A Midsummer Night's Dream Compare And Contrast

The Loss of Magic Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, there are multiple analyses that one can follow in order to reach a conclusion about the overall meaning of the play. These conclusions are reached through analyzing the play’s setting, characterization, and tone. However, when one watches the production A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Michael Hoffman, a completely different approach is taken on these aspects, leading to a vastly different analysis of the work. Though there are many similarities between the original written play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and the on-screen production of the aforementioned play which was directed by Michael Hoffman, there are differences in setting and

His choice of setting leads his readers to a naturally more magical, mythical land (as Greece was the location of the belief in mythical happenings and beings, such as in the religion of the land’s people). This made the occurrences of fairies, potions, anecdotes, etc. much more inherent. However, in the movie, Hoffman set the production in twentieth century Italy. The audience of the movie is much more baffled by the appearance of mythological creatures due to the setting. It is not innately magical, as in Shakespeare’s written play. The modern setting naturally incorporates the use of modern inventions, modern clothing, and modern behavior. These factors change the audience’s perspective and analyzation from the original play to the movie. For example, the use of bicycles made transportation easier and the running away seem less impossible. The modern clothing took away from the inherent magic, much like changing the setting originally affected this. The behavior of the characters that changed due to this setting change, however, disturbed the original emotions and analyzations one might make from reading the work as intended, through William Shakespeare’s original

In the original written play, there was no mention of a wife for Nick Bottom; the on-screen rendition, however, portrayed a wife who, though having no lines, was intolerant of her husband’s idiocy. To build on this, the characters that were part of Peter Quince and his cast were much more tolerable and less aware of Bottom’s idiocy in the play than in the movie. Hoffman’s portrayal depicted Bottom as a laughingstock among laughingstocks, going so far as to add a scene in which wine is poured over Bottom’s head to reveal the intolerance of his idiocy. Regarding the characters in the main portion of the play, Helena was much less irritating, whiny, and desperate in the original work than in Hoffman’s movie. The “Hollywood” aspect of the movie made Helena seem to be a rather unlikeable character (this also was affected by the setting, as mentioned above), whereas in the play she was seen to be mostly an unfortunate soul who whined only sometimes. These differences in character, though seemingly small, lead the audience to draw two very different conclusions about the characters’ situations and why they are placed in them. The analyzation of the characters changes from Shakespeare’s written play to Hoffman’s rendering of A Midsummer Night’s