t he lays his head on the pillow, the
fairies and the fairy queen. To him the whole circle of childhood
fantasy reveals itself; nothing is changed, nothing but this absurd
ass's head which he wears, and this curious longing for dry, sweet hay.

"This is the dream and the action of the play. Superficially, all this
magic is set in motion by the fairies; Theseus and his train, with whom
come hunting horn and hunting talk and processional--are, in reality,
the incarnation of the festival. And the comedy at the close is added by
way of counterpiece to the light, delicate fancies of the dream. It is
the thoughts we have thought, the painfully-wrought products of the
waking mind, given in a sparkle of mocking laughter against the
background of nightly visions. See the play over and over again. Do
not study it with Bottom's ass's head, and do not be so blase that you
reject the performance because it does not command the latest electrical
effects."

Bjornson then proceeds to discuss the staging. He admits by implication
that the machinery and the properties are not so elaborate as they
sometimes are in England, but points out that the equipment of
Christiania Theater is fully up to that which, until a short time
before, was considered entirely adequate in the great cities of Europe.
And is machinery so important? The cutting of the play used at this
performance was originally made by Tieck for the court theater at
Potsdam. From Germany it was brought to Stockholm, and later to
Christiania. "The spirit of Tieck pervades this adaptation. It is easy
and natural. The spoken word has abundant opportunity to make itself
felt, and is neither overwhelmed by theater tricks nor set aside by
machinery. Tieck, who understood stage machinery perfectly, gave it free
play where, as in modern operas, machinery is everything. The same is
true of Mendelssohn. His music yields reverently to the spoken word. It
merely accompanies the play like a new fairy who strews a strain or two
across the stage before his companions enter, and lends them wings by
which they may again disappear. Only when the words and the characters
who utter them have gone, does the music brood over the forest like a
mist of reminiscence, in which our imagination may once more synthesize
the picture of what has gone before."

Tieck's adaptation is still the standard one. Englishmen often stage
Shakespeare's romantic plays more elaborately. They even show us a ship
at sea