Download A Midsummer Night*s Dream

A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
If you recall…
• In Romeo and Juliet,
Shakespeare made
love a crazed, druglike state, which led
to murder, suicide,
and exile.
Love in Midsummer Night’s Dream
• The play features
quarrelsome lovers
who fall in and out for
small, petty reasons
• THESEUS: “The
lunatic, the lover, and
the poet are of
imagination all
compact” Act V Sc. 1.
Mythological Background
• Theseus
• Hippolyta
– Founder of Athens, Greece
– Famous for defeating Minotaur
– Defeats Hippolyta in battle and
claims her as his wife
– Queen of Amazons, a
race of warrior-women
who reproduce with men
but then kill them
HERMIA
DEMETRIUS
HELENA
LYSANDER
Mythological Background
OBERON:
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before, milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it “love-in-idleness.”
Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once.
HIPPOLYA:
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear
Such gallant chiding, for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
Interchangeable Lovers
LYSANDER:
I am, my lord, as well
derived as he,
As well possessed. My
love is more than his;
My fortunes every way as
fairly ranked
(If not with vantage) as
Demetrius’
HELENA:
How happy some o’er
other some can be!
Through Athens I am
thought as fair as she.
But what of that?
Demetrius thinks not so.
He will not know what all
but he do know.
Lovers’ Spats
The Nobles
Theseus and Hippolyta: he has captured her
and they prepare for their wedding
The Mortals
Lysander and Hermia: forbidden to be
together, they run away to elope
Demetrius and Helena: he no longer loves her
The Fairies
Oberon and Titania: quarrel over an Indian
boy
Puck is a spirit
cheerfully amoral,
free because never
in love and always
more amused even
than amusing…
Free of love, Puck
becomes an agent
of the irrational
element in love.”
—Harold Bloom
Boy Girl Drama
Act I
Act III
Act IV
LYSANDER
HERMIA
DEMETRIUS
HELENA
LYSANDER
HERMIA
DEMETRIUS
HELENA
LYSANDER
HERMIA
DEMETRIUS
HELENA
Going Around In Circles
Act 3 Scene 2
Hermia
Lysander
Demetrius
Helena
HERMIA
●Defies father
and risks death
●Loves
Lysander
●Short, dark
BOTH
●Of equal
beauty
●Lifelong
friends
HELENA
●Insecure and
heartbroken
●Loves
Demetrius
●Tall , fair
The Athenian Lovers
LYSANDER
●Defies Theseus
and Egeus
for love
●Has wealthy
aunt
BOTH
●Love Hermia
at start of play
●Of equal
wealth and
heredity
DEMETRIUS
●Flip-flops
●Insulting to
Helena
●Favored
by Egeus
“Pyramus and Thisbe”
A Play by Peter Quince
PLAYBILL
NICK BOTTOM THE WEAVER…………….………..……PYRAMUS
FRANCIS FLUTE THE BELLOWS-MENDER…..…….…THISBE
ROBIN STARVELING THE TAILOR……….…...…MOONSHINE
TOM SNOUT THE TINKER…………………………….…………WALL
SNUG THE JOINER……………………………………………………LION
PETER QUINCE………………………..…………..…………PROLOGUE
The Play
Within the Play
The play of “Pyramus
and Thisbe”… alludes…
to the tragic possibilities
of a conflict between
love and parental
opposition. A
Midsummer Night’s
Dream does not let its
audience forget that love
entails confusion and
danger as well as grace,
although it never entirely
separates these
contraries (Belsey 186).
The Formula
1) Controlling parents forbid young
lovers to be together
2) Love cannot be forbidden, so they
run away together to the woods
3) In a place of mystery, danger, and
confusion, the lovers are soon
separated by bizarre twists of fate
Act V
Reader/
Audience
Oberon,
Titania,
Puck
The
Athenians
Bottom and
Actors
What Critics Are Saying
Selections from Catherine Belsey’s Essay
• “Bottom’s name, and his
transformation… [clarify] more
than [they change] his identity”
(181).
• “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a
play about love. It proposes that
love is a dream, or perhaps a vision;
that it is absurd, irrational, a
delusion” (182).
What Critics Are Saying
• “…the four lovers are virtually
indistinguishable. Romantic love is in
this sense oddly impersonal. Because
of love’s power to idealize, the object of
desire seems unique, even though in
the event it turns out that Hermia and
Helena are interchangeable” (183).
• “The play does not ignore the trace of
violence that exists within love when
the other person fails to conform to the
lover’s idealized image” (185).
What Critics Are Saying
• “The plot leads up to the marriages of the
lovers, but it does not quite confirm the
distinction we might expect it to identify
between true love on the one hand and
arbitrary passion induced by magic on the
other.” (189).
• “The Athenian court represents the world of
reconciliation and rationality, of social
institutions and communal order, while the
wood outside Athens is the location of night
and bewildering passions, a place of anarchy
and anxiety, where behavior becomes
unpredictable and individual identity is
transformed” (189).