Renaissance A Midsummer Night's Dream Background materials

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

A Midsummer night's dream

While you watch: 

Write down the names of the characters. 

Athens

• Theseus, duke of Athens 
• Hippolyta, the Amazon queen

• Hermia and Lysander are in love. 

• Demetrius: Hermia’s father wants Hermia to marry him. 
• Helena is in love with Demetrius 

Forest - fairies

• Oberon, the king of the fairies + Titania his queen
• servant Puck  

Forest: a group of artisans are rehearsing an entertainment for the duke’s wedding. 

• Nick Bottom: The overconfident weaver chosen to play Pyramus in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration

00:20

The course of true love never did run smooth =

1. love is a journey
2. love is not easy

00:20

Fill in the missing word:
“The course of true ... never did smooth”

Which character from A Midsummer Night's Dream are you?

www.folger.edu

Which character from A Midsummer Night's Dream are you?

The Many Plots of A Midsummer Night’s Dream 

The Many Plots of A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Teaching Tips

All you need is love

Note: This activity can be completed individually or in pairs.

There are four main plots that makeup the A Midsummer Night’s Dream—and there is one emotion that connects them all: love. Instruct students to watch the five videos in this media gallery.

Then distribute the Love and Plot in A Midsummer Night’s Dream handout and tell your students to watch the videos again. As they watch, they should record how love impacts each plot (e.g., Athenian court, the lovers, the fairies, and the rude mechanicals).

Order or Chaos?

Ask students to compare the order of the Athenian court to the chaos of the forest. Encourage students to use examples from the video and the play.

Then tell students to write an argumentative essay about which society they would prefer to live in. Instruct students to use evidence from the videos and play to support their argument.

The Many Plots of A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Discussion Questions

• In the Overview video, host Hugh Bonneville describes the many plots in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What are they?
  
• Why does the host Hugh Bonneville say “a worrying beginning for a comedy” in the Lovers, Part I: The Athenian Court video? What’s worrying? What do Shakespeare’s comedies do for female characters?
  
• According to the Lovers, Part I: The Athenian Court video, what does Shakespeare, and this play specifically, want the audience to feel about the relationship between women and men?
  
• In the Lovers, Part II: The Plan video, how do the scenes (and text) examine what’s happening between Hermia and Helena?
  
• In the Fairies video, Diane Purkiss says that Shakespeare's fairies serve a darker purpose. What type of mischief does she say they get into?
  
• What does Gail Paster say that Shakespeare was trying to show in the scenes with the Rude Mechanicals?

www.pbslearningmedia.org

PUCK

Meet Puck Activity

· Students analyze the character Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and how he’s introduced in the play.

· In the “Puck” video from Shakespeare Uncovered, Julie Taymor discusses how she added a visual prologue to her 2013 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Some interpret the entire play as Puck’s dream while others interpret Puck as being the one who starts all of the dreaming. While Taymor’s interpretation is unique, Shakespeare provided plenty of clues in the play’s text to describe Puck’s mischievous personality and how the character should be performed on stage.

· Today, the students are going to examine an excerpt from Act 2.1 where they are first introduced to Puck. This lesson will include speaking the language out loud, doing a textual analysis, and performing various interpretations of Puck using different types of voice and physical movement. Students will begin with an oral reading of the lines.

Puck - Discussion Questions

• Given what you watched in this video, what can you infer about Julie Taymor? Who is she and why is she important to A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
  
• What choice did Julie Taymor make regarding the character of Puck?
  
• What two worlds does Puck straddle in the play?
  
• According to this video, Puck is a character that has many levels. What does this mean exactly and what are the levels?
  
• What does the narrator Hugh Bonneville allude to when he says "But before the characters can see anything more clearly, the magic of Puck and Oberon is going to distort everything"?

view.officeapps.live.com

www.pbslearningmedia.org

The four lovers

Act 3.2 The Four Lovers

In the video "How the Love Potion Impacts the Lovers and their Dialogue," host Hugh Bonneville talks about the rhymed poetry used in Act 3, scene 2 when the four lovers fight in the forest. Distribute the Act 3.2: The Four Lovers handout to your students and instruct them to identify the dialogue that’s in rhyming and blank verse. Students can work alone or in pairs. Encourage students to share their findings with the class. Conclude this activity with students acting out the scene.

The Love Potion - Discussion Questions

• Who was Robert Dudley?

• What does Hugh Bonneville say might have been the reason that Queen Elizabeth came to Kenilworth Castle in 1575?

• Is it possible that a young William Shakespeare saw the water show with "a mermaid on a dolphin's back" during the Queen’s Royal Progress? Use evidence from the video to explain.

• According to host Hugh Bonneville, how is the phrase "a mermaid on a dolphin’s back" connected to Kenilworth Castle?

• How does Oberon try to use to solve the Athenian lover’s problems? Describe what results from his meddling.

• Why does Helena think Lysander and Demetrius are mocking her?

• How does Shakespeare use poetic form and language to instruct the actors on how to perform what Julie Taymor calls the "quartet" scene? How does Helena speak in this scene and how does it change when she talks to Hermia?

view.officeapps.live.com

www.pbslearningmedia.org

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www.rsc.org.uk

Schools’ Synopsis

The events of the play can divided up between groups of students, allowing them to create their own 2 minute versions of each section and then presenting them back.

You can also print the ten lines on this page and ask students to work in pairs to arrange them in the order they take place in the play.

www.rsc.org.uk

cdn2.rsc.org.uk

cdn2.rsc.org.uk