For Thursday: A MIdsummer Night's Dream, Acts 3-4 (and mabe 5)

 

* We didn’t talk about the actors last time, so think about how they represent a satire of contemporary acting in Shakespeare’s day, including in-jokes and references to acting/actors. What’s so funny about how they approach acting—and why might an audience used to watching actors find this particularly funny?

* Consider how the way characters talk to one another describes their relationships. Why does Hermia, for example, speak in couplets to Helena but not to Lysander? Why do lovers, in general, speak without rhyme?

* Are Helena and Hermia like Proteus and Valentine in Two Gentlemen? In 3.2, Helena reproaches Hermia of being unfaithful, since they were once “Two lovely berries molded on one stem.” Do women have the same close friendships that Shakespeare reserved for men in his earlier plays?

* Examine how Demetrius and Lysander both woo Helena: how does their language change from what it once was? Look, too, at the metaphors and imagery they use to woo.

* How do you read Robin Goodfellow (“Puck”): as an unwitting fool who can’t do anything right, or a “wit” who knows what he’s doing and is all the more menacing because of that? Consider, too, his final trick on the lovers in Act 4.

* On the same token, what about Bottom? Is he another witless fool, or is he a true “fool,” and perhaps even something of a tragic figure?

* Why does Shakespeare stage a play-within-a-play in Act 5? What is the effect of watching the audience watch a performance (all of whom are actors)? And what does the Athenian audience say about the performance that might echo what we say about it?

* Does the play end as a true comedy, with marriages and everything set to rights, or is it also like Two Gentlemen, a somewhat uneasy compromise between comedy and tragedy? Do we feel that everyone has received their just desserts? Is everyone sufficiently “happy”? Or are they simply forced to leave the stage?