1

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“...which I have never seen before, nor shall ever again,

for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.”

[Samuel Pepys, Diary, 29 September, 1662]

Entered in Stationers’ Register “8 Octobris [1600]”:

1stQuarto (Q1) 1600 for Thomas Fisher Q2 printed 1619 by William Jaggard

probably from Shakespeare’s ‘foul papers’ [N.B. title page claims “by Iames Roberts,

rather than from prompt-book; 1600 – i.e. a ‘fake’ edition].

N.B.Jaggard’s Passionate Pilgrim by ‘W.Shakespeare’ (1599).

  • Some scholars claim that it was written for the public theatre but others think it was probably written to be performed at a wedding in a noble household,

Between EITHER Elizabeth Vere & William, Earl of Derby on 26 January, 1595 [at Greenwich];

ORElizabeth Carey & Thomas, son of Lord Berkeley on 19 February, 1596 [at Blackfriars]. Carey’s coat-of-arms

  • Possibly performedin the presence of Queen Elizabeth herself: she was godmother to both brides; also Elizabeth Carey was granddaughter of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon (son of William Carey and Mary Boleyn, elder sister of Anne), the Queen’s cousin & Lord Chamberlain.
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dreamis mentioned inPalladis Tamia: Wit’s Treasury, (1598) edited by Francis Meresand must have been performed in the public theatre by then.
  • Edward Sharpham’s comedy The Fleire (1607)acted by the Children of the Revels company in 1606 has the following:

Knight. And how lives he with ‘em?

Fleire. Faith, like Thisbe in the play,’a has almost killed himself

with the scabbard.

  • 30 August, 1594, Baptism of Prince Henry (eldest son of King James VI&I). During elaborate festivities a chariot was drawn onstage by a ‘blackamoor’. “This chariot should have been drawne in by a lyon, but because his presence might have brought some feare to the nearest, or that the sights of the lights and the torches might have commoved (i.e. agitated, excited) his tameness, it was thought meete that the Moor should supply that room”.[1] Is this the origin of the Mechanicals’ anxiety about ‘afright[ing] the ladies out of their wits’…?

Important sources:

  • Chaucer’s ‘The Knight’s Tale’ from The Canterbury Tales which begins:

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,
Ther was a duc that highte Theseus;
Of Atthenes he was lord and governour,
And in his tyme swich a conquerour,
That gretter was ther noon under the sonne.
Ful many a riche contree hadde he wonne,
What with his wysdom and his chivalrie;

He conquered al the regne of Femenye,
That whilom was ycleped Scithia,
And weddede the queene Ypolita,
And broghte hir hoom with hym in his contree,
With muchel glorie and greet solempnytee,
And eek hir yonge suster Emelye.
And thus with victorie and with melodye
Lete I this noble duc to Atthenes ryde,
And al his hoost, in armes hym bisyde.
And certes, if it nere to long to heere,
I wolde have toold yow fully the manere
How wonnen was the regne of Femenye
By Theseus, and by his chivalrye,
And of the grete bataille for the nones
Bitwixen Atthenes and Amazones,
And how asseged (i.e. besieged) was Ypolita
The faire hardy queene of Scithia,
And of the feste that was at hir weddynge …

  • Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans compared togetherhas a ‘Life of Theseus’ which treats of his encounters with the Amazons. Here Hippolyta is called ‘Antiopa’.[2]
  • Ovid’s Metamorphoses[3]provides many instances of the sort of transformation that befalls Bottom in MND – and, of course, other characters are undergo their own form of ‘metamorphosis’ during the course of the play.MetamorphosisBook IV has the story of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’; Helena chases her love Demetrius through the forest, and refers to Apollo’s chasing of the nymph Daphne: “Run when you will, the story(i.e. Ovid’s story) shall be changed: // Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase” (II.1).[4]
  • The Golden Asseby Lucius Apuleius ‘Africanus’(125-180 AD), Trans. by William Adlington[1566] – during which the protagonist, Lucius, is accidentally turned into an ass.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, First Quarto (Q1), British Library Copy. Published:London: Thomas Fisher, 1600; Printer:Robert Bradock;Bookseller:Thomas Fisher.

[1]William Fowler’sTrue Reportarie of the Baptism of the Prince of Scotland (1594).

[2]Translated out of Greek into English by James Amyot and out of French into English by Sir Thomas North (1579).

[3]Arthur Golding’s English translation (1567).

[4]The godApollopursued the nymph Daphne. She prayed for rescue and was turned into a laurel tree as he touched her.