After you have read the first two acts of William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, respond to the following:
(1) Based on the information that you have after reading the first two acts of the play, what do you predict will happen next for Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius?
(2) Shakespeare creates a number of literary allusions in Act 1, Scene 1, including (1) “To do observance to a morn on May,” (2) “And by that fire which burn’d the Carthage queen,” and (3) “When the false Troyan under sail was seen.” To fully understand these allusions, Google the following search terms “Ancient May Day,” “Dido, Queen of Carthage,” “Aeneas, the False Trojan.” Select one to read, and summarize what you learned about one of these allusions.
After you have finished reading William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, answer the following questions:
(1) What do you think are Oberon’s intentions of the cruelty of making Titania fall in love with Bottom (with the donkey’s head)? Does he win the battle?
(2) How many different stories are interwoven to make up the plot of the play? What effect does the criss-crossing of plot lines have on the play as a whole?
(3) The play contains a “play within a play” (i.e., The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby). What is the purpose of the play within the play? Does the play within the play remind you of another Shakespearean play you may have read or heard of?
