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| A Midsummer Night's Dream poster & movie trailer link |
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (AMND) is a weird story that at first I did not enjoy as it was over the top, there seemed to be too many stories to keep a track of, and I could not gather what it was all about. After watching it for a second time, this time critically, I enjoyed it more as I was able to understand it better. Of course we are dealing with the fairy king and queen, so the characters should be over the top and fantastical, and cinema is the perfect medium to create believable representations of reality. It left me confused though; is the midsummer night’s dream the story we are watching unfold? Is the dream a metaphor for a wish that people could marry for love? Or is the whole play/movie the dream, as Puck mischievously suggests at the end? Puck: ‘That you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream.’
AMND has many recurring themes from other Shakespearean plays: duty, social hierarchies, authority, women as property, infatuation and love (true, unrequited, shared & lost). But the theme I found most prominent was Vanity.
Vanity:
Oberon: I believe hopes that Titania will love him more upon realising she has loved a vile thing, and that he hopes that they will reconcile.
Titania: is shocked that she had been dallying with the ass.
Feary Sentinal: is distracted by her own reflection in the mirror Oberon gives her, and lets him pass.
Nick Bottom: is constantly trying to be the centre of attention (male and female). He dresses up fancy, sings ballads in public, is visibly hurt when he is laughed at, believes he can be the best at all of the parts available in the play, catches his reflection in the wood, is so satisfied that such a beautiful woman could love him unconditionally that he ignores the initial fear he had and all the weird happenings going on around him.
Helena & Hermia: the fight they have in the wood. They insult one another about their looks.
Helena: believes that Demetrius does not love her because she is ugly.
Discussion Question: How is the supernatural portrayed in A Midsummer Night's Dream? How do you think the director wants us to read the relationship between the fairies and the 'real' characters?
The fairies are portrayed as supernatural and magical, however their quarrels and mistakes give them a human quality. Titania and Oberon’s marital quarrel has caused havoc in the human world. They seem to have power over the elements and nature, with their tempers causing famine and flood and the alteration of seasons. 'The green corn hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard, The fold stands empty in the drowned field, The crows are fatted with the murrain flock.' In the human world the fairies make childish sport with the humans. This is evident through the description one of the fairies gives of Puck, Oberon’s jester: ‘are not you he that frights the maidens of the villagery, and mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?’ to which Puck replies, ‘Thou speaks aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night.’
Titania, Oberon, Puck, and the attendant fairies’ influence affect the bizarre adventures of the young lovers and actors in the wood. Oberon’s revenge on his disobedient wife, Titania, and Puck’s transfiguring magic affects Nick Bottom. Oberon’s desire to relieve the lovers from their problems using the love juice from the flower that has been hit by cupid's arrows, greatly adds to them through the mistake of his minister, Puck. Overall, the fairies seem to affect humans all the time, whether it’s for sport or out of genuine desire to help. The humans though seem all the time unaware of their presence or of their involvement, putting any assumed memories of interaction with the fairies down to a dream.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfk3IO7sn54&feature=related
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