A Midsummer Night’s

Dream

By William Shakespeare

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• Author · William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream- Key Facts

• Comedy, fantasy, romance, farce

Genres

• 1600

Date of first publication

• written · London, 1594 or 1595

Time and place

Characters

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• Also known as Robin Goodfellow

Puck

• His enchanting, mischievous spirit pervades the atmosphere, and his antics are responsible for many of the complications in the play.

• He is the closest this the play has to a protagonist.

Play’s Protagonist (?)

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• Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Most famous quote:

• I am that merry wanderer of the night.I jest to Oberon and make him smile

Oberon’s Jester

• So, good night unto you all.Give me your hands, if we be friends,And Robin shall restore amends.

He has the last line in the play:

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• Oberon - Oberon is angry with his wife, Titania, because she refuses to give up control of a young Indian prince whom he wants for a knight.

Oberon- The king of the fairies

• And this same progeny of evils comesFrom our debate, from our dissension;We are their parents and original.

• And this same progeny of evils comesFrom our debate, from our dissension;We are their parents and original.

Nature is distraught because Oberon and Titania are fighting

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• Titania resists the attempts of her husband, Oberon, to make a knight of the young Indian prince that she has been given to raise.

Titania - The beautiful queen of the fairies

• She has a quick temper and a fierce loyalty.

Wife of Oberon

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They fight over the child…“And now they never meet in grove or greenBy fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,But they do square (fight)”.

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• At the beginning of the play, he is in love with Hermia.

Lysander - A young man of Athens

• He cannot marry Hermiabecause Egeus, her father, wishes her to wed another man named Demetrius.

Secret Love

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Demetrius - A young man of Athens

• He is now in love with Hermiabut used to be in love with Helena.

Fickle Heart

• He has won the heart of Hermia’s father and therefore, Hermia has no choice but to marry Demetrius or be put to death (or become a nun).

Men rule!

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• A young woman of Athens.

Hermia - Egeus’s daughter

• Hermia is in love with Lysander and is a childhood friend of Helena.

• Hermia must face a horrible choice, either marry Demetrius, her father’s choice, or run away and marry Lysander in secret.

Goes Against her Father

.

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• She is in love with Demetrius.

Helena - A young woman of Athens

• Demetrius and Helena were once betrothed, but when Demetrius met Helena’s friend Hermia

• He fell in love with her and abandoned Helena.

Helena + Demetrius

• She is determined to win him back.

Won’t let him go.

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Egeus - Hermia’s father.

• Egeus has given Demetrius permission to marry Hermia, but Hermia, in love with Lysander, refuses to marry Demetrius.

He brings a complaint against his daughter to Duke Theseus:

Marry him or Die!

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• Theseus was a famous Greek King who was credited with killing the minotaur.

Theseus - The heroic duke of Athens

• Theseus represents power and order throughout the play.

Engaged to Hippolyta.

• He appears only at the beginning and end of the story, removed from the dreamlike events of the forest.

Represents order and royal hierarchy.

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• She is engaged to Theseus. Like Theseus, she symbolizes order.

Hippolyta - The legendary queen of the Amazons

• She was once the proud queen of the Amazons, a warrior race of women, and

Queen of the Amazons

• After he beat her in battle, he won her heart, and they will soon be married.

Theseus won her in battle

.

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• He is chosen to play Pyramus in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration.

Nick Bottom - The overconfident weaver

• Bottom is full of advice and self-confidence but frequently makes silly mistakes and misuses language.

He is turned into a half-man – half-donkey.

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• Titiana is tricked by a love potion into loving a drastically changed, Bottom!

Magical Forces at work

•The Athenian workman want to put on a play called Pyramus and Thisbe

The play within a play.

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• He is the leader of the craftsmen’s attempt to put on a play for Theseus’s marriage celebration.

Peter Quince - A carpenter.

• Quince is often shoved aside by the abundantly confident Bottom. During the craftsmen’s play, Quince plays the Prologue.

Plays second fiddle to Bottom.

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• He is chosen to play Thisbe in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration.

Francis Flute - The bellows-mender

• Forced to play a young girl in love, the bearded craftsman determines to speak his lines in a high, squeaky voice.

No women allowed on stage !

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• He is chosen to play Thisbe’s mother in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration

Robin Starveling -The tailor

• He ends up playing the part of Moonshine.

The Man in the Moon

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• He is chosen to play Pyramus’s father in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration.

Tom Snout - The tinker

• However, he ends up playing the part of Wall, dividing the two lovers.

Just another brick in the wall…

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• He is chosen to play the lion in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration.

Snug - The joiner.

• Snug worries that his roaring will frighten the ladies in the audience.

Kind-hearted lion.

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Philostrate - Theseus’s Master of Ceremonies

• He is responsible for organizing the entertainment for the duke’s marriage celebration.

• He advises Theseus not hear the craftsman’s play because he thinks it is awful.

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• The four fairies are ordered by Titania to attend to Bottom after she falls in love with him.

Mote

• ―I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb. If I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you.‖

Cobweb

• ―I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Mustardseed.‖

Mustardseed

• Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more acquaintance too.

Peaseblossom

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• Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Symbols

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• The Duke and the Duchess, Theseus and Hippolyta, appear in the daylight at both the beginning and the end of the play’s main action.

Theseus and Hippolyta

• They disappear, in the middle of Act I, and don’t reappear until Act IV, as the sun is coming up to end the magical night in the forest.

• Shakespeare uses Theseus and Hippolyta, the ruler of Athens and his warrior bride, to represent order and stability, to contrast with the uncertainty, instability, and darkness of most of the play.

Royal Bookends

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• The love potion is made from the juice of a flower that was struck with one of Cupid’s misfired arrows; it is used by the fairies to wreak romantic havoc throughout the play.

The Love Potion

• The love potion becomes a symbol of the unreasoning, fickle, erratic, and undeniably powerful nature of love, which can lead to inexplicable and bizarre behavior and cannot be resisted.

The Power of Love

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• The play-within-a-play that takes up most

• of Act V is used to represent many of the important ideas and themes of the main plot.

The Craftsmen’s Play

• Because the craftsmen are such bumbling actors, their performance satirizes the melodramatic Athenian lovers and gives the play a purely joyful, comedic ending.

Bumbling Actors

• The craftsmen’s play is a kind of symbol for A Midsummer Night’s Dream itself: a story involving powerful emotions that is made hilarious by its comical presentation.

Comedy at its best.

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• Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts,and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Motifs

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• The idea of contrast is the basic building block of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The entire play is constructed around groups of opposites and doubles.

Contrasting Ideas

• Every scene represents a contrast. Helena is tall, Hermia is short; Puck plays pranks, Bottom is the victim of pranks; Titania is beautiful, Bottom is grotesque.

Like night and day.

• Like Demetrius's whipped spaniel, Helena grows fonder from mistreatment.

Love and Hate

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• Theseus woos Hippoyta "with his sword". On opposite sides in battle, they fall in love. Enemies become friends (the mismatched lovers, the families of Pyramis and Thisbe.)

More Contrasts

• Helena's affection for Demetrius seems to make him hate her. Hermia's hatred seems to make him love her.

Love and Hate

• In the dream world of the forest, deer chase tigers as Helena pursues Demetrius.

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•Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Themes

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• ―The course of true love never did run smooth,‖ comments Lysander, articulating one of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s most important themes—that of the difficulty of love (I.i.134).

The Difficulties of

• The tone of the play is so lighthearted that the audience never doubts that things will end happily, and it is therefore free to enjoy the comedy without being caught up in the tension of an uncertain outcome.

It all works out in the end.

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• The fairies’ magic, which brings about many of the bizarre and hilarious situations in the play, is another part of the fantastic atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Magic

• Shakespeare uses magic both to portray the almost supernatural power of love (symbolized by the love potion) and to create a surreal world.

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• As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Nature of Dreams

• The theme of dreaming recurs when characters attempt to explain the strange events of one night in the forest: ―I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what / dream it was.

• Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound this dream,‖ says Bottom the morning after the events of the play.

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• ...Are you sureThat we are awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream.

Dreaming…

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• All three of the major plot elements come together in a clearing in the forest.

Setting – The Clearing in the Forest

• The Craftsman use the clearing as a place to practice their play.

• The lovers (Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius) use the clearing as a meeting place.

• The Fairies use the clearing to perform ancient ceremonies

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...where often you and I

Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to

lie,

Emptying our bosoms of their counsel

sweet

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THE END

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