Transcript Introduction to Shakespeare

Introduction to
Shakespeare and
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
Born 1564, died 1616
Married Anne Hathaway and had 3 children:
Susanna, Hamnet (dies age 11) and Judith
Lived in Renaissance England, ruled by Elizabeth
I, then James I
Resided in Stratford-on-Avon and London
Actor, poet, playwright
Wrote 37 plays and over 150 sonnets (poems)
Language
Used over 20,000 words in his works
The average writer uses 7,500
The English Dictionary of his time had only
500 words
He’s credited with creating 3,000 words
in the Oxford English Dictionary
Some examples: suspicious, obscene,
generous, lonely, majestic
Speaking Like Shakespeare
You are quoting Shakespeare if you say:
‘Too much of a good thing’ (As You Like It)
‘a method to his madness’ (Hamlet)
‘eating me out of house and home’ (Henry
IV)
‘It’s all Greek to me’ (Julius Caesar)
‘vanish into thin air’ (Othello)
‘in a pickle’ (The Tempest)
‘green-eyed monster’ (Othello)
The Globe Theatre
Built in 1599
Open ceiling
Three stories high
2 large doors at the back of
the stage: actors made
entrances and exits in full
view of audience
• Trap doors also for entrances
and exits
• No sets, few props – WORDS
set the scene
• No artificial lighting
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daytime performances
Spectators
Wealthy people got to sit on
benches
The poor (called “groundlings”)
had to stand and watch from
the courtyard called ‘the pit’. It
cost 1 penny.
Audience was expected to talk
back to the actors; they might
even throw rotten fruit if they
didn’t like the performance
Plays were composed with
something for everyone –
nobles to commoners (elevated
language, comic relief)
Language trumped spectacle:
You didn’t go to “see” a play,
you went to “hear” a play
http://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=yBSmuTIozbs&feature=rel
ated
Actors
Not a respected profession!
Operated in repertory troupes (same people
all the time)
Only men and boys
Young boys whose voices had not changed
played the women’s roles
It would have been indecent for a woman to
appear on stage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha6-15TVQOM
Types of Plays
Shakespeare wrote:
Comedies - light and amusing, usually
with a happy ending
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of
the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing
Tragedies –serious dramas with
disastrous endings
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello
Histories – based on events or persons
from history
Henry V, Richard III, Julius Caesar
Tragedies and Comedies
Five-act plays. (Modern plays have 1-3 acts.)
Written mostly in blank verse (unrhymed iambic
pentameter – 10 syllables per line).
Tragedy
Named after hero of
high birth (royal or
aristocratic)
Hero has a tragic flaw
Ends in death
Comedy
No title characters, can
be high or low born
Mistaken identities,
mixed up plans, chaos
Ends in marriage
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was
written in 1594, early in Will’s career
This is a play about “poets, lovers, and madmen,” all
of whom live in their imaginations. Shakespeare’s
audiences assumed that:
On Midsummer Night ….
Fairies and sprites were especially powerful
People had especially vivid dreams
People were more susceptible to both love and insanity
(perhaps because love was considered a form of insanity!)
A dream could be …
A fantasy
A nightmare
The work of fairies
A way to work through problems
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=bNkwaZQ4zEA
Four Groups of Characters
Intersect in the Play
Two Rulers and an Angry Father
Theseus, Duke of Athens, engaged to
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons
Egeus, father of Hermia
Four Lovers
Hermia and Lysander are in love
Helena loves Demetrius, who loves Hermia (oh-oh)
Six Mechanicals – common tradesmen
Bottom, Quince, Flute, Snug, and others
Three Fairies, along with their courts & an Indian boy
King Oberon, feuding for custody with the boy with
Queen Titania
Oberon’s right-hand sprite, Robin Goodfellow (also called
Puck)
The Two Worlds of the Play
Athens
Daytime
Order
Reason
Law
Theseus & Hippolyta
are characters in
ancient Greek legend
Magic Forest
Nighttime
Chaos
Passion
Anarchy
Robin Goodfellow is
a character in
Renaissance English
fairy lore
METER
Meter and Rhyme
Two-SYLLABLE METRIC FEET
Iamb - Bah BOOM (unstressed/stressed)
Trochee – BOOM bah (stressed /unstressed)
FEET PER LINE
Five feet per line – pentameter
Four feet per line - tetrameter
RHYME
Blank verse: unrhymed, regular meter
Couplet: a pair of rhymed lines
VERSE vs. PROSE
Verse = poetry (lines)
Prose = “regular” speech (paragraphs)
Character Groups
Choose one (or maybe two) boxes– your group is responsible for
the character/characters throughout the play
Theseus/
Oberon
Hippolyta/
Titania
Egeus /
Hermia
Helena
Lysander
Demetrius
Robin
Goodfellow
Nick Bottom
Everyone Else
– Philostrate,
Mechanicals,
Fairies