Shakespeare Club meets to discuss ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream‘

Scan from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Illustrated by Authur Rackham, 1908. Public domain image.

submitted by Joan Gaughan, Manchester’s Shakespeare Club

The Shakespeare Club’s first meeting of the year 2023–24 was lunch at the Bridgewater Bank on September 26. While enjoying the excellent food and service of the Bank and catching up on the summer’s news, Chris Kanta distributed the colorful booklets for the year that she had compiled. The Thought for the Day that she had chosen was, appropriately, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end” by the Roman poet Seneca. Sallie Anderson also volunteered to accept the office of Vice President of the Club, which has been vacant for over a year.

The two meetings in October were given over to watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream on a DVD provided by Rosemary Whelan. The superb cast included Judi Dench as Titiana, Ian Richardson as Oberon, Helen Mirren as Hermia, and Ian Holm as the mischievous sprite, Puck. Sue Furda also shared a booklet of the play in verse written for children. Several of their reactions were also included. One child, using rather original spelling, had summed up the plot like this: “Puck had made a dredful BOO-BOO. He put the love juice into Lysander’s eyes. Helen came blubering by with a pudel of tears behind her. Lysander saw Helena and fell in love. Hermis is left with a cracked up heart! That makes confewshun!” And another child thought that, with all the “confewshun” Puck had caused, the play should have been called “A Midsummer Nightmare!”

A delightful beginning to the new season, indeed.

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.