Midsummer Background

LIFE PLAYSTIMES THEATER

Brief Background• A

Midsummer Night’s Dream

• Written in 1595 right after Romeo and Juliet

• One of Shakespeare’s many comedies

• One of his most popular plays

• Looks at young love with a totally different angle than his tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet

Brief Background• A

Midsummer Night’s Dream

• inspired four hundred years of stories and pictures of tiny, butterfly-winged people living in the woods. Walt Disney's fairies are their descendants.

• For over 200 years, the play was never put on stage except as adaptations.

• Today's conservatives are still divided on the question of whether the play is good family entertainment or a satanic exercise.

Athens

The PlayWoods

Shakespeare creates three worlds within the play that interact with each other

“Athens” World: Characters

Helena Hermia

Demetrius

LysanderTheseus and Hippolyta

“Athens” World: Theseus and Hippolyta

Theseus and Hippolyta

The play begins with about to be married. Both are figures of classic mythology – Theseus a great warrior and Hippolyta an Amazon warrior-woman (related to Hercules) who was defeated in battle by Theseus. The event of their wedding binds Athens, the woods, and the play together.

“Athens” World: Young Lovers

Helena

Hermia

Demetrius

Lysander

During the play, four young lovers sort themselves into couples. However, they go through two different love triangles first.

Helena

Demetrius

Lysander

Hermia

1 2

“Woods” World: Characters

Puck/Robin Goodfellow

Titania

Oberon

“Woods” World: Fairyland

Puck/Robin Goodfellow

TitaniaOberon

A different type of love battle is going on in the woods

where the king, and the

queen, of Fairyland are fighting over

custody of an orphan boy. In anger, the king uses magic to

make the queen fall in love with an “ass” (donkey) who is

really Bottom the weaver transformed by Oberon’s

helper, .

“The Play” World: Characters

Bottom – the “ass”

Quince, Flute, Snout, Snug, Starveling

“The Play” World: Pyramus and Thisbe

Bottom

Quince, Flute, Snout, Snug, Starveling

All the while, a group of workingmen

come into the woods to rehearse a play for Theseus and

Hippolyta’s upcoming wedding.

(the “ass”) is a foolish man who writes and directs the

tragic love story of “Pyramus and Thisbe” that ends in a

double suicide (sound familiar?).

Athens

The PlayWoods

Themes in MSND

This day my oaths of drinking wine and going to plays are out, and so I do resolve to take a liberty to-day, and then to fall to them

again. To the King's Theatre, where we saw "Midsummer's Night's Dream," which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, which

was all my pleasure.-- Samuel Pepys, Diary, Sept. 29, 1662

You are always insane when you are in love.-- Sigmund Freud

Theme in MSND

• Shakespeare’s plays are so much more than their plot–Not a moral

• About exploring human nature, language, and the ambiguity of that language– Many in the audience knew

the plot before seeing it

• Why might the popular movie "Dead Poets Society" have used the play as a metaphor for young people choosing nonconformity?

• Why might the best-known character, "Bottom", be transformed into an "ass" and become the "butt" of jokes. What could be "behind" this?

• Why might the play-within-a-play, which retells a story from Ovid, looks like Shakespeare's parody of his own "Romeo and Juliet“?

• For years, Puck was featured at the top of many Sunday comics, with the banner "What fools these mortals be.” Why do you think?

Best guesses at themes so far?

• Some themes we will watch for in MSND

• Love is complicated• People are foolish• Appearances can be

deceiving/shallow

Terms of a Play

• Structure • Act – 5 total• Scene – 2 per act

except for act 5• Line• Enter/Exit/aside• I.E.• Stage Directions

• Stage Directions • Enter• Exit• Aside• To…

Shakespearean Insults

“Go hence you rank, onion-eyed lewdster!” Adjective Hyphenated

adjectiveNoun

PeevishGrizzledGreasyJadedWaggishPurpledRankSaucyVacantYeastyDroningGoatishSpleenySurlyGorbellied

Clay-brainedDog-heartedEvil-eyedLily-liveredMad-bredOnion-eyedPaper-facedRump-fedShag-earedWhite-liveredPlume-pluckedFly-bittenElf-skinnedCommon-kissingFat-kidneyed

PantaloonClot poleEgg-shellSnipeDewberryHaggardBarnacleLewdsterGudgeonFlax-wenchMinnowStrumpetRatsbaneWhey-faceHugger-mugger

• Soliloquy