A Midsummer Night's Dream

by Daniel Fischlin (Editor), Andrew Bretz (Introduction), Martha Burns (Introduction)

Overview

Human identities unravel under the light of the Midsummer moon . . .

Shakespeare's popular comedy probes both the light and the dark side of desire, as unseen beings manipulate individual perceptions in the forest beyond the civilized world. Andrew Bretz's thought-provoking introduction to the play reminds us of the early modern concept of fairies: far from the ethereal creatures of the Victorian imagination, we see them here as amoral, energetic, and dangerous.

While fairies may have come and gone in the course of 150 years of Canadian productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, this edition highlights how performances in Canada and elsewhere in the world have embraced the multitude of possibilities inherent within this uncanny "shaping fantasy."

... includes concise "Character Synopses", boldfacing the names of all characters so that relationships between and amongst them are clear, and equally helpful is the "Plot Synopsis" which follows the "Character Synopses", summarizing the scene-by-scene action in each act.... Preceding the actual text of [the] play, there is "A Note on the Text", providing information about the quarto and folio publications ... and explaining the challenges faced by editors of any new editions of Shakespearean text.... Clearly-referenced footnotes clarify unfamiliar words, expressions, and provide explanatory material. The notes are comprehensive, referring to both print and electronic resources which were consulted.... Rather unusual, I thought, was the section entitled "Ten Tips for Reading Shakespeare", which offered insights into a diverse range of subjects, including concepts of social status, how words might have been pronounced in Shakespeare's time, and Shakespeare's rich use of Classical and Biblical references. --Joanne Peters, CM Magazine, January 2017

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780988129368
Publisher:	Rock's Mills Press
Publication date:	05/19/2015
Series:	Shakespeare Made in Canada
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.35(d)
Age Range:	7 - 9 Years

About the Author

Daniel Fischlin is University Research Chair and Full Professor of English at the University of Guelph.

Andrew Bretz is a CSA award-winning instructor at the University of Guelph and Wilfrid Laurier University, whose research specializes in the representation of desire, the erotic, and violence on the Shakespearean stage.

Martha Burns is a Canadian actor known for her stage work and youth outreach and her leading role as Ellen Fanshaw in the TV dramedy series Slings and Arrows.

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Chapter 1
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Excerpted from "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
by .
Copyright © 2016 William Shakespeare.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction, with new section on recent stage and critical interpretations; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Textual analysis; Appendix: A further note on sources; Reading list.

Editorial Reviews

This edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is wonderfully lucid and thoughtful, offering supporting material that will appeal to readers from high school students to scholars. The introduction is especially thoughtful, offering, in addition to expected discussions of love, magic and imagination, an exploration of the theatrical history. The bibliography and filmography are both detailed and helpful, and the questions guide students to consider the play from many viewpoints without ever forcing an interpretation onto them.
- Annalisa Castaldo, Widener University

Even as the New Kittredge Shakespeare series glances back to George Lyman Kittredge's student editions of the plays, it is very much of our current moment: the slim editions are targeted largely at high school and first-year college students who are more versed in visual than in print culture. Not only are the texts of the plays accompanied by photographs or stills from various stage and cinema performances: the editorial contributions are performance-oriented, offering surveys of contemporary film interpretations, essays on the plays as performance pieces, and an annotated filmography. Traditional editorial issues (competing versions of the text, cruxes, editorial emendation history) are for the most part excluded; the editions focus instead on clarifying the text with an eye to performing it. There is no disputing the pedagogic usefulness of the New Kittredge Shakespeare's performance-oriented approach. At times, however, it can run the risk of treating textual issues as impediments, rather than partners, to issues of performance. This is particularly the case with a textually vexed play such as Pericles: Prince of Tyre. In the introduction to the latter, Jeffrey Kahan notes the frequent unintelligibility of the play as originally published: "the chances of a reconstructed text matching what Shakespeare actually wrote are about 'nil'" (p. xiii) But his solution — to use a "traditional text" rather than one corrected as are the Oxford and Norton Pericles — obscures how this "traditional text," including its act and scene division, is itself a palimpsest produced through three centuries of editorial intervention. Nevertheless, the series does a service to its target audience with its emphasis on performance and dramaturgy. Kahan's own essay about his experiences as dramaturge for a college production of Pericles is very good indeed, particularly on the play's inability to purge the trace of incestuous desire that Pericles first encounters in Antioch. Other plays' cinematic histories: Annalisa Castaldo's edition of Henry V contrasts Laurence Oliver's and Branagh's film productions; Samuel Crowl's and James Wells's edition of (respectively) I and 2 Henry IV concentrate on Welle's Chimes at Midnight and Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho; Patricia Lennox's edition of As You Like It offers an overview of four Hollywood and British film adaptations; and John R. Ford's edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream provides a spirited survey of the play's rich film history.

The differences between, and comparative merits of, various editorial series are suggested by the three editions of The Taming of the Shrew published this year. Laury Magnus's New Kittredge Shakespeare edition is, like the other New Kittredge volumes, a workable text for high school and first year college students interested in film and theater. The introduction elaborates on one theme — Elizabethan constructions of gender — and offers a very broad performance history, focusing on Sam Taylor's and Zeffirelli's film versions as well as adaptations such as Kiss Me Kate and Ten Things I Hate About You (accompanied by a still of ten hearthtrobs Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles). The volume is determined to eradicate any confusion that a first time reader of the play might experience: the dramatis personae page explains that "Bianca Minola" is "younger daughter to Baptista, wooed by Lucentio-in-disguise (as Cambio) and then wife to him, also wooed by the elderly Gremio and Hortensio-in-disguise (as Licio)" (p.1). Other editorial notes, based on Kittredge's own, are confined mostly to explaining individual words and phrases: additional footnotes discuss interpretive choices made by film and stage productions. Throughout, the editorial emphasis is on the play less as text than as performance piece, culminating in fifteen largely performance-oriented "study questions" on topics such as disguise, misogyny, and violence.

Studies in English Literature, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Volume 51, Spring 2011, Number 2, pages 497-499.

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