The unreality in A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that encompasses three worlds: the romantic world of aristocratic lovers, the working world of rough mechanics and the fairy world of Titania and Oberon. And while all three worlds tangle and intertwine over the course of the show, it is the fairy world that has the greatest impact, as both the lovers and the mechanics are changed by their contact with the "sons of Pan." For those whose work involves bringing these worlds to life in the theater - directors, set designers, actors - the first questions that need to be answered are: what do fairies look like, and how is their world different from ours? As our world has become increasingly scientific, technological, and separated from nature, artists' answers to these two questions have changed considerably. street lamps; as the "whispers of the leaves, the sighs of the winds, and the low, sad wail of the waves" were gradually replaced by the noise of traffic and small-arms fire, the gentle voices of the fairies were drowned out by the cacophony of the metropolis. In this brave new world of concrete and glass, Shakespeare's "sons of Pan" look more like the "sons of Man" than ever. One hundred and fifty years ago, however, it was very different: the world of fairies were an idealized version of our own, full of otherworldly splendor and wonder. Directors and designers relished the opportunity to create scenes of unparalleled beauty and magnificence. In a sumptuous production created by Madame Vestris a......medium of paper......natural. To emphasize this, Longworth sets the play in the Victorian era with its rigid social codes, which served to insulate the human soul from any emotion or thought that suggested a lack of reason and control; and with his confidence that Man could dominate nature and convert it to human purposes. Fairies, of course, are proof that humans are deeply deluded in both respects. And although at the end of the play the lovers still cannot see the fairies, they still begin to sense their presence a little more. In our noisy, frenetic world, full of sound and fury that too often seems to mean nothing, Longworth's tale of the fairies seems to encourage us to listen once more, to seek the mysteries of "another kind of life similar to but distinct from [ our] own,” and to hear once again the voices of the sons of Pan as they whisper the secrets of their lives. world.