Michelle Terry as Puck
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, May 2023
Photo by Tristram Kenton
064 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream is arguably Shakespeare’s first great comedy. It is undoubtedly one of his most enduringly popular works with producers and audiences alike. The play has all the ingredients of classic romantic comedy: a magical setting, a merry-go-round of earnest young lovers, a fairy King and Queen, and a troupe of hapless comic actors, all given a supernatural spin in the course of a single moonlit night. But is the dream-like world of the wood outside Athens as benign a place as we imagine?
As we record this episode a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is in repertory in the Summer season at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London, where the Artistic Director, Michelle Terry, gives an outstanding performance as the sardonic sprite, Puck.
My guest to help explore Shakespeare’s wondrous “visions” is Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford. Emma has appeared twice before on the podcast, sharing her deep knowledge of The Duchess of Malfi, and of Macbeth.
Emma Smith
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford. Her books on Shakespeare’s First Folio, The Making of the First Folio and Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book have been published in new editions to coincide with the 400th anniversary this year. She is currently working on an edition of Twelfth Night, and a new book on Elizabethan art and culture.
Recommended Play
Emma recommended Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel, which we covered in episode 63.
Emma also volunteered to return to talk about any other Shakespeare play that we haven’t yet covered!
The Footnotes to our episode on William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream include observations on the forest as a setting for love and dreams, on the play as democratic drama, and on the not-so-hidden meanings in the names of the rude mechanicals.
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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg
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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.
Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.
Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.
114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.
I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
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