A Mid Summers Night Dream Essay, Research Paper
A Mid Summers Night Dream
One play can be told in so many different ways but yet have the same story behind it. A major example of this is the six interpretations of William Shakespeare’s play A Mid Summers Night Dream. In class we saw these six versions, there were many differences in these plays. The setting, accuracy, costuming, acting , direction, and interpretations. The versions we saw were; a cartoon of the play, a 1940s, 1960s, and a 1999 movie versions of the plat and last we a 1999 stage version of the the play. Through out viewing these plays you were able to learn the main story and characters. You were also able to pick out little things that were different in each version.
The cartoon version of Mid Summers Night Dream was the first we saw. It made the play very simple to understand. It was easy to see that it was changed for younger children to understand the more complex play. In the play the story was to take place in Athens, before Christ. In the cartoon, the setting wasn’t very accurate, you really couldn’t tell whether the story was taking place in the right time frame or place. It was very short and really never got into the whole play; it seemed like the cartoon was made of younger children, or people that are just getting into to Shakespeare’s plays. It wasn’t as accurate as it could have been. It is not the version you would want to see, if you wanted to understand the play. The main characters weren’t portrayed as well as they could have been.
1940s Movie Version
The 1940s movie version of A Mid Summers Night Dream was made very well, and told the story very accurately The characters were portrayed very accurate and the story was clear and precise. Even though the movie was made in the 1940s and in black and white the movie had good special effects, and the acting was done well. The actors were ensembled so great that even though they didn’t have an English accent and probably weren’t used to having such difficult dialog they all pulled it off well. If there is one thing that I didn’t like in this version from the others was the way Puck was portrayed. I think Mickey Rooney was the wrong actor to play him, Puck was to out of control and to hyper.
1960s Movie Version
The 1960 movie version was an interesting adaptation of Shakespeare’s great work. Even if you didn’t know they year this movie was made you could easily figure it out. This movie was straight out of the sixties, the setting was very Woodstock like. It seemed very mystical and not at all a part of reality, which was good, but it was way to out there. I though the costuming was out of the ordinary, I can see long flowing dresses, but body paint is were you have to draw the line. The accuracy was on point kind of, it didn’t seem like the movie was taking place before Christ but more like the day, again before Woodstock.