A Midsummer Night's Dream

Session One: Prelude




1. Love is “fondness through familiarity” from C. S. Lewis. It is also friendship,



2. A few famous lines are Lysander’s lament that the “course of true love never did run smooth” (Act 1. 1), Helena’s bitter assertion that “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind” (1.1), and Theseus’s bemused comment that “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are imagination all compact” (5.1). In these and other passages, the play gives a complex and classic representation of the struggle between emotion and reason. The main theme involves a struggle between emotion and reason. Neither emotion nor reason can be completely depended on.



3. Magic, in the Christian sense and understood a certain way, can be a rich inspiration for literature. It expresses the fact that the world is personal and poetic, not mechanical. Magic also makes us see in a new light things that we think we already know.



4. We can see traces of God in the play of the fairies in the way that A Midsummer Night’s Dream has a seemingly fated outcome. God is appearing like a Character in the story, even seeming to change his ways in the end. (i.e. Ex. 32: 14) Sometimes, when things happen to us that make us end up feeling like Hermia or Helena, we have to trust, despite the tricks and tests, that He can and will work out all things for good(Rom 8:28), and, as in the play, the whole thing will someday seem like just a bad dream (Rom. 8:18 & 1 Cor. 13: 12). Like the fairies in the play, God is not totally predictable. He differs from the fairies in the fact that He is all-powerful and the fairies are not.



5. If something is wrong, there must be an idea of a standard for it; it can't be wrong without an idea of what is right." There simply has to be a right for us to know that something is wrong.



6. This interpretation is too simplistic because the play shows that both places have something to teach one another.









7. The two main locations in the play are Athens and the forest. They relate to the themes of the play, which are magic, love, unfaithfulness, and emotion, by planting them in an emotional, magical place, (the forest) as well as a loving but unfaithful atmosphere, the home of Hermia’s father in Athens. the forest is where emotion reigns while in the city, reason reigns.







Session IV: Discussion



1. The subject of the very first lines in the play is upon the subject of marriage, and begins with this so as to start off the play in a suitable way- after all, the whole play is about love.



2. Eugeus does not approve of Lysander because he would rather his daughter Hermia marry Demetrious, though both men are of equal status and equilibrium, and so Eugeus is simply playing favorites.



3. In Lysander’s argument against Demetrious in 1.1, “You have her father’s love, Demetrious; let me have Hermia’s- do you marry him,” Eugeus acknowledges that Demetrious is his most favored, but giving no reason why.



4. Overall, most of the passages in the play that refer to promises and faithfulness gives you a pessimistic view of people’s ability to keep their promises.



 Cultural Analysis



1. Our secular culture views marriage as something lightly dealt with- most of the time you may marry whenever you choose, whomever you choose, and there is no consideration about the future of the two mates and how well they will work together.



2. Normally a person of high status or someone who seems to know a lot on the subject of marriage defines it in our society.



3. Two nonbelievers might marry in our culture because they believe that they’ve found the “right person.”



4. I think of romance and marriage as somewhat connected, but only so long as it’s a godly relationship that would lead you into a lasting marriage.





 Biblical Analysis



1. The Biblical reasons for marriage are that it is one of your rewards, to protect your wife.





 Session V: Discussion



A Question to Consider: How do fiction and imagination relate to “real life”?

Fiction and imagination relate to real life by what happens. Your dream could seem so far off, and then one day, it happens, and you think yourself the happiest person in the world. It starts in your mind- what you imagine is what seems fiction, until it becomes real life.



1. When Helena says, “Love sees not with the eyes, but with the mind,” I think by mind she means reason. This, according to her, perceives reality correctly by looking through the eyes.



2. Unknown



3. When Theseus lumps together “the lunatic, the lover, and the poet,” fiction to him is similar to imagination.



4. The craftsmen’s assumptions about the theater are that it’s exceedingly large. Their assumptions about their audience is that they’re easily frightened; and this is funny because they are on a real stage- they are actors playing the part of actors, and in turn, these same actors play the part of- once again- actors.



5. The actual reaction to the craftsmen’s performance is one of much hilarity.



6. Shakespeare devotes a long scene to the craftsmen’s play when his own play is over to comment on it through the eyes of the craftsmen.



7. Puck says about the play that it must only have been a dream, echoing the comments of the craftsmen’s play.







Master Puck

Session VI: Recitation





1. The cultural significance to a Midsummer Night’s Dream is to celebrate a wedding.



2. The play opens with preparations for the wedding between Theseus and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, his bride. The marriage gives the play a target to go toward.



3. Lysander and Hermia have to elope because Eugeus, Hermia’s father, wants her to marry Demetrious.



4. Oberon and Titania are at odds because Titania will not give Oberon a little Indian orphan boy that he wants for a page.



5. Oberon wins the argument by putting a “love juice” into Titania’s eyes, and causing her to fall in love with “Bottom.” She begs for his patience and hands over the boy.



6. Puck makes the mistake of putting his portion of “love juice” into Lysander’s eyes instead of in Demetrious’.



7. The event which takes up most of Act 5, scene 1, is the production of the craftsmen’s play.



 Conceptual Questions



1. Magic and fairies, from a Christian perspective, seem to play the role of God, in the way that he handles everything according to His perfect plan.



2. The ideas of love and commitment are seemingly of no value to the men at all.



3. The play says that the natures of fiction and imagination are a compacted substance.

The play of A Midsummer Night’s Dream gives the impression that the whole play really was a dream, or rather more seemingly, a dream inside a dream. In fact, Demetrious ends his part of the play with these words-



“Why, then, we are awake: let’s follow (Theseus); and by the way, let us recount our dreams.”

~Demetrious, act 1V, scene 1







What about you? Sometimes we feel, like Helena and Hermia, that the world has ganged up on us, and we cannot find the way out. But we must always trust that God has the power, like the fairies, to work all things out for good. And later, after the thought “horrors” are over, we look back on things like this……

……. as nothing but a dream.







Finis