About This Clip
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Le songe d’une nuit d’été), directed by Peter Brook, Royal Shakespeare Company.
Also known as Peter Brook’s Dream
Premiered in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1970 and then moved to the Aldwych Theatre in London’s West End in 1971. World tour in 1972-3.
Brook rejected the 19th-century realist tradition and used the play as a metaphor. The now renowned set, designed by Sally Jacobs, is a white box with two doors. When on tour, stagehands and lighting technicians are visible during performance.
Watch the clip showing Oberon and Puck.
Act 2 Scene 1
OBERON (to Puck): I pray thee, give it me.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
Peter Brook on A Midsummer Night’s Dream: a cook and a concept – Brook’s 1970 RSC production of Shakespeare’s play featured circus trapezes, stilts and plate-spinning – and changed theatre history for good. In an extract from his new book, Peter Brook explains how this most seductive of Dreams came alive.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Clips
Oberon from Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970)
Act 2 Scene 1 OBERON (to Puck): I pray thee, give it me. I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite...more
Act 2 Scene 1
OBERON (to Puck): I pray thee, give it me.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies. less
TV Documentary: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, dir. Peter Brook (1970)
Television documentary – highlightsmore
Television documentary – highlights less
Related Productions
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Al-Shamma, James; 2013)
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Perng, Ching-hsi)
- El Somni d’una nit d’estiu (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) (Peris, Joan; 2000)
- Sonho de uma Noite de verão (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) (Teatro Praga; 2010)
- Sonho de uma Noite de Verao: uma intromissao do grupo Nós do Morro no mundo de Shakespeare (Midsummer’s Night Dream) (Mello da Costa, Fernando; 2004)
