A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Read Free Book Online Page A

spectacular operatic versions of the play predominated, culminating in the extravaganzas of the great Georgian and Victorian actor-managers such as John Philip Kemble, Charles Kean, Henry Irving, and Beerbohm Tree. Ballet-style productions featured choruses of fairies, processions with spears and trumpets, and acres of gauze. Mid- and late-nineteenth-century productions focused on pictorial realism and attempted to “illustrate” the plays. Great emphasis was placed on the recreation of historical accuracy in costume and sets to create a complete theatrical illusion. For example, James Grieve, the designer for Kean’s 1858 production, aimed at historical accuracy—the playbill boasted that “The Acropolis, on its rocky eminence, surrounded by marble Temples, has been restored, together with the Theater of Bacchus, wherein multitudes once thronged to listen to the majestic poetry of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.” 6 Realism was taken to the extreme, reproducing Quince’s workshop and stage properties supposedly made by him, which used descriptions of objects found in the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum for the tools. Tree’s production actually recreated the “bank where the wild thyme blows” and imported live rabbits to scamper across it in his 1911 revival. 7
    Adaptations of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
separated out the different elements of the play. The anonymous droll published in 1661 under the title
Bottom the Weaver
was chiefly concerned with the “rude mechanicals,” though it provided abbreviated roles for Oberon, Titania, and Robin. “Duke,” “Duchess,” and two “Lords” represented the courtly audience. In 1692 Thomas Betterton produced
The Fairy Queen, An Opera
with music by Henry Purcell. This included court characters, “The Fairies,” “The Comedians,” and a masque at the end of each act, including “Juno,” “Chinese Men and Women,” “A Chorus of Chineses” (
sic
),
“A
Dance of 6 Monkeys,” “An Entry of a Chinese Man and Woman,” “A Grand Dance of 24 Chineses.” Richard Leveridge’s
The Comick Masque of Pyramus and Thisbe
(1716) containedthe mechanicals plus “Mr Semibreve the Composer,” “Crochet,” “Gamut,” as well as “Prologue,” “Pyramus,” “Wall,” “Lyon,” “Moonshine,” “Thisbe,” and “Epilogue.” And the 1763 adaptation
A Fairy Tale in Two Acts
featured “Men” (the mechanicals) and “Fairies.”
    In 1775 David Garrick staged
The Fairies: An Opera taken from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, which featured courtiers and fairies but no mechanicals. It included twenty-eight songs and was moderately successful, certainly in comparison with his later five-act, thirty-three song version—that lasted only one performance. In 1816 Frederick Reynolds presented his version of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. The title page describes it as “Written by Shakespeare: with Alterations, Additions, and New Songs; as it is performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden.” In his “Advertisement” for the play, Reynolds denigrated Garrick’s earlier version. Nevertheless, he used quite a lot of the material from it, notably the songs, and his text was almost as abbreviated, although he did reinstate the mechanicals. Lucia Elizabeth Vestris’ 1840 production, in which she played Oberon, although still lavish and incorporating elements of opera and ballet, restored much of Shakespeare’s text. Felix Mendelssohn had originally written the overture to his “Incidental Music to
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
” in 1826 (opus 21), composing the rest of the score sixteen years later (opus 61) for Ludwig Tieck’s 1843 revival at the Potsdam Court Theatre.
    In 1853 Samuel Phelps staged a highly successful production at