A Midsummer Night’s Dream

William Shakespeare

Considered by many to be the greatest writer in the English language.

1564-1616

• Lived in England during the Renaissance. – A time in history marked by a renewed

interest in science, commerce, philosophy, and the arts.

– Renaissance thinking was a new emphasis on the individual and the freedom of choice.

• Shakespeare started his literary career during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.– During the period between 1558 and 1603.– Often referred to as the Elizabethan Age.

Theater in Shakespeare’s Day

• London was the center of the Elizabethan stage.

• The Lord Chamberlain's Men were the company that both the rich and powerful and the common people both respected.

• In 1599, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, along with William Shakespeare, a part owner, became joint owners of the Globe Theater.

The Globe was a three-story wooden structure with an open air courtyard in the center.

Actors performed on a raised stage within the courtyard.

The theater could hold as many as 3,000 spectators, many of whom stood in the part of the courtyard near the stage called the pit.

These customers were known as groundlings, and paid the lowest admission charge.

Rich theatergoers sat in partially enclosed galleries, or inner balconies which surrounded the courtyard.

The Globe Theater

Audiences would become emotionally involved in the performances, openly showing their pleasure or disappointment.

Theatergoers relied heavily on their imagination.› The theater had no curtains, no artificial lighting, and

very little scenery.› Props, sound effects, and lines of dialogue would let

the audience know when and where a scene took place.

› Elegant costumes also added to the spectacle and helped the audience imagine that women were playing the female roles. In Shakespeare’s day, no women belonged to the acting

companies. It was considered improper for women to be on stage.

The boys underwent rigorous training in order to be move gracefully and speak convincingly on stage.

The Globe Theater

The original Globe was built in 1599. It burned to the ground in 1613, and was immediately rebuilt. The original structure was closed in 1642. Almost 400 years later, The Globe Theater was rebuilt. The picture represents the restored Globe Theater, built in 1997.

http://www.olejarz.com/art/london2003/images/18%20Globe%20Theater.jpg

Shakespeare’s Impact on the English Language

Shakespeare is known for his clever imagination, the way he plays with words and their meanings, and creating striking images, that once heard, are rarely forgotten.

Shakespeare created more words and expressions than any other writer. Among these are bump, assassination, and lonely.

Other expressions that are credited to Shakespeare’s invention: “dead as a doornail” -Henry IV, Part 2“laughing-stock” -The Merry Wives of

Windsor“the green-eyen monster” -Othello“for goodness’s sake” -Henry VIII

Up Next:Shakespearean Drama

Literary Terms…

(found on page 986)

COMIC RELIEF

In his tragedies, Shakespeare often includes comic relief, a humorous scene, incident, or speech that relieves the overall emotional intensity.

This helps the audience absorb the earlier events and get ready for the ones to come.

This has a practical use as well. Theater companies liked to use all of their star performers in each play, including those who specialized in comedic roles.

ALLUSION

Allusion is a brief reference, within a work, to something outside the work that the reader or audience is expected to know.

Shakespeare’s plays often contain allusions to ancient Greek and Roman mythology and to the Bible.

FOIL

Foil

A character whose personality or attitudes are in sharp contrast to those of another character in the same work.

By using a foil, the writer highlights the other character's traits or attitude.

The kind of behavior of one character, for example, will be made clearer presented in sharp contrast to another characters who is not at all kind.

What are some opposing character traits that might make good character foils?

SOLILOQUY AND ASIDE

Like all playwrights, Shakespeare makes use of what are called, dramatic conventions—devices that theater audiences accept as realistic, even though they do not reflect the way people actually behave.

SoliloquyA speech that a character gives when he or she is alone on stage.

It’s purpose is to let the audience know what the character is thinking.

Aside

A character’s remark, either to the audience, or another character, that others on stage are not supposed to hear.

It’s purpose, too, is to reveal the character’s private thoughts

BLANK VERSE

Iambic PentameterLines that have FIVE unstressed syllables each followed by a stresses syllable.

Each set of two syllables is called a foot.

Shakespeare’s plays are written in blank verse—a form of poetry that uses unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.

The pattern is not perfect…sometimes there are breaks in the pattern!

The Historical Particulars

• Written: 1595 or early 1596

• First performed: at an aristocratic wedding, possibly that of Elizabeth Carey, the granddaughter of Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain of England, and the patron of Shakespeare’s acting company

• Acting Company: Chamberlain’s Men

Sources• A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the few

Shakespeare plays that came principally from his own imagination.

• Other major sources:

1. The Roman comic novel by Apuleius, The Golden Ass in which a man is transformed into an ass.

2. Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales which provides the setting of the Theseus, Hippolyta, and the Athenian court.

3. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the source of the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe.

Some Performance Facts• A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most

frequently performed of Shakespeare’s plays.• Not everyone loves it. Samuel Pepys attended a

performance in 1662 and called it “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.”

• A 1900 set of the play featured live rabbits and birds and dense foliage.

• It has been the subject of operas by Carl Orff and Benjamin Britten.

• A jazz version, Swinging the Dream, was performed by the Benny Goodman sextet with Louis Armstrong as Bottom.

• George Balanchine made it into a ballet in 1964.• The play has been made into a movie 8 times and has

been seen on TV at least 8 times.

The Tradition of the Masque

• The masque was developed during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods in England as a prelude to social dancing. The participants in the play would join the spectators at a ball after the performance. This made the masque a time for flirting and sexual intrigue.

The courtier Robert Dudley dancing with Elizabeth I

Elements of the Masque• The masque was an entertainment often performed at

aristocratic weddings.• It was allegorical in nature, drawing on stories from

classical mythology whose characters represent specific virtues and vices. The setting was often pastoral.

• Overall themes are clear and are typically marriage or pastoral contentment.

• The Revels we associate with Christmas have their origins in the masque, being private entertainment for a wealthy family. The Mummers play and Morris dancing were featured elements of this kind of masque.

• Masques, being associated with the nobility, were expensive to stage. Because of their cost and frivolous nature they were suppressed during the Puritan revolution, but did not reappear with the Restoration as new genres of Restoration comedy took their place.

3 sets of characters; 3 plots• Three distinct sets of characters are involved in three

interlinking plots in this tale.• The Athenian court assembled for the wedding of

Theseus & Hippolyta. The nobles include two sets of lovers.

• The realm of the fairies, led by Oberon and Titiana who are arguing, turning their fairyland topsy turvy and letting loose the mischievous.

• The everyday world of human beings represented by a troupe of actors who have ordinary occupations. They mean to play the story of Pyramus & Thisbe, tragic lovers of myth.

• All three sets of characters venture into the same woodland. This allows them to interact where normally they would not. Enchantment makes characters fall in love where they shouldn’t or wouldn’t. All ends happily with the characters in right relationships.

The Athenians

• Theseus, Duke of Athens, good friend of Egeus

• Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and betrothed of Theseus

• Egeus, father of Hermia, wants to force Hermia to get married to Demetrius

• Lysander, beloved of Hermia • Hermia, beloved of Lysander • Helena, in love with Demetrius • Demetrius, in love with Hermia • Philostrate, Master of the

Revels for Theseus

Washington Allston, Hermia and Helena 1818

The SupernaturalsOberon, King of Fairies

Titania, Queen of Fairies

Puck, a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow, servant to Oberon

Titania's fairy servants (her "train"): – First Fairy – Peaseblossom, fairy – Cobweb, fairy – Moth (sometimes rendered as

'Mote'), fairy – Mustardseed, fairy

William Blake, Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing c. 1786

The Mechanicals• The acting troupe (also known as The

Mechanicals):

• Peter Quince, carpenter, who leads the troupe

• Nick Bottom, weaver; he plays Pyramus in the troupe's production of "Pyramus and Thisbe," and gets a donkey head put on him by Puck so that Titania will magically fall in love with a monster.

• Francis Flute, the bellows-mender who plays Thisbe.

• Robin Starveling, the tailor who plays Moonshine.

• Tom Snout, the tinker who plays the wall.

• Snug, the joiner who plays the lion.

Kevin Kline as Bottom in the 1999 film version

Major Themes: Love

• Love and its difficulties: As Lysander tells Hermia in Act 1, scene 1, "The course of true love never did run smooth.”

• The play describes several types of love: mature (Theseus & Hippolyta); immature (the two young couples); and love as a power struggle (Oberon & Titiana). While it may at times be irrational, love has value and it need not have a tragic outcome (like Pyramus & Thisbe). The Renaissance love of the contrast between reason and imagination (or the rational vs the irrational) is at work in this theme. Magic, which manipulates love in this play, is a phenomenon which cannot be understood by the rational mind, and so it belongs to the world of the fairies. In the end the supernatural beings come to bless the rational beings, restoring balance and harmony to both the court and to the lovers they have manipulated.

• Shakespeare is concerned in this play with the way that our emotions alter our perceptions. Like magic, love has the power to transform our lives for the better, but it also has the power to drive humans to foolishness, lust, and violence. Love makes humans blind to reality while engaging their imagination.

Theme: Dreams• One of the main tensions in the play is that between dream and

reality. Theseus is able to use his imagination and appreciate the dreaming and the lunacy. Hippolyta only sees what is rational and constant. Because Shakespeare uses the imaginary, and freely invokes the dream state, the audience sees that what he has done is to make the unreal real.

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream might as well be entitled A Midsummer Night’s Madness, for the characters who enter the enchanted wood are caught up in a kind of madness that makes them lose their balance. In the end the balance is restored and the characters who have been confused about their partners are again in right relationship.

• During dreaming time loses its sequential, logical flow and things happen without explanation. Many of the characters have lines that talk about dreams and the magic that seems to have happened in their dreams. At the end Puck suggests to the audience that if they don’t like the play, they can think of it as just a dream.

The Play Within the Play• Act V, scene 1 is largely a play-within-a-play. The plot of this

internal play is the myth of Pyramus & Thisbe, a couple whose parents disapprove of their romance. This runs parallel to the difficulties of Hermia & Lysander. The story of Pyramus & Thisbe ends tragically (like Romeo & Juliet) for in the darkness Pyramus mistakenly thinks that Thisbe has been killed by a lion. The mistaken notions of the Athenian lovers in the main plot are not much different.

• So the craftsmen’s play is a symbolic telling of the play as a whole. The fact that it is poorly acted doesn’t make it any less meaningful to the audience (as Theseus remarks). Its comic qualities make it a satire on romantic confusion rather than a Greek tragedy. Its importance is in bringing together the rational, concrete elements of the play with the irrational, imaginative ones. Harmony can be restored to the court, the wood, and all the ordinary places in between.

Memorable Lines • The course of true love never did run smooth.” (Lysander) 1. 1.134

• "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind." (Helena) 1.1.234

• “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;” (Oberon) 2.1.249

• "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"   (Puck) 3.2.115

• “Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill; The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.” (Puck) 3.2.461

• “My Oberon! what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.” (Titiana) 4.1.76

• “The lunatic, the lover and the poet  Are of imagination all compact:” (Theseus) 5.1.7