A Midsummer Night's Dream

Here are this week's presentations:

A Midsummer Night's Dream,

by Lisa Droege

It is often argued that Puck or Robin Goodfellow is the closest thing to a protagonist, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has. However, Micheal Hoffman’s 1999 film version of the play makes Bottom the weaver the central focus of the production. The director abandons the caricature and clown in order to shift the focus from the aristocracy of Athens (in this case the town of Monte Athena in Tuscan, Italy)to the lower social classes. In earlier productions, the artisans were merely reduced to Puck’s contemptuous view of them: “A crew of patches, rude mechanicals”, “the shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort”. Hoffman’s Bottom (played by Kevin Kline) however is not simply a fool: He is presented as a character with unfulfilled longings for love and as a bit of a womanizer, who is finally redeemed by his fantastic experience in the woods. The director has also inserted an entire series of additional scenes that give his character more depth and complexity. The final scene, seems particularly central to the understanding of Bottom’s character. Hoffman presents Bottom, clinging on to Titania’s crown (now reduced to miniature size) as evidence of the validity of the dream. He then greets the passing fairies (dots of light in the night) and his smile of acknowledgement fades into Puck’s smile who has now joined the world of the workers and common men.

The music and setting of the film also indicate the new emphasis on Bottom and his social class in Hoffman’s version. As mentioned above, the play is set in Tuscan in the late 19^th century : a time that suggests social change and the growing importance of the upcoming working class. This growing importance of the working class is also stressed by the extensive inserted scenes at the beginning of the film. While Shakespeare’s play opens with a scene at the court of Theseus, Hoffman’s first scenes centre on the servants, cooks, and gardeners working at the court.

On top of that, the director uses music to underscore the central role of the lower classes – he drew from a number of operas that deal with the lower classes or challenges of class and social rank (see La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi).

 

 

A Midsummer Night's Dream,

by Marguerite Devereux

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was put on by the Theaterrific Acting Group—a group comprised of young actors between ages seven and fifteen—of which I was a member. This first play that I was ever in is a cherished home video, so I have seen it many times and critiqued the way it was done. Due to the fact that this play was put on by children, the original script was heavily modified. Most of the lines were written in plain English so that the children could understand what they were acting out, but some of the poetic lines remained intact. In Act 2 Scene 1 Shakespeare opens with Puck saying, “How now spirit, wither wander you?” However in the children’s version, Puck simply says, “Hey there spirit, where are you going?” The fairy then replies in a sing-song poem which sticks to the original Shakespeare script. These rhymes helped to create the whimsical atmosphere which I believe Shakespeare envisioned.

-The play was also modified to be a bit more child-friendly in the fact that the word “ass” was removed entirely from the play. All of the lines surrounding Bottom were changed so that he was referred to simply as a donkey. In Act 3 scene 1 when Bottom is transformed and the other players flee, Bottom says, “I see their tricks. They’re trying to make a donkey out of me!” The line itself is still ridiculous, but it does not bear the same humor that Shakespeare intended for it. To us as children, it simply seemed like Bottom was commenting on the fact that he was now a donkey, rather than suggesting his friends were trying to make him look like a fool.
-The scenes involving the four lovers were also heavily cut. Any sexual innuendos were removed, and most of Act 3 Scene 2 was cut, in which the four lovers argue over who loves whom. The audience sees very little of the four lovers throughout the course of the play; we see only just enough to get the sense of their situation, Puck’s mistake, and his correction; more emphasis was placed on the fairies and the tricks that they play. 
-The play was also made interesting by the fact that there were more girls than boys, so several of the girls had to play boys’ roles. All of the players in the performance for Theseus’ marriage except Bottom were played by girls. This added an interesting element to the play because in Shakespeare’s time all of the girls would have been played by boys, so this reversal of roles added an unintended dimension to the play that made it in some regards more similar to the original.
-Overall, the play served as good introduction to Shakespeare for children, and reduced the old language into something a bit more understandable. The resulting play lacked some of the original meaning, but the play still retained its integrity as being a dreamy play performed at the height of summer.

A Midsummer Night's Dream,

 

by Beth Kirk

·         Michael Hoffman is the  director of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) and the cast feature Kevin Kline as Bottom, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Everett as Titania and Oberon, Stanley Tucci as Puck, and Calista Flockhart, Anna Friel, Christian Bale, and Dominic West as the four lovers.
·         The time and place are different to the play which is set in Athens, whereas the film adaptation takes place in Italy during the 20^th century which is portrayed through the transport such as bicycles, architecture and the taverns. However the language, the names of the characters and the scenes remain the same.
 ·         Act one scene 1: Focus on the disruption of power, Shakespeare portrays this in the play by Hermia rejecting her father and therefore the order of patriarchal society, and she is perceived as a rebellious, self- assured character. However, within this first scene Hoffman firstly dresses Hermia all in white which represents innocence. Furthermore, her spoken lines are either excluded from this adaptation or spoken to just Thesues alone which emphasises the fact that her voice is excluded from the public sphere and only within the private sphere between herself and Theseus can she reveal her anger as she violently insists ‘I do entreat you grace to pardon me.’ This I would argue contrasts with Shakespeare’s presentation of her character where the lines are violently spoken in front of the other characters and the film portrays her as a more submissive character than the play itself.
 ·         This power is further disrupted within the fairy kingdom and the sudden change in scenery from the Italian architecture to the woodlands, a place where the fairies, the actors and the four lovers all come together in a mythical world of chaos. Titania is portrayed as a confident, strong-minded female towards the deceiving Oberon, and Michelle Pfeiffer through her wicked and scornful manner emphasises the power she holds over the fairy kingdom, with her fairies there at her beckoning call. However, after the love potion is anointed upon her eyelids she falls immediately in love with bottom and through her laughter and flirtatious body language, she declares ‘I love thee.’ Her power deteriorates and her powerful position now weakened by love, and she becomes associated more with Helena under the spell of magic, Helena being the epitome of the winey, weak and love sick female.
·         Although peace and cohesion is finally restored at the end, Hoffman focuses on Nick Bottom as he looks out of his window to observe the flashing lights that come to represent the fairies. This scene is added in Hoffman’s adaptation to stress the connection between reality and the mythical and dream like world, with both the mythical world and reality portraying its constant struggle for power and how the two separate worlds are not so different after all.