A Midsummer Night's Dream (No Fear Shakespeare) in Easley Library Bookworms

Jun 17, 2014 Werner rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, plays

Although I'd seen a student production of this play back in my college days, I'd never read it until now. This month, it was a common read in one of my Goodreads groups; so I decided to join in, and watched it again (this time on film) as well. (I didn't read it in the above edition, but in the 1918 Yale Shakespeare set edition.)

Quite a few of my Goodreads friends have rated this play, mostly at four or five stars. My three-star rating (which is rounded up from two 1/2!) marks me as a bit of a h Although I'd seen a student production of this play back in my college days, I'd never read it until now. This month, it was a common read in one of my Goodreads groups; so I decided to join in, and watched it again (this time on film) as well. (I didn't read it in the above edition, but in the 1918 Yale Shakespeare set edition.)

Quite a few of my Goodreads friends have rated this play, mostly at four or five stars. My three-star rating (which is rounded up from two 1/2!) marks me as a bit of a heretic, or at least nonconformist. I'll readily admit that it has its pluses. As several reviews point out, it's funny (in places), especially if you like screwball situational humor --but the verbal humor of the play-within-a-play is a hoot as well. The blank verse diction of the play is grandiloquent and impressive (and has a few often quoted lines) as poetry. And I'll admit I'm always a sucker for a happy ending (okay, that's not a spoiler; given that it's one of the author's comedies, would you expect it to be tragic?) But it has, IMO, it's artistic weaknesses as well; and some of its attitudes haven't worn well with time. I wouldn't rank it as highly as some Shakespeare plays I've read/watched.

Naturally, I sympathize with Hermia and Lysander, who seem to genuinely love each other, and I rooted for them to be together. To his credit, Shakespeare clearly doesn't side with Egeus' and Theseus' ultra-patriarchial defense of arranged marriage and absolute paternal authority. Egeus, who wants to hand his own daughter to a suitor of his choosing in complete disregard for her feelings, and is seriously willing to actually have her killed for defying him, comes across to me as out-and-out evil pond scum. For me, though, that's a dysfunctional family situation that's hard to see as the stuff of comedy. Demetrius doesn't show up as much better; he's physically and selfishly infatuated with Hermia, to the point where he wants to essentially rape her for his own gratification regardless of what she wants, an attitude as far from love as it's possible to get. And he's thrown over an engagement (which the Elizabethans regarded as just as binding as marriage) to Helena, whom he obviously doesn't love either, to pursue this infatuation; and he treats her like dirt. It's hard (no, make that impossible) to imagine what Helena can see in him, and why she'd actually want him. Her absolute groveling before him, with lines like, "I am your spaniel... The more you beat me, I will fawn on you," etc., etc., for any male viewer who admires and respects women, can't help but come across as wince-worthy (or vomit-worthy). The fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titiana, have their own battle of the sexes going on, over a changeling human boy that Oberon selfishly wants to take for his own, despite Titiana's rather touching desire to raise him out of love and respect for his dead mother. Shakespeare's handling of some of these plot elements doesn't exactly suggest a real proto-feminist statement.

The motivation for some of the characters' key decisions at turning points of the plot are incomprehensible and implausible. (view spoiler)

A central premise of the play, the idea that love can be magically alienated from its object and attached to someone else, sends a rather reductionist message about what love is, and the role of the mind and free will of humans in those kinds of feelings and choices. To be sure, we don't take this message seriously, because we don't believe fairies and magic exist; to us, they're just literary conceits. But to Shakespeare and his audience, these things actually DID exist (and love philtres were taken as seriously as a heart attack in the folk magic of that day --though most of them were actually just herbal aphrodisiacs), and we have techniques of brainwashing and mind control today that their believers credit with as much reductionist power. At a deeper level than the superficially amusing, one might find it problematical to see things like love and friendship made playthings for fairy amusement, and "esteem" it less of a "sport" than Puck does. That raises fair questions about the ending, too. (view spoiler)

While Bottom and his fellow artisan actors (who obviously aren't well-educated, as few manual laborers were in the 16th century) are highly comical at times, one can detect a certain stereotyping and disparaging of those who aren't of the upper class in some lines. There seems to be an intent to portray them as being as moronic and naturally inferior to their social "betters" as possible; and that's another aspect of the play that comes across as irritating if you dig below the surface level.

Some readers/viewers might find the Elizabethan English here (and in other plays of the period) to be a deal-breaking stumblingblock. For me it wasn't. In viewing the play, I think most intelligent people could basically follow the action and get the gist of the dialogue without a problem. Making sense of the written text actually isn't too hard in most places (especially if you've previously seen the play performed). The Yale Shakespeare has very short explanatory footnotes, and longer endnotes, explaining the meanings of archaic words and phrases, with an index of words glossed; but I usually didn't have to refer to this. (When I did, it was generally helpful.) This edition also has short appendices on the sources of Shakespeare's ideas for the play, on the theatrical history of the play (to 1918), and on the text of it, and a few suggestions, now a bit dated, for collateral reading. I didn't read over any of these in much detail, but I'll probably refer to some of the material for discussion in the group during the rest of the month. ...more

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