Comedies and Histories at Two Stratfords, 1977

Summary

In 1977 Stratford, Ontario, celebrated its twenty-fifth season: its repertoire included Richard III and All’s Well That Ends Well (the two plays with which it began in 1953) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Stratford-upon-Avon’s repertoire also included A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as the complete Henry VI. Both Stratfords also gave As You Like It, but Ontario’s had not opened when I was there. The approaches, and the results, were extremely variable.

A Midsummer Night's Dream has always seemed to me a particularly Elizabethan play, in that its combination of courtly formality and rich, vivid evocation of the English countryside has a strong flavour of Elizabeth's own court and its progresses. This flavor was caught with particular success in Peter Hall's Elizabethan country house version, especially in the 1962/3 revival. It was totally absent from the celebrated Peter Brook version. J. L. Styan in The Shakespeare Revolution, reviewed below, claims that 'those who disliked [Brook's] could not see past the surface of the production'; but the meaning of a play is not to be arbitrarily separated from the style and language in which it is expressed. The wood, the wild flowers, the juxtaposed court and rural worlds are essential features of the play.