A midsummer night's dream and "Romeo and Juliet"

1955 ◽  
Vol CC (jan) ◽  
pp. 13-14
Author(s):  
Ernest Schanzer
Keyword(s):  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream

“Truly, and very notably discharg’d”: The Metamorphosis of Pyramus and Thisbe and the Place of Appropriation on the Early Modern Stage

2019 ◽  
pp. 203-220
Author(s):  
Louise Geddes
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Asymmetry

In the mid 1590s, Shakespeare began a trend when he appropriated Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in two different genres, the tragedy Romeo and Juliet and the comic performance by the rude mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream The latter was the more subversive act, transforming the source material into a satire on the amateurs’ unskillful remix of their text, by focusing on the asymmetry between the performers’ transformative ambition and their skills. This janus-faced use of Ovid marks a divergence of appropriative treatment that saw the tragic adaptations struggle to maintain popularity against the widespread enjoyment of Shakespeare’s “tragical mirth,” and implicates Shakespeare in debates about the place of fidelity in appropriation. Pyramus and Thisbe’s Ovidian devolution aligns Shakespeare’s appropriative work with current theories about rhizomatic adaptation, and recognizes the collaborative and transformative nature of remediation.

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