A Midsummer Night's Dream

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A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare written sometime in the mid-1590s. It depicts the adventures of four young lovers and a group of amateur actors in a moonlit forest, and their interactions with the fairies who inhabit it. Today, the play is one of Shakespeare's most popular and is performed across the world.

1 Date and sources
2 Character list
3 Synopsis
4 Movie adaptations
5 Other adaptations
6 External links

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Date and sources

It is not known exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but it is assumed to be between 1594 and 1596. Some have theorized that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding; numerous such weddings took place in 1596, while others suggest it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John, but no concrete evidence exists to link the play with either of them. In either case, it would also have been performed at The Theatre, and, later, The Globe in London.

There is no known source for the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream, although individual elements can be traced to classical literature; for example, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses and the transformation of Bottom into an ass is descended from Apuleius' The Golden Ass; Shakespeare would have studied both texts at school. In addition, Shakespeare would have been working on Romeo and Juliet at about the same time that he wrote the Dream, and it is possible to see Pyramus and Thisbe as a comic reworking of the tragic play. A further, frequently ignored source, is The Knight's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.^[1]

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Character list

Puck or Robin Goodfellow
Oberon, King of Fairies
Titania, Queen of Fairies
Lysander, in love with Hermia
Demetrius, in love with Hermia
Hermia, in love with Lysander
Helena, in love with Demetrius
Egeus, father of Hermia
Theseus, Duke of Athens
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and betrothed of Theseus
Nick Bottom, weaver
Peter Quince, carpenter
Francis Flute, bellows-mender
Robin Starveling, tailor
Tom Snout, tinker
Snug, a joiner
Philostrate, Master of the Revels
Peaseblossom, fairy
Cobweb, fairy
Moth (sometimes rendered as 'Mote'), fairy
Mustardseed, fairy

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Synopsis

Image:Study for The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania.jpg The play features three interlocking plots, all of which are connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian Hippolyta. At the beginning, Hermia refuses to comply with her father Egeus and marry his chosen suitor, Demetrius; in response, Egeus takes her before Theseus and invokes an ancient Athenian law whereby a daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her father, or else face death or lifelong chastity as a nun of Diana. Therefore, Hermia and her lover Lysander decide to elope to a nearby city. Hermia tells the plan to her best friend Helena, who, having been recently rejected by Demetrius, decides to win back Demetrius's favor by revealing the plan to him. This results in a situation where Demetrius, followed doggedly by Helena, goes after Hermia, who, in turn, chases Lysander, from whom she becomes separated. The situation develops a comical twist typical in Shakespeare's plays when Hermia's two lovers temporarily turn against her in favor of Helena because of Puck's misapplied magical enchantment. The four pursue each other into the woods around the city all night, losing themselves in the dark and in the maze of their romantic entanglements.

Meanwhile, Oberon, king of the fairies, and his estranged wife, Titania, arrive in the same woods to attend the upcoming nuptial of the Duke and Hippolyta. Titania refuses to give her Indian page-boy to Oberon for use as his 'henchman' as the child's mother was one of Titania's followers who died in childbirth, and Oberon seeks to punish her for her disobedience. Oberon recruits the mischievous Puck (also called Hobgoblin and Robin Goodfellow) to help him apply a magical juice from a flower called "love-in-idleness," which makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing they see when they wake up. Oberon applies the juice to Titania in order to distract her and force her to give up the page-boy, while Puck is instructed to cause "the Athenian man" to fall in love with Helena, whose argument was overheard by Oberon. It is with this enchantment that Puck causes much mishap with the Athenian lovers.

At the same time, a band of 'mechanicals' (lower-class laborers) have arranged to perform a crude pageant on the theme of Pyramus and Thisbe for the wedding festivities, and they venture into the forest, near Titania's nest, for their rehearsal. Most notable among them is Nick Bottom the Weaver, one of Shakespeare's most admired comic creations, who soon finds his head transformed into that of an ass by Puck. The fairy queen is awoken by Bottom's singing, and she immediately falls in love with him.

When the morning comes, the ass's head is removed from Bottom, and the magical enchantment is removed from Lysander and Titania. It is allowed to remain on Demetrius, so that he may reciprocate Helena's love. The lovers and the mechanicals decide that the nonsensical events during the night must be no more than a dream.

The lovers return to Athens, where Egeus's invocation is nullified by Theseus, in large part because of Demetrius's change of mind. The lovers happily join the wedding ceremony of Theseus and Hippolyta. They watch a bumbling play staged by Nick Bottom's crew, and retire to their nuptial beds when the night comes. Afterwards, the fairy king and queen bless the house, its occupants, and the offspring of the newlyweds.

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Movie adaptations

See also Shakespeare on screen (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

The Shakespeare play has inspired several movies. The following are the best known.

1935 - directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, produced by Henry Blanke and adapted by Charles Kenyon and Mary C. McCall Jr.
- 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 and Victor Jory as Oberon.
- Some of Mendelssohn's music was used , but reorchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The fairies were choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska.
- The film won two Academy Awards:
  - Best Cinematography - Hal Mohr
  - Best Film Editing - Ralph Dawson
- It was nominated for:
  - Best Picture - Henry Blanke, producer
  - Best Assistant Director - Sherry Shourds
  - Notably, Hal Mohr was not nominated for his work on the movie; he won the Oscar thanks to a grass-roots write-in campaign. The next year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences declared that it would not accept write-in votes for the awards.

1968 - directed by Peter Hall.
- The cast included Paul Rogers as Bottom, Ian Holm as Puck, Diana Rigg as Helena, and Judi Dench as Titania.
- This film is based on Hall's popular Royal Shakespeare Company production, which was avant-garde at the time, but is looked back on as very dated, with mini-skirts and 1960's psychedelic overtones. Titania and her fairies wore body suits.
1996 - 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/Hippolita.
- This film is based on Noble's hugely popular Royal Shakespeare Company production. Its art design is eccentric, featuring a forest of floating light bulbs and a giant umbrella for Titania's bower.
1999 - written and directed by Michael Hoffman.
- The cast included Kevin Kline as Bottom, Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania, Sophie Marceau as Hippolyta, Christian Bale as Demetrius and Calista Flockhart as Helena.
- This adaptation relocates the play's action to Tuscany in the late nineteenth century.
1999 - written and directed by James Kerwin.
- The cast included Travis Schuldt as Demetrius. Sets the Dream story against a surreal backdrop of techno clubs and ancient symbols.
2005 - ShakespeaRe-Told BBC TV drama, adapted by Peter Bowker.
- The cast includes Johnny Vegas as Bottom, Dean Lennox Kelly as Puck, Bill Paterson as Theo {Egeus}, and Imelda Staunton as his wife. Lennie James plays Oberon and Sharon Small is Titania. Zoe Tapper and Michelle Bonnard play Hermia and Helena.
- This is a modern adaptation, set in a contemporary holiday park playing host to the engagement party of Hermia and James (Lysander). It has the three parallel plots, plus the fairies, mischief, hallucinations and comedy of the original play. The dialogue is modern with allusions to Shakespeare's original lines.

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Other adaptations

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Musical versions

Incidental music: An overture and incidental music for the play were composed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1826 and were used in most stage versions through the nineteenth century. Mendelssohn also composed the ballet version as well (which contains the famous leaving of the church performed at weddings around the world).

Opera: 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 June 1, 1960, at Aldeburgh.

Semi-opera: The Fairy-Queen by Henry Purcell consists of a set of masques meant to go between acts of the play, as well as some minimal rewriting of the play to be current to 17th century audiences.

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Literary

Drama: Botho Strauß' play Der Park (1983) is based on characters and motifs from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Comics:

A Midsummer Night's Dream was adapted for comics by Neil Gaiman for his series The Sandman under the title Dream Country. It won several awards, and is distinguished by being the only comic that has ever won a World Fantasy Award.
In 2006, web-comic artist Brooke McEldowney, author of the web-comics 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn, adapted the story into a 20th-century setting using characters from both his web-comic series as part of the Pibgorn title.

Novels:

Magic Street (2005) by Orson Scott Card revisits the work as a continuation of the play under the premise that the story by Shakespeare was actually derived from true interactions with fairy folk.
A Midsummer Night's Gene (1997) by Andrew Harman.

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Film

Disney shorts: A Midsummer Night's Dream was recently adapted into a Disney short starring Mickey Mouse as Lysander, Minnie Mouse as Hermia, Donald Duck as Demetrius, and Daisy Duck as Helena. Featured in Disney's "Mickey Mouse Works" and "House of Mouse"

Disney's animated series "Gargoyles" featured many characters from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, including Oberon, Titania, and, most prominently, Puck. In this series, Puck actually takes the form of Owen, loyal assistant to the main villain Xanatos. Later, Puck becomes the tutor for Xanatos' quarter-fae son, Alex. He is wily, spritely, and willing to have fun at the expense of others.

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