Midsummer Night's Dream
Sat, 09 Sept
|First session in-person; remaining via Zoom
In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, fairies work, gods appear, spells are cast but this does not make it play for children alone. What are the darker themes underlying the surface plot?
Time & Location
09 Sept 2023, 10:30 BST – 30 Sept 2023, 12:30 BST
First session in-person; remaining via Zoom
Guests
About the event
In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, Fairy magic appears as the mysterious counterpart of the human world, and Shakespeare depicts the latter as completely entangled in the former. Fairies work, gods appear, magic spells are cast, yet the purposes and motivations of these powers remains elusive and ambiguous.
Why might Shakespeare make use of gods, spirits and other supernatural devices to create or resolve conflicts? Is love portrayed as a kind of mysterious power or as a cover for unbridled sexual desire? Are the transformations that take place in the Fairy world merely the product of harmless mischief, or is there something darker here? Does the play suggest that poetry and the human imagination are themselves a kind of magic?