Midsummer Night's Dream
Tue, 12 Sept
|First class in person; remaining via Zoom
In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, fairies dance, gods appear and spells are cast but the themes underlying these events are much darker than they might first appear....
Time & Location
12 Sept 2023, 11:00 BST – 10 Oct 2023, 13:00 BST
First class in person; remaining via Zoom
About the event
***No class 26th Sept***
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?