Midsummer Night's Dream
Written: 1595; Texts: Quartos 1600, 1619, First Folio 1623 (Comedy)
Source: Perhaps influenced by: Theseus and Hippolyta; Plutarch (c.46-120). Lives (Thomas North's translation in 1579); Chaucer, Geoffrey (c.1340-1400). The Canterbury Tales “The Knight's Tale” (1400); The story of “Pyramus and Thisbe” and the name of Titania; Ovid (43 BC- AD18). Metamorphoses (Arthur Golding's English translation in 1567); Oberon; Huon of Bordeau, a 13th-century French adventure tale translated by Lord Berners (1534)
Characters: Helena, Oberon, Theseus Duke of Athens, Puck, Lysander, Hermia, Titania, Demetrius, Bottom, Quince, Flute, Egeus
Setting: Athens
Time: Undetermined
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Notes on Midsummer Night's Dream
Video: Lo! She is one of this confederacy
Read the NoteFrom Peter Hall’s film (January 30, 1968) of A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring Michael Jayston, Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, and David Warner.
Town and Country
Read the NoteIn Cymbeline, Belarius advises his two adoptive sons to embrace the idyllic life in the country rather than the political life at court:
“O, this life
Is nobler than attending for a check;
Richer than doing nothing for a bable;
Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk:
Such gain the cap of him that makes him fine,
… continue reading this note
Quotes from Midsummer Night's Dream
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace
Read the QuoteTheseus
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 stepdame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
… continue reading this quote
How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?
Read the QuoteLysander
How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?
Hermia
Belike for want of rain, which I could well
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.
Ay me! For aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
… continue reading this quote
Godspeed, fair Helena. Whither away?
Read the QuoteHermia
Godspeed, fair Helena. Whither away?
Helena
Call you me “fair”? That “fair” again unsay.
Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair!
Your eyes are lodestars and your tongue’s sweet air
More tunable than lark to shepherd’s ear
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
O happy fair!
Your eyes are lodestars and your tongue’s sweet air
More tunable than lark to shepherd’s ear
When wheat is green,
… continue reading this quote
How happy some o’er other some can be!
Read the QuoteHelena
How happy some o’er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know;
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
… continue reading this quote
How now, spirit? Whither wander you?
Read the QuoteRobin
How now, spirit? Whither wander you?
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow.
Fairy
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood,
… continue reading this quote
How canst thou thus for shame, Titania
Read the QuoteOberon
How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigouna,whom he ravishèd,
And make him with fair Aeglesbreak his faith,
With Ariadne and Antiopa?
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate,
… continue reading this quote
My gentle Puck, come hither
Read the QuoteOberon
My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
I’ll put a girdle round about the Earth
In forty minutes.
… continue reading this quote
I love thee not; therefore pursue me not
Read the QuoteDemetrius
I love thee not; therefore pursue me not.
Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?
The one I’ll stay; the other stayeth me.
Thou told’st me they were stol’n unto this wood,
And here am I, and wood within this wood
Because I cannot meet my Hermia.
Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.
… continue reading this quote
Hast thou the flower there?
Read the QuoteOberon
Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.
Robin
Ay, there it is.
Oberon
I pray thee give it me.
Robin gives him the flower.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
… continue reading this quote
Come, now a roundel and a fairy song
Read the QuoteTitania
Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence—
Some to kill cankers in the muskrose buds,
Some war with reremice for their leathern wings
To make my small elves coats, and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits.
… continue reading this quote