Lines 192-273: Demetrius is angered by the difficulty in finding his way, claiming that it makes him "wood" (mad or frantic), emphasizing the disorder associated with this setting. He tries to stop Helena following him, telling her that he does not love her and warning that she is risking "the rich worth" of her virginity by entering the woods with him. Helena acknowledges his power over her by describing herself as his "spaniel," that he may "beat" and "spurn," although this passivity contrasts with her assertive warning that she will follow him wherever he goes. When they have gone, Robin returns with the flower and Oberon takes some of it to "streak" the eyes of Titania, then sends Robin to apply some to "disdainful" Demetrius--whom he will know by his "Athenian garments"--so that he will love Helena.
ACT 2 SCENE 2
The rapid action of the next few scenes highlights the confusion caused by the fairies' involvement in the mortal world and the disorienting nature of the dark woods.
Lines 1-34: Titania calls her train to sing her to sleep before they go about their fairy tasks. Once she is asleep, Oberon squeezes the flower's juice onto her eyelids and leaves.
Lines 35-83: Lysander and Hermia are lost and decide to rest until daylight. Lysander wishes to sleep close to Hermia, but she asks him, out of "love and courtesy" to "Lie further off," as this is more fitting to her virtue. Robin the Puck enters, complaining that he has searched the forest for an Athenian and "found none." He sees sleeping Lysander in his Athenian clothes, and Hermia lying at a distance. Assuming that Hermia is distanced because the man is a "lack-love" who has spurned her, he concludes that these are the mortals that Oberon described. He applies the juice to Lysander's eyelids and leaves as Demetrius enters, running away from Helena.
Lines 84-156: Helena pleads with Demetrius to stop but he refuses and runs off, leaving her alone in the dark. In a speech that makes reference to sight, drawing attention to the way the characters' literal and metaphorical perception is distorted by both magic and love, she reveals her jealousy of Hermia and her "blessed and attractive eyes." Helena bewails her own appearance, claiming that she is "ugly as a bear" and that Demetrius sees her "as a monster." She stumbles on Lysander and wakes him. On seeing her, enchanted Lysander falls in love and rejects Hermia, saying that Helena is "the worthier maid." Helena, convinced that Lysander is mocking her, leaves. He follows, leaving "hated" Hermia alone. Hermia wakes from a nightmare, the description of which highlights the more potentially threatening side of the wood and the fairies, as she finds herself alone in the dark and ready to "swoon almost with fear."
ACT 3 SCENE 1
Lines 1-51: The artisans rehearse in the glade where Titania sleeps. Theatrical self-awareness is evident throughout the scene, particularly in the allocation of "This green plot" as their stage and "this hawthorn brake" as their "tiring-house," as stage becomes woodland in the audience's imagination and is then transformed back into a stage in the minds of the characters. They discuss the details of staging, worrying about the lion or Pyramus' death upsetting the ladies in the audience, and considering how they will convey moonshine. Their simplistic approach once again emphasizes the sophistication of the wider performance.
Lines 52-190: Robin sustains the theatrical self-awareness as he observes the rehearsals and says that he will "be an auditor, / An actor too perhaps." Bottom makes a "stage exit," followed by Robin. He returns with an ass's head as a result of Robin's spell and frightens the others away, pursued by Robin. Bottom, confused by their behavior, decides that they mean to frighten him and sings so that they see that he is "not afraid." His singing wakes Titania, who, under the enchantment of the flower, is "enamoured" and "enthralled" of Bottom's singing and appearance and falls in love with him. She persuades him to remain in the woods with her, and calls upon four fairies to attend to him as she leads him to her bower.
ACT 3 SCENE 2
Lines 1-40: Oberon wonders what Titania now "must dote on." Robin appears and reports that she is in love with "a monster," recounting the events of the previous scene. He says that he has put the juice in the Athenian's eyes, but as Demetrius and Hermia enter, it becomes clear that Oberon and Robin do not mean the same Athenian. They stand aside and watch.
Lines 41-121: Hermia believes that Demetrius has "slain Lysander in his sleep," as there can be no other explanation for his leaving her. Demetrius denies this and realizes that there is no point in following Hermia, who leaves. He rests and falls asleep. Oberon realizes Robin's mistake and sends him to fetch Helena, then places the juice on Demetrius' eyelids while chanting a spell. Robin reports that Helena is on her way, followed by Lysander. He revels in the situation and suggests they enjoy the "sport" of watching how "two at once woo one."
Lines 122-357: As Lysander tries to convince Helena that he loves her, Demetrius wakes up. Under the influence of the flower, he too falls in love with Helena, but she thinks that they are both mocking her. Hermia enters, having heard Lysander's voice, and demands to know why he left her. Lysander declares his love for Helena and his hatred of Hermia, who says that "it cannot be." Helena, however, thinks that Hermia is part of "this confed'racy" and that all three are joined to spite her. She berates the bewildered Hermia, reminding her of their close friendship since childhood--"Two lovely berries moulded on one stem"--and accuses her of encouraging Lysander and Demetrius.
Lysander challenges Demetrius to a duel. Hermia desperately tries to remind him of the love they share, but he insists that he hates her and loves Helena. Hermia turns on Helena, accusing her of stealing Lysander's love. The two women argue, insulting each other over their respective heights--Hermia describes Helena as a "painted maypole"--but their repeated use of the words "low" and "lower" also apply to their positions in the esteem of the two men, again emphasizing the notion that it is the desire of others that creates worth. Demetrius and Lysander leave together to fight their duel and Helena and Hermia also exit.
Lines 358-408: Oberon suggests that Robin "wilfully" caused the confusion, which he denies, saying that he did as Oberon requested, " 'nointed an Athenian's eyes," although he does confess to finding sport in the resulting "jangling." Oberon commands Robin to "overcast the night" and lead Lysander and Demetrius astray, so that they cannot meet and fight. He is to lead them around until they fall asleep, exhausted, and then put the juice of a different herb into Lysander's eyes, which will make all that has happened "seem a dream." While Robin does this, Oberon is going to beg Titania for the Indian boy and release her from the spell. Robin says that they must be quick as daylight is approaching--perhaps a metaphor for the impending restoration of order--and fairies "themselves exile from light." Oberon argues that he can exist in daylight, but agrees that a quick resolution is needed.
Lines 409-480: Pretending to be first Demetrius, then Lysander, Robin leads both characters around the wood, making sure that they never meet, until they are both so tired that they lie down and sleep. Helena and Hermia arrive separately and, not seeing the others, decide to sleep until daylight. Robin squeezes the herb's juice onto Lysander's eyelids so that he will love Hermia again, but Demetrius is left in love with Helena, so, as Robin says, "all shall be well."
ACT 4 SCENE 1
Lines 1-101: Titania dotes upon Bottom, caressing his "fair large ears." Bottom gives orders to Titania's attendants to scratch him, until he grows sleepy. Titania twists herself around him as "doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle" and they sleep. Oberon, who has been watching them unseen, says to Robin that he begins to feel sorry for Titania, who has given him the changeling boy. He instructs Robin to change Bottom back so that he may return to Athens believing it all to have been "the fierce vexation of a dream" and releases a confused Titania from the spell. Oberon and Titania dance, then leave as the morning approaches, emphasizing their place in the shadowy world, away from the light and the human order that it represents.
Lines 102-218: Theseus and his party stumble upon the sleeping lovers, and assume that, like them, they are all there to "observe The rite
of May." Remembering that Hermia must "give answer of her choice," Theseus commands that the huntsmen wake them with their horns. Lysander admits to running away with Hermia and Egeus calls for "the law, upon his head," saying that Lysander would have "defeated" Demetrius of a wife. Demetrius, however, says that although he pursued them "in fury," he now "by some power" finds his "love to Hermia, Melted" and the only "pleasure" of his "eye" is Helena. Theseus says that they will hear more "anon," but for now he overrules Egeus' will and decrees that Hermia shall marry Lysander and Demetrius shall marry Helena, sharing in the ceremony with himself and Hippolyta. The lovers discuss the dreamlike quality of events, but agree that they are now awake and must follow Theseus. Bottom wakes alone and confused, talking of the dream he has had. He leaves to get Quince to record his dream as a ballad.
ACT 4 SCENE 2
The other artisans look for Bottom, as the play is "marred" without him. Snug reports that the marriages have taken place, and that if they could have performed before the duke they would have been "made men" (beneficiaries of preferment). Bottom appears and they set off for the palace.
ACT 5 SCENE 1
Lines 1-109: Theseus and Hippolyta discuss the lovers' stories, and Theseus comments on how "The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact," thus highlighting the confused realities within the play, but also its metatheatrical element. They greet the lovers and discuss the possibility of some entertainment "Between our after-supper and bedtime." Egeus gives Theseus a list of possible "sports" and he selects the artisans' play.
Lines 110-362: The play-within-the-play provides both linguistic and visual comedy and theatrical self-awareness is present in both the contrast with the wider performance and the presence of the two "audiences." Both comedy and self-awareness are heightened by the interjections of the onstage audience. The performance concludes and Theseus orders everyone to bed, as " 'tis almost fairy time."
Lines 363-430: The fairies return and their final verses, a blessing on the three couples' marriages, evoke their world and their place in mortal lives and imaginations. Robin's metatheatrical epilogue to the audience suggests that if the play has offended, they think of it as "a dream," a final confusion of reality and illusion in the audience's mind.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S
DREAM IN PERFORMANCE:
THE RSC AND BEYOND
The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible--a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made "our contemporary" four centuries after his death.
We begin with a brief overview of the play's theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an "RSC stage history" to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.
Finally, we go to the horse's mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director. He, or sometimes she (like musical conducting, theater directing remains a male-dominated profession), must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director's viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare's plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways.
FOUR CENTURIES OF THE DREAM: AN OVERVIEW
Interpretations and ideas about the play have altered radically over the four centuries since its first performance around 1595-96. Theories suggesting that it was written to celebrate an aristocratic wedding have fallen into disfavor. The Quarto edition of 1600 claims that it had "beene sundry times publickly acted" by the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men) and it may be the play referred to in a letter which records a court performance of the "play of Robin goode-fellow" on 1 January 1604.1 There is no further evidence of performance before the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Will Kempe, the company's chief comic actor at this period, may originally have played Bottom and Richard Burbage Oberon, possibly doubling the role with Theseus. The text suggests Titania's fairies were small-sized and may have been played by boys, although recent research based on the pattern of appearances of fairies and mechanicals suggests that the same actors may well have doubled these parts,2 a theory perhaps corroborated by the cast list of the 1661 droll The Merry conceited Humours of Bottome the Weaver, which suggests that Snout, Snug, and Starveling as Wall, Lion, and Moonshine "likewise may present three Faries."3
The play's combination of realism and fantasy was not to the taste of Restoration audiences. Samuel Pepys judged it "the most insipid ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life."4 Eighteenth-and nineteenth-century taste preferred romanticized, sanitized versions of Shakespeare's plays. The drama was heavily influenced by French neoclassicism's strict adherence to the unities of time, place, and action: decorum was observed and bawdy language eliminated. Theatrical productions emphasized spectacle and there were a number of operatic adaptations which featured the play's courtly aspects, with music and dancing. William Hazlitt, writing in 1817, argued against all performance on the grounds that theatrical representation is, by its very nature, gross and material, unlike Shakespeare's airy conception: "The Midsummer Night's Dream, when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. Poetry and the stage do not agree well together."5 In fact the version that Hazlitt saw was most likely Frederick Reynolds' 1816 adaptation, as much a musical as a play.
From the Restoration onward, thanks to technical innovation, increasingly sophisticated theatrical machinery, and movable stage sets, spectacular operatic versions of the play predominated, culminating in the extravaganzas of the great Georgian and Victorian actor-managers such as John Philip Kemble, Charles Kean, Henry Irving, and Beerbohm Tree. Ballet-style productions featured choruses of fairies, processions with spears and trumpets, and acres of gauze. Mid-and late-nineteenth-century productions focused on pictorial realism and attempted to "illustrate" the plays. Great emphasis was placed on the recreation of historical accuracy in costume and sets to create a complete theatrical illusion. For example, James Grieve, the designer for Kean's 1858 production, aimed at historical accuracy--the playbill boasted that "The Acropolis, on its rocky eminence, surrounded by marble Temples, has been restored, together with the Theater of Bacchus, wherein multitudes once thronged to listen to the majestic poetry of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides."6 Realism was taken to the extreme, reproducing Quince's workshop and stage properties supposedly made by him, which used descriptions of objects found in the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum for the tools. Tree's production actually recreated the "bank where the wild thyme blows" and imported live rabbits to scamper across it in his 1911 revival.7
Adaptations of A Midsummer Night's Dream separated out the different elements of the play. The anonymous droll published in 1661 under the title Bottom the Weaver was chiefly concerned with the "rude mechanicals," though it provided abbreviated roles for Oberon, Titania, and Robin. "Duke," "Duchess," and two "Lords" represented the courtly audience. In 1692 Thomas Betterton produced The Fairy Queen, An Opera with music by Henry Purcell. This included court characters, "The Fairies," "The Comedians," and a masque at the end of each act, including "Juno," "Chinese Men and Women," "A Chorus of Chineses" (sic), "A Dance of 6 Monkeys," "An Entry of a Chinese Man and W
oman," "A Grand Dance of 24 Chineses." Richard Leveridge's The Comick Masque of Pyramus and Thisbe (1716) contained the mechanicals plus "Mr Semibreve the Composer," "Crochet," "Gamut," as well as "Prologue," "Pyramus," "Wall," "Lyon," "Moonshine," "Thisbe," and "Epilogue." And the 1763 adaptation A Fairy Tale in Two Acts featured "Men" (the mechanicals) and "Fairies."
In 1775 David Garrick staged The Fairies: An Opera taken from A Midsummer Night's Dream, which featured courtiers and fairies but no mechanicals. It included twenty-eight songs and was moderately successful, certainly in comparison with his later five-act, thirty-three song version--that lasted only one performance. In 1816 Frederick Reynolds presented his version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The title page describes it as "Written by Shakespeare: with Alterations, Additions, and New Songs; as it is performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden." In his "Advertisement" for the play, Reynolds denigrated Garrick's earlier version. Nevertheless, he used quite a lot of the material from it, notably the songs, and his text was almost as abbreviated, although he did reinstate the mechanicals. Lucia Elizabeth Vestris' 1840 production, in which she played Oberon, although still lavish and incorporating elements of opera and ballet, restored much of Shakespeare's text. Felix Mendelssohn had originally written the overture to his "Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1826 (opus 21), composing the rest of the score sixteen years later (opus 61) for Ludwig Tieck's 1843 revival at the Potsdam Court Theatre.