The Use Of Light In Shakespeare's Midsummer Night

Even though the lighting could not be manipulated in Shakespeare’s time, he understood the importance of it and worked with what he had. Shakespeare didn’t always do what was expected, and this was shown in his use of his limited lighting. Nowadays, we can portray nighttime and the audience can still observe the action on stage. In Shakespeare’s time manipulation of light was an impossible task, so instead he welcomed the daylight to go against the nighttime scenes, as in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Much of this play is at night, but the bright daylight gives the play enhanced conflict. The lovers’ treacherous relationships give the play conflict, but the audience also could possibly feel the frustration of the light outside and the supposed

Introduce on the English stage, the purpose of footlights is to “soften heavy shadows” and to create a “general illumination” of the actor and the stage (“footlights”, 1). Oil lamps, that contained a floating wick, were placed at the front of the stage and level with the floor. These lamps were placed in a tin box so the reflection of the light went up on stage. By using this box the audience could not see the possibly distracting open flame. (“footlights”,

This posed a problem for the theatre industry. Since there was a live flame, there was a job designated to monitoring the flame during the production. Once the flame burned the wick down so low that is became a hazard, this person would have to walk in front of the audience and put it out. (Fuchs, 37) Even though this was a safety, it ruined the mood of the play. This could happen at anytime during a play since a live flame does not wait for the most important scene of a play to finish before having someone obstruct the audience’s view and distract them from what is happening on stage. (Fuchs, 37) This type of footlight dimmed out of the theatre industry throughout part of the 19th century when modern high intensity lights, such as limelight, which cut out the need for a live flame footlight. Not to say that footlights are completely cut of out the theatre industry. Modern footlights are used to make high intensity lighting to look more natural, and to soften an actors features. (“footlights”,