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

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The two are interrupted when Oberon enters from one side of the glade, followed by a train of attendants. At the same moment, Titania enters from the other side of the glade, followed by her own train. The two fairy royals confront one another, each questioning the other’s motive for coming so near to Athens just before the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. Titania accuses Oberon of loving Hippolyta and of thus wishing to bless the marriage; Oberon accuses Titania of loving Theseus. The conversation turns to the little Indian boy, whom Oberon asks Titania to give him. But Titania responds that the boy’s mother was a devotee of hers before she died; in honor of his mother’s memory, Titania will hold the boy near to her. She invites Oberon to go with her to dance in a fairy round and see her nightly revels, but Oberon declines, saying that they will be at odds until she gives him the boy. Presenter: Here are the directors. 12 divorces, nine law suits and three stints in rehab between them, these guys know what they want and they normally get it. Today they’re looking for innovative ways of staging the fairy fight scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream . It’s act two, scene one.

Botho Strauß's play The Park (1983) is based on characters and motifs from A Midsummer Night's Dream. [83] 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.Wiles, David (2008). "The Carnivalesque in A Midsummer Night's Dream". In Bloom, Harold; Marson, Janyce (eds.). A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism. pp. 208–23. ISBN 978-0-7910-9595-9. 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. Presenter: Next into the Directors’ Den is young designer Walter, the Directors seem unsure if Walter has an exciting idea, or simply no idea at all. Presenter: Well, now, this is a classic Bottom tactic, and arguably it gets the job done, but are we getting the best performance out of this chap where we can’t see his face? And the heat is really getting to him. In 1967, John A. Allen theorised that Bottom is a symbol of the animalistic aspect of humanity. He also thought Bottom was redeemed through the maternal tenderness of Titania, which allowed him to understand the love and self-sacrifice of Pyramus and Thisbe. [43] In 1968, Stephen Fender offered his own views on the play. He emphasised the "terrifying power" [43] of the fairies and argued that they control the play's events. They are the most powerful figures featured, not Theseus as often thought. He also emphasised the ethically ambivalent characters of the play. Finally, Fender noted a layer of complexity in the play. Theseus, Hippolyta, and Bottom have contradictory reactions to the events of the night, and each has partly valid reasons for their reactions, implying that the puzzles offered to the play's audience can have no singular answer or meaning. [44]

The tinker chosen to play Pyramus’s father in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. He ends up playing the part of Wall, dividing the two lovers. Snug In 2015, the plot of Be More Chill included a version of the play called A Midsummer Nightmare (About Zombies). [94] [95] Ballets [ edit ]

Both David Wiles of the University of London and Harold Bloom of Yale University have strongly endorsed the reading of this play under the themes of Carnivalesque, Bacchanalia, and Saturnalia. [10] Writing in 1998, David Wiles stated that: "The starting point for my own analysis will be the proposition that although we encounter A Midsummer Night's Dream as a text, it was historically part of an aristocratic carnival. It was written for a wedding, and part of the festive structure of the wedding night. The audience who saw the play in the public theatre in the months that followed became vicarious participants in an aristocratic festival from which they were physically excluded. My purpose will be to demonstrate how closely the play is integrated with a historically specific upper-class celebration." [11] Wiles argued in 1993 that the play was written to celebrate the Carey-Berkeley wedding. The date of the wedding was fixed to coincide with a conjunction of Venus and the new moon, highly propitious for conceiving an heir. [12] Love [ edit ] Hermia and Lysander by John Simmons (1870) Stage History". The Royal Shakespeare Company. n.d. Archived from the original on 13 December 2016 . Retrieved 11 May 2014. and seen a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine. There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight (II.i.249–254). 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]

A Midsummer Night's Dream, a UK production shot in Austria, set in an alternative near future. Directed by Sacha Bennett, it features Robert Lindsay as Oberon, Juliet Aubrey as Titania, Lee Boardman as Bottom, Harry Jarvis as Lysander, Tamzin Merchant as Helena, Holly Earl as Hermia, Tyger Drew-Honey as Demetrius and Florence Kasumba as Hippolyta. [ citation needed] In 1987, Jan Lawson Hinely argued that this play has a therapeutic value. Shakespeare in many ways explores the sexual fears of the characters, releases them, and transforms them. And the happy ending is the reestablishment of social harmony. Patriarchy itself is also challenged and transformed, as the men offer their women a loving equality, one founded on respect and trust. She even viewed Titania's loving acceptance of the donkey-headed Bottom as a metaphor for basic trust. This trust is what enables the warring and uncertain lovers to achieve their sexual maturity. [54] In 1988, Allen Dunn argued that the play is an exploration of the characters' fears and desires, and that its structure is based on a series of sexual clashes. [54] Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 83. Were the World Mine (2008) features a modern interpretation of the play put on in a private high school in a small town. [ citation needed] [102]Huke, Ivan; Perkins, Derek Cyril (1981). A Midsummer Night's Dream. Literature Revision Notes and Examples. Walton-on-Thames: Celtic Revision Aids. ISBN 978-0-17-751305-3.

The youths enter and Theseus greets them heartily. He says that they should pass the time before bed with a performance, and he summons Egeus (or, in some editions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Philostrate) to read him a list of plays, each of which Theseus deems unacceptable. Egeus then tells him of the Pyramus and Thisbe story that the common craftsmen have prepared; warning that it is terrible in every respect, he urges Theseus not to see it. Theseus, however, says that if the craftsmen’s intentions are dutiful, there will be something of merit in the play no matter how poor the performance.Presenter: He’s handled the constant change in tactics really well, but just look at his face, it’s not attractive. Charles, Gerard (2000). "A Midsummer Night's Dream". BalletMet. Archived from the original on 1 May 2011 . Retrieved 29 January 2010.