A play that becomes a play within a play. Though ambitious, this really wasn't my
cup of tea. That being said, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the
characters are wonderful and that their lines are sometimes exquisite.
However,
establishing an intriguing plot in Act I, scene 1 that gets hijacked in Scene 2
by a separate cast of characters, who in turn are manipulated by forces outside
the play they're rehearsing (while giving rise to a reflection only such a structure
can affect), complicates things unnecessarily. Especially when you consider introducing a geas into the story. A geas, an archaic trope popular in ancient fairy tales,
essentially serves as a manipulating factor, rendering a given character bound
to desires beyond his or her own personality or control, making him or her a
marionette at the mercy of, say, a potion or a psychosis.
Today
we're most likely to call this trope a cheat. In this play, the geas allows the
audience to consider the nature of romantic love in ways it might not have
thought of it before. After all, could it not be argued that the very nature of
romantic love renders our wills irrelevant? To be sure, despite our best
rationalizations, romantic love forces us, arguably, into situations under
which we otherwise would never have submitted ourselves. In that sense, this trope,
if interpreted metaphorically at least, has much to say about our irrational
state when in love, or at least as it pertains to the young.
Consider
Romeo and Juliet. Despite their feuding families, despite what reason and good
sense would dictate, they fall for each other not because they share an
interest in primitive medicine or Plato. In fact, they seem to have nothing
whatsoever in common apart from their youth and their eloquent speech, the
latter of which hardly makes them unique in a Shakespearean play. Yet their
romantic love fates them to live out a tragedy. For this reason, I can't deny
that A Midsummer Night's Dream serves an artistic function. I just
wished this had been achieved without resorting to such a convoluted play.
Still recommended. Three out of five stars. Rated G
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