Midterm

Question 1

What are the conventions of a shakespearean comedy?

Answer 1

Features “high” and “low” characters
Begins with a conflict—at the level both of the individual person and the community they
belong to—that is resolved somewhat satisfactorily or happily by the end of the play
 Moves from disorder to harmonious order
Focuses on the formation of a couple (or multiple couples)

Question 2

What is scene?

Answer 2

Formal unit of theatrical drama

Takes place in one location

In Shakespearean drama, one scene ends and another begins when the action shifts to a new location, OR when all the characters in a scene exit the stage, and a different character or set of characters take their place

Question 3

What is Barbados?

Answer 3

Island country in West Indies
History of colonization:
 Spain (late 15th-early 16th century)
 Portugal (1532-1620)
 England (from 1625)
 Became a Commonwealth realm in 1966, and republic within the Commonwealth in 2021

Question 4

What is the information for a carribbean dream?

Answer 4

2017, romantic comedy
 Winner of several awards: Best Drama at the National Film Awards UK, Best International Feature at the Charlotte Black Film Festival, best UK Feature at the London Independent Film Festival

directed and written by Shakirah Bourne

cast includes Barbadian and English actors

set on Barbados, present day, during annual Caribbean Festival/ Crop Over

 harvest festival that occurs in early August

 began in 1687

 originally sponsored by slaveowners, now (since 1974) organized by the Barbados
Tourist Board

Question 5

Who is Shakirah Bourne?

Answer 5

Born and grew up in Barbados
 Graduated from University of the West Indies
(Barbados) in 2007
 author (YA fiction and non-fiction, memoir, stage
plays, screenplays), director, professor

Question 6

What is Shakespeare suggesting by this title? What does Midsummer have in common
with a dream?

Answer 6

suggests a fantastical, enchanting world where reality and illusion blur, much like the surreal and unpredictable nature of a dream. Both midsummer and dreams are times of magic and transformation, where boundaries fade, and love and desires can be fleeting and irrational.

Question 7

What is the analogy between romantic love and a play?

Answer 7

both depend on the power of the imagination/ fantasy to make something out of “nothing”
 both are ways in which ordinary reality becomes “enchanted”
 alternately both absurd/ ridiculous and powerful
 both involve dynamics of power

Question 8

What is the comedic resolution of conflict?

Answer 8

Titania gives the “changeling child”—the Indian boy—to Oberon, and Oberon gives her
the antidote to the nectar (4.1.58-64, p. 125)
Robin removes the ass-head from Bottom, and restores his human head to him (4.1.86, p.
127)
 Bottom returns to his friends, and they get to perform their play for Theseus and Hippolyta (Act 5)
The love triangles involving the Athenian youth are sorted into two couples (4.1.148-209,
p. 131-35)
Egeus’s “consent” and the Athenian law are overruled by Theseus’s will (4.1.186, p. 133)

Question 9

What is the green world?

Answer 9

A space of relative freedom from the laws and social norms that govern the ‘normal’ social world of a play, to which characters
flee for a brief period to work out the conflicts of the normal world, before eventually returning—somehow transformed—to the latter. The green world is often aligned with nature rather
than civilization.

Question 10

What is athenian court associated with

Answer 10

Law
 Reason
 Civilization
 Parental will
 Rationality
 Daytime

Question 11

What is the forrest outside Athens associated with

Answer 11

Liberty
 Imagination/ Fantasy
 Nature
 Desire
 Magic/ the supernatural
 Night