Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Acts 4-5

.:.Prompt.:.Shakespeare, William, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Acts 4-5 (Folger pp 119-173)

    BLOG: Ancient Athens is a totally patriarchal world. Shakespeare likes to overturn power dynamics in his plays, and especially expectations regarding gender. Give several examples in this play of gender roles being overturned.  Also, how does Puck explain the title of Midsummer Night’s Dream in his epilogue? Find Mendelssohn’s wedding music for this play. Listen to it and imbed Naxos link. Include several different images of Puck.

.:.Blog.:.

       In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare displays several examples of the gender roles being overturned. In this time period, women were not supposed to have the rights nor the liberties that the men were available to. The first time we see this switch is in the beginning of the play when Theseus is talking to Hermia about whom she should marry. She clearly ignores her fathers wishes and runs away with Lysander to go get married.She did not respect her father's wishes and acted upon her own accord.

          Another example of the gender roles being over turned is when Helena chases Demetrius out into the woods to confess how much she is in love with him. A funnier example of roles changing is when Nick Bottom gets turned into a donkey. A man is suppose to be strong, courageous, heroic, but Shakespeare turning "bottom" into an "ass", no longer a man, is not only good irony but it symbolizes that he is viewed as naive and foolish in the play.

       Towards the end of the play, Puck’s epilogue hints to why this play is named, A Midsummer night’s Dream.  Puck accounts for the whimsical nature of the play by explaining it as just a dream. He says if the play has offended, the audience should remember it simply as a dream and to think that all of the mishaps were but apart of the dream.

          Puck and Oberon                                   Joy as Puck                        Dan Spielman as Puck