What Is the Role of a Person in This Type of Relationship?

Act I

Pre-writing

What are the different types of relationships humans can be involved in? List them and then answer these questions regarding each.

· What is the role of a person in this type of relationship?

· What kinds of things do we expect from a good example of this relationship?

· What is unacceptable in this kind of relationship?

· How can this type of relationship be influenced by society?

After Reading
Answer the following questions and provide evidence from the text to back up your answers.

Literal

1. Where is the opening action taking place?

2. How did Theseus make Hippolyta fall in love with him?

3. According to Egeus how did Lysander make Hermia fall in love with him?

4. What will happen to Hermia, under Greek law, if she does not obey her father, Egeus?

Inferred

1. Why is it apt that Hermia speaks of Venus and Cupid?

2. What is characteristic about the different ways that the characters speak? What can we infer from those differences?

3. How would you describe the character of Bottom?

Thematic

1. In these opening pages there are many references to the moon. What might Shakespeare be employing this image for? What is the moon possibly symbolizing?

2. A big theme of the play can be summed up in Lysander’s line “The course of true love never did run smooth” How have you seen this so far?

3. “Love is said to be a child/because in choice he is so oft beguiled” What does this mean? How is this quote key?

4. What relationships have we seen already? How would you describe and characterize them?

Character Analysis
Choose two characters encountered in this act and provide a text-based analysis of each of them. This needs to tell us basic things about the character such as role in the play, motivations, defining characteristics, etc. You should also provide important quotes from the text that help us understand this character better.

Adaptation
Adapt a part of this act as a modern day scene in a film or play. You must include all the characters but give them relevant roles in today’s society (e.g. Theseus is the principal of a school, Hermia is the homecoming queen, etc.)

Act II

Pre-writing
Think about the natural world versus the “real” world. Define both in your own terms. What kinds of things are valued in them? What are the characteristics of both? What purposes do they serve respectively? Compare and Contrast them.

After Reading
Answer the following questions and provide evidence from the text to back up your answers.

Literal

1. Name 3 tricks that Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow, has played on humans.

2. What are Titania and Oberon arguing about?

3. What is the effect of the argument on the human world?

4. What is Oberon’s plan to get his own back on Titania?

5. When Puck returns with the juice Oberon instructs to put the juice on whose eyes?

6. What do Lysander and Hermia argue about in 2.2. 33-65?

7. What different reasons do the characters have for being in the woods?

Inferred

1. How would you describe the character of Puck? Use evidence from the text to support your claims.

2. Does your opinion of Helena change when she rebuffs Demetrius’s threats with witty word play?

3. What is the important about the fact they have left the City?

4. What is ironic about Lysander’s last words to Hermia before he falls asleep?

5. How do you feel about Helena when she speaks of being Demetrius’s “spaniel.”? Do you think it is merely a product of when the play was written, or do you think it still reflects something you recognize today?

6. Why might Shakespeare have written it was a snake that Hermia dreamed about?

Thematic

1. What is the effect of Titania and Oberon’s argument on the human world? What does this tell us about the power of relationships? Explain.

2. What is different about being in the woods for the characters?

Love Song
Write a love song or poem from one character addressed to another. It must make sense regarding the writer’s personality and the situation between the two characters.

Act III

Pre-writing

How important is good communication to any relationship? Why? What can happen as a result of miscommunication?

After Reading
Answer the following questions and provide evidence from the text to back up your answers.

Literal

1. What are some of player’s worries about the putting on the play?

2. What are some of the solutions to those worries?

3. What mistake has Puck made?

4. Why does Helena assume Demetrius is declaring his love for her?

5. Helena tells us all about her relationship to Hermia. Summarize the friendship up to this point.

6. How does Act three close?

Inferred

1. Exactly where is Bottom’s head changed to an ass? (The exact moment in the play; why did Shakespeare handle the transformation of Bottom in this manner?)

2. What is the irony in what Bottom says when the players desert him?

3. Where is there irony in Titania and Bottom’s conversation? What is the effect of this irony?

4. When Hermia and Helena argue what clues are they giving us about the physical qualities of each other? What do they focus on in their insults? What is the effect of these lines?

5. Does Oberon think this was a mistake on Puck’s part? What do you think and why?

6. How does your opinion of Oberon change when he asks Puck to sort out the lives of mere mortals?

7. How do you think Oberon sees Titania?

Thematic

1. “Reason and Love keep little company together now-a-days” Do you think this is still true now-a-days?

2. We see the imagery of both the moon and the serpent again in these scenes? What effect does this have on the reader?

3. How do we know what is real at this point?

4. How do the characters know what is real?

5. Is there such a thing as “true love?”

6. Think of a love song and relate its lyric to one of the relationships in the play; connect the lyric to a specific Shakespearean line.

Visual Summary
Depict this act using four illustrated panels to show the progression of the story throughout. Choose the four most important events and include as many major characters as possible.

Act IV

Pre-writing

What is the difference between magic and reality? How do we use the blurred line between the two to attempt to explain what cannot be explained?

After Reading
Answer the following questions and provide evidence from the text to back up your answers.

Literal

1. What turns out to be the key to solving all the lovers’ quarrels?

2. When Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus stumble on the four lovers why do they imagine they are all out in the Woods?

3. What does Theseus decree on the matter of Hermia’s betrothal?

Inferred

1. What change do we see in Oberon’s attitude in his speech. What makes you say this?

2. Do the four lovers know why How do the player’s greet Bottom on his return to the city? Does that make you feel differently about Bottom’s character?

3. they are there out in the Woods?

Thematic

1. The play’s conflicts are all solved. What reasons could there be for Act Five?

2. “Are we awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream” says Demetrius. How do we know what is real?

3. What explanation does Bottom have for what transpired the night before?

4. Are the lovers truly unique or are they interchangeable?

5. Compare and contrast the Mechanicals with the Lovers.

Visual Summary
Depict this act using four illustrated panels to show the progression of the story throughout. Choose the four most important events and include as many major characters as possible.

Act V

Pre-writing

Imagine that you were in charge of putting on a production for someone famous or notable but everything about it went horribly wrong although you did your best. What kind of reception would you expect?

After Reading
Answer the following questions and provide evidence from the text to back up your answers.

Literal

1. What entertainment could have been at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta?

2. Who is the only person left under the spell?

Inferred

1. What does Hippolyta think about the four lover’s story? Look at Lines (#?) for clues

2. If Philostrate were to write a review of the Rude Mechanicals play what would it read?

3. Why does the Duke overrule Philostrate’s advice and insist on seeing Bottom’s play?

4. What do you understand by Puck’s final speech?

5. Why does there have to be entertainment at the wedding?

6. What are some of the audience’s reactions to the play?

Thematic

1. “The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name” How would you apply this line from Theseus to the play?

2. Theseus makes reference to the “lunatic, the lover and the poet” all having something in common. What is it?

3. What might Shakespeare be commenting on here?

4. What do you think was real and what wasn’t in this play?

5. Compare and Contrast the two different settings in the play.

Alternate Ending
Write a different ending to the play. It must make sense in the context of the situation of the play and for each of the characters involved.