ABSTRACT
In several recent Shakespeare-related artistic endeavors, a magical force captures the minds and bodies of children. The hero of Susan Cooper’s novel King of Shadows is an American lad named Nat Field who, while playing a part in a modern London production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a replica of the Globe Theatre, finds himself transported to Shakespeare’s London to perform in the same play. In Julie Taymor’s film Titus, a media-saturated modern boy is carried away by a brutish professional wrestler type down a timewarping stairwell to arrive smack in the middle of Titus Andronicus, where the boy becomes Titus’s grandson Lucius. Christine Edzard’s film The Children’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which A Midsummer Night’s Dream is performed by untrained 8–12 year olds, begins at a puppet theater performance for children. Young audience members and the play’s characters magically coalesce in a celebration of the power of Shakespearean drama to appeal to the imaginations of children. When the play’s language reaches out irresistibly to the audience as though choosing the young voices as its medium, the relationship between children and playing and words is depicted as an easy, natural one. Peter Holland, director of the Shakespeare Institute, points out that, for young children, Shakespeare’s language is no stranger than the other language that surrounds them. During a recent Hawaii Homeschool Association Shakespeare Festival, a parent of a young actor commented on her son’s responsiveness to Shakespearean drama, “I guess at this age he hasn’t reached the stage where it’s uncool or intimidating” (Vogel, B4). Children in fact have a special place in Shakespeare’s plays, in which over forty-five child figures appear, an unsurprising number when one considers that about half the population was under twenty years old in early modern England (Brigden, 37).
