by William Shakespeare
(first published 1600)
with songs and incidental music by Anthony Bernard
The music by the late Anthony Bernard was written for productions of the play at Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1930s and re-orchestrated by the composer in 1943 for the Theatre Royal, Santiago, who had asked the British Council to recommend an English score to replace the over-familiar Mendelssohn music.
A fragment of an Elizabethan melody, 'Heartsease,' is used with variations in the music for Oberon and Titania, and the music for the clowns is an old English folk tune.
Scenes:
In the Palace of Theseus
In the Cottage of Peter Quince
In a Wood, a league from Athens

(The play will be given in two parts with an interval of eight minutes at 8.30* pm)

Listeners' comments after the first broadcast in June:
"A production which captured the spirit of the play and served to cast new light on an old favourite."
"Every part beautifully played with refreshing interpretations of characters."
"The stereo effects and unfamiliar music made the fairy-haunted woodland very real indeed, and the fairies quite other-worldly."