Oberonâs assertion that Theseus (led on by Titania) is a serial rapist?
Boyd: Josette Simon has great beauty and dignity and was dressed elegantly as Hippolyta, but chastely. She and Oberon stood far apart as their forthcoming wedding was announced to choreographed applause. Disharmony lay beneath the optimistic rhetoric in the summer snow.
Doran: We felt Theseus was actually a very ordinary man who had this fantasy. Oberon and Titania see them in mythological terms as fantasies that they want to play out. Oberonâs description seems to have no relationship to Theseus at all. Theseus himself has a very strange attitude to any kind of imaginative capacity, finding it all a bit suspicious. It seemed to us that that was Oberon and Titania creating a sort of mythological context for the play. I think you could see in my production that there is a relationship to that myth, but that it was another layer of fantasy. I donât think it helps to see Theseus as a serial rapist.
Supple: Shakespeare is enigmatic, or very open, about both Hippolyta and Theseus. Who knows how much this was deliberate or the mark of unfinished work? But the most interesting approach is to assume that it was deliberate and, rather than fixing the nature of Hippolytaâs captivity or Theseusâ character, leave it as open as possible. We know that they have fought and that Theseus has won and we know that they get married. We donât know how Hippolyta feels about this. Her first words are ambiguous and could be convincingly played as both willing compliance and biting resentment. When decisions have to made, we tried to make just enough to bring a story to life and to create the sense of journey and change that all good stories need. In our production, Hippolyta has lost a war,agreed to marry, but has no love for Theseus. An Amazonian queen, she has no voice in Athensâ court. Her journey is to come to terms with the situation she is in: his journey is to win her loveânot through conquest or through spectacle. This occurs in 4.1 when his flexibility leads him to champion the young lovers over Egeus and the law. What has occurred to bring about this change? We know nothing about Theseus and Hippolyta after 1.1. The process of change is surely to be found in the forest. Titania and Oberon are the continuation of the battle between Hippolyta and Theseus and their turbulent, ferocious fight over marital power, sexual ownership, a child, and the world that they are responsible for is the dream-catharsis that exorcises and resolves the buried issues and frustrations between the two mortal monarchs. We have to take everything that one character says about another seriously, while remembering that it is only the perspective of one character. We would not be surprised if Theseus was a rapistâsurely this is common to many powerful figures of myth? But we would not be surprised if Oberon is exaggerating in his jealousy and anger. What we can assume is that Theseus has yet to learn love in its tender, thoughtful, selfless sense. He must make the journey from absolute monarch-soldier who wins his wife on the battlefield to a man who knows love. He is given this by Oberon and Titania, who sit beautifully poised between two modern notions, being both alter egos and spirit-gods of love.
Whatâs going on with all that business in which Oberon and Titania fight over the Indian boy? Some productions actually include the boy in the castâ â¦
Boyd: In my Crucible production the boy was played by Mumta Gupta, the gorgeous son of Nirmal Gupta, who ran by far the best curry house in Sheffield and loved the snooker. We had no onstage boy in Stratford, but his unconscious root might be the Child Christ whose mother the Virgin Mary has been so recently banished from English spirituality. Titaniaâs account of disharmony has strong suggestions of an England out of joint following the Reformation.
Doran: [
See Doranâs answer
Boyd: Josette Simon has great beauty and dignity and was dressed elegantly as Hippolyta, but chastely. She and Oberon stood far apart as their forthcoming wedding was announced to choreographed applause. Disharmony lay beneath the optimistic rhetoric in the summer snow.
Doran: We felt Theseus was actually a very ordinary man who had this fantasy. Oberon and Titania see them in mythological terms as fantasies that they want to play out. Oberonâs description seems to have no relationship to Theseus at all. Theseus himself has a very strange attitude to any kind of imaginative capacity, finding it all a bit suspicious. It seemed to us that that was Oberon and Titania creating a sort of mythological context for the play. I think you could see in my production that there is a relationship to that myth, but that it was another layer of fantasy. I donât think it helps to see Theseus as a serial rapist.
Supple: Shakespeare is enigmatic, or very open, about both Hippolyta and Theseus. Who knows how much this was deliberate or the mark of unfinished work? But the most interesting approach is to assume that it was deliberate and, rather than fixing the nature of Hippolytaâs captivity or Theseusâ character, leave it as open as possible. We know that they have fought and that Theseus has won and we know that they get married. We donât know how Hippolyta feels about this. Her first words are ambiguous and could be convincingly played as both willing compliance and biting resentment. When decisions have to made, we tried to make just enough to bring a story to life and to create the sense of journey and change that all good stories need. In our production, Hippolyta has lost a war,agreed to marry, but has no love for Theseus. An Amazonian queen, she has no voice in Athensâ court. Her journey is to come to terms with the situation she is in: his journey is to win her loveânot through conquest or through spectacle. This occurs in 4.1 when his flexibility leads him to champion the young lovers over Egeus and the law. What has occurred to bring about this change? We know nothing about Theseus and Hippolyta after 1.1. The process of change is surely to be found in the forest. Titania and Oberon are the continuation of the battle between Hippolyta and Theseus and their turbulent, ferocious fight over marital power, sexual ownership, a child, and the world that they are responsible for is the dream-catharsis that exorcises and resolves the buried issues and frustrations between the two mortal monarchs. We have to take everything that one character says about another seriously, while remembering that it is only the perspective of one character. We would not be surprised if Theseus was a rapistâsurely this is common to many powerful figures of myth? But we would not be surprised if Oberon is exaggerating in his jealousy and anger. What we can assume is that Theseus has yet to learn love in its tender, thoughtful, selfless sense. He must make the journey from absolute monarch-soldier who wins his wife on the battlefield to a man who knows love. He is given this by Oberon and Titania, who sit beautifully poised between two modern notions, being both alter egos and spirit-gods of love.
Whatâs going on with all that business in which Oberon and Titania fight over the Indian boy? Some productions actually include the boy in the castâ â¦
Boyd: In my Crucible production the boy was played by Mumta Gupta, the gorgeous son of Nirmal Gupta, who ran by far the best curry house in Sheffield and loved the snooker. We had no onstage boy in Stratford, but his unconscious root might be the Child Christ whose mother the Virgin Mary has been so recently banished from English spirituality. Titaniaâs account of disharmony has strong suggestions of an England out of joint following the Reformation.
Doran: [
See Doranâs answer
Similar Books
