Exhibition: Shakespeare at the OU

Apart from the Fairies I dare say A Midsummer Night’s Dream is best known for the broad comedy of the low-life, ‘hard-handed’ ‘rude mechanicals’ and their inept rehearsal and performance of their would-be tragic play-within-the-play, the ‘Most Lamentable Comedy’¹ of Pyramus and Thisbe. This episode invariably provides an uproarious near-finale to the Dream. As so often, however, Shakespeare’s work may be appreciated on various levels. The mechanicals’ play is exploited by Shakespeare to convey in comic mode a reflection on the nature of dramatic art, including consideration of the use (and misuse!) of props and costume. This self-reflexive quality, the use of drama to explore the nature of the dramatic art, is known as metatheatre. Clip 16, which shows part of the mechanicals’ rehearsal scene, affords a good illustration.

View Clip 16

Footnotes

1 Shakespeare, W. (n.d.) A Midsummer Night's Dream [Act 1, Scene 2, line 9], in Greenblatt, S. (ed) (1997) The Norton Shakespeare, New York, W.W. Norton, p. 820