A Midsummer Night

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A Midsummer Nights Dream

• An Introduction

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What does the title of the play mean?

• Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Nights Dream
  during the early days of his career.
• This play focuses on the comical misadventures of
  two pairs of lovers that wander around in the
  woods at night.
• During the night they fall under the power of
  sprites (fairies, elves, nymphs, leprechauns)
• To the theatre goers in Shakespeares time the
  title held a clue.
• The clue was that it may possibly be about
  romance, magic, and madness.
• A Midsummer Night was considered as one of the
  nights of the year when sprites were very
  powerful.
• People in Shakespeares time believed that
  flowers gathered on a midsummers night could
  work magic, and was a time when people dreamt of
  their true love

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• To the theatre goers in Shakespeares time the
  title held a clue.
• The clue was that it may possibly be about
  romance, magic, and madness.
• A Midsummer Night was considered as one of the
  nights of the year when sprites were very
  powerful.
• People in Shakespeares time believed that
  flowers gathered on a midsummers night could
  work magic, and was a time when people dreamt of
  their true love

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Comedies

• Shakespeare based his comedic plays on classical
  Greek and Roman stories.
• A Midsummers Night Dream begins in Athens
  Greece, and quickly moves into the woods, and
  into the English ideal of a midsummers night.

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Questions addressed by Shakespeare

• This play is a story about frustrated love, and
  mistaken identity.
• Shakespeare explored these key questions when
  writing this play
• What is love?
• Why do people fall in love and out of love?

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Time and Place

• Shakespeare wrote during the reign of Queen
  Elizabeth I
• Companies of actors would travel around England
  performing plays

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Facts

• Shakespeare wrote this play and many of his plays
  in blank verse
• Blank verse follows a rhythmic pattern of an
  unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
  syllable. Example
• Four days will quickly steep
• themselves in night
• Four nights will quickly dream
• away the time

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