Midsummer Night's Dream

“ In The Midsummer Night's Dream, on the other hand, there flows a luxuriant vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have been brought about without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours are of such clear transparency that we think the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath. ”

“ His delicacy and sportive gaiety are infinite. In the Midsummer Night's Dream alone, we should imagine, there is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole range of French poetry put together. ”

“ When we come out from a performance of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' we feel as near to the stars as when we come out from 'King Lear.' For the joy of these works is older than sorrow, their extravagance is saner than wisdom, their love is stronger than death. ”

“ Thus he gradually returns to those brighter moods of his youth from which the fairy dances of the Midsummer Night's Dream had evolved, or that unknown Forest of Arden in which cypresses grew and lions prowled, and happy youth and mirthful maidenhood carelessly roamed. Only the spirit of frolic has departed, while free play is given to a fancy unhampered by the laws of reality, and much earnest discernment lies behind the untrammelled sport of imagination. He waves the magician's wand and reality vanishes, now, as formerly. ”

“ For A Midsummer Night's Dream, as for one other early play, Love's Labour's Lost, and another very late one, The Tempest, Shakespeare seems to have devised a plot with relative independence. At any rate, nothing has been found which may properly be called the 'source' of A Midsummer Night's Dream. ”

“ But read it and compare it with the nature-poetry of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and you will feel how far the great Englishman surpasses the greatest Frenchmen in pure unrhetorical lyrism and irrepressibly playful, absolutely poetical poetry, with its scent of clover, its taste of wild honey, and its airy and shifting dream-pageantry.
We have here no pathos. The hurricane of passion does not as yet sweep through Shakespeare's work. ”

“ Finally, the whole fairy story is the creation of Shakespeare in a Mercutio mood.
In the diversity of its metrical form, Midsummer Night's Dream is also the counterpart of Romeo and Juliet. The abundance of rimed couplet, combined wherever there is intensity of feeling with a perfect form of blank verse, is reminiscent of the earlier play. Passages of equally splendid poetic power meet us all through, while at the same time we feel the very charm of youthful fervor in expression that the tragedy displayed. ”

“ All comes right, as it ever must in fairyland; the true lovers are reunited; the faithful unloved lady gets her faithless lover; Titania repents and is forgiven; and Theseus's wedding is graced by the "mirthfullest tragedy that ever was seen."
We have in Midsummer Night's Dream three distinct groups of characters—the lovers, the city clowns rehearsing for the play, and the fairies. ”

“ And now, if any are offended with this story of fairies and their pranks, as judging it incredible and strange, they have only to think that they have been asleep and dreaming, and that all these adventures were visions which they saw in their sleep: and I hope none of my readers will be so unreasonable as to be offended with a pretty harmless Midsummer Night's Dream. ”

“ His liberal eye doth give to every one—
Thawing cold fear.
The singular language and thought in Midsummer Night's Dream, reflects on our subject. The poet, from his vast treasury of imagery, speaks of the fiery light of the glowworm's eyes. ”

“ To talk with her in unrestrained frivolity, glancing from theme to theme, but always with a grain of sentiment or philosophy in their talk; to walk beside her in those stately alleys at Discombe, or to linger in the marble temple; to follow the peacocks along the grass walks; to look for the nests of the thrushes and blackbirds in the thick walls of laurel; to plan garden-plays—Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream—in that grassy amphitheatre, which reminded Allan of the Boboli Gardens—these things made a happiness that filled mind and heart to the exclusion of all thought of the future. ”

“ The play chosen for representation that night was A Midsummer Night's Dream; and Filina, in the character of "Titania," won golden opinions from one and all. In her dainty fairy garments she bewitched the hearts of her audience by her charming acting and fascinating coquetry, and the old castle walls rang with the loud bursts of applause that were constantly accorded to the lovely actress. ”

“ No one could take the Midsummer Night’s Dream and produce a modern extravaganza, though they might (as Planché did) use the fairies out of it, who are immortal. No one deprecates a vulgar, coarse piece of buffoonery by way of burlesque more than I do. ”

“ Love's Labour's Lost. Act v. Sc. 2.
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn [57:1]
Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act i. Sc. 1.
For aught that I could ever read, [57:2]
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act i. Sc. 1.
O, hell! to choose love by another's eyes.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act i. Sc. 1.
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ”

“ In the Two Noble Kinsmen we find echoes from The Midsummer Night's Dream, from Julius Cæsar (the quarrel between Brutus and Cassio) , and, above all, a tasteless and offensive imitation of Ophelia's madness, when the jailer's daughter goes crazy for fear while seeking Palamon in the wood at night, and in her raving and singing later in the play. Shakespeare never repeated without excelling, and certainly never parodied himself in this fashion. ”

“ The only action of 'As You Like It' is pedestrian; if the characters had been placed in the forest in the first scene, the drama would have been then as ripe for its catastrophe as it is in the last. Midsummer Night's Dream has no plot.'The Midsummer Night's Dream' relates a midnight stroll in a wood ”

“ In Shakespeare’s time it was a belief that no one could see the fairies and live, for he makes Falstaff exclaim, “They are fairies, he who looks on them shall die;” but any one who desires to see them through the eye of a poet should read most carefully the altogether delightful “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” ”

“ There are some points that naturally suggest a comparison between The Tempest and A Midsummer-Night's Dream. In both the Poet has with equal or nearly equal success carried Nature, as it were, beyond herself, and peopled a purely ideal region with the attributes of life and reality ”

“ It is none the less of value to recognise at the outset that A Midsummer-Night's Dream is more of a masque than a drama—an entertainment rather than a play. The characters are mostly puppets, and scarcely any except Bottom has the least psychological interest for the reader. ”

“ The public always came in goodly numbers to hear "Macbeth," "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and "The Merchant of Venice;" and Mendelssohn's exquisite music, made an accompaniment to the reading of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," rendered that a peculiarly popular performance. ”