Russell T Davies’s Visualization of the Invisible War in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Abstract

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is generally believed to be written originally for an aristocratic wedding, must be one of Shakespeare’s most amusing and festive comedies. But, in fact, the background of Dream, which starts with Theseus’s confession that he conquered the Amazons and won their queen by his sword, is full of violence, brutality, climate crisis, natural disaster, and social problems of tyranny and an oppressed lower class. Russell T Davies’s 2016 television film of Dream emphasizes vividly the dark aspect of the original play, with the tyrannical court of Athens as its setting. In this film, Theseus is a fascist dictator and his court is filled with pseudo-Nazi flags and soldiers. Hippolyta, a prisoner of war, wears a straitjacket and Hannibal Lecter facemask, which are not taken off even on their wedding day. Oberon and Titania’s fairies appear as fierce soldiers rather than romantic ones, and the mechanicals’s fear about hanging is true and serious. Although all the conflicts are solved by Oberon and Titania’s magic at the last moment, the whole film is surrounded by warlike environments. This paper illuminates fully the dark aspects of Dream and to explain how effectively the darkness of the play works to reflect our contemporary world by analyzing Davies’Dream in detail.