Act III, scene 2: Vocabulary and Plot Research

A.  Go to the internet to find information and analysis of the plot in Act III, scene 2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Focus on this particular scene.  Previously, we have completed an overview of the play as a whole. Today, "target" this scene which is our next topic of study.  After you have located this information, write it into your notes to use it for the vocabulary activity below.

B.  Using the internet or a dictionary or both, define the following words. After you have their definitions, write an original sentence for each that connects to the plot information you entered into your notebook.  Be sure that each sentence demonstrates your knowledge of the definition, uses the proper part of speech and relates to the plot information.

consecrated (v)
bower (n)
mimic (v)
confound (v)
sojourn (n)
chronicled (v)
shrewish (adj)
fray (n)
harbinger (n)

Act III, scene 1 Vocabulary and Research Sources

TASKS:
1. Research Process- scan all sources for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in A.  After you have read through them all, gather two aspects that is interesting to you.  Paraphrase the information in a paragraph in your notebook, write a work cited for your sources and apply in text citation to your paragraph.
2.  Vocabulary- after you have completed the task above, use 8 of the words below in B, correctly, in the proper part of speech given, in a complete and original sentence for each that connects to either the plot of Act III, scene 1 or your research.

These sentences must be turned in to me to be graded.
_______________________________________________________________________________
A.  Research Sources

1. Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare's Extrovert Actor With a Dream

• Jem Bloomfield

Nick Bottom is the most noticeable character amongst the “mechanicals” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mostly because he seems to be constantly talking. At his first appearance, when Quince is giving out the parts for the play Pyramus and Thisbe, Bottom volunteers to play Pyramus, Thisbe and the lion, as well as giving an extempore example of how he would play Hercules, if he were ever called upon to do so.

Most people putting on a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream will have met a Bottom in drama groups at some point – he’s a complete extrovert, bossy, energetic and quite annoying. He tells the director what to do (“Now, name the rest of the players” I.2) argues with the audience, (“No, in truth, sir, he should not.” V.1) and messes up his lines (“Thisbe, the flowers of odious savours sweet.” II.2) He’s a great character to play for someone who likes lots of stage business and mucking around.                                   However, this bumbling, noisy plebian is the only character who crosses over between the human and fairy worlds which run parallel in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Used as a pawn in the rivalry between Oberon and Titania, Bottom has his head changed for a donkey’s, and finds himself adored by a fairy queen. (A character called Bottom becomes an “ass-head”. Sometimes Shakespeare didn’t bother with the subtle jokes.)      Bottom mostly acts the clown in the fairy kingdom: commenting that Fairy Mustardseed’s family have made his eyes water, and declaring he needs a shave as his donkey’s fur is tickling him. On his return to the human world, he decides that his sojourn with the fairies must have been “a most rare vision...a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”(IV.1) This is an interesting twist on the tradition of dream visions in medieval English: a character who decides that actual events must have been a dream.                                                                                                                                     The words Bottom uses to talk about his dream are also worth considering: “man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought”. The image of a “patched fool” evokes a madman in ragged clothes, such as Tom a’Bedlam in King Lear, but it also suggests the Fool in the same play. The “patches” could be the motley clothing of a jester, or for that matter the shabby clothes which actors were mocked for wearing as they trudged the provinces. This vision, which only a “patched fool” would offer to present, could be taken as an image of the theatre itself.                                                      Bottom’s comic confusion in this scene also has echoes of a more famous text. “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen...” is a mangling of St. Paul’s words in Corinthians, in the Bishops’ Bible which was generally used in English churches during Shakespeare’s youth. Readers, and directors, have to decide for themselves whether this is simply a joke about an illiterate craftsman messing up a quotation, or whether the echo means that Bottom’s experience has given him some glimpse of a great vision he cannot articulate properly.

http://www.suite101.com/content/quince-and-the-mechanicals-a29081


2. Quince and the Mechanicals

The Play-Within-a-Play in A Midsummer Night's Dream

• Jem Bloomfield

The “mechanicals” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are a group of Athenian craftsmen who have been chosen to perform a play at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Their rehearsals provide continual comedy, as they lose an actor, much of the plot, and all sense of proportion.                                                                                      Peter Quince, their leader, proclaims the mechanicals to be the men “thought fit through all Athens to play in our interlude”, but as he reads out their names, it becomes obvious that this is hardly a crack acting troupe: “”Nick Bottom the weaver”, “Francis Flute, the bellows-mender”, “Robin Starveling the tailor”, “Tom snout, the tinker” and “Snug the joiner” (I.2). There is something of the professional’s condescension to amateur bunglers in the way Shakespeare depicts their attempts to produce high drama, and Snug’s request that the lion’s part be written out for him so he can learn it properly.                       Their ambition continually makes them trip over their words, as Bottom promises to “aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove” (I.2), and they offer a “tedious brief scene” full of “very tragical mirth” (V.1) to the Duke and his household. Typically with Shakespeare, these malapropisms are ironically apt: Bottom may well “aggravate” his voice with his attempts, and their scene could be tedious despite its brevity.                                                                                                               Egeus dismisses their dramatic attempts as “nothing, nothing at all” by “hard-handed men”, but Theseus welcomes their “tongue-tied simplicity” as proof of their honest duty to him (V.1). He later defends them with terms which he seems to apply to all actors: “The best in this kind are no more than shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them.” (V.1) The mechanicals, though clearly a terrible acting troupe, have somehow become emblematic of the dramatic arts.                                                         The play-within-a-play motif appears frequently in Renaissance drama, notably in Hamlet and The Spanish Tragedy. Of course Hamlet also contains some shoddy actors, who deliver an old-fashioned dumb-show and some ranting out-of-date tragedy. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it isn’t clear what the play represents or symbolizes, though their word-mangling attempt at presenting a great story seems to have some link to Bottom’s vision which “the eye of man hath not heard”.                                                     The 1999 film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (starring Kevin Kline as Bottom) suggested that the mechanicals, amidst all of their mistakes and idiocy, touched true drama, if only briefly. Thisbe’s death scene was produced as a moment when the play-within-a-play transcended its shoddy staging conditions and awkward actors to make the “hard-handed men” who “never laboured in their minds” an embodiment of the power of drama. Whether or not one agrees with this reading of the text, it’s an intriguing moment.

http://www.suite101.com/content/quince-and-the-mechanicals-a29081

_________________________________________________________________________________

B.  Vocabulary
brake (n)
auditor (n)
odious (adj)
knavery (n)
ouzel (n)
tawny (adj)
enamoured (v)
enthralled (v)
gleek (v)
purge (v)

Act II Plot Research and Vocabulary- A Midsummer Night's Dream

1.  Find information about the plot and/or meaning of Act II of A Midsummer Night's Dream on the internet. Write the events and aspects discussed in your internet source to guide you.

2.  Define the following words.  After you have found the meaning of the word, write a sentence for each word that not only

a. demonstrates your understanding of the meaning, in the proper part of speech, but also                        
b. connects to the information that you found in your internet research.

Write these sentences on a piece of loose leaf paper to hand in for a grade.

Heed (v)
Beguile (v)
Forsworn (v)
Wanton (adj)
Amorous (adj)
Brawls (n)
Progeny (n)
Dissension (n)
Amend (v)
Conceive (v)
Chide (v)
Render (v)
Fawn (v)
Spurn (v)