The Hardiness of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Abstract

A Midsummer Night's Dream baits its critics, especially those most fascinated by workings of the poet's pen . . as it ... gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. It is a much produced play. Not only staple of summer festivals and only play of Shakespearean canon produced with impunity by amateurs, A Midsummer Night's Dream receives a continual revisionist production. In this century performances have exhibited fairies dressed in tinsel with live bunnies running about stage, as well as presentations in which actors' codpieces lit up in psychedelic neon and an Amazon queen was carried about stage in a cage. The most memorable production was undoubtedly that of Royal Shakespeare Company under Peter Brook's direction, which took place in an all-white gymnasium with trapezes and whirling plates on sticks, a circus production.