A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)

Nov 17, 2018 Brad rated it liked it

Shelves: shakespeare, drama, read-in-2019

This is Shakespeare's version of the cheesy summer comedy. It's mostly light, mostly fluffy (although not from the perspective of the most recent staging I saw, which was deeply influenced by #metoo and ramped up female on male violence in a conscious effort to redress imbalance), and mostly idiotic. There are some seriously fun parts to play and to watch, but there are also some superfluities that make for drag, especially near the end.

It was nice to revisit this much beloved classic, but if I ...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Laura rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2011, drama, audio-books

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 18, 2017 Maggie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, play, british, romance, fantasy, humour

Theseus, Duke of Athens, is about to marry Hippolyta in 4 days. At the same time, Demetrius and Lysander are vying for Hermia, but Hermia loves Lysander, and Helena loves Demetrius. In the forest outside Athens, the fairy king Oberon wants a changeling that the fairy Titania has. He thinks up an elaborate plot involving the use of a herb that, when applied to the eyelids of a sleeping person, makes that person fall in love with the first being he/she sees on waking. While he uses the herb on Tit Theseus, Duke of Athens, is about to marry Hippolyta in 4 days. At the same time, Demetrius and Lysander are vying for Hermia, but Hermia loves Lysander, and Helena loves Demetrius. In the forest outside Athens, the fairy king Oberon wants a changeling that the fairy Titania has. He thinks up an elaborate plot involving the use of a herb that, when applied to the eyelids of a sleeping person, makes that person fall in love with the first being he/she sees on waking. While he uses the herb on Titania, he orders his jester Puck to use the herb on Demetrius to make him fall in love with Helena. But Puck applies the herb on Lysander instead, who falls in love with Helena. Then Oberon, trying to correct matters, uses the herb on Demetrius, and now both men are trying to win over Helena, who thinks that they are mocking her, and poor Hermia is left loveless. Thankfully, Oberon uses another herb to remove the spell from Lysander, and after a fair bit of magic and a night's sleep in the forest, the couples awake and all things are right. Theseus chances upon them, and brings them to his palace where the three couples get married. As a parallel plotline, there's a group of mechanicals who are rehearsal a play on Pyramus and Thisbe for the duke's wedding. At one point, Puck transforms the man playing Pyramus, Bottom, into a man with an ass' head, and Titania, under the herb's spell, falls in love with him. He's eventually transformed back and the group perform a comically dismal play after the combined wedding.

This is a wonderfully lighthearted play. There's fairies, music, dancing, magic galore, sleeping and dreaming, and everyone ends up happily married. It's humorous, with all sorts of jokes from witty ones to ironical ones to plain slapstick, like the whole Bottom turning into an ass situation, and the many inadvertent references he makes to asses while in that state. And as always, Shakespeare's talent at wordplay is on full display.

The funniest part was at the end during the mechanicals' play. Words were mangled, especially by Bottom and Quince. The Wall, the Moon and the Lion all explained who they were, ruining the effects of their scenes completely. The Moon ran off at a metaphorical comment of "Moon, take thy flight". Some of the rhymes were ridiculous. And Pyramus last words were "Now die, die, die , die." Their bumbling performance was capped by sarcastic comments from the audience. And yet, as typical of this play, Theseus sought for patience and tolerance from the audience, so that what could have been an ugly situation turned out reasonably good-humoured. It was also perhaps Shakespeare's way of showing that not everyone can write and perform a good play, and that what he causes to look easy actualy requires good skill.

The play also explores what love is and how it is formed. The characters, influenced by magic, fall in and out of love with each other as quickly as teenagers do. Their love, as Bottom, in his only wise comment of the play discerns, has no reason to it, and at the end Demetrius remains in love with Helena only due to the magic of the herb. But while their reasons for love are ridiculed, the lovers, while being spellbound, also occasionally drop hints that the reasons for their love go deeper than magic.

I don't know much about iambic pentameters and its cousins, but Shakespeare's poetry is always better read aloud than read. It has a wonderful rhythm and the rhymes, though plentiful, are not silly. His wordplay made me chuckle. This play was a joy to read. ...more

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