莎士比亚: 仲夏夜之梦/SHAKESPEARE: Midsummer Night's Dream (A)

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- 莎士比亚: 仲夏夜之梦
  SHAKESPEARE: Midsummer Night's Dream (A)
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莎士比亚: 仲夏夜之梦 / SHAKESPEARE: Midsummer Night's Dream (A)
[ 读物介绍 ]
William ShakespeareA Midsummer Night’s Dream A Midsummer Night’s Dream must be one of the most enduringlypopular of Shakespeare’s plays, and it is not difficult to see why: the workblends several kinds of comedy with a powerful atmosphere of magic and mysteryand a satisfying set of contrasts—between city and country, reason andimagination, love and infatuation. The play dates from 1595-6, and therefore belongs toShakespeare’s early maturity as a dramatist. There is some disagreement aboutwhether A Midsummer Night’s Dream was specially written for an aristocraticwedding. No direct evidence for this speculation exists, although the festiveand optimistic emphasis at the end—the fairies blessing the ‘bride-bed’—wouldcertainly be appropriate. One senses, too, a celebratory delight in the youngwriter’s new-found richness of ideas and mastery of form, and it is interestingto see from what a wide range of sources Shakespeare drew in order to createwhat is nevertheless a highly original work. Sources The anticipation and completion of Theseus’ and Hippolyta’swedding, which frames the action, is taken from Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale.Puck’s origin, on the other hand, owes more to folklore than literature; the‘mechanicals’ or ‘clowns’ (Bottom, Quince et al) are clearly caricaturedElizabethan workingmen, while the story of Pyramus and Thisbe came toShakespeare through Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. No singlesource, however, can account for the miraculous transformation Shakespeare worksupon these diverse materials. Synopsis of the Play Act 1, Scene 1: The setting is Athens. Theseus and Hippolytalook forward to their wedding in four days’ time. Egeus enters, angrilydemanding that his daughter Hermia be forced to marry Demetrius, while Hermiadefiantly asserts her love for Lysander. Lysander and Hermia, left alone,decide to elope the following night: they will meet in the wood outside thecity. Helena enters, lamenting her unrequited love for Demetrius, and thelovers reveal their plan to her. Scene 2: A group of Athenian workmen plan toperform ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ before the ‘Duke and Duchess on their wedding-dayat night’. They agree to rehearse secretly in the wood on the next night. Act 2, Scene 1: The action moves to the wood on thefollowing evening. Puck, Oberon’s servant, meets a Fairy belonging to Titania:then master and mistress appear, and quarrel violently over a ‘littlechangeling boy’ with whom Titania will not part. Oberon sends Puck off to fetchhim the flower ‘love-in-idleness’, with the juice of which he will compelTitania to fall humiliatingly in love with the first creature she sees onwaking. Demetrius enters, pursued by the lovesick Helena; Oberon, seeing this, instructs thereturning Puck to anoint the eyes of the ‘disdainful youth’, Demetrius, so thathe will again love Helena. Scene 2: Titania, in her bower, prepares for bed.Once she is asleep, Oberon squeezes the juice on her eyes. Lysander and Hermiaenter and lie down to sleep. Puck, mistaking one Athenian youth for another,anoints Lysander’s eyes. Helena, still pursuing Demetrius, stumbles across thesleeping Lysander who awakes, declares his passion for her and runs after her.Hermia wakes to find herself abandoned. Act 3, Scene 1: The Athenian ‘mechanicals’ enter to rehearsetheir play. Bottom, awaiting his cue off-stage, is mischievously transformed byPuck: he reappears with an ass’s head. His colleagues flee in terror, leavingBottom to confront the ardor of the waking Titania who is ‘much enamored’ ofhis ‘fair shape’. Scene 2: Puck and Oberon confer. Oberon, seeing Demetrius andHermia, realizes Puck’s error. He dispatches Puck to bring Helena to him,meanwhile anointing the sleeping Demetrius’ eyes so that he may wake and seeHelena. Lysander enters, protesting his love to Helena; their noise awakesDemetrius who thus joins Lysander in passionate courtship of her. Hermia enterssadly and then cannot understand Lysander’s coldness. All four fall to bitterquarrelling. Oberon therefore instructs Puck to lead the couples apart and thenuse the juice on Lysander’s eyes so that his love for Hermia will be restored. Act 4, Scene 1: Titania cossets the bemused Bottom beforethey sleep. Oberon undoes the ‘hateful imperfection of her eyes’ and sheaccepts his victory in the quarrel. Dawn arrives, and with it Theseus,Hippolyta and Egeus, out hunting. They discover the sleeping couples. Onceawake, their obvious happiness together moves Theseus to overrule Egeus andpropose a triple wedding. Bottom, alone, wakes to wonder at his ‘dream’. Scene2: The ‘clowns’, in despair at the loss of Bottom, are overjoyed at his return. Act 5, Scene 1: The wedding rites completed, Theseus callsfor entertainment and chooses the clowns’ play, which is presented withludicrous incompetence but sincere intention. All retire to bed at midnight,and the Fairies enter to bless the house. Stage History We can be fairly sure that A Midsummer Night’s Dream wasperformed at court in 1604, but the next recorded occasion is in 1662 whenSamuel Pepys saw a production and described it as ‘the most insipid ridiculousplay that ever I saw in my life’. From this date until the 20th century AMidsummer Night’s Dream was only known in radically adapted versions. Purcell in The Fairy Queen of 1692 first exploited itsmusical potential. The dominance of spectacle, dancing and music in thisproduction was maintained throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, including(for example) Garrick’s 1755 version (The Fairies). Mme. Lucia Vestris’ 1840production restored most of Shakespeare’s text and at least restricted thenumber of songs, although the operatic style still predominated, with lavishspecial effects and a huge cast. Mendelssohn’s incidental music, composed in1843, became de rigueur for all performances in the Victorian period—MaxReinhardt’s 1935 Hollywood version still maintained the tradition. Harley Granville-Barker’s 1914 production restored the fulltext and stripped away Mendelssohn’s music and the overblown staging, thusemphasizing ‘dramatic rather than scenic illusion’ (R.A. Foakes, introductionto the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition). Benjamin Britten’s 1960 opera basedon A Midsummer Night’s Dream featured disturbingly vivid sets by John Piper andfairies more sinister than innocent, but it was Peter Brook’s 1970 productionof the play which seemed at last to provide a truly 20th century reading of thetext. His set consisted of a bright white box in which the actors performedlike circus artists, bringing out the ‘dark and powerful currents ofsensuality’ (John Kane) within an apparently playful context. Commentary Certain themes stand out with obvious clarity in any readingof the play. Varieties of love abound: there is the naive infatuation of theyoung lovers, counterbalanced by the mature and rational affection betweenTheseus and Hippolyta; darker currents of lust are suggested by theTitania/Bottom liaison; and there is the innocent intensity of the mechanicals’comradeship as they struggle to achieve pathos in their presentation of‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, itself a story of tragic love in the mode of Romeo andJuliet. The play, then, might be seen as a study of the blind powerof love modified and ultimately blessed by the experience of suffering, albeitartificially condensed into one night of madness. How seriously we take theseideas will vary: Jan Kott famously drew attention to the dark and sinisteraspects of the ‘fairy’ world, while cynics might point out that the happy resolutionof the lovers’ difficulties is only achieved by the ‘artificial’ interventionof Oberon. Indisputably, the idea of transformation informs almost every partof the play: Bottom is ‘translated’ into an ass; the lovers see each otherafresh when they wake from their dream (‘And I have found Demetrius, like ajewel, /Mine own, and not mine own’); Theseus is suspicious of the transformingpower of the imagination, yet Hippolyta reminds him that ‘all the story of thenight told over, /And all their minds transfigured so together, /Morewitnesseth than fancy’s images...’ Something real and important, then, hasoccurred. The mechanicals strive for dramatic realism and falllaughably short—yet their failure actually draws attention by contrast to thetriumphant success of the play as a whole in seducing the audience into that‘willing suspension of disbelief...which constitutes poetic faith’ (Coleridge). Notes by Perry Keenlyside The Cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Theseus, Duke of Athens JackEllisHippolyta, Queen of the Amazons KarenArcherLysander, in love with Hermia Benjamin SoamesDemetrius, suitor to Hermia JamieGloverHermia, in love with Lysander Cathy SaraHelena, in love with Demetrius Emily RaymondOberon, King of the Fairies MichaelMaloneyTitania, Queen of the Fairies Sarah WoodwardPuck, in the service of Oberon Ian HughesPeter Quince, a carpenter JohnMoffattNick Bottom, a weaver WarrenMitchellFrancis Flute, a bellows-maker Peter KennyTom Snout, a tinker DonMcCorkindaleSnug, a joiner; Egeus, father of Hermia David TimsonStarveling, a tailor; Philostrate, Master of the Revels John RyeFairy, in the service of Titania Daisy DonovanFairies attending on Titania: Peaseblossom EmmaLindars Cobweb Sophie Nakhimoff Moth Laura Sheldon Mustardseed DominicKraemer JACK ELLIS (Theseus) has played Orsino in Twelfth Night and Horatio in Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company, aswell as many other Shakespearean roles for theaters across Great Britain. Histelevision appearances include Wycliffe, Beck, Prime Suspect and The Knock andhis film credits include A Dangerous Man and Didn’t You Kill My Brother? KAREN ARCHER (Hippolyta) has worked for the RoyalShakespeare Company in Nicholas Nickleby and as Mrs. Erlynne in LadyWindermere’s Fan, as well in plays such as Ghosts, She Stoops to Conquer andWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Her television appearances include The Chief,Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Casualty and Chancer and she has been seen in the filmsThe Secret Garden and Forever Young. BENJAMIN SOAMES (Lysander) trained at LAMDA. Since then hehas appeared in the TV series Sharpe and Absolutely Fabulous as well as the TVfilms Heavy Weather and England, My England. His theater credits includeMeasure For Measure. JAMIE GLOVER (Demetrius) trained at the Central School ofSpeech and Drama and has since played title roles in Hamlet and Henry V and anumber of other roles in, amongst others, Tartuffe and The Rose Tattoo for SirPeter Hall. His TV appearances include A Dance to the Music of Time andCadfael. CATHY SARA (Hermia) has worked for the New ShakespeareCompany in The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet, as well as the StephenJoseph Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse and King Lear at the Hackney Empire.Her television appearances include Kavanagh QC, Beck, The Detectives andHeartbeat, and she has worked extensively for the BBC Radio Repertory. EMILY RAYMOND (Helena) has played Helena in A MidsummerNight’s Dream for the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as a number of otherroles in plays such as The Changeling, All’s Well That Ends Well, and TheBeggar’s Opera. For other theaters she has appeared in Romeo and Juliet, TheSeagull, and Of Mice and Men. Her TV credits include Robin Hood and Highlanderand her film credits, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and A Murder of Quality. MICHAEL MALONEY (Oberon) has worked extensively for theRoyal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and in the West End, intaking leading roles such as Romeo, Prince Hal in Henry IV Parts 1 & 2,Peer Gynt and Hamlet. He is also active in film, and is known for his roles inTruly, Madly, Deeply, and Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, Henry V and In the BleakMidwinter. SARAH WOODWARD (Titania) joined the Royal ShakespeareCompany after leaving RADA and has since appeared in many Shakespearean rolesincluding Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Other theater credits include The Sea,Kean and Wild Oats. IAN HUGHES (Puck) has played Puck in A Midsummer Night’sDream for the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as other roles in King Lear,Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, The Venetian Twins and numerous otherplays. His TV credits include Death of a Salesman, Survivor’s Guide andAccidental Death of an Anarchist. JOHN MOFFATT’S (Peter Quince) distinguished theater careerencompasses two hundred roles across the UK, 42 major London productions andtwo Broadway appearances. He has played Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the OpenAir Theatre, Regents Park, appeared in Ingmar Bergman’s production of HeddaGabler and in Married Love directed by Joan Plowright. Film credits includePrick Up Your Ears. He has also been seen on UK TV in Love in a Cold Climate and Maigret. WARREN MITCHELL (Nick Bottom) is well known for his performanceas Alf Garnett in the TV series Till Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and InHealth. He has also played Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman at the RoyalNational Theatre (a role he later recreated for the BBC), and the title role inKing Lear at the Almeida Theatre. He has worked extensively in theater inAustralia where his credits includes The Homecoming, Uncle Vanya and HelloDolly. PETER KENNY (Francis Flute) trained at RADA and his variousShakespearean roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal NationalTheatre, The Orange Tree and other theaters across Great Britain, have includedFeste in Twelfth Night and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. He has also workedextensively for the BBC Radio Drama Company. DON McCORKINDALE (Tom Snout) has performed numerous leadingroles during a theater career, which has taken him all over the world. Hisroles have included Prospero in The Tempest and Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz andGuildenstern Are Dead. Other plays include Shiver Breathing at the RoyalNational Theatre and The Mousetrap in London’s West End. His TV credits includeEdwin Drood and Coronation Street and he often records for BBC Radio. DAVID TIMSON (Snug/Egeus) has performed in modern andclassic plays across the world, including Wild Honey for Alan Ayckbourn,Hamlet, The Man of Mode, and The Seagull. He has been seen on TV in Nelson’sColumn and Swallows and Amazons, and in the film The Russia House. JOHN RYE (Starveling/Philostrate) has performed in TheMerchant of Venice, Cymbeline, Henry VI and A Funny Thing Happened on the Wayto the Forum, in London’s West End, as well as The Comedy of Errors for theRoyal Shakespeare Company. His television appearances include The Bills andSpycatcher. DAISY DONOVAN (Fairy) trained at LAMDA where she performed ina number of productions including Barbarians, Twelfth Night and The Duchess ofMalfi.EMMA LINDARS (Peaseblossom), SOPHIE NAKHIMOFF (Cobweb),LAURA SHELDON (Moth) and DOMINIC KRAEMER (Mustardseed) are members of TheFinchley Children’s Music Group in London.