A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

2. The Historical Particulars • Written: 1595 or early 1596 • First performed: at an aristocratic wedding, possibly that of Elizabeth Carey, the granddaughter of Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain of England, and the patron of Shakespeare’s acting company • Acting Company: Chamberlain’s Men

3. Sources • A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the few Shakespeare plays that came principally from his own imagination. • Other major sources: 1. The Roman comic novel by Apuleius, The Golden Ass in which a man is transformed into an ass. • Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales which provides the setting of the Theseus, Hippolyta, and the Athenian court. • Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the source of the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe.

4. Some Performance Facts • A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most frequently performed of Shakespeare’s plays. • Not everyone loves it. Samuel Pepys attended a performance in 1662 and called it “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.” • A 1900 set of the play featured live rabbits and birds and dense foliage. • It has been the subject of operas by Carl Orff and Benjamin Britten. • A jazz version, Swinging the Dream, was performed by the Benny Goodman sextet with Louis Armstrong as Bottom. • George Balanchine made it into a ballet in 1964. • The play has been made into a movie 8 times and has been seen on TV at least 8 times.

5. The masque was developed during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods in England as a prelude to social dancing. The participants in the play would join the spectators at a ball after the performance. This made the masque a time for flirting and sexual intrigue. The Tradition of the Masque The courtier Robert Dudley dancing with Elizabeth I

6. Elements of the Masque • The masque was an entertainment often performed at aristocratic weddings. • It was allegorical in nature, drawing on stories from classical mythology whose characters represent specific virtues and vices. The setting was often pastoral. • Overall themes are clear and are typically marriage or pastoral contentment. • The Revels we associate with Christmas have their origins in the masque, being private entertainment for a wealthy family. The Mummers play and Morris dancing were featured elements of this kind of masque. • Masques, being associated with the nobility, were expensive to stage. Because of their cost and frivolous nature they were suppressed during the Puritan revolution, but did not reappear with the Restoration as new genres of Restoration comedy took their place.

7. 3 sets of characters; 3 plots • Three distinct sets of characters are involved in three interlinking plots in this tale. • The Athenian court assembled for the wedding of Theseus & Hippolyta. The nobles include two sets of lovers. • The realm of the fairies, led by Oberon and Titiana who are arguing, turning their fairyland topsy turvy and letting loose the mischievous. • The everyday world of human beings represented by a troupe of actors who have ordinary occupations. They mean to play the story of Pyramus & Thisbe, tragic lovers of myth. • All three sets of characters venture into the same woodland. This allows them to interact where normally they would not. Enchantment makes characters fall in love where they shouldn’t or wouldn’t. All ends happily with the characters in right relationships.

8. Theseus, Duke of Athens, good friend of Egeus Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and betrothed of Theseus Egeus, father of Hermia, wants to force Hermia to get married to Demetrius Lysander, beloved of Hermia Hermia, beloved of Lysander Helena, in love with Demetrius Demetrius, in love with Hermia Philostrate, Master of the Revels for Theseus The Athenians Washington Allston, Hermia and Helena 1818

9. Oberon, King of Fairies Titania, Queen of Fairies Puck, a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow, servant to Oberon Titania's fairy servants (her "train"): First Fairy Peaseblossom, fairy Cobweb, fairy Moth (sometimes rendered as 'Mote'), fairy Mustardseed, fairy The Supernaturals William Blake, Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing c. 1786

10. The acting troupe (also known as The Mechanicals): Peter Quince, carpenter, who leads the troupe Nick Bottom, weaver; he plays Pyramus in the troupe's production of "Pyramus and Thisbe," and gets a donkey head put on him by Puck so that Titania will magically fall in love with a monster. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender who plays Thisbe. Robin Starveling, the tailor who plays Moonshine. Tom Snout, the tinker who plays the wall. Snug, the joiner who plays the lion. The Mechanicals Kevin Kline as Bottom in the 1999 film version

11. Major Themes: Love • Love and its difficulties: As Lysander tells Hermia in Act 1, scene 1, "The course of true love never did run smooth.” • The play describes several types of love: mature (Theseus & Hippolyta); immature (the two young couples); and love as a power struggle (Oberon & Titiana). While it may at times be irrational, love has value and it need not have a tragic outcome (like Pyramus & Thisbe). The Renaissance love of the contrast between reason and imagination (or the rational vs the irrational) is at work in this theme. Magic, which manipulates love in this play, is a phenomenon which cannot be understood by the rational mind, and so it belongs to the world of the fairies. In the end the supernatural beings come to bless the rational beings, restoring balance and harmony to both the court and to the lovers they have manipulated. • Shakespeare is concerned in this play with the way that our emotions alter our perceptions. Like magic, love has the power to transform our lives for the better, but it also has the power to drive humans to foolishness, lust, and violence. Love makes humans blind to reality while engaging their imagination.

12. Theme: Dreams • One of the main tensions in the play is that between dream and reality. Theseus is able to use his imagination and appreciate the dreaming and the lunacy. Hippolyta only sees what is rational and constant. Because Shakespeare uses the imaginary, and freely invokes the dream state, the audience sees that what he has done is to make the unreal real. • A Midsummer Night’s Dream might as well be entitled A Midsummer Night’s Madness, for the characters who enter the enchanted wood are caught up in a kind of madness that makes them lose their balance. In the end the balance is restored and the characters who have been confused about their partners are again in right relationship. • During dreaming time loses its sequential, logical flow and things happen without explanation. Many of the characters have lines that talk about dreams and the magic that seems to have happened in their dreams. At the end Puck suggests to the audience that if they don’t like the play, they can think of it as just a dream.

13. The Play Within the Play • Act V, scene 1 is largely a play-within-a-play. The plot of this internal play is the myth of Pyramus & Thisbe, a couple whose parents disapprove of their romance. This runs parallel to the difficulties of Hermia & Lysander. The story of Pyramus & Thisbe ends tragically (like Romeo & Juliet) for in the darkness Pyramus mistakenly thinks that Thisbe has been killed by a lion. The mistaken notions of the Athenian lovers in the main plot are not much different. • So the craftsmen’s play is a symbolic telling of the play as a whole. The fact that it is poorly acted doesn’t make it any less meaningful to the audience (as Theseus remarks). Its comic qualities make it a satire on romantic confusion rather than a Greek tragedy. Its importance is in bringing together the rational, concrete elements of the play with the irrational, imaginative ones. Harmony can be restored to the court, the wood, and all the ordinary places in between.

14. Memorable Lines • The course of true love never did run smooth.” (Lysander) 1. 1.134 • "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind." (Helena) 1.1.234 • “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;” (Oberon) 2.1.249 • "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"   (Puck) 3.2.115 • “Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill; The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.” (Puck) 3.2.461 • “My Oberon! what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.” (Titiana) 4.1.76 • “The lunatic, the lover and the poet  Are of imagination all compact:” (Theseus) 5.1.7