- Possibly written: 1595 or 1596, possibly his 12th play. Very early for such a great play!
- What’s it about? It’s very complex, but I’ll attempt to sum it up. In ancient Athens, Helena loves Demetrius who loves Hermia who loves Lysander who loves her back, but Hermia’s dad insists she marry Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander go into the woods at night to elope, followed by the other two trying to stop them. Meanwhile, fairies Titania and Oberon are feuding and their war affects the teenagers as well as some workmen who are rehearsing their play in the forest. Oberon sends out his servant Puck with love potions, and soon the boys both switch their affection from Hermia to Helena, and Titania falls for one of the workmen, who has been given the head of a donkey. In the morning, the teens finally pair off into two happy couples and Bottom rejoins the workmen. They perform their play at a wedding, unintentionally amusing the other characters.
- Most famous dialogue: Either “The course of true love never did run smooth,” or “Lord what fools these mortals be”
- Sources: None! This is considered one of Shakespeare’s few truly original works. Aristophanes’ The Birds does have a scene similar to the scene with Titania and Bottom.
- Best insult: Lots of them:
- Away you Ethiope! Hang off, thou cat, thou burr; let loose or I will shake thee from me like a serpent. Out, tawny Tartar, out!
- You juggler! You canker-blossom! Thou painted maypole
- Get you gone, you dwarf, you minimus, of hind’ring knot-grass made! You bead! You acorn!
- Best word: None stood out.
- Best production of this play I’ve seen: I’ve seen many very good productions. One at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem had a very funny Bottom. There was a good one at Stratford during the Iraq war that was shockingly warlike. But perhaps I have the most affection for the bare bones version I saw in the brief time we had a Shakespeare company here in Evanston. I loved that Flute, as Thisbe in the play at the end, gives a shockingly great performance that quiets the hecklers.
- Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Helen Mirren returns for the first time since As You Like It, this time in the very different role of Titania. Geoffrey Palmer, who you’ve seen in a million things, shows up as Quince. They’re both very good.
- Excellent. As you would expect from the BBC, the “teenagers” are a little long in the tooth, but they’re very funny, especially Cherith Mellor as Helena. The real stand-out is Phil Daniels as Puck. Moshinsky said he didn’t like portrayals of Puck as a harmless sprite and had Daniels play him as an “anti-establishment punk.” (He sounds like Billy Bragg, so I guess that’s an Essex accent?) I’d never seen a scary Puck who genuinely dislikes the people he’s zonking, and it’s a great interpretation.
- It’s delightful. Everything is very funny and, as opposed to the last two, which were over three hours long, this one is under two hours because it’s played fast, so fast in fact that they spend half the time talking right over each other. The sets, while stagy, are beautiful, with much use made of pools and puddles, and the lighting really makes it feel like a forest on a moonlit night.
Previous on this blog and in one of my books, I talk about being T.A. for Andrew Sarris’s Hitchcock class at Columbia, and a student asking me, “Why does everybody say that Vertigo is better than North by Northwest, when North by Northwest is generally considered to be perfectly constructed and Vertigo is so messy.” My answer was that depth is found in holes. Vertigo’s plot holes make it deeper, more mysterious, and more beautiful.
Likewise, this play has always been my favorite Shakespeare play. But it’s a mess.
The pacing is bizarre. Every other comedy builds up to the fifth act, when all of the misunderstandings are resolved in the final scene and true love wins out at the last possible minute. But in this play, that all happens in the fourth act. Almost every storyline wraps up in Act Four Scene Two, and Act Five is just a long one-scene epilogue, where our two pairs of happy lovers just do some heckling while the workmen put on their play.
I’ve always wondered when I’ve seen this play on stage or screen, if anyone has ever tried to “fix” it, slice and dice it, and move the resolution of the teenager and fairy plots until after (or during) the performance of the workmen’s play. I think you would have to make a terrible hash of it if you did, but I’ve never stopped thinking about ways to do it.
But no, this is as it should be. Shakespeare, masterfully splicing together other people’s plots, would usually interweave many story elements until they tie together into a beautiful fifth act bow. In this, one of the only plays without source material, he doesn’t try, and allows many of his (original) plot elements to be resolved early, with only one plot element awkwardly spilling over into the final act. It’s a somewhat baffling decision, but still wildly entertaining.
It’s a mess, but it’s his most beautiful mess, and greater than many plays that are far more (and perhaps far too) tidy.
Straying From the Party Line: Don’t Give Physical Descriptions of Your Actors!
This is one of the few Shakespeare plays which limits who can play which part, because it’s a big element of the dialogue that Helena is taller than Hermia. And indeed, I think in every production I’ve seen they did cast the taller actress as Helena. It breaks a big rule of playwriting, because it means they can’t cast just anybody in any part, but it’s a very funny dialogue runner (see the insults above), so Shakespeare can get away with it just this once.
Storyteller’s Rulebook: Redeem the Old “Take Her Glasses Off” Trick
The production does an old trick: Helena wears glasses (one of many anachronisms) and, when Demetrius finally realizes he loves her, the glasses are, of course, off. But I loved that later, when they spend the fifth act just heckling the play, the couple are happy together and the glasses are, thankfully, back on. Guys may not make passes at girls who wear glasses, but once they realize they’ve found the one, they’ll hopefully let you see again.