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Last week, I reviewed the series We Are Lady Parts about Muslim women who form a punk band in London. Tina read Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner, finding it a slow read even though it’s only 184 pages long.

I want to explore A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare as we approach the summer solstice. I saw an abbreviated production last summer. This year, I plan to read the play. But, first, I prepared myself to make the process a little easier.

One episode of the BBC Radio show In Our Time is about A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The entire archive of the show (over a thousand episodes!) is available on-line, even to those of us outside the UK. Since In Our Time explores all kinds of subjects — literature, history, and science among them — I find that it is a terrific resource when I want to learn about a new topic.

The original broadcast of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” aired on April 18, 2019.

I learned from this episode that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is typically a British person’s first exposure to Shakespeare, often in the form of children’s productions of the play, usually outdoors. There is an estimate that 25% of Brits have participated in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Toward the end of this conversation, each of the presenters confessed to the role that they played in their childhood.

That contrasts sharply with my experience, which is probably pretty common among Americans. My first exposure to Shakespeare was reading Romeo and Juliet in a freshman English class in high school.

A magical early Hollywood production with a young Olivia de Havilland as Hermia and an even younger Mickey Rooney as Puck.

I can’t remember the first time that I heard the title of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but one cultural touchpoint for me came in the movie Dead Poets Society when one of the characters plays Puck in a school production. My first experience of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was part of an exploration of Olivia de Haviland’s early career — the film adaptation was her movie debut.

Each episode of In Our Time is accompanied by a reading list. For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the list proved to be very academic and a little intimidating. I added Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths by Helen Hackett to my TBR but it won’t be part of this month’s exploration.

In Our Time recently went through a big transition. Melvyn Bragg has been the host of this Thursday morning show since its inception in 1998. He retired last fall (at the age of 86!) and a new presenter took over in January. I’ve listened to a couple of the episodes with Misha Glenny and it seems that In Our Time will survive this big change. The format stayed the same and still provides an in-depth and wide-ranging conversation on the week’s topic.

If you want to experience In Our Time, the show conveniently compiled a list of ten of their popular programs, covering a variety of topics.

What was your first exposure to Shakespeare?