The Three Worlds of A Midsummer Night’s

Dream

Jennifer R. Rustjrust2@slu.edu

Assistant ProfessorDepartment of EnglishSaint Louis University

Three “Worlds”: Interlocking Spheres of Action and their

Sources

Athens: Classical Mythology

Faerie Forest: Folklore and Elizabethan Festive Culture

“Rude Mechanicals”: Working Classes of Shakespeare’s England – Artisans and Artists

First World: Athens

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Politics

Law

Marriage

Ruling Class

Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus

Athenian Lovers

Hermia, Demetrius, Lysander, Helena

Theseus

The Deeds of TheseusFrom: Athens, GreeceDate: about

440-430 BCBritish Museum

Theseus, Duke of Athens, Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes,

1579. British Library, C.38.k.24, p.1

Theseus

Theseus and the Minotaur(Detail)

Amazonomachy: Theseus and the Amazons

Hippolyte and Deinomache (Vase painting)

Hippolyta and the Amazons

Amazonomachy – Attic – ca. 420 BC   New York -

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hippolyte. Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum. 1553.

Queen Elizabeth as Amazon

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Facsimile of the 1623 First Folio

Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of

Victoria (Canada), 2010.

http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca

/

A Midsummer Night's Dream (First Folio, 1623)

1.1.1-11

Enter Theseus, Hippolita, with others.

Theseus. NOW faire Hippolita, our nuptiall houre

Drawes on apace: foure happy daies bring in

Another Moon: but oh, me thinkes, how slow

This old Moon wanes; She lingers my desires

Like to a Step-dame, or a Dowager,

Long withering out a yong mans reuennew.

 

Hip. Foure daies wil quickly steep the-selues in nights

Foure nights wil quickly dreame away the time:

And then the Moone, like to a siluer bow,

Now bent in heauen, shal behold the night

Of our solemnities.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (First Folio, 1623)

1.1.20-25

Theseus. Hippolita, I woo'd thee with my sword,

And wonne thy loue, doing thee iniuries:

But I will wed thee in another key,

With pompe, with triumph, and with reuelling.

Second World:

Faerie Forest

Traditional English Culture (Folklore and Festivity)

“Green World”: Crossing between natural world and

supernatural realm

Echoes Athens but also offers different perspective on it

Titania, Oberon, Puck

A Midsummer Night's Dream

(First Folio, 1623)2.1.101-110

Titania. The nine mens Morris is fild vp with mud,

And the queint Mazes in the wanton greene,

For lacke of tread are vndistinguishable.

The humane mortals want their winter heere,

No night is now with hymne or caroll blest;

Therefore the Moone (the gouernesse of floods)

Pale in her anger, washes all the aire;

That Rheumaticke diseases doe abound.

And through this distemperature, we see

The seasons alter …

Third World: “Rude Mechanicals”

World of Art (Artisans and Artists)

Working Class

Metatheatre

Bottom, Quince, Flute, Snout, Snug, Starveling

The Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Old Vic Theatre, London, 1937

Bottom

“Bless thee Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated.”

Illustration by Arthur Rackham (1908)

Pyramus and Thisbe

Act FiveSource: Ovid, Metamorphoses

Plot similar to Romeo and Juliet, but also the Midsummer that might-have-been if the comic impulse had not won out.

The End

Questions?