MIDSUMMER´S NIGHT´S DREAM

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH II

DIANA LISETH MANIOS ASCENCIO

2011234026

ENRIQUE HOYOS OLIER

UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGÓGICA NACIONAL

FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES

PROGRAMA ESPANOL E INGLES

2015

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………3

2. Genre…………………………………………………………………….. 4

2.1 Subgenre ………………………………………………………………....4

3. Narration…………………………………………………………………. 4

4. Historical background …………………………………………………... 4

5. Plot………………………………………………………………………. 5

6. Order of the Play………………………………………………………… 6

7. Character List ……………………………………………………………. 7

8. Inside Story Time…………………………………………………………..9

9. Historical Time …………………………………………………………….9

10. Analysis ………………………………………………………………. ... 1

10.1.Theoretical Approach ...............................................................................10

10.2 How the Woman is Conceived .................................................................13

10.3 The Role of a Woman in Love……………………………………………15.

11. References ................................................................................................21

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1. INTRODUCTION

Midsummer s Night s Dream by William Shakespeare is a play with a mixture

of charm, enthusiasm and forced love. The play may be considered as a comedy of

manners, which is concerned with the conventional behavior of men and women

under certain social codes. It is a comedy that is going to develop a cozy plot about

love and lack of affection. It mixes the everyday with the mythological; the magical

with unreal, giving rise to the appearance on the scene of the queen of the fairies,

whose confrontation give rise to the seasons and weather changes in the place.

Terrible conflicts between characters that produce astonishment, terror and

compassion are told, the tragic and comic elements are mixed for that reason the

pain interspersed with comic elements blend release tension.

This comedy was written around 1595- 1596 apparently on the

commemoration of wedding of Sir Thomas Berkeley and Elizabeth Carey, in

February 1596. When Shakespeare wrote this play, Elizabeth I was still Queen of

England.

2. GENRE:

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It belongs to the drama as the author gave the floor to the fiction´s characters

to present their conflicts in front of the reader. This is what can be displayed on the

romantic entanglements, love spells and magic that occurs when passing the play

2.1SUBGENRE:

Its theatrical subgenre is comedy, developing friendly conflicts, sometimes

treated with humor, which often has a positive outcome.

3. NARRATION

There is not a narration because; usually in plays characters are saying what

is happening and what they think through their actions like a monologue. On stage,

the narrator disappears and characters are in charge of making known the dialogue

using the language spoken on stage, the characters are distinguishing and play is

decorated.

4. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

At the time when William Shakespeare writes Midsummer-Night's Dream, in

1595, The Queen Elizabeth of England was 62 years old, 37 years in command of

the English empire, she was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Who

gave the fruit to stabilize her reign, the following aspects stand out:

To control almost all adverse to Anglicanism religious groups,

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To establish English colonies in the New World,

To end the war with France,

A confrontation with Spain due to the death of Mary Stuart, which was

specific battle where the Spanish Armada had been defeated by the England

Navy and later, the invasion of the Spanish Armada in the English territory

of Cornwall in the southwest of the English territory.

Also, in this time was produced an unrivaled literary flowering in England.

During this period and into the Jacobean era that followed, the English theatre

reached its highest peaks.

5. PLOT

Hermia, in love with Lysander refuses to marry Demetrius, contradicting the

wish of Egeus, her father. Demetrius, meanwhile, is loved by a friend of Hermia,

Helena, who has leave by Demetrius to marry Hermia. According to Athenian law,

the Duke Theseus gives Hermia four days of time to obey the will of her father, after

a day she has to married, die or go into a cloistered away from that way of her

beloved.

Hermia and Lysander agree to leave Athens and they marry secretly where

Athenian laws are different. They have the plan of finding each other in a forest a

few miles from the city. Hermia reveals the plan to Helena, who informs the plan to

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Demetrius. Demetrius follows Hermia into the forest and Helena continues to follow

Demetrius; so that the four are in the forest.

That night, king and queen of the fairies Oberon and Titania, who inhabit the

forest, have quarreled because of a page. Oberon asks the sprite Puck, to bring him

some magical flower whose juice poured on Titania's eyes while she is sleeping, it

will make her fall in love of the first person or animal that sees when she wakes up.

In the forest, Oberon hears to reproach Demetrius with Helena who walks

following him, for that reason he orders Puck to pour some of that love potion on

Demetrius's eyes when Helena is near to him, with the idea of helping the girl.

Puck taking Lysander as Demetrius puts the juice in Lysander´s eye, and as Helena

is the first person who Lysander sees, he declares her his love, but Helena is irritated,

she thinks that he is bothering her. Oberon notices Puck´s error and he pours the

juice in the eyes of Demetrius, so that now, the two are courting Helena.

The two women fight while men are prepared to fight for Helena. Meanwhile

Oberon has put the juice on the eyelids of Titania, who, upon awakening, found Nick

Bottom with a donkey's head. He was practicing with a company of Athenian

artisans a drama to be represented to celebrate the wedding of Duke Theseus and

Hippolyta the queen, and Puck has put on the donkey's head. Titania falls in love for

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him for its beauty. Later, Oberon feels sorry for Titania, and after recovering the

kidnapped page, he rubs the eyes of his wife with an herb that releases the charm.

Oberon orders Puck to seek out human lovers, he meets while they are

sleeping next to each other, he squeezed the plant on their eyes that undoes the

charm, so when they wake up again they love as before. Theseus and Egeus are

presented; the fugitives are forgiven and couples get married. The drama ends with

a scene of Pyramus and Thisbe recited by Nick Bottom grotesquely and his

companions to the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.

6. ORDER

The play is divided in five acts, and this in turn scenes. The book begins with

an introduction, which is the whole act first. This first act is developed in Theseus’s

palace. When Theseus announces his marriage with Hippolyta. Demetrius and

Lysander are in love with Hermia, but Hermia just wants Lisandro, but Egeus wants

Demetrio. While in the house talking to perform the work of "Pyramus and Thisbe"

at the wedding of Theseus Then, continues from the second to the fourth act. The

escape of Helena and Lysander is developed. In the forest sprites and elves appear.

While Helena appears in love with Demetrius. The outcome is followed in fifth and

last act. This outcome takes place in the palace of Theseus. This last act ends with

the wedding of Theseus with Hippolyta , of Helena with Demetrius and Lysander

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with Hermia, also, the play of "Pyramus and Thisbe" is presented. In addition, this

play has a linear structure which unfolds as the story takes a beginning, middle

and end.

7. CHARACTER LIST

Puck: Also known as Robin Goodfellow, Puck is Oberon’s jester, a mischievous

fairy who delights in playing pranks on mortal.

Oberon: The king of the fairies, Oberon is initially at odds with his wife, Titania,

because she refuses to relinquish control of a young Indian prince whom he wants

for a knight.

Titania: The beautiful queen of the fairies, Titania resists the attempts of her

husband, Oberon, to make a knight of the young Indian prince that she has been

given.

Lysander: A young man of Athens, in love with Hermia.

Demetrius: A young man of Athens, initially in love with Hermia and ultimately in

love with Helena.

Hermia: Egeus’s daughter, a young woman of Athens. Hermia is in love with

Lysander and is a childhood friend of Helena.

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Helena: A young woman of Athens, in love with Demetrius. Demetrius and Helena

were once betrothed, but when Demetrius met Helena’s friend Hermia, he fell in

love with her and abandoned Helena.

Egeus: Hermia’s father, who brings a complaint against his daughter to Theseus,

Egeus has given Demetrius permission to marry Hermia.

Theseus: The heroic duke of Athens engaged to Hippolyta. Theseus represents

power and order throughout the play. He appears only at the beginning and end of

the story,

Hippolyta: The legendary queen of the Amazons, engaged to Theseus. Like

Theseus, she symbolizes order.

Nick Bottom: The overconfident weaver chosen to play Pyramus in the craftsmen’s

play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. Bottom is full of advice and self-confidence

but frequently makes silly mistakes and misuses language. His simultaneous

nonchalance about the beautiful Titania’s sudden love for him and unawareness of

the fact that Puck has transformed his head into that of an ass mark the pinnacle of

his foolish arrogance.

Peter Quince: A carpenter and the nominal leader of the artisan’s attempt to put on

a play for Theseus’s marriage celebration.

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Francis Flute: The bellows-mender chosen to play Thisbe in the artisans’ play for

Theseus’s marriage celebration

Robin Starveling: The tailor chosen to play Thisbe’s mother in the craftsmen’s play

for Theseus’s marriage celebration

Tom Snout: The tinker chosen to play Pyramus’s father in the craftsmen’s play for

Theseus’s marriage celebration.

Snug: The joiner chosen to play the lion in the artisans’ play for Theseus’s marriage

celebration.

Philostrate: Theseus’s Master of the Revels, responsible for organizing the

entertainment for the duke’s marriage celebration.

Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed: The fairies ordered by Titania

to attend to Bottom after she falls in love with him.

8. INSIDE STORY TIME

The play takes place in a day, a night and a morning. First in Athens where

they are debating who will marry Hermia and choosing the characters of the play, at

night all characters go to forest except the Amazon Queen and the Duke of Athens.

The next morning the three married couples and play of Pyramus and Thisbe is

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shown. Although for the four love stories, it was just a dream of a long summer

night.

9. HISTORICAL TIME

The play is based on ancient Greece, more exactly in Athens.

10. ANALYSIS

One theme important for analyzing the play is going to be Gender, because

Midsummer Night's Dream dramatizes gender tensions that arise from complex

familial and romantic relationships. When the play opens, a young woman fights

her father for the right to choose her own husband , a duke is set to marry a woman

he recently conquered in battle, and the King and Queen of Fairies are at war with

each other, representing a battle of the sexes so intense that it disrupts the natural

world.

Through the play, also it shows some stereotypes about traditional gender

roles when it comes to romance. For example, while men are usually expected to be

aggressive, women are expected to remain passive and docile.

Taking into account the previous aspects named, I decided to analyze how

Shakespeare presents that men and women have differences in the notion of LOVE

through his work “Midsummer s Night s Dream”. The theoretical approach for

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analyzing this novel will be feminist theory by Simone de Beauvoir who was a

French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and

social theorist.

To begin with it is necessary to know love´s concept according to (Beauvoir,

1949) The word “love” has not at all the same meaning for both sexes, and this is a

source of the grave disagreement that separate them. Due to love is merely an

occupation in the life of the man, while it is life itself for the woman. It means what

woman gives total devotion (not mere surrender) with soul and body, her love is a

faith; love becomes a religion for her, woman has no other faith.

On the contrary, a man only wish to possess a woman, annex them; at the

heart of their lives, they remain sovereign subjects; the woman they love is merely

one value among others; they want to integrate her into their existence, not submerge

their entire existence in her.

Therefore, woman accepts the traditional feminine destiny: husband, home,

children; or they live in difficult solitude, many women do not abandon themselves

to love unless they are loved in return and the love they are shown is sometimes

enough to make them fall in love.

When a woman falls in love, she sees through the man’s eyes. It is in man’s

eyes that the woman believes she has at last found herself; the woman in love can

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open her eyes, look at the man who loves her and whose gaze glorifies her; through

him nothingness becomes plenitude of being, and being is transfigured into value.

Therefore, here is the slave, queen, flower, doormat, servant, courtesan, muse,

companion, mother, sister woman, depending on the lover’s imperious orders, she

complies with delight her submission. Also, when a woman is in love she can kill

any friendship insofar as the woman in love encloses herself in the universe of the

loved man; jealous exasperates her solitude, thus constricting her dependence even

more.

In contrast, Of course for men too suffering is linked to love; but their

heartbreaks either do not last long or are not all consuming. The man in love is

authoritarian and when he has obtained what he wanted, he is satisfied; A lover who

has confidence in his mistress shows no displeasure at her absences or if she is

occupied when away from him, he feels sure that she belongs to him.

Now, after knowing the theory de Beauvoir in her work "The second sex". The

previous notions about a woman in love are going to be analyzed deeper in the play

Midsummer Night's Dream. First, we have in the play a social reflection about the

paterfamilias, also written as paterfamilias. The paterfamilias was the oldest living

male in a household. He had complete control of all the family members especially

the ones related to marriage one example of this theme in the play is:

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Quote 1.

EGEUS

“I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:

As she is mine, I may dispose of her,

Which shall be either to this gentleman

Or to her death, according to our law

Immediately provided in that case” . (1.1.42-46).

Egeus has arranged for his daughter, Hermia, to marry Demetrius, but Hermia

refuses because she is in love with Lysander. Egeus is enraged because, according

to him, he can "dispose" of Hermia as he pleases. Hermia has struggled against her

father. It shows the kind of situation in which young Elizabethan women often found

themselves. In Shakespeare's day, young, unmarried women were considered their

parents property and were encouraged to obey their parents' wishes when it came

to choosing a husband.

Second, we have how the woman could be conceived.

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Quote 2.

THESEUS

“Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword

And won thy love, doing thee injuries,

But I will wed thee in another key,

With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling”. (1.1.17-20).

In Shakespeare's play is reflected that men see the woman as a positions for

showing their power. As noted Beauvoir (1949) (Theseus marries the Amazonian

Queen he won in battle and Oberon humiliates Titania and takes away her foster

child).it is a “patriarchal norm."

Quote 3.

THESEUS

What say you, Hermia? be advised fair maid.

To you your father should be as a god,

One that composed your beauties, yea, and one

To whom you are but as a form in wax

By him imprinted and within his power

To leave the figure or disfigure it. (1.1.47-52)

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Theseus says that fathers are like "gods" and daughters are like globs of wax, Here,

Theseus is sinister because he says that Egeus had the power to make Hermia in his

own image, he also has the "power" to "disfigure" her (body/face) if he wish it. In

conclusion, Egeus is her owner.

Quote 4.

OBERON

“Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?”

TITANIA

“Then I must be thy lady” (2.1.65-66)

Third, the role of the woman in love.

Quote 5.

HELENA

“Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,

You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!

Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex.

We cannot fight for love, as men may do.

We should be wooed and were not made to woo”. (2.1.245-249)

Here, Helena points out that, even though it is not socially acceptable for women to

be aggressive in the pursuit of love, she does not care. On the one hand, Helena acts

like a creepy stalker when she chases Demetrius around after the guy is made it

Another owner

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perfectly clear that he is not in love with her. That is to say, she only sees through

Demetrius´eyes.

Quote 6.

PUCK

“My mistress with a monster is in love

Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.

fall in love with the donkey-headed Bottom,

and give up her foster child to Oberon”. (3.2.6; 36-39)

Another example, that a woman in love only sees through lover's ´eyes.

Quote 7.

LYSANDER

Demetrius, I will avouch it to his head,

Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,

And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,

Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,

Upon this spotted and inconstant man. (1.1.108-112)

This is an example of unstable love that a man may feel.

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Quote 8.

HERMIA

"Puppet!" why so? Ay, that way goes the game.

Now I perceive that she hath made compare

Between our statures; she hath urg'd her height,

And with her personage, her tall personage,

Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.

And are you grown so high in his esteem

Because I am so dwarfish and so low?

How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak!

How low am I? I am not yet so low

But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes. (3.2.304-313)

This is the fight between Helena and Hermia, it is an example when a woman is in

love she can kill any friendship.

With all examples presented are clear highlights the theory feminist by

Simone Beauvoir in her work “The second Sex” created in 1949, about the difference

between the notion of “love” by women and men. This is found in the play

“Midsummer s Night s Dream” By William Shakespeare in 1595. Aspects that in

our present society can be reflected like stereotypes about traditional gender role.

This is a reason, of why is so magic and rewarding to read play ´Shakespeare which

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there are themes that are not going to change such as, love. Because the word “love”

has not at all the same meaning for both sexes.

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“The day when it will be possible for the woman to love in her strength and not in

her weakness, not to escape from herself but to find herself, not out of resignation

but to affirm herself, love will become for her as for man the source of life and not

a mortal danger. For the time being, love epitomizes in its most moving form the

curse that weighs on woman trapped in the feminine universe, the mutilated woman,

incapable of being self-sufficient. Innumerable martyrs to love attest to the injustice

of a destiny that offers them as ultimate salvation a sterile hell”.

Simone Beauvoir-1949-France.

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11. Bibliography

Beauvoir, S. (1949). The Second Sex. France: Gallimard.

Hidalgo, P. (1997). Shakespeare posmoderno. España: Universidad de Sevilla,

Secretariado de publicaciones.

Shakespeare, W. (2014). Sueño de Una Noche de Verano. Mexico,D.F: Penagos,

S, A. DE C.V.