Director

Rehearsal Diary

Set design

Costume design

ANNOTATED SPEECHES FOR DRAMA WORK – see website in bibliography to access this annotated script on line.

As well as talking about meaning of difficult words or phrases, ask the children to think about the effect of the rhythm. In general, lower status characters (such as Bottom) speak prose. High status characters speak blank verse or iambic pentameter; unrhymed lines of ten syllables divided into five pairs of unstressed / stressed syllables. This gives a “di dum / di dum / di dum / di dum / di dum rhythm, although it is not rigidly stuck to.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare plays around with rhyme and meter to suggest courtly love, fairy movements etc. The play’s language is very poetic and any work in literacy around alliteration, vowel sounds, assonance etc can be picked up on too.

Extract 1 – mature love. Act 1, scene 1, lines 1 ff

THESEUS
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man's revenue.

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

THESEUS
Go, Philostrate,
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;
The pale companion is not for our pomp.
Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.

Notes
• Beginning the play and setting the theme for love resulting in marriage, this opening section is controlled in its poetic style.
• An early mention of the moon and its association with magic suggests the tension between reason and imagination to follow.
• Mention of former animosity between the two lovers shows that “the course of true love never did run smooth.” (line 134)

Draws on apace: Approaches quickly.

lingers my desires: delays the fulfilment of my desires. The "lingers" is used here in conjunction with the following metaphor. The moon lingers like the step-dame or dowager. These were a class of women with access to their departed husband's money. The longer they lived, or "lingered", the longer this money was kept from the son, who was next to inherit it.

dowager: a widow with a right to her husband's property and title.

Long withering out: Living long enough to use up, causing to dwindle.

solemnities: solemnisation of the marriage between THESEUS and HIPPOLYTA.

doing thee injuries: Theseus captured Hippolyta in battle.

Extract 2 – doting love Act 4, scene 1, lines 1 ff

TITANIA
Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

BOTTOM
Where's Peaseblossom?

PEASEBLOSSOM
Ready.

BOTTOM
Scratch my head Peaseblossom. Where's Monsieur Cobweb?

COBWEB
Ready.

BOTTOM
Mounsieur Cobweb, good monsieur, get you your
weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped
humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good
monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret
yourself too much in the action, monsieur; and,
good mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not;
I would be loath to have you overflown with a
honey-bag, signior . Where's Monsieur Mustardseed?

MUSTARDSEED
Ready.

BOTTOM
Give me your neaf, Monsieur Mustardseed. Pray you,
l have your courtesy, good mounsieur.

MUSTARDSEED
What's your Will?

BOTTOM
Nothing, good monsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb
to scratch. I must to the barber's, monsieur; for
methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I
am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me,
I must scratch.

TITANIA
What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?

BOTTOM
I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let's have
the tongs and the bones.

TITANIA
Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.

BOTTOM
Truly, a peck of provender : I could munch your good
dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle
of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

TITANIA
I have a venturous fairy that shall seek
The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.

BOTTOM
I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas.
But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I
have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

TITANIA
Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
Fairies, begone, and be all ways away.

[Exeunt fairies]

So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!

[They sleep]

Notes
• Compare the verse spoken by Titania with Bottom’s prose. This language would have further emphasised the discrepancy between the two of them.
• Along with Demetrius’s declarations to Helena when under the spell, this section shows the height of absurdity of “doting, blind” love

coy: caress.

humble-bees: bumblebees

overflown: sticky with, drowned by. Bottom is concerned that Cobweb not spill the honey on himself.

signior: Italian - Bottom is being courteous to his servants by addressing them respectfully in Italian and French - Monsieur. He is acting in a parody of courtly manners.

neaf: hand, fist.

Cavalery: Cavalier, an honorific courtly title, similar to knight.

tongs and the bones: rustic musical instruments. The bones were rattled against each other, while the tongs were struck with a piece of metal.

peck: a quarter of a bushel.

botte : bundle.

hath no fellow: there’s nothing like it.

venturous: adventurous, bold.

stir: disturb.

exposition: Bottom is using inappropriate vocabulary to impress again (disposition).

wind: wrap.

all ways away: assume positions all about.

Extract 3 – disorder Act 2, scene 1, lines 82 ff

TITANIA
The human mortals want their winter cheer;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems 'thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

Notes.
• The power of Oberon within the play is suggested by the catastrophic effect his quarrel with Titania has on the natural world and how mortals have been affected by such disorder.
• The whole speech is perfect as a piece of crafted poetry; pick out individual words for their powerful connotations.

winter cheer: provisions for winter.

governess of floods: responsible for tidal activity, therefore associated with floods also.

That: so that.

distemperature: disorder in the weather.

hoary-headed: white.

Heims: Winter personified

thin: bald, covered with a thin layer of hair.

chaplet: wreath.

childing: fruitful.

liveries: uniforms

By their increase: because of this irregular cycle of crops.

original: origin, source.

Extract 4 – order Act 5, scene 1, lines 3 ff

THESEUS
More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
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 :
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt :
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Notes.
• The speech is ironic in that Theseus is not only a mythical character, but is also created here by a poet (Shakespeare). Again, the notion of the play, appearance and reality are important.
• Try to gain the sense of the speech rather than unraveling every part.

toys: tales - this is ironic, since Theseus himself is a mythological character.

Seething: burning, boiling. This is a recurring theme in Shakespeare's poetry and drama - lovers and poets are mad. This idea is not has a long history - mad poets are mentioned by Aristotle and Horace.

shaping fantasies: hallucinations.

apprehend: imagine

compact: made up, composed. Theseus goes on to explain that in all three cases, that is, the lover, the madman and the poet, the problem seems to be a lack of ability to distinguish between illusion and reality.

all as frantic: just as mad.

brow of Egypt: dark skinned face, considered ugly by Elizabethan standards. Gypsies were said to originate from Egypt and were considered ugly.

bodies forth: produces, creates.

local habitation: place to live. The difference between the madman, the lover and the poet seems to be that the poet can influence others to share his illusions. This conversation between Theseus and Hippolyta is essentially a discourse on dramatic theory. They are discussing the extent to which illusion is accepted as reality in the confines of a theatrical performance.

Extract 5 – dreaming, Act 3, scene 2, lines 369ff

OBERON
And from each other look thou lead them thus,
Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep:
Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye;
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,
To take from thence all error with his might,
And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.
When they next wake, all this derision
Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision,
And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,
With league whose date till death shall never end.

Notes.
• Just one example of the magnificent poetry Oberon speaks throughout the play.
• References to sleeping and night are soon to be replaced with daylight, waking and resolution.

virtuous: potent.

his might: the antidote's potency.

wonted: regular, normal.

derision: the trick that was played on them (rather like Puck’s suggestion that the play could be a dream).

wend: go

league: alliance, fidelity.

Extract 6 – waking Act 4, scene 1, lines 191 ff

DEMETRIUS
These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far off mountains turned into clouds.

HERMIA
Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When every thing seems double.

HELENA
So methinks:
And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,
Mine own, and not mine own.

DEMETRIUS
Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think
The duke was here, and bid us follow him?

HERMIA
Yea; and my father.

HELENA
And Hippolyta.

LYSANDER
And he did bid us follow to the temple.

DEMETRIUS
Why, then, we are awake: let's follow him
And by the way let us recount our dreams.

Notes.
• The passage illustrates illusion and reality and mirrors the audience’s reaction to watching a play which they have become involved with.

parted: divided, out of focus.

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