Monday, April 8, 2013

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Act 2, Scene 1

Hey! ANOTHER new group of characters?

What the heck? One of them is called Robin Goodfellow and is referred to as a “puck” or mischievous spirit

A puck is indeed a spirit or sprite or fairy creature that leads people astray (Old English folklore) Folklore is local legend and myth and stories told be people

So, we see that this play takes a turn for the SUPERNATURAL - interesting

And we see that this new character is a troublemaking creature of the woods - this may come into play when all the characters gather in the forest for the meetings they have all set up

This puck would have a VERY obvious look and the audience would immediately recognize him

Fairies serve Nature, as represented by the Fairy Queen

Puck/Robin mentions that the fairy queen has a little human boy that she loves (a changeling) and her husband (Oberon, the fairy king) doesn’t like the baby - Here we have a whole new storyline and set up problems (or situation)

Fairy Queen - Titania
Fairy King - Oberon

If we have this magical trickster in the mix, things will get even more complicated.

He will be working for the fairy king (or queen), but he is also pranking everyone all the time.

Lobb’s Guess - he will even further complicate the romantic tangling

AH! MORE OF THE MALE/FEMALE PROBLEM - men trying to control women and the women refusing to give in

Oberon says to Titania “Am I not thy lord?” - he EXPECTS her to obey him - much like Egeus expects Hermia to obey HIM

Titania accuses Oberon of a) having a mistress and b) only showing up here to visit Hippolyta, who is referred to a “bouncing Amazon”

Amazons are a group of famed female warriors from ancient Greece - they are most famous for one particular pop culture female warrior - they are also famous for being big, powerful, well-shaped women (in pop culture)

In actual legend, they burned or cut off one breast for better use of their bows

The tension between the fairy king and queen is pure jealousy - in spite of being fairies (therefore supernatural) their emotions are very human

He knows the Titania loves Theseus - and now we know that this play is EXACTLY LIKE A SOAP OPERA!

A result of this fighting between the fairy king and queen is that nature is going CRAZY - this is called PATHETIC FALLACY - when the environment reflects characters’ feelings and echoes their feelings - this is something that you are familiar with from modern movies, videos and so on

PATHETIC FALLACY is a kind of SYMBOLISM -

Oberon’s jealousy is NATURAL too - it is similar to something husbands feel when their wives have babies - the baby rules the wife - the baby is the greatest thing the wife has ever seen and she dotes on it in place of doting on her husband -

Doting means to care for, to spoil and to gew gaw over.

Every man understands that feeling - it is something that is UNIVERSAL

Oberon and Titania part angrily, but will stay in that same forest (which is full of activity)

Oberon plans to have Puck get a magic flower which will be used to create a potion that will make the one who is affected fall in love with the first thing (person) he/she sees

We get an idea here exactly how magical Puck really is - he can fly around the world in 40 minutes

Oberon will make Titania fall in love with some animal and then he will get her to give him the changeling boy -