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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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The Forms of Things Unknown

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For all the power of his poetry, volume of his vocabulary and sheer prolific output, Shakespeare seemed intent on telling us that we cannot know, truly know, what we most want to know, or even think we already know. We know this on several levels.

We’re frustrated enough that he left no correspondence, no diary, no memoir, no hand-written manuscripts.
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Video: Lo! She is one of this confederacy

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From Peter Hall’s film (January 30, 1968) of A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring Michael Jayston, Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, and David Warner.

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Town and Country

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In 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,
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Double Cherries and Drops of Water

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In A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Helena’s expression of love as a union that makes a couple one inseparable being —

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
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Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace

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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 stepdame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
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Act 1
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How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?

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Lysander 
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,
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Act 1
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The Architecture of Sonnet and Song

Godspeed, fair Helena. Whither away?

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Hermia
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,
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Act 1
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How happy some o’er other some can be!

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Helena
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,
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How now, spirit? Whither wander you?

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Robin
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,
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How canst thou thus for shame, Titania

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Oberon
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,
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Act 2
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My gentle Puck, come hither

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Oberon
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.
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Act 2
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I love thee not; therefore pursue me not

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Demetrius
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.
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Act 2
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Hast thou the flower there?

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Oberon
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,
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Act 2
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Come, now a roundel and a fairy song

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Titania
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.
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