1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Building Background to Better Understand the Bard’s Play

2. Mythology You Need to Know:
Apollo vs. Dionysus
Pyramus & Thisbe
Theseus

3. Apollo vs. Dionysus
Apollo is the God of the Sun (hence truth and light).
Dionysus is the God of the Earth, of spring and renewal (hence everything that was natural and beyond rational analysis).

4. Human Characteristics of Each
Apollo
Reason
Order
Clarity
Moderation
Control
Analysis
Research
Rule-Oriented
Ideal characters maintain a balance between the two mindsets and perspectives. The tension/conflict between the emotion and reason is one of the things that makes tragedy so captivating.
Dionysus
Passion
Spontaneity
Imagination
Excess
Frenzy
Intuition
Feeling
Faith & Ritual

5. “Pyramus and Thisbe” excerpt taken from Edith Hamilton’s Mythology

9. Theseus
Here is a brief overview of the sad, often inconsiderate, life of Theseus – one of our main characters.

10. Theseus is the son of a common woman and Aegeus, the Athenian King
Theseus is the son of a common woman and Aegeus, the Athenian King. Aegeus leaves when he discovers Theseus’s mother is pregnant; he says that if it is a boy – only a boy – and he is strong enough to roll away a great stone that covered Aegeus’s sword and shoes, then she should send him to Athens to claim Aegeus as his father. He is not told of his heritage until he is older and stronger; at this time his mother shares the challenge and Theseus is successful in retrieving the sword and shoes.
On the road to Athens, he begins to make a name for himself by killing the bandits that besieged the road. He killed each in the manner in which they harmed their victims (kicked one off of a cliff, tied one to two bent pine trees and ripped him apart, etc.) Upon being claimed by his father he volunteered to travel to Crete to kill the Minotaur and save his people from the tribute required every nine years.

11. Ariadne – the daughter of the King of Crete – had helped Theseus in his victory, and in return he agreed to marry her and bring her back to Athens. On the way, he stopped at the island of Naxos and abandoned her there. Upon returning to Athens, he forgot to hoist the white sail – a sign that he had survived the Minotaur – and his father killed himself. This resulted in Theseus becoming the King of Athens. He brought a more democratic rule and went on many adventures.
Those adventures include the war with the Amazons in which he captured Hippolyta – the Queen of the Amazons, the Calydonian Hunt for the Golden Fleece, the raid of the Centaurs on Pirithous’s wedding, the kidnapping of Helen of Troy (pre-Illiad), and the journey into the underworld to try to capture Persephone – Hades’s wife – for his friend Pirithous.

12. In the end, Theseus married Ariadne’s sister, Phaedra, who fell in love with Theseus’s son – Hippolytus. When he refused her advances, she accused him of attacking her and he was banished. On his way out of Athens, he was killed in a chariot crash; Phaedra killed herself; and Theseus is poisoned by a “friend” at a feast – no one knows why.

13. Character Map
On a piece of blank paper, copy the following character map for your notes. As you recreate the map, use different colors for characters in the four different storylines.
1. The Wedding Party The Fairy Court
2. The Lovers The Players