Cummings Study Guide

Type of Work

.......A Midsummer Night's Dream is a stage play in the form for a comedy. 

Composition and Publication
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.......Shakespeare probably wrote the play between 1594 and 1596. It was published in 1600 and 1619 quarto editions and then in 1623 as part of the First Folio, the first authorized collection of Shakespeare's plays. 

Sources

.......Shakespeare based parts of the play on The Knight's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400). Chaucer's story has an entirely different plot, but the setting and two of the main characters—Theseus and Hyppolyta—are the same. Other sources Shakespeare used include The Golden Ass, by Apuleius (2nd Century AD); Life of Theseus, by Plutarch (46?-120?); and possibly King James the Fourth, by Robert Greene (1560?-1592). Pyramis and Thisby, the play within the play, is based on passages in Metamorphoses (Book IV), by Ovid (43 BC.-AD 17). The character Puck appeared as Robin Goodfellow in a 1593 play, Terrors of the Night, by Thomas Nashe (1567-1601). Edmund Spenser referred to a devilish sprite called Pook in Epithalamium.(1595), and Shakespeare may have adopted Pook and changed his name to Puck.

Settings
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.......The action takes place in Athens and nearby woods during the age of myth in ancient Greece. However, the play has the atmosphere and lighthearted mood of a land of enchantment which could be anywhere. Although the characters reside in the environs of Athens, many of them speak and act like Elizabethan Englishmen. The time of the action is June 24. In Elizabethan England, Midsummer Day—the feast of Saint John the Baptist—fell on that date. It was a time of feasting and merriment. On Midsummer Night, fairies, hobgoblins and witches held their festival. To dream about Midsummer Night, therefore, was to dream about strange creatures and strange happenings—like those in the play.
Characters

Protagonists: The Various Lovers; Puck, the Main Trickster Who Invigorates the Plot and Informs the Audience That the Story Is Not to be Taken Seriously
Antagonists: Egeus and the Tricks and Pitfalls Facing the Lovers
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Theseus: Duke of Athens. He orders lavish festivities and merriment for his marriage to Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, telling her "I will wed thee . . . with pomp, with triumph and with revelling." Theseus and Hippolyta represent ideal, mature love against which the immature love of the other couples—including Oberon and Titania—is to be measured.
Hippolyta: Queen of the Amazons, a race of women warriors, and a former battlefield foe of Theseus. She is his wife-to-be. According to one tale in Greek mythology, Theseus first made war on the Amazons in their homeland on the Black Sea; they, in turn, invaded Greece in the region of Athens. In this tale, Theseus marries an Amazon queen named Antiope, who is the daughter of the war god Ares (Mars). 
Hermia: Strong-willed young woman in love with Lysander. She refuses to marry Demetrius, her father's choice for her. Her father asks Theseus to settle the dispute.
Egeus: Hermia's father.
Lysander, Demetrius: Young men in love with Hermia.
Helena: Young woman in love with Demetrius.
Philostrate: Master of the revels for Duke Theseus.
Bottom: Weaver who plays Pyramus in the tradesmen's play.
Peter Quince: Carpenter who plays Thisby's father in the tradesmen's play. He also recites the prologue.
Snug: Joiner (Cabinetmaker) who plays a lion in the tradesmen's play.
Francis Flute: Bellows-mender who plays Thisby in the tradesmen's play..
Tom Snout: Tinker who plays Pyramis's father.
Robin Starveling: Tailor who plays Thisby's mother.
Oberon: King of the fairies.
Titania: Queen of the fairies.
Puck (Robin Goodfellow): Mischievous sprite who acts on behalf of Oberon. He can take the form of any creature or thing—hog, bear, horse, dog, and even fire. 
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed: Fairies.
Other Fairies Attending Their King and Queen
Attendants of Theseus and Hippolyta
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Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2003
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 ......Only four days remain until the marriage of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. When eager Theseus bemoans how lazily the hours pass, Hippolyta observes:

Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow¹
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities. (1. 1. 9-13)

Having once this juice,
I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep,
And drop the liquor of it in her eyes.
The next thing then she waking looks upon,
Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,
On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,
She shall pursue it with the soul of love:
And ere I take this charm from off her sight,
As I can take it with another herb,
I’ll make her render up her page [the changeling] to me. (2. 1. 183-192)

......After Lysander and Hermia escape, Demetrius wanders into fairy territory in search of Hermia, ignoring the lovestruck Helena who trails after him like a lapdog. Oberon, feeling sorry for Helena, orders Puck to squeeze the juice of the magic flower on the eyelids of Demetrius to make him fall in love with Helena. Oberon then ventures forth and squeezes flower juice on the eyelids of Titania, who is sleeping peacefully in a bed of violets and thyme. Puck, meanwhile, mistakenly squeezes flower juice on the eyelids of Lysander while he is sleeping with Hermia at his side. Upon awakening, Lysander’s gaze falls upon Helena, who is wandering in search of Demetrius. 

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet.
Are of imagination all compact. (5. 1. 6-10)

Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. [Stabs himself.]
Now am I dead,
Now am I fled;
My soul is in the sky:
Tongue, lose thy light;
Moon take thy flight.
Now die, die, die, die, die. [Dies.] (5. 1. 277-283)

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:⁵
Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.
I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn
As much as we this night have overwatch’d.
This palpable-gross play hath well beguiled
The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.
A fortnight hold we this solemnity,
In nightly revels and new jollity. (5. 1. 322-329)

That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms. (1. 2. 14)
Bottom uses hyperbole to predict the effect of his acting on the audience.

Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I have a beard coming. (1. 2. 20)
Flute speaks this line.

SNUG   Have you the lion’s part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.
QUINCE   You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. (1. 2. 30-31)
Snug and Quince discuss Snug’s role as the lion.

.......The play reaches its climax near the end of Act IV, after all of the lovers overcome their obstacles and leave for the temple to be united in marriage.
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Diana (1. 1. 94): Roman name of Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt.
Cupid (1. 1. 175): Roman name for the Greek god of love, Eros, who shot arrows at humans to wound them with love.
Venus (1. 1. 177): Roman name for the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. She was the mother of Cupid. 
Dido (1. 1. 179): Dido is not referred to by name but by the designation Carthage queen, meaning she was the queen of the North African country of Carthage. She appears in Virgil’s great epic poem, The Aeneid. Dido falls desperately in love with The Aeneid’s main character, Aeneas, after he stops in Carthage on his way from Troy to Italy. But after he abandons her, she kills herself by falling on a sword. At sea on his ship, Aeneas can see Carthage glowing with the flames of Dido’s funeral pyre. 
Aeneas (1. 1. 180): See Dido, above.
Ariadne (2. 1. 84): Daughter of King Minos of Crete. She gave Theseus a thread that enabled him to find his way out of the labyrinth, a maze constructed to house the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man.
Neptune (2. 1. 131): Roman name of Poseidon, god of the sea.
Apollo and Daphne (2. 1. 239): Apollo—god of poetry, music, medicine, and the sun—pursued the nymph Daphne, daughter of a river god. After she prayed for a way to escape Apollo, her father changed her into a laurel tree. Apollo later used the leaves of the laurel in wreaths with which victors of various contests were crowned.
Hercules (4. 1.98): Greek demigod known for his feats of strength.
Cadmus (4. 1.98): Son of the king of Phoenicia and founder of the Greek city of Thebes.
Jove (5. 1. 181): One of two Roman names for Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods. The other Roman name is Jupiter.

My good Lysander!
I swear to thee, by Cupid’s strongest bow [see Cupid, above], 
By his best arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus’ [see Venus, above] doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,
And by that fire which burn’d the Carthage queen [see Dido, above],
When the false Troyan [false Trojan, Aeneas] under sail was seen,
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke,
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee. (1. 1. 174-184)

Nature and animal imagery also abounds in the play, helping to maintain the “enchanted forest" atmosphere. Oberon’s description of the place where Titania sleeps is an example of this imagery:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. (2. 1. 259-266)

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen.
Philomel,⁶ with melody 
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby:
Never harm,
Nor spell nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.
Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence. (2. 2. 12)

Sometimes characters speak in couplets. (A couplet consists of two successive lines with end rhyme). Here are two examples:

Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand;
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be! (Puck: 3. 2. 116-121)

Now, until the break of day, 
Through this house each fairy stray. 
To the best bride-bed will we, 
Which by us shall blessed be; 
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate. (Oberon: 5. 2. 33-38) 

O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!
To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?
Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show
Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!
That pure congealed white, high Taurus snow,
Fann'd with the eastern wind, turns to a crow
When thou hold'st up thy hand: O, let me kiss
This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss! (3. 2. 144-151)

Shakespeare's plays frequently present characters in settings far removed from urban centers. However, they generally are creatures of the city, the court, the vibrant life where people throng. Consider the following observation: 

Shakespeare's characters are . . . dubious of rusticity. Valentine [in The Two Gentlemen of Verona] does not rejoice in his woodland life as head of an outlaw band; the lovers of A [Midsummer Night's] Dream find their woodland adventure unnerving, and mountain life seems rude to the characters in Cymbeline who are forced to endure it. Although Florizel [in The Winter's Tale] dreams of spending his life with Perdita in a cottage, she knows that pastoral bliss is only a dream; true content lies in Leontes' court, to which all the characters . . . return. Even Prospero [in The Tempest], who has no great desire to see Milan again, knows that he and Miranda must leave their island, which is as much prison as refuge to them. Although critics can idealize the pastoral experiences of Shakespeare's characters as renewing contacts with nature, that experience is often somewhat harrowing.—Shakespeare's Comedies From Roman Farce to Romantic Mystery. Newark: U of Delaware, 1986 (Page 144).

• When Hermia’s father opposes her choice of husbands, Duke Theseus tells her not to go against her father’s wishes, saying, “To you ....your father should be as a god." Is Theseus right?
• The play ends with a triple wedding. Do you believe those getting married will stay married? 
• Write an informative essay focusing on what a typical wedding was like in Shakespeare’s day.
• Puck’s magic spells cause several characters to fall in love with the wrong persons. Are there “magic spells" in real life that affect people this way?
• Hippolyta, bethrothed to Theseus, is the queen of the Amazons, who play prominent roles in various stories in Greek mythology. Who were the Amazons? 
• German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) wrote music based on the themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One of these compositions inspired by Shakespeare’s play accompanies a ceremony performed tens of thousands of times in churches throughout the world every year. What is this ceremony? What is the composition? 
• Write an essay focusing on one of the themes of the play.

1. Moon . . . bow: New moon, crescent-shaped.
2. Thisby: Thisbe, the lover of Pyramus. Both were Babylonians were the subject of a story by the Roman poet Ovid (AD 43 BC-17) in his Metamorphoses. When Pyramus thinks a lion has killed Thisbe, he kills himself. Thisbe is still alive, however. But when she discovers the body of Pyramus, she also kills herself.
3. Changeling: Child whom fairies substitute for another.
4. Fingers thus: Held apart, in a V shape, to represent the chink. 
5. The iron tongue . . . twelve: Clapper of the bell strikes midnight.
6. Philomel: nightingale.