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A Midsummer Night’s Dream Hermia and her lover Lysander elope from Athens, only to become tangled with squabbling fairies in the woods.

In two parts

1594-1596
Music: Felix Mendelssohn

© Martyn Gorman, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0. Source

About this picture …

‘Love-in-idleness’ or ‘Heartsease’ (viola tricolor) growing in the Sands of Forvie, a large nature reserve of grassy sand dunes by the North Sea at Collieston, Aberdeenshire. Shakespeare describes it as ‘Before [i.e. at the front] milk-white, now purple with love’s wound’.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Part 1 of 2

The action opens in Athens, where (supposedly) there was a law saying that a father whose daughter had refused the husband he had chosen for her could be put to death.

WHEN Hermia’s father declared her life forfeit unless she married Demetrius, she fled Athens with her lover Lysander. But her friend Helena betrayed them, hoping in the frantic pursuit through the woods beyond the city to win Demetrius’s trust, and eventually his love.

She could not know, however, that those same woods were the scene of a family quarrel.

Titania, Queen of the Fairies, had refused to let a favourite page boy enter the service of her husband, King Oberon.

Oberon responded, childishly, by ordering the sprite Puck to dab the sap of the flower ‘Love-in-idleness’ on Titania’s eyes as she slept, for herb-lore promised that she would fall hopelessly in love with the first live creature she saw.*

Puck, meanwhile, took time out to indulge in a little practical joke. Rehearsing in the woods that night was a troupe of very indifferent actors, including Nick Bottom, and seized by a fit of word-play, Puck gave him the head of an ass.

Jump to Part 2

‘Love-in-idleness’ is one of the common names for the Viola tricolor, otherwise known as heartsease or wild pansy; it is the precursor of today’s cultivated pansy. See Wikipedia.

Précis

Hermia elopes with Lysander to escape marriage to Demetrius, but her friend Helena betrays them in the hope of getting Demetrius for herself. All four find themselves in the woods, where Oberon, king of the Fairies, is playing a trick on his queen Titania, mixing a magic potion so she will fall in love with first person she sees. (59 / 60 words)

Part Two

© Krystallia A. S., Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0. Source

About this picture …

A forest near Soufli in Thrace, in the northeast corner of Greece. Soufli was a centre of the country’s silk industry in 19th century, and the town has two museums dedicted to it.

OBERON could not believe his luck: Titania had woken to the sight of Nick Bottom with his ass’s head, and the beautiful fairy queen, stroking his long grey ears, was becoming increasingly amorous.

While she was thus distracted, Oberon drafted her little page boy into his retinue.

His other plans were not faring so well. Feeling sorry for Helena, he had told Puck to use the flower-juice on Demetrius, but Puck had applied it to Lysander, and the first person he saw was not Hermia but Helena.

Oberon attended to Demetrius himself, but omitted to unbewitch Lysander first, setting the two infatuated men on course for a duel over Helena.

Things were getting messy. So Oberon let fall a sudden fog of forgetfulness, and when they awoke from it Lysander loved Hermia again, and Demetrius had eyes only for Helena.

Looking back in wonder, they agreed that it must all have been a madcap dream.

It was nothing to the one Nick Bottom awoke from.

Copy Book

Précis

Oberon’s magic potion works a treat on Titania, who falls for actor Nick Bottom, who thanks to mischievous sprite Puck now has an ass’s head. But it causes utter chaos among Hermia and the other mortals, which Oberon can only resolve by an enchanted sleep. When they wake, the fairies are gone and all their adventures seem like a dream. (60 / 60 words)

Source

Based on ‘Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare’ by Edith Nesbit, and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

Suggested Music

1 2

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61

3: Nocturne

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jane Glover.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61

5: Wedding March

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jane Glover.

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