NOTES: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
1) Explain how this play is a perfect example of dramatic Comedy.2) Identify and comment on Shakespeare's use of traditional comic devices such as mistaken identity, etc.
3) There are four plots and four sets of characters all interwoven together. How did the Video specifically characterize and distinguish these 4 groups in costume, language and action.
4) What themes are specific to each group?
5) What themes do all four groups share?
6) How does the theme of love link all four groups?
7) Friendship is a secondary theme in the play. Identify the friendships. How does friendship differ from a love relationship?
8) Bottom's "most rare vision" (If you have the text, Act IV, sacene 1, line 205-220) -- when he awakens without the ass' head -- is said to contain the central paradox of the play. Carefully interpret "Bottom's Dream" -- Kevin's Kline's speech after he returns from Titania's Bower of Bliss.
9) Many characters sleep. Several dream. What is the connection between saleeping, dreaming and loving?
10) What image of an Ideal Marriage does the play present in the "union" of Titania and Bottom?
11) In the union of Theseus and Hippolytia?
12) Peter Quince and his fellow laborers perform the play "Pyramus and Thisbee." Shakespeare writes "Midsummer." Shakespeare succeeds in creating a meaningful illusion while Peter Quince fails. Why? What does the play suggest about what is necessary to create a meaningful illusion? What concepts about the theater do Quince and his fellow fail to comprehend?
13) Trace the plot from the real world to "fairyland" and back to the real world. What advantages does this plot have thematically?
14) In the comic mode the real world is made to seem hypocritical and intolerant so that the resolution of the play is able to show an improved social order. How is the court of Theseus improved at the end of Midsummer?
15) Show how Theseus and Hippolyta represent Reason while Titania and Oberson represent Fantrasy?
16) Show how the four lovers represent passion while the mechanicals represent instinct.
17) Explain how the play charmingly shows love to be both rational and irrational, nonsense and common sense?
18) Puck is the most aware (omniscient) and Bottom the least aware. Allign the other characters between these two extremes to reveal the very "ordered" and hierarchical world of Elizabethan cosmology.
19) In what way are Bottom and his pals superior to those at Court?
20) Since the play is from a Christian culture, show how allegorically it can be viewed in the context of the Fall and the Redemption. (A snake is alluded to several times). An allegory tells one story on one level but is really the re-telling of another, older and more familiar one -- usually mythic or religious.
21) Compare and Contrast Helena and Hermia.
22) What do "the lunatic, the lover and the poet" have in common? (Act 5, scene 1)
23) Comment on the central paradox of the play -- that society must impose order (reason) on an emotion (love) that is fundamentally irrational.
24) How does the tragic tale of love in "Pyramus and Thisby" connect with the comic tale of love in the forest.
25) As in all great drama, the play has wondeful thematic contrasts. Show how the play contrasts country life in the forest with sophisticated city life at court. Show how the play contrasts the upper classes with the lower working classes
26 - 27) In the video comment on the casting of the characters, especially Steven Tucci as Puck and Kevin Kline as Bottom. Did the physicality of these characters meet with your expectations of what they should look and act like? How were these two roles re-interpreted for this production?
Note: Two people may respond to this question.28 - 29) Comment on the setting of the play. Shakespeare's original is the city of Athens in ancient Greece and a forest nearby. The video places the play in the Italien countryside in 1880??? What worked? What didn't? Don't overlook costume and props.
Note: Two people may respond to this question.30) How does the play remind us of the nature and the necessity of play-acting in our daily lives?