1.1 A Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare: The Animated Tales

Shakespeare: The Animated Tales (also known as The Animated Shakespeare) is a series of twelve half-hour animated television episodes, broadcast on BBC 2 between 1992 and 1994, with each episode based on a play by William Shakespeare.

Directed, designed and animated by Robert Saakiants
Originally aired: 9 November 1992
Animation type: Cel animation
Menna Trussler as Narrator
Daniel Massey as Oberon
Suzanne Bertish as Titania
Anthony Jackson as Puck
Abigail McKern as Hermia
Kathryn Pogson as Helena
Charles Millham as Demetrius
Kim Wall as Lysander
Bernard Hill as Bottom
Peter Postlethwaite as Quince
Anna Linstrum as Fairy
Lorraine Cole as Fairy

The course of true love never did run smooth

and never did it stamble worse

than on one summer's day,

when all Athens was bright with expectancy

for the wedding of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta.

But love was not as simple for others in the town.

Hermia loved Lysander,

and Lysander loved Hermia.

And what could have been better than that!

At the same time, Helena loved Demetrius...

but Demetrius did not love Helena.

Instead he loved Hermia.

What could have been worse than that!

Only Hermia's father,

although there was nothing to choose between the two young men,

Hermia's father had chosen;

and he had chosen Demetrius.

So quick bright things come to confusion!

And such was the law of Athens that,

if Hermia disobeyed her father

she would be shut up in a nunnery for the rest of her life.

The lovers were in despair.

But despair leads to desperation;

and desperation to desperate measures...

The very next night, first Hermia then Lysander crept from the town.

At midnight they were to meet in a wood not far from Athens,

and from there to fly away together to some distant place

where the cruel law could not touch them.

And all might have turned out well

had not Hermia confided in Helena who was her best friend.

For Helena, hoping for no more than a grateful smile, told Demetrius.

Outraged, Demetrius rushed after the runaways,

meaning to win Hermia's heart

by plunging his sword in Lysander's.

And after him... stumbled Helena,

still hoping for a kindness

to be flung over his shoulder,

like a bone to a starving dog.

And so the four lovers hastened to the wood.

But they were not the only ones

to leave the town that night.

For the secrecy of the wood

Peter Quince, the carpenter,and scholar of the company;

Nick Bottom, the weaver, a great man

and tower of strength in any enterprise

which not even he would deny.

Flute the bellow's mender,Snug the joiner,

Snout the tinker and Starveling the tailor.

Is all our company here?

Six good men of Athens.

They were met in secret

to rehearse a play for the wedding of the Duke.

The play they'd chosen was, most fittingly, about love.

It was the most lamentable tragedy

and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.

Nick Bottom of course, was to play Pyramus;

although he could have taken any,

or all the other parts with equal success.

Let me play Thisbe, too.

No, no, you must play Pyramus.

Let me play the lion, too. I will roar,

that I will make the Duke say,

"Let him roar again!"

It was a strange wood, huge, mysterious

and haunted by more than spinning spiders, beetles,

hedgehogs and softly gliding, spotted snakes.