A Midsummer Night

1
A Midsummer Nights Dream

• This is a play about dreams--and nightmares.
• It is also a feel-good play
• As Bottom, who dreams of being a great actor,
  says, I will roar, that it will do any mans
  heart good to hear me (1.2.71)

2
Dreams

• Nightmares
• Dreams of wealth, sex, prestige
• Resolution of waking anxieties
• A replay of the days events by a drunken,
  untalented film director
• Helplessness, unprepared, naked

3
Moon imagery

• Theseus says the old moon wanes slowly but
  Hippolyta counters that time flies and the new
  moon will arrive fast (as an arrow?), bent
  like to a silver bow 1.1.1-10
• The moon controls tides Titania floods
• Moonshine lunacy lt luna moon

4
Note the different social classes (intro. p. 98)

• martial elders Theseus and Hippolyta,
• young lovers
• Robin the lone prankster spirit
• King and Queen of fairies
• flower fairies Peaseblossom, Bobweb, Moth,
  Mustardseed
• Athenian workmen Quince, Flute, Snout, Snug,
  Starveling, Bottom (the real hero of the play?)

5
Key passages

• What are the elements of Egeuss belief in
  witchcraft? (1.1.27-40)? (rhymes, songs, and
  verses tokens and impressions prevailment)
• Contrast Egeuss reading of the law (obedience or
  death, 1.1.42044) to that of Theseus (he adds
  chaste confinement, 1.1.65, 73-75)
• Why does Theseus feel the need to cheer up
  Hippolyta (1.1.122)? (He hasnt exactly saved
  Hermia from her fathers brutality).

6
1.1

• What does Theseus want to talk to Demetrius and
  Egeus (the idiot) about? What is the effect of
  his calling them aside?
• For what reasons is it that the course of true
  love never did run smooth (1.1.134)? (class
  differences, age, friends opinions, etc.)
• Hermia advises patience (as will King Lear), but
  Lysander suggests they elope to the forest, and
  Hermia swears she will (note that all oaths in
  Shakespeare are taken by a higher power here
  there are several, including Cupids bow).

7
1.1

• Helena is uncomfortable in her body (she wants
  Hermias eye, tongue, look, beauty at 3.2.289,
  we learn she is tall, or at least taller than
  Hermia).
• Hermia by contrast is a kind of head case (Athens
  seemed like paradise before she saw Lysander, now
  she wants to leave)
• Lysander (having gotten what he wants, Hermia to
  elope) becomes very poetic, telling Helena their
  plan.
• Note that Hermia has been to the woods before,
  with Helena when they were girls (215)

8
1.1

• Lysander prays that Demetrius will favor Helena
  (may Demetrius dote on you 1.1.225, which
  eventually he does, once properly drugged the
  other doter is Bottom, also drugged)

9
The power of love

• Note how the iconography of Cupid offers Helena
  ways to think about how love acts, what it
  is--blind, wings, a child why?, forsworn a
  liar, like Demetrius, who had said he loved
  her?), otherwise a very difficult topic (OK,
  class, take out some paper and write an essay on
  what love is), since Platos Symposium.

10
Helenas decision

• Having learned that Hermia and Lysander plan to
  fly to the forest, Helena in turn plans to tell
  Demetrius, knowing he will follow Hermia, and
  thus give her an opportunity merely to see him.
• But a decision is not an action. What does Helena
  do?

11
Action 1.1

• Mortified by Demetriuss desertion, jealous of
  Hermia, overlooking the bleakness of Hermias
  flight from her father, and still in love,
  Helena settles for the chance merely to see
  Demetrius as he leaves her and back again
  (meaning what? come back with him? return home
  alone and dream of him some more? follow him?).
• Or, if we rephrase in terms of the theme of the
  play
• Abandoned as if in a nightmare (compare Hermia
  and Bottom later left alone and frightened)
  Helena day-dreams about Demetrius.

12
1.2 Action Statement

• After Peter Quince orders the players to meet at
  the Dukes oak, Bottom gets in the last word.
• Or, in terms of the theme of the play
• Dreaming of being a great actor, Bottom gets in
  the last word, reinforcing Peter Quinces order
  to the players that they meet in the forest to
  rehearse, where no one can steal their ideas.

13
2.1

• Notice the use of short, headless lines to
  suggest the supernatural
• Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough
  briar.
• Compare Macbeth
• Double, double, toil and trouble

14
Puck

• Robin Goodfellow (2.1.35, also called Puck, pn.
  Pook, as in spook) is different from Titanias
  flower fairies.
• Goodfellow is a euphemism for a trouble-maker
  (like the movie about the Mafia).
• What are the examples of Pucks mischief?
• (lines 35-52 interferes with household chores,
  misleads travelers, spooks horses, makes the ice
  slip in your drink, collapses your chair)

15
Marital strife of Oberon and Titania

• She accuses him of affairs (with Phillida and
  even Hippolyta!
• He accuses her of loving Theseus and stealing him
  away from many women (Perigouna, Ariadne,
  Antiopa).
• Their strife affects the weather (2.1.81-117)
  winds, fog, floods, rot in the fields, early
  frost)
• He wants her changeling boy (120) but she keeps
  him in memory of the boys mother who was a
  devotee of the goddess in India (136)

16

• We have laughed to see the sails conceive
• And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind
• Which she . . . would imitate, and sail upon the
  land . . .
• (2.1.130-132)

17
Marital strife of Oberon and Titania

• Furious at her refusal, Oberon sends Puck for the
  flower love-in-idleness (love is only for
  aristocrats of leisure, not the working classes,
  who have no time for it).
• The fair vestal throned by the west (158) is
  often taken to be Queen Elizabeth, immune to
  Cupids arrows (she never married, and styled
  herself the virgin Queen, and was flattered when
  Sir Walter Ralegh named the land she gave him in
  America Virginia) . Annabel Pattern says,
  thought, that the one immune to love may also
  be Titania, who seems not so in love with Oberon
  (perhaps parallel to Hippolyta, wary of Theseus).
• The herb will make Titania love the next thing
  she sees (180), and Oberon will demand the child
  in exchange for curing her (and he gets want he
  wants by the end of the play).

18
Meanwhile, Helena enters in pursuit of Demetrius

• Not exactly what she planned she is not dreaming
  of him, but begging, fawning like a spaniel.
• She complains that men should pursue women, as
  Apollo chased Daphne (231)
• --in Ovids Metamorphoses, also the source of
  Pyramus and Thisby, and all Shakespeares
  classical myths. He also wrote a poem called The
  Art of Love, which said idleness was necessary,
  leave town on her birthday to save expenses,
  offer her a soft pillow at the games, and girls,
  do not let the goats graze under your arms.

19

• Berninis Daphne and Apollo
• Villa dEste, Rome

20
Plots join

• Interfering Oberon sees the need for the love
  juice to make Demetrius love Helena.
• Oberon gives the job to Puck, while he heads for
  a bank where the wild thyme grows (flowers,
  party time pun?) to find Titania and juice her.
• (note that the love potion can be use for good or
  ill).

21
2.1 Action Statement

• Perhaps blinded by his own need for
  vengeance--his dream of controlling his wife
  Titania--but also something of a do-gooder and so
  not wholly unredeemed, Oberon trusts Puck
  (mistakenly, as it turns out), the prankster, to
  administer properly the potent love potion.

22
2.2 Fairies

• Titania, sleepy, asks the fairies to sing for
  her, and their lullaby raises the horrors of
  insects so deadly to tiny flower fairies
• Shakespeare shrunk the fairies, who were
  traditionally supernatural, lusty beings like
  Oberon and Titania Walt Disney is the result.)

23
2.2 More adventures at the bank of the wild thyme

• Oberon leaves after completing his task.
• Weary Hermia and Lysander sleep apart, appalling
  Puck, who figures Lysander must be the one who
  needs the love juice (this lack-love, 83).
• Enter Helena and Demetrius. He leaves she stays.
• Lysander, juiced, wakes, sees Helena, proclaims
  he will run through fire for her, and chasing
  Helena, deserts Hermia (the moral action?).

24
Some Shakespeare Vocabulary

• blows means blooms (where the wild thyme blows)
• owe means owns
• fond always means foolish

25
More 2.2

• Well, Demetrius cant help it, so its not really
  an action following a decision.
• After Lysander leaves, Hermia wakes, having
  dreamed of a serpent--obviously that rat (rather,
  snake) Lysander, who deserted her, and chases
  after Lysander, afraid to stay alone.
• Her action parallels Helenas in 1.1, sort of
  chasing a dream, or a man.

26
3.1

• Puck turns Bottom into an ass (as if he wasnt
  one already)
• Bottom, also afraid to be alone (like Hermia),
  sings to dispel fear (117).
• Titania wakes and is enchanted by his song
  (recall the magic Egeus worried about).

27
3.1 Bottom among the fairies

• Bottom turns out to be a great guy, perfectly at
  home in any company he shakes hands with the
  little fairies.
• Titania proves to be a true dream for Bottom, a
  despiser of chastity (190).
• Action Titania orders her fairies to keep Bottom
  silent (reversing roles, since men usually wanted
  women silent).

28
3.2 Chasing around the forest

• Oberon praises Puck for making the thing Titania
  must love an ass-headed actor trying to play
  Pyramus (35).
• Hermia rejects Demetrius, who lies down to sleep.
  gets juiced, and wakes to fall for Helen,
  goddess, nymph, perfect, divine (137).
• Helena thinks hes making fun of her.
• Lysander and Demetrius bicker over her and
  retreat for a duel (249-255)
• Hermia thinks Helena insults her shortness
  (puppet line 289).
• Oberon stirs up the chase (360), even telling
  Robin they are spirits that dont have to quit at
  dawn (388), so on it goes..

29
3.2

• Puck ends the pursuit by anointing Lysanders
  eyes--not a moral action, since thats his job.
• Puck moralizes, that he is restoring order
  harmony, the theme of comedy,

30
4.1 Out Hunting

• Oberon restores Titania and Bottom after he gets
  what he wants, before Theseus, enters to boast
  about the music of my hounds (105), which he
  admits is a musical confusion (109).
• Hippolyta says she has seen better hounds (the
  worst insult), those of Hercules (111), putting
  Theseus on the defensive (My hounds are bred of
  the Spartan kind 118, with big ears and
  dewlaps), but the argument dwindles and is set
  aside (182) when they stumble across the lovers.
• Like a comedy, where harmony emerges despite the
  ridiculous, Theseus hears music in the discordant
  howling of the hounds, tuned like bells, each
  under each. The musical baying of the hounds is
  the Central image for the whole play.

31
Bottoms Dream

• When the court party leaves, Bottom wakes up.
• He has glimpsed the other world, but as in
  Platos allegory of the cave, how can he explain
  it to anyone? Also a vague overtone of seeing
  through a glass darkly, or Corinthians 2-9-10
  the eye hath not seen
• The actors are bewailing Bottoms death or
  translation when he enters with joy, the theme of
  the play Where are these lads, where are these
  hearts? (24).
• (Shakespeare likes to add rebirth after death to
  heighten the joy of his comedies, along with lots
  of harmony in the form of dance and music)

32
5.1

• Rationale Theseus tries to explain the lovers
  story (3-22, lovers are like madmen or poets,
  famous speech read it carefully), but Hippolyta
  insists on truth, since their stories dont
  contradict.
• The play of Pyramus and Thisby is a comic
  tragedy, showing that art less important than
  mirth.
• The fairies bless the house.
• Note the sequencing, the varying moods of the
  long fifth act hilarious, touching, feel good,
  does your heart good. No source for this plot
  Shakespeare invented it. Its all show biz.

33
Genre

• Tragedy is a dramatic form that shows happens
  when
• 1) a virtue becomes a vice
• 2) civilization falls apart
• Comedy is about the establishment of social
  harmony.
• Both are dramatic terms of art thus tragedy is
  not the same as horrible and comedies can be
  bittersweet as well as funny.

34
Comedy

• From Shakespeare Script, Stage, Screen, pp.
  73-75
• Impossible to define
• Definite kinds, low to high
• Reformation of a (ridiculous) character
• Holiday spirit
• Ritual element (marriage)
• Comic diction

35
Ritual

• Drama is not life, but ritual.
• Thus Shakespeare ends comedies (and romances) in
  weddings as a sign, not a proof, of social
  stability 3 weddings in MSND 2 in Much Ado
• (What happens after, who knows? Cf. the marital
  problems of Oberon and Titania but you need
  hope.
• Thus in tragedies, people tend to die (but not
  necessarily).

36
End of Monty Python and the Meaning of Life

• Sense of moral uplift for vile humans
• Montage of death
• Dinner party as image of social communion
• Outsider/scapegoat to remove evil
• Hint of heaven
• Rebirth after death
• Music and harmony
• Message be kind to others