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A MidsummerNight’s Dream

Education Pack

© Pop-up Globe International Ltd. 2018. All rights reserved.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAMPlot synopsis

Four days before the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and his conquered bride Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, the elderly Egeus comes before the Duke, believing his daughter Hermia has been bewitched into loving Lysander. Egeus wants Hermia to marry Lysander’s rival Demetrius. In accordance with Athenian law, Theseus gives Hermia four days to either marry Demetrius, become a nun, or be executed. Hermia and Lysander decide to elope, escaping through the forest of Athens, but Hermia’s best friend Helena, lamenting that Demetrius has rejected her for Hermia, tells Demetrius about their plans in the hope that her loyalty will make Demetrius love her again. Demetrius pursues Hermia and Lysander, while Helena pursues Demetrius.

Meanwhile, a group of local craftsmen or ‘mechanicals’ led by Peter Quince and the amateur actor Nick Bottom begin secretly rehearsing a play dramatizing Ovid’s tragic tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, which they hope to perform at Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding feast.

Far from being paradise, the Athenian forest is in turmoil due to the conflict between Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen Titania. Titania has withheld from Oberon a changeling boy he wishes to join his entourage. Determined to be revenged on Titania, Oberon employs the devilish spirit Puck to find him a plant whose juice has the ability to induce love-at-first-sight in anyone who gets squirted in the eye with it.

In a night of chaos, the love juice has its desired effect when it causes Titania to fall in love with Bottom immediately after Puck has transformed him into an ass. However, Oberon’s plan to use the juice to unite Demetrius and Helena fails when Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and both men reject Hermia for Helena.

By morning, everything has been resolved: Oberon and Titania are reconciled, Hermia and Lysander are reconciled, Helena and Demetrius are united, and Bottom is returned to human form. Theseus has a last-minute change of heart and overturns the law that previously threatened Hermia’s execution. The two young couples are married in the same ceremony as Theseus and Hippolyta.

After the marriage feast, of all the entertainment available Theseus decides to see the mechanicals’ play, on the grounds that plays performed with honesty and sincerity can have as much merit as plays performed by those who have talent. The opportunity to perform before the Duke transforms and inspires the mechanicals, no matter how incompetent some aspects of their performance are. At midnight, the three couples retire to bed and the fairies, led by Oberon, Titania and Puck, sneak into the household to bless the marriages.

Review1. What two options does Hermia face if she refuses to marry Demetrius?

2. Why does Helena tell Demetrius about Hermia and Lysander’s plan to elope?

3. What is the source of the conflict between Oberon and Titania?

4. What animal does Puck transform Bottom into?

5. Why does Theseus decide to see the mechanicals perform ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’?


PLAYWRIGHT’S IDEAS“The course of true love never did run smooth”As a romantic comedy, the ultimate aim of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is for all of its couples to finish the play living happily ever after. But the journey to that ending is rocky for everyone involved. Lysander and Hermia are in love, but Hermia’s father Egeus opposes their relationship and he has on his side an ancient law that gives him final say over who his daughter gets to marry. Helena loves Demetrius, but Demetrius has decided he prefers Hermia. Duke Theseus and Queen Hippolyta are about to be married, but only really know each other on the battlefield; the fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania live as immortals but squabble like humans. The obstacles that stand in the way of the couples all being united at the end seem insurmountable.

TransformationA key theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is that of transformation, both literal and figurative. Theseus opens the play desiring a change from the old moon into the new moon. The lovers find their relationships are transformed when they travel from the safety of the court into the uncertainty of the forest. The mechanicals believe that the successful performance of their play before Theseus on his wedding day will transform their fortunes. The fairies believe that the conflict between Oberon and Titania has transformed the landscape of the mortal world. After witnessing Bottom behaving like an ass, Puck transforms him into an actual ass; and the love juice that Puck and Oberon apply to Lysander and Demetrius transforms them from men who both love Hermia into men who both love Helena.

Illusion versus reality; dreaming versus wakingMany of the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream question the difference between appearance and reality. Hermia says her whole world has changed since falling in love with Lysander; Helena protests that Demetrius once praised her beauty, but now he cannot see it since falling in love with Hermia; Demetrius later describes his infatuation with Hermia as a sickness that made him blind to the love he had always felt for Helena. The mechanicals have difficulty working out which parts of their play should be realistic and which should be fantasy. The word ‘dream’ is part of the title, and most of the characters end up in situations where they aren’t sure if they’re awake or dreaming. Hermia dreams of being betrayed by Lysander; Titania thinks of her night with Bottom as a dream; Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius all question whether the events of their night in the forest were real or imagined; and Bottom considers his night to be “a most rare vision.”

TASKIdentify who speaks the following lines, describe the situation in which the line occurs, and explain how the quotation supports one (or more) of the three themes above:

1. Before the time I did Lysander see / Seemed Athens as a paradise to me.

2. This same progeny of evils comes / From our debate, from our dissension.

3. Methought a serpent ate my heart away / While you sat smiling at his cruel prey.

4. It is not night when I do see your face, / Therefore I think I am not in the night.

5. Like a sickness did I loathe this food / But as in health, come to my natural taste, / Now do I wish it, love it, long for it / And will for evermore be true to it.

6. And the Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I’ll be hanged.

7. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, / Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend / More than cool reason ever comprehends.

8. Our sport shall be to take what they mistake, / And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect / Takes it in might, not merit.

9. Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note, / So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape.

10. O why rebuke you him that loves you so? / Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.

11. Of thy misprision must perforce ensue / Some true love turned, and not a false turned true.


DIRECTOR’S VISION“Each world could not be more different.”Of all of Shakespeare’s extraordinary plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream must be one of the most famous and certainly the most popular in performance. Shakespeare wrote the play around 1595/96, possibly for performance at an aristocratic wedding. Romeo and Juliet, his great exposition on young love, was written at the same time.

Like Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream starts with a pair of lovers separated by parental decree, and ends with a double suicide. They both explore the extreme passions of young lovers, and are both expositions on the theme of love as madness. And they are both great pieces of art, but at different ends of the dramatic spectrum. Romeo and Juliet is a powerful tragedy; A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a wild and lyrical comedy.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is notionally set in Athens, ruled by Duke Theseus (himself a mythical figure, supposed to be the founder of the city). However, this setting is almost incidental, and we can understand Athens simply to be a place where the action of the play happens to be set.

The play is divided into three distinct worlds, which intermingle as the production unfolds.

The first world is the Court of Theseus, in the city of Athens. This is inhabited by Theseus and Hippolyta, the lovers, and Theseus’ attendants. In our production this is a Jacobean world, set in 1614. It’s also a harsh dictatorship, where young women can be condemned to death for not marrying according to their parent’s wishes.

Near to the city is a large forest. In the forest dwell ancient Gods, written as ‘fairies’ in Shakespeare’s original. We do not know how Shakespeare costumed his fairies, or what they looked like. We do know however that they are meant to be terrifying to the people of Athens. They have supernatural powers – they can travel around the world in forty minutes, and become invisible, as well as transforming a human head into the head of a donkey. They are certainly not pretty fairies with gauze wings – although the Victorians often portrayed them in this way. In this production, these gods are inspired by Māori folklore, and they speak in te reo Māori.

Finally, in Athens there are a group of tradesmen, often called the ‘mechanicals’, ‘hard-handed men’ who are honest, everyday people. In our production they wear modern dress as ‘tradies’. In some ways these supposedly ‘comic’ characters are the most truthful in the play. They are earnest, kind, men, who are in awe of the dramatic possibilities of the play they plan to perform before Theseus.

The three worlds bump into each other during the action of the play, then come together in the final scenes. Each world could not be more different. The joy of the play lies in seeing them jostle each other in glorious juxtaposition as we see a tragedy turn to comedy.

Director: Dr Miles GregoryMiles is the founder and CEO of Pop-up Globe, and its first artistic director. He was formerly Artistic Director of The Bristol Shakespeare Festival and the British Touring Shakespeare Company, and a Regional Producer (Bristol) for Shakespeare’s Globe London, before spending three years as Artistic Director and CEO of The Maltings Theatre, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK.

He has directed over 20 professional productions, mainly of Shakespeare, in the UK and internationally including at the Theatre Royal Newcastle, the Palace Theatre Southend, and at London’s Westminster and Shaw Theatres. He is a visiting lecturer on Shakespeare, arts management and research methodologies at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, London, and Whitecliffe College of Art & Design, Auckland. In his spare time he is principal consultant at Auckland-based international arts management consultancy Henslowe Irving Ltd.

Born in Wellington, Miles attended King’s College, Auckland, before reading for his BA in Modern History at Durham University, UK. Miles also holds a PhD in Shakespeare in Performance from Bristol University and a Master of Fine Arts in Staging Shakespeare from Exeter University.


Discuss1. What elements of the play might have made it suitable for performance at an aristocratic wedding?

2. How does this production seek to illustrate the director’s comment that A Midsummer Night’s Dream exposits the theme of love as a form of madness?

3. What is the effect of seeing Jacobean costumes juxtaposed with both modern dress and tikanga Māori? How does such a juxtaposition help clarify the different worlds of the play?

4. Where are there moments in the production that illustrate the idea that the comic mechanicals are actually amongst the play’s most honest characters? And are there moments that highlight the dishonesty of the higher-born characters?

5. To some, Shakespeare’s language and poetry is sacred. What do you think is the aim and effect of having the supernatural characters speak their lines in te reo Māori?


FIRST GLOBE, SECOND GLOBE, POP-UP GLOBE

When Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, built the original Globe in 1599, they had already eclipsed the Admiral’s Men as London’s preeminent players. The first Globe was built from the recycled timbers of their previous playhouse after they were barred from their original premises in Shoreditch by an unresolved tenancy dispute with their landlord, and their financial capital was exhausted fitting out the indoor Blackfriars playhouse that they then found they couldn’t use after local residents petitioned against them. The original Globe has received extensive critical attention because of its important role in Shakespeare’s career - this was, after all, the playhouse he wrote Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth for - but while the first Globe lasted just 14 years, the second Globe was as big a part of Shakespeare’s legacy to his company as his plays were. It stood for almost 30 years and was the culmination of everything Shakespeare and his company learnt in their previous 30 years making theatre together.

London’s theatrical landscape changed significantly between 1599-1614. When the first Globe opened in 1599 it was still an era of makeshift playhouses, sometimes retrofitted into already-existing spaces and frequently remodelled to keep up with rival companies’ innovations. When the second Globe opened in 1614, Shakespeare’s company were now the King’s Men, and there were two hugely significant influences that hadn’t been in play 15 years earlier: the first was that from 1608 they were also performing indoors at the Blackfriars, a decade after their initial investment in it; the second was the huge influence that the private masques loved by King James and his court had on public performance. The Blackfriars’ intense and intimate atmosphere leant itself to more intense and intimate plays, and its more sophisticated audiences - the cheapest Blackfriars seats cost the same as the most expensive at the Globe -required more sophisticated fare. Court masques, as well as containing the same high music/dance content favoured by Blackfriars audiences, featured some of the most spectacular stage effects ever seen. The technical innovations of court masques fed into the Blackfriars, and when the second Globe opened in 1614, the technical innovations of the Blackfriars fed into the Globe. The second Globe was therefore the culmination of all that had happened in English theatre the past three centuries, embracing everything from medieval pageant wagons, inn-yard playing spaces, the public playhouses and court entertainment; but it also prefigured the major innovations still to come when theatres re-opened in the 1660s after the Civil War, embracing scenic design and pictorial realism – this was no sudden overnight change but a gradual development over three decades, and the second Globe was right at the heart of it.


Tim Fitzpatrick and Russell Emerson’s groundbreaking work on the exterior dimensions means we will never be more certain about the exact size and shape of the second Globe. Working out what it looked like inside, however, is an entirely different matter. Almost everything about how we think 16th/17th-century playhouses worked is supposition. There are a few emblematic sketches of playhouse interiors, an incomplete construction contract for the Fortune, and some contemporary reports of Elizabethan/Jacobean plays in performance - but unless we were to miraculously excavate a perfectly preserved Renaissance playhouse, we will always be dealing in hypotheticals. The uncovered foundations of the Rose and the original Globe, and even the recent excavation of the Curtain, cannot offer absolute certainty and some scholars have been unwilling to accept their discovery may challenge or even contradict previously-held notions about playhouse workings.

There are several ongoing strands of research that feed into the evolving interior design of Pop-up Globe. First, we have reconsidered the key surviving contemporary illustrations of playhouses-of the Swan in the 1590s, and of hall playhouses in 1632, 1640 and 1660 - and what they indicate about interior features, balanced alongside what is suggested by the archaeological remains of the Globe, the Rose and the Curtain. We have looked at Inigo Jones’ surviving court masque designs, his larger influence on Jacobean art and architecture, and at Jacobean architecture in general. We have also looked at the surviving European theatres of the period that share heritage with English playhouses. We have interrogated the academic and practical choices made by many of the 20th/21st century reconstructions of Renaissance playhouses, and we continue to try and assess with as much objectivity as possible all the available scholarship on all Renaissance performance spaces, from the most pragmatic and reliable through to the most seemingly-crackpot, so that we can attempt to comprehend what factors might have fed into way the second Globe was used.


The other strand of our ongoing investigation is to re-examine the clues in the plays themselves, alongside surviving documentation of the period. Philip Henslowe, the Rose and Fortune’s impresario manager, kept a diary that included an inventory of prop, set and costume items; Alan Dessen & Leslie Thomson have comprehensively itemised everything that can be gleaned from 22,000 stage directions found in 500 surviving Renaissance plays, and those directions provide strong indications of some interior playhouse features and technology, and how those features were utilised. The wealth of scholarly examination of specific companies/playhouses’ repertoire also suggests the sorts of things they had at their disposal. Surviving texts of court masques sometimes describe their effects vividly enough that we can surmise, from what we know about available technology, how they might have been achieved. And one of our greatest research resources was the experience of the first two Pop-up Globe seasons and what we learnt from them. Our 2016 season utilised a deliberately minimalist frons scenae, modelled on early seventeenth century neo-classical exterior architecture. Our 2017 frons scenae tried to imagine what the Globe interior might look like if it were the exterior of a modern Stuart-era building from 1614-1642 rather than attempting to look entirely neo-classical. And our 2018 frons scenae explores what sort of features might have been available if the focus were on interior rather than exterior architecture.

Whereas academic positions on how Renaissance playhouses worked are often dictated by caution, the production of theatre must be driven by exploration. Rather than a position of “there are only a handful of references to that sort of thing, so we should assume that they probably didn’t generally do it,” at Pop-up Globe we want to embrace opportunity rather than be suspicious of it. If there is textual/historical evidence for particular features, we have opted to include them so we can practically interrogate their likeliness – or uselessness. The very pop-up nature of Pop-up Globe means we don’t have to be eternally bound to our design decisions – if something turns out not to work, we can abandon it in future iterations, just as if something turns out to be beneficial, we can continue to make it a feature of future versions of the playhouse. Rather than make an absolute decision between “the Globe’s stage was rectangular, even though some illustrative evidence as well as the remains of the Rose suggest it might have been tapered,” or “the Globe’s stage was tapered, even though some illustrative evidence as well as the contract for the Fortune suggest it might have been rectangular,” our pop-up nature allows the unique flexibility, lacked by other major reconstructions, to say “our 2016 season trialled a rectangular stage, based on this evidence, and these were the benefits/disadvantages; our 2017 season trialled a tapered stage, based on this evidence, and these were the benefits/disadvantages.” We can both evolve with the latest scholarship and play a vital role in its evolution, rather than lock ourselves inextricably to one theory or dogma forever; nor do we have to live in fear of the next major archaeological excavation of a Renaissance site proving our life’s work wrong. Pop-up Globe as a building can be the living embodiment of our research rather than a monument to caution or compromise.


ACTIVITYOn the pictures provided, label the following parts of the Second Globe:

a The stage

b The posts

c The gables

d The onion dome

e The Lords’ Rooms

f The yard

g The heavens

h The upper gallery

i The middle gallery

j The lower gallery

k The arras

l The tarras

m The garret

n The trap

o The gunports

p The casements

DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING1. What might be the significance of characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream entering from the trap door?

2. Where are there moments in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that might benefit from an interior rather than exterior setting?

3. What moments in A Midsummer Night’s Dream might benefit from the kinds of spectacle audiences would have expected in a Jacobean masque?

4. Identify a moment in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where the actors might use the yard.

5. Identify a moment in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where the actors might appear on the tarras.

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