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Professor Arnold Kettle compares some of the ways 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' has been produced in the theatre and appraises the influence they have on our own interpretation today. Professor Kettl
...e argues that the most pervasive production style is essentially one of the nineteenth century, and he analyses it using paintings by Richard Dadd and Mendelssohn's incidental music. The programme also contains a short section from Max Reinhardt's Hollywood production of 1935 and a long section from an interview with Peter Brook including excerpts from his Royal Shakespeare Company's production at Stratford in 1970.
| 1 | 00:00:01,000 | 00:00:07,000 | Peter Brook: Shakespeare in talking, in writing a play of which there are many themes, |
| 1 | 00:00:02,000 | 00:00:05,000 | (Arnold Kettle) Now, whatever the Elizabethans made of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'... |
| 2 | 00:00:06,000 | 00:00:09,000 | (Arnold Kettle) ..they didn't treat it as a Teutonic fairytale. |
| 2 | 00:00:07,000 | 00:00:13,000 | if we say 'illusion and reality' there's only one of the themes, decided that as a… |
| 3 | 00:00:09,000 | 00:00:14,000 | (Arnold Kettle) Yet it's this tradition that lurks behind the small grotesque figures… |
| 4 | 00:00:14,000 | 00:00:20,000 | (Arnold Kettle) ..in Fuseli's picture of Titania and Bottom finished in 1789, |
| 3 | 00:00:15,000 | 00:00:19,000 | ..metaphor for this, something that he could work through, he would – |
| 4 | 00:00:19,000 | 00:00:22,000 | he took the most dazzlingly simple solution which was there, |
| 5 | 00:00:20,000 | 00:00:23,000 | (Arnold Kettle) the sort of picture that influenced the visual effects… |
| 5 | 00:00:22,000 | 00:00:25,000 | he would work through the theatre . So he said, I'm going to do a play about… |
| 6 | 00:00:23,000 | 00:00:27,000 | (Arnold Kettle) ..19th century producers of 'The Dream' had up their sleeves, |
| 6 | 00:00:26,000 | 00:00:32,000 | ..illusion and reality and for this I'm going to use the action of make-believe, |
| 7 | 00:00:27,000 | 00:00:32,000 | (Arnold Kettle) and that still influences the Walt Disney Corporation to this day. |
| 7 | 00:00:33,000 | 00:00:36,000 | the action of make-believe means that my play is going to be about… |
| 8 | 00:00:34,000 | 00:00:39,000 | Arnold Kettle: And then there's Mendelssohn's music - splendid music - which perhaps… |
| 8 | 00:00:36,000 | 00:00:38,000 | ..a play within a play within a play. |
| 9 | 00:00:39,000 | 00:00:44,000 | ..more than anything has shaped producers' and our responses to 'The Dream', |
| 9 | 00:00:39,000 | 00:00:42,000 | (Peter Brook) It's a play about some people who are not actors… |
| 10 | 00:00:42,000 | 00:00:44,000 | (Peter Brook) ..who decide to become actors to do a play, |
| 10 | 00:00:44,000 | 00:00:47,000 | even though we may not always be conscious of it. |
| 11 | 00:00:44,000 | 00:00:47,000 | (Peter Brook) and in the process of their doing the play, |
| 12 | 00:00:48,000 | 00:00:51,000 | (Peter Brook) strange questions of what a play is even emerge. |
| 11 | 00:00:49,000 | 00:02:18,000 | (classical music by Mendelssohn with an operatic female vocalist) |
| 13 | 00:00:52,000 | 00:00:56,000 | Bottom: Masters, you ought to consider with yourself, to bring in – God shields us… |
| 14 | 00:00:56,000 | 00:01:02,000 | – a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wildfowl… |
| 15 | 00:01:02,000 | 00:01:05,000 | ..than your lion living; and we ought to look to it. |
| 16 | 00:01:06,000 | 00:01:09,000 | Snout: Therefore another prologue must tell he is not the lion. |
| 18 | 00:01:14,000 | 00:01:20,000 | ..lion's neck, and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect: |
| 19 | 00:01:21,000 | 00:01:28,000 | 'Ladies' or 'Fair ladies' – I would ask you', or 'I would request you', or… |
| 20 | 00:01:29,000 | 00:01:35,000 | ..'I would beseech you' not to tremble, not to fear. My life for yours: |
| 21 | 00:01:35,000 | 00:01:46,000 | if you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity on my life. No. I am no such thing. |
| 22 | 00:01:46,000 | 00:01:52,000 | I am a man, as other men are' – and then indeed let him name his name, |
| 23 | 00:01:52,000 | 00:02:00,000 | Bottom: and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner. -Quince: Well, it shall be so. |
| 24 | 00:02:01,000 | 00:02:04,000 | (James Mossman) How important for you is that conversation of the workmen… |
| 25 | 00:02:04,000 | 00:02:06,000 | (James Mossman) ..preparing their play for the nobles? |
| 26 | 00:02:07,000 | 00:02:08,000 | (James Mossman) It seemed to be the very key to you? |
| 27 | 00:02:09,000 | 00:02:13,000 | Peter Brook: Yes, because in a very short time all the arguments, |
| 28 | 00:02:13,000 | 00:02:19,000 | all the theories of the modern theatre are all dealt with. But you can find... |
| 12 | 00:02:20,000 | 00:02:25,000 | Now the thing that above all I want you to notice about these images and that music... |
| 29 | 00:02:20,000 | 00:02:26,000 | ..the whole of the work of Brecht ; you can find the results of almost all the round tables… |
| 13 | 00:02:25,000 | 00:02:30,000 | ..is that they belong to a period which is neither Shakespeare's nor ours. |
| 30 | 00:02:27,000 | 00:02:30,000 | ..and discussions of directors all over the world, all through the last century, |
| 14 | 00:02:31,000 | 00:02:34,000 | And perhaps the key image is that of fairies as ballet dancers, |
| 31 | 00:02:31,000 | 00:02:39,000 | all summed up in these very, in these few lines, of which the strongest one for me is… |
| 15 | 00:02:35,000 | 00:02:39,000 | (Arnold Kettle) as we can see again in these Richard Dadd paintings of 1841. |
| 16 | 00:02:40,000 | 00:02:45,000 | (Arnold Kettle) There seems to have been at least two traditions behind this. |
| 32 | 00:02:40,000 | 00:02:48,000 | ..the assertion that the theatre is about men, by men for men. |
| 17 | 00:02:45,000 | 00:02:49,000 | (Arnold Kettle) One is a rather austere classical one. And the other tradition… |
| 18 | 00:02:49,000 | 00:02:54,000 | (Arnold Kettle) ..linked with dancing is erotic with Titania treated as a Venus… |
| 33 | 00:02:49,000 | 00:02:52,000 | Flute: Must I speak now? -Quince: Ay, marry must you; for you must understand... |
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