A Midsummer night’s dream: the inscription of the process of stage adaptation within Shakespeare’s text

Abstract

In the artisans’ plot, one of the four intertwined narratives of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Shakespeare thematizes the procedures of textual appropriation and the collaborative processes used for the creation of a spectacle. The bard does not only insert the metatheatrical device of the play within the play, but inscribes within his text the mechanisms of adaptation from page to stage, including conception, production and reception. Besides illuminating issues, such as the representation of reality and the breaking of dramatic illusion, Shakespeare’s text can also be read as a ludic and metacritical reflection on his own dramaturgy which establishes a dialogue with the appropriation/adaptation theories discussed by contemporary critics.