THE WOOD IN ATHENS (COMMENT). Charles Lock pointed out that Shakespeare in a Midsummer Night’s Dream puns on “wode”, meaning “mad”…Shakespeare plays on this in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “when Demetrius feels ‘wood within this wood'”.
A couple years ago, Mary Jane and I saw an outdoors production of Dream directed by Tina Packer at the Elm Shakespeare company. One half of the stage was for the court in Athens and one half was for a tangled wood, which used the existing foliage as a backdrop. At various times in the production, strange sounds came from this wood. It was very effective.