Seminar I

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

ROMEO AND JULIET

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

3. The comparison chart of classical tragedy and comedy. Which of listed

characteristic features are applicable works under consideration?
6. Development of the plot

Romeo and Juliet

Exposition (експозиція)

 Feuding street fight between Capulet and Montague Families

 Romeo SAD Rosaline is not interested in him
 Juliet told to marry Paris (an older man)
 Conversation between the Capulet's and the Montagues
 Mercutio makes fun of Romeo because Rosaline's intent is to never marry.

Complication (зав`язка)

In Shakespeare's romantic tragedy, the complication is the meeting of Romeo.

This is the catalyst that starts the major conflict.

In “Romeo and Juliet”, a complication is the fact that Capulet and the servingmen
are planning the wedding even when Juliet refused to get married. Capulet is
planning the wedding without consent of Juliet and he knows that she will refuse to
marry Paris.

When the two lovers finally get some alone time later that night, they decide that
the family feud doesn't matter—they have to be together. So, they enlist the help
of some adults who really should know better: Juliet's nurse and Romeo's
confessor, a priest named Friar Laurence. Less than twenty-four hours after they've
met, Romeo and Juliet are tying the knot in secret at Friar Laurence's church.

Tybalt is so furious that Romeo crashed the Capulet party that he's decided to
challenge Romeo to a duel. Yep, this is going to be a problem.

Climax (кульмінація)

After crashing the Capulet party, Tybalt goes after the Montague crew and kills
Mercutio. To avenge his friend, Romeo duels with and kills Tybalt - Juliet's cousin.
Romeo is banished.

Resolution (розв`язка)

 The resolution occurs after Prince Escalus summons Lord Capulet and Lord
Montague.
 The parents are informed of the events involving the deaths of Romeo and
Juliet;
 Afterwards, they reconcile and end their feud.
Denouement (епілог)

The denouement occurs in the play when the Capulets and Montagues see their
beloved children committing suicide at the tomb. Lord Capulet and Lord Montague
agree to end their dispute to avoid further tragedy in the future.

A Midsummer Night`s Dreams

Exposition (експозиція)

The Duke of Athens is to be married to the Queen of the Amazons. During the
festival, two young men, Demetrius and Lysander, meet Hermia. Both men fall in
love with her. Her father gives her permission to marry Demetrius, even though
she loves Lysander.

Complication

Hermia runs away with her love. However, before she does, she tells her friend
Helena, who is in love with Demetrius. Helena tells him in hopes of winning some
favor in his eyes. They all end up running into the woods after one another.

In the woods, a fairy named Puck tries to solve the love triangle and accidentally
makes Lysander fall in love with Helena. While trying to fix the issue, he makes
Demetrius fall for her too.

Climax

With the men fighting over Helena, Hermia mad at Helena. Puck manages to
separate all so they don`t end up killing each other. Once they fall asleep, Puck
reverses the spell and rights his wrong.

Resolution
By the dawning of a new day, the night and its discord has resolved. Lysander,
free of Puck's enchantments, falls back in love with Hermia, while Demetrius
remains enchanted, and in love with Helena. Helena's father agrees to accept
Lysander as a match for his daughter.

Denouement

In the end, everyone is married. The play “Pyramus and Thisbe” is performed,
and Puck ends the play by asking the audience to remember it all as if it were a
dream!

7. Compare ROMEO AND JULIET and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT`S DREAM

  “The course of true love never did run smooth” (how far are Lysander`s
proved true by the (total) events in either play? Are they are more suitable
motto for one than the other? Why?

Lysander says this quote to show that his love towards Hermia is stronger that
Demetrius'. He says this quote to Hermia because he wants her to know that any
relationship will have its ups and downs, a relationship cannot be perfect.

The young lovers Lysander and Hermia, like young lovers in every comedy, have
run into trouble at the very start of the play. Hermia’s father has decided that she
shall marry Demetrius, not Lysander; if she refuses, she’ll have to face the law of
Athens—that is, either death or consignment to a nunnery. Lysander offers
“comfort” with the observation that “the course of true love never did run smooth,”
apparently comparing romance to a river current. His examples—which elicit
parallel replies from Hermia—include affairs complicated by differences in class
(“blood”) or age, or dictated by relations (“friends”).

 Puck and Oberon/ Friar Laurence and the Nurse (Compare their efforts
to help lovers. How and why are fairies succesful where human helpers
fail? Compare the Friar`s use of magical or seeming magical herbs with
Oberon`s use of magical plants)

Oberon and Puck

Oberon is the king of the fairies, and as such, is one of the central characters in A
Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck is Oberon's assistant, although he also acts on his
own instincts and gets into lots of mischief that Oberon has nothing to do with.
Oberon and Puck generally have a good relationship with one another; even when
Puck messes up his orders from Oberon, it does not lead to serious problems
between the two. For example, at one point in the play Oberon orders Puck to put
fairy drops on Demetrius's eyes, but Puck accidentally places them on Lysander's
eyes; Oberon merely scolds Puck, and puts the juice on Demetrius's eyes himself.

Puck solves the problem of the four lovers by, first, imitating the men's voices to
separate Demetrius and Lysander, who want to fight a duel over Helena. When all
the lovers are back asleep in the glade, Puck then drops more love potion into
Lysander's eyes. When Lysander awakes, he falls back in love with Hermia.

Oberon ensures that the proper lovers end up together by the end of the play. He
sympathizes with the sorely abused Helena and causes Demetrius to fall madly in
love with her. As a benevolent ruler of the spirit world, he also brings blessing of
peace and health to the future families of the newlyweds.
Friar Laurence and the Nurse

Nurse: She genuinely wants Juliet to be happy. She’s more of a mother to Juliet
than Lady Capulet is. Though her willingness to enable Juliet only goes so far -
after the bloodbath and Romeo’s banishment, she basically joins Juliet’s parents in
telling her to marry Paris (though the Nurse’s rationale is slightly different - for her
parents it’s all about social position; for the Nurse, it’s because Romeo can’t ever
return to Verona under pain of death and the Nurse thinks that forgetting him and
marrying Paris will be better for Juliet in the long run rather than being disowned
and running away to join Romeo somewhere; Juliet is only 13, after all…).

Friar Lawrence: He thinks it’s a way of ending the feud by bringing the two
families together through the love and marriage of their children. And he possibly
would have been right if not for the fact that he was dealing with a couple of
teenagers with virtually not an ounce of impulse control between either of them.

 Almost fairy time (What difference do the fairies make to the comic world
of A Midsummer Night`s Dream compared to the harcher view of the
world that we see in Romeo and Juliet)

The main role of the fairies in William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's
Dream" is to introduce the magic into the story that both causes problems and
helps to bring about a happy ending. They give a surreal character to the play and
contrast some of the more coarse characters in the story. They also help to add the
humor a comedy needs to be successful.

The purpose of the fairies is to provide comedy, giving them child-like

characteristics.

Queen Mab serves to underline Romeo’s immaturity in the context of

relationships– a typical characteristic in a teenage boy. During the course of the
play Romeo faces several challenges and experiences that force him to grow up,
and we see that by the time of his death he has matured significantly.

 Verona and Athens (Comment on the various settings within each play,
and explain what it has to do with what happens)

The setting of Romeo and Juliet is Verona, Italy, in what is most likely the 1300s
or 1400s. Different settings within Verona include the Capulet estate, the street
(where the citizens of Verona get into fights), and Friar Laurence's church.

The audiences attending Romeo and Juliet were not disappointed. It is set in
Verona, Italy, which is unbearably hot in summer. It is at midday on a very hot day
that the central action, the death of Mercutio, takes place. We have already seen a
lot of sexual passion by now but the violence we now see is the dramatic device
that puts the tragedy into top gear. The Italian setting perfectly suits the action.

Shakespeare set A Midsummer Night's Dream in ancient Athens and the wood
just outside it, which Shakespeare changes into a magic place with fairies. There is
a fairy king and a fairy queen. ... This wood near Athen is important as a setting
because it is a magical, unrealistic place, not the real world of humans.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare uses the green world and its
inhabitants as a symbol of imagination. The characters flee from reality to escape
the laws that govern everyday life in Athens. ... The problems that these characters
face are remedied because of the ability of the mind to create this mythical world.

 Fathers and daughters (Comment on these relationships, as you see them

in the 2 plays)

In 'Romeo and Juliet' Shakespeare explores and contrasts the passion of two
lovers with the violence and bitter hatred between their families. Shakespeare also
has a strong theme of male domination in the play, and helps express this with the
relationship between Juliet and her father, Old Capulet. Old Capulet is the head of
one of the two households in contrast.

In Old Capulet's monologue the audience learns a great deal about Juliet's
relationship with her father. Although he says to the outside world that he loves
her, the underlying feeling is that he is in control of her, as a father figure he has
the ' according voice' to force her into something as big as a wedding. Shakespeare
begins to dramatise the relationship between father and daughter in his play
introduces the audience to Verona, a city where, if you're female, your male peers
and parents make your decisions for you.

The relationship between Egeus and Hermia is very distinct. Egeus expects
Hermia to marry the man of his choice despite Hermia’s wishes to marry another
man. Egeus disregards his daughter’s feelings on the subject, and gives her an
ultimatum: either marry Demetrius or die (1.1.40-45). Egeus feels that since he is
Hermia’s father.

When considering the relationship between Egeus and Hermia, there is not
affection displayed between them. Egeus announces multiple times that Hermia
belongs to him, which gives off the sense of ownership rather than care.

 Contrast (Both plays exploit obvious contrasts for theatrical effect. Among
these are light and dark (or day and night), love and hate and the upper
 and lower hands of the social scale. Explain how any of these work to
make the drama more effective)

Shakespeare`s A Midsummer Night`s Dream uses contrast to emphasize theme

and theme and the attributes of the characters.

Helena is portrayed as tall and Hermia is short. Titania is a beautiful fairy who
falls in love with Bottom, who is portrayed as graceless. Moreover, the main sets
of characters even have differences. Fairies are graceful and magical creatures, yet
tradesmen are clumsy and mortal.

Contrast is important because it emphasizes aspects of a plot or character that

may have otherwise overlooked or understated.

The light is seen as a healthy and good thing, while the darkness is seen as
representing and deepening Romeo's depression. This imagery of darkness is
associated with Romeo's depression, which is caused by Rosaline. Rosaline does
not reciprocate Romeo's love. Rosaline is also associated with darkness.

The images of the sun and moon are images of day and night respectively and
thus serve as images of lightness and darkness. These images represent both beauty
and their love, but also foreshadow their upcoming deaths. ... Since light refers to
beauty, we also know that it is symbolizing their love.

For example, both Romeo and Juliet see the other as light in a surrounding
darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun, brighter than a torch, a
jewel sparkling in the night, and a bright angel among dark clouds.

Darkness is a perpetual presence in the final scenes of the play. When Paris is
traveling to Juliet’s grave, he has a torch indicating that it is night. This is one of
the darkest scenes in the play, both figuratively and literally. Finally, after Romeo
and Juliet’s death, Prince Escalus gives a final speech saying, “A glooming peace
this morning with it brings; / The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head” This is
the final speech in the play and a summary of Escalus’s feelings about Romeo’s
and Juliet’s deaths. The darkness that is death has taken all from both Romeo and
Juliet.

 Order and disorder (In both plays we see rulers (Theseus and Oberon and
Prince Escalus) try to resiore or maintain order, in the face of disruptive
or anarchic behaviour. Show how this appears in each play, and how
important it is to the play`s central themes. In each vplay there are figures
who represent disorder (Bottom and Puck; Mercutio and Tybalt). Expain
how these challange attempts to preserve order in their domains)
 A Midsummer Night's Dream also deals with the theme of order and disorder.
The order of Egeus' family is threatened because his daughter wishes to marry
against his will; the social order to the state demands that a father's will should be
enforced. When the city dwellers find themselves in the wood, away from their
ordered and hierarchical society, order breaks down and relationships are
fragmented.

Natural order — the order of Nature — is also broken and restored in A

Midsummer Night's Dream. The row between the Fairy King and Queen results in
the order of the seasons being disrupted.

 Theseus describes Hermia's punishment if she disobeys her father,

prompting the lovers' escape to the woods.
 Titania describes the consequences for the natural world of her quarrel with
Oberon.
 Bottom's transformation disrupts the Mechanicals' rehearsal.
 Puck's mistakes bring the lovers to great confusion.
 Titania expresses her love for Bottom who has been transformed into a
donkey.
 Three weddings and a fairy blessing bring all to a happy.

The contrast between order and disorder appears from the Prologue, where the
Chorus tells a tragic story using the ordered sonnet form. From that point onwards,
the separation between order and disorder is a common theme. Ironically, violence
and disorder occurs in bright daylight, while the serenity of love emerges at night.
The relationship between Romeo and Juliet is uncomplicated without the
disorderly feud between their families, which has taken over the streets of Verona.
The contrast between order and disorder underscores the way that Shakespeare
presents love - a safe cocoon in which the lovers can separate themselves from the
unpredictable world around them. At the end of the play, it becomes clear that a
relationship based on pure love cannot co-exist with human weaknesses like greed
and jealousy.

 Conclusion (Explain what you like/dislike about either play or both. Say
what kind of response they provoke in the audience)

The conclusion of Romeo and Juliet Tragic story Is due to human flaws. Both
romeo and Juliet gave each other illusions that they knew couldn't happen. Their
love could not happen because their families were enemies. By loving each other
they would be betraying their families and dishonoring them.
 Perhaps if the adults had not meddled with the lives of the young teenagers there
lives wouldn’t have ended so abruptly. Lord Capulet’s selfish desire for Juliet to
marry Paris made her desperate and impulsive. The Nurse’s reckless
encouragement of the love, followed by her betrayal caused Juliet to lose trust in
the only adult that could have helped her live. Friar Lawrence’s deceitfulness, and
his complete lack of thought was one of the most important factors in the untimely
deaths of Romeo and Juliet.

The moral lesson of A Midsummer Night's Dream may be to point out the fickle
nature of human relationships. Shakespeare uses comedy and the magic of fairies
to demonstrate the failure of humans to form constant and steady romantic
relationships.

8. Major themes

 Love and marriage

In the world of Romeo and Juliet, marriage for love, rather than money or
social position, is a radical and dangerous choice—particularly for kids from
wealthy and influential families. ... Romeo and Juliet pay a heavy price for
marrying for love—their clandestine union propels the lovers towards their
tragic deaths.

Romeo and Juliet get married so quickly because they are in lust and, due to
their young age, do not know how to handle it. Also, the feud between their
families plays a role in that they know they will be forbidden to be together, so
they figure the best way to get around it is just to get married.

Marriage in Romeo and Juliet shows how the partner’s wealth and social
background was the main factor in marriage, as opposed to modern day
passionate love, which is drawn by attraction and compatibility.

When Romeo and Juliet first meet, they instantly fall in love. Shakespeare
presents their initial meeting as passionate, flirtatious and true. This shows that
their first meeting was charged with love and desire for one another.

In the play Shakespeare portrays three types of love; arranged marriage, true
love and courtly love. Arranged marriage is shared between Juliet and Paris.
Juliet is forced to marry Paris after a family loss.

Love is a central topic in the play. Nearly every protagonist is somehow in

love but some of them are happily in love and some of them are not.
 The best example for a very unhappy love is maybe Helena, who has been left
from Demetrius, the love of her life, because he preferred the beauty of
Helena’s best friend Hermia.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, love is a force that characters cannot control,

a point amplified by workings of the love potion, which literally makes people
slaves to love. And yet, A Midsummer Night's Dream ends happily, with three
marriages blessed by the reconciled fairy King and Queen.

A Midsummer Night's Dream asserts marriage as the true fulfillment of

romantic love. All the damaged relationships have been sorted out at the end of
Act IV, and Act V serves to celebrate the whole idea of marriage in a spirit of
festive happiness.

 Friendship

Mercutio's relationship with Romeo is that of Romeo's best friend, but beyond
that, Mercutio also serves as Romeo's dramatic foil. Mercutio is the exact opposite
of Romeo, and his lewd and humorous nature contrasts against Romeo's serious
and devoted nature.

Benvolio and Mercutio are friends with Romeo. The Nurse is Juliet's closest
friend and confidant and she is also close to Tybalt. Lord Capulet refers to Paris as
his friend when he is insisting that Juliet marry the Count. Friar Lawrence could
also be considered friends with Romeo and Juliet.

All in all, friendship and loyalty was mostly demonstrated between Lysander,
Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena in the story "A Mid Summer Night's Dream" there
is love and jealousy and staying true to each other as friends or as lovers in many
different ways in the story .

 Order and disorder

A Midsummer Night's Dream also deals with the theme of order and
disorder. The order of Egeus' family is threatened because his daughter
wishes to marry against his will; the social order to the state demands that
a father's will should be enforced. When the city dwellers find
themselves in the wood, away from their ordered and hierarchical
society, order breaks down and relationships are fragmented.

Natural order — the order of Nature — is also broken and restored in A

Midsummer Night's Dream. The row between the Fairy King and Queen
results in the order of the seasons being disrupted.
  Theseus describes Hermia's punishment if she disobeys her father,
prompting the lovers' escape to the woods.

 Titania describes the consequences for the natural world of her quarrel
with Oberon.

 Bottom's transformation disrupts the Mechanicals' rehearsal.

 Puck's mistakes bring the lovers to great confusion.

 Titania expresses her love for Bottom who has been transformed into
a donkey.

 Three weddings and a fairy blessing bring all to a happy.

The contrast between order and disorder appears from the Prologue,
where the Chorus tells a tragic story using the ordered sonnet form. From
that point onwards, the separation between order and disorder is a
common theme. Ironically, violence and disorder occurs in bright
daylight, while the serenity of love emerges at night. The relationship
between Romeo and Juliet is uncomplicated without the disorderly feud
between their families, which has taken over the streets of Verona. The
contrast between order and disorder underscores the way that
Shakespeare presents love - a safe cocoon in which the lovers can
separate themselves from the unpredictable world around them. At the
end of the play, it becomes clear that a relationship based on pure love
cannot co-exist with human weaknesses like greed and jealousy.

 Illusion Vs. Reality

Appearance vs. reality is one of the themes that are portrayed through out the
play. It means, things aren’t always what they seem to be. Something or someone
might appear to be another thing, but the reality is different. Romeo and Juliet
show appearance vs. reality through out the play because of their secret marriage.

Examples of appearance vs. reality are when Juliet finds out about Tybalt’s death
and Romeo’s banishment. Juliet’s parents think that Juliet is crying about Tybalt’s
death, but she is crying about Romeo’s banishment, when the couple (Romeo and
Juliet) get married, but everybody thinks they are still single and when the nurse
finds Juliet dead and the Capulet’s have an unnecessary funeral for Juliet even
though she is not dead and had only swallowed Friar Lawrence’s potion, which put
her into a long sleep.

The world of A Midsummer Night's Dream is no doubt magical. . The story takes
place in three different settings: Athens, the forest, and the story-within-a-story
setting of Babylon.

The irony of discussing the reality of A Midsummer Night's Dream is that the
play is fictional. It has realistic elements, but at the end of the day, the story and its
characters are imaginary. It's only real because it's a text that we can read.

Once the story reaches the forest, however, it begins to lose even some of those
realistic elements. The play gains a supernatural element as we meet the fairies,
and the humans begin to interact in their world. As the story moves from realism to
fantasy, it becomes more of an illusion.

 Dreams and imagination

A Midsummer Night's Dream uses the theme of magic to explore love. Magic in
the play is mainly used to get characters to fall in love with people they would not
usually pursue. ... Magic is therefore used to show an exaggeration of love, an
extension of the foolish behavior that love inspires even without magic.

The title of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has both literary and
social significance. The title tells the audience right away that the play is going to
deal in some way with a sort of dream on a summer night. To dream, a person
must be asleep; however, most of the characters are awake throughout the play.

The main theme of the dreams and premonitions in Romeo and Juliet is death.
Romeo tells Mercutio that he had a dream, which he implies suggested going to the
masque was not a good idea. If Romeo had not gone to the party and met Juliet,
their love would not have ended in his death and hers, so he is correct that going to
the party will ultimately end in doom.

 Light and darkness

The disparity between lightness and darkness is one of the play’s most significant
symbols. Innocent, gentile characters like Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio and Benvolio,
who display qualities of goodness are often seen during the daylight, while
characters who exhibit evil or violence, such as Lord Capulet and Paris, are usually
seen only at night. Take Romeo’s famous soliloquy, in which he describes Juliet as
the giver of light: “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the
east, and Juliet is the sun.” Contrast that with the speech Prince Escalus gives at
the very end of the play, after the death of Romeo and Juliet: “A glooming peace
this morning with it brings / the sun, for sorrow, will not show his head.”

While it's true that day is for men and night for fairies, on a deeper level, day
represents law and order and night fantastic chaos. Both can hinder truth; the law
stopped Hermia and Lysander's true love just like chaos did with the love potion.
Both can also illuminate truth as well.

 Destiny

Juliet's destiny is to die a tragic death by her own hand. We know this because it
explicitly says so in the play's Prologue.

The prologue introduces the theme of fate when the lovers are called star-crossed
and death-marked. This means that the events of their lives, and their deaths, are
somehow already decided. ... Later when Juliet looks at Romeo from the balcony
she is upset that she sees him as one dead in the bottom of a tomb.

Romeo and Juliet share a destiny that dooms them to tragic deaths immediately
after the exchange of their precious love.

Romeo comparing Juliet's eyes to stars offers another symbolic interpretation of

stars in the play. The stars in Romeo's comparison symbolically represent natural,
awe-inspiring beauty. Overall, stars symbolically represent fate, destiny, and
beauty at various times throughout the play.

Where do we see fate in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Destiny plays an exceptional part in the play. For example throughout the play
would be the love potion that the fairies use on the characters. Puck, otherwise
known as Robin Goodfellow, was commanded by Oberon to put the love potion in
the Athenian lovers'eyes.

Puck, after being chided by Oberon for charming Lysander instead of Demetrius,
says, “Then fate o'errules, that, one man holding troth A million fail, confounding
oath on oath.

 Time

How long does the action last in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Four days, but only one night.

Time is crucial to the plotting of Romeo and Juliet: for example, the length Juliet
will remain under the effects of Friar Laurence's potion ('two-and-forty hours'), and
the timing of the letter the friar sends to Romeo. ... This alternating between fast
and slow makes time incredibly elastic in this play.

It covers five full days