Watch Introducing the Mechanicals - Do you know men like this? Would you cast men/women? What status do they have compared to the other characters?
Watch The Globe's production from 22.40- 27.00 vs The Mechanicals - students to make notes on the differences in interpretation.
Watch Clowning Around - Considering what you know from this and what you learnt from the Commedia Workshop - what are your ideas for creating comedy with this group?
The Court/The Lovers
The World of the Court
‘Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments.’
‘To you your father should be as a god.’
‘Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword . . . ‘
‘As she is mine, I may dispose of her. . .’
‘Either to die the death, or to abjure
For ever the society of men.'
‘Come, my Hippolyta. What cheer, my love?’
The Lovers’ World
‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’
‘Tomorrow truly I will meet with thee.’
‘I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.’
‘Hence, get thee gone and follow me no more.’
‘It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream . . .’
From these statements what do you know about The Court / Lovers and their world?
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blindworms, do no wrong;
Come not near our Fairy Queen.
Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence;
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail do no offence.
Philomel with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby;
lulla, lulla, lullaby.
Never harm,
Nor spell nor charm
Come our lovely lady nigh
So good night, with lullaby
The Fairies
In the opening scene,
Hippolyta, unhappy in her enforced relationship with Theseus, escapes into the dreamworld magic
forest.
Like many dreams this place is populated by people who have surrounded her in the real
world, but they are changed; freed from their everyday constraints and inhibitions.
The tense and
servile Philostrate becomes the naughty, lively Puck.
The workers or mechanicals who came to court
in the first scene to repair a domestic problem in the cellar are transformed into the amateur actors
ambitious for the Duke’s approval.
Three sullen and unhappy court ladies become the cheerful, curious
fairies who attend Titania.
Hippolyta herself becomes Titania, Queen of the Fairies, finds her voice and
defies the demands of her husband.
Creating the Fairies
As with the witches in Macbeth the ‘Dream Fairies’ have been interpreted in a great variety of
ways, ranging from scary old men to stroppy, gum-chewing adolescents.
Nor would the fairies in the
original production have been depicted as gentle tutued ballerinas as most Elizabethans believed in
fairies and appreciated that they came in all shapes and sizes; they also understood that fairies could
be unpredictable and sometimes dangerous.
Having watched this, how do you imagine the fairies in our production being??
The first Fairies scene - Act 2 scene 1
The scene comes soon after a similarly charged scene at court, with only the Mechanicals offering
a comic interlude in between.
Comparisons are often made between the world of the court and
the world of the fairy kingdom, and between Theseus and Hippolyta, and Oberon and Titania.
This is explored in this production with the actors doubling the parts: Titania being the alter ego
of Hippolyta and Oberon the alter ego of Theseus.
In a speech rich with imagery, Titania demonstrates how powerful she and Oberon are, and
the effect they have on the fairy and mortal worlds.
In 37 lines Titania describes the devastating
impact their argument is having on the seasons and the natural world.
In a second highly
descriptive speech full of images, Titania explains how she acquired the boy at the heart of her
battle with Oberon: a battle that is not resolved until the end of the play
A Midsummer Night's Dream contains a fair amount of regular old prose (how we talk every day), but it's famous for its dazzling displays of verse, or poetry. The three most common types of verse in the play are:
iambic pentameter rhymed verse,
and catalectic trochaic tetrameter.
Blank Verse or, Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter (The Nobles)
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the noble characters often speak in unrhymed "iambic pentameter" (also called "blank verse"). This is considered a fancy way to talk and it helps separate upper class characters from the commoners or everyday Joes of the play. Don't let the fancy names intimidate you—it's simple once you get the hang of it. Let's start with a definition of iambic pentameter.
An "iamb" is an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. "Penta" means "five," and "meter" refers to a regular rhythmic pattern. So "iambic pentameter" is a kind of rhythmic pattern that consist of five iambs per line. It's the most common rhythm in English poetry and sounds like five heartbeats:
da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM
Here's an example from Theseus's speech to Hippolyta:
hippOLyTA, i WOO'D thee WITH my SWORD,
and WON thy LOVE, doING thee INjurIES;
Every second syllable is accented (stressed), so this is classic iambic pentameter. Since the lines have no regular rhyme scheme we call it unrhymed iambic pentameter, a.k.a. blank verse.
2. Rhymed Verse
When the young Athenian lovers (also members of the nobility) speak passionately about love, their lines of poetry tend to rhyme, like when Helena goes on about the nature of love. Notice that the rhyme scheme below follows this pattern: AABBCC.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; (A rhyme)
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind: (A rhyme)
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; (B rhyme)
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: (B rhyme)
And therefore is Love said to be a child, (C rhyme)
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled. (C rhyme)
By the way, we've got three "heroic couplets" here. (Heroic couplets are just rhyming pairs of verse in iambic pentameter.)
3. Catalectic Trochaic Tetrameter (The Fairies)
The fairies also speak in verse, but it's done in a way that sets them apart from the other characters. Many of their lines are delivered in what's called "catalectic trochaic tetrameter." That's a mouthful, but, again, it's actually pretty simple once you wrap your brain around it. Let's take a closer look.
A "trochee" is the opposite of an "iamb." It's an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable that sounds like DUM-da. "Tetra" means "four" and "meter" refers to a regular rhythmic pattern. So "trochaic tetrameter" is a kind of rhythmic pattern that consist of four trochees per line. It sounds like this:
DUM-da, DUM-da, DUM-da, DUM-da
When the last syllable of the line is cut off, it's called catalectic trochaic tetrameter. Here's an example where Puck addresses Oberon:
CAPtain OF our FAIry BAND,
HELeNA is HERE at HAND;
Shakespeare's a big fan of using trochaic verse for supernatural beings like fairies (and the Witches in Macbeth) because it's light and airy. Let's face it, it's also kind of fun.
4. Prose (the Mechanicals)
Ordinary folks like the Mechanicals (craftsmen) usually don't talk in a special rhythm—they just talk. Check out this passage, where Bottom and his pals talk about the play they want to perform:
There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and
Thisbe that will never please. First, Pyramus must
draw a sword to kill himself, which the ladies
cannot abide. How answer you that? (3.1.9-12)
Prose makes sense for this scene, because it's a very practical way to talk. Notice, though, that when the Mechanicals perform the play Pyramus and Thisbe, their lines are spoken in rhymed verse, which has a comical effect. Check out these lines where Flute (playing the role of Thisbe) tries to be poetic about Pyramus's beauty:
Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,
Of color like the red rose on triumphant brier,
Most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew,
As true as truest horse that yet would never tire, (3.1.92-95)
It's obvious that Peter Quince (the guy who wrote the play script) tried really, really hard to come up with a rhyme for "hue," but the speech just sounds silly and absurd. This suggests that Quince and the other "rude Mechanicals" aren't actually capable of writing or speaking in verse like the nobles and fairies.
