Appearance and reality in Midsummer Night's Dream
- Created by: em
- Created on: 28-05-15 22:18
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- Appearance and reality
- Setting
- Forest - irony is that audience have to suspend reality to imagine the setting
- Oberon describes the flower things solely by language imagery: 'with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine'
- Funny how mechanicals don't get this - repetition of 'present': 'present a wall', 'horned moon present'
- Fairy: 'the cowslips tall her pensioners be' - implies the fairies are small but doesn't mean Shakespeare had to use short people to show this!
- however some productions have cast children to be the fairies
- R. W. Dent: 'to the Elizabethan the imagination ideally functioned as an essential servant to the understanding'
- Granville-Barker - production mirrored how it was performed in 1600s - simple set with two clear scenes of woods and Athenian court
- Moon
- Belief that fall of man made area from moon to earth imperfect & unstable
- Earth love over divine love was unreliable & impertant
- Egeus says Lysander 'bewitch'd the bosom of my child' by moonlight
- Symbol of inconstancy & imperfection - L & D
- Earth love over divine love was unreliable & impertant
- Lesley Jordan: 'just adds to the mystical, dream-like setting and nature to it'
- References to lunar time which rules play
- 'four happy days bring in another moon' 1.1.2
- 'her silver visage in the watery gl***' tommorow
- symbol of madness, fertility & chastity which running theme throughout the play
- References to lunar time which rules play
- personfied: 'pale in her anger' due to Oberon & Titania's quarrel
- Belief that fall of man made area from moon to earth imperfect & unstable
- Globe: very minimal lighting & special affects & had to transportable to noble house
- So any reference to setting/lighting has symbolic meaning
- Forest - irony is that audience have to suspend reality to imagine the setting
- Paradox is resolved at end of play & ends with marriage & symmetry
- Oberon and Titania dance once they make up - symbolises unity
- Pictured for centuries as cosmic dance of elements
- Oberon: 'take hands with me' renewal of love and harmony
- 'A Midsummer Night': Elizabethan festival - linked to mayhem & chaos
- Oberon and Titania dance once they make up - symbolises unity
- Fairies
- Untitled
- Magic
- Bottom as an *** tries to change his speech but just filled with malapropisms
- 'I have an exposition of sleep come upon me'
- Social mobility not possible for lower cl*** characters
- Does speak truth: 'reason and love keep little company together nowadays'
- Hunter: 'to talk more sense than any of the other characters'
- Bottom as an *** tries to change his speech but just filled with malapropisms
- Audience
- Maurice Hunt: 'a certain haziness not only in the character's mind but in those of the viewers as well'
- Ending suggests they are still in dream
- Theseus: 'tis almost fairy time'
- Heroic couplets: 'Trip away, make no stay;/meet me all by break of day.'
- short-lined p***ages gives song-like quality
- Hazy imagery 'glimmering light 'the dead and drowsy fire'
- Hippolyta talks of the lovers' accounts to have 'something of great constancy'
- The magic and appearances they saw was real
- Reflects audiences's views on unexplainable occurrences e.g. bad harvest in 1590s explained due to Oberon & Titania's fight
- The magic and appearances they saw was real
- None of it is a reality to them!!!
- Irony that Theseus dismisses the stories as antique fables' when he is fictional character played by an actor
- Setting
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