1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare

2. If you recall…
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare made love a crazed, drug-like state, which led to murder, suicide, and exile.

3. Love in Midsummer Night’s Dream
The play features quarrelsome lovers who fall in and out for small, petty reasons
The play shows “the power of desire to take over one’s vision and one’s actions” (xiii).
Lovers are interchangeable

4. Mythological Background
Theseus
Founder of Athens, Greece
Famous for defeating Minotaur
Defeats Hippolyta in battle and claims her as his wife
Hippolyta
Queen of Amazons, a race of warrior-women who reproduce with men but then kill them

5. HERMIA
DEMETRIUS
LYSANDER
HELENA

6. Lovers’ Spats
The Nobles Theseus and Hippolyta: he has captured her and they prepare for their wedding The Mortals Lysander and Hermia: forbidden to be together, they run away to elope Demetrius and Helena: he no longer loves her The Fairies Oberon and Titania: quarrel over an Indian boy

7. Act I Act III Act IV Boy Girl Drama LYSANDER HERMIA DEMETRIUS HELENA

8. The Athenian Lovers HERMIA ●Defies father and risks death
●Loves Lysander
●Short
HELENA
●Insecure and heartbroken
●Loves Demetrius
●Tall
BOTH
●Of equal beauty
●Lifelong friends
The Athenian Lovers
LYSANDER
●Boldly stands up for his love to Egeus
●Makes plan to flee to wealthy aunt’s
BOTH
●Love Hermia at start of play
●Of equal wealth and heredity
DEMETRIUS
●Flip-flops
●Insulting to Helena
●Favored by Egeus

9. “Pyramus and Thisbe” A Play by Peter Quince
PLAYBILL NICK BOTTOM THE WEAVER…………….………..……PYRAMUS FRANCIS FLUTE THE BELLOWS-MENDER…..…….…THISBE ROBIN STARVELING THE TAILOR……….…...…MOONSHINE TOM SNOUT THE TINKER…………………………….…………WALL SNUG THE JOINER……………………………………………………LION PETER QUINCE………………………..…………..…………PROLOGUE

10. The Play Within the Play
The play of “Pyramus and Thisbe”… alludes… to the tragic possibilities of a conflict between love and parental opposition. A Midsummer Night’s Dream does not let its audience forget that love entails confusion and danger as well as grace, although it never entirely separates these contraries (Belsey 186).
The Formula
Controlling parents forbid young lovers to be together
Love cannot be forbidden, so they run away together to the woods
In a place of mystery, danger, and confusion, the lovers are soon separated by bizarre twists of fate

11. What Critics Are Saying Selections from Catherine Belsey’s Essay
“Bottom’s name, and his transformation… [clarify] more than [they change] his identity” (181).
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play about love. It proposes that love is a dream, or perhaps a vision; that it is absurd, irrational, a delusion” (182).
“…the four lovers are virtually indistinguishable. Romantic love is in this sense oddly impersonal. Because of love’s power to idealize, the object of desire seems unique, even though in the event it turns out that Hermia and Helena are interchangeable” (183).

12. What Critics Are Saying Selections from Catherine Belsey’s Essay
“The play does not ignore the trace of violence that exists within love when the other person fails to conform to the lover’s idealized image” (185).
“The plot leads up to the marriages of the lovers, but it does not quite confirm the distinction we might expect it to identify between true love on the one hand and arbitrary passion induced by magic on the other.” (189).
“The Athenian court represents the world of reconciliation and rationality, of social institutions and communal order, while the wood outside Athens is the location of night and bewildering passions, a place of anarchy and anxiety, where behavior becomes unpredictable and individual identity is transformed” (189).