midsummer night

William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Poems

Essay: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I am asking you to do something a little different for this first essay: My experience is that students have a lot of trouble writing sustained one or two question analyses of Shakespeare’s comedies. Therefore, I am going to ask you to write much shorter responses to a number of separate questions. The minimum total words used should still add up to 1300 (and remember that this is a minimum) and the requirement that at least FIVE quotations from the text be used is still in force (remember that this is also a minimum number).

PLEASE CHOOSE FOUR (4) OF THE FOLLOWING SIX (6) QUESTIONS TO ANSWER

1. After reading the document about Comedy and especially Shakespearean Comedy, reflect on your own personal theories about the comic: humor is a very complex human phenomenon and most people have very individual reactions and ideas; on the other hand, our culture, just like Shakespeare's, has cultural ideas about the comic as well. Secondly, reflect on the unique characteristics of Shakespearean comedy: which strike you as the most unusual and/or most challenging aspects of the comic mode? (Note: it is not necessary to quote from the play for this question).

2. Consider the doubling that Shakespeare creates and delights in in the play...we have not just one pair of lovers but Four! Theseus + Hippolyta; Oberon + Titania; Lysander + Hermia; and Demetrius + Helena. What might be his dramatic strategy in presenting four such contrasting (or are they?!) pairs? Secondly, with the two pairs of young lovers, consider why it seems that the women, Hermia and Helena, are such richly drawn characters while the men, Lysander and Demetrius, seem rather unexceptional and even, perhaps, are a little difficult to "tell apart."

3. After watching the film, I would like you to reflect on the pros and cons of watching the play as a film. Please address this question in both a general way (for example, the advantages/disadvantages of watching the plays as films) and in a specific way (for example, what was good and bad about this particular film version -- the 1999 Michael Hoffman directed version).

4. Although Bottom is, in many ways, a Fool -- the audience usually ends up feeling great affection and sympathy for him. Shakespeare often uses the character of the Fool as a unique point of view. What are your thoughts on how he does this with Bottom and why it works? Consider also comparing him with his "mirror-fool," Robin Goodfellow...

5. Next, tackle the interesting issue of why Shakespeare leaves Demetrius in an enchanted state; that is, his "passion" for Helena, whom he supposedly hated until his eyes were anointed with “love-in-idleness,” may or may not be "real" as, unlike Lysander, he has not received the remedial potion to reverse the original spell.

6. After looking at the Key Passages Document, consider the two key speeches, Bottom's Dream (Act IV/Scene 1/Lines 203ff.) and Theseus' speech about Lovers, Poets, and Madmen (Act V/Scene 1/Lines 1-27): I am interested in what Shakespeare is saying about human imagination and its powers and limitations in these two speeches. Expand and discuss!