A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Page A

to the question about the fairies
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    Supple: Again, this is an enigmatic, or open, aspect of the play and one can either explain it clearly or leave it open. We chose the latter while never forgetting that it is at the heart of what they are arguing about and so must be essential to their very beings. We are told by Puck that Oberon wants the boy to be a special member of his followers—a scout or ranger. We can imagine that a little mortal child would be as special to a spirit as a spirit-child would be to a mortal. But it is hard to believe that this is all such a terrible fight is about. In the argument between them in 2.1 we can surmise that Oberon is furious that his request is being denied, and perhaps the boy has become a symbol of the love and sexual partnership that she is denying him. “Am not I thy lord?!” he thunders when she tries to leave his company again. Is the boy the battleground for marital power within which sexual availability and fidelity is the real issue? This is possible, but does not feel quite deep or rich enough to enter the bloodstream of such a play of wonderful humanity. It is striking what emerges in Titania’s speech when she is pushed. The boy is a child of a woman who loved her and with whom she shared tenderness, humor, and friendship. The woman died, and for her sake Titania has made the boy her own. Is the potent issue here the fact that, being immortals, Titania and Oberon cannot have children? In a play in which all the characters yearn to be other than they are, is it Titania and Oberon’s yearning to have a child, to be a family? This is not so fanciful: at the end of the play they come to the marriage beds to bless the sexual union of the three couples and the children that they will have. If the ending requires some profound union between all the characters of the play, this might indeed make a deep connection between the immortal and mortal worlds. One of the toughest challenges presented by the boy in the play is simply to make it clear—a common phrase one hears from audiences at productions of the
Dream
is: “What exactly are Oberon and Titania fighting about?” It can be useful and interesting to have the boy in the show, as we do, to help establish the character firmly in the story. However, even this cannot make the argument easily clear toall watching. Perhaps, like all marriages, the exact issue in a falling-out can never be clear to outsiders. Or perhaps the most important clue is in the mystery itself. A great concern of the play is the mystery of the immortal or spirit world. We yearn to touch it. In love and art (theater) we can glimpse it, but it will remain a mystery. A dream.
    Though it requires some very quick costume changes, many productions double Theseus with Oberon and Hippolyta with Titania. Did yours? Why? Why not? Gains and losses, discoveries?
    Boyd: We were bound to double them as our premise was that the woods were a transforming agent on Athenian life, permitting the release of repressed or taboo ideas and urges. The biggest single gain was the moving and dangerous moment when Bottom approached Hippolyta in the burgomasque dance. Both of them half understood what they had each “dreamed” the night before. The humanizing of Nick Jones as Theseus through Oberon was also powerful.
    Doran: We didn’t. The reason was that it has actually become the norm to double them. It’s fine for Oberon and Titania, but the worry I had was that Hippolyta and Theseus are rather diminished. You stop regarding them in their own right, and I wanted to look at them in their own capacities and at their own agendas, to try to understand who they are. There’s a physical moment which is very difficult, because you have to have an extraordinarily quick change when they go off and come straight back on again, which seems to indicate to me that it was not the original purpose to double them. Rather than effect a