A Midsummer Nights Dream

1
A Midsummer Nights Dream
2
What is the dream of the title?
Henry Fuseli, Titania Awakening (c. 1785).
3
Richard Dadd, Puck (1841).

• If we shadows have offended, / Think but this,
  and all is mended / That you have but slumbered
  here, / While these visions did appear
  (5.1.414-17).

4
Pyramus and Thisbe

• Play within the play in Act 5.
• Ovids Metamorphoses.
• Tragedy similar to that of Romeo and Juliet.
• Both plays written in the same period.
• Tragedy turned comedy loves labours won.

5
Roots of the Pastoral

• Popularized during Italian renaissance.
• Idealized country life in contrast to values of
  urban aristocracy.
• Developed out of earlier classical precedents,
  including Virgils Eclogues.
• English popularity from late sixteenth century
  first three books of The Fairie Queene printed in
  1590, and all six books printed in 1596 Philip
  Sydneys Arcadia (after the setting in the
  Eclogues) in 1590.

6
The English Pastoral

• Pastoralism a highly idealized mode of existence.
• English landscape transformed during sixteenth
  century from pastoral network of open ranges to
  agricultural plots.
• Austere simplicity of pastoral world incorporated
  in tenants of Christianity.
• God as a shepherd administering to his flock on
  earth.
• Paradise as a green pasture.
• English Protestantism particularly influenced by
  contemporary pastoralism pastor derived from
  the Latin term for shepherd.

7
The Roman Pastoral

• Shares with English pastoral the idealization of
  simpler rural life, beyond mechanisms of courtly,
  urban world.
• Roman pastoral is world without imperial
  expansion.
• Both worlds manifested through support of
  sympathetic benefactor-deities, whether Christian
  or classical.
• Unlike Christian pastoral, Roman pastoral is a
  sexual setting youth confronts sexual
  experience.
• Danger of sexual encounter symbolised by natural
  imagery, wildness.
• Strong element of violence connected to sex.