A Midsummer Night's Dream © 2015 American Shakespeare Center
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THE AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE CENTER STUDY GUIDE A Midsummer Night's Dream © 2015 American Shakespeare Center. All rights reserved. The following materials were compiled by the Education and Research Department of the American Shakespeare Center, 2015. Created by: Cass Morris, Academic Resources Manager; Sarah Enloe, Director of Education and Research; Ralph Cohen, ASC Executive Founding Director and Director of Mission; Jim Warren, ASC Artistic Director; Jay McClure, Associate Artistic Director; ASC Actors and Interns. Unless otherwise noted, all selections from Much Ado about Nothing in this study guide use the stage directions as found in the 1623 Folio. All line counts come from the Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al, 1997. The American Shakespeare Center is partially supported by a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. American Shakespeare Center Study Guides are part of Shakespeare for a New Generation, a national program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. -2- Dear Fellow Educator, I have a confession: for almost 10 years, I lived a lie. Though I was teaching Shakespeare, taking some joy in pointing out his dirty jokes to my students and showing them how to fight using air broadswords; though I directed Shakespeare productions; though I acted in many of his plays in college and professionally; though I attended a three-week institute on teaching Shakespeare, during all of that time, I knew that I was just going through the motions. Shakespeare, and our educational system’s obsession with him, was still a bit of a mystery to me. The problem, I’ve since discovered, was that in trying to find the theme and the character arc, which I thought was buried in the meter and the footnotes, I was ignoring some simple facts, or, rather, I was unaware of them. Until, that is, my first week as a Master’s student studying Shakespeare and Performance, when I finally discovered that I loved the plays. I loved what Shakespeare was doing with all of that stuff. I knew why he wrote them that way. Professor Ralph Alan Cohen opened my eyes to all that iambic pentameter could tell an actor, to what those crazy word arrangements could be clues to in a performance, to the staging information contained in the thees and thous; he addressed all of the terrors I had (not so) bravely faced and fought with over the years. In this guide, we want to take you on that journey, too. We want to bring you and your students from obligatory appreciation to complete enamorment with the situations, characters, and joy Shakespeare created across 38 plays. In the Education Department at the American Shakespeare Center, we have the joy of working side-by- side with some of the best Shakespearean actors on stage today; we are home to a masters program which welcomes the brightest scholars in the field to conferences and as lecturers; and we dwell and play in the world’s only re-creation of Shakespeare’s indoor theatre, the Blackfriars Playhouse. These advantages teach us, daily, the myriad of ways we can make discoveries about characters and staging through a close consideration of clues Shakespeare provides actors in the text and in the playhouse. In this guide, we have taken the exercises that our actors, directors, and dramaturgs use to get a play on its feet, and formatted them for use in your classroom. These activities open a door for inquiry that we designed to guide you and your students on the path to “reading the stage” that I was lucky enough to experience as a graduate student. We are delighted that you have added the American Shakespeare Center’s Study Guide on A Midsummer Night's Dream to your classroom toolbox. We hope that the lessons and activities that you find in this book will propel you and your students towards a consideration of Shakespeare’s stagecraft as a means to embracing his wordcraft. We expect that you and your students will find new insights by breaking down the long columns of text into playable chunks, chunks that illuminate moments and provide opportunity for the shaping of characters. Shakespeare left many choices to his company of actors for the realization of their characters on stage, so when we see or read his plays, we can find multiple “right” answers for a single moment. We believe that an investigation focused on those choices will both engage your students and create in them a hunger to investigate further. We look forward to seeing you at our Teacher Seminars, our Students Matinees, and all of the other enrichment opportunities ASC offers. Sincerely, Sarah Enloe Director of Education American Shakespeare Center -3- TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 Inside This Guide 11 Shakespeare Timeline 13 Shakespeare's Staging Conditions 14 Stuff That Happens 15 Who's Who 16 Character Connections 17 Discovery Space Questions Basics 18 Getting Students on Their Feet 21 Line Assignments 23 First 100 Lines 25 Choices 31 The Elizabethan Classroom 34 Classroom Diagram 40 Paraphrasing 42 Wordle 45 Verse and Prose 48 Handout #1 – Scansion Guidelines and Flowchart 57 R.O.A.D.S. to Rhetoric 68 Handout #2 – R.O.A.D.S. Guidelines 76 Asides and Audience Contact 80 Teacher's Guide – Asides Diagram 81 Handout #3 – Audience Contact Classroom Exploration of A Midsummer Night's Dream 83 Staging Challenges: Actors Playing Actors 86 Handout #4A-B: Midsummer Rehearsal Scenes 90 Handouts #5A-D: Pyramus and Thisbe 94 Teacher's Guide -4- 109 Perspectives: Courtship and Match-Making 113 Handout #6: Historical Perspectives on Courtship 115 Handout #7: Lysander vs Demetrius 117 Handout #8: Doves and Griffins 119 Teacher's Guide 126 Metrical Explorations: Metrical Magic 128 Handouts #9A-F: The Meter of Magic 134 Teacher's Guide 146 Handout #10: The Poetry of John Skelton 147 Staging Challenges: Titania's Bower 148 Textual Variants: Speech Prefixes 151 Handouts #11A-B: Quarto and Folio 153 Perspectives: Spirits of Another Sort 156 Handout #12: Fairies in Literature 161 Dr. Ralph's ShakesFear Activity: Writing Exercises 163 Production Choices 163 Casting and Doubling 164 Handout #13: Doubling Chart 166 Cutting the Script 168 Handout #14 – Cutting Guidelines 170 Handout #15 – Line Count Chart 171 Cue Scripts 173 Teacher's Guide 175 Handout #16A-G – Example Cue Scripts 182 Further Exploration: Putting up a Play 184 Handout #17 – Costume Quick Guide 185 Film in the Classroom 188 Core Curriculum Standards 189 Bibliography 191 ASC Education Events, Programs, and Opportunities -5- Secondary Table of Contents For those teachers who prefer to work through a play strictly chronologically, we provide this secondary table of contents. Proceed as usual through the Basics, then: Classroom Exploration of A Midsummer Night's Dream Act One Act Four 109 Perspectives: Courtship and Match-Making 126 Metrical Explorations: Metrical Magic 113 Handout #6: Historical Perspectives 131 Handouts #9D: The Meter of Magic (4.1) 115 Handout #7: Lysander vs Demetrius (1.1) 140 Teacher's Guide (4.1) 83 Staging Challenges: Actors Playing Actors 147 Staging Challenges: Titania's Bower (4.1) 86 Handout #4A: A Play Fitted (1.2) 94 Teacher's Guide (1.2) Act Five 148 Textual Variants: Speech Prefixes Act Two 151 Handouts #11A-B: Quarto and Folio (5.1) 126 Metrical Explorations: Metrical Magic 83 Staging Challenges: Actors Playing Actors 128 Handouts #9A-B: The Meter of Magic (2.1) 90 Handouts #5A-D: Pyramus & Thisbe (5.1) 134 Teacher's Guide (2.1) 100 Teacher's Guide 109 Perspectives: Courtship and Match-Making 126 Metrical Explorations: Metrical Magic 113 Handout #6: Historical Perspectives 146 Handout #10: The Poetry of John Skelton 117 Handout #8: Doves and Griffins (2.1) 126 Metrical Explorations: Metrical Magic 119 Teacher's Guide (2.1) 131 Handouts #9E-F: The Meter of Magic (5.2) 147 Staging Challenges: Titania's Bower (2.2) 140 Teacher's Guide (5.2) 147 Staging Challenges: Titania's Bower (5.2) Act Three 147 Staging Challenges: Titania's Bower (3.1) Cumulative 83 Staging Challenges: Actors Playing Actors 153 Perspectives: Spirits of Another Sort 88 Handout #4B: Marvelous Convenient (3.1) 156 Handout #12: Fairies in Literature 96 Teacher's Guide (3.1) 161 Dr. Ralph's ShakesFear Activity 126 Metrical Explorations: Metrical Magic 163 Production Choices 130 Handouts #9C: The Meter of Magic (3.2) 185 Film in the Classroom 138 Teacher's Guide (3.2) -6- INSIDE THIS GUIDE For teachers and students of Shakespeare’s plays, the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse provides a number of instructional insights. Our Study Guides draw on the experiences of actors, directors, and designers, as well as top minds in the field of Shakespeare and students in our Master’s Programs, to give teachers concrete methods for studying the plays. Each guide includes a number of resources, activities, and assignments we created specifically for the teachers and offers a broad range of materials for you to choose from as you plan your classes. Shakespeare’s World Shakespeare Timeline gives students a brief history of Shakespeare’s life, as well as other significant moments in early modern history, and connects these facts to the production of his plays. Shakespeare’s Staging Conditions (and how well he used them): Shakespeare wrote his plays with a unique stage environment in mind. This section outlines those practices that the ASC engages to create plays at the Blackfriars Playhouse and on the road. The Play Stuff That Happens in the Play sets the stage for the play’s twists and turns. Who’s Who uses quotations from the play to describe each character, illustrating the information Shakespeare provides within his text.