A Midsummer Night’s Dream - EMC Publishing

A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare

THE EMC MASTERPIECE SERIES

Access Editions

SERIES EDITOR

Robert D. Shepherd EMC/Paradigm Publishing

St. Paul, Minnesota

Staff Credits: For EMC/Paradigm Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota

Laurie Skiba Editor

Eileen Slater Editorial Consultant

Shannon O'Donnell Taylor Associate Editor

Jennifer J. Anderson Assistant Editor

For Penobscot School Publishing, Inc., Danvers, Massachusetts

Editorial

Robert D. Shepherd President, Executive Editor

Christina E. Kolb Managing Editor

Design and Production

Charles Q. Bent Production Manager

Sara Day Art Director

Sara Hyry Editor

Laurie Faria Associate Editor

Sharon Salinger Copyeditor

Diane Castro Compositor

Janet Stebbings Compositor

Marilyn Murphy Shepherd Editorial Advisor

ISBN 0-8219-1635-1

Copyright ? 1998 by EMC Corporation

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be adapted, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without permission from the publisher.

Published by EMC/Paradigm Publishing 875 Montreal Way St. Paul, Minnesota 55102

Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 xxx 09 08 07 06 05

Table of Contents

The Life and Works of William Shakespeare . . . . . . . . . . . iv Time Line of Shakespeare's Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii The Historical Context of A Midsummer Night's Dream . . . x Echoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii Illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix Dramatis Personae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx

ACT I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ACT II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 ACT III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 ACT IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 ACT V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Plot Analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream . . . . . . . . . . 89 Creative Writing Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Critical Writing Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Selections for Additional Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Handbook of Literary Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

THE LIFE AND WORKS OF

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564?1616). William Shakespeare may well be the greatest dramatist the world has ever known. His mother, Mary Arden Shakespeare, was from a well-to-do, well-connected family. His father, John Shakespeare, was a prosperous glove maker and local politician. William's exact birthdate is unknown, but he was baptized in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564, and tradition has assigned him a birthdate of April 23, which was also the day of his death and the feast day of Saint George, England's patron saint.

Shakespeare attended the Stratford grammar school, where he studied Latin and perhaps some Greek. At the age of eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, who was with child. Altogether, William and Anne had three children, a daughter Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. He may have worked for a while as a schoolteacher, for there are many references to teaching in his plays. By 1592, however, he was living in London and pursuing a life in the theater. Shakespeare continued to provide for his family and to expand his holdings in Stratford while living in London. He retired to Stratford-upon-Avon at the end of his life.

Shakespeare's Professional Career

By 1593, Shakespeare was a successful actor and playwright. His history plays Henry the Sixth, Parts 1, 2, and 3, and The Tragedy of Richard the Third had established him as a significant force in London theater. In 1593, when an outbreak of the plague forced the closing of the theaters, Shakespeare turned to narrative poetry, producing Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, both dedicated to a patron, the Earl of Southampton. When the theaters reopened, Shakespeare plunged back into his primary vocation, and wrote thirtyseven plays in less than twenty years, including The Taming of the Shrew; A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Merchant of Venice; Twelfth Night, or What You Will; All's Well That Ends Well; The Tragedy of King Richard the Second; The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet; The Tragedy of Julius C?sar; The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince

iv A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

of Denmark; The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice; The Tragedy of King Lear; The Tragedy of Macbeth; The Winter's Tale; and The Tempest.

Around 1594, Shakespeare became a shareholder in a theater company known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men. The troupe quickly became the most popular in London. By 1599, they were wealthy enough to build their own theater, a large open-air playhouse they called the Globe, and in 1603 they bought the Blackfriars, a small, artificially lighted indoor theater for winter performances. Their company began performing regularly at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. After the death of Elizabeth in 1603, Shakespeare's company became, officially, servants of King James I, and their name was changed to The King's Men. Shakespeare's final noncollaborative play, The Famous History of the Life of Henry the Eighth, was performed in London in 1613. Later that same year, he collaborated with John Fletcher to write a play called The Two Noble Kinsmen. At that time he was probably living again in Stratford, in a large house called New Place that he had bought in 1597. When he died in 1616, survived by his wife and his two daughters, Shakespeare was a wealthy man. He was buried in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where his bones rest to this day. The stone over his grave reads,

Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare, To digg the dust encloased heare: Blest be the man that spares thes stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.

The Publication of Shakespeare's Plays

Shakespeare did not personally prepare his plays for publication, and no official collection of them appeared until after his death. A collection of his sonnets, considered by critics to be among the best poetry ever written in English, appeared in 1609. Many individual plays were published during his lifetime in unauthorized editions known as quartos. Many of these quartos are quite unreliable. Some were probably based on actors' memories of the plays. Some were reprintings of socalled prompter's copies used in production of the plays. Some may have been based on final manuscript versions produced by the author. In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, his friends and fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell published a collected edition of thirty-five of Shakespeare's plays. This collection is known to literary historians as the First Folio. In the centuries since 1623, and especially during the last century and a half, editors have worked diligently to compare the various early printed

THE LIFE AND WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE v

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download