil Cates Jr changes the setting to a modern rave Puck is a drug dealer the magic flower called love in idleness is replaced with magic ecstasy and the King and Queen of Fairies are the host of the rave and the DJ citation needed Were the World Mine 2008 features a modern interpretation of the play put on in a private high school in a small town citation needed 104 A Midsummer Night s Dream an American independent film that relocates the story to modern day Los Angeles CA A Midsummer Night s Dream a UK production shot in Austria set in an alternative near future Directed by Sacha Bennett it features Robert Lindsay as Oberon Juliet Aubrey as Titania Lee Boardman as Bottom Harry Jarvis as Lysander Tamzin Merchant as Helena Holly Earl as Hermia Tyger Drew Honey as Demetrius and Florence Kasumba as Hippolyta citation needed TV productions Edit The play within a play from Act V Scene I Pyramus and Thisbe was performed by the members of the British pop music group The Beatles on 28 April 1964 for a British television special Around The Beatles Paul McCartney appeared as Pyramus John Lennon as Thisbe George Harrison as Moonshine and Ringo Starr as Lion The performance before a live audience was done with great comic intent and included a number of intentional hecklers This was broadcast in the UK on ITV on 6 May and in the US on ABC on 15 November 105 The 1981 BBC Television Shakespeare production was produced by Jonathan Miller and directed by Elijah Moshinsky It starred Helen Mirren as Titania Peter McEnery as Oberon Phil Daniels as Puck Robert Lindsay as Lysander Geoffrey Palmer as Quince and Brian Glover as Bottom An abbreviated version of A Midsummer Night s Dream was made into an animated short with the same title by Walt Disney Television Animation in 1999 as part of the Mickey Mouse Works series It was featured in a 2002 episode of House of Mouse House of Scrooge Season 3 Episode 34 The star crossed lovers are played by Mickey Mouse Lysander Minnie Mouse Hermia Donald Duck Demetrius and Daisy Duck Helena The character based on Theseus is played by Ludwig Von Drake and the character based on Egeus by Scrooge McDuck Goofy appears as an accident prone Puck The story ends with the revelation that it was a dream experienced by Mickey Mouse while sleeping at a picnic hosted by Minnie citation needed In 2005 ShakespeaRe Told the BBC TV series aired an updated of the play It was written by Peter Bowker The cast includes Johnny Vegas as Bottom Dean Lennox Kelly as Puck Bill Paterson as Theo a conflation of Theseus and Egeus and Imelda Staunton as his wife Polly Hippolyta Lennie James plays Oberon and Sharon Small is Titania Zoe Tapper and Michelle Bonnard play Hermia and Helena 106 In 2006 The Suite Life of Zack amp Cody released an episode called A Midsummer s Nightmare where the children are preparing to perform Shakespeare s popular work for a school play This episode was 22 in season two of the show 107 BBC One s 2016 production was a 90 minute TV film adaptation by Russell T Davies directed by David Kerr starring Matt Lucas as Bottom Maxine Peake as Titania and with a diverse cast including Nonso Anozie as Oberon Prisca Bakare as Hermia and Hiran Abeysekera as Puck 108 Astronomy Edit In 1787 British astronomer William Herschel discovered two new moons of Uranus In 1852 his son John Herschel named them after characters in the play Oberon and Titania Another Uranian moon discovered in 1985 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft has been named Puck 109 Gallery EditA Midsummer Night s Dream in Art Puck by Joshua Reynolds 1789 Titania and Bottom by Johann Heinrich Fussli 1793 94 Titania and Bottom by John Anster Fitzgerald Joseph Noel Paton The Reconciliation of Titania and Oberon The Marriage of Oberon and Titania by John Anster Fitzgerald Henry Meynell Rheam Titania welcoming her fairy brethren A Midsummer Night s Dream by John Simmons 1873 Thomas Stothard Oberon and Titania from A Midsummer Night s Dream Act IV Scene I An animatronic depicts the character Oberon King of the Elves in the Dutch fairytale theme park Efteling designed by Ton van de Ven See also EditBrag folklore Puca Pyramus and Thisbe Summer solsticeNotes and references EditAll references to A Midsummer Night s Dream unless otherwise specified are taken from the Arden Shakespeare 2nd series edition 110 Under their referencing system which uses roman numerals III i 55 means act 3 Roman numerals in upper case scene 1 Roman numerals lower case line 55 Notes Edit Theseus The lunatic the lover and the poet speech is in A Midsummer Night s Dream V I 2 22 37 Specifically Bottom alludes to I Corinthians 2 9 43 References Edit Kopf Dan 22 September 2016 What Is Shakespeare s Most Popular Play Priceonomics Retrieved 11 October 2022 Brooks 1979 p lix Kimura 木村マリアン Marianne The sun the moon and two new sources for A Midsummer Night s Dream Retrieved 30 July 2021 Twyning 2012 p 77 Kehler 1998 p 3 a b Brooks 1979 p xxi Brooks 1979 p lvii Leeds Barroll Anna of Denmark Queen of England A Cultural Biography Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 2001 p 83 Venus and Adonis Wiles 2008 pp 208 23 Wiles 2008 p 213 Wiles 1993 Bevington 1996 pp 24 35 Bevington 1996 p 32 A Midsummer Night s Dream I I 2 3 A Midsummer Night s Dream I I 208 13 A Midsummer Night s Dream I II 90 9 A Midsummer Night s Dream IV I 131 5 a b c d Hunt 1986 Kiernan 1993 p 212 Kiernan 1993 p 210 a b c Marshall 1982 Green 1998 p 370 a b Green 1998 p 375 Garner 1998 pp 129 30 Slights 1988 p 261 Howard 2003 p 414 Montrose 2000 p 65 Montrose 2000 pp 61 69 Tennenhouse 1986 p 73 Tennenhouse 1986 pp 74 76 a b c d e f g h i j k l Kehler 1998 p 6 Kehler 1998 pp 6 7 a b c d e Kehler 1998 p 7 Kehler 1998 pp 7 8 a b c d e Kehler 1998 p 8 A Midsummer Night s Dream V I 2 22 a b c d e f g h i Kehler 1998 p 9 Kehler 1998 pp 8 9 Kehler 1998 pp 9 10 a b c d e f Kehler 1998 p 10 a b c d e Kehler 1998 p 11 a b c d e Kehler 1998 p 29 a b Kehler 1998 pp 29 30 a b c d e f Kehler 1998 p 30 Kehler 1998 pp 30 1 a b Kehler 1998 p 31 Kehler 1998 pp 31 32 a b c d Kehler 1998 p 32 Kehler 1998 pp 32 33 a b c d e Kehler 1998 p 33 Kehler 1998 pp 33 34 a b c d Kehler 1998 p 34 a b c d Kehler 1998 p 40 Kehler 1998 pp 40 1 a b c Kehler 1998 p 41 Halliday 1964 pp 142 43 316 17 Halliday 1964 pp 255 271 278 316 17 410 RSC n d A Midsummer Night s Dream Shakespeare and the Players shakespeare emory edu Retrieved 12 April 2018 Beatrice Ferrar Footlight Notes Kimber 2006 p 201 a b MacQueen 2009 p 31 Mancewicz 2014 p 12 MacQueen 2009 p 36 MacQueen 2009 pp 36 37 MacQueen 2009 pp 51 52 MacQueen 2009 pp 38 46 MacQueen 2009 pp 37 38 46 Gibson 1996 p 3 a b MacQueen 2009 pp 57 58 MacQueen 2009 p 41 MacQueen 2009 pp 46 47 MacQueen 2009 p 52 MacQueen 2009 pp 47 48 52 MacQueen 2009 pp 44 45 Wyver John 10 June 2019 A midsummer night s mystery my search for Peter Brook s Dream The Guardian Retrieved 4 July 2022 Review An Ethereal Gender bent Midsummer Night s Dream 22 November 2015 Shakespeare in the Arb n d Clapp Susannah 8 May 2016 A Midsummer Night s Dream review the wildest of dreams The Observer Retrieved 14 April 2020 A Midsummer Night s Dream review A rocking dream with real spirit Evening Standard 6 May 2016 Retrieved 14 April 2020 The Globe s A Midsummer Night s Dream is wonderfully bonkers Radio Times 6 May 2016 Retrieved 14 April 2020 Singh Jyotsna G 2019 Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN 978 1 4081 8526 1 Retrieved 14 April 2020 KILIAN MICHAEL No holds Bard This Shakespeare worth giving hoot chicagotribune com Retrieved 14 October 2019 Ken Ludwig Playwright Shakespeare in Hollywood www kenludwig com Archived from the original on 27 October 2019 Retrieved 14 October 2019 Garden Robin 2014 Shakespeare Reloaded Cambridge University Press p 135 ISBN 978 1 107 67930 6 BFI Screenonline Ill Met By Moonlight 1957 www screenonline org uk Retrieved 18 January 2018 Broich 2006 p 144 Levenson Jill L Ormsby Robert 2017 The Shakespearean World Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 1 317 69619 3 Forward 2006 Fools and Mortals finds Shakespeare s brother taking center stage The Christian Science Monitor 16 January 2018 Retrieved 14 April 2020 Sanders Julie 2013 Shakespeare and Music Afterlives and Borrowings John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 978 0 7456 5765 3 Bridge Frederick 1965 Shakespearean Music in the Plays and Early Operas Ardent Media p 58 Greenberg Robert Mendelssohn s Wedding March at 150 NPR org Whittall 1998 Marks 1999 IOBDB n d Waleson 2011 Brantley Ben 10 August 2018 Review A High School Meltdown Heats Up Be More Chill The New York Times Retrieved 8 April 2021 Peikert Mark 2019 Be More Chill s Stephanie Hsu Is Not Underestimating Teenagers Playbill Retrieved 8 April 2021 a b Charles 2000 Barnes 1967 Reynolds 2006 Ball 1968 pp 297 99 378 Watts 1972 p 48 Midsummer Night s Sex Comedy A British Universities Film amp Video Council Retrieved 22 June 2021 Halsall Jane 2009 Visual Media for Teens Creating and Using a Teen centered Film Collection Santa Barbara CA Libraries Unlimited p 109 ISBN 978 1591585442 Cavendish 2014 BBC 2005 A Midsummer s Nightmare 11 August 2006 via IMDb O Donovan 2016 USGS n d Brooks 1979 Sources EditEditions of A Midsummer Night s Dream Edit Brooks Harold F ed 1979 A Midsummer Night s Dream The Arden Shakespeare 2nd series Methuen amp Co ISBN 0 415 02699 7 Secondary sources Edit Ball Robert Hamilton 2016 first published 1968 Shakespeare on Silent Film A Strange Eventful History Routledge Library Editions Film and Literature Vol 1 London Routledge ISBN 978 1 138 99611 3 Barnes Clive 18 April 1967 Midsummer Night s Dream Balanchine Helps Turn Classic into Film The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 OCLC 1645522 Retrieved 31 March 2017 A Midsummer Night s Dream BBC 28 November 2005 Retrieved 1 April 2017 Bevington David 1996 But We Are Spirits of Another Sort The Dark Side of Love and Magic in A Midsummer Night s Dream In Dutton Richard ed A Midsummer Night s Dream New York St Martin s Press pp 24 35 ISBN 978 0 333 60197 6 Broich Ulrich 2006 Oberon and Titania in the City Park The Magic of Other Texts as the Subject of Der Park by Botho Strauss In Jansohn Christa ed German Shakespeare Studies at the Turn of the Twenty first Century International studies in Shakespeare and his contemporaries Newark Delaware University of Delaware Press pp 144 60 ISBN 978 0 87413 911 2 Cavendish Dominic 21 June 2014 10 things you didn t know about A Midsummer Night s Dream The Telegraph Archived from the original on 29 September 2016 Retrieved 1 April 2017 Charles Gerard 2000 A Midsummer Night s Dream BalletMet Archived from the original on 1 May 2011 Retrieved 29 January 2010 Forward Stephanie 1 August 2006 A reader s guide to Lords And Ladies The Open University Archived from the original on 7 October 2016 Retrieved 2 June 2016 Garner Shirley Nelson 1998 A Midsummer Night s Dream Jack Shall Have Jill Nought Shall Go Ill In Kehler Dorothea ed A Midsummer Night s Dream Critical Essays Garland reference library of the humanities Vol 1900 reprint ed Psychology Press pp 127 44 ISBN 978 0 8153 3890 1 Gibson Gloria J 1996 Gone but Never Forgotten B McQueen M Sinclair R Cash and T Cade Bambara Black Camera Indiana University Press 11 1 3 4 eISSN 1947 4237 ISSN 1536 3155 JSTOR 27761473 Green Douglas E 1998 Preposterous Pleasures Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night s Dream In Kehler Dorothea ed A Midsummer Night s Dream Critical Essays Garland reference library of the humanities Vol 1900 reprint ed Psychology Press pp 369 400 ISBN 978 0 8153 3890 1 Halliday F E 1964 A Shakespeare Companion 1564 1964 Baltimore Penguin Howard Jean E 2003 Feminist Criticism In Wells Stanley Orlin Lena Cowen eds Shakespeare An Oxford Guide New York Oxford University Press pp 411 23 ISBN 978 0 19 924522 2 Hunt Maurice 1986 Individuation in A Midsummer Night s Dream South Central Review The South Central Modern Language Association 3 2 1 13 doi 10 2307 3189362 eISSN 1549 3377 ISSN 0743 6831 JSTOR 3189362 The Donkey Show A Midsummer Night s Disco Internet Off Broadway Database n d Retrieved 31 March 2017 Kehler Dorothea 1998 A Midsummer Night s Dream A Bibliographic Survey of the Criticism In Kehler Dorothea ed A Midsummer Night s Dream Critical Essays Garland reference library of the humanities Vol 1900 reprint ed Psychology Press pp 3 76 ISBN 978 0 8153 3890 1 Kiernan Victor Gordon 1993 Shakespeare Poet and Citizen London Verso ISBN 978 0 86091 392 4 Kimber Marian Wilson 2006 Reading Shakespeare Seeing Mendelssohn Concert Readings of A Midsummer Night s Dream ca 1850 1920 The Musical Quarterly Oxford University Press 89 2 3 199 236 doi 10 1093 musqtl gdm002 eISSN 1741 8399 ISSN 0027 4631 JSTOR 25172840 MacQueen Scott 2009 Midsummer Dream Midwinter Nightmare Max Reinhardt and Shakespeare versus the Warner Bros The Moving Image The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists University of Minnesota Press 9 2 30 103 doi 10 1353 mov 2010 0012 eISSN 1542 4235 ISSN 1532 3978 JSTOR 41164591 S2CID 191461112 Mancewicz Aneta 2014 Intermedial Shakespeares on European Stages Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology Springer ISBN 978 1 137 36004 5 Marks Peter 28 May 1999 More a Backstage Bacchanal Than a Midsummer Dream The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Archived from the original on 22 April 2016 Retrieved 22 November 2016 Marshall David 1982 Exchanging Visions Reading A Midsummer Night s Dream ELH The Johns Hopkins University Press 49 3 543 75 doi 10 2307 2872755 eISSN 1080 6547 ISSN 0013 8304 JSTOR 2872755 S2CID 163807169 Montrose Louis 2000 The Imperial Votaress In Brown Richard Danson Johnson David eds A Shakespeare Reader Sources and Criticism London Macmillan Press pp 60 71 ISBN 978 0 312 23039 5 O Donovan Gerard 30 May 2016 Russell T Davies made Shakespeare engaging fresh and funny The Telegraph Archived from the original on 5 August 2016 Retrieved 1 April 2017 Reynolds Norman 14 July 2006 Ein Sommernachtstraum A Midsummer Night s Dream Ballet co uk Archived from the original on 29 November 2014 Retrieved 11 May 2014 Stage History The Royal Shakespeare Company n d Archived from the original on 13 December 2016 Retrieved 11 May 2014 Shakespeare in the Arb University of Michigan n d Archived from the original on 23 June 2016 Retrieved 15 July 2016 Slights William W E 1988 The Changeling in A Dream SEL Studies in English Literature 1500 1900 Rice University 28 2 Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama 259 72 doi 10 2307 450551 eISSN 1522 9270 ISSN 0039 3657 JSTOR 450551 Tennenhouse Leonard 1986 Power on Display The Politics of Shakespeare s Genres Routledge library editions Shakespeare Vol 48 reprint ed New York Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 35315 1 Twyning John 2012 Forms of English History in Literature Landscape and Architecture New York Springer Nature ISBN 978 1 137 28470 9 Planet and Satellite Names and Discoverers USGS n d Retrieved 1 April 2017 Waleson Heidi 25 January 2011 A Remarkably Inventive A Cappella Premiere The Wall Street Journal ISSN 0099 9660 OCLC 781541372 Watts Richard W 1972 Films of a Moonstruck World In Eckert Charles W ed Focus on Shakespearean Films Film focus Prentice Hall ISBN 978 0 13 807644 3 Whittall Arnold 1998 Midsummer Night s Dream A In Sadie Stanley ed The New Grove Dictionary of Opera The New Grove Dictionary of Opera Vol 3 8 ed Macmillan Publishers ISBN 0 333 73432 7 Retrieved 31 March 2017 via Grove Music Online Wiles David 2008 The Carnivalesque in A Midsummer Night s Dream In Bloom Harold Marson Janyce eds A Midsummer Night s Dream Bloom s Shakespeare Through the Ages New York Bloom s Literary Criticism pp 208 23 ISBN 978 0 7910 9595 9 Wiles David 1993 Shakespeare s Almanac A Midsummer Night s Dream Marriage and the Elizabethan Calendar Woodbridge D S Brewer ISBN 0859913988 Further reading EditBuchanan Judith 2005 Historically Juxtaposed Beans I A Midsummer Night s Dream on Film In Buchanan Judith ed Shakespeare on Film Harlow Pearson Education pp 121 49 ISBN 978 0 582 43716 6 Croce Benedetto 1999 Benedetto Croce comedy of love In Kennedy Judith M Kennedy Richard F eds A Midsummer Night s Dream Shakespeare The Critical Tradition Vol 7 London A amp C Black pp 386 88 ISBN 978 1 84714 175 0 Evans G Blakemore Tobin J J M eds 1997 A Midsummer Night s Dream The Riverside Shakespeare Vol 1 2nd illustrated ed Boston Houghton Mifflin pp 256 83 ISBN 978 0 395 85822 6 Foakes R A ed 2003 A Midsummer Night s Dream The New Cambridge Shakespeare 2nd ed Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 53247 1 Holland Peter ed 1994 A Midsummer Night s Dream The Oxford Shakespeare Oxford Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 actrade 9780198129288 book 1 ISBN 978 0 19 812928 8 Huke Ivan Perkins Derek Cyril 1981 A Midsummer Night s Dream Literature Revision Notes and Examples Walton on Thames Celtic Revision Aids ISBN 978 0 17 751305 3 Merwin Ted 23 March 2007 The Dark Lady as a Bright Literary Light The Jewish Week pp 56 57 Parker P 1998 Murals and Morals A Midsummer Night s Dream In Most Glenn W ed Texte Edieren Editing Texts Aporemata Kritische Studien zur Philologiegeschichte Vol 2 Gottingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht pp 190 218 ISBN 3 525 25901 8 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to A Midsummer Night s Dream Wikiquote has quotations related to A Midsummer Night s Dream Wikisource has original text related to this article A Midsummer Night s Dream A Midsummer Night s Dream at Standard Ebooks A Midsummer Night s Dream at the British Library A Midsummer Night s Dream at Project Gutenberg A Midsummer Night s Dream Navigator annotated searchable text HTML with scene summaries Formatted text HTML of the play No Fear Shakespeare parallel edition Archived 6 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine original language alongside a modern translation Clear Shakespeare s A Midsummer Night s Dream a word by word audio guide through the play A Midsummer Night s Dream 2016 Internet Movie Database A Midsummer Night s Dream 90 Minute abridgement by Gerald P Murphy A Thirty Minute Dream Abridgement by Bill Tordoff Shakespeare s text reduced to the length of a school lesson A Midsummer Night s Dream public domain audiobook at LibriVox Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title A Midsummer Night 27s Dream amp oldid 1150807462, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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