A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare
Directed by Melia Bensussen
Cutler Majestic Theatre

• Saturday, November 10 2pm & 8pm
• Sunday, November 11 2pm
• Friday, November 16 8pm
• Saturday, November 17 2pm & 8pm

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare shows us the lengths to which we'll go to follow our passions, however misguided they may be! One of Shakespeare’s best loved and known plays, this production will emphasize the dangerous strength our deepest longings have over us, and how thrilling abandoning ourselves to our darker impulses can be.

Luckily for all the lovers emerge from their dark night into the bright civilized Athenian day. A modern-dress version, this production will stress the metaphors of the script, and using 20th century artists will help reveal to audiences of all ages the mysteries of our emotional lives and the wildness that often lies right below the surface of our civilizations.

There are two student matinees for A Midsummer Night's Dream--Friday November 9 at 10am and Thursday November 15 at 10am. For more information, please go to the student matinee website.

Dramaturgical Notes:

A Midsummer Night's Dream is widely regarded by Shakespearean scholars as the single Shakespeare play without a pre-existing literary or historical source for its plot.  But even though the plot is original, it does not necessarily mean that the characters are completely original, too.  In fact, several of the play's characters have Greek or other literary origins.

• Theseus, who is the Duke of Athens in the play, is a famous character from Greek mythology.  In some tales he is referred to as the son of Poseidon, in others the son of King Aegeus of Athens.  In any case, Theseus is perhaps best known for saving a group of young Athenians by slaying the Minotaur, to which they were given as a sacrifice.  Theseus was also an early suitor of Helen, whose face would later "launch a thousand ships."
• Hippolyta is both a prisoner of war and a bride-to-be as A Midsummer Night's Dream opens.  She is another legendary character from Greek mythology, who was Queen of the Amazons, a race of warrior women descended from Ares, the Greek god of fire and war.  She appears in the myth of Heracles, in which Heracles goes to Hippolyta to obtain the girdle designating her Queen of the Amazons.  In the story, the goddess Hera tells the Amazons that Heracles intends to capture their Queen.  Heracles then kills Hippolyta in the resulting fray.  In other legends, Theseus abducts Hippolyta, thus setting off a fierce battle between the Athenians and the Amazons.  After her eventual marriage to Theseus, Hippolyta gave birth to a son, Hippolytus, but in some versions of the story, is sent back to the Amazons when Theseus abandons her for Phaedra.
• Oberon, Shakespeare's King of Fairyland, is likely derived from a character who appears in two other plays of the sixteenth century:  the French romance Huon of Bordeaux (1533, translated by Lord Berner), and James IV, a history play by Robert Greene (1590).  In Greene's play, Oberon is depicted as a dwarf fairy with powers of enchantment over nature and human beings.  In an interesting historical footnote, Greene actually accused William Shakespeare of plagiarism in his 1592 pamphlet, Greene's Groats--Worth of Wit.  While Shakespeare had, in fact, already begun writing in London at that time, none of his works had yet been published.
• Titania, Shakespeare's Fairy Queen, is believed to be based on Diana, the Greek goddess of the moon and hunt.  She was also closely associated with forests and animals, and appears in Ovid?s Metamorphoses.  Some scholars, however, believe that Titania, as well as Oberon, may actually be based on a god and goddess couple named Pluto and Proserpine who appear in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in "The Merchant's Tale."  In this story, the couple fights vehemently over male-female relations.
• Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, appears repeatedly in Elizabethan fairy lore.  He is always depicted as a mischievous entity, sometimes in the form of a goblin, other times an elf, and other times a fairy not unlike the one Shakespeare depicts.  Puck's character has existed in some form dating back to the time of early paganism in Great Britain, and is believed to predate the English language.  In Elizabethan England, it was widely believed that Puck, who when disguised went by the name Robin Goodfellow, would sometimes appear in secret to do simple chores and housework for people, but would pull pranks and tricks on those who fell out of favor with him.
• The Mechanicals, would have most certainly been inspired at least in part by the everyday people Shakespeare encountered in Warwickshire, his home county.  However, Bottom stems from the additional influence of Lucius Apuleius's The Golden Ass, a Latin novel written in the second century, A.D.  In the story, the main character is a young man obsessed with magic, who receives a special ointment from a fairy queen.  This ointment is meant to transform him into a bird, but instead turns him physically into an ass while retaining his human mentality.  While he is in this state, several women experience an extreme sexual attraction to him, similar to Bottom?s encounter with Titania in the forest.
• Pyramus and Thisbe, the lovers whose story is told in the play the Mechanicals rehearse and perform for the Duke's wedding, are featured in Ovid's Metamorphoses.  This story was well known in Shakespeare's time, and is also referenced in works by Chaucer and Clement Robinson.