A Midsummer Nightmare

No poet has been more cruelly treated after his death than Shakespeare. In his lifetime, not one person doubted that he was the author of his plays or poems. But doubt has now become common - usually argued on the snobby grounds that a glover’s son without a university education could never be a great poet. But Shakespeare went to a good grammar school in which an intensive programme of teaching involved a thorough knowledge of the classics. And, like many other people, before and since, he also educated himself - a feat perfectly possible without being attended to by a university teacher. In any case, Shakespeare’s rampant originality of voice combined with a ruthless plagiarism of stories from elsewhere would have made him a most unwelcome student. Like Robert Burns, Shakespeare was the vigorous voice of popular poetry, deeply aware of human nature, and a shrewd observer of its triumphs and failures.

Even greater acts of cruelty to Shakespeare are carried out by those directors who see his plays as a means to celebrate their own fame rather than the words of the poet. I suffered this on my wedding anniversary on September 23rd, when my wife and I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream in Stratford-on-Avon. The stage was set out, for no particular reason, as a seedy nightclub. Chairs hung from the ceiling, and were raised and lowered at different points in the play. This meant that we were unable to imagine a wood outside Athens - which we could have done if there had been just a bare stage.

But there was worse than that. The play was done for laughs: plenty of frantic slapstick, devoid of any sense of drama or the wonder of a magic. Helena’s anguish from unrequited love - something we have all experienced - was lost in comic over-acting. The wonderful moment in Act IV when Demetrios, Lysander, Hermia and Helena wake to find their night of magic is over was lost to drama. Finally, the cast pretended they were not in a play written by Shakespeare. They ignored the verse spoken by the Athenians in the play (the English workingmen who Shakespeare inserts in the play use everyday speech). So we lose the force of Puck’s last great speech to the audience, which speaks for Shakespeare himself:

    If we shadows have offended,
    Think but this, and all is mended,
    That you have but slumber’d here
    While these visions did appear.
    And this weak and idle theme,
    No more yielding but a dream,
    Gentles, do not reprehend:
    if you pardon, we will mend:
    And, as I am an honest Puck,
    If we have unearned luck
    Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
    We will make amends ere long;
    Else the Puck a liar call;
    So, good night unto you all.
    Give me your hands, if we be friends,
    And Robin shall restore amends.