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"I was little more than a godfather on the occasion, and the alterations should have been subscribed Anon."

The best production of this comedy ever accomplished on the English stage was that effected by Charles Kean, at the Princess's Theatre, London,-managed by him from August, 1850, till August 29, 1859.

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The first performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream ever given in America occurred at the old Park Theatre, for the benefit of Mrs. Hilson, on November 9, 1826. Mr. Ireland, in his valuable Records, has preserved a part of the cast, rescued from a mutilated copy of the playbill of that night: Theseus, Mr. Lee; Bottom, Mr. Hilson; Snout, Mr. Placide; Oberon, Mr. Peter Richings; Puck, Mrs. Hilson; Titania, Mrs. Sharpe; Hippolita, Mrs. Stickney; Hermia, Mrs. Hackett. On Au gust 30, 1841, the comedy was again revived at this theatre, with a cast that included Mr. Fredericks as Theseus, Mr. W. H. Williams as Bottom, Mrs. Knight as Puck, Charlotte Cushman as Oberon, Mary Taylor as Tïtania, Susan Cushman as Helena, Mrs. Groves as Hippolita, Miss Buloid (afterward Mrs. Abbott), as Hermia, William Wheatley as Lysander, C. W. Clarke as Demetrius, Mr. Bellamy as Egeus, and Mr. Fisher (not Charles), as Quince. It kept the stage only one week. The next revivals came on February 3 and 6, 1854, at Burton's Theatre and at the Broadway Theatre, rival houses. The parts were cast as follows:

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Great stress, in both cases, was laid upon Mendelssohn's music. At each house it ran for a month. It was not revived in New York again until April 18, 1859, when Laura Keene brought it forward at her theatre, and kept it on till May 28th, with C. W. Couldock as Theseus, William Rufus Blake as Bottom, Miss Macarthy as Oberon, Miss Stevens, as Helena, Miss Ada Clifton as Hermia, and herself as Puck. It was a failure. Even Blake failed as Bottom-the most acute critic of that period (Ed.

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ward G. P. Wilkins), describing the performance as "not funny, not even grotesque, but vulgar and unpleasant." Charles Peters was good as Thisbe. The stage-version used was made by R. G. White. This same theatre subsequently became the Olympic (not Mitchell's, but the second of that name), and here, on October 28, 1867, under the management of Mr. James E. Hayes and the direction of Joseph Jefferson, who had brought over from London a fine Grecian panorama by Telbin, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was again offered, with a cast that included G. L. Fox as Bottom, W. Davidge as Quince, Owen Marlowe as Flute, Cornelia Jefferson as Titania, Clara Fisher as Peasblossom, Miss Fanny Stockton as Oberon, Miss Alice Harrison as a Fairy, Master Willie Young as Puck, Mr. Harry Wall as Theseus, Mr. J. J. Wallace as Demetrius, Mr. J. Franks as Lysander, Mr. T. J. Hind as Egeus, Mrs. Edmonds as Hippolita, Mrs. Wallace as Hermia, Miss Louisa Hawthorne as Helena, Mr. M. Quinlan as Stout, Mr. C. K. Fox as Snug, Mr. J. B. Howland as Starveling, and Miss Vincent, Miss Howard, Miss Thomas, and Miss Le Brun as Fairies. Telbin's panorama, a magnificent work, displayed the country supposed to lie between Athens and the forest wherein the Fairy Queen and the lovers are enchanted and bewitched and the sapient Bottom is "translated." Fox undertook Bottom, for the first time, and he was drolly consequential and stolidly conceited in it. Landseer's famous picture of Titania and the ass-headed Bottom was well copied, in one of the scenes. Mr. Hayes provided a gorgeous tableau at the close. Mendelssohn's music was played and sung, with excellent skill and effect-the chief vocalist being Clara Fisher. Owen Marlowe, as Thisbe, gave a burlesque of the manner of Rachel. The comedy, as then given, ran for one hundred nights-from October 28, 1867, till February 1, 1868. The stage version used was that of Charles Kean.

The next production of“ A Midsummer Night's Dream was effected by Augustin Daly at the Grand Opera House, on August 19, 1873. The scenery then employed, especially a woodland painted by Mr. G. Heis ter, was of extraordinary beauty-delicate in color, sensuous in feeling, sprightly in fancy. Mr. Fox again played Bottom; Miss Fanny Kemp Bowler appeared as Oberon, Miss Fay Templeton as Puck, Miss Fanny Hayward (Stocqueler) as Titania, Miss Nina Varian as Helena, Miss Adelaide Lennox as Hermia, Miss M. Chambers as Hippolita, Mr. M. A. Kennedy as Theseus, Mr. D. H. Harkins as Lysander, Mr. James Taylor as Demetrius, and Mr. Frank Hardenburgh as Egeus. The piece ran three weeks.

The attentive reader of this stage-version, made by Mr. Daly, will ob. serve that much illustrative stage-business has been introduced by him, which is new and effective. The disposition of the groups at the start is fresh, and so is the treatment of the quarrel between Oberon and Titania, with disappearance of the Indian child. The moonlight effects, in the

transition from act second to act third, and the gradual assembly of gob. lins and fairies in the shadowy mists through which the fire-flies glimmer, at the close of act third, are novel and beautiful. Cuts and transpositions have been made at the end of the fourth act, in order to close it with the voyage of the barge of Theseus, through a summer landscape, on the silver stream that ripples down to Athens. The third act has been judiciously compressed, so that the spectator may not see too much of the perplexed and wrangling lovers. Only a few changes have been made, and those only such as are absolutely essential. But little of the original text has been omitted. The music for the choruses has been selected from various English composers: that of Mendelssohn is used only in the orchestra. It is upon the strength of the comedy, and not upon the incidental music, that reliance has been placed, in effecting this revival. The accepted doctrine of traditional criticism-a doctrine made seemingly potent by reiteration—that “A Midsummer Night's Dream" is not for the stage, need not necessarily be considered final. Hazlitt was the first to insist on that idea. "Poetry and the stage," said that great writer, "do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them, in this instance, fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective. The imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual impression of the senscs." But this is only saying that there are difficulties. The remark applies to all the higher forms of dramatic literature; and, logically, if this doctrine were observed in practice, none of the great plays would be attempted. "A Midsummer Night's Dream," with all its ideal spirit, is essentially dramatic; it ought not to be lost to the stage; and to some extent, certainly, the difficulties can be surmounted. In the spirit of a dream the play was written, and in the spirit of a dream it can be acted.

The student of “A Midsummer Night's Dream," as often as he thinks upon this lofty and lovely expression of a most luxuriant and happy poetic fancy, must necessarily find himself impressed with its exquisite purity of spirit, its affluence of invention, its extraordinary wealth of contrasted characters, its absolute symmetry of form, and its great beauty of poetic diction. The essential, wholesome cleanliness and sweetness of Shakspere's mind, unaffected by the gross animalism of his times, appear conspicuously in this play. No single trait of the piece impresses the reader more agreeably than its frank display of the spontaneous, natural, and entirely delightful exultation of Theseus and Hippolita in their approaching nuptials. They are grand creatures both, and they rejoice in cach other and in their perfectly accordant love. Nowhere in Shakspere is there a more imperial man than Theseus; nor, despite her feminine impatience of dulness, a woman more beautiful and more essentially woman-like than Hippolita. It is thought that the immediate

impulse of this comedy, in Shaksperc's mind, was the marriage of his friend and benefactor, the Earl of Southampton, with Elizabeth Vernon-which, while it did not in fact occur till 1598, was very likely agreed upon, and had received Queen Elizabeth's sanction, as early as 1594-95. In old English literature it is seen that such a theme often proved suggestive of ribaldry; but Shakspere could preserve the sanctity even while he revelled in the passionate ardor of love, and "A Midsummer Night's Dream," while it possesses all the rosy glow, the physical thrill, and the melting tenderness of such pieces as Herrick's "Nuptiall Song," is likewise fraught with all the moral elevation and unaffected chastity of such pieces as Milton's "Comus." Human nature is shown in it as feeling no shame in its elemental and rightful passions, and as having no reason to feel ashamed of them. The atmosphere is free and bracing; the tone honest; the note true. Then, likewise, the fertility and felicity of the poet's invention -intertwining the loves of earthly sovereigns and of their subjects with the distensions of fairy monarchs, the pranks of mischievous elves, the protective care of attendant sprites, and the comic but kind-hearted and well-meant fealty of boorish peasants-arouse lively interest and keep it steadily alert. In no other of his works has Shakspere more brilliantly shown that complete dominance of theme which is manifested in the perfect preservation of proportion. The strands of action are braided with astonishing grace. The fourfold story is never allowed to lapse into dulness or obscurity. There is caprice, but no distortion. The supernatu ral machinery is never wrested toward the production of startling or mon strous effects, but it deftly impels cach mortal personage in the natural line of human development. The dream-spirit is maintained throughout, and perhaps it is for this reason-that the poet was living and thinking and writing in the free, untrammelled world of his own spacious and airy imagination, and not in any definite sphere of this earth-that "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is so radically superior to the other comedies written by him at about the same period, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," ""The Comedy of Errors," "Love's Labor's Lost," and "The Taming of the Shrew." His genius overflows in this piece, and the rich excess of it is seen in passages of the most exquisite poetry-such as the beautiful speeches of Titania and Oberon, in the second act-over against which is set that triumph of humor, that immortal Interlude of “ Pyramus and Thisbe," which is the father of all the burlesques in our language, and which, for freshness, pungency of apposite satire, and general applicability to the foible of self-love in human nature, and to ignorance and folly in human affairs, might have been written yesterday. The only faults in this play are a slight tinge of monotony in the third act, concerning the lovers in the wood, and an excess of rhymed passages in the text throughout. Shakspere had not yet cast aside that custom of rhyme which was in vogue when he came first upon the scene. But these defects are trifles.

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The beauties overwhelm them. It would take many pages to enumer ate and fitly to descant on the felicitics of literature that we owe to this comedy-gems such as the famous passage on "the course of true love;", the regal picture of Queen Elizabeth as “a fair vestal throned by the west;" the fine 'description of the stormy summer (that of 1594 in England, according to Stowe's Chronicle and Dr. Simon Forman's Diary); the vision of Titania asleep upon the bank of wild thyme, oxlips, and violets; the eloquent contrasts of lover, madman, and poet, each subdued and impelled by that "strong imagination" which" bodies forth the forms of things unknown;" and the wonderfully spirited lines on the hounds of Sparta, "with cars that swept away the morning dew." In character likewise, and in those salutary lessons which the truthful portraiture of character invariably teaches, this piece is exceptionally strong. Helena, noble and loving, yet a little perverted from true dignity by her sexual infatuation; Hermia, shrewish and violent, despite her feminine sweetness, and possibly because of her impetuous and clinging ardor; Demetrius and Lysander, cach selfish and fierce in his love, but manly, straightforward fellows, abounding more in youth and desire than in brains; Bottom, the quintessence of bland, unconscious egotism and self-conceit; and Theseus, the princely gentleman and typical ruler-these make up, assuredly, one of the most interesting and significant groups that can be found in fiction. The self-centred nature, the broad-minded view, the magnanimous spirit, the calm adequacy, the fine and high manner of Theseus, make this character alone the inspiration of the comedy and a most potent lesson upon the conduct of life. Through certain of his people-such as Ulysses in "Troilus and Cressida," the Duke in "Measure for Measure," and Prospero in "The Tempest "-the voice of Shakspere himself, speaking personally, is clearly heard; and it is heard also in Theseus. "The best in this kind are but shadows,” says this wise observer of life, when he comes to speak of the actors who copy it, "and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them." There is no higher strain of princelike courtesy and considerate grace, even in the perfect breeding of Hamlet, than is visible in the preference of Theseus for the play of the hardhanded men of Athens:

"And what poor duty cannot do

Noble respect takes it in might, not merit,

For never anything can be amiss

When simpleness and duty tender it."

With reference to the question of suitable method in the acting of “A Midsummer Night's Dream," it may be observed that too much stress can scarcely be laid upon the fact that this comedy was conceived and written absolutely in the spirit of a dream. It ought not, therefore, to be treated as a rational manifestation of orderly design. It possesses, indeed,

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