2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Key Facts
• Author · William Shakespeare
Genres
• Comedy, fantasy, romance, farce
Date of first publication
• 1600
Time and place
• written · London, 1594 or 1595
2
4. Puck
• Also known as Robin
Goodfellow
Play’s Protagonist (?)
• His enchanting, mischievous
spirit pervades the
atmosphere, and his antics
are responsible for many of
the complications in the play.
• He is the closest this the play
has to a protagonist.
4
5. Most famous quote:
• Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Oberon’s Jester
• I am that merry wanderer of the
night.
I jest to Oberon and make him
smile
He has the last line in the
play:
• So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be
friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
5
6. Oberon- The king of the
fairies
• Oberon - Oberon is angry with his
wife, Titania, because she refuses to
give up control of a young Indian
prince whom he wants for a knight.
Nature is distraught because
Oberon and Titania are fighting
• And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
• And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
6
7. Titania - The beautiful
queen of the fairies
• Titania resists the attempts of
her husband, Oberon, to make
a knight of the young Indian
prince that she has been given
to raise.
Wife of Oberon
• She has a quick temper and a
fierce loyalty.
7
8. They fight over
the child…“And
now they never
meet in grove or
green
By fountain
clear, or
spangled
starlight sheen,
But they do
square (fight)”.
8
9. Lysander - A young
man of Athens
• At the beginning of the
play, he is in love with
Hermia.
Secret Love
• He cannot marry Hermia
because Egeus, her father,
wishes her to wed another
man named Demetrius.
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10. Demetrius - A young
man of Athens
Fickle Heart
• He is now in love with Hermia
but used to be in love with
Helena.
Men rule!
• He has won the heart of
Hermia’s father and
therefore, Hermia has no
choice but to marry Demetrius
or be put to death (or become
a nun). 10
11. Hermia - Egeus’s daughter
• A young woman of Athens.
• Hermia is in love with Lysander
and is a childhood friend of Helena.
Goes Against her Father
• Hermia must face a horrible choice,
either marry Demetrius, her father’s
choice, or run away and marry
Lysander in secret.
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12. Helena - A young woman
.
of Athens
• She is in love with Demetrius.
Helena + Demetrius
• Demetrius and Helena were once
betrothed, but when Demetrius met
Helena’s friend Hermia
• He fell in love with her and
abandoned Helena.
Won’t let him go.
• She is determined to win him back.
12
13. Egeus - Hermia’s father.
He brings a complaint against
his daughter to Duke Theseus:
• Egeus has given Demetrius
permission to marry Hermia, but
Hermia, in love with Lysander, refuses
to marry Demetrius.
Marry him or Die!
13
14. Theseus - The heroic duke of
Athens
• Theseus was a famous Greek King
who was credited with killing the
minotaur.
Engaged to Hippolyta.
• Theseus represents power and order
throughout the play.
Represents order and royal
hierarchy.
• He appears only at the beginning and
end of the story, removed from the
dreamlike events of the forest.
14
15. Hippolyta - The legendary
queen of the Amazons
• She is engaged to Theseus. Like
Theseus, she symbolizes order.
Queen of the Amazons
• She was once the proud queen of the
Amazons, a warrior race of women,
and
Theseus won her in battle
• After he beat her in battle, he won her
heart, and they will soon be married.
15
16. Nick Bottom - The
overconfident weaver .
• He is chosen to play Pyramus in the
craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s
marriage celebration.
He is turned into a half-man
– half-donkey.
• Bottom is full of advice and self-
confidence but frequently makes
silly mistakes and misuses language.
16
17. Magical
Forces at work
• Titiana is tricked
by a love potion
into loving a
drastically
changed, Bottom!
17
18. The play
within a play.
•The Athenian
workman want to
put on a play
called Pyramus
and Thisbe
19. Peter Quince - A
carpenter.
• He is the leader of the
craftsmen’s attempt to put on a
play for Theseus’s marriage
celebration.
Plays second fiddle to
Bottom.
• Quince is often shoved aside by
the abundantly confident
Bottom. During the craftsmen’s
play, Quince plays the
Prologue.
19
20. Francis Flute - The
bellows-mender
• He is chosen to play
Thisbe in the craftsmen’s
play for Theseus’s
marriage celebration.
No women allowed
on stage !
• Forced to play a young
girl in love, the bearded
craftsman determines to
speak his lines in a high,
squeaky voice.
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21. Robin Starveling -
The tailor
• He is chosen to play
Thisbe’s mother in the
craftsmen’s play for
Theseus’s marriage
celebration
The Man in the
Moon
• He ends up playing the
part of Moonshine.
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22. Tom Snout - The
tinker
• He is chosen to play
Pyramus’s father in the
craftsmen’s play for
Theseus’s marriage
celebration.
Just another brick
in the wall…
• However, he ends up
playing the part of Wall,
dividing the two lovers.
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23. Snug - The joiner.
• He is chosen to play the
lion in the craftsmen’s
play for Theseus’s
marriage celebration.
Kind-hearted lion.
• Snug worries that his
roaring will frighten the
ladies in the audience.
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24. Philostrate - Theseus’s
Master of Ceremonies
• He is responsible for
organizing the entertainment
for the duke’s marriage
celebration.
• He advises Theseus not hear
the craftsman’s play because
he thinks it is awful.
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25. Mote
• The four fairies are ordered by Titania to attend
to Bottom after she falls in love with him.
Cobweb
• ―I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good
Master Cobweb. If I cut my finger, I shall make
bold with you.‖
Mustardseed
• ―I promise you your kindred hath made my
eyes water ere now. I desire you of more
acquaintance, good Master Mustardseed.‖
Peaseblossom
• Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you
of more acquaintance too.
25
26. Symbols
• Symbols are objects,
characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas
or concepts.
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27. Theseus and Hippolyta
• The Duke and the Duchess, Theseus and
Hippolyta, appear in the daylight at both the
beginning and the end of the play’s main
action.
• They disappear, in the middle of Act I, and
don’t reappear until Act IV, as the sun is
coming up to end the magical night in the
forest.
Royal Bookends
• Shakespeare uses Theseus and Hippolyta, the
ruler of Athens and his warrior bride, to
represent order and stability, to contrast with
the uncertainty, instability, and darkness of
most of the play.
27
28. The Love Potion
• The love potion is made from the juice
of a flower that was struck with one of
Cupid’s misfired arrows; it is used by
the fairies to wreak romantic havoc
throughout the play.
The Power of Love
• The love potion becomes a symbol of
the unreasoning, fickle, erratic, and
undeniably powerful nature of love,
which can lead to inexplicable and
bizarre behavior and cannot be
resisted.
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29. The Craftsmen’s Play
• The play-within-a-play that takes up most
• of Act V is used to represent many of the
important ideas and themes of the main plot.
Bumbling Actors
• Because the craftsmen are such bumbling
actors, their performance satirizes the
melodramatic Athenian lovers and gives the play
a purely joyful, comedic ending.
Comedy at its best.
• The craftsmen’s play is a kind of symbol
for A Midsummer Night’s Dream itself:
a story involving powerful emotions that is
made hilarious by its comical presentation.
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30. Motifs
• Motifs are recurring
structures, contrasts,
and literary devices
that can help to
develop and inform
the text’s major
themes.
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31. Contrasting Ideas
• The idea of contrast is the basic building block
of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The entire play
is constructed around groups of opposites and
doubles.
Like night and day.
• Every scene represents a contrast. Helena is
tall, Hermia is short; Puck plays pranks, Bottom
is the victim of pranks; Titania is beautiful,
Bottom is grotesque.
Love and Hate
• Like Demetrius's whipped spaniel, Helena
grows fonder from mistreatment.
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32. More Contrasts
• Theseus woos Hippoyta "with his sword". On opposite sides
in battle, they fall in love. Enemies become friends (the
mismatched lovers, the families of Pyramis and Thisbe.)
Love and Hate
• Helena's affection for Demetrius seems to make him hate her.
Hermia's hatred seems to make him love her.
• In the dream world of the forest, deer chase tigers as Helena
pursues Demetrius.
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33. Themes
•Themes are the
fundamental
and often
universal ideas
explored in a
literary work.
33
34. The Difficulties of
• ―The course of true love never did run smooth,‖
comments Lysander, articulating one of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream’s most important
themes—that of the difficulty of love (I.i.134).
It all works out in the end.
• The tone of the play is so lighthearted that the
audience never doubts that things will end
happily, and it is therefore free to enjoy the
comedy without being caught up in the tension
of an uncertain outcome.
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35. Magic
• The fairies’ magic, which brings about many
of the bizarre and hilarious situations in the
play, is another part of the fantastic
atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
• Shakespeare uses magic both to portray the
almost supernatural power of love
(symbolized by the love potion) and to create
a surreal world.
35
36. The Nature of Dreams
• As the title suggests, dreams are an important
theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
• The theme of dreaming recurs when
characters attempt to explain the strange
events of one night in the forest: ―I have had a
dream, past the wit of man to say what /
dream it was.
• Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound
this dream,‖ says Bottom the morning after
the events of the play.
36
37. Dreaming…
• ...Are you sure
That we are
awake? It seems
to me that yet
we sleep, we
dream.
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38. Setting – The Clearing in the
Forest
• All three of the major plot elements
come together in a clearing in the
forest.
• The Craftsman use the clearing as a
place to practice their play.
• The lovers (Hermia, Helena, Lysander
and Demetrius) use the clearing as a
meeting place.
• The Fairies use the clearing to perform
ancient ceremonies
38
39. ...where often you and I
Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to
lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel
sweet
39
40. THE END
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