A Midsummer Night's Dream Critics

Question 1

What was Regina Buccola’s feminist view on the play?

Answer 1

“the play sympathies with rebellious women,”

Question 2

How does Ryan note on parallels in the play?

Answer 2

“the Athenian scenes frame the scenes of erotic mayhem in the woods

Question 3

How does Hopkins note on marriage within the play?

Answer 3

“single or multiple marriages provide a sense of comic closure,”

Question 4

How does Kriegar note on the fact the play is a conservative genre?

Answer 4

“The lovers flee Athens to win autonomy, but their actions remain systematic and codified,”

Question 5

What is Dent’s comment on love?

Answer 5

“The origin of love never lies in reason,”

Question 6

How does Garber comment on love?

Answer 6

“AMND is throughout a celebration of the irrationality of love, not a criticism of the failure of reason,”

Question 7

How did Laroque comment on the woods in the play?

Answer 7

“[The Greenworld is] a place of escape from the constraints of the law and everyday life,”

Question 8

How does Denise Waterman: BBC online news magazine compares Bottom to Miranda?

Answer 8

“Bottom is silly and bossy but ultimately very lovable. He makes a fool if himself but his stupidity is endearing, innocent and never malicious.”

Question 9

How does Fender comment on metatheatre in play?

Answer 9

“The mechanical’s performance of Pyramus and Thisbe is a parody of the lovers,”

Question 10

How does Synder comment on the conservative genre?

Answer 10

“Shakespeare’s women on top speciality has its own relevance in the comic mode, which rejoices like the seasonal festivals that animate it in temporary placing servants over masters and women over men, dislocating the hierarchies sanctioned but it’s society only to reassert them at the end of the play,”

Question 11

What was Kerr’ comments on marriage?

Answer 11

“To be comic, the ending must forcefully call into question the issues of happiness and forever after

Question 12

How did Carlson comment on the conservative genre?

Answer 12

“Women are allowed their brilliance, freedom and power in comedy only because the genre has built - in safe - guards against such behaviour

Question 13

How did Gay comment on unacceptable behaviour in the play?

Answer 13

“indecorous,”

Question 14

What did Frye call the woods?

Answer 14

“Greenworld,”

Question 15

How did Gay comment on the conservative genre?

Answer 15

“Comedy, while delighting in the events of a briefly topsy turvy world it is ultimately conservative,”

Question 16

What does Gay believe comedy inhabits?

Answer 16

“a liminal space,”

Question 17

What is Wilson’s Marxist view on the play?

Answer 17

“sees the play as supporting the ruling class,”

Question 18

What does Hazlitt say about Puck?

Answer 18

The description of puck as not pitting but laughing at those whom he deceives

Question 19

What does Maslen say about articulating concern?

Answer 19

The comedy genre itself gave actors a voice and allowed them to articulate their concerns in a time of high political tensions

Question 20

What is C.L. Barber’s opinion about festive comedies?

Answer 20

He used his knowledge of Elizabethan rituals and festivals to argue that the subversive inversion in the central section of the play draws parallels to the inversion during twelfth night as rules were suspended and normal hierarchies were inverted.

Question 21

What does Ryan comment about the mechanicals?

Answer 21

The mechanical performance of Pyramus of Thisbe along with the comic romance between Bottom and Titania undermine authority and provide a levelling effect

Question 22

What does Emma Smith argue within her article Dream, illusion and Doubling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Answer 22

• Doubling helped the audience to make connections and contrasts especially between characters heightening the fantastical elements
• The fickleness of love in the play implies that lovers are interchangeable
• The play is meant to be for children due to Victorian images which is ironic due to the dark nature of the fairies and the dark undertones in the play
• Parallelism between Hermia and Helena emphasises how both characters are driven by love

Question 23

What does Garner believe about Theseus?

Answer 23

He remains a lover and leaver of women who, having abducted Hippolyta, naturally sympathises with Demetrius’ desire to force Hermia into marriage

Question 24

What does Knight believe about Theseus?

Answer 24

He has put his youthful adventures behind hi, and has become the, “calmest and wisest,” of the characters with, “an exquisite and wide love and deep human knowledge.”

Question 25

What does Holland argue?

Answer 25

Hermia's dream, of being attacked by a snake while Lysander watches her revealing inner vulnerability as the snake is a symbol of loveless desire triggering a fear of betrayal for the audience as it separates Lysander's characterisations between sexual and affectionate

Question 26

What Kreiger argue about the craftsmen?

Answer 26

They are exploited workers who find themselves, "incorporated into the ruiling-class vision of society,"

Question 27

What does Ryan argue about the mechanicals?

Answer 27

They are natural subversives who upstage and parody the aristocrats

Question 28

What does Hackett believe about Titania?

Answer 28

She represents the fear of female authority felt during the Elizabethan period because Elizabeth I was ruiling

Question 29

What does Bevington believe about Puck?

Answer 29

He represents the sinister aspects of the fairyworld. The audience may be amused by his antics but the mortal characters are terrified as he turns their fears against them creating, "truly frightening illusions in the forest

Question 30

What does Smith believe about Puck?

Answer 30

He serves to present the, "subconscious of the Athenians,"

Question 31

What does Calderwood believe?

Answer 31

The tripartite structure creates a sense of anamorphism through doubling allowing the audience to criticise the courtly setting

Question 32

What does Smith believe about a Victorian audience?

Answer 32

They manipulated the play to be about romance and marriage when it was really about sex

Question 33

What does Ryan believe about Oberon and Titania?

Answer 33

While Oberon is , "cuckolded," Titania is reduced to a, "tradesman's concubine,"

Question 34

What does Montrose argue?

Answer 34

'Oberon and Theseus work towards a common goal: to restabilise, if only temporarily, the patriarchal ordering of the public and domestic domains'

Question 35

What does Hunt believe?

Answer 35

'Until Oberon and Titania's brawl is settled, the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta - or any of the Athenian lovers - would be ill-advised, simply because the nature disturbed by the fairies' quarrel remains hostile to happiness.'

Question 36

What does Forsch suggest about the epilogue?

Answer 36

'Rather than answering questions about enchantment and demystification, Puck's epilogue helps us recognise that we have been in a psychologucal place where such answers are irrelevant.'

Question 37

What does RF Miller argue?

Answer 37

'The world of the stage bears a significant resemblance to the world of the fairies. Both define a mode of existence separate from but interacting with quotidian existence; both challenge an outsider either to rejection or to a tentative understanding of his scpetical instincts.'

Question 38

What does Stott believe?

Answer 38

Comic characterisation is usually subordinate to the demands of the plot, and therefore more effectively realised with stereotypes and one dimensional characters than anything approaching the realistic portrayal of human emotions. I...] Accordingly, we see a seemingly endless parade of characters who are utterly dominated by a single prevalent characteristic.

Question 39

What does Maslen believe comedy plays dealt with?

Answer 39

the "dangerous present,"

Question 40

What does Smith argue about women?

Answer 40

Shakespeare purposefully presented a similarity between the names of the women to reveal how their roles are interchangeable