| Theatre Companies in the 17th century | each company had a patron, all actors were men, typically 12-14 |
| Lord Chamberlain’s Men | 1594 – Shakespeare became a full time member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men |
| 17th century audience | 2500-3000 people |
| Written | 1595-1596 |
| Published in Folio | 1623 |
| AMND described as a | play without a source |
| Sources of AMND | North’s translation of Plutarch’s life of Theseus, Theseus and the Minotaur myth, Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pyramus and Thisbe, King Midas |
| Sources Reference | Theseus’ Shadows in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Peter Holland |
| Quote Peter Holland – forest | Implication that the forest…is a world freed from conventional social patterns of sexual and gender restraint in contrast to the forest’s normal identification with the chaste world of Diana and hunting |
| Quote Peter Holland – maze | The journey through the wood in AMND leads the lovers through a maze and then out again…they are made to take false paths…until the true pattern can be found and reinforced…gives the audience a superior and secure perspective |
| Quote Peter Holland – theseus and the minotaur | the only half man half animal the play can offer at the centre of the maze is half-ass, not half-bull: Bottom |
| Ovid’s Metamorphoses | magical transformations |
| King Midas | grows ears of a donkey |
| Apuleis – The Golden Ass | accidentally transformed into an ass while trying to perfect a spell |
| Minotaur symbolism | repeatedly defined as an emblem of lust |
| Carnivalesque examples in AMND | athenian tradesmen, grotesque union of titania and bottom and concluding performance of pyramus and thisbe |
| carnivalesque in AMND | temporary inversion of social, gendered, bodily, sexual and even generic norms = both liberate and yolk together unlikely pairs in this play but the effect is fleeting and all work to a more socially acceptable normative conclusion in the form of heterosexual comic union and marriage |
| traditional comic pattern | movement of conflict into harmony |
| May time | time of sexual liberation |
| C.L. Barber – holiday | The holiday occasion was a time to abandon the control of the city and civil order and enter the realm of nature. |
| C.L. Barber – woods | The woods are a place of change, fluidity, misrule and power of a different order entirely |
| Puck | main instrument of sexual union between lovers, only character not to be paired off – does not change himself but is the agent of all sexual change and energy |
| Shakespeare’s combo of folk and fairytale | appropriated the cult of Queen Elizabeth 1st |
| Queen Elizabeth 1st – reign | 1558-1603 |
| Queen Elizabeth 1st | famous for her chastity = virgin queen, suggested to have been present at one of first performances of amnd |
| Queen Elizabeth 1st – iconography | Astrea – virgin goddess, virgin Mary, Cynthia/phoebe – moon goddess, Diana – hunting/chastity goddess |
| Macrobius – 5th century – book about interpretation of dreams | predictive dreams, non-predictive dreams and enigmatic dreams |
| Predictive dreams | prophetic = visio or revelatory = oraculum |
| Non-predictive dreams | apparitions = visum and nightmares = insomnium |
| Enigmatic dreams | somnium – ‘conceals with strange shapes and veils with ambiguity the true meaning of the information being offered’ |
| Fairy verse structure | catalectic trochaic tetrameter – suggestive of their diminutive size |
| Most of play verse structure | blank verse = regular iambic pentameter – humans, usually reserved for higher characters |
| Lovers speaking passionately about love – verse structure = | rhymed verse and couplets |
| Mechanicals/athenian tradesman verse structure | prose |
| Bottom as Pyramus verse structure | adopts idiom and style of higher characters = iambic pentameter, but turns it into ballad meter – shakespeare mocking translations of the period |
| Doubling – Shakespeare | often had an actor playing more than one role to enables him to intensify the atmosphere of his plays and make connections/contrasts between scenes/storylines |
| Doubling – AMND | Athenian court of Theseus and Hippolyta doubled as Oberon and Titania, Philostrate doubled with Puck, faires doubled with tradesmen |
| doubling = modern ideas about dreams | fairy world = unconscious of athens where the repressed anger of theseus’ domination over Hippolyta breaks out into a quarrel between Oberon and Titania and where stifling patriarchy (Egeus) swept aside for sexual freedom |
| doubling = dark side of romantic desire | dark side of romantic desire is revealed to be disturbingly carnal = dream scape of woods, lovers swapping, coupling of titania and bottom |
| Jan Knott – marriages | The tragic outcome of these performed lovers hint at the darker associations of sex and death, the unacknowledged or suppressed dream unconscious of romantic comedy |
| locus | back of stage where higher characters are |
| platea | part of the stage close to audience – power struggle |
| Jacques Derrida | theory of deconstruction – western philosophers have thought in oppositional pairs (binary opposites) e.g. positive vs negative, mind vs body, masculine vs feminine |
| Theory of Deconstruction | 1. identify hierarchical ranking of binary opp 2. reverse 3. destabilise and displace e.g. man women = gender itself = deconstructed – 1st element already contains qualities associated with 2nd/neither has a fixed meaning |
| AMND – binary opps/theory of deconstruction | trying to force hermia into marrying demetrius in city, faries have similar way of executing these ideas by forcing demetrius to fall in love with helena and bottom blurs lines |
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
August 1, 2019