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  (Arnold Kettle) Now, whatever the   
 Elizabethans made of 'A Midsummer
  Night's Dream'...

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  (Arnold Kettle) ..they didn't   
 treat it as a Teutonic fairytale.

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  (Arnold Kettle) Yet it's this   
 tradition that lurks behind the small
  grotesque figures…

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  (Arnold Kettle) ..in Fuseli's   
 picture of Titania and Bottom
  finished in 1789,

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  (Arnold Kettle) the sort of   
 picture that influenced the
  visual effects…

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  (Arnold Kettle) ..19th century   
 producers of 'The Dream' had up
  their sleeves,

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  (Arnold Kettle) and that still   
 influences the Walt Disney Corporation
  to this day.

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  Arnold Kettle: And then there's   
 Mendelssohn's music - splendid music -
  which perhaps…

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  ..more than anything has shaped   
 producers' and our responses to
  'The Dream',

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  even though we may not always be   
 conscious of it.

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  (classical music by Mendelssohn   
 with an operatic female vocalist)

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  Now the thing that above all I   
 want you to notice about these images and
  that music...

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  ..is that they belong to a period   
 which is neither Shakespeare's nor ours.

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  And perhaps the key image is that   
 of fairies as ballet dancers,

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  (Arnold Kettle) as we can see   
 again in these Richard Dadd
  paintings of 1841.

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  (Arnold Kettle) There seems to   
 have been at least two traditions
  behind this.

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  (Arnold Kettle) One is a rather   
 austere classical one. And the
  other tradition…

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  (Arnold Kettle) ..linked with   
 dancing is erotic with Titania
  treated as a Venus…

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  (Arnold Kettle) ..who manages like  
  so many mythological goddesses to be…

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  (Arnold Kettle) ..sacred and   
 profane at the same time.

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  We're lucky that we have preserved  
  for us in an unlikely but available form,

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  the essential 19th century way of   
 producing 'The Dream'.

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  Max Reinhardt's film wasn't made   
 until 1935, and of course…

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  ..it gets effects no stage   
 production could ever achieve.

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  But forget about Mickey Rooney and  
  the other Hollywood stars, but don't forget
  Mendelssohn…

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  ..or the fact that the dancing was  
  in the charge of Bronislava Nijinska,

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  sister of the great Russian dancer  
 . And don't forget that Reinhardt
  himself was...

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  ..a great experimental producer,   
 who earlier had played an exciting
  part in making…

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  ..Germany a great centre of the   
 drama. It was because of Hitler that he
  happened to be…

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  producing 'The Dream' in the   
 Hollywood Bowl,

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  and Warner Bros. persuaded him to   
 have a go at filming it.

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  Puck: How now, here comes Oberon  
 ! (fairies screaming and fleeing in terror)

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  Oberon: Ill met by moonlight,   
 proud Titania!

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  Titania: What, jealous Oberon?   
 Fairies, skip hence. I have forsworn his bed
  and company.

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  Oberon: Tarry, rash wanton! Do you  
  amend it then? It lies in you.

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  Oberon: Why should Titania cross   
 her Oberon?

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  Oberon: I do but beg a little   
 changeling boy to be my henchman. 
  fairies screaming)

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  Titania: Set your heart at rest.   
 The fairy land buys not the
  child of me.

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  His mother was a votaress of my   
 order and for her sake do I
  rear up her boy;

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  and for her sake I will not part   
 with him.

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  Oberon: How long within this wood   
 intend you stay?

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  Titania: Perchance till after   
 Theseus' wedding day.

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  Titania: If you will patiently   
 dance in our round and see our moonlight revels
   go with us.

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  Titania: If not, shun me, and I   
 will spare your haunts.

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  Oberon: Give me that boy and I   
 will go with thee.

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  Titania: Not for thy fairy kingdom!
  Fairies, away. (fairies giggling)

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  (laughter)