AMND Critics and Interpretations (A03)

Question 1

Dan Rebellato

Answer 1

From responsibility to the borderlines of respectability.

‘When they return to Athens the relationships have reorganised themselves for the better as it is a comedy’.

Question 2

Alexandra Leggat

Answer 2

Individuality is at particularly low ebb in Shakespearean comedy.

Question 3

Samuel Pepys

Answer 3

The most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life (1662)

Question 4

Susan Snyder

Answer 4

Comedy, beginning in turmoil but ending in harmony, celebrates life.

Question 5

John Morreall

Answer 5

In the comic vision…authority and tradition are threatened and tested rather than blindly accepted…Comedy goes out of its way to expose authority figures for their pretences.

Question 6

Erasmus

Answer 6

Fool are the only plain honest men who speak truth.

Question 7

Langley

Answer 7

Do we care or do we accept that what a comedy wants you to do is accept your social identity?
The comedy brings you together and gives you an identity through coupling not through isolation.

Question 8

Dan Rebellato on the forest

Answer 8

The forest is a magical place - when they get there all of the rigid relationships set up in the first act become loosened. They are physically transformed and transformed in their relationships.

Question 9

Montrose

Answer 9

Figuration of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture’: I explore this dialectic within a specifically Elizabethan context of cultural production: the interplay between representations of gender and power in a stratified society in which authority is everywhere, that is, except at the top

Question 10

Freud

Answer 10

A joke is a metaphorical mask behind which lurk aggressive or obscene thoughts.

Question 11

Langley - social roles

Answer 11

I often get the sensation that people are disappointed by the end of Shakespearean comedies as it seems people retreat into social roles, they agree to just fit in.

Question 12

Jonathan Dollimore

Answer 12

Do these plays reinforce the dominant order or do they interrogate it to the point of subversion?

Question 13

BBC RSC Live TV Production (interpretation)

Answer 13

The scene where Bottom and Titania meet is played, Bottom has the outfit of a bricklayer and an East London accent, where Titania is played by Judie Dench.

Question 14

Hoffman Film Production (Interpretation)

Answer 14

The film sticks to the script - the fairies are dressed very fairy-like, Puck with horns etc.

Question 15

Classical Comics Graphic Novel version of the play (interpretation)

Answer 15

Puck is more childlike is a satyr, artform is very colourful.

Question 16

2016 Emma Rice Production at the Globe Theatre

Answer 16

Titania, Hippolyta, Theseus and Oberon are played by the same two people, Helena was changed to a man named ‘Helenus’, there was song and dance etc.