Comparing Jan Kotts Opinion Of The Play A Midsummer Nights Dream

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has long been a touchstone for discussions of romantic comedy, pastoral idylls, and the transformative power of love and imagination. However, the critical landscape surrounding the play was significantly altered by Jan Kott's provocative reinterpretation in his seminal work, Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Kott, writing in the mid-20th century, stripped away much of the play’s perceived lightness, presenting it instead as a deeply unsettling exploration of chaos, illusion, and the darker impulses lurking beneath the surface of social order. Comparing Kott’s vision with more traditional readings reveals a fundamental divergence in how the play’s core elements—its characters, its setting, and its overarching themes—are understood.

Traditional interpretations often emphasize the play’s bipartite structure: the Athenian court and the enchanted forest. The court, governed by Duke Theseus and Hippolyta, represents order, law, and rational society. The forest, conversely, is a space of magic, misrule, and uninhibited desire, where fairies and lovers alike experience transformations and resolutions. In this view, the forest serves as a temporary escape, a necessary disruption that ultimately reaffirms the values of the Athenian world. The lovers’ trials—Hermia’s defiance of her father, Lysander’s elopement, Helena’s pursuit, and Demetrius’s fickle affections—are seen as charmingly chaotic adventures that conclude with the restoration of social harmony and the celebration of true love. The mechanicals’ play-within-a-play, Pyramus and Thisbe, is typically viewed as a source of comic relief, a meta-theatrical commentary on the nature of performance and illusion that ultimately reinforces the audience’s understanding of reality.

Kott, however, radically reconfigures this dynamic. For him, the forest is not a benign space of magical escapism but a primal, often terrifying, arena where the established order is not merely suspended but fundamentally undermined. He famously links the play to the medieval concept of the 'world turned upside down,' a carnivalesque inversion where social hierarchies are temporarily abolished, but not without a sense of underlying menace. Kott’s reading is heavily influenced by his engagement with the 'Great Chain of Being,' a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by God. While Shakespeare’s play seems to play with this chain, allowing for temporary disruptions, Kott sees a more profound, almost existential, breakdown. The fairies, in his view, are not benevolent sprites but capricious, even cruel, forces. Oberon and Titania’s quarrel, the source of the forest’s disarray, is not a minor spat but a cosmic disruption reflecting a deeper, inherent disorder in the universe.

This darker lens profoundly affects how Kott interprets the characters. The lovers, far from being innocents caught in a romantic entanglement, become pawns in a cruel game, their affections manipulated by forces beyond their control. Their transformations are not magical but indicative of a deeper, psychological instability. Puck, often seen as a mischievous but ultimately harmless jester, is re-imagined as a more sinister agent of chaos, a figure who delights in the confusion and suffering he causes. Even the mechanicals, whose amateur theatricals are usually a source of gentle amusement, take on a different quality. Kott suggests their performance, particularly Pyramus and Thisbe, can be seen as a grotesque parody, a reflection of the absurdity and brutality that lie beneath the veneer of civilization. The play’s conclusion, with its multiple weddings and the Duke’s pronouncements, does not signal a return to normalcy for Kott, but rather a fragile, perhaps temporary, reassertion of order over an ever-present chaos.

Kott’s interpretation is deeply rooted in his historical and philosophical context. Writing in post-war Europe, a period marked by widespread disillusionment and the horrors of totalitarianism, Kott saw in Shakespeare a reflection of contemporary anxieties. He argued that Shakespeare’s plays, particularly the comedies and romances, often contain a hidden darkness, a recognition of the irrational and violent forces that can erupt even in seemingly stable societies. His famous essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not merely a literary analysis but a philosophical statement about the human condition, suggesting that the 'dream' is not an escape from reality, but a confrontation with its more disturbing aspects. He posits that the apparent order of the Athenian court is itself a fragile construct, easily disrupted by the primal energies of the forest.

In contrast, traditional readings often prioritize the play’s formal elements and its perceived genre conventions. They focus on the symmetrical plot structures, the lyrical poetry, the exploration of themes like love’s irrationality, the power of imagination, and the contrast between appearance and reality, all within the framework of a celebratory comedy. These interpretations tend to see the forest’s chaos as a temporary, necessary phase that allows for personal growth and the eventual triumph of love and reason. The fairies are often depicted as ethereal beings, and Puck as a playful sprite. The mechanicals’ play is almost universally understood as a charmingly inept but good-hearted performance, highlighting the difference between professional and amateur art, and providing a satisfyingly 'real' conclusion to the magical proceedings.

While Kott’s interpretation offers a powerful and enduringly influential lens through which to view the play, it is not without its limitations. By emphasizing the darkness and chaos, Kott risks overlooking the genuine moments of joy, beauty, and imaginative wonder that are also central to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play’s exquisite poetry, its celebration of nature, and the undeniable charm of its romantic entanglements are arguably downplayed in his reading. Furthermore, some critics argue that Kott imposes his own 20th-century anxieties onto the text, reading Shakespeare through a lens of existential dread that may not be fully supported by the play’s own internal logic or its Elizabethan context. The play’s enduring popularity as a comedy, often staged with a light touch, suggests that audiences and performers have always found elements of pure delight and enchantment within it.

Conversely, traditional interpretations, while perhaps more palatable and aligned with the play’s genre, can sometimes flatten its complexities. By focusing solely on the romantic and comedic aspects, they may fail to acknowledge the unsettling undertones, the moments of cruelty, and the profound questions about identity and perception that Shakespeare raises. The play’s exploration of power dynamics, the arbitrary nature of love, and the potential for illusion to both deceive and enlighten can be more fully appreciated when viewed through a critical lens that, like Kott’s, acknowledges the darker currents at play. Ultimately, the richness of A Midsummer Night’s Dream lies in its capacity to sustain multiple, even contradictory, interpretations. Kott’s contribution is invaluable not because it offers the definitive reading, but because it forces us to confront the play’s ambiguities and its potential for unsettling commentary, challenging us to look beyond the pastoral surface and consider the deeper, more complex realities it may reflect.