| Meaning behind title | longest day of the year is the summer solstice. Elizabethans would have heard this title and thought “party time!”—in Shakespeare’s day, Midsummer’s Eve was all about celebrating fertility (not just the successful planting and harvesting of crops, but also the kind of fertility associated with dating and marriage). It was an excuse to party outdoors and the holiday involved dancing, drinking, and collecting medicinal herbs. Midsummer’s Eve was also supposed to be a time of mystery and magic, when spirits ran around causing mischief and teenage girls had dreams about the guys they’d eventually fall in love with and marry. |
| what makes this and two other plays unique | the play-within-the-play of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, parallels that of Romeo and Juliet. Critics have wondered if Romeo and Juliet is a serious reinterpretation of the other play, or just the opposite: Perhaps Shakespeare is mocking his tragic love story through the burlesque of “Pyramus and Thisbe.” |
| Pyramus and Thisbe | Pyramus and Thisbe has feuding families, forbidden love, and a tragic endingfunctions as a parody of bad theater and reminds us that being a stage actor is craft that requires intellect and its own set of skills.the group performing the play comically bumbled their way through what’s supposed to be a classic tragedy. |
| topic of love | characters fall erratically in and out of love as they chase each other around the woods, and makes a Fairy Queen fall in love with a literal jackass. By literalizing the familiar cliché that “the course of true love never did run smooth,” Shakespeare suggests that love really is an obstacle course that turns us all into madmen. Or in the immortal words of Pat Benatar: Love is a battlefield. |
| Puck (a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow) | household sprite who, depending on his mood, plays annoying tricks on people or helps them out with their chores.He is sent by Oberon to find the flower “love-in-idleness” and is told to apply its juice to the eyes of Demetrius to make him fall in love with Helena. He mistakenly administers the juice to Lysander, who loves Hermia, thus producing that both men fall in love with the same woman, Helena.Puck is good-hearted, but capable of cruel tricks. often portrayed as somewhat bizarre looking. some call Puck a “hobgoblin” less glamorous.Puck’s function in the play is crucial, although he appears to be a kind of secondary character in some way, all the plots develop around him. Puck represents the difficulties of love, the power of magic, the nature of dreams and the relationships between fantasy and reality. |
| Puck’s relationship to others | all the dialogues in which Puck is present deal with Oberon. Puck’s relationship and interaction with other characters is practically nonexistent, but at the same time, his actions are essential for the development of the relationship between the other characters.He takes advantage of one of humankind’s weakness, love. without his mistakes, the plot is lost and senseless. without his mischief, the play would not be a comedy. Puck is the one who ties and unties, deforms and creates as he pleases. And although he has created all that chaos, at the end he resolves his mistakes by restoring the love balance in the two couples of lovers |
| The Mechanicals. | These are the working-class guys slated to perform the play Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus’s wedding entertainment. bumbling craftsmen try to be serious actorsTheir production is crude and, for the most part, badly done until the final monologues of Nick Bottom, as Pyramus and Francis Flute, as Thisbe. |
| Twists and turn for the lovers | Theseus and Hippolyta love each otherLysander loves Hermia and she loves himHelena loves Demetrious and he likes HermiaTitania and Oberon love each otherLysander falls in love with HelenaTitania falls in love with Bottom and back to OberonIn the end, all couples end up togetherLysander and Hermia marryTheseus and Hippolyta marryTitania and Oberon get back togetherDemetrius and Helena get married |
| Bottom | his very name lets us know we won’t be taking him very seriouslyhead is transformed (by Puck) into that of an “ass” (donkey), making him the butt of the play’s biggest jokeTitania been charmed with Oberon’s love juice and has a romantic relationship with an “ass.” a relationship between a commoner and a royal, which would have been viewed as “monstrous.”Bottom becomes a kind of replacement for Titania’s foster child, the little “changeling” boy Oberon has taken from her.Bottom, a weaver by trade, manages to “weave” or fuse together the fairy realm and the human worlds of the tradesmen and nobility. (In the same way, Puck weaves these worlds together by traveling back and forth between the two.) |
| Bottom’s strengths and weaknesses | He is confident in his ability to play any, even all, roles in “Pyramus and Thisbe.”audience realizes, this confidence is misplaced, and Bottom is little more than a swaggering fool — indeed, an ass, as Puck’s prank makes apparent. Bottom continually draws his fellow players’ attention back to the question of the audience’s gullibilityBottom believes his audience will be equally susceptible to the powers of artThrough him, Shakespeare implicitly validates the vision of the artist. |
| Theme of Transformation | Clueless that he’s been transformed, Puck declares that Bottom’s friends have run away from him in fear because they’re trying to “make an ass” out of him.Puck embodies the play’s theme of “Transformation.” He famously transforms Bottom’s head into that of a donkey, and he’s also fond of shape-shifting himsel |
| Themes of play | Love – recurring theme of the play: How do love and reason relate? Should love be based on reason or on fantasy? love and its complicationsTheme of Art and Culture – what make a good playTheme of Gender – men are usually expected to be aggressive, women are expected to remain passive and docile. this isn’t necessarily always the case—especially when you get magical love juice involvedTheme of Versions of Reality – these differing perceptions of reality also extend to the characters’ perspectives.Theme of Foolishness and Folly – In the end, it’s all two sides of the same coin—nothing, not even murder and death, is taken seriously here. Misunderstanding is as central to the play as any other element of plot. And since the play is all about how ridiculous love can be, no one can avoid embarrassing foolishness.Theme 0f Man and Natural World – is an escape for man, but it’s also a reminder of how good man has it in his other homeTheme of Supernatural – Magic is certainly in the eye of the beholder. |
| Perceptions of Reality | Puck sees the mortal world as full of fools, and Theseus is certain fairies aren’t real. In Lysander’s book, if you don’t have to fight for it, it isn’t true love. These differing perspectives are central to the play, revealing that each man envisions his reality according to his circumstances, and that all these different realities can make things pretty darn complicated. |
| Epilogue | Puck closes the play by telling the audience that, if they hate the play, they should just imagine that the whole play was a dream. |
Midsummer Night’s Dream
August 10, 2019