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Midsummer Background

Midsummer Background. LIFE. TIMES. PLAYS. 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

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Midsummer Background

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  1. Midsummer Background

  2. LIFE TIMES PLAYS THEATER

  3. BriefBackground • 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

  4. BriefBackground • 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.

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

  6. “Athens” World: Characters Lysander Demetrius Theseus and Hippolyta Helena Hermia

  7. “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.

  8. “Athens” World: Young Lovers During the play, four young lovers sort themselves into couples. However, they go through two different love triangles first. 1 2 Helena Hermia Demetrius Lysander Demetrius Lysander Helena Hermia

  9. “Woods” World: Characters Oberon Puck/Robin Goodfellow Titania

  10. “Woods” World: Fairyland 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, . Oberon Titania Puck/Robin Goodfellow

  11. “The Play” World: Characters Bottom – the “ass” Quince, Flute, Snout, Snug, Starveling

  12. “The Play” World: Pyramus and Thisbe 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?). Bottom

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. 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?

  16. Best guesses at themes so far?

  17. Some themes we will watch for in MSND • Love is complicated • People are foolish • Appearances can be deceiving/shallow

  18. Terms of a Play

  19. Structure • Act – 5 total • Scene – 2 per act except for act 5 • Line • Enter/Exit/aside • I.E. • Stage Directions

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

  21. Shakespearean Insults “Go hence you rank, onion-eyed lewdster!” Adjective Hyphenated adjective Noun

  22. Clay-brained Dog-hearted Evil-eyed Lily-livered Mad-bred Onion-eyed Paper-faced Rump-fed Shag-eared White-livered Plume-plucked Fly-bitten Elf-skinned Common-kissing Fat-kidneyed Pantaloon Clot pole Egg-shell Snipe Dewberry Haggard Barnacle Lewdster Gudgeon Flax-wench Minnow Strumpet Ratsbane Whey-face Hugger-mugger Peevish Grizzled Greasy Jaded Waggish Purpled Rank Saucy Vacant Yeasty Droning Goatish Spleeny Surly Gorbellied

  23. Soliloquy

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