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

Sadler’s Wells, in which he played Bottom. Three years later, Charles Kean’s revival at the Princess’s was equally successful—the nine-year-old Ellen Terry played Robin, an experience recalled in her autobiography. 8 Augustin Daly’s three American productions (1873, 1888, 1895–96) were lavish and spectacularly staged, with a ballet of fifty children in Act 3. Beerbohm Tree’s productions were even more extravagant, but no less popular with audiences and critics alike: “No scene has ever been put upon the stage more beautiful than the wood near Athens in which the fairies revel and the lovers play their game of hide-and-seek.” 9
    The self-reflexive quality of Shakespearean drama was eliminated in all these adaptations and the conventions of Elizabethan staging regarded as limitations to be overcome. The end of the Victorian period saw the beginnings of a contemporary reaction against theatrical realism and the spectacular in favor of simpler, faster-paced productions which used all or most of Shakespeare’s text on recreated Elizabethan-style stages. The most influential directors in this move were William Poel and Harley Granville-Barker. Gordon Craig also offered simplified staging of the play and a full text. Barker’s production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at the Savoy Theatre in 1914 created a critical sensation which was not wholly favorable. In his
Preface
to
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, Barker argued that the non-realism of the play, like the “greatness” of
King Lear
and the “scope of the action” of
Antony and Cleopatra
, were problematic for the scenic productions of the modern theater. He suggested producing the play on Shakespeare’s own terms, with an appeal to the ear and the imagination of the audience. The structure of the play should be kept flexible. He also advocated the use of folk music and dances as opposed to the by then customary Mendelssohn score. Barker made it clear, though, that his emphasis was Shakespeare’s own theme:

    1. Victorian staging with elaborate set and huge troupe of gossamer-clad fairies.
    In fine, Shakespeare has a theme, which only poetry can fully illuminate, and he trusts to poetry. Nor will he risk any conflict of interest, all the rest of his dramatist’s equipment must cry small for the occasion. Wherefore we in our turn must plan the play’s interpretation upon these terms. Poetry, poetry; everything to serve and nothing to compete with it! 10
    Barker’s production did not meet with universal approbation. Nevertheless, it was revolutionary for its time and set in train the fashion for stylized and nonnaturalistic productions. His ideas were influenced by a modernist aesthetic which rejected realism and romanticism.
    This aesthetic development found perhaps its most complete expression in Peter Brook’s 1970 RSC production (discussed in detail below). In 1992, the French Canadian director Robert Lepage also offered a dark reading of the play for Britain’s National Theatre, emphasizing its psychological and sexual elements. While incorporating certain aspects of Brook’s version, such as the acrobatics, in other regards Lepage reacted against it. Most dramatically, Brook’s celebrated white box was replaced by a mud pool. Critics at the time seem to have been confounded by this, but the hints are there in many film versions from Max Reinhardt onward which feature water, mud and pools, culminating in the mud-wrestling in Michael Hoffman’s 1999 version. Hoffman, however, was probably inspired in turn by Lepage, which suggests something of the circularity of cross-media cultural influences today.
    The play’s spectacular potential has recommended it to operatic composers from Purcell to Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett via Mendelssohn. Tippett’s
The Midsummer Marriage
(1946–52) was inspired by Shakespeare’s play. It contains a similar