All the Bloody Shakespeare: Midsummer Night's Dream

Speculations of Faustian bargains are not without foundation. 

This is a much better play.

Between Love's Labour's Lost and Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare becomes a different author.  Stories have been written about sinister supernatural pacts to grant preternatural writing talent.  Conspiracy theories have drafted in Marlow, or Spenser or Queen Elizabeth to help him out.  But, I suspect he just listened to criticism and reflected on how to improve.

The best writing in Love's Labour's Lost is only as good as any given line from the first four acts of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here we have a play worthy of Shakespeare's reputation.  

Funny, well-phrased, populated with distinct and interesting characters and well-paced. At least until the last act, which I'll moan about later. Best of all, Shakespeare doesn't make a single antisemitic remark beginning to end. No sexy sheep stuff either. Instead, he fixates on how ugly he thinks Egyptians and Ethiopians are, which is both unfair and unfounded. Though to be fair, the play is set in Ancient Greece and that is literally where the word xenophobia comes from. So, maybe it's a misguided effort at cultural authenticity.

At its heart, MSD is a story about how badly behaved British fairies are when they go on holiday abroad. It all starts when the Anglo-Germanic king of the fairies, Oberon, has a major barney with his Greek wife Titania.

Why is the Anglo-Germanic king of the fairies is in Greece? Or, for that matter, the specifically English hobgoblin Puck? Shakespeare explains this by suggesting Puck can put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. But, he doesn't touch on why there are British fairies who are indigenous to Greece, or why a performing troupe of British labourers are in the vicinity. Or why the queen of the fairies is now the invented Greek fairy Titania, and not Queen Mab who Shakespeare knows damn well is Oberon's wife (given how much he drones on about her in Romeo and Juliet). 

None of the main premise bares close scrutiny, but it works within the story and that's what counts.

An angry Oberon torments Titania by getting Puck to slip her the Mickey. The fae roofy causes her to fall asleep, then fall in love with the first thing she sees on waking. Because everyone can relate to wanting to humiliate their loved one by having them duped into sex with a disgusting stranger... Okay, this bit doesn't bear much scrutiny either. It makes narrative sense in the play though. And they're fairies, so I guess they work on different moral frameworks. Anyway, the prose is so pretty that you can overlook the fact that most of the play's humour happens as a result of drug-induced sexual coercion. At least, you could until just now.

Titania falls in love with this play's clown, Nick Bottom. A bad actor in a terrible play. He is wearing a donkey mask during most of the "love" sequences.  Bottom is no Launce. There's no bad observational comedy or staff jokes. All the humour comes from his unearned confidence and the mismatch between him and Titania.  It's all good stuff (apart from the morality).

The two sets of lovers that make up the main plot are a huge step up for Billy S. Helena and Hermia are great characters. Helena short and passionate, Hermia tall and a bit drippy.  Helena is in love with Demetrius who is set to marry Hermia, who is planning to run off with Lysander. There it is, the premise works! Lots of conflict and tension, a few classic quotes, the fairies get involved and it's all pretty much wrapped up by the end of Act IV. 

But as someone once said in some play or other, "the course of true love never did run smooth."

Act V is a bit of a letdown. Most of it is taken up with Bottom and his friends putting on their production of Pyramus and Thisbe. Now, this probably did work as pastiche at the time, but unless you've watched a lot of live Elizabethan theatre, this bit drags on. It's mostly Shakespeare making fun of ham actors, writers who always apply alliteration and the key concept of Pyramus and Thisbe (which has a very similar plot to West Side Story, but with a physical wall instead of a socio-economic divide). Some of this seems a little rich coming from the cack-handed hack that slapped The Taming of the Shrew together. But, given how good the rest of MSD is, he's earned a tiny bit of indulgence.

4/5 All's well, even if it doesn't end all that well.

Addendum:

Theseus and Hippolyta are in the play too.  But they don't kill any Minotaurs or eschew traditional gender conventions.  So, they're not really worth mentioning.