Never before had I read or watched A Midsummer Night’s Dream until this morning. Despite some plot and theme preparation from my Shakespeare in Community MOOC, I still managed to hold onto preconceptions that a play about love and faeries would be, well, happy… and magical.

It took me a scene or two to familiarize myself with the characters, particularly because in this play, Puck was played simultaneously by a man and a woman (or so I suppose). While I was relegated to watch a movie version of Romeo and Juliet, I lucked out and found a theatrical production of MSND. In fact, the playbill read:

Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theatre presents William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Summer 2007 stage production featuring the music of Felix Mendelssohn.

With no surprise, the actors, the sets, and the accuracy of Shakespeare’s language were all of the highest quality. I could have been transported to the Globe Theatre in England, were I not aware of my surroundings. I imagined myself sitting in the theatre during a live performance, which was authenticated as audience members occasionally, unwittingly, stepped in front of the camera, thus momentarily obscuring my view. There was an unbearably long (mere minutes), and oddly placed, intermission, and the orchestra was brilliant. My “seat” was far closer than if I attended the performance in person, so YouTube does have its benefits.

The mechanics of the performance aside, the content of the play truly caught me off-guard. I had no prior exposure to this play in any entirety (not counting a Disney show’s parody, which, in hindsight, did not cast much light on the subject, now that I have seen the actual play), so I experienced every word, every action, every confusing and infuriating moment for the first time. These were fresh emotions and reactions to a Shakespearean play, which I have not felt in many years, since other Shakespearean works have reappeared often throughout my life.

For a play about love, and it is, sort of, in many varied forms, MSND has much hatred, callousness, whining, degradation, and scorn – and that’s before the faeries make their mischief! My utmost surprise came at the lack of love toward Hermia by her father, Egeus. He is despicable and treats his daughter like dirt. Meanwhile, Helena basically harasses Demetrius and even asked him to treat her as his dog (literally) if only he allowed her to love him. She is desperate and crass, loud and rude. After the night’s confusion, Demetrius does come to love her (probably by spell, but since he did mention that he loved her when they were children, it’s possible that his love still exists), yet Helena pulls him down the aisle and must keep his attention during their brief ceremony. It is quite painful to watch. Hermia seems a sweet spirit, with no obvious faults, yet she is repeatedly abused by all the mortal men, including her father and especially during Lysander and Demetrius’ duel. I believe she is the most deserving of the term “victim”.

Finally, to end a very odd play indeed, is the “play within a play”, which is the most ridiculous thing I have ever witnessed, even if it was meant to be a farce. I was put off by the harsh comments of the audience (particularly the Duke) made during the play, even criticizing the actors in earshot and to their faces. Was this the norm in Shakespeare’s time or was this of his own imagining? Hippolyta seems utterly disgusted with her “lover”, Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and rather annoyed at the whole process of betrothal. Her responses to her own wedding and general bitchiness make me want to reread some of my Greek mythology to see why she carries this attitude. Was she forced into the marriage? Of course, the play does not address this; in fact, the Duke and his bride are minor characters in terms of time on stage.

Watching the play in theatre format made me feel part of the performance, but movie versions do have their place – for one thing, the audience is less distracting. Either medium is an exceptional way to see one of Shakespeare’s plays come to life. As we discussed this week in my course, Shakespeare’s plays have been translated into many languages and people even watch them without speaking the language of the land, so my aversion to Shakespeare for not understanding the “King’s English” seems rather arbitrary. And yes, naysayers will emphasize that Shakespeare often wrote and “borrowed” stories that were based on others’ work, such as folklore and poetry, rather than write completely original content, but he made the stories his own, which is what any good writer does. (Lord of the Rings has many mythological references, as does Star Wars, because the themes transcend time.) He used his skillful language, but more than that, he brings these stories to the “Every Man” even today because all patrons of his art can relate in some way to the themes and the powerful emotions. If you can follow a play without understanding the language, then one must think this is due to brilliant acting, directing, and of course, playwriting.

Finally, note that while Romeo and Juliet begins with love and ends in tragedy and A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins with tragedy and ends in “love”, I would attest that truer love is present between Romeo and Juliet, and the real tragedy lies in the seemingly happy, yet blissfully ignorant, lives of the newlyweds, and even more so, the adulterous Faerie Queen and the spiteful Faerie King.

*As quoted by the director of the production, Joshua Randall, in regard to Puck: “We thought of them as two halves of the same Puck rather than two Pucks. The main reason was because we wanted Puck to be able to explicitly express both female and male characteristics. Since the character of Puck is somewhat androgynous, many modern productions choose to have Puck played by a woman. However, in this production we were highlighting the gender roles and therefore did not want to choose only male or only female characteristics for Puck.”