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A
Midsummer Night’s
Dream is unique in
Shakespeare’s varied
canon. Full of romance and poetry,
humor and beauty, it is a flight of
fantasy, a journey into a world
of magic that explores love in all
its tenderness, excitement, and
danger. Its story has resonated
across cultures, and the play is
widely performed across the world.
The play is set not just on any
night, but Midsummer Night. The
summer solstice had a mystical
significance dating back to ancient
times. Shakespeare’s England had
pagan roots that ran far deeper
than its Christian tradition, and this
was the night when magic was felt
to be in the air, and fairies and
sprites were abroad. It is not that
everyone believed in fairies, though.
Edmund Spenser, who wrote his
poem The Faerie Queene around
this time, declared, “the truth is
that there be no such things,A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
nor yet the shadow of the things.”
Shakespeare simply uses the magic
of this night to delve into the
interplay between imagination and
reality, madness and reason, love
and common sense, and tell a story
that is both an enchanting delight
and a voyage into the dark places of
the mind. Spenser’s Faerie Queen,
although set in fairyland, was about
the real queen, Elizabeth I, and it is
hard not to see Elizabeth, too, in the
strong queens of the Dream, Titania
and Hippolyta.Wedding and marriage
It is not known for certain when
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was
written, but some suggest that it
was a play to celebrate a wedding,IN CONTEXT
THEMES
Love, identity, sense,
and madnessSETTING
Mythical Athens, and a
forest outside AthensSOURCES
8 CE The poem Metamorphoses
by the Roman poet Ovid, plus
various Greek myths.LEGACY
1604 The first recorded
productions are at the court
of King James I.1662 A gutted adaptation is
performed; and English diarist
Samuel Pepys describes it as
“the most insipid, ridiculous
play that I ever saw.”1692 English actor Thomas
Betterton commissions Henry
Purcell to write music for a
version called The Fairy Queen.1905 Austrian director Max
Reinhardt stages the play in
Berlin using a revolving set.1914 British actor/director
Harley Granville-Barker
stages a controversial
futuristic version.1960 The play is adapted into
an opera by British composer
Benjamin Britten.
1970 Peter Brook’s famous
minimalist production for the
RSC has a white box for a set.2006 With a production
originating in Chennai, Tamil
Nadu, British theater director
Tim Supple turns the play into
an Indian folktale.Tim Supple’s production for the RSC
in 2006 set the action in India. The
lines were spoken in a mix of English
and six Indian languages. Here, Bottom
bemoans his ass’s head.