The Oxford Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's DreamClarendon Press, 26/01/1995 - 284 páginas A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the best-loved of Shakespeare's plays, and certainly the one that children are likely to encounter first; its mixture of aristocrats, workers, and fairies meeting in a wood outside Athens has a magic of its own. Simple and engaging on the surface, it is nonetheless a highly original and sophisticated work, remarkable for both its literary and its theatrical mastery. The fact that it is one of the very few of Shakespeare's plays not to draw on a narrative source suggests the degree to which it reflects his deepest imaginative concerns. In his Introduction, defining the play in both the literary and theatrical traditions to which it belongs, Peter Holland pays particular attention to dreams and dreamers, tracing the materials out of which Shakespeare constructs his world of night and shadows in the strange but enchanting amalgam he makes of them. Both here and in the detailed commentary he draws freely upon the play's extensive performance history to illustrate the wide range of interpretations of which it is capable. |
Palavras e frases frequentes
actor Amazons appears Artemidorus Athenian Athens audience BOTTOM as Pyramus Brooks Cambridge CAPELL Chaucer comedy comic Cupid dance Demetrius Diana doth dramatic edition Egeus Elizabethan emendation English Enter Exeunt Exit eyes FAIRY Q Fairy Queen FLUTE as Thisbe Foakes Golding Golding's Ovid Granville hath Helena Hermia Hermia's dream Hippolyta Ibid imagination King Knight's Tale lion lord lovers Lyly Lyly's Lysander Lysander's masque metamorphosis Midsummer Night's Dream moon Moonshine mortals Mustardseed never Oberon on-stage Ovid Ovid's Oxford Peaseblossom performance Peter Philostrate play's production prologue Proverbial Puck Pyramus and Thisbe Quince Quince's Reginald Scot rehearsal Robin Goodfellow Romeo ROWE scene seems serpent Shakespeare sleep Snout Snug song speech stage Starveling suggests sweet Theatre theatrical thee THEOBALD Theseus things Thisbe's thou Tilley tion Titania tradition transformation vols W. W. Greg waking wall wedding wood word