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Name: Raunak Mitra

Roll no: 2133108

Professor: Dhanesh M, Surya Kiran

Subject: British Literature (132)

Date: 31st August 31, 2021

Studying the Queer Aspects in the Bridge Theatre’s Adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s

Dream

Queer adaptations of Shakespearean plays are quite common in today’s time and

fittingly so, for a world which is slowly recognizing and accepting queerness as a part of the

existing culture hitherto suppressed; such adaptations further add to the establishment of such

representations. The question that however remains is whether locating the presence of queer

prospects in texts written almost four centuries ago might be deemed forced or out of place.

England in the 16th century was quite rigid in terms of social conventions and Shakespeare

was largely a patron of the English court and this had largely influenced his settings, his

characters and his plots. Shakespeare nevertheless has presented the groundwork for

exploration, opening up prospects for modern directors to locate the existence of the ‘other’

and without the erstwhile imposed limitations of the court, these adaptations have also got the

freedom to make a statement– that even if they were written some centuries ago, the plays,

through their modern adaptations, do open the possibilities of queer representation, thus

disrupting their heteronormative roots. to further legitimize the creative liberty undertaken by

Shakespeare’s modern adaptations, it is imperative to explore how Shakespeare had dealt

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with the idea of the queer which is a difficult task owing to the lack of information available

on the Bard’s life.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream for instance, Athens stands for a heteronormative and

patriarchal society while the forest creates a space where queer and transgressive passions are

allowed to propagate. Instances of homoerotic attractions underlie Helena’s perception of

Hermia when the former declares – “O, were favor so / Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere

I go / My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye / My tongue should catch your

tongue’s sweet melody. However, it is Helena’s desire for a symbolic bestiality and

sadomasochism that further heightens the queerness of the character in the following lines -

“I am your spaniel, and Demetrius / The more you beat me, I’ll fawn on you / Use me but as

your spaniel, spurn me, strike me / Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave / Unworthy as I

am to follow you./ What worser place can I beg in your love / (And yet a place of high

respect with me) / Than to be used as you use your dog?” According to Melissa E. Sanchez,

what has been seldom unexplored is “the way in which women’s desires for sodomy, group

sex, bestiality, and sadomasochism can equally challenge gender hierarchies and sexual

norms” (496). Helena’s desire, which reveals itself as explicitly masochistic in these lines,

upholds a quite anti-feminist tradition of a woman being inferior to a man. But in these lines,

it is Helena who is the agent in the passage – the one who voices the fantasy and, therefore, in

control it. This intrinsically poses a challenge to the patriarchal norms of the society and

further challenges the idea of what constitutes as “good” or “bad” sex for someone. This

relationship, therefore, goes against the heteronormative ideas of sexuality and can be

labelled as ‘queer’.

The 2019 adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was staged at the Bridge

theatre succeeds in attempting what the play itself apprehends. Hytner and MacGibbon, the

directors of this adaptation, exploit the liminal setting of the forest to materialize what could
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have been a big possibility in the original play, as Dalmaijer suggests that “though the male

lovers in the play both fall in love with the female Helena when they wake up after having the

juice to explore the queer possibilities that put on their eyelids, they could have woken up and

seen a person of their own gender when first opening their eyes and fallen in love with them”

(8). In the 2019 adaptation, Puck and Titania manipulate the lovers by placing the flower over

Lysander and Demetrius for a moment when the two men fall for each other and share an

intimate moment on-stage (1:23:00), and do the same with Hermia and Helena (1:24:57),

consolidating the queer possibilities of the play. In the final act of the play, there is a

noticeable change taking over the four main characters for Hermia and Helena share a

passionate kiss, and Demetrius and Lysander share an unspoken moment of acknowledgment

ending with the latter playfully rubbing the former’s hair saying, “Yeah, I’ll see you”

(2:26:59). This entire scene, that lasts for almost a minute, implies that their love has

transcended the liminal space of the forest. The adaptation, therefore, presents a production

that is in tandem with the queer aspects that Shakespeare had established, but left unexplored.

Shakespearean plays do establish that the idea of sexuality and sexual identity as a broad

spectrum which was still present, and still admonished, during Elizabethan England, and

while Shakespeare might not have been able to make certain choices, it is rather important

that modern readers do make those choices, for in a world that is sill grappling with the issues

of queer representation in mainstream media, queering Shakespeare seems only a logical step

towards inclusivity and help the spectators understand how far the world has progressed, if it

has at all.
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Works Cited

Dalmaijer, Eva. “A queer reading of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

BA Thesis Literary Studies, Utrecht University, 2019,

www.dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/382366/thesis%20a%20midsummer

%20 night's%20dream%20eva%20dalmaijer%205880580.pdf?sequence=2

Hytner, Nicholas and Ross MacGibbon, directors. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By William

Shakespeare. Bridge Theatre, A London Theatre Company Production, 2019,

ww3.ytsmx.com/.

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by R.A. Foakes. Cambridge

University Press, 2003.

Sanchez, Melissa E. ““Use Me But As Your Spaniel”: Feminism, Queer Theory, and Early

Modern Sexualities.” PMLA, vol. 127, no. 3, 2012, pp. 493-511. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/41616842.