A Midnight Summers Dream Flashcards
A Midsummer Night’s Dream General Info
- Written 1595 (around same time of Romeo and Juliet, both use Pyramus and This be as source)
- also have similar thematics of marriage and relationships
- Tragic subject wiht comic spin
Ovid’s Metamorphoses (MND)
- Inter woven tales in the form of an epic (typically containing some “change”/metamorphosis
- Written by Ovid during reign of Augustus
- Widely read during Shakespeare’s time
- Ideas of change similar in this play
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Play formatting
- Three sets of characters, three sets of lovers and two contrasting settings
-Noble Athenians, Rude Mechanicals, Fairies
MND Themes
- Examines ideas of love, marriage and duty
- Marrying for Love (Forest) vs Marrying for Duty (Athens)
MND Setting Function (Green world)
- Green world of the forest contrasts the high order of the city (natural vs civilized worlds)
MND Pastoral Tradition and Setting Thematics
- idealization of simple/ rural life vs complex and corrupt world of the court
- Forest associated with passion, liberty, magic, night
- Athenian court with reason, law and duty, day
Forest Setting
- Home to the fairies, to mirror Athens (Oberon and Titania vs Theseus and Hypolith)
- Disordered and conflict over the changling child (values vs submission)
Titania and Oberon Conflict
- Marriage putting on strain on female friendships
- Oberon pranks as punishment, to get control of her once again
- degrading Titania through Bottom (lower class and animal like)
- reinforcing tradition values of sexuality, gender relations and class hierarchies
Elizabeth 1 (MND)
- Mythologized as Fairy Queen
- “Married” to subjects
- Titania reflection?
- idea of ambivalence about women in power
Order and Authority (characters)
- Noble Athenians contrasted to rustic tradesmen
- also seen through their language, less educated characters making Malapropisms
Malapropism
the mistaken use of a word for another that it resembles (familiar sounding), comic effect
Audience Contrast (IRL)
- diversity of noble and common also seen in audience (groundings vs balconies)
- audiences could see comic versions of themselves
- positioning of a monarch (watch the monarch watch)
- Athenians distracted by bad acting: Elizabethana audiences similarly noisy and disruptive
Theatre’s purpose (MND Mechanics)
- drawing lessons from the tragic experiences of those on stage
- Mechanics enact process of creating and preforming (badly)
- viewers asked to reflect upon their own interpretive role
Metathreatre
A technique or set of strategies that foregrounds the play’s own theatricality, calling attention to the work of actors/ the interpretive role of the audience
- used to reflect upon aspects of Shakespeare’s theatre
“Bad” Theatre
- Mechanics make tragic play into comedy (literary metamorphosis), Shakespeare does the same more skillfully
- Mismatch of language and meter (shorter ballad 4-6 syllable lines)
- stepping out of character, (lion and moon talking as well)
Groundlings
- area in front of the stage for poor people to pay to watch
Mechanicals VS Shakespeare as playwrites (epilogue)
- Mechanicals struggle with the conventions of drama
- good plays need no apologies, but maybe bad ones do (Mechanicals are shut down, Shakespeares epilogue happens right after)
Play within the play (MND)
- Shakespeare can comment on the role of the theatre/ imagination
- plays as craft
- Dramatic irony: did the Athenians get it?
