A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM –The One With All Those Fairies!

Well, now we come to the play that is many people’s favourite; the one that instantly puts a smile on their face when it is mentioned, that open their eyes to enchantment, and wonder, and delighted amusement. Like no other Shakespeare play it brings out the child in all of us, and it’s no surprise that it’s particularly popular with children and young people; for many of them it is their first encounter with Shakespeare, either as a text or in performance, and it’s one of the most frequently produced of all Shakespeare’s plays and somehow (magically perhaps?) almost always seems to work. You can do almost anything with it and still pull it off, as countless productions have shown. I’ve seen it played by children, by teenagers, by students, by amateur groups and by seasoned professionals; and done as high comedy, lyrical and mysterious musical pageant, puppet show and circus-like physical theatre. I’ve seen it done on a bare stage, and on incredibly elaborate sets. I’ve even seen it set on a rubbish tip! And all of these wildly diverse productions have worked, and given their audience joy and laughter and wonder and delight. Quite a feat!

When I went back to revisit the text itself I had memories of all these productions whizzing about in my head, and it was often difficult to try and examine the play objectively, as if reading it for the first time. Yet I was instantly struck by just how gloriously the words and lines flow from the page, especially after coming straight from Love’s Labour’s Lost which took so much more effort to fully understand and appreciate. With A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare really steps up a gear, and this seems to me to be a turning point in his output: the moment when his already great talent becomes truly sublime. Everything he has learned and experimented with comes together here in a perfect play: poetry, comedy, romance, construction, plot, clarity and a true grasp of theatre in all its possibilities and devices. It’s a light play –one could say it floats; yet it is never trivial. Its characters may not at first seem deep, but they are as living and memorable as any in Shakespeare. We recognize and can smile at some of them (anyone who has ever been involved in any form of theatre will have known numerous Nick Bottoms and Peter Quinces and Francis Flutes), whilst others are far from anything in our experience, except perhaps in our dreams.

Yes, there’s something for everyone here: at least three separate stories and a multitude of stories within each story, yet all held and coming together beautifully, like a delicate silk web. And I adore the poetry and imagery of the play as much as I adore the comedy and pathos of the amateur players, whose keenness makes up for their lack of talent, and who are treated much more gently in this play by their audience than the players at the end of the previous play, Love’s Labour’s Lost.

If you are new to this play then do try to see a production of it before picking up the text; let yourself be swept away by its poetry and music and delightful charm before delving into the brilliant and elegant craftsmanship of the piece more closely.


Favourite Line:

Theseus:
”His speech was like a tangled chain –nothing impaired, but all disordered.”
(Act 5, Sc.1)

And almost all of Puck’s lines

Character I would most like to play: Puck