Free A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Page B

device:
    The repressed, regimented, grey court, reminiscent of Cold-War Russia, would move to the forest by way of the transformation scene, which would begin with artificial flowers (the first color in the play) sprouting through the stage floor. 52
    The transformation from Athens to fairyland was enacted by two characters from the Athenian court who stripped off each other’s clothes to reveal the “fairy” beneath. This also signaled how the sexual war, and sexual frustrations of the fairy world, were impinging on the real world:
    Sirine Saba, Philostrate’s side-kick in the court scenes, came on in her white gloves, fur hat, and spectacles. Philostrate appeared in the doorway behind her as she bent down—ostensibly to picka flower, but somehow in a rather suggestive manner. Philostrate would then stalk her down the stage … he would catch her up and … be right behind her the next time she bent down. Philostrate had had an idiosyncratic little gesture, in the court scene, of stepping forward and rocking on his heels. This movement behind a girl bending down was, obviously, very sexual … She would then turn, and slap me across the face. I would … then remove her hat, pull off its ear-flaps and throw it away. She would … then remove my glasses and break the arms off … take off my bowler hat, spit in it, and throw them all into the wings. Things would then escalate … until we would be ripping the clothes off each other with frenzied energy. This was followed by energetic kissing, the fierceness of the love/hate relationship descending rapidly into pure sexuality. She would then run away in a very coy, teasing manner, which was the cue for the first line of the scene: “How now, spirit, whither wander you?” … the scene became directly about desire and passion—everything they had both been repressing at court. 53
If We Shadows Have Offended
    Puritan writers such as Philip Stubbes were shocked by the degree of sexual license taken at May Day and Midsummer Night festivals. His work
Anatomy of Abuses
published in 1583, then reprinted in 1585 and 1595 (very probably the same year in which Shakespeare wrote the
Dream
), spoke out against the pagan rituals still abundant in England at the time:
    All the young men and maids, old men and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, groves, hills, woods, and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes … I have heard it credibly reported (and that
viva voce
) by men of great gravity and reputation, that of forty, threescore, or a hundred maids going to the wood over night, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled. These be the fruits which these cursed pastimes bring forth. 54 In 1642 the Puritans closed the theaters. In 1644 the May festival was banned. From their representation in his plays, we can imagine that these were not Shakespeare’s favorite people.
    Most modern productions have the lovers go through various states of undress as they make their journey through the hostile forest. However, it is a mistake to think of this as just a sexual undressing. As the program to Sheila Hancock’s 1984 touring production suggested, it is also a process of self-discovery:
    In sleep we have a reversion to a more primitive type of experience … The dream becomes a revelation. It strips the ego of its artificial wrappings and exposes it in its native nudity. It brings up from the dim depths of our sub-conscious life the primal, instinctive impulses, and discloses to us a side of ourselves which connects us with the great sentient world. 55
    In a world where magic and the supernatural are no longer a part of everyday life, “once we are out of childhood the closest we come to magic is through our dreams; in this extra-terrestrial world we meet the part of