A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare - Book Report/Review Example

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Great societal shifts were taking place in England during the 16th and 17th century, a period particularly influenced by the revival of arts and thinking that had started in Italy nearly 200 years earlier known as the Renaissance (Campbell, 2004). This period in history saw a tremendous shift in the country’s economic base from one based upon agriculture and its products to one based on the town market and produced consumer goods. It was also a time when a shift was started in the long-held class systems from that of feudal organization made up of the traditionally wealthy and the barely recognized desperately poor to one consisting of a greater stratification of wealth and prestige, in which social mobility was possible with little more than a ready mind and a willingness to make the attempt. According to Stephen Greenblatt (1997), “This is a world in which outward appearance is everything and nothing, in which individuation is at once sharply etched and continually blurred, in which the victims of fate are haunted by the ghosts of the possible, in which everything is simultaneously as it must be and as it need not have been” (60). These issues are strongly addressed in the literature produced during this time period such as William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Although it is not known exactly when William Shakespeare wrote his play, perhaps around 1595 or 1596, the inspirations Shakespeare used for the play as well as the changing nature of his own time are worked into the play in such a way that it continues to capture the postmodern condition of the world today. While many of Shakespeare’s plays can be traced to earlier stories, this particular play has fewer of these connections. One probable source for the play was Geoffrey Chaucer’s story of the Knight’s Tale in his Canterbury Tales (Mabillard, 2000). This is a story told from the perspective of the noble Knight who values above all things the concepts of chivalry and the ‘right’ place of women within this world. “His courtly preoccupation with truth, honor, liberality and courtesy shines through the noble soldiers Arcite and Palamon, illuminating the wise, righteous, merciful ruler Theseus and highlighting the faultless Lady Emily … Fortune and her false wheel control the plot as regal personas are maneuvered by chance and by the gods” (Dosik, 2006). The Knight’s story is full of the importance of honor and oath-taking among men of the nobility. In spite the importance they place on these attributes, the story is full of contradictions. Theseus swears to hold the two nobles Arcite and Palamon prisoner forever, but changes his mind upon the pleading of a friend for the one and the noble escape of the other. Arcite and Palamon swear brotherhood forever, but quickly forget this oath when they each fall in love with Emily. In this sense, Chaucer exposes the hypocrisy of such oaths in the face of the chivalric conception of love, regardless of the knight’s conception of these actions as of the highest nobility while he also shifts the attention from consideration of the actual events to a consideration of the reasons and motivations of the individual characters, making even this story begin to take on the characteristics of feminine romance, something Shakespeare often gently criticized as the ideas of his time were changing. The English Renaissance flowered during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who encouraged more enlightened views. “Elizabeth is often regarded as rather brilliant. She had a quick mind, was not extravagant, and recognized that her throne was not as secure as her counselors might lead her to believe. She was strong and certainly capable of making hard and difficult decisions; however, perhaps because she was a woman, she was less functionally arrogant than most of her contemporary monarchs” (Judkins, 2008). Although women didn’t achieve a great deal of independence or greater legal rights during this period, the seeds of equal rights were formed during this period. This was largely the result of individualism, which necessarily had some carry-over effect onto the female gender as it made its way through the male population. Political changes took place during this period as well, not only as a result of a strong female queen but also as a result of an expanding world thanks to developed technology and a stronger international position. “Although she was Queen of England, [Elizabeth] shared some of her rule with Parliament, a body made of men chosen to represent the various areas of England” (Judkins, 2008). While this body had voting rights to a greater degree than they’d had in the past as counselors, they were not yet the democratic system of today. At the same time that the English government was becoming more liberal, advances in technology was allowing it to become more global. Sailing ships had been developed with more streamlined shapes and lighter designs, enabling the English navy to assert certain dominance over that of the fabled Spanish Armada, to that point the strongest power on the seas. “Improvements in navigation led to improved maps and charts … As a result of these combined improvements, captains began pushing their ships to more distant lands. New trading routes were secured which led to increased competition in trade and wider availability of exotic products” (Judkins, 2008). Faster, more maneuverable ships and greater range of travel enabled England to begin colonizing far away lands and establish itself as a true world power moving into the 17th century and beyond. All of this was introducing new possibilities and perhaps more rebellious children, particularly daughters, as women were beginning to gain some degree of social life thanks to their queen. This can all be traced in the play as Shakespeare mocks the superficial strictures of traditional society and incorporates many of the new ideas infusing society. He questions traditional social customs through the characters of Hermia and her father. Although Hermia wants to marry Lysander, her father wishes her to marry Demetrius, apparently for no other reason than to assert his own authority. Rather than subject herself to this disgrace because, as Lysander has pointed out, Demetrius has already proven himself unworthy as he “Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena, / And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes, / Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry, / Upon this spotted and inconstant man” (I.i.107-110), Hermia decides to elope with Lysander. Any emotion that springs up between Hermia and Demetrius then can be founded on nothing remotely resembling her conception of a pure love. The apparent purity of young love between Hermia and Lysander is brought into question though with the application of Oberon’s pansy-juice causing Lysander to change his mind about who he loves. Because he doesn’t forget his past love for Hermia, this calls into question the strength of even the purist love to resist the course of life events. In Act II, scene 2, he says, “I do repent / the tedious minutes I with her have spent. / Not Hermia but Helena I love. / Who will not change a raven for a dove?” (111-114). Although the two young people finish the play by getting married in a multiple ceremony shared with Duke Thesius and Queen Hippolyta, Shakespeare has demonstrated how even the most ardent, pure and innocent love can be quickly and easily damaged by a change in the wind as well as the changing social attitudes of the younger generations. Shakespeare’s play, written sometime around the turn of the 17th century, might be considered too outdated to be a likely candidate for today’s audiences, but directors such as Peter Brook have demonstrated ways in which it can still be made relevant in the 21st century. “From David Garrick to Max Reinhardt, directors had leaned heavily upon the tradition of cloying romanticism, and few had the temerity to break it. Finally, Peter Brook did. His Midsummer Night’s Dream was a deliberate departure from convention – contemporary in design, Freudian in tone, and, at the same time, faithful to the Shakespearean text” (Croyden, 2003). Beginning from a concept of a celebration of love, magic and theater in general, Brook described how his process began with a simple white box. The initial idea was to create a space that was completely unlike the fanciful forests and dreamscapes that had been used in other productions throughout history. “Nothing was going to impose an actual shape on the story, nor would any of the costumes impose an interpretation on the actors. It would all be purely functional, in a theatrical way. The place had to be somewhere that told no story but enabled very difficult theatrical actions to be seen” (Brook cited in Croyden, 2003). While the white box provided exactly this kind of space, one that told no story of its own, it also functioned to provide an illusion that no magic could take place here because there was nowhere to hide the illusions. Wires, swings and other props remained in full view for the actors to utilize without detracting from the overall effect of a blank room. Costuming for the play was approached in much the same way but with different effect. During rehearsals, actors in jeans and sweaters accomplished the goal of placing no emphasis or interpretation on the play whatsoever, but the end effect served to reduce the meaning rather than enhance it. “We were making a celebration in Dream. … Actors dress up because you can do more brilliant movements if you have a flying cloak; you can fly through the air more dazzlingly if you know that you are a streak of yellow moving through the air. … They were working clothes for performers trying to perform, proud of what they were – that is, performers enjoying performing in front of other people” (Croyden, 2003). This developed into each character eventually emerging with a particular signature color – Oberon in purple, Puck in yellow and Titania in green for example – as a means of expressing their emerging personality. On the blank canvas of the stage, these colors shimmered and drew attention to the actions being performed on stage and in the air while creating a magic all their own. Finally, Brook added circus elements to this production, again as the result of his refinement process. “I didn’t do it as a circus. It has nothing to do with the circus. It worked quite the other way around. What I wanted to do came from the elimination of impossible alternatives. You have a play that contains elements of magic and fantasy. It’s about acting. It’s about illusion. And it is a joyous play. It is a celebration for actors, to be performed by actors, and, in one respect, it is a celebration of the arts of the theater” (Brook cited in Croyden, 2003). In order to describe this magical joy and celebration, Brook felt it would be trite to return to some of the more traditional means of expression, such as illusionistic theater which had already lost its wonder. Instead, the only way to demonstrate and celebrate the essential elements of pure theater became the demonstration of the talents and abilities of the actors as they spun and swung, juggled and walked on stilts, demonstrating their pleasure in actively doing challenging things that take a great deal of concentration and talent to pull off. “My basic decision was that this should be theater that celebrates theater and therefore it had to be theatrical. Which is quite different from wanting to use the circus as a metaphor, or something like that. Which I wouldn’t dream of doing” (Brook cited in Croyden, 2003). The new insights and excitement injected into the play through this portrayal marked the turning point for the approach to Shakespeare in general. More than simply exploring the ideas inherent in the play, such as love and sexual desire, Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream explored what is meant by theater and celebrated the dream of the stage, reawakening the excitement of earlier times and providing a strong draw away from the modern distractions that had caused a decline in theater attendance up to that point. In addition, it illustrated to the world how such a radical approach to staging, costuming, musical scores and various other elements could lead to entirely new understandings of the text and of the theater in general, giving birth to a new generation of directors willing to take a chance on new approaches and opening up the funding sources to more creativity and exploration. Through Brook’s approach, Shakespeare’s focus on the duality of the spirit, the changing attitudes of the time and the questionable sincerity of the age are translated into the modern day and made instantly relevant to a postmodern society. Works Cited Campbell, Gordon. Renaissance Art and Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Croyden, Margaret. Conversations with Peter Brook: 1970-2000. New York: Faber & Faber, 2003. Dosik, Diana. “Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Miller’s Tale.” Phillips Academy, Andover University, 2006. Greenblatt, Stephen (Ed.). The Norton Shakespeare. New York: Norton, 1997. Judkins, David. “Life in Renaissance England.” Texas: University of Houston, (2008). Available November 7, 2008 from Mabillard, Amanda. “Sources: A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Shakespeare Online. (2000). November 7, 2008 Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. New York: Penguin Classics, 1969. Read More