Study Guide for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Online Texts

Text of A Midsummer Night's Dream (from the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center): web version | e-book | Palm   

A Midsummer Night's Dream with hypertext commentary.

Other Online Resources

"Pyramus and Thisbe," in Arthur Golding's 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamporphoses (Book 4).

Chaucer, The Knight's Tale (a source for the play).

Course Resources Available on Blackboard 

Optional Discussion Board on course reading assignments (under Communication).  Use this area to discuss the plays with your classmates and the course instructor.  Submit questions here about issues we weren't able to discuss in class, or questions you have for the instructor that might be of interest to other students.

Northrop Frye on the "Green World" in Shakespeare's comedies (under Course Documents). 

C. L. Barber on Shakespeare's "Festive Comedy" (under Course Documents). 

Discussion Questions

• How many plots can you identify in this play?  What is the relationship between the plots, and where do they intersect?
• What is the story of Pyramus and Thisbe?  Does it remind you of any other works you know by Shakespeare?  Is it significant that Shakespeare has the "rude mechanicals" perform this play?
• Some scholars have noted that in many of Shakespeare's comedies we can identify a "space that is provided by a temporary freedom from the pressures of a real social world . . . [that] allows characters to 'play' at solutions which could (we imagine) resolve the impediments that real life imposes on happiness" (G.K. Hunter, Oxford History of English Literature, vol. 6, p. 389).  If this is true, in what ways does the "real" world of MND respond to the "holiday" world it creates?  What actually happens in this "holiday" or "green" world?  (See also the essays by C. L. Barber and Northrop Frye on this idea; copies are available on Blackboard under Course Documents.)
• This play presents many different views of love and marriage.  How many can you identify?  How are these different versions of love related to each other?
• There are numerous references to the eyes and seeing in the play--what is their significance?  How are these references related to the play's thematic treatment of fantasy and imagination?
• Nearly all of Shakespeare's comedies (and many of his tragedies) dramatize conflicts between parents and children and the rites of passage that children experience in their journey to maturity.  What rites of passage are depicted in this play?

Bibliography

(You must be on a computer connected to the university network to access most of these links.)

Louis Montrose, "'Shaping Fantasies':  Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture," Representations 2 (1983):  61-94.

James Calderwood, "A Midsummer Night's Dream:  Anamorphism and Theseus' Dream," Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991):  409-430.

Film Versions

A Midsummer Night's Dream (UK, 1909).
On Silent Shakespeare (1899-1911).
DVD, 88 min., b/w, tinted, and original hand-stenciled color.
[Digitally restored to video by the British Film Institute's National Film and Television Archive.]
Greenwood Library Call Number: PN1997 .S56555 1911.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (UK, 1968).
Dir. Peter Hall.
Paul Hardwick (Bottom), Ian Richarson (Oberon), Judi Dench (Titania), Ian Holm (Puck).
VHS, 119 min., color.
Greenwood Library Call Number: NA.

The BBC A Midsummer Night's Dream (UK, 1981).

Dir. Michael Hoffman.

Helen Mirren (Titania), Peter McEnery (Oberon), Pippa Guard (Hermia), Brian Glover (Bottom).

VHS, 111 min., color.

Greenwood Library Call Number:  PR2827 .A23 1981.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (UK, 1996)
Dir. Adrian Noble
Desmond Barrit (Bottom), Alex Jennings (Theseus/Oberon), Lindsey Duncan (Hippolyta/Titania).
VHS, 103 min., color.
Greenwood Library Call Number: NA.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (USA, Italy, 1999).
Dir. Michael Hoffmann.
Kevin Kline (Bottom), Michele Pfeiffer (Titania), Rupert Everett (Oberon), Stanley Tucci (Puck).
VHS, 130 min., color.
Greenwood Library Call Number: PN1997 .M5295 1999.