. As we read
_A Midsummer Night's Dream_ it is easy to imagine the glorious
succession of splendid scenes, but on the stage the characters become
flesh and blood with fixed limitations, and the illusion is easily lost
unless every agency is used to carry it out. Hence the need of lights,
of rich costumes, splendid backgrounds, music, rhythm.

The play opens in an apparently uninhabited wood. Suddenly all comes
to life--gay, full, romantic life. This is the scene to which we are
transported. "It is a grave question," continues the reviewer, "if it is
possible for the average audience to attain the full illusion which the
play demands, and with which, in reading, we have no difficulty. One
thing is certain, the audience was under no illusion. Some, those who do
not pretend to learning or taste, wondered what it was all about. Only
when the lion moved his tail, or the ass wriggled his ears were they at
all interested. Others were frankly amused from first to last, no less
at Hermia's and Helen's quarrel than at the antics of the clowns. Still
others, the cultivated minority, were simply indifferent."

The truth is that the performance was stiff and cold. Not for an instant
did it suggest the full and passionate life which is the theme and the
background of the play. Nor is this strange. _A Midsummer Night's Dream_
is plainly beyond the powers of our theatre. Individual scenes were well
done, but the whole was a cheerless piece of business.

The next day the same writer continues his analysis. He points out that
the secret of the play is the curious interweaving of the real world
with the supernatural. Forget this but for a moment, and the piece
becomes an impossible monstrosity without motivation or meaning.
Shakespeare preserves this unity in duality. The two worlds seem to meet
and fuse, each giving something of itself to the other. But this unity
was absent from the performance. The actors did not even know their
lines, and thus the spell was broken. The verse must flow from the lips
in a limpid stream, especially in a fairy play; the words must never
seem a burden. But even this elementary rule was ignored in our
performance. And the ballet of the fairies was so bad that it might
better have been omitted. Puck should not have been given by a woman,
but by a boy as he was in Shakespeare's day. Only the clown scenes
were unqualifiedly good, "as we might expect," concludes the reviewer
sarcastically.

The article clos