A group of English migrant workers try to impress Athenian aristocracy by putting on a play.  It turns out to be a comic but tragic and tragic but comic event.

Patrick Spottoswoode’s talk will explore the different sound worlds that Shakespeare presents in „A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.  He will consider how the play both celebrates and mocks English as a language and how amazed Shakespeare would have been if he knew that one day his play would be performed in Krakow and in Polish.

Patrick Spottiswoode is Founder, Globe Education and Senior Research Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe. In 2019 he curated a „Shakespeare and Poland Festival” in London for which he commissioned the first English translation of Wyspianski’s „Hamlet, Study”. The Festival included performances of Wyspianski’s „Death of Ophelia”, Kochanowski’s „Laments” and „The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys” as well as a production of „King Lear” presented by the Song of the Goat Company.  Patrick has twice been on the jury of the ItSelf Festival at the Alexander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw.