1935 Reinhardt/Dieterle Production

This adaptation, directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, starred Dick Powell as Lysander; Ross Alexander as Demetrius; Olivia de Havilland as Hermia; Jean Muir as Helena; James Cagney as Bottom; Joe E. Brown as Flute; Victor Jory as Oberon; Anita Louise as Titania; and Mickey Rooney as Puck.

Discussing this version in his 1971 book Shakespeare and the Film (26–27), Roger Manvell noted its emphasis on “choreography and special effects” and on a “nineteenth-century romantic concept” of the play (26). He praised the “commanding performance of Victor Jory”; suggested that Mickey Rooney, as Puck, was neither very “sinister” nor very “elfin” (two competing ways of interpreting the role); mentioned the “hard professional clowning of Joe E. Brown”; and called “James Cagney” a “relatively straight character” significantly different from “the rustics as a whole.” Manvell commented that “it is the choreographic spectacle of the corps de ballet of the fairies to which Reinhardt constantly returns,” concluding that “[h]owever much one may object to the characterization, to the truncated lines, to the speaking, or non-speaking, of Shakespeare’s verse, much of the film is still strangely effective in its own particular right” (27).

Writing in his 1977 book Shakespeare on Film (36–50), Jack Jorgens wrote that this production, “with its magical disappearances, fairies suspended by wires, Chinoiserie, and elaborate sets, its music by Mendelssohn, emphasis upon dance, and attempt to create in its viewers a sense of wonder and awe, is a summing up of [a long Romantic] stage tradition” (38). He called it “a remarkable interpretative film, for not only does it incorporate the tradition of idyllic and spectacular productions, it is also a precursor of the ‘darker Dream’ which has fascinated modern critics and directors—a recent view that emphasizes numerous undercurrents which are unfestive, grotesque, [and] erotic” (41). Noting the play’s stress on “structural parallels, pairs, and mirror scenes,” Jorgens suggested that “the glistening floors of Theseus’s palace [in this film] reflect the figures who walk and act upon them” (43). He praised this film in contrast with “the faded, rather dull efforts which came between it and Olivier’s exuberant Henry V” of 1944, arguing that, “[p]articularly in the performances of Puck, the rustics, Hermia, and Helena, it was a blow in the ongoing battle to free actors from the staid, elocutionary style [of previous stagings] and to replace it with acting less polished, perhaps, but livelier, more energetic, closer to modern experience.” Finally, Jorgens commended the way the directors “skillfully integrated the traditional view of the play as idyllic fantasy with the darker, post-Freudian Dream” (48).

Samuel Crowl, in an essay from 1983 titled “Babes in the Woods: or The Lost Boys,” reported that “there is little quarrel among contemporary film and Shakespeare enthusiasts that the Reinhardt-Dieterle Dream has aged remarkably well,” adding that “[p]art of its current charm contributed considerably to its initial failure. My students, rather than finding [the film’s stars] disastrously out of place in Shakespeare’s dream, delight in the eclectic mixture of famous faces and acting styles familiar to them from their early years of watching late show movies on television” (187).

Discussing this film in his 1989 book Shakespeare, Cinema and Society, John Collick noted a common assumption that this work displayed a “tension” between filmic and theatrical impulses and traditions. According to this view, “[i]n the same way that the British silent films combined the imagery of painting, spectacular theatre and historical narrative, so [the 1935] A Midsummer Night’s Dream consciously acknowledged a diversity of genres: musical revues; romantic comedies; classic silent films and cartoons” (81). Collick wrote that the “set is dominated by claustrophobic verticals and blocks of architecture arranged in abstractly ‘Greek’ patterns. Similarly, footage taken out of doors for Theseus’ hunt show a minimalist approach to landscape, with a few Greek temples dotted about an otherwise empty wilderness” (89). He argued, however, that “to categorise A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a product of the Hollywood dream factory is not to invest it with glib escapism. Its exposition of the mechanism of fantastic cinema, and the various images and structures it culls from its many cultural sources, are far from innocent,” partly because the film deals with such taboo subjects as “sexuality and death,” so that “[i]n the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream both these hazy and forbidden areas are drawn together, within the dream framework, using the images and motifs of childhood and childhood perception” (90). For this reason, the “roles of Mickey Rooney and James Cagney are more significant because it is through them that the alienated childhood consciousness is articulated in the film” (91). Collick called Rooney’s Puck “energetic” but added that his “continual shouting and face pulling tends to grate in comparison to the [film’s] other, subtler, performances. Nevertheless his uncontrollability and contempt for the lovers reverses the power relationship between child and adult. The mortals, unaware of the true nature of the dream world, are innocent and stupid. Puck, the magic child, continually flaunts his power” (92). For Collick, the fact that this movie resembled American movie musicals “allows [its] various different styles and techniques … to work [together] with little disjunction” (93).

Samuel Crowl, assessing the film briefly in his 1992 book Shakespeare Observed, wrote that, in response to this movie, “we are moved to sentimental pity rather than engaged in comic wonder.” In her relations with Bottom, “Titania responds as maternal Beauty touched by the soulful Beast, rather than as exotic Imagination become infatuated with imperturbable Reality” (66). Crowl concluded that “[a]s much as we enjoy and delight in the exuberance of [the filmmakers’] achievements we must still be prepared to assess their failures to transcend early sound film’s tendency to grind its material into the grist of domestic melodrama” (67).

In his 1994 book on A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Shakespeare in Performance series (85–95), Jay L. Halio reported that Warner Brothers, which produced the movie, wanted a “prestige” production (86) but got a somewhat ambiguous version, especially during the Depress era. He suggested that the use of music by Mendelsohn emphasized the production’s Romanticism; discussed the opening scene in some detail (88); and wrote that the movie “made [Shakespeare’s poetry] visual” (90). Offering much plot summary but relatively little discussion of the film as a film (90–94), Halio noted that roughly fifty percent of the play’s words were cut before he concluded by summarizing critics’ and scholars’ responses to the film (94–95).

Russell Jackson, also writing in 1994 but in an essay titled “Shakespeare’s Comedies on Film” (103–6), commented on Mickey Rooney’s obviously American performance; on the stylized presentation of the mechanicals; and on the “paradoxically restrained, subtle and ironic” performance by James Cagney as Bottom (103). He noted Cagney’s “self-conscious, cocksure swagger,” as in his other performances as “insecure tough guys,” and said that the “lovers seem to exist in no coherent framework of believability.” He found Dick Powell the most believable of the lovers; commended the film’s special effects (104) such as its “spacious” settings, and the “lavishness of the wood”; and compared this film to the movie musicals of the 1930s (105). Although he called its Titania inadequate, he generally considered the film a successful adaptation (106).

Writing about this version in his 1999 overview of a century of Shakespeare on film, Kenneth Rothwell called the Reinhardt/Dieterle production “the best … major Hollywood Shakespeare movie” of its time, saying it presented a gothic version of the play resembling Nosferatu and Dracula, offering “a dark vision of disorder and chaos with nature gone awry and the rule of reason threatened by unchained forces.” Noting the film’s complex integration of different plots, characters, and locations, he wrote that the filmmakers “incarnated this fantasy world of mirror and reverse-mirror effects into a swirling electronic Masque of Light and Dark on the theme of the search for certainty in uncertainty” (34). Suggesting that both “Hugh Herbert’s silly giggle … and Joe E. Brown’s deadpan face bring the full animal vitality of Hollywood creativity” to the adaptation, Rothwell considered the movie “a feast for the camera’s eye,” especially with “its swirling non-linear patterns of movement” (35). Although calling the opening scene both “overblown [and] baroque,” he did value it “for identifying the key characters and hinting at the future complications” (36) and argued that despite its Romanticism, the film presented “many dusky currents [that] run just beneath the bright surface” but is also a movie that “turns most filmic in the orchestration of camera work, editing, and theme music for the dazzling ballet sequence” (36).

Discussing the film in his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare in Hollywood, 1929–1956, Robert F. Willson suggested that “Reinhardt and Dieterle may have gone overboard in exploiting the text’s musicality through images”; noted “some striking parallels to screwball comedy” (41), including “rapid-paced dialogue” and also “music and song as tools for solidifying social union”; and observed that in this adaptation “longer speeches are broken up by giving one character’s lines to another to increase the tempo” (42). He reported that “Frank McHugh’s Quince … exhibits the same exasperation in the role of stage manager that he showed in earlier films, where he was often a straight man or comical sidekick”; found this film “a significant advance over the [1929] Pickford-Fairbanks” version of The Taming of Shrew (47); and concluded that “[a]lthough not a box office success, Dream did prove that an Americanized Shakespearean film could artfully convey the playwright’s themes and images, creating an even larger audience for future experiments” (48).

Daniel Rosenthal, in his 2000 book Shakespeare on Screen (88–89), largely dismissed this film as one in which “the plight of the Athenian lovers … becomes a tiresome, broadly acted series of shouting matches” (89). More (but not entirely) positive were brief comments by Douglas Brode in his 2000 book Shakespeare in the Movies, who wrote that “[h]owever one feels about individual performances or the cutting of lines in favor of music and movement, no one can deny that the [film’s] imagery catches the viewer’s eye, jolts the mind, and lingers in the memory. The biggest problem,” Brode thought, “was the staging of the play within a play,” which he considered “anticlimactic” (65). Meanwhile, Stephen Buhler, in his 2002 book Shakespeare in the Cinema: Ocular Proof, mainly commented on the genesis of the production, including influences on it and its own influence on later film adaptations (59–61).

In a 2004 essay on the Reinhardt and Dieterle film, Pierre Berthomieu discussed such matters as Warner Brothers’s hope for the film and their worries about it (202); the directors’ careers (202–3); the choice of cast members (203–4); the careers of each director (204–6); the “American actors’ excessive liveliness” and its relations to German Romanticism (206); the use of choreography and stage and film “tricks” (207); and relations between the play and Hollywood genres, methods, and traditions (208–9). Meanwhile, in a 2004 article, Sarah Hatchuel commented on the use of “mirror effects” in the Reinhardt and Dieterle film (157). And, in the same 2004 volume, in an essay titled “Transcoding the Play within the Play,” Michèle Willems compared and contrasted several different filmed versions “of the play staged by the mechanicals.”

In a 2004 essay titled “‘Fearful Wild Fowl’: Misrepresenting Nature in Filmed Midsummer Night’s Dreams,” Kevin De Ornellas, commenting on several silent films as well as on the later productions of Reinhardt and Dieterle, Noble, and Hoffman, argued that “filmed versions [usually] do not dramatise the play world’s projection of lethal competition between the human and the non-human. Consequently, nature, as it is maligned and vulnerable in the play, is not shown to be threatened on the screen as it is on the page. Directors of A Midsummer Night’s Dream have not shown a realistic nature because, in their films, nature is not under threat” (133).

Discussing the film at length in his 2007 book Shakespeare Films in the Making, Russell Jackson offered a very detailed account of every aspect of the making of the film, from start to finish. Making few generalizations, he discussed such topics as Reinhardt’s early career in the theater; the history of modern productions of the play before Reinhardt’s; the history of Reinhardt’s stage productions; the genesis of the film; and the development of the script. He then discussed details of the film, including its inclusion of dancing; the ways it depicts Titania and Oberon; its use of optical effects; and specific aspects of filming and photography. Finally, he explored the depiction of the craftsmen; the presentation of Bottom; the development of Bottom’s emotions after he is transformed into an ass; the closing “Pyramus and Thisbe” play; and, in conclusion, issues of marketing and advertisement, early reviews, and Reinhardt’s life after the making of this film (12–69).

Martin White, discussing the play in 2009 for the Shakespeare Handbooks series (125–28), commented on Reinhardt’s biography and especially his silent films. He called the present film “most spectacular in its treatment of the fairy world”; mentioned its “[many] production numbers”; observed its emphasis on “a darker, more ominous strand in the play” (125–27); mentioned Oberon’s “capacity for malevolence”; and found the “Pyramus and Thisbe” play too forced, noting that it draws on “conventions of film” (128).

Briefly assessing this adaptation in his 2013 volume Small-Screen Shakespeare (105–6), Peter Cochran called it vulgar and kitschy, with costumes, imagery, and forced laughter that are all overdone. He found Rooney’s Puck especially annoying; faulted the actors playing both Titania and Oberon; disparaged certain choices of music; criticized errors of direction; (105) and criticized Titania’s line delivery as singsongy (106). He said that Bottom here is played in ways that make nonsense of certain lines and are ultimately ineffective; considered the ballet striking; thought the play-within embarrassing; but admired the film’s use of black-and white-photography (106). Meanwhile in his 2016 book Shakespeare Films (47–49), Peter E. S. Babiak discussed this adaptation’s “alternating pattern of theatrical and cinematic conventions”; admired its use of “interesting strategies for clarifying relations and situations”; praised its “sense of wonder”; wrote that “the fairy ballet is remarkable by the standards of the time”; and observed that a “stately march” is used three times (49).

Neil Forsyth, in his 2019 book Shakespeare the Illusionist (42–45), agreed with other critics who saw the Reinhardt and Dieterle film as “indebted to nineteenth-century stage traditions” (42) but noted that Sir John Gielgud, one of the twentieth-century’s greatest Shakespearean actors, “said watching it was akin to having surgery” (43). Again agreeing with others that young Mickey Rooney “often crows a little too loudly and emphatically,” Forsyth said that “it does not take much to imagine yourself into his power, and [therefore] helpless with fear,” adding that although “[Rooney’s Puck] is less threatening perhaps when he imitates the lovers, leads them astray, and puts them to sleep.” Nevertheless, “without him and his humor those scenes would be unbearable for the dreadful acting—the lovers behave like sulky and spoilt children—except for Olivia de Havilland, who is melodrama incarnate as she wakes from her snake dream (2.2.150) and manages to lose all its suggestive power” (43). Still, Forsyth reiterated that Rooney’s “childish cackle echoes and sums up the other slightly hysterical and often unfunny laughter of the film” (44).

In an essay from 2024 titled “‘Out of this wood do not desire to go’: The Woods in Six Productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Christopher Baker wrote that in this production the forest “scenes tend to draw us away from the play itself and direct us more towards Reinhardt’s own vision; in fact, half the play’s text was cut. The scenic design of the forest is noticeably influenced by the artistic style of Arthur Rackham, who had published a set of illustrations for the play in 1908; his woods,” Baker continued, “are a jumble of gnarled and contorted tree trunks, exposed roots, and filament-like branches that sometimes seem to suggest the silhouettes of hidden figures. Recalling Rackham, too, (but not Shakespeare) are the dwarfish forest gnomes with bulging eyes, bald heads, and hooked noses who play various unusual musical instruments” (85).

1964 Joan Kemp-Welch Production

This shortened version of the play broadcast live on British television and directed by Joan Kemp-Welch, starred Benny Hill as Nick Bottom; Peter Wyngarde as Oberon; Anna Massey as Titania; Patrick Allen as Theseus; and Tony Tanner as Puck.

In a 2004 essay titled “The Forgotten Rediffusion A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1964),” José Ramón Díaz Fernández offered a discussion full of photos and describing this adaptation’s history, features, actors, and publicity.

1968 Peter Hall Production

This film adaptation, directed by Peter Hall, starred Derek Godfrey as Theseus; Ian Holm as Puck; Judi Dench as Titania; Helen Mirren as Hermia; Paul Rogers as Bottom; Diana Rigg as Helena; Ian Richardson as Oberon; David Warner as Lysander; Michael Jayston as Demetrius; and Barbara Jefford as Hippolyta.

In his 1971 book Shakespeare and the Film (119–27), Roger Manvell offered few of his own ideas about the Hall production but instead quoted at length from Hall himself. In conversation, Hall discussed such matters as the relations between film and television (120); the relations between film and opera; the relations between Shakespeare’s plays and the small theaters in which they were first performed; and the need for actors to thoroughly understand Shakespeare’s words and meanings (121). Hall also commented on Shakespeare’s use of rhetoric; Hall’s own desire to avoid exaggerated facial expressions in his film of the Dream; and why he chose to film the play outdoors (122). He said he saw this work as “a play about an English summer in which the seasons have gone wrong,” which explains the film’s emphasis on bad weather (123). Although admitting the influence of Jan Kott’s view of this work as a “dark play,” Hall also remarked that Kott paid little attention to the play’s humor. Returning to his own views, he discussed such matters as his belief in “editing to the rhythms of the text” and his emphasis on iambic pentameter rhythms and the importance of line endings (124). Next, quoting from an article about the film written by Hall, Manvell mentioned Hall’s desire to do justice to Shakespeare’s words; his interest in realistic settings; his emphasis on the play’s Englishness; and his emphasis, in the film, on bad weather. Hall also discussed the advantages of shooting at the particular country estate where the production was filmed; and his focus on “long takes” while “shooting quickly” to preserve continuity, especially continuity of emotions (126–27). Manvell himself had little to say about the film except to remark that it “can only appeal to those ready to accept [Hall’s] entirely different approach” to the play—an approach quite distinct from the one used in the 1935 film by Reinhardt and Dieterle (127).

Michael Mullin, in a 1975 essay titled “Peter Hall’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ on Film,” wrote that the movie “abounds with so many good things, from conceptual setting to graceful subtleties of visual composition, that I am puzzled by the poor reviews. These point,” he thought, “to a special difficulty the film encounters with a general audience, a difficulty minimized for us as teachers and critics of Shakespeare’s plays by our interest in the verse and in the interpretation of the play. Hall’s documentary camera techniques call into play realistic cinematic conventions which may distort a true response to the film as a film.” According to Mullin, “Because we associate close-ups and handheld cameras with film documentary, especially with television news reporting, [Hall’s] film is in constant danger of seeming to be merely a film of actors acting. If this convention prevails, as it did for about one-third of the British reviewers, the film fails. The modern clothes and setting,” he claimed, “then seem a cute attempt to be up-to-date.” In that case, the “interplay between posing and ironic reality collapses. The special effects, devoid of magic, only irritate” (534).

Jack Jorgens, in his 1977 book Shakespeare on Film (51–65), called the world of this production “a frightening world of reflections, disorientation, and flux. For dreamers and audience in this film,” he continued, “the patterns of logic and identity which we use to make sense of things break down.” Noting that Hall cut almost nothing, Jorgens suggested that “not only do the film’s avant-garde techniques complement the verse, as in cuts which are located consistently at the end of verse lines or in caesuras,” but they “also embody meaning, as when color fades of red, blue, and orange underscore the unnaturalness of the alterations in the seasons as Titania describes them” (59). Jorgens quoted Hall as saying that he wanted the movie “close shot because this seems to me the only way to scrutinize” the text’s “marked ambiguity,” although Jorgens himself suggested that “in a play where the real interest lies in the overall pattern and not in the characters, perhaps close-ups are less appropriate.” But despite some misgivings about this production, Jorgens asserted that “rarely has Shakespeare’s verse been spoken so well on film, few directors have experimented so boldly with cinematic style and Shakespearean meaning, and few actors have surpassed Paul Rogers as Bottom” (65).

In an essay from 1983 titled “A Cinematic Oxymoron in Peter Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Frank Occhiogrosso tried to show that Hall “realized, even more richly than has yet been noted, his perception of that concord of discords which lies at the heart of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Occhiogrosso thought that in the film’s “initial sequence of images I think we get something more than simply a series of discordant views of seasonal conflict. In that succession of images, pleasant and unpleasant, overlaid by the continuity provided by the rolling of the film’s credits, we get a blueprint for a filmic technique that Hall will repeat half a dozen times … to give us a sense of chaos within order, discontinuity within continuity, discord within concord. His camera and actors,” Occhiogrosso wrote, “combine to show us that although some of the characters who chase each other through that moonlit wood are spotted and inconstant, their confusions nevertheless ultimately add up and issue into something of great constancy” (175).

Samuel Crowl, discussing the Hall production in his 1992 book Shakespeare Observed, called it the “most successful modern attempt to translate Shakespearean comedy onto film” while “captur[ing] the earthy, erotic, even nightmare qualities of Shakespeare’s dream.” Although Crowl thought the film “proved, on release, to be far in advance of its audience’s expectations,” he felt that two decades “later it stands as the most intelligent and successful—particularly to generations of university student audiences—achievement in Shakespearean comedy on film” (72–73). He considered “Hall’s wood … both jungle and Maze, and we are, like the lovers, trapped within it and never privileged by the camera with a prospective superior to theirs.” Commenting that as “the lovers become more disheveled and mud-caked, so they become more exposed, vulnerable, and comic. They, too, are going through a ritual of transformation which the woods makes possible not through a natural benevolence but through an absence of social rules and structures” (73–74). He called the mechanicals’ “out-building … a halfway house between Theseus’s court and Oberon and Titania’s woods” (74) and concluded by remarking that “Hall broke with tradition by actually taking us to Nature and rubbing our noses in it through the exasperating confusions of the lovers” (76).

Jay Halio, in his 1994 book on the play for the Shakespeare in Performance series, discussed Hall’s film (95–105) by noting that it radically differs from the 1935 film; by calling its casting “absolutely right”; by praising the actors for expertly speaking the verse; and by praising the excellent variation in kinds of shots and settings. He reported that the text was not cut much (96); admired the film’s effective opening (96); and said that in that opening Hall avoided shots of crowds of courtiers while also emphasizing the characters’ “civility” (97). Observing that the play used realism but not in any fussy way (97–98), Halio wrote that the fairies are “not merely cute but also intelligent”; praised Hall’s effective use of “jump cuts” in the forest scenes; and noted the film’s “fluid” shifts between night and day and its interesting use of time (100). Calling Puck’s “panting” the “only unfortunate gesture in the entire film” (100), Halio otherwise considered the forest scenes excellent; commended the use of appropriately broad comedy for the mechanicals (101); and thought the hunting scene was presented in a “simple, straightforward manner” (102). Writing that “[a]ll of Hall’s restraint and measured pace are evident in the final act” (103), Halio considered the film “full of playful touches”; said it “does not strain to entertain, but it does entertain” (104); noted that some critics had nonetheless found flaws in it (104–5); and concluded again that Hall’s film constituted a rejection of the kind of movie Reinhardt and Dieterle had produced (105).

Writing about the Hall production in a 1994 essay titled “Shakespeare Comedies on Film” (105–7), Russell Jackson found the setting unconvincing (106); disliked much of the “camera technique”; and commended the performances of David Warner, Dianna Rigg, Judi Dench, Ian Richardson, and Ian Holm but said that the “outdoor world seems drab, old and far from magical while the great house itself is poorly used.” He faulted some of the acting and direction; considered this production “theatrical rather than filmic”; and called many of the performances overdone (107).

Daniel Rosenthal, in his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare on Screen (90–91), wrote that “[w]oeful lighting continuity means [that the film’s] characters change colour alarmingly from one shot to the next, as do their equally green fairy minions—urchin-like children with messy hair and little talent. ‘Special effects’ here,” Rosenthal continued, “means fairies appearing and vanishing in primitive jump-cuts or rushing out of shot in speeded-up footage, accompanied by cartoonish whizzing noises. Such clumsy techniques,” he thought, “suck all visual magic from the film—a pity, since Dench, suitably spellbound for her one-night stand with Bottom (a tiresomely loud Paul Rogers), Richardson’s world-weary king and Holm give eloquent voice to the verse’s magic. … They, like all the other actors, are shown in close-up in eight out of ten shots—a monotonous technique adopted to place the greatest possible emphasis on Shakespeare’s language.” Rosenthal, then, disliked almost everything that Hall himself and many earlier critics had considered distinctive to this production. He did admire the precision with which the language was spoken (even if the speeches were dubbed in after the film had been shot), commending the fact that “Shakespeare’s every word is given precise meaning.” But he concluded by asking “Does such fine acting cancel out the visual flaws?” and then replying: “Sadly not. Hall delivered perhaps the only Shakespeare movie that would be more enjoyable if you watched it with your eyes shut” (91).

Responding to the film in his 2000 book Shakespeare in the Movies, Douglas Brode connected the nudity of some of the film’s fairies and the trendy costumes of the humans to the zeitgeist of the late sixties. Noting that “Hall used a minimum of editing,” Brode felt that therefore “scenes drag on in single-camera setup,” alleging that Hall “succeeded in making this [film] as unpleasant a viewing experience as possible” and finding it odd that he chose to “remove the pleasurability from Shakespearean comedy” and thus “remove the audience’s reason for attending” (92).

In 2002 Stephen M. Buhler, in his book Shakespeare in the Cinema (82–84), commented that although Hall’s “Dream may not have been politically radical—especially in its gender politics,” it nonetheless “possessed an anarchic energy appropriate to its time.” He thought this film displayed “a power to disturb expectations”; wrote that “Hall delights in juxtaposing discordant scenic and technical elements” (82); observed that the “mechanicals and their milieu are clearly more connected than the denizens of Theseus’s court with nature and the physical world in general”; and suggested that “far from trying to fool the audience, Hall’s Dream endeavors to announce itself as film. The medium’s ability to transcend time, to collapse or extend space, to bring drastic extremes into close proximity—this becomes the basis of the magic both within the play and of the play” (83), so that this movie “shares its power with the multiple languages of film” (84).

Peter S. Donaldson, in an essay from 2002 titled “‘Two of Both Kinds’: Modernism and Patriarchy in Peter Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” examined Hall’s film by “tracing several specific figures of film style as they change function, shifting from leftist social critique and Brechtian distantiation to a resolution in which the film’s avant-garde style is associated with a conception of ‘the imagination’ that transcends social process, and in which a trenchant critique of romantic love and patriarchal marriage yields,” according to Donaldson, “to a celebration … of marriage as a ‘stellar equilibrium’ between self-sufficient though not quite equal individuals.” He argued that “[b]oth in its style and in its treatment of gender relations, the radicalism of Hall’s Dream does not merely fade away but modulates, carefully, toward the cultural and political mainstream” (44).

Meanwhile, Graham Holderness, in his 2002 book Visual Shakespeare (62–64), briefly argued that in many ways the Hall production “produces from a filmic imitation of the text an experimental, avant-garde form of cinema which is highly successful in representing the play’s ambivalent exploration of the shifting, elusive relations between reality and illusion.” Holderness thought that it “is precisely because literature and film are such different forms of narrative and representation that the attempt to make one imitate the other precisely resulted in a radically new method of screening Shakespeare” (63). Equally briefly, Samuel Crowl, in his 2008 Norton Guide, noted that this film includes almost all of Shakespeare’s words (131); provided details of its shooting (132); and noted its use of 1960s-style costumes (140–41).

In a 2004 article titled “From Meta-Theatre to Meta-Cinema in Screen Versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Sarah Hatchuel commented that in Hall’s film “monologues are filmed with the actors regularly facing the camera” (157). Writing in the same 2004 volume, Kenneth Rothwell, in an essay titled “A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Screen,” argued that Hall’s version “finally broke with the romanticism going as far back as Henry Purcell’s Fairy Queen conventions when, with its hand-held camera, it brought a quirky realism to the play. The Victorian themes of Love and Dreams give way to the ruthless and alienating analysis of Gender and Power that dominates modern discourse. Feminist studies have deromanticized the relations between the sexes and highlighted the subjugated role of Hippolyta the Amazon Queen, and Hermia’s helplessness in the hands of patriarchal tyranny” (21). Also in the same 2004 volume, in an essay titled “Transcoding the Play within the Play: ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ from Playtext to Screen Realization,” Michèle Willems compared and contrasted several different filmed versions of the play within the play. And, from the same 2004 volume, in an essay titled “‘The Noise They Make’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Screen,” Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin commented that often, in act 3, scene 2 of the play, “directors play on the physical degradation of the lovers. Except for Adrian Noble and Christine Edzard who resort to other strategies to express the chaos in the scene, directors undertake to make the quarrel visual by playing on the lovers’ physical appearance. In most versions,” she continued, “the characters are more and more dishevelled. Peter Hall’s version is famous for making the lovers ‘muddy,’ and Michael Hoffman’s version enhances this aspect partly representing the lovers’ quarrel as a fight in the mud. With the mud. directors make the verbal quarrel visual” (95).

Discussing the Hall adaptation in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (107–8), Peter Cochran called it “very clumsily directed,” monotonously filmed, flawed in any consistent use of color, badly dubbed, faultily costumed, and sometimes just ridiculous. Nonetheless, he praised the use of nearly all the play, admired the pacing, and commended the excellent speaking (107). He thought Hall understood the text inside and out and that he made no faulty innovations (108).

In his 2019 volume on Shakespeare the Illusionist (45–46), Neil Forsyth wrote that in Hall’s film “the magic is done with taste and firmness of touch” (45); that “Puck is the primary focus” and that his “appearances, like those of the other fairies, are done by jump cuts” and that he “is usually in close-up, suddenly there with us on the screen, often occupying it entirely with his intelligent and eager face.” Forsyth believed that Puck “is played throughout by the excellent Ian Holm with a convincingly amoral naughtiness, and he has splendid fun with the leaden Demetrius (Michael Jayston) and Lysander (David Warner)” (46).

Discussing the Hall production in his 2019 history of the Royal Shakespeare Company on film (68–73), John Wyver began by discussing details of the production’s preparation; noted that “the words are distinctly spoken” by a “distinguished cast”; but felt that “the words feel dissociated from the action, recorded as they are in the dead space of the studio rather than amongst the living world of the forest” (71–72). For Wyver, “One of the most irritating aspects of the film’s style is the frequent cuts within speeches, often to set-ups that break the visual and spatial continuity. Only rarely does Hall allow a character to unfold a paragraph of emotion in a sustained shot”—although this is exactly what Hall had claimed he tried to do. Wyver disliked what he called the “static, frequently close-up frames,” adding, “Nor is there respite from the relentless pace of the words, as the film offers no space for establishing shots or primarily visual sequences that might contribute shadings of rhythm and tone.” He did concede, however, that “[i]n the years since its release the film has attracted extensive academic attention, much of it arguing that it is a richer and more complex text than the initial reviews (and my own response) might suggest” (72).

In an essay from 2024 titled “‘Out of this wood do not desire to go’: The Woods in Six Productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Christopher Baker wrote that “[d]espite [some] lackluster reviews that carped about the general muddiness of the characters’ makeup, this production boasts a cast from the Royal Shakespeare Company who do impressive justice to Shakespeare’s poetry, which (using an uncut text) is spoken with clarity and vigor under the guidance of famed Shakespearean coach John Barton” (88).

1981–82 BBC Shakespeare Production

This television broadcast, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, starred Estelle Kohler as Hippolyta; Nigel Davenport as Theseus; Pippa Guard as Hermia; Nicky Henson as Demetrius; Robert Lindsay as Lysander; Cherith Mellor as Helena; Brian Glover as Bottom; Phil Daniels as Puck; Helen Mirren as Titania; and Peter McEnery as Oberon.

Discussing “The Production” (18–26) in the booklet the BBC released when this version was broadcast, Henry Fenwick noted the decision by director Elijah Moshinsky and set designed David Myerscough-Jones to use two pools of water to emphasize the reflected moon and to enhance the romance of the set—a romance combined with realism partly inspired by paintings by Rubens and Rembrandt, especially one featuring Danae (18–19). The color gray was especially emphasized (green would not have worked as well), while John Summers stressed artificial moonlight in deciding how to illuminate the set (19–20). Costume designer Amy Roberts discussed the challenges of outfitting thirty children as fairies in a wet environment and making them look appropriate to the seventeenth century. She also reported on the process of clothing (or unclothing) Titania and Oberon as well as the mortals, with ideas suggested by Moshinsky, saying she especially enjoyed creating costumes for the mechanicals (22–23). Moshinsky said that he wanted Puck in this production to seem wild and untamed—curious about humans but not especially sympathetic toward them. He wanted the other actors to seem diverse both as individuals and as groups and wanted the fairies to seem physical rather than ethereal. For the whole production, he wanted an exuberant atmosphere (24), with an emphasis on comedy and wittiness (24–25). Although he played with the script, the actors’ delivery was unusually accurate (25). The play begins and ends in what resembles an English estate, such as Hatfield House, with this setting partly inspired by paintings by Rubens (25–26).

In a 1981 review of the BBC production for the London Times Literary Supplement, Nicholas Shrimpton found much to fault, calling the adaptation “the nearest this series has come to disaster” in several years. He accused it of “incoherence”; said Moshinsky’s “heart was not in it”; did seem to admire the “world of spectacular theatre” once the lovers made it to the woods; thought the production deliberately echoed the 1936 film; but found the fantasy of the forest scenes hard to reconcile with the “austere historicism” of the scenes set in Athens. Shrimpton said the incoherent music typified the production as a whole; called the acting “every bit as uncertain”; disliked the way the lovers spoke over each other when quarreling; and alleged that “indecision … infected every corner of the interpretation,” especially in the presentation of the mechanicals, who, he said, “were not allowed to be funny.” He did admire Helen Mirren for giving “a spirited account of Titania,” but in general this must have been a grim review for the production’s creators to read.

J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, in their 1988 critical anthology Shakespeare on Television, quoted from (or reproduced) several early reviews. In 1981, for example, a writer for the Washington Post saw the BBC production as a kind of “homage” to the 1936 film; praised it as enchanting; commented that its Puck had “a touch of punk”; and observed that Moshinsky did not intend to “dwell on the darker aspects of the fable. It’s a dream, not a nightmare, after all. And the cast plays it so—with grace and poetry and the slightly dazed look of any moonstruck lover.” This writer especially admired Cherith Mellor’s Helena and said that the whole production provided a “good measure of bewitchment” (283). A review from 1982 in the New York Times called the BBC adaptation magical and praised the “typically strong and impressive cast,” while a review in an academic journal liked the production’s “fluid movement” as well as “Helen Mirren’s sensitive and seductive Titania” (282).

Scott Colley, reviewing the production in 1983 for the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, found the opening scenes in Athens too constricting, saying that no one seemed “to have room to stretch” and remarking that “[e]ven the forest seems cramped.” He praised Helen Mirren and Cherith Mellor but found Brian Glover, as Bottom, physically unattractive (but did say that he “does bring a wonderful dignity to the nonsense of Pyramus and Thisby”). He called this production’s Oberon “not only unhuman” but also “strangely menacing” and concluded that, overall, this “version seems too dark (in a metaphorical as well as 198in the sense of set lighting and design), too given to menace for its own good. Many of the scenes are visually arresting, but the production suffers from too many poses. The play becomes painterly where it should be dramatic” (6).

In her 1991 book on the BBC series (152–54), Susan Willis wrote that by “casting Phil Daniels [as Puck, director Elijah Moshinsky] … consciously sought an effect closer to A Clockwork Orange” rather than depicting him as a “sweetly mischievous sprite” (69). Arguing that Moshinsky “renders the darkness of the night in psychological or psychosexual terms,” Willis also noted that the “restrained physical movement” in the early scenes “contrasts with the more mobile forest scenes” (152). Puck moves much more quickly than the other fairies, rapidly entering shots (152–53). Even the speech in this production is often hurried, with the lovers “sometimes talking over one another” (153) in a production that concludes with a “strangely sober ending” (154).

Jay Halio, in his 1994 book on the play in performance (106–114), provided a history of the BBC series (106); called this production a “less than extravagant rendition” than some others; commented that “even Oberon and Titania … behave much like ordinary people” (107); offered a history of the production (107–8); and noted that the text of the play was not much cut (108). Contending that this version “somewhat lacks coherence,” Halio pointed to an inconsistent presentation of Hippolyta, seventeenth-century interiors alongside a Roman forest, and the mechanicals’ varied accents. Although he did not find these mechanicals especially funny, he did consider their final skit somewhat enjoyable (109). Assessing the production as a whole, he suggested that the play’s “emotional temperature” is “deliberately lowered” here; thought that Helena seems motivated not by passion but by “girlish spite” (110); called Theseus, Oberon, and Puck more human than in Hall’s film; wrote that this Puck “lacks Mickey Rooney’s ebullience and Ian Holm’s delight in mischief” (111); and considered the BBC Puck “almost as much a victim of mischief as the perpetrator of it” (111–12). Halio wrote that Titania “seems almost assailed by the fairies, like a kindergarten teacher”; that Bottom’s transformation does not much radically transform his appearance (112); and that the final skit is more elaborate here than in the film by Hall (113).

Commenting briefly on this production in his 2009 overview of the play (133–34), Martin White wrote that “despite a strong cast, the result … was a staid, safe, and conventional work … producing neither exciting Shakespeare nor exciting television” (134).

Writing in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (108–10), Peter Cochran found the opening boring and the lovers unemotional; thought the mechanicals seemed generally thoughtful but therefore potentially unfunny; and admired the charming fairies, the appealing music, and especially this Oberon and Titania, with even this Puck fairly effective (108). He questioned the credibility of this Quince; found Bottom’s ass’s head defective; but did praise the lovers’ fights (109). Although calling the mechanicals and their play ultimately unfunny (109), Cochran did, however, generally commend this version (110).

In an essay from 2024 titled “The Forest Scenes in the 1981 BBC Production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Robert C. Evans commented that “[o]f the various productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream I have seen, one of the most under-rated … is the 1981 BBC TV production directed by Elijah Moshinsky,” which “disappointed many critics—although not … as many as is sometimes assumed. After surveying previous commentary on the Moshinsky production (some of it previously overlooked),” Evans offered “some commentary of [his] own, focusing especially on the ‘forest scenes,’ which,” he argued, “are particularly impressive” (123).

1982 Emile Ardolino Production

Produced by Joseph Papp for the New York Shakespeare Festival and directed by Emile Ardolino, this version—filmed outside before a live audience—starred Diane Venora as Hippolyta; James Hurdle as Theseus; Deborah Rush as Hermia; Rick Lieberman as Demetrius; Kevin Conroy as Lysander; Christine Baranski as Helena; Jeffrey DeMunn as Bottom; Marcell Rosenblatt as Puck; William Hurt as Oberon; and Michele Shay as Titania.

In their 1988 critical anthology Shakespeare on Television, J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen provided excerpts from a 1983 review published in Shakespeare Quarterly. It criticized Hurt’s acting, found Rosenblatt’s Puck exceptionally “annoying”; but did praise the “delightful Helena of Christine Baranski” (284). A long review by Coursen himself greatly and repeatedly admired the production’s set but disliked the costumes, the acting by and of the mechanicals (284), Rosenblatt’s “awful” Puck, the too-intense lighting, and Hurt’s poor performance as Oberon. On the other hand, Coursen did admire Baranski’s Helena and did eventually conclude that despite “all of the unevenness and remarkable lapses of taste of this production” it was still “worth watching” (285).

Jay Halio, commenting on this adaptation in his 1994 overview performances of the play (112–21), noted that it was a televised recording of a live stage production; provided a brief history of the New York Shakespeare Festival (114–15); reported that the text had not been much altered (115); and commented that the “setting could not be lovelier” (116). Noting the variety of kinds of shots (117), Halio called the cast mostly excellent (especially the actors playing Helena, Bottom, and Quince [118]); called the fairies a “mixed,” “colorful,” and funny lot; deemed Oberon and Puck “the biggest disappointment”; and in fact called Marcell Rosenblatt, as a female Puck, “a disaster” (119). Halio did find the final skit exuberant, noting that Lion’s “roars earn roars of laughter” from the audience (121).

1996 Adrian Noble Production

Directed by Adrian Noble, this version starred Lindsay Duncan as Hippolyta/Titania; Alex Jennings as Theseus/Oberon; Desmond Barrit as Nick Bottom; Finbar Lynch as Philostrate; Monica Dolan as Hermia; Kevin Doyle as Demetrius; Daniel Evans as Lysander; and Emily Raymond as Helena.

Kenneth Rothwell, in his 1999 overview of a century of Shakespeare on film and television, said that the Noble version “makes all the right gestures but never quite comes up with a protocol believable enough to attract the widespread interest generated by competing productions” (244). He thought the actors “vary in quality, the men sometimes veering toward the prissy, particularly Theseus/Oberon (Alex Jennings), the women sometimes first-rate as in the happy case of Hippolyta/Titania (Lindsay Duncan).” He concluded that the “impeccable [Royal Shakespeare Company] diction carries more polish than feeling” and said the “choreography and costumes are like a box of overly rich cream-filled chocolates, so sweet as to be slightly nauseating” (244–46).

Discussing the Noble production in his 2003 book Shakespeare in the Cineplex (170–80), Samuel Crowl wrote that if the boy added to the cast here created opportunities, “he also created problems” (177). Crowl suggested that the boy might have been more successful as a mere “framing device” rather than a character “not always fully integrated” into the play, adding that “[k]ey energies” from the text and from the stage version—energies “concern[ing] the bittersweet comedy about the agonies of [the lovers’] puberty”—are missing from the film (177), perhaps because Noble became so fixated on the boy that he lost “interest in the text’s other adolescents” and even cut “their awakening from the night’s dream.” Although he did, however, find the comedy involving Bottom more successful, he was less impressed by the awkward transition back to Theseus’s marriage, finding the “wedding feast … too gaudy” and also being troubled by the film’s general “devaluation of … female experience.” He concluded that “Noble’s insistence on gendering his Dream as exclusively male” oddly eliminates “issues of sisterhood and the clash of female power with the patriarchy—elements” he considered central to the play (179).

In an article also published in 2003 titled “Nostalgia and Theatricality: The Fate of the Shakespearean Stage in the Midsummer Night’s Dreams of Hoffman, Noble, and Edzard,” Douglas Lanier discussed this production’s “inventive staging,” its emphasis on close-ups (160), and its nostalgia for late-Victorian performances of Shakespeare (161). He noted its unusual emphasis on the Boy (162), saying this character is allowed to “engage anxieties and forbidden pleasure associated with adult sexuality without [any Freudian] rivalry associated with a father” (154) and said the film’s conclusion “ostentatiously celebrate[s] the power of theatre” (164), with the Boy often functioning as both director and spectator (165).

In a 2004 essay titled “From Meta-Theatre to Meta-Cinema in Screen Versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Sarah Hatchuel commented that in Noble’s film “monologues are filmed with the actors regularly facing the camera” (157), adding that “doors and keyholes create the reflexive effect of a frame within a frame” (158). In a 2004 essay from the same volume—this one titled “‘The Noise They Make’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Screen”—Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin observed that often, in act 3, scene 2 of the play, “directors play on the physical degradation of the lovers. Except for Adrian Noble and Christine Edzard who resort to other strategies to express the chaos in the scene, directors undertake to make the quarrel visual by playing on the lovers’ physical appearance. In most versions,” she continued, “the characters are more and more dishevelled. Peter Hall’s version is famous for making the lovers ‘muddy,’ and Michael Hoffman’s version enhances this aspect partly by representing the lovers’ quarrel as a fight in the mud. With the mud. directors make the verbal quarrel visual” (95). Meanwhile, in another 2004 essay titled “Transcoding the Play within the Play,” Michèle Willems compared and contrasted several different filmed versions of the play staged by “the mechanicals.”

In a 2004 essay titled “‘Fearful Wild Fowl’: Misrepresenting Nature in Filmed Midsummer Night’s Dreams,” Kevin De Ornellas, commenting on several silent films as well as on the later productions of Reinhardt and Dieterle, Noble, and Hoffman, argued that “filmed versions [usually] do not dramatise the play world’s projection of lethal competition between the human and the non-human. Consequently, nature, as it is maligned and vulnerable in the play, is not shown to be threatened on the screen as it is on the page. Directors of A Midsummer Night’s Dream have not shown a realistic nature because, in their films, nature is not under threat” (133).

Maurice Hindle, in his 2007 book Studying Shakespeare on Film (122–29), called Noble’s production “brilliantly colourful”; thought its “eroticism” is “finally mediated through … [the] young boy’s dream”; and offered detailed discussion of many scenes and methods, including such techniques as “diverse points of view, use of back flats, shot/reverse shots, metatheatrical aspects, slam zoom shots,” and similar devices. He did, however, think viewers’ attention might “wander or be lost in the forest sequences” and found the use of doorways (effective in the stage production) less effective on film (126). Meanwhile, Samuel Crowl, in his 2008 Norton Guide (132–33), discussed differences between the stage production and the film; said Bottom here is effectively played; and noted that some of the lovers’ speeches are sharply cut, especially those involving relationships between the women, so that the cuts damage our sense of their sisterhood (132–33).

Assessing the film briefly in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (119–11), Adrian Peter Cochran found Nunn’s fairies unconvincing, partly because of a postmodern skepticism about them; thought most of the design decisions made little sense (110); called the acting forgettable; considered the rustics implausible; thought even the Reinhardt version preferable; and concluded that the tone of the final play-within-the-play is too serious (111).

In an essay from 2024 titled “‘Out of this wood do not desire to go’: The Woods in Six Productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Christopher Baker wrote that “[d]espite Noble’s afterthoughts about his production, it, like the others considered in this overview, suggests a forest that is a boundary territory where humans can experience strange visions, a mysterious tract where spectral spouses can contest each other’s power, a trackless expanse where loving and lovelorn wanderers are easily lost, a place of confusion and trickery where victims of natural potions are duped and then rescued” (95).

1999 Michael Hoffman Production

This big-budget film, directed by Michael Hoffman, starred Kevin Kline as Nick Bottom; Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania; Rupert Everett as Oberon; Stanley Tucci as Puck; Calista Flockhart as Helena; Anna Friel as Hermia; Christian Bale as Demetrius; Dominic West as Lysander; David Strathairn as Theseus; Sophie Marceau as Hippolyta; and Sam Rockwell as Francis Flute.

Daniel Rosenthal, in his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare on Screen (92–93), admired the backstory the film provided about Bottom in an unhappy marriage but thought Kevin Kline overacted this “refreshing twist.” Although finding most of the British actors playing the young lovers “adequately ardent,” Rosenthal not only added that “you can’t believe that these civilized Brits are from the same century, let alone community, as Helena,” played by the American Calista Flockhart, but remarked that “Hoffman deserves a special booby prize for making Flockhart and Friel wrestle in a pool of absurdly chocolaty mud.” He criticized the film’s “unconvincing sets”; found the forest too small to be sufficiently confusing or enchanting; said that except for Tucci’s performance the acting lacked “zest”; and thought that the final play-within, featuring too much “canned laughter,” shows that “Hoffman doesn’t trust us to laugh for ourselves” (92).

Stephen Buhler, in his 2002 book Shakespeare in the Cinema, called the Hoffman effort less funny than it could have been (183); compared it both to Adrian Noble’s Dream and to the Merchant/Ivory film A Room with a View (184); joked about an added final scene in which Bottom discovers that his “sojourn in the forest strangely confirms his manhood, if not his marriage”; and considered this production “often ill at ease with the playtext’s strategically decentered plot.” He thought David Straithairn’s acting “tentative and uncertain”; said the film frequently failed at either synthesis or juxtaposition; called this Oberon “intriguingly languid”; and stated that “Roger Rees as Peter Quince” won “most of the laughs” during the final play-within (185).

Discussing the Hoffman version in his 2002 book Shakespeare in Space (72–86), Herbert R. Coursen called it “a waste of money and, possibly, of good actors, and certainly of time for its audience.” Critiquing its “shallow understanding of post-modernism” and its concessions to Hollywood’s yearning for popularity, he disliked the updated setting (72) and the failures “of casting, lighting, and that subtle but vital element called rhythm” (74) and concluded with an exceptionally detailed discussion of practically every alleged flaw in this production (86).

Samuel Crowl, in his 2003 book Shakespeare at the Cineplex (180–86), although praising “Hoffman’s lush, visually stunning” approach, disliked the numerous “ripe images” that often seemed irrelevant to the text, explaining that Hoffman “has a fertile cinematic imagination, but his art is only fitfully in control of his Shakespearean material” (180). Calling this Bottom “both something of a dreamer and a dandy” and admiring Kline’s “exquisite” performance, with its “delicate, subtle shadings,” Crowl called this Bottom “neither ass nor ham, but the lost soul who comes into focus through his attempts to transform himself in art” (181). Reporting that “Hoffman’s woods are crammed with a multinational cast of fairies that ranges from Disney fireflies to a motley crew of monsters and over-the-hill nymphs hanging out at a grotto fairy bar,” Crowl wrote that this film’s Oberon and Titania resembled characters from The Clash of the Titans—more evidence that “Hoffman’s teeming imagination just doesn’t know when to stop” (183). He found similar (excessive) variety in the varied landscapes and the diverse styles of acting, finding Kline, Everett, Tucci, Strathairn, and Bale “the best (because least labored) actors, and Flockhart, Hill, and Friel less successful (because too emphatic).” Crowl was one of many critics who admired “Sam Rockwell’s brilliant, moving Flute” as a “heartbreaking Thisby” in what Crowl called “a brilliant moment, but one that runs against the grain of the comedy” (184). Suggesting that Hoffman had been influenced by Kenneth Branagh’s successful film of Much Ado About Nothing, Crowl nonetheless regretted that Hoffman lacked “confidence in his Shakespearean material” (185), eventually concluding that Hoffman’s “excess and clutter finally sink the film’s more interesting achievements” (186).

Jay Halio, in the 2003 second edition of his 1994 book on the play for the Shakespeare in Production series (151–72), discussed this film’s changes of setting and era (151–52); called it “a feast to the eyes” and a “banquet to the ears”; said the “lines are very well spoken … [and the] sound track is excellent” (152) and admired the eclectic music (153). He considered the casting of Kline as Bottom “a stroke of brilliance”; suggested that Bottom evolves in the forest through his love for Titania (154); and in general provided much plot summary but little analysis (155–70). Commenting that despite the production’s “many splendours, … many critics were not well pleased” (170), especially with the acting (170–71), Halio ended by citing one generous and positive review with which he agreed (172).

In an essay from 2003 titled “Nostalgia and Theatricality: The Fate of the Shakespearean Stage in the Midsummer Night’s Dreams of Hoffman, Noble, and Edzard,” Douglas Lanier discussed such matters as how the opening of this film showed the influence of Kenneth Branagh (155), how the film seemed frequently nostalgic, how its forest displayed a “stagey artificiality” (156), and how its women displayed a “potential for shrewishness” (157). He noted its emphasis on the “technology of modernity,” such as bicycles and photographs (158–59) as well as its unusual treatment of Flute as Thisby (159–60).

Also in 2003, in an essay titled “‘A Shakespeare for the People’? Negotiating the Popular in Shakespeare in Love and Michael Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Sarah Mayo argued that “Hoffman attempts the dissolution, or at least the happy co-existence, of the categories of elite and popular culture, but this is doomed by his failure to recognize the different kinds of symbolic value which modernism and the mass media have assigned to opera, to the Disney film, to Pre-Raphaelite painting, to television comedies such as Ally McBeal, and, most importantly, to Shakespeare” (308).

Michael Anderegg, discussing the Hoffman production in his 2004 book Cinematic Shakespeare, found it “more visually striking than Nunn’s Twelfth Night” but also thought it “relies excessively, as did Branagh’s Much Ado about Nothing, on its Tuscan setting—a particularly odd choice for a play that is so clearly English” (142). Anderegg wrote that “Hoffman provides a strangely soporific reading of a play full of action and movement. There is little energy or sense of fun, and the forward thrust of the narrative is slowed down at almost every step by irrelevant business” (143).

In a 2004 essay titled “‘Fearful Wild Fowl’: Misrepresenting Nature in Filmed Midsummer Night’s Dreams,” Kevin De Ornellas, commenting on several silent films as well as on the later productions of Reinhardt and Dieterle, Noble, and Hoffman, argued that “filmed versions [usually] do not dramatise the play world’s projection of lethal competition between the human and the non-human. Consequently, nature, as it is maligned and vulnerable in the play, is not shown to be threatened on the screen as it is on the page. Directors of A Midsummer Night’s Dream have not shown a realistic nature because, in their films, nature is not under threat” (133).

Sarah Hatchuel, in a 2004 essay titled “From Meta-Theatre to Meta-Cinema in Screen Versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” discussed how Hoffman used well-known actors to shape audience reactions to the characters these actors play, especially in the case of Calista Flockhart (160), while in another essay from the same volume (this one titled “A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Screen: ‘Fierce Vexation[s]’ for Author and Auteur”), Kenneth Rothwell argued that “Michael Hoffman’s 1999 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (‘Based on the play by William Shakespeare’) supports Shakespeare’s lyric intensity with a dazzling feast of spectacle and music, all of it set around the year 1900 in an Athens resituated in Tuscany rather than in Greece.” Rothwell felt that the “treatment of Bottom departs from Shakespeare’s text when Hoffman indulges in a veritable orgy of … ‘character criticism’ by creatively expanding Bottom’s role into a full-blown arc of almost tragic proportions” (24).

Bernice Kliman, in a 2004 essay titled “Video Clips as Clues to a Whole Film and Companions to the Playtext: The Instance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Directed by Michael Hoffman,” wrote that “by giving students opportunities to make observations of short clips [from films], I believe I am giving them practice in … studying a part to try to make something of it as well as of a whole. My clips can help students to read films in general and ultimately to make their own choice of clips to illuminate a work of art, whether it is a film or a painting or a novel. In my classroom,” she continued, “we all make observations about the chosen clip, not worrying about whether what we notice will work towards any analysis or thesis. By hearing each other’s observations, we see possibilities for other features. We work together to organize the observations into categories. We might arrange them in fluid classifications having to do with acting, camera work, design, sound effects, and more.” She added that a “heightened awareness of all sorts of details is what I hope my students will learn from our practice, as well as a way to organize what they notice in ways that will help them write about a film, reaching from details to classifications of details, to inferences and an hypothesis that can be tested on the whole film and on the playtext—and finally to a project that will express what the student has discovered” (46–47).

In a 2004 essay titled “Intertextual Dialogues: Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing and Michael Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Mark Thornton Burnett compared and contrasted the two movies, saying that Hoffman, by choosing his temporal and geographical settings, wanted to resist “inhibiting historical assumptions” about Shakespeare’s play (181). Burnett described Hoffman’s film’s emphasis on the relations between words and images; noted similarities between the openings of the two films (186); commented on Hoffman’s treatment of Victorian technologies (188–89); asserted the film’s democratic ethos; and discussed Bottom’s nostalgia for his fairy experience (190–91). He found, in Hoffman’s film, “self-conscious reflections upon forms of theatre,” allusions to theatre (192), and a de-mythologizing of traditional assumptions about Shakespeare (193). Additionally, in a 2004 essay titled “Transcoding the Play Within the Play,” Michèle Willems compared and contrasted several different filmed versions of the play staged by “the mechanicals.” And, in the same 2004 volume, in an essay titled “‘The Noise They Make’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Screen,” Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin commented that often, in act 3, scene 2 of the play, “directors play on the physical degradation of the lovers. Except for Adrian Noble and Christine Edzard who resort to other strategies to express the chaos in the scene, directors undertake to make the quarrel visual by playing on the lovers’ physical appearance. In most versions,” she continued, “the characters are more and more dishevelled. Peter Hall’s version is famous for making the lovers ‘muddy,’ and Michael Hoffman’s version enhances this aspect partly representing the lovers’ quarrel as a fight in the mud. With the mud. directors make the verbal quarrel visual” (95).

Nicholas Jones, in an essay published in 2004 and titled “Bottom’s Wife: Gender and Voice in Hoffman’s Dream,” asked, “What does Bottom long for in the theatrical [performance] at the end of the play?” He answered: “The transformative potentiality of acting seems central. This Bottom wants to play all the parts not because he is a big ego but because his ego seeks ways to become bigger. His Ereles, Thisbe, and lion represent an escape from the traps of class, gender, and even humanity (if we include the lion). He is,” Jones continued, “simultaneously wonderful and atrocious in these roles because he believes so totally in their effect on him, on his audience, and on life itself. Partly because this Bottom so yearns for theatrical success, Hoffman’s ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ is not particularly funny: it is hard for us to laugh with him or even at him, as do the aristocrats. Bottom’s aspirations,” Jones asserted, “are not simply ridiculous. Theater is for Bottom a deeply engrained fantasy of freedom and transformation. thwarted by his unnoticed marginality” (128).

In an article from 2006 titled “Bottom Gets a Life: Michael Hoffman’s Contribution to the Shakespeare Film Canon,” William Brugger asserted that the Bottom in this film, who is “[g]reater than the sum of his parts, … exhibits a depth … that is only hinted at in the play. These scenes combine to form much more than a day-in-the-life of Nick Bottom: collectively, they represent his whole life. To his wife, he is not Nick the weaver; he is Nick the weasel. … To audiences, he is not just Bottom the ‘egoist, braggart, or buffoon’ of many other Midsummer productions, nor is he just Bottom the ‘dreamer, actor, pretender.’” Instead, “this film explores the tragedy in Bottom’s private life as much as it preserves the comedy in his public life” (4).

Also in 2006, in an essay titled “Where Is That Worthless Dreamer? Bottom’s Fantastic Redemption in Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Frank P. Riga wrote that Hoffman’s film makes “Bottom and his fantastic ‘redemption’ the central focus of his production” as this “Bottom becomes the representative for the artisan classes all told, resulting in a radical shift from the traditional privileging of the aristocracy to a new emphasis on the lower classes. Bottom and his fellow artisans,” according to Riga, “are seen as participating in a new vision of social class and individual worth, a vision that is central to Hoffman’s conception of the play” (197). Riga thought that in “a topsey turvey shift, Bottom, the lowest of the ‘rude mechanicals,’ has come out on top and has assumed a privileged position as the only mortal whose eyes are capable of seeing beyond the veil which hides the vision’s reality from the other mortals in the play. This translation of Bottom,” Riga continued, “prepares the ground for the unexpected and moving performance of Pyramus and Thisbe, thereby allowing all of the other artisans to participate in Bottom’s sublimation. And finally, the elevation of Bottom and the artisans also makes sense of Hoffman’s decision to transpose the play from a mythic Athens to nineteenth century Italy, and by extension, to nineteenth-century Europe, where the ‘mechanicals,’ or common men, will have the opportunity to become something other than worthless dreamers” (210).

In his 2007 volume Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (30–41) as in his essay from 2004, Mark Thornton Burnett compared and contrasted Hoffman’s film with Branagh’s Much Ado about Nothing, seeing Branagh’s film as an influence on Hoffman, especially in his treatment of history. He noted Hoffman’s film’s emphasis on an Italian setting and on a carnival atmosphere (30); thought it helped demythologize Shakespeare’s play (33); said it deemphasized British actors and traditions; and noted its allusions to previous films and theatrical conventions (33–34). Burnett argued that both Branagh’s film and Hoffman’s sought to “achieve a culturally denuded Shakespeare … even if ideological accretions of Englishness, and American economic realities, complicate that transformative project” (35). He noted, in both projects, an emphasis on books (36); suggested that “anxieties about Shakespeare and reproduction are played out” in both films; commented on both films’ treatment of gender and women (38; see also 43); discussed resemblances between the movies’ openings (41); and compared and contrasted the ending of Hoffman’s Dream with the conclusions of certain Disney films (44).

Maurice Hindle, in his 2007 volume Studying Shakespeare on Film, called Kevin Kline “a brilliant actor” and his performance here “accomplished and often very moving” even while suggesting that its depiction of Bottom as “a dandyish, extrovert[ed], but pensive dreamer” might undermine some of the comedy of Shakespeare’s text (55). Later, in an extended essay on the movie (130–35), Hindle quoted from Hoffman’s introduction to the screenplay; said Hoffman wanted to make the characters plausibly realistic, with complex psychological backstories; wrote that “Kline is onscreen for almost a third of the movie”; thought Hoffman’s focus on Bottom’s melancholy conflicted with the comedy of the play (131); but did praise some “marvelous elements” that make the film “hugely enjoyable.” Hindle emphasized throughout this essay that Hoffman employs music well; noted the use of “time-lapse photography,” “montage,” “cranes,” “pans,” and Steadicam; and admired the effective use made of opera (132) as well as of other musical elements (133–34). Commenting on this film’s debts to Disney films and on its skillful use of melancholic music, Hindle nonetheless thought there was sometimes too much emphasis on spectacle and too little on Shakespeare’s language being clearly and properly spoken, just as he also regretted some of the cuts to the text (134). He considered the forest scenes sometimes “overloaded” with “elaborate” visual details; found allusions to various paintings unimpactful; but did admire the bower scene featuring Bottom and Titania (135).

In an essay from 2008 titled “Bottom and the Gramophone: Media, Class and Comedy in Michael Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Peter S. Donaldson argued that by “shifting at key moments from opera as soundtrack accompaniment to shots in which records are actually shown playing on-screen within the narrative, Hoffman foregrounds the medium, calls attention to the historical moment of its introduction, and implicitly contrasts that moment with the more rigidly class-based cultural hierarchies of Shakespeare’s play.” His article sought to “trace the opening up of such cultural space in Hoffman’s Dream” and “the role of the gramophone in creating it” and concluded with a brief look at the ways in which “the film, like the play, ends by closing down some of the possibilities for class fluidity it opens” (23–24).

In his 2009 overview of Shakespeare’s play (129–31), Martin White noted its late-Victorian Italian setting (129); commented on its “lavish visual style”; wrote that “Hoffman’s interpretation of Bottom is distinctive”; and suggested that the “spirit world is presented as a direct mirror of the mortal one” (130). He observed that Hoffman is unique in showing “the moment of Bottom’s translation from man to ass” and noted that the size of “his penis both amaze[s] and fascinate[s] the fairies and their queen” (131).

Commenting briefly on the Hoffman film in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (111–13), Peter Cochran praised Flockhart, Pfeiffer, and Strathairn but not Kline, whose Bottom, according to Cochran, makes little sense (111–12). He noted an emphasis on mud; found certain details incongruent; thought a middle-class Bottom is implausible; and found Flute’s big moment at the end of the film nonsensical (113).

Discussing the Hoffman film in her 2017 book titled Devouring Time (320–27), Philippa Sheppard called this adaptation “dewey with nostalgia”; noted its “fantasies of home” (320); considered it “elegiac in tone” (323); and suggested that its music implies a “wistfulness for the past” (327). She discussed Hoffman’s use of the “melancholy image of the lone person sweeping the stage” (328) and his presentation of an “artificially oversized moon” (329), arguing that nostalgia “inspires us to question our collective memories” (331). She thought that “Shakespeare’s language does not seem out of place” in the film’s Victorian time frame (331), an era when displays of male/male affection were still acceptable (333) and when men still exercised most social power—and thus in both respects an era appropriate as the setting for a Shakespeare play (335). According to Sheppard, both this film and Kenneth Branagh’s recent Love’s Labour’s Lost are “nostalgic” in at least four different ways: first, that the two directors “selected Shakespeare to adapt”; second, “[that] they set Shakespeare in eras different to his own and their own; third, [that] they … opted for musical scores that use existing forms … rather than commissioning original music”; and “fourth, [that] they allude to other films through blocking, props, and costumes.” Thus, both films “are perfect examples of postmodernism. Very little in [them] is fresh or new; [and] both rely excessively on quoting other, older works of art. This nostalgia for the art of the past,” in Sheppard’s view, “reveals a deep insecurity about the present and the future.” For this reason, “Hoffman’s use of Mendelssohn and operatic arias” and “his recreation of a phony aristocratic lifestyle that has little to do with Shakespeare’s ancient Athens or his Renaissance England … also seem like a wild grasping after creativity instead of the genuine article” (337).

Discussing the Hoffman film in his 2019 book Shakespeare the Illusionist, Neil Forsyth called it “dispiriting”; disliked its “swarm of Tinker Bells”; accused it of “artistic vulgarity”; and wrote that the “star cast does nothing to redeem the film,” although he excepted “Rupert Everett’s Oberon and Stanley Tucci’s Puck from this criticism, but even there the campy gay subtext is amusing but works against any sense of a consistent interpretation.” He condemned Hoffman’s “incompetence,” particularly for providing a “tasteless mélange of various styles of operatic music” (49).

Robert C. Evans, in an article from 2020 titled “Michael Hoffman’s Film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Survey of Reviews,” summarized and categorized sixty different assessments of the movie in the popular press, from a wide range of newspapers, magazines, and websites. Evans classified the reviews from negative to mixed to positive, noting that this film, to an unusual degree, elicited feedback that covered the spectrum from intense dislike to enthusiastic admiration.

In an essay from 2024 titled “‘Out of this wood do not desire to go’: The Woods in Six Productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Christopher Baker wrote that the “darkly fantastic quality of Hoffman’s woods is a perfect context for the action of the nonhuman spirits, notably Puck …” (89–90).

2001 Christine Edzard Production

This adaptation, directed by Christine Edzard and titled The Children’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, featured a very young cast of untrained actors, including Jamie Peachey as Hermia; John Heyfron as Demetrius; Danny Bishop as Lysander; Jessica Fowler as Helena; Leane Lyson as Puck; and Oliver Szczypka as Bottom.

Discussing the production in his 2003 book Shakespeare at the Cineplex (163–69), Samuel Crowl wrote that the “agonies of puberty” are largely lost in the playing of the roles here by Edzard’s youngsters (167). Asserting that the transformation back to Athens here “was not as smoothly handled as the film’s initial transition into the forest” (167), Crowl did admire “the innocence and charm of [Edzard’s] achievement,” arguing that “we should quibble less about whether Edzard’s schoolchildren can fully inhabit Shakespeare’s text and [instead] admire more the simple fact that they can do it at all.” He called the film “cleverly structured, handsomely costumed, sweetly scored, and often a delight to hear” (169).

In a 2004 essay titled “From Meta-Theatre to Meta-Cinema in Screen Versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Sarah Hatchuel wrote that in the opening of this film, Edzard “creates a double level of spectatorship—the children watching the scene and the audience of the cinema watching a show being watched” (154). And, in another 2004 essay from the same volume —an essay titled “‘The Noise They Make’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Screen”—Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin commented that often, in act 3, scene 2 of the play, “directors play on the physical degradation of the lovers. Except for Adrian Noble and Christine Edzard who resort to other strategies to express the chaos in the scene, directors undertake to make the quarrel visual by playing on the lovers’ physical appearance. In most versions,” she continued, “the characters are more and more dishevelled” (95). Finally, in a third 2004 essay from the same volume—an essay titled “Producing The Children’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (2001): A Discussion with Olivier Stockman,” Stockman reported that Edzard regarded the play as simpler and more accessible than is sometimes assumed; that she believed that “children were the only ones who could take the text as it comes”; that many of the children “didn’t prepare the text”; that “some could hardly read”; and that they therefore “had to prepare the text literally on the day we were filming” (117).

Commenting on the Edzard version in his 2009 overview of Shakespeare’s play (132–33), Martin White wrote that the film explores the “play’s metatheatrical dynamics”; said it “looks good”; judged “[many] directorial devices …ingenious and appropriate” (132); but concluded that the child actors find Shakespeare’s language “an insurmountable challenge” (133).

2014 Julie Taymor Production

This adaptation, directed by Julie Taymor, starred Kathryn Hunter as Puck; David Harewood as Oberon; Tina Benko as Titania; Max Casella as Nick Bottom; Zach Appelman as Demetrius; Roger Clark as Duke Theseus; Mandi Masden as Helena; and Okwui Okpokwasili as Queen Hippolyta.

Neil Forsyth, in his 2019 book Shakespeare the Illusionist (162–65), wrote that the Taymor film “highlights the many tricks of the play from which it derives”; said “we sympathize almost viscerally with Bottom’s delight” in his relations with Titania; but commented that “Titania, however, remains aloof, a white-clad mystery, well beyond our reach” (165).

In an essay from 2022 titled “Tracing Julie Taymor’s ‘Rough Magic’ in Her Three Screen Shakespeares,” Kade Ivy wrote that “Taymor’s influence is all over what we see onstage and how we see it onscreen, making this case unique in the realm of live captures [of live performances]. There is, to my knowledge, no other Shakespeare director working within the live broadcast phenomenon who has taken responsibility for directing the live capture of their own theater production. Taymor’s Dream,” Ivy concluded, “thus presents a case study in how the auteur might navigate the format of the live capture, which Taymor has herself called ‘a new medium’” (130).

In an essay from 2024 titled “‘Out of this wood do not desire to go’: The Woods in Six Productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Christopher Baker wrote that in Taymor’s production the “overall effect is of a forest that is seductively, psychedelically inviting, replete with background sounds of owls hooting and loons calling, rather than a darkly forbidding kingdom ruled by Oberon; it is a place more fecund than fearsome. We soon forget that much of this impressive stage design is accomplished with nothing more than colored light; gone are the flashing gimcracks of Reinhardt or the pasty makeup of Hall” (92).

Bibliography