THE DREAMING
A new musical by Howard Goodall with book and lyrics by Charles Hart
Commissioned and first performed by the National Youth Music Theatre
First performed at the Northcott Theatre Exeter August 2001, Royal Opera House Covent Garden Linbury Studio Theatre December 2001-January 2002, Guildford Yvonne Arnauld Theatre August 2002, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, George Square Theatre August 2002. Since then, The Dreaming has been performed by the Birmingham School of Acting in April 2003, by Broadwater School, Godalming, Surrey, in March 2004, Carey Baptist Grammar School, Victoria, Australia, in June 2004, and in a production at Kings College School Wimbledon in November 2004.
Based on A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
Directed by Jeremy James Taylor and Russell Labey
Designed by Peter Rice
Choreography by Leah Hausman, with Suzy Bolt
Musical Directors: Alex L'Estrange and Jonathan Gill
Scored for piano, 2 synthesizers, saxophone/clarinet, recorder/crumhorn, percussion & double bass
Perusal score is available here
Perusal script is available here
NYMT Cast members (2001 and 2002):
Jonathan Anderson, David Baker, Ben Barnes, Sarah Bird, James Bisp, Daisy Boulton, Jamie Bower, Sarah Brown, Ben Beechey, Aaron Buckingham, David Carboni, Hannah Caton, Sophie Cookson, James Copp, Louisa Copperwaite, Fiann Cox-Davies, Thomas Davies, Laura Darkins, Barney Evans Doran, Cerian Forrest, Caroline Graham, Pippa Johnson, Tasha Johnson, Terry Keeley, Alastair Kirby, Ellie Kirk, Clement Leek, Oliver Llwellyn Jenkins, Nathan Laryea, Gregg Lowe, Daniel McGinn, Adam McKeown, Jordan Metcalfe, James Nitti, Oliver O'Donovan, Robert O'Donovan, Chiké Okonkwo, Gloria Onitiri, Freyana da Paoli, Vally Pappalardo, Chris Pearse, Ollie Pengelly, Catherine Pollock, Matt Robertson, Sophie Rose, Hannah Scanlon, Jonathan Scott, Tasha Sheridan, Oliver Sones, Michael Sturges, Roxanne Tataei, Jonathon Taylor, Antonia Thomas, Simon 'Stingo 'Thomas, Lily Thomson, Dominic Tighe, Nik Waterman, Sîan Williams.
The Musicians
Tom Allwood, Jennifer Druce, Alex L'Estrange, Jonathan Gill, Andrew Moore, Jodie Oliver, Matt Lyne, Geoff Taylor, Antonia Wilmot-Smith, Dan Swana.
Edinburgh Festival 2002 photo: Ian Soutar
Reviews of the National Youth Music Theatre Premiere production of THE DREAMING:
Michael Coveney's Daily Mail review from the Edinburgh Festival 2002:
LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM IS A WAKING JOY
"The National Youth Music Theatre has returned to George Square with one of its finest ever pieces of work. Last year in London, The Dreaming by Howard Goodall (the Blackadder and Mr Bean composer) and Charles Hart (lyricist on The Phantom of the Opera) seemed a musical gem, but an unfocussed drama.
Now, with its eager young cast drawn from schools and colleges all over Britain, from Plymouth to Edinburgh, it strikes me as an organic, tightly realised achievement of power, beauty and immense significance. The action is a re-working of A Midsummer Night's Dream in a quiet Somerset village surrounded by woodland on the eve of the summer solstice in 1915.
A young scruff of a local lad, Jack, is caught up in a woodland spat between Angel and Sylvia, the punkish tribal leaders of the woodlanders. Two young middle-class couples are tangled in romantic confusion. And the lord of the manor is celebrating his birthday with a patriotic pageant of St George to be performed by the local tradesmen and farm boys. Benjamin Britten's great opera based on Shakespeare's comedy will always stay in the repertoire. But I predict a very rosy future for this rival piece, more suited to young actors and their voices, but equally shot through with yearning, melody, charm and comic jauntiness.
Tim Rice once said that you need at least ten great numbers to make a successful musical. You more or less have those by the interval in this show."
Reviews from Royal Opera House Covent Garden Linbury Studio Theatre:
Michael Billington Saturday December 22, 2001 The Guardian
We are constantly bombarded by American musicals, so it makes a refreshing change to come across this totally English transposition of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Linbury Studio, with music by Howard Goodall and book and lyrics by Charles Hart. As staged by the National Youth Music Theatre, it's vigorous and enjoyable.
Hart sets the action in a Somerset village during the summer solstice in 1915. Following Shakespeare's plot closely, he gives us absconding lovers, local amdram yokels and bands of woodlanders led by the supernatural Sylvia and Angel. His biggest change is to combine Puck and the boy over whom the fairies quarrel into the single figure of an impish foundling called Jack. I have just two caveats about this intelligent piece of updating. One is that, unlike Britten and Pears in their operatic version, Hart follows the rhythm of Shakespeare's original too slavishly. The other is that, apart from a silhouetted image of soldiers in the first act finale, there is hardly any reference to the first world war - something that would have had a huge impact on the Somerset youth. But Goodall, as he showed way back in The Hired Man, has a strong sense of the English musical tradition: here you can trace references to all kinds of composers, from Lionel Bart and Edward German to Sullivan and Elgar. Goodall and Hart also find a different idiom for each of the play's separate groups.
The village actors, led by a fusspot vicar, hark back to a simple folk-song tradition. The warring lovers are given a greater melodic and lyrical complexity, especially in a haunting song entitled Jennifer ("I'm obsessive, I'm depressive, I'm impossibly possessive.") And the forest creatures express themselves in music full of shimmering textures, such as the delightful Night and Silence. At close to three hours, the show feels overextended and the choruses are too packed with words to be fully audible. But the updating works more successfully than in the recent Dawn French-led revival of Shakespeare's play, set during the second world war, and the production combines striking individual performances with a strong sense of ensemble. Jordan Metcalfe's nimbly mischievous Jack clearly projects every syllable, Sian Williams is excellent as the first despised and then ardently pursued Jennifer, and both Aaron Buckingham as the leather-trousered forest king and David Carboni as the Panama-hatted vicar make a decisive mark. Jonathan Gill also leads a good six-strong band in the pit. But the really heartening thing is that Goodall and Hart, unlike some of their contemporaries, draw on native traditions instead of aiming for an ersatz internationalism.
Georgina Brown reviews The Dreaming in The Mail on Sunday, December 23rd 2001:
Audiences, it seems, believe they will have more fun if they can sing along to a show and before long, if we are not very careful, our musical theatre will have dwindled into karaoke, Mamma-Mia!-style (which I confess I loved but would be very sorry if every new work had to be built out of hit pop songs).
Thankfully, though, there are still a few contemporary composers successful enough in other areas of their career to devote some time and effort to the theatre. One is Howard Goodall, the writer of such well-known theme tunes as The Vicar of Dibley and Blackadder, who has teamed up with lyricist Charles (The Phantom of the Opera)Hart to create THE DREAMING, a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the National Youth Music Theatre, midwife to such talents as Jude Law and Jamie Bell.
Shakespeare's original is little more than a starting-point for this delightfully romantic comedy of errors. It is full of mischief and magic, which, rather charmingly, plays down the play's eroticism in favour of a more appropriate youthful innocence. The woodland sprites are reminiscent of J.M.Barrie's lost boys from Peter Pan; the young lovers - Jennifer, Charlotte, army-barmy David and Alexander the arty conchie - are, of course, Helena, Hermione, Demetrius and Lysander.
Jack (Jordan Metcalfe), the bewitching, disturbingly malevolent woodland sprite, is Puck with a bit of the Artful Dodger thrown in; Sylvia (Gloria Onitiri) is the exotic fairy queen Titania and Nick Cheek (geddit?) the rather underwritten butcher, is Bottom, one of the vicar's lowkey company of yokels putting on a show about St George and the Dragon for the toff's party.
Hart's often witty tale is written in a slightly bizarre Mummerset: strangers are 'stranglings', singing is 'mouth-music'. The syntax, too, is addled ('been a twist here, me seems..') but it all works well with Goodall's moody, spell-binding score.
There is a delightfully cuckoo chorus of birdcalls, a charming melody in 'Sad, Sad Lady' and a wonderfully comic duet which Gilbert and Sullivan would have been proud of. A baffled Jennifer insists: 'I'm pedantic, not romantic, my bottom is gigantic...I'm obsessive I'm depressive and impossibly possessive.' While Alexander, a splendidly nerdy Ben Barnes, then David (Dominic Tighe has terrific presence, full of military bluster) protest their love.
The standards of the production and the performances on stage and in the orchestra are first-rate. This is midsummer merriment to bring a glow to bleak mid-winter. Enchanting.
Michael Coveney reviews THE DREAMING in The Daily Mail, December 22nd 2001:
'Skilful, enchanting new musical Dream'
The National Youth Music Theatre is playing a short season in the Linbury, the smaller venue at the Royal Opera House, and has come up with a little gem.
The new musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream has a score by Howard Goodall - who writes the music for all Rowan Atkinson's comedies - and book and lyrics by Charles Hart, who collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love. A few years ago they did a beguiling version of She Stoops to Conquer called The Kissing-Dance.
The Dream is a much more obvious source for musical theatre, and by setting the action in darkest Somerset on the eve of World War I, they can mix fairy legend with Edwardian pomp and parlour song. A pageant of St George celebrates the multiple weddings. Sudden, misdirected love is expressed in the gorgeous song 'Jennifer'. Bottom - here called Nick Cheek - is transformed into a goat, not a donkey. And the third act quarrel scene is a brilliantly sustained exercise in midsummer musical madness.
Rupert Christiansen reviews The Dreaming at the Linbury Studio of the Royal Opera House: The Daily Telegraph
FOR its 25th anniversary season, Jeremy James Taylor's admirable National Youth Music Theatre has commissioned Howard Goodall - composer of the immortal Black Adder theme tune as well as several more substantial theatrical pieces - and Phantom of the Opera's lyricist Charles Hart for a re-writing of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The result will reassure those who believe that today's national youth is only happy when vomiting at 3am outside drug-crazed gangsta clubs.
The show is set in 1915, as the squire of a Somerset village prepares for his 21st birthday and four of his friends run into fairy trouble when they bunk off into the forest to elope. Meanwhile, a band of local tradesmen is preparing a pageant for the village hall. As an idea, it's good enough, yet, taken as an innocent romantic comedy of errors, it has much charm, with Goodall's score providing a fluent series of tuneful numbers, scored for a small band sugared with recorder, crumhorn and a large percussion section. I am also grateful to be reminded - via the Peter Quince figure - of a saw I haven't heard since I was clothed in short grey trousers: "What is the largest room in the world?" "Room for improvement!" The exciting element of the evening is the quality of the performers. NYMT has nurtured several big names over the years - Jude Law and Jamie Bell among them - but this show was primarily a brilliant team effort. I was particularly impressed by the cast's efforts to hold a tune, project words clearly and sing in a proper mix of chest and head voice, rather than surrendering to the ghastly belting and nasal crooning that now prevails in the over-amplified West End. No estuary accents or glottal stops either, though "dew" became "jew" rather too often. Invidious as it is to single out individuals, I can't end without special congratulation to Jordan Metcalfe for his exuberant Puck and Sian Williams for her splendidly bossy Hermia.
Review by Paul Taylor 20 December 2001: The Independent
"The play's the thing/The Bard once said./But sad to say,/The Bard is dead," sings the vicar, who is the Peter Quince figure in this new musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Well, the Bard's spirit is alive and well in this National Youth Music Theatre show, which boasts music by Howard Goodall and book and lyrics by Charles Hart.
Watching this, you marvel more than ever at the miraculous skill with which, in the original, the various glittering balls are kept in the air – a seemingly effortless feat of juggling the drama's disparate worlds.
Goodall has always excelled at tuneful choral music. It's the anthemic rather than the quirkily individualistic that brings out the best in him. Some of the most inspiring moments in this piece occur when all the various groups – from the tatterdemalion, sexually-segregated troupes of woodlanders to the plus-foured search party that enters the magic forest – are brought on stage together, their conflicting themes interwoven into roof-raising song. Presided over by Jordan Metcalfe's sweet-voiced changeling Jack, Jeremy James Taylor's cast acquit themselves with admirable conviction. Dominic Tighe as Alexander, a weed likeably emboldened by love, and Sian Williams as a plumply disconsolate Jennifer, have the most presence and also, in "Jennifer, Jennifer", get to deliver one of the finest numbers.
Mark Shenton reviews the year's musicals in WHAT'S ON STAGE:
At the year's end, THE DREAMING, a musical adaptation of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by composer Howard Goodall and lyricist Charles Hart, proved to be the year's best new British musical by a mile at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio.
EXETER production (August 2001):
"Midsummer and full moon madness hit the stage at the Northcott Theatre last week when the National Youth Music Theatre opened with its world premiere of The Dreaming. The Dreaming takes a fresh look at Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night's Dream, but since it is set in 1914 it is probably best to forget all about the original play and just view it as a completely fresh piece of theatre.
.. The cast were terrific, but the star of the show must surely have been the mischievous Jack, the blacksmith's son who gets caught up in the boy woodlanders' tricks and capers. The band of villagers were a hoot and their antics gave rise to many a laugh including Saint George's slaying of the dragon. Personally, I thought this was a terrific performance - the youngsters sang well and put their all in making this a thoroughly enjoyable performance." Mary Evans, Exmouth Journal
Young cast gives new life to old tale.
This hugely talented cast of young performers produces a night of fascinating theatre where success is built on impressive and generous ensemble work. Charles Hart's reworking of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has a lyrical quality, charm and poignancy. The music, stamped with Howard Goodall's unmistakable hallmark, articulates as eloquently as the lyrics. Tightly written and directed, it is stunningly and professionally performed by this 70 strong youth company.
Set in 1914, it is a story celebrating Midsummer Eve in a small Westcountry village. On this special night, unseen eyes hidden deep in the Fern Woods watch those who pass through this magical place. There are young people celebrating a coming of age, villagers rehearsing a midsummer mummers play, and Jack (Jordan Metcalfe), impish boy of the woods, who links the twin worlds. Celebrating the Englishness of this rural idyll, tunes intermingle, movements choreographed in a patchwork that weaves this dream world into visual interpretation. Yet there is also a subtle nightmarish edge and some moments of superb comedy.
'Midsummer Madness', a hilarious quartet of confusions is cleverly performed by the mismatched young lovers David (Dominic Tighe), Alexander (Ben Barnes), Jennifer (Sian Williams) and Charlotte (Valentina Pappalardo)." Anne Broom, Arts Review
Bewitched by a dream of a night.
This is not so much Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream with music as a magical transformation of the story. The supernatural elements dominate, and revolve around the power tussle between the Titania and Oberon figures, here renamed Sylvia and Angel. Their actions influence the lovers, whose pangs of young love are very real, and the rude mechanicals insofar as the rehearsals for their mummers' play are disrupted by the transmogrification of Nick (Bottom) into a goat.
The whole tale is framed by Jack, a waif who becomes both the foundling boy over whom the royal fairies quarrel and the Puck figure…. It's a triumph all the way, … Howard Goodall's terrific score, realised by a small but talented orchestra, ranges from haunting ballads to Gilbert and Sullivan jollity (especially in the brilliant quartet for the lovers) and Charles Hart's lyrics soar above 'moon and June' banality. … There's not a weak link among the principals, whose singing is uniformly fine, and there are clearly one or two stars in the making. And the ensemble playing of the large cast, swollen by the troupes of boy and girl Woodlanders attending Sylvia and Angel, is consistently impressive. For some of the characters The Dreaming is at times more a nightmare, but for the audience it is totally bewitching." Bill Stone, Evening Herald
"The future of British musical theatre is safe. On the evidence of this show, the new generation of performers have all the pizzazz, talent and sheer exuberance needed to keep us happily entertained. What's more, the brand new musical is a treat too….. The audience came out whistling the tunes and smiling - a sure sign of success. It's an updated version of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, set in a Westcountry village in 1914. It's the eve of the Great War but this is a carefree time in a world on the edge of change.
It's written by Charles Hart, of Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love fame, with music by Howard Goodall, the BAFTA-winning composer whose credits include the Blackadder and Vicar of Dibley themes. And the quality shines through in this rich show. There are songs that you could happily listen to again and again such as the delightful Jennifer and the title song. And then there are the performances to revel in. There's an extraordinarily assured Jordan Metcalfe as the mysterious Jack, who at 14 is one of the younger performers. Sian Williams as Jennifer, one of the four young lovers in the woods, is another who can both act and sing. The directors, Jeremy James Taylor and Russel Labey, have brought something special out of all the 50 young people involved, and it would be easy to go on and on praising. This is the third NYMT show I've seen, and the best." David Marston, Express & Echo
The Streets of Edinburgh 2002; photo Ian Soutar
Songs: Thursday's Children, Dream-nights, Cuckoo-Song, Heart of the Wood, Love-in-Idleness, Jennifer, Night & Silence, The Legend of St George, The Banner of St George, Midsummer Madness, Under the Hill, The Rising of the Sun, Catch me if you can, Dreaming (The Dreaming).
Characters: Julian (Lord) Melstock, Henrietta (Lady) Melstock, Charlotte, Alexander, David, Jennifer (the 4 lovers), Angel (leader of the boy-woodlanders), Sylvia (leader of the girl-woodlanders), Jack (the blacksmith's boy), Rev Herbert Plum, Nick Cheek, Walter Grubb, Seth Wilmot, Jess Dunn, Bob Fry, Matthews, Bowles, boy and girl woodlanders.
[ For a perusal score of The Dreaming click here ]
photo: Ian Soutar
Dreaming miscellany
'Gordon Winter’s intriguing book, A Country Camera 1844-1914, which was the source of much inspiration for the look of this production, finishes with the most moving photograph of a huge, horse-drawn cart carrying 16 or so young men. The caption reads, ‘The first men leaving Calne, Wiltshire, for the forces in August 1914’. These might have been the young men of Midsomer Magna (or any small West Country community where The Dreaming is set), photographed a few weeks after the midsummer celebrations of June 1914.
The caption goes on to state: ‘They sat here for a minute or two in the sunshine to have their photograph taken; not much troubled about the future, knowing that what they were going to do was right, and anyway that it had to be done. We do not know how many of them - perhaps one should say how few of them - came back. We know only too well that the cream of their generation of countrymen died before they had time to reproduce themselves and to hand on their qualities to another age. But for those who did return, rural England had changed beyond recognition, and was never to be the same again.
The Dreaming was about to end.'
Jeremy James Taylor
“Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word - the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again”
Philip Larkin MCMXIV
The Dreaming takes us back to a period when a belief in spiritualism was at its height. In 1917, two Yorkshire girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths even managed to fool Sir Arthur Conan Doyle creator of super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, into believing they had photographed fairies at the bottom of their garden.
Frances explained, "The first time I ever saw anything was when a willow leaf started shaking violently, even though there was no wind, I saw a small man standing on a branch, with the stem of the leaf in his hand, which he seemed to be shaking at something. He was dressed all in green..... They were real fairies. Some had wings and some not…. They were once sitting in a patch of sunlight on a low bank…. It all seemed so peaceful and friendly…. Sometimes they came up, only inches away, but I never wanted to join in their lives."
The hoax wasn’t explained until 1982, when the pair finally admitted to photographing paper cut-outs supported by hat-pins. The Cottingley Fairies photographs fetched £6,000 at auction earlier this year, surely an indication that people still wish to believe in them.
The Dreaming takes a fresh musical look at Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, preserving the legacy of directors like Peter Brook, who persisted in exploring and adapting the protean structure of the play.
"I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.”
Edward Thomas, Lights Out
“The return to the green chaos, the deep forest and refuge of the unconscious is a nightly phenomenon, and one that psychiatrists - and torturers - tell us is essential to the human mind.”
John Fowles, The Tree
“The darkness quakes with blood;
Form its pulse the dark eyes of the hunter glow
Green as their forest, fading images
Of the dream in the firelight: shudder of the coals
In their short Hell, vined skeleton
Of the charcoal-burner dozing in the snow.”
Randall Jarrall, The Märchen
“The vigil of St John comes on 23 June - his day is 24 June. On the evening of the 23rd, fires were lit, more for their smoke than for sparkling, crackling flames. The smoke was purifying. It strengthened the magic of plants already magical, it strengthened against the powers of evil all those who jumped across the fire. The herbs of St John were picked on the morning of 23rd before sunrise, when they were still wet with dew - itself a magical and strengthening substance”
Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora
“The legend of St George and the Dragon is imply an expression of the triumph of the Christian hero over evil, which St John the Divine beheld under the image of a dragon.
Brewer, Myth and Legend
“It is still believed in Ireland that a ‘fiery bolt and dragon’ will, on a St John’s Eve that falls on a Friday, pass through the land…. Destroying in its path three-fourths of the people.”
Elenor Hull, Folklore of the British Isles
“They say that many years ago there was a wondrous flower… which was as rare as it was marvellous. It bloomed only on St John’s Night (some say under a fern) between the hours of eleven and twelve; but when the last stroke of twelve was struck, the flower vanished away… and no man every yet plucked it unless he had been set apart by Providence for the task. To him who was lucky enough to cull it, the flower revealed all the treasures of the earth….”
Lady Frazer, Leaves from the Golden Bough
Every village has its Jack, but no village every had quite so fine a Jack as ours:-
So picturesque,
Versatile,
Irresponsible,
Powerful,
Hedonistic,
And loveable a Jack as ours.
How Jack lived none knew, for he rarely did any work.True, he set night-lines for eels, and invariably caught one,Often two, Sometimes three;While very occasionally he had a day’s harvesting or haymaking. And yet he always found enough money for tobacco, With a little left over for beer, though he was no soaker”.
EV Lucas, Jack
“…..landscapes where the leaves have an animal fleshiness, and old pig-snouted Darkness grunts and roots in the hovels. There, the country gentlemen are rooted in the mould; and they know that beyond the sensual aspect of the sky (that harsh and goatish tent) something hides - but they have forgotten what it is.”
Essay by Edith Sitwell
“Many ancient sites were given the Devil’s name. That is because the Devil, with his… goat’s horns is, more often than not, just Pan, the King of the Faeries. Pan, like witchery, got a very bad press for being keen on fertility and the sacredness of the Earth.”
Evelyn Francis, Avebury
“…..the solar cult, of which Stonehenge and Avebury are the outstanding monuments, left also long-lasting memorials in human behaviour. On Midsummer Eve, large bonfires were constructed, and at midnight they were lit. It is said that not many centuries ago a dozen could be seen at a time, blazing in the villages, and round them were figures moving in rhythm, young men and garlanded girls, dancing and tossing violets and verbena into the flames…. Enough to say that this dying Festival of Fire persisted even into the last century, and still betrayed in its keeping….the worship of the sun…in many lands there were men and women bathing themselves and washing in the dew at the instant of sunrise…even the ‘Cloth’ had been known to foot it in honour of the sun…At Laughton in Yorkshire the Midsummer Fair was held in the churchyard. The church stands high on a hill, and the patron saint is St John. It even became accepted that the fires were kindled in his honour.”
Laurence Whistler, The English Festivals
In that open field If you do not come too close,
If you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde.
Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth Nourishing the corn.
Keeping time, Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts.
Feet rising and falling. Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
TS Eliot, 'East Coker', from Four Quartets
“The lonelier the place, the better it pleased me: its silence, its aura, its peculiar confirmation, its enclosedness. I had a dream of some endless combe, I suppose almost an animal dream, an otter-dream, of endless hanging beechwoods and hazel coppices and leated meadows, houseless and manless…”
John Fowles, The Tree
“And the countryside not caring:
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat’s restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines.”
Philip Larkin, MCMXIV
What have I done for you, England, my England?
What is there I would not do England, my own?
With your glorious eyes austere,
As the Lord were walking near,
Whispering terrible things and dear
As the Song in your bugles blown, England-
Round the world on your bugles blown!
Ever the faith endures, England, my England:-
‘Take and break us: we are yours, England, my own!
Life is good, and joy runs high
Between English earth and sky:
Death is death; but we shall die
To the Song on our bugles blown,
England - To the stars on your bugles blown!”
William Ernest Henley, For England’s Sake; Verses and Songs in Time of War (1891)
“Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”
AE Houseman, A Shropshire Lad
“…And while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: ‘We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all…We are nothing: less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been…”
Charles Lamb, Dream Children, a Reverie
Alice Liddell as a beggar-girl, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
She still haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear, Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream -
Lingering in the golden gleam -
Life, what is it but a dream?
Epilogue to Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll
This must be the wood," she said thoughtfully to herself, "where things have no names. I wonder what'll become of my name when I go in? I shouldn't like to lose it at all ..."
Looking-glass Insects, Lewis Carroll
“Across the world people are flocking to ancient temples. Why? Perhaps it is because they do something to us… Maybe one day a new science will begin and maybe then we will better understand the ancients.”
Evelyn Francis, Avebury
“There are freedoms in woods that our ancestors perhaps realised more fully than we do.”
John Fowles, The Tree
“Our life is no dream, but it should be and will perhaps become one.”
Novalis
Some notes & links on Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare' synopsis
There was a law in the city of Athens which gave to its citizens the power of compelling their daughters to marry whomsoever they pleased; for upon a daughter's refusing to marry the man her father had chosen to be her husband, the father was empowered by this law to cause her to be put to death; but as fathers do not often desire the death of their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little refractory, this law was seldom or never put in execution, though perhaps the young ladies of that city were not unfrequently threatened by their parents with the terrors of it.
There was one instance, however, of an old man, whose name was Egeus, who actually did come before Theseus (at that time the reigning duke of Athens), to complain that his daughter Hermia, whom he had commanded to marry Demetrius, a young man of a noble Athenian family, refused to obey him, because she loved another young Athenian, named Lysander. Egeus demanded justice of Theseus, and desired that this cruel law might be put in force against his daughter. Hermia pleaded in excuse for her disobedience, that Demetrius had formerly professed love for her dear friend Helena, and that Helena loved Demetrius to distraction; but this honourable reason, which Hermia gave for not obeying her father's command, moved not the stem Egeus.
Theseus, though a great and merciful prince, had no power to alter the laws of his country; therefore he could only give Hermia four days to consider of it: and at the end of that time, if she still refused to marry Demetrius, she was to be put to death. When Hermia was dismissed from the presence of the duke, she went to her lover Lysander, and told him the peril she was in, and that she must either give him up and marry Demetrius, or lose her life in four days. Lysander was in great affliction at hearing these evil tidings; but recollecting that he had an aunt who lived at some distance from Athens, and that at the place where she lived the cruel law could not be put in force against Hermia (this law not extending beyond the boundaries of the city), he proposed to Hermia that she should steal out of her father's house that night, and go with him to his aunt's house, where he would marry her.
'I will meet you,' said Lysander, 'in the wood a few miles without the city; in that delightful wood where we have so often walked with Helena in the pleasant month of May.'
To this proposal Hermia joyfully agreed; and she told no one of her intended flight but her friend Helena. Helena (as maidens will do foolish things for love) very ungenerously resolved to go and tell this to Demetrius, though she could hope no benefit from betraying her friend's secret, but the poor pleasure of following her faithless lover to the wood; for she well knew that Demetrius would go thither in pursuit of Hermia. The wood in which Lysander and Hermia proposed to meet was the favourite haunt of those little beings known by the name of Fairies. Oberon the king, and Titania the queen of the fairies, with all their tiny train of followers, in this wood held their midnight revels.
Between this little king and queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement; they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarrelling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide themselves for fear. The cause of this unhappy disagreement was Titania's refusing to give Oberon a little changeling boy, whose mother had been Titania's friend; and upon her death the fairy queen stole the child from its nurse, and brought him up in the woods. The night on which the lovers were to meet in this wood, as Titania was walking with some of her maids of honour, she met Oberon attended by his train of fairy courtiers. 'Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,' said the fairy king.
The queen replied: 'What, jealous Oberon, is it you? Fairies, skip hence; I have foresworn his company.' 'Tarry, rash fairy,' said Oberon; 'am not I thy lord? Why does Titania cross her Oberon? Give me your little changeling boy to be my page.' 'Set your heart at rest,' answered the queen; 'your whole fairy kingdom buys not the boy of me.' She then left her lord in great anger. 'Well, go your way,' said Oberon: 'before the morning dawns I will torment you for this injury.' Oberon then sent for Puck, his chief favourite and privy counsellor.
Puck (or as he was sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighbouring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the chum, in vain the dairymaid would labour to change her cream into butter: nor had the village swains any better success; whenever Puck chose to play his freaks in the brewing copper, the ale was sure to be spoiled. When a few good neighbours were met to drink some comfortable ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going to drink he would bob against her lips, and spill the ale over her withered chin; and presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating herself to tell her neighbours a sad and melancholy story, Puck would slip her threelegged stool from under her, and down toppled the poor old woman, and then the old gossips would hold their sides and laugh at her, and swear they never wasted a merrier hour.
'Come hither, Puck,' said Oberon to this little merry wanderer of the night; 'fetch me the flower which maids call Love in Idleness;
the juice of that little purple flower laid on the eyelids of those who sleep, will make them, when they awake, dote on the first thing they see.
Some of the juice of that flower I will drop on the eyelids of my Titania when she is asleep;
and the first thing she looks upon when she opens her eyes she will fall in love with, even though it be a lion or a bear, a meddling monkey, or a busy ape;
and before I will take this charm from off her sight, which I can do with another charm I know of, I will make her give me that boy to be my page.'
Puck, who loved mischief to his heart, was highly diverted with this intended frolic of his master, and ran to seek the flower; and while Oberon was waiting the return of Puck, he observed Demetrius and Helena enter the wood: he overheard Demetrius reproaching Helena for following him, and after many unkind words on his part, and gentle expostulations from Helena, reminding him of his former love and professions of true faith to her, he left her (as he said) to the mercy of the wild beasts, and she ran after him as swiftly as she could.
The fairy king, who was always friendly to true lovers, felt great compassion for Helena; and perhaps, as Lysander said they used to walk by moonlight in this pleasant wood, Oberon might have seen Helena in those happy times when she was beloved by Demetrius. However, that might be, when Puck returned with the little purple flower,
Oberon said to his favourite: 'Take a part of this flower; there has been a sweet Athenian lady here, who is in love with a disdainful youth; if you find him sleeping, drop some of the love-juice in his eyes, but contrive to do it when she is near him, that the first thing he sees when he awakes may be this despised lady. You will know the man by the Athenian garments which he wears.'
Puck promised to manage this matter very dexterously: and then Oberon went, unperceived by Titania, to her bower, where she was preparing to go to rest. Her fairy bower was a bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets, under a canopy of wood-bine, musk-roses, and eglantine.
There Titania always slept some part of the night; her coverlet the enamelled skin of a snake, which, though a small mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy in. He found Titania giving orders to her fairies, how they were to employ themselves while she slept.
'Some of you,' said her majesty, 'must kill cankers in the muskrose buds, and some wage war with the bats for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, come not near me: but first sing me to sleep.'
Then they began to sing this song:
'You spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms do no wrong, Come not near our Fairy Queen.
Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby, Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby; Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh;
So good night with lullaby.'
When the fairies had sung their queen asleep with this pretty lullaby, they left her to perform the important services she had enjoined them. Oberon then softly drew near his Titania, and dropped some of the lovejuice on her eyelids, saying: 'What thou seest when thou dost wake, Do it for thy true-love take.' But to return to Hermia, who made her escape out of her father's house that night, to avoid the death she was doomed to for refusing to marry Demetrius.
When she entered the wood, she found her dear Lysander waiting for her, to conduct her to his aunt's house; but before they had passed half through the wood, Hermia was so much fatigued, that Lysander, who was very careful of this dear lady, who had proved her affection for him even by hazarding her life for his sake, persuaded her to rest till morning on a bank of soft moss, and lying down himself on the ground at some little distance, they soon fell fast asleep.
Here they were found by Puck, who, seeing a handsome young man asleep, and perceiving that his clothes were made in the Athenian fashion, and that a pretty lady was sleeping near him, concluded that this must be the Athenian maid and her disdainful lover whom Oberon had sent him to seek; and he naturally enough conjectured that, as they were alone together, she must be the first thing he would see when he awoke; so, without more ado, he proceeded to pour some of the juice of the little purple flower into his eyes.
But it so fell out, that Helena came that way, and, instead of Hermia, was the first object Lysander beheld when he opened his eyes; and strange to relate, so powerful was the love-charm, all his love for Hermia vanished away, and Lysander fell in love with Helena. Had he first seen Hermia when he awoke, the blunder Puck committed would have been of no consequence, for he could not love that faithful lady too well; but for poor Lysander to be forced by a fairy love-charm to forget his own true Hermia, and to run after another lady, and leave Hermia asleep quite alone in a wood at midnight, was a sad chance indeed.
Thus this misfortune happened. Helena, as has been before related, endeavoured to keep pace with Demetrius when he ran away so rudely from her; but she could not continue this unequal race long, men being always better runners in a long race than ladies. Helena soon lost sight of Demetrius; and as she was wandering about, dejected and forlorn, she arrived at the place where Lysander was sleeping.
'Ah!' said she, 'this is Lysander lying on the ground: is he dead or asleep?' Then, gently touching him, she said: 'Good sir, if you are alive, awake.'
Upon this Lysander opened his eyes, and (the love-charm beginning to work) immediately addressed her in terms of extravagant love and admiration; telling her she as much excelled Hermia in beauty as a dove does a raven, and that he would run through fire for her sweet sake; and many more such lover-like speeches. Helena, knowing Lysander was her friend Hermia's lover, and that he was solemnly engaged to marry her, was in the utmost rage when she heard herself addressed in this manner; for she thought (as well she might) that Lysander was making a jest of her.
'Oh!' said she, 'why was I born to be mocked and scorned by every one? Is it not enough, is it not enough, young man, that I can never get a sweet look or a kind word from Demetrius; but you, sir, must pretend in this disdainful manner to court me? I thought, Lysander, you were a lord of more true gentleness.'
Saying these words in great anger, she ran away; and Lysander followed her, quite forgetful of his own Hermia, who was still asleep. When Hermia awoke, she was in a sad fright at finding herself alone. She wandered about the wood, not knowing what was become of Lysander, or which way to go to seek for him.
In the meantime Demetrius, not being able to find Hermia and his rival Lysander, and fatigued with his fruitless search, was observed by Oberon fast asleep. Oberon had learnt by some questions he had asked of Puck, that he had applied the love-charm to the wrong person's eyes; and now having found the person first intended, he touched the eyelids of the sleeping Demetrius with the love-juice, and he instantly awoke; and the first thing he saw being Helena, he, as Lysander had done before, began to address love-speeches to her; and just at that moment Lysander, followed by Hermia (for through Puck's unlucky mistake it was now become Hermia's turn to run after her lover) made his appearance; and then Lysander and Demetrius, both speaking together, made love to Helena, they being each one under the influence of the same potent charm.
The astonished Helena thought that Demetrius, Lysander, and her once dear friend Hermia, were all in a plot together to make a jest of her. Hermia was as much surprised as Helena; she knew not why Lysander and Demetrius, who both before loved her, were now become the lovers of Helena; and to Hermia the matter seemed to be no jest.
The ladies, who before had always been the dearest of friends, now fell to high words together.
'Unkind Hermia,' said Helena, 'it is you have set Lysander on to vex me with mock praises; and your other lover Demetrius, who used almost to spurn me with his foot, have you not bid him call me Goddess, Nymph, rare, precious, and celestial? He would not speak thus to me, whom he hates, if you did not set him on to make a jest of me. Unkind Hermia, to join with men in scorning your poor friend. Have you forgot our school-day friendship?
How often, Hermia, have we two, sitting on one cushion, both singing one song, with our needles working the same flower, both on the same sampler wrought; growing up together in fashion of a double cherry, scarcely seeming parted! Hermia, it is not friendly in you, it is not maidenly to join with men in scorning your poor friend.' 'I am amazed at your passionate words,' said Hermia: 'I scorn you not; it seems you scorn me.' 'Ay, do,' returned Helena, 'persevere, counterfeit serious looks, and make mouths at me when I turn my back; then wink at each other, and hold the sweet jest up. If you had any pity, grace, or manners, you would not use me thus.'
While Helena and Hermia were speaking these angry words to each other, Demetrius and Lysander left them, to fight together in the wood for the love of Helena. When they found the gentlemen had left them, they departed, and once more wandered weary in the wood in search of their lovers.
As soon as they were gone, the fairy king, who with little Puck had been listening to their quarrels, said to him: 'This is your negligence, Puck; or did you do this wilfully?' 'Believe me, king of shadows,' answered Puck, 'it was a mistake; did not you tell me I should know the man by his Athenian garments? However, I am not sorry this has happened, for I think their jangling makes excellent sport.'
'You heard,' said Oberon, 'that Demetrius and Lysander are gone to seek a convenient place to fight in. I command you to overhang the night with a thick fog, and lead these quarrelsome lovers so astray in the dark, that they shall not be able to find each other. Counterfeit each of their voices to the other, and with bitter taunts provoke them to follow you, while they think it is their rival's tongue they hear. See you do this, till they are so weary they can go no farther; and when you find they are asleep, drop the juice of this other flower into Lysander's eyes, and when he awakes he will forget his new love for Helena, and return to his old passion for Hermia; and then the two fair ladies may each one be happy with the man she loves, and they will think all that has passed a vexatious dream. About this quickly, Puck, and I will go and see what sweet love my Titania has found.'
Titania was still sleeping, and Oberon seeing a clown near her, who had lost his way in the wood, and was likewise asleep: 'This fellow,' said he, 'shall be my Titania's true love'; and clapping an ass's head over the clown's, it seemed to fit him as well as if it had grown upon his own shoulders.
Though Oberon fixed the ass's head on very gently, it awakened him, and rising up, unconscious of what Oberon had done to him, he went towards the bower where the fairy queen slept. 'Ah! what angel is that I see?' said Titania, opening her eyes, and the juice of the little purple flower beginning to take effect: 'are you as wise as you are beautiful?'
'Why, mistress,' said the foolish clown, 'if I have wit enough to find the way out of this wood, I have enough to serve my turn.' 'Out of the wood do not desire to go,' said the enamoured queen. 'I am a spirit of no common rate. I love you. Go with me, and I will give you fairies to attend upon you.'
She then called four of her fairies: their names were Pease-blossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed. 'Attend,' said the queen, 'upon this sweet gentleman; hop in his walks, and gambol in his sight; feed him with grapes and apricots, and steal for him the honeybags from the bees. Come, sit with me,' said she to the clown, 'and let me play with your amiable hairy cheeks, my beautiful ass! and kiss your fair large ears, my gentle joy!'
'Where is Pease-blossom?' said the ass-headed clown, not much regarding the fairy queen's courtship, but very proud of his new attendants. 'Here, sir,' said little Pease-blossom. 'Scratch my head,' said the clown. 'Where is Cobweb?' 'Here, sir,' said Cobweb. 'Good Mr Cobweb,' said the foolish clown, 'kill me the red humble bee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with a honey-bag. Where is Mustard-seed?'
'Here, sir,' said Mustard-seed: 'what is your will?' 'Nothing,' said the clown, 'good Mr Mustard-seed, but to help Mr Pease-blossom to scratch; I must go to a barber's, Mr Mustard-seed, for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face.' 'My sweet love,' said the queen, 'what will you have to eat? I have a venturous fairy shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and fetch you some new nuts.' 'I had rather have a handful of dried pease,' said the clown, who with his ass's head had got an ass's appetite.
'But, I pray, let none of your people disturb me, for I have a mind to sleep.' 'Sleep, then,' said the queen, 'and I will wind you in my arms. 0 how I love you! how I dote upon you!' When the fairy king saw the clown sleeping in the arms of his queen, he advanced within her sight, and reproached her with having lavished her favours upon an ass. This she could not deny, as the clown was then sleeping within her arms, with his ass's head crowned by her with flowers. When Oberon had teased her for some time, he again demanded the changeling boy; which she, ashamed of being discovered by her lord with her new favourite, did not dare to refuse him.
Oberon, having thus obtained the little boy he had so long wished for to be his page, took pity on the disgraceful situation into which, by his merry contrivance, he had brought his Titania and threw some of the juice of the other flower into her eyes; and the fairy queen immediately recovered her senses, and wondered at her late dotage, saying how she now loathed the sight of the strange monster. Oberon likewise took the ass's head from off the clown, and left him to finish his nap with his own fool's head upon his shoulders.
Oberon and his Titania being now perfectly reconciled, he related to her the history of the lovers, and their midnight quarrels; and she agreed to go with him and see the end of their adventures. The fairy king and queen found the lovers and their fair ladies, at no great distance from each other, sleeping on a grass-plot; for Puck, to make amends for his former mistake, had contrived with the utmost diligence to bring them all to the same spot, unknown to each other: and he had carefully removed the charm from off the eyes of Lysander with the antidote the fairy king gave to him.
Hermia first awoke, and finding her lost Lysander asleep so near her, was looking at him and wondering at his strange inconstancy. Lysander presently opening his eyes, and seeing his dear Hermia, recovered his reason which the fairy charm had before clouded, and with his reason, his love for Hermia; and they began to talk over the adventures of the night, doubting if these things had really happened, or if they had both been dreaming the same bewildering dream.
Helena and Demetrius were by this time awake; and a sweet sleep having quieted Helena's disturbed and angry spirits, she listened with delight to the professions of love which Demetrius still made to her, and which, to her surprise as well as pleasure, she began to perceive were sincere.
These fair night-wandering ladies, now no longer rivals, became once more true friends; all the unkind words which had passed were forgiven, and they calmly consulted together what was best to be done in their present situation. It was soon agreed that, as Demetrius had given up his pretensions to Hermia, he should endeavour to prevail upon her father to revoke the cruel sentence of death which had been passed against her.
Demetrius was preparing to return to Athens for this friendly purpose, when they were surprised with the sight of Egeus, Hermia's father, who came to the wood in pursuit of his runaway daughter. When Egeus understood that Demetrius would not now marry his daughter, he no longer opposed her marriage with Lysander, but gave his consent that they should be wedded on the fourth day from that time, being the same day on which Hermia had been condemned to lose her life; and on that same day Helena joyfully agreed to marry her beloved and now faithful Demetrius.
The fairy king and queen, who were invisible spectators of this reconciliation, and now saw the happy ending of the lovers' history, brought about through the good offices of Oberon, received so much pleasure, that these kind spirits resolved to celebrate the approaching nuptials with sports and revels throughout their fairy kingdom. And now, if any are offended with this story of fairies and their pranks, as judging it incredible and strange, they have only to think that they have been asleep and dreaming, and that all these adventures were visions which they saw in their sleep: and I hope none of my readers will be so unreasonable as to be offended with a pretty harmless Midsummer Night's Dream.
"This day my oaths of drinking wine and going to plays are out, and so I do resolve to take a liberty to-day, and then to fall to them again. To the King's Theatre, where we saw "Midsummer's Night's Dream," which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure"
Samuel Pepys, Diary, Sept. 29, 1662
Some famous quotes from the play:
For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. . Act i. Sc. 1.
O, hell! to choose love by another’s eyes. Act i. Sc. 1.
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, “Behold!” The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion. Act i. Sc. 1.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Act i. Sc.1
And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free. Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness. Act ii. Sc. 1.
I ’ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes. Act ii. Sc. 1.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine. Act ii. Sc. 1.
So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition. . Act iii/sc 2
I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Act iv. Sc. 1.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, 8 man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. . Act iv. Sc. 1.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear! Act v. Sc. 1.
Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night's Dream,
by Gerard Charles, BalletMet Columbus
With its central theme of marriages and the inclusion of a royal wedding, it is thought that Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream in celebration of a particular wedding. Exactly whose wedding is the matter of scholarly debate, as is the exact date of the play's writing and first performance. It is believed to come from Shakespeare's lyric period of 1594-1596, due to the writing style and also to references in the play to events of that time. Most of Shakespeare's plays are a reworking of an older play or a dramatization of a specific story already in print. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the few Shakespearean plays (others would be Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest) that has no single identifiable source and is indeed a skillful interplay of four stories in one. However, some of the characters are traceable to a variety of works that would have been a part of Shakespeare's general reading: for example, Chaucer and Plutarch for Theseus, Huon of Bordeaux for Oberon, and common legends of man being turned into beast, as is Bottom. Specifically there is an example of an Ass's head being placed on Midas in Theasaurus Romanae et Britannicae.
In all probability Shakespeare, informed by having been well read, wrote this as an original play. It was probably written just after Romeo and Juliet as there are many parallels between the two plays. Many have viewed the play as a mirror of the life in London at the time of writing: a bustling sophisticated metropolis, full of many different characters but tempered by the folk customs of the majority. There are many contrasting elements explored in the play: reality and illusion, waking and dreaming, true and false love, change and transformation. Only three seasons were recognized in Shakespeare's day, autumn, winter and summer that began in March. Thus the play, taking place on the eve of May Day (May 1), can be explained as being "midsummer." It was a time of year when spirits of the woods were thought to be out. Puck is seen as the gateway between the real world and the fairies.
Music was used extensively in the fairy scenes since their words are in free forms, which are suitable for singing. The play ends with a dance, in the typical Elizabethan finale. A Midsummer Night's Dream was first published in 1600 in a Quarto edition. The introduction to the Quarto states "It hath been sundry times publikey acted." However, there are scant records of the play being performed much - save for January 1, 1604 for James I - before the closing of the theaters by the Puritans in 1642. When theaters re-opened under Charles II there was a performance of The Merry Conceited Humors of Bottom the Weaver in 1662, attested by Samuel Pepys in his diary. He did not care much for the play but found there to be "some good dancing and some handsome women." It was probably quite a free adaptation of Shakespeare's play. In 1692 Thomas Betterton produced an operatic version The Fairy Queen with music by Henry Purcell. The 18th Century was not generally kind to Shakespeare. David Garrick, who did much to restore Shakespeare's plays, mounted A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1755 as a musical offering called The Fairies. In 1840 Madame Lucia Vestris restored much of Shakespeare's text and introduced to London Mendelssohn's full score for the play.
The overture had been written for an 1827 German production and had been heard in London in 1833. Madame Vestris cast herself as Oberon and another woman as Puck. The Vestris version served as the basis of the play until 1914 when Harley Granville-Barker presented an uncut version at the Savoy Theatre, London. He also used men to play the roles of Puck and Oberon and dispensed with Mendelssohn's music in favor of English folk tunes. In other incarnations A Midsummer Night's Dream saw the light of day in 1937 when Tyrone Guthrie produced in a balletic version of the play with dancer Robert Helpman as Oberon and Vivien Leigh as Titania. Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman produced Swingin' the Dream in 1939 with a predominantly black cast. The setting was New Orleans in the late 19th century, and Armstrong played Bottom. Despite a talented group it played for only 13 performances. In 1960 Benjamin Britten composed an operatic version first performed at Aldeburgh, June 11. It used about half of Shakespeare's text.
Versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream as a Ballet
by Gerard Charles, BalletMet Columbus
Shakespeare's play has been transformed into a ballet on a number of occasions. A Midsummer Night's Dream is represented by two very well known ballets, Balanchine's full length A Midsummer Night's Dream for the New York City Ballet, 1961 and The Dream, a one act ballet by Sir Frederick Ashton made for the Royal Ballet in 1964. Petipa's Pas d'action was a miniature version of this story over a hundred years ago (1877). Mendelssohn's music has been choreographed to by Fokine as Les Elfes, and Lichine as Nocturne. The earliest reference to a ballet on this theme seems to be Shakespeare or A Midsummer Night's Dream at La Scala, Milan, January 27, 1855 choreographed by Giovani Corsati to music of Giorza.
George Balanchine (New York, January 1962, with Mendelssohn's music) chose A Midsummer Night's Dream as the subject for his first original full-length work. As a child of eight, Balanchine appeared as an elf in a production of Shakespeare's play in St. Petersburg. He divides his ballet into two acts and does away with Shakespeare's idea of a play within a play. In addition to the Overture and Incidental Music written to accompany Shakespeare's play, Balanchine used other works by Mendelssohn including Overtures to Athalie, Son and Stranger, and The Fair Melusine, Symphony No. 9 for Strings and The First Walpurgis Night. The ballet was chosen to open The New York City Ballet's first season at the New York State Theater in April 1964.
Sir Frederick Ashton produced his The Dream for Shakespeare's quatercentenary in 1964 as one of three ballets on the program honoring the bard. Ashton & Ninette de Valois had choreographed stagings for the play, but this was the first British ballet on the subject. Ashton disposes with Theseus and Hippolyta and begins the ballet with Oberon and Titania. His Bottom, portrayed by a male demi-character dancer, dances on pointe when transformed into a donkey.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM IN PERFORMANCE
By Prof Stanley Wells, chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon
There's a lot we don't know about how A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed in Shakespeare's theatre. Was it actually written for an aristocratic wedding as many have argued? Were the fairies played by children brought in for the occasion, or by the boy actors regularly employed by the company, or by grown men (as in Peter Brook's production)? Were Oberon and Theseus, Titania and Hippolyta doubled (as also by Brook), and if so, was the audience expected to see any significance in the doubling? Was any attempt made to represent the wood near Athens, or was the audience left to use its imagination? Imagination is a key word of the play; the play acted within the play strains the imaginative capacities of both those who perform it and those who watch it on stage; and the unrealities of a plot that reaches a climax in an encounter between the Queen of the Fairies and a weaver transformed into an ass demands the imaginative participation of its theatrical audience too. Only imagination can find concord in this discord, and over the centuries the theatre has not always met the imaginative challenges that the play poses. It has been distorted especially by over-emphasis of both its broad comedy and the opportunitites it offers for stage spectacle.
As early as 1661 appeared a playlet called The Merry Conceited Humours of Bottom the Weaver, reducing the play to little more than the rehearsal and performance of Pyramus and Thisbe, and in an adaption of As You Like It by Charles Johnson in 1723, Love in a Forest, the Pyramus and Thisbe episodes were incorporated as an entertainment for the banished Duke and his followers. America has seen a version called Swingin' the Dream (1939), in which the Bottom who roared as gently as any sucking-dove was Louis Armstrong. The mechnicals' scenes, parodies of the efforts of amateur entertainers, have themselves formed the centrepiece of many amateur entertainments in later ages, a constant source of innocent mirth in school halls and village institutes. Exploitation of the play's opportunities for spectacle also has a long histroy. When Samuel Pepys saw it in 1662 only its incidental features appealed to him. He wrote: "We saw a Midsummer Night's Dream, which I have never seen before nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing, and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure."
Thirty years later appeared The Fairy Queen a lavish spectacle with a marvellous score by Henry Purcell; though this is based on Shakespeare, Purcell set no line of the play. Another musical version is Frederick Reynolds's (with music by Henry Bishop) of 1816, which provoked a violent attack by William Hazlitt: "All that's fine in the play, was lost in the representation. The spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled; but the spectacle was fine: it was that which saved the play. Oh, ye scene-shifters, ye scene-painters, ye machinists and dressmakers, ye manufacturers of moon and stars that give no light, ye musical composers, ye men in the orchestra, fiddlers and trumpeters and players on the double drum and loud bassoon, rejoice! This is your triumph; it is not ours." Hazlitt depressingly concluded that "Poetry and the stage do not agree together."
The play was last produced in something like its original form by Elizabeth Vestris at Covent Garden in 1840, but the nineteenth-century production outstanding for excellence of both acting and staging was Samuel Phelps's at Sadler's Wells in 1853; dream-like visual effects created by gaslight and gauzes were praised, but it is clear too that they were fully at the service of the play. Later productions have not always been so successful in subordinating spectacle to drama. Shaw wrote of Augustin Daly's in 1895: "He certainly has no suspicion of the fact that every accessory he employs is brought in at the deadliest risk of destroying the magic spell woven by the poet. He swings Puck away on a clumsy trapeze with a ridiculous clash of the cymbals in the orchestra, in the fullest belief that he is thereby completing instead of destroying the effect of Puck's lines. His panoramic illusion of the passage of Theseus's barge to Athens is more absurd than anything that occurs in the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in the last act." The pictorial, quasi-operatic style of production, in which presentation of the fairy world was assimilated to the traditions of classical ballet, continued well into this century, influencing for instance Max Reinhardt's film of 1935 and the BBC television version, and has still not been entirely abandoned. But Harley Granville Barker's Savoy Theatre production of 1914 presented a thorough re-thinking of the play which effected a healthy if temporary clearance of conventional accretions. Mendelssohn's exquisite music, completed in 1843 for a German performance, was abondoned in favour of English folk tunes, and Robin Goodfellow (or Puck) and Oberon were no longer played by women, as had been customary.
Granvile Barker broke the Victorian mould but did not establish a new one; since his time productions have drawn on a wide range of traditions, a few returning to the play's origins, others rethinking its text in terms of contemporary theatre, and many mingling the Victorian with later methods. Critical writings have exerted their influence: Wilson Knight was followed by Jan Kott in drawing attention to the fairies' sinister aspects (already apparent in nineteenth century artists' representations), but Peter Brook, in his famous RSC production of 1970 followed Kott rather in emphasising Bottom's sexuality than in adopting Kott's vision of the fairy world as an existentialist nightmare. Brook set the play in a white box (as Granville Barker had recommended); costumes were timeless - loose satin garments in bright colours; we were reminded of the circus as Puck and Oberon swung on trapezes and Titania, seated on a great scarlet feather, descended from on high. For a while, the doubling of Oberon and Theseus, Titania and Hippolyta, adopted (though not initiated) by Brook, seemed to have established a pattern, yet it was abandoned by Bill Bryden in his National Theatre production of 1982, set in the early years of this century, whose "great concern, and great excitement", wrote Robert Cuchman, was "to bring the play's levels together, and yet keep them tantalisingly apart.... Oberon and Titania come face to face with Theseus and Hippolyta: a more powerful moment than can be produced by the now orthodox doubling of roles."
Directors of the play frequently allude to its theatre history; at Stratford in 1981 Ron Daniels had set parts of it backstage in a Victorian theatre, and in 1989 John Caird's determinedly, and exuberantly, post-modern production constantly alluded, often mockingly, sometimes parodistically, to the play's performance histroy in, for instance, its use of Mendelssohn's overture which began authentically but took on rock rhythms as it progressed, in the portrayal of the fairy attendants as horrible teenagers, the girls with wings and tutus reminiscent of Swan Lake, and in a Puck with a habit of mimicking everyone within sight or mind and who at one point read his lines from a printed copy of the play (my own New Penguin edition, as it happened), which he then threw derisively aside, sometimes hitting one of the bandsman. The 2200 or so lines of verse and prose that Shakespeare wrote in the mid 1590s have been astonishingly productive of music, operas, ballets, paintings, and other writings as well as of an immensely varied range of performances of the text either in adaption or as written; the play is different each time we see it, a constant stimulus to the imaginations of performers and audiences alike.
(this essay was published in the programme for a 1998 Oxford Stage Company production of Shakespeare’s play, directed by John Retallack)