A Midsummer Night's Dream Critics Flashcards
What was Regina Buccola’s feminist view on the play?
“the play sympathies with rebellious women,”
How does Ryan note on parallels in the play?
“the Athenian scenes frame the scenes of erotic mayhem in the woods
How does Hopkins note on marriage within the play?
“single or multiple marriages provide a sense of comic closure,”
How does Kriegar note on the fact the play is a conservative genre?
“The lovers flee Athens to win autonomy, but their actions remain systematic and codified,”
What is Dent’s comment on love?
“The origin of love never lies in reason,”
How does Garber comment on love?
“AMND is throughout a celebration of the irrationality of love, not a criticism of the failure of reason,”
How did Laroque comment on the woods in the play?
“[The Greenworld is] a place of escape from the constraints of the law and everyday life,”
How does Denise Waterman: BBC online news magazine compares Bottom to Miranda?
“Bottom is silly and bossy but ultimately very lovable. He makes a fool if himself but his stupidity is endearing, innocent and never malicious.”
How does Fender comment on metatheatre in play?
“The mechanical’s performance of Pyramus and Thisbe is a parody of the lovers,”
How does Synder comment on the conservative genre?
“Shakespeare’s women on top speciality has its own relevance in the comic mode, which rejoices like the seasonal festivals that animate it in temporary placing servants over masters and women over men, dislocating the hierarchies sanctioned but it’s society only to reassert them at the end of the play,”
What was Kerr’ comments on marriage?
“To be comic, the ending must forcefully call into question the issues of happiness and forever after
How did Carlson comment on the conservative genre?
“Women are allowed their brilliance, freedom and power in comedy only because the genre has built - in safe - guards against such behaviour
How did Gay comment on unacceptable behaviour in the play?
“indecorous,”
What did Frye call the woods?
“Greenworld,”
How did Gay comment on the conservative genre?
“Comedy, while delighting in the events of a briefly topsy turvy world it is ultimately conservative,”
What does Gay believe comedy inhabits?
“a liminal space,”
What is Wilson’s Marxist view on the play?
“sees the play as supporting the ruling class,”
What does Hazlitt say about Puck?
The description of puck as not pitting but laughing at those whom he deceives
What does Maslen say about articulating concern?
The comedy genre itself gave actors a voice and allowed them to articulate their concerns in a time of high political tensions
What is C.L. Barber’s opinion about festive comedies?
He used his knowledge of Elizabethan rituals and festivals to argue that the subversive inversion in the central section of the play draws parallels to the inversion during twelfth night as rules were suspended and normal hierarchies were inverted.
What does Ryan comment about the mechanicals?
The mechanical performance of Pyramus of Thisbe along with the comic romance between Bottom and Titania undermine authority and provide a levelling effect
What does Emma Smith argue within her article Dream, illusion and Doubling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
- Doubling helped the audience to make connections and contrasts especially between characters heightening the fantastical elements
- The fickleness of love in the play implies that lovers are interchangeable
- The play is meant to be for children due to Victorian images which is ironic due to the dark nature of the fairies and the dark undertones in the play
- Parallelism between Hermia and Helena emphasises how both characters are driven by love
What does Garner believe about Theseus?
He remains a lover and leaver of women who, having abducted Hippolyta, naturally sympathises with Demetrius’ desire to force Hermia into marriage
What does Knight believe about Theseus?
He has put his youthful adventures behind hi, and has become the, “calmest and wisest,” of the characters with, “an exquisite and wide love and deep human knowledge.”
What does Holland argue?
Hermia’s dream, of being attacked by a snake while Lysander watches her revealing inner vulnerability as the snake is a symbol of loveless desire triggering a fear of betrayal for the audience as it separates Lysander’s characterisations between sexual and affectionate
What Kreiger argue about the craftsmen?
They are exploited workers who find themselves, “incorporated into the ruiling-class vision of society,”
What does Ryan argue about the mechanicals?
They are natural subversives who upstage and parody the aristocrats
What does Hackett believe about Titania?
She represents the fear of female authority felt during the Elizabethan period because Elizabeth I was ruiling
What does Bevington believe about Puck?
He represents the sinister aspects of the fairyworld. The audience may be amused by his antics but the mortal characters are terrified as he turns their fears against them creating, “truly frightening illusions in the forest
What does Smith believe about Puck?
He serves to present the, “subconscious of the Athenians,”
What does Calderwood believe?
The tripartite structure creates a sense of anamorphism through doubling allowing the audience to criticise the courtly setting
What does Smith believe about a Victorian audience?
They manipulated the play to be about romance and marriage when it was really about sex
What does Ryan believe about Oberon and Titania?
While Oberon is , “cuckolded,” Titania is reduced to a, “tradesman’s concubine,”
What does Montrose argue?
‘Oberon and Theseus work towards a common goal: to restabilise, if only temporarily, the patriarchal ordering of the public and domestic domains’
What does Hunt believe?
‘Until Oberon and Titania’s brawl is settled, the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta - or any of the Athenian lovers - would be ill-advised, simply because the nature disturbed by the fairies’ quarrel remains hostile to happiness.’
What does Forsch suggest about the epilogue?
‘Rather than answering questions about enchantment and demystification, Puck’s epilogue helps us recognise that we have been in a psychologucal place where such answers are irrelevant.’
What does RF Miller argue?
‘The world of the stage bears a significant resemblance to the world of the fairies. Both define a mode of existence separate from but interacting with quotidian existence; both challenge an outsider either to rejection or to a tentative understanding of his scpetical instincts.’
What does Stott believe?
Comic characterisation is usually subordinate to the demands of the plot, and therefore more effectively realised with stereotypes and one dimensional characters than anything approaching the realistic portrayal of human emotions. I…] Accordingly, we see a seemingly endless parade of characters who are utterly dominated by a single prevalent characteristic.
