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Rackham, Arthur
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We were in Waco last night to see an English department production of this rather odd play in the Armstrong-Browning Library at Baylor University. Eldest Daughter played the attendant fairy Mustard-Seed.
Some disconnected thoughts that occurred as I watched:
***The play was staged in Victorian costumes partly because it was not revived in its entirety, after Shakespeare’s day, until the 1840’s. I think the costumes and setting worked quite well, or maybe I just like tophats and stiff collars.
***Shakepeare critic William Hazlit once said in an essay on a production of Midsummer: “A 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. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The IDEAL can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective; everything there is in the foreground.
I think it is difficult to get the dream-like effect on stage that Mr. Shakepeare was attempting to achieve. The whole play is full of dreams and even at the end Puck tells the audience:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream . . .
Lots of sleeping and dreaming, dreams within dreams, weird dream-like sequences of events . . . Nevertheless, I still knew that I was in a building, sitting in stadium chairs, watching a play, not dreaming. That’s no insult to the acotrs nor to the production, but rather a comment on the difficulty of staging the play. (The same comment, abbreviated, was in the program notes, probably what made me think about it.)
***The actor who played Bottom was actually, according to Eldest Daughter, a librarian at Baylor. He was magnificent, stole the show. The comedic parts of the play were hilarious. Bottom was indeed an ass, in the funniest, Charlie Browniest sense of the word.
The Dream in a nutshell:
Act 1, Scene 1
Lysander: The course of true love never did run smooth
Hermia of Demetrius: I give him curses, yet he gives me love.
Act 1, Scene2
Bottom: Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.
Act 2, Scene 1
Titania: What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:
I have forsworn his bed and company.
Helena to Demetrius: I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
Act 2, Scene 2
Lysander to Hermia: One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;
One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.
Act 3, Scene 1
Bottom: I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could.
Act 3, Scene 2
Hermia to Helena: O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom!
You thief of love! what, have you come by night
And stolen my love’s heart from him?
Act 4, Scene 1
Titania: My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.
Act 4, Scene 2
Bottom: Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian.
Act 5, Scene 1
Quince: Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;
But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.
Puck: So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
I saw this play performed outdoors on a Summer eve in London. Perhaps that’s why I was able to feel its dream-like magic!
Outdoors would be a great atmosphere —although the Armstrog Browning Library has its own atmosphere, rather Victorian in itself. I love libraries.
I love this play, I think it one of Shakespeare’s more accessible and there is so much room for playing around with things. The artwork you posted is gorgeous