Date the play was written

It is unknown exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but on the basis of topical references and an allusion to Edmund Spenser it was for an aristocratic wedding, while others suggest that it was written for Queen Elizabeth to celebrate the feast day of St. John. No concrete evidence exists to support either theory. It would have been performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe.

Date first performed

It is believed that A Midsummer Night's was first performed between 1595 and 1596. In the Elizabethan era there was a huge demand for new entertainment and A Midsummer Night's Dream would have been produced immediately following the completion of the play. It is believed that the script was first printed in 1600.

Sources of the plot

Some features of the plot and characters can be traced to elements of earlier mythologically based literature; for example, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses and the transformation of Bottom into an ass is descended from Apuleius' The Golden Ass.

Lysander was also an ancient Greek warlord while Theseus and Hippolyta were respectively the Duke of Athens and Queen of the Amazons. Shakespeare could have been working on Romeo and Juliet at about the same time that he wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it is possible to see the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude as a comic reworking of the tragic play. Another source is The Knight's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Costumes

Shakespeare's players would have been costumed in rich and elegant clothes, mixing classical dress with contemporary Elizabethan fashions.  We know from Philip Henslowe's inventory of the costumes owned by his company in 1598, that costumes available for use included:

* "a scarlet cloke Layd downe with silver Lace and silver buttens"

* "a short velvet cap cloth embroidered with gould and gould spangle"

* "a yellow silk gowne"

* " blew calico gowns"

Shakespeare's players could also make use of a wide variety of props, including among other things:

* "a baye tree"

* "a lyone skin"

* " Imperial crownes"

* " bedsteade"

* "i black dogge"  - for use by Starveling playing Moonshine!

Stage backround and landmark productions

A Midsummer Night’s Dream has had a long and chequered history with, of course, all the roles initially being played by men and boys since Elizabethan law forbade women and girls to act on stage.

It disappeared from the stage after Shakespeare's death.  The play soon came to be viewed as old-fashioned and when Samuel Pepys saw it some 40 years after Shakespeare's death he thought that it was the "most insipid" and "ridiculous" play that he had seen in his life.  Essentially, with its four plots, and fantastical story line, Shakespeare's play proved simply too complicated for late 17th century audiences.

Later still there was a period when only selected parts of the play were performed. But things changed in the 1800s…

In 1840, Madame Vestris at Covent Garden returned the play to the stage with a relatively full text, but padded it out with musical sequences and ballet dances. Vestris took the role of Oberon and, for the next 70 years, Oberon and Puck would always be played by women. After the success of Vestris' production, 19th century theatre continued to treat the Dream as an opportunity for huge spectacle, often with a cast numbering nearly 100.

Hugely detailed sets were created for the palace and the forest, and the fairies tended to be envisaged as gossamer-winged ballerinas. The much-loved overture by Felix Mendelssohn was always used throughout this period, with the text often being cut to provide greater space for music and dance.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (who played Bottom) staged a 1911 production with live rabbits hopping about the stage. Another landmark production was the Peter Brook's RSC production of 1970. Brook staged the play in a blank white box, in which masculine fairies engaged in circus tricks such as trapeze artistry. Brook also introduced the subsequently popular idea of doubling Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania, as if to suggest that the world of the fairies is a mirror version of the world of the mortals.

Since Brook's production directors have felt free to use their imaginations to decide for themselves what the play's story means, and to represent that visually on stage.

This play is a favourite for open-air performance because of its woodland setting and fairy characters. It is regularly in the repertoire for the Open Air Theatre in London’s Regent’s Park. “This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tiring-house"

Dream quotations

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania

I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night.

I have an exposition of sleep come upon me

What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.

Oh lord, what fools these mortals be

The characters

There are three distinct groups of characters in the play: the Athenian court characters (including the lovers), the workmen and the supernaturals.

The Athenians:

Theseus, Duke of Athens, good friend of Lysander

Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and betrothed of Theseus

Egeus, father of Hermia, wants to force Hermia to get married to Demetrius

Lysander, beloved of Hermia

Hermia, beloved of Lysander

Helena, in love with Demetrius

Demetrius, in love with Hermia but ends up in love with Helena

Philostrate, Master of the Revels for Theseus

The supernatural characters:

Oberon, King of the Fairies

Titania, Queen of the Fairies

Puck, a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow, servant to Oberon

Titania's fairy servants (her "train"):

Peaseblossom, fairy

Cobweb, fairy

Moth, fairy

Mustardseed, fairy

The acting troupe (also known as The Mechanicals):

Peter Quince, carpenter, their leader and director of their play

Nick Bottom, weaver; he plays Pyramus in the troupe's production of "Pyramus and Thisbe," and receives a donkey head from Puck so that Titania will magically fall in love with a monster.

Francis Flute, the bellows-mender who plays Thisbe.

Robin Starveling, the tailor who plays Moonshine.

Tom Snout, the tinker who plays the wall.

Snug, the joiner who plays the lion.

Performers

One of the most famous interpretaions of Bottom was by American actor James Cagney in the movie of 1935. Mickey Rooney played Puck.

Another notable Bottom was Ralph Richardson.

Dame Judi Dench has this year (2010) been playingTitania at the Rose Theatre in Kingston…a role she first played for Peter Hall’s RSC company in 1962. Dames Diana Rigg and Helen Mirren played Helena and Hermia.

The 1981 BBC Television Shakespeare production was produced by Jonathan Miller, starring Helen Mirren as Titania, Peter McEnery as Oberon, Robert Lindsay as Lysander, Geoffrey Palmer as Quince and Brian Glover as Bottom. It was performed in Elizabethan costume.

The 1999 film of A Midsummer Night's Dream included Kevin Kline as Bottom, Rupert Everett as Oberon, Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania, Stanley Tucci as Puck, Sophie Marceau as Hippolyta, Christian Bale as Demetrius, Dominic West as Lysander and Calista Flockhart as Helena. This adaptation relocates the play's action to Tuscany in the late 19th century.

The attendant fairies are always a challenge for designers/directors and there seems to be no end to the ways in which they can be portrayed. Puppets can be used to substitute actors. And performers can be seen as anything from delicate little wood nymphs to aggressive punks.