A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

ASF 2016 Study Materials & Activities for A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Director Set Design Costume Design Lighting Design Diana Van Fossen James Wolk Brenda Van der Wiel Travis MaCale Contact ASF at: www.asf.net Study materials written by 1.800.841-4273 Susan Willis, ASF Dramaturg [email protected] ASF/ 1 A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Welcome to A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare's comedies are among the glories of drama, and none is more Characters glorious than A Midsummer Night's at court: Dream, a hearty confection of myth and Theseus, Duke of Athens magic, court and country, aristocrat and Hippolyta, queen of the artisan. It dazzles with the delights of its Amazons fairy kingdom, its confused lovers, and its Egeus, a lord at court earnest amateur acting troupe—and any Hermia, his daugher play that puts donkey ears on a blowhard Titania Lysander, beloved of Hermia is sure to please. It moves toward a spate asleep Demetrius, the man Egeus of weddings and the funniest rendition in her wants Hermia to marry of a tragedy known to theatre. Along the bower, Helena, in love with Demetrius way, Shakespeare weaves four plots into and, like the Philostrate, a lord a joyous comic pattern that divides and reunites, dreams and awakens, enchants lovers, and enlightens. about to in the town: awaken Peter Quince, a carpenter to new Nick Bottom, a weaver who The Story "love" plays Pyramus Trouble at Court Francis Flute, a bellows Having defeated Hippolyta in battle, the others. Bottom's singing then awakens mender who plays Thisbe Theseus now plans to wed this Queen of the the flower-charmed Titania, and she falls Tom Snout, a tinker who plays Amazons. Egeus interrupts, complaining in love with the ass. Wall and Moon that his daughter Hermia will not marry Invisible Oberon hears Demetrius Snug, a joiner who plays Lion Demetrius, the man Egeus has chosen. scorn Helena and sends Puck to charm Hermia protests that she loves Lysander, Demetrius's eyes, but instead Puck finds in the forest: but Duke Theseus must enforce Athenian Lysander and Hermia, so he anoints law and decrees that Hermia must choose Oberon, king of the fairies Lysander's eyes—and when that youth is to wed Demetrius, go to a nunnery, or die. Titania, queen of the fairies awakened by Helena, he instantly falls in Lysander convinces Hermia to elope Puck (Robin Goodfellow) love with her. Oberon, miffed by the error, First Fairy, who serves Titania with him to his aunt's house beyond anoints Demetrius's eyes himself, so both Athenian law. They tell their plans only to young men now love Helena and scorn Hermia's best friend, Helena, yet she tells Hermia, who attacks her friend for stealing Setting: Athens and a nearby Demetrius, who left her for Hermia, so she her beloved. can follow him to pursue Hermia. wood Awaking to Happiness Time: A fanciful, gypsy-filled Meanwhile, some Athenian working Once Oberon gets the changeling time in the past men are planning to rehearse Pyramus and boy, he releases Titania from the charm Thisbe secretly in the forest the next night. and they reconcile. He also releases the Trouble in the Wood charm on Lysander's eyes, so the young In the forest, the king and queen of the couples end up happily paired when they are The cover image and other fairies continue their quarrel about custody discovered the next morning by Theseus illustrations in the study materials of a changeling boy. When Titania scorns and Hippolyta. Theseus overrules Egeus are by the skilled Victorian Oberon, he swears revenge and decides and allows Hermia to marry Lysander. illustrator Arthur Rackham. to charm her into loving a wild animal, so Pyramus and Thisbe is chosen to he sends Puck for a magic flower. entertain the newlyweds, and it proves to When the rustics begin their forest be an unintentionally hilarious version of the rehearsal, Puck finds them and in jest puts tragedy, ending with a bergomask dance. a donkey's head on Bottom, the leading Afterward, the newlywed couples say good man, a transformation that scares away night, and the fairies bless them. ASF/ 2 A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Shakespeare and Comedy For Shakespeare, romantic comedy often opens with a serious and divisive event—a shipwreck, a forbidding injunction, or, as here, a death threat. Out of this severe challenge, he then weaves his comedy, for young lovers must be tested, parents must block children's desires, and authorities must for a time be unhelpful if true love is to prove itself and the knots untangled so the resolution can be welcome and joyous—and Becoming an Ass preferably full of weddings. "Lord, what fools The ass is a long-eared, these mortals be" might well describe the sure-footed, domesticated action in any of Shakespeare's comedies, relative of the horse. In the but it is especially apt in Midsummer. ancient world, it was primarily A Midsummer Night's Dream has a a beast of burden, and one remarkably tight comic construction typical was reliable enough for Mary of Shakespeare's ability to juggle multiple to ride to Bethlehem. sets of characters—here, four sets: the Even in Shakespeare's court, the lovers, the fairies, and the time, the term ass was also working men or mechanicals. Yet he tells used to mean a fool or the story in only nine scenes written mostly blockhead. Puck makes a in verse. Exactly how typical is this play of Arthur Rackham's newly transformed Bottom judgment about Bottom—that Shakespeare's comic work? Let's look: and a mystified Peter Quince he's a fool, an "ass"—and then The Comedy of Errors 11 scenes 1778 lines 87% verse/13% prose as a joke gives him a literal The Two Gentlemen of Verona 20 scenes 2294 lines 82% verse/18% prose ass's head. The Taming of the Shrew 13 scenes 2649 lines 81% verse/19% prose A Midsummer Night's Dream 9 scenes 2174 lines 80% verse/20% prose Shakespeare was quite Love's Labour's Lost 9 scenes 2789 lines 61% verse/39% prose inventive with his ass jokes The Merchant of Venice 20 scenes 2660 lines 75% verse/25% prose and repeated the term without Much Ado about Nothing 16 scenes 2862 lines 25% verse/75% prose the donkey head in Much Ado The Merry Wives of Windsor 23 scenes 3018 lines 10% verse/90% prose about Nothing, where the As You Like It 22 scenes 2857 lines 41% verse/59% prose constable Dogberry is told he's Twelfth Night 18 scenes 2690 lines 35% verse/65% prose an ass (accurately), and in his Midsummer is a shorter comedy, told them more in prose—a medium at outrage he repeatedly insists mostly in verse, and with comparatively few which he was equally adept. that everyone remember scenes. Shakespeare accomplishes all the Until the last scene of Midsummer, only "that I am an ass" so he can comic confusion and conflict inMidsummer the working men speak prose, but once prosecute the miscreant. because he gets all four sets of characters their play of Pyramus and Thisbe begins, a into the forest where they can intersect reversal occurs—the courtiers speak prose each other's scenes. And the percentage of in their comments about the play while the verse is not surprising, for the play comes players, the working men, speak verse from what scholars call Shakespeare's in enacting it. Only after the bergomask lyrical period, about 1594 to 1596, when he that officially ends that presentation had just finished his sonnets and narrative does Theseus return to verse. Thus, the poems and was writing this play as well as presence of the play-within-a-play enacts Romeo and Juliet and Richard II, a play its own kind of transformation on everyone The line counts listed are entirely in verse. based on The Complete Works of concerned, giving them time in each other's Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, As he continued to work with comedy, verbal world, transmuting the workers for a 3rd edition we can see that Shakespeare began to moment into the expressive mode of literary write more heavily plotted story lines and heroes and romantic lovers. ASF/ 3 A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Making Magic: Midsummer + Night + Dream Midsummer Night In many agrarian cultures, times of Much of A Midsummer Night's Dream planting, ripening, and harvest were marked does, in fact, occur at night. Arguably the by folk celebrations when the annual cycle first scene is at night, since they discuss of fertility was acknowledged with holiday the current phase of the moon. Certainly indulgence. The "rites of May" that Theseus the entire action in the forest is during the in 4.1 ironically suggests the sleeping lovers night and early dawn, and the wedding feast have been keeping were one such time, and after-dinner entertainment are again associated with planting; midsummer or the at night, waiting for bedtime. Likewise, the summer solstice was another. Midsummer working men can only rehearse their play is the apogee, the limit of the year's bloom at night, on their own time. Darkness and and burgeoning, after which the focus being in nature rather than the city both play turns to ripening and harvest. Festivals into the power of the forest scenes, for the associated with fertility often involved not supernaturals are at home in the night and only eating and drinking but a celebration the forest, but the young lovers and amateur of human fertility as well.

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