A Midsummer Night

1
A Midsummer Nights Dream 3

• Video clip of Act 1, scene 2

2
Bottoms dream and vision of theater

• St. Paul But as it is written, eye hath not
  seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into
  the heart of man, the things that God hath
  prepared for them that love him. (1 Corinthians
  29).
• Shakespeare teasing the Puritans?
• Or expressing a comic, quasi-religious faith in
  theater?

3
Pyramus and Thisbe and the invention of theater

• Yes, a bad play, but a really good bad play?
• A play thats actually inventing theater, as
  children do when they decide to put on a play.
• Contrast the comments of the court party V,
  237ff, 305ff.
• Recall Theseus The best in this kind are but
  shadows, And the worst no worse if imagination
  mend them. Hippolytas answer is, without her
  knowing it, the point It must be your
  imagination then. Well duh!
• Theater is always a pact between players and
  audience

4
The irony of the lovers irony?

• We watch Pyramis and Thisbe through the lovers,
  mediated by their witty commentary . . .
• . . . After weve watched their comedy in the
  forest, Puck their unseen director, playwright.
• Their dream or nightmare had them move
  through the various permutations, the geometry,
  of love relationships.
• From our perspective, were they any less comic
  than Quinces company?

5
Helenas fantasy

• She imagines that shes caught in a play III, 2,
  145ff.
• Hermia too part of this conspiracy ll. 192ff.
• Interrupted sisterhood interrupted childhood
  now plunges her into an unwilling role.
• Persevere, counterfeit sad looks,/ Make mouths
  when I turn my back,/ Wink at each other, hold
  the sweet jest up. ll. 237ff.
• A general fantasy of adolescence?

6

• Bottom seems the only one who manages a
  transition from reality into the dream world of
  fairies, then emerging back to reality.
• He also manages the various incongruities, a
  classical tragedy that concludes with a
  Bergomask dance, a love affair with the queen of
  the fairies and memories of a donkeys head.
• Bottom the weaver. After all this, can he go
  back to mere weaving?

7
The audiences complicity

• In the epilogue, Puck makes the play our dream.
  Its evanescent, inconsequential, but ours.
• If you pardon this strange, weird play, the
  Lord Chamberlains Men will mend.
• So our applause makes us complicit with Puck,
  friends with his mischievous, mildly malicious
  power.

8
Theatrical self-reflexivity

• Why refer to theater and imagination within a
  play? It seems to counter the usual
  referentiality of theater.
• The anti-realism of MND.
• Art calling attention to art.
• Whats the effect in MND ?

9
Change of direction MND and experimentation

• Play has been a site of theatrical and
  imaginative play.
• Music Mendelssohn gt Balanchines ballet (1962).
• Opera Benjamin Brittens opera (1962).
• Peter Brookes famous production of the play at
  the RSC (1970).
• Does the play invite experimentation?

10
The Adrian Noble film of MND

• Its experiments?
• The effect of the doubling?
• The set for the forest?
• The boy?