Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, A (Sparknotes Literature Guide)

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This technique extends even to the suggestive names of some of the characters, such as the craftsmen Snug, Starveling, Quince, Flute, and Snout, and the fairies Cobweb, Mustardseed, Mote, and Peaseblossom. In 1970, R. A. Zimbardo viewed the play as full of symbols. The Moon and its phases alluded to in the play, in his view, stand for permanence in mutability. The play uses the principle of discordia concors in several of its key scenes. Theseus and Hippolyta represent marriage and, symbolically, the reconciliation of the natural seasons or the phases of time. Hippolyta's story arc is that she must submit to Theseus and become a matron. Titania has to give up her motherly obsession with the changeling boy and passes through a symbolic death, and Oberon has to once again woo and win his wife. Kehler notes that Zimbardo took for granted the female subordination within the obligatory marriage, social views that were already challenged in the 1960s. [45]

A 1996 French film, The Apartment ( L'Appartement), directed by Gilles Mimouni, has many references to the play. Walter: Well that’s correct, just a fairy glow about the stage. This whole play could be a dream, so why not let the audience use their imagination.As Quince doles out the parts, Bottom often interrupts, announcing that he should be the one to play the assigned part. He says that his ability to speak in a woman’s voice would make him a wonderful Thisbe and that his ability to roar would make him a wonderful lion. Quince eventually convinces him that Pyramus is the part for him, by virtue of the fact that Pyramus is supposed to be very handsome. Snug worries that he will be unable to learn the lion’s part, but Quince reassures him that it will be very easy to learn, since the lion speaks no words and only growls and roars. This worries the craftsmen, who reason that if the lion frightens any of the noble ladies in the audience, they will all be executed; since they are only common laborers, they do not want to risk upsetting powerful people. Bottom says that he could roar as sweetly as a nightingale so as not to frighten anyone, but Quince again convinces him that he can only play Pyramus. The group disperses, agreeing to meet in the woods the following night to rehearse their play. Let me guess - Athens! He’s Theseus, Duke of Athens. He’s getting married. Everybody’s got wedding fever. Like rabies. Ask Hermia. Her Dad is like ‘marry Demetrius’, or die, and she’s like, ‘Yeah, as if!’. She thinks Demetrius is a jerk. And she loves Lysander. Whereas her best pal Helena loves Demetrius, but he ain’t interested! What a mess! Oh Shakespeare! You so understand! Ball, Robert Hamilton (2016) [first published 1968]. Shakespeare on Silent Film: A Strange Eventful History. Routledge Library Editions: Film and Literature. Vol.1. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-99611-3.

Marius Petipa made a ballet adaptation for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg with additional music and adaptations to Mendelssohn's score by Léon Minkus. The revival premiered 14 July 1876. Slights, William W. E. (1988). "The Changeling in A Dream". SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. Rice University. 28 (2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama): 259–72. doi: 10.2307/450551. eISSN 1522-9270. ISSN 0039-3657. JSTOR 450551. In 1981, Mordecai Marcus argued for a new meaning of Eros (Love) and Thanatos (Death) in this play. In his view, Shakespeare suggests that love requires the risk of death. Love achieves force and direction from the interweaving of the life impulse with the deathward-release of sexual tension. He also viewed the play as suggesting that the healing force of love is connected to the acceptance of death, and vice versa. [53]Shakespeare in the Arb". University of Michigan. n.d. Archived from the original on 23 June 2016 . Retrieved 15 July 2016. A Thirty Minute Dream: Abridgement by Bill Tordoff, Shakespeare's text reduced to the length of a school lesson. In 1972, Ralph Berry argued that Shakespeare was chiefly concerned with epistemology in this play. The lovers declare illusion to be reality, the actors declare reality to be illusion. The play ultimately reconciles the seemingly opposing views and vindicates imagination. [47] Also in 1972, Thomas McFarland argued that the play is dominated by a mood of happiness and that it is one of the happiest literary creations ever produced. The mood is so lovely that the audience never feels fear or worry about the fate of the characters. [48]

Presenter: Oh it’s a full change of kit there, he certainly looks the part, but I’m not sure he can see where he’s going. Morning has arrived and Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus are walking through the woods. Theseus suddenly spies the sleeping lovers and imagines they woke early to observe the rite of May. When the lovers are awakened, Demetrius confesses that he now loves Helena. Theseus decides the other lovers should be married along with him and Hippolyta. As they return to the palace, the scene shifts to Bottom. Just awakening from his dream, Bottom declares he'll have Quince write a ballad about it, called "Bottom's Dream," because it has no bottom. After her dancing and revelry, Titania falls asleep by the stream bank. Oberon creeps up on her and squeezes the flower’s juice onto her eyelids, chanting a spell, so that Titania will fall in love with the first creature she sees upon waking. Oberon departs, and Lysander and Hermia wander into the glade. Lysander admits that he has forgotten the way to his aunt’s house and says that they should sleep in the forest until morning, when they can find their way by daylight. Lysander wishes to sleep close to Hermia, but she insists that they sleep apart, to respect custom and propriety. At some distance from each other, they fall asleep.Presenter: Hello and welcome to The Big Scene. We’re at rehearsals for A Midsummer Night’s Dream . It’s Act 4, scene 1, and fairy magic has been transforming Bottom and just won’t stop. The challenge facing the director today? How can this player be made to look like a right donkey? She’s got options, but it’s a big ask. Can she pull it off on this team’s budget? She’s got great vision this director, but this has got to be convincing for the crowd and still allow for a great performance from the player. Read a translation of Act V, scene i Summary: Act V, scene ii–epilogue Think but this, and all is mended:

Much of the comic tension in this scene (and throughout the rest of the play, as the confusion wrought by the love potion only increases) stems from the fact that the solution to the love tangle seems so simple to the reader/audience: if Demetrius could simply be made to love Hermia, then the lovers could pair off symmetrically, and love would be restored to a point of balance. Shakespeare teases the audience by dangling the magic flower as a simple mechanism by which this resolution could be achieved. He uses this mechanism, however, to cycle through a number of increasingly ridiculous arrangements before he allows the love story to arrive at its inevitable happy conclusion. The lords and ladies take their seats, and Quince enters to present a prologue, which he speaks haltingly. His strange pauses put the meaning of his words in question, so that he says, “Our true intent is. All for your delight / We are not here. That you should here repent you,” though he means to communicate that “Our true intent is all for your delight. / We are not here that you should here repent you” (V.i.114–115). The other players then enter, including two characters performing the roles of Wall and Moonshine. They act out a clumsy version of the story, during which the noblemen and women joke among themselves about the actors’ strange speeches and misapprehensions. Bottom, in particular, makes many perplexing statements while playing Pyramus, such as “I see a voice...I can hear my Thisbe’s face” (V.i.190–191). Pyramus and Thisbe meet at, and speak across, the actor playing Wall, who holds up his fingers to indicate a chink. Snug, as the lion, enters and pours forth a speech explaining to the ladies that he is not really a lion. He roars, scaring Thisbe away, and clumsily rends her mantle. Finding the bloody mantle, Pyramus duly commits suicide. Thisbe does likewise when she finds her Pyramus dead. After the conclusion of the play, during which Bottom pretends to kill himself, with a cry of “die, die, die, die, die,” Bottom asks if the audience would like an epilogue or a bergamask dance; Theseus replies that they will see the dance (V.i.295). Bottom and Flute perform the dance, and the whole group exits for bed. The Donkey Show: A Midsummer Night's Disco". Internet Off-Broadway Database. n.d . Retrieved 31 March 2017. The 20th century brought new insights into the play. In 1961, Elizabeth Sewell argued that Shakespeare aligns himself not with the aristocrats of the play, but with Bottom and the artisans. It is their task to produce a wedding entertainment, precisely the purpose of the writer on working in this play. [41] Also in 1961, Frank Kermode wrote on the themes of the play and their literary sources. He counted among them fantasy, blind love, and divine love. He traced these themes to the works of Macrobius, Apuleius, and Giordano Bruno. Bottom also briefly alludes to a passage from the First Epistle to the Corinthians by Paul the Apostle, dealing with divine love. [41] [b]

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In 1971, James L. Calderwood offered a new view on the role of Oberon. He viewed the king as specialising in the arts of illusion. Oberon, in his view, is the interior dramatist of the play, orchestrating events. He is responsible for the play's happy ending, when he influences Theseus to overrule Egeus and allow the lovers to marry. Oberon and Theseus bring harmony out of discord. He also suggested that the lovers' identities, which are blurred and lost in the forest, recall the unstable identities of the actors who constantly change roles. In fact the failure of the artisans' play is based on their chief flaw as actors: they can not lose their own identities to even temporarily replace them with those of their fictional roles. [46] Neil Gaiman's comic series The Sandman uses the play in the 1990 issue " A Midsummer Night's Dream". In this story, Shakespeare and his company perform the play for the real Oberon and Titania and an audience of fairies. The play is heavily quoted in the comic, and Shakespeare's son Hamnet appears in the play as the Indian boy. This issue was the first and only comic to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, in 1991. [84]