Neil Gaiman's “A Midsummer Night's Dream”: Shakespeare Integrated into Popular Culture

Abstract

How this particular man produced the works that dominate the cultures of much of the world almost four hundred years after his death is one of life's mysteries-and one that will continue to tease our imaginations as we continue to delight his plays and poems. (Mowat and Werstine 1993: xxxv) Bill Moyers: But, has no audience, today, to speak of. He really doesn't. Peter Sellars: Well, our has been taught that is not theirs. Our has been taught that belongs to the British and to the Royal Company[...]. What is maddening is most people have been separated from their culture. They've been told there's a special privileged class of artists-they have a special insight. A normal person doesn't have this insight and is not on the inside track of this work. That is a monstrous lie and it is hideous, because it is taught to us early on as we grow up this system. (Moyers 1990) The twentieth century saw about three hundred and eighty-five film and television adaptations of Shakespeare's plays-two hundred and thirty-four for film and one hundred and fifty-one for television (IMDB). Thirty-six of these films were made the 1990s, the largest amount any decade, except for the 1910s, when fifty-two of Shakespeare's plays were adapted to film. The most popular Shakespearean films of the 1990s most notably correspond with Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989), which led a Branagh-Shakespearian renaissance through such films as Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), and Hamlet (1996), all of which (except Othello) he directed. This popular British resurgence of on film also included Ian McKellen's adaptation and lead role Richard 111 (1995) and Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996). Also, other popularizations of Shakespeare's plays adapted to film the 1990s revolved around the popularity of movie stars, beginning most strikingly with action movie star Mel Gibson's appearance the title role of Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990), as well as Leonardo DiCaprio and Clair Danes Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1996), Al Pacino's documentary-postmodern rendition of Richard III Looking for Richard (1996), and Calista Flockhart's, Kevin Kline's, and Michelle Pfeiffer's appearances A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999). The 1990s Shakespearean film renaissance seemed to peak with Love (1998), which earned an Academy Award for best picture 1999, indicating not only the high brow sensibility of the Academy, but also the film's popularity the larger public, a popularity not seen since the first half of the nineteenth century. Interviewer Bill Moyers, talking to theater director Peter Sellars, mused about how he was fascinated to learn that in the nineteenth century, great American actors would roam the countryside the small towns. In Marshall, Texas, they would get off the railroad and they would perform for mill workers, for saloons, mining camps, and they were speaking to an untutored, but appreciative audience (1990). In fact, researching popular novels, playbills, and newspapers of the nineteenth century, historian Lawrence Levine discovered that Shakespeare's works were so integrated into American culture during the time period Moyers speaks of that he drew the following conclusion: Shakespeare was popular entertainment nineteenth century America (Levine 21) -a view lost to most of the twentieth century, as Sellars bemoaned the interview opening this essay. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the plays of Shakespeare, Levine observes, were presented as of the same milieu inhabited by magicians, dancers, singers, acrobats, minstrels, and comics. [His works] appeared on the same playbills and was advertised the same spirit (23). Spectators didn't see as someone to revere, but as part of the culture they enjoyed, a rendered familiar and intimate by virtue of his context (23). …