A Midsummer Night's Dream

In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Lysander's sudden change in love interest is caused by Puck's misguided love potion that he mistakenly applies to Lysander's eyes while he sleeps. This leads Lysander to fall in love with Helena instead of Hermia when he wakes up.

Often in Shakespeare's plays, one word seems to come up over and over. In Romeo and Juliet, it's "stars". In Macbeth, it's "blood". In Othello, it's "honest". In Midsummer Night's dream, it's "moon". Consider:

At the very beginning of the play, Theseus says that he and Hippolyta will be married at the new moon. "Four happy days bring in Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes!" Hippolyta replies, comparing the new moon to a "silver bow, new-bent in heaven."

Egeus claims that Lysander has bewitched Hermia by singing at her window by moonlight, among other things. It is interesting that the moon is here associated with the magic of love. Theseus will use the moon to describe lovelessness by evoking nuns "chanting hymns to the cold fruitless moon", which is the opposite.

Quince proposes that the mechanicals should rehearse a mile from the town, and by moonlight. There shouldn't be much moonlight if it is only a couple of days from the new moon, but Shakespeare wanted it both ways. Later the mechanicals will wonder whether the moon shines on the night they are to perform. Snug says it does, but come on, man! it's new moon, and there will be no moonlight. Maybe that's why Starveling ends up playing the part.

Then we get the fairies. Oberon's first line is "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!". The fairy who talks to Puck says that she wanders "swifter than the moon's sphere", Titania also talks about "moonlight revels", and Oberon, in describing love-in-idleness to Puck says that Cupid was flying between the "cold moon and the earth" and also talks about "the chaste beams of the watery moon", which reminds one a little of Theseus and the cold fruitless moon. Oberon will tell Titania later that they can go around the earth "swifter than the wandering moon", echoing the fairy.

Titania will talk later about the watery moon when she says, "The moon methinks looks with a watery eye; And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforced chastity" echoing quite closely what Oberon said earlier. She also has the fairies use butterfly wings to sweep moonbeams out of Bottom's donkey eyes.

Hermia uses the moon to express impossibility: "I'll believe as soon This whole earth may be bored and that the moon May through the centre creep and so displease Her brother's noontide with Antipodes." Is the moon likely to fall through the earth and reappear on the same side as the sun? She thinks not.

The presentation of "Moonshine" in Pyramus and Thisbe is the cause of much mirth in the audience, especially Demetrius, who is always rudely interrupting the actors. "This lanthorn doth the hornéd moon present" results in hoots of laughter, since "horns" were always associated with cuckolds, as well as with "horniness". Hence Demetrius says "He should have worn the horns on his head", a sign of cuckoldry.

Anyway, Starveling is able to retire with good grace, and even gets a compliment from Hippolyta: "Well shone, moon. Truly the moon shines with a good grace." Of course, it might well be a tongue-in-cheek compliment. After all, what kind of acting does it take to "shine"?

Puck closes off the moon-imagery by saying "Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon."

It's a dangerous time, the night-time, when wolves are out and so are the fairies. Love-songs work better, and it is a time of reveling, a time associated with horns and horniness. At the same time the moonlight is cold and watery and chaste. The moon moves swiftly and you cannot pin it down. Either way it is magic.

The most recent movie version is that directed by Michael Hoffman and starring Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christian Bale and Callista Flockhart. Earlier movies include one from 1968 with Judi Dench, Diana Rigg, Ian Holm and Helen Mirren. A 1935 film starring James Cagney, Joe E. Brown, and Olivia de Havilland won a number of Oscars.

It is not The Comedy of Errors which is another play by Shakespeare. If your question means, does the plot move because people make mistakes, this is partly true. Puck's mistake in juicing Lysander instead of Demetrius does add to the comic confusion. However, for the most part, the movement of the plot comes from the intersecting of the various story lines and Oberon and Puck's desire to make mischief.

What puck wears would depend on the concept of the show. The director and the costume designer will collaborate on what the final dress of the show is, whether modern or period, whether Puck is a female or male, and how physically active Puck will be adds into this decision. In the past four prodctions I've done Puck has worn a leather top and black pants, horns on a fedora and in a suit, and dressed as a satyr.

Egeus wants his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius because he has chosen him as a suitable suitor for her. Egeus believes that Demetrius is the best match for Hermia due to factors like social status, financial stability, and reputation. He also feels that Demetrius is more obedient and will ensure Hermia's well-being.

The second problem brought up by Snout in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is the fear that the ladies in the audience might be scared by the lion costume in their play. He is concerned about how they will react and suggests they add a prologue to clarify that it is not a real lion.

Situational irony is when the outcome is different from what is expected. An example of this from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is when Oberon orders Puck to put the juices from the flower, or the love potion, into Demetrius's eyes so that he will fall in love with Helena. The situational irony here is that Puck accidentally puts the love potion into Lysander's eyes, therefore making Lysander fall in love with Helena, and NOT Demetrius.

"The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe"

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's more popular comedies. It may in fact be his most popular comedy. However it is hard to say how much as there is no Richter scale of popularity.

Insults are, Oberon: "Tarry rash wanton: am I not thy lord?"

Demetrius: "For I am sick when I do look on thee."

Demetrius: "I rather give his carcass to my hounds"

Lysander : " Away you Ethiop!"

Hermia:"You juggler.you cankerblossom"

Helena: "Fie,fie, you counterfit, you puppet you!"

Lysander: "Get gone, you dwarf, you minimus of hind'ring knotgrass made, you bead, you acorn."

She looks exactly like what the actress who is cast in whatever production you are thinking about looks like. She wears whatever clothing the costumer for the production designed, and whatever makeup the makeup designer has designed. She is a character in a play and can look like whatever the director wants her to look like. That's how plays work.

In Ancient Greece (Athens), in Pericle's century (around % century BC, if I remember correctly).

Egeus, Philostrate, various Fairies including Mustardseed, Cobweb, Peaseblossom and Moth, who has only two words to say: "And I."

Helena is rather insecure about herself, as she has been rejected by Demetrius and is always in Hermia's shadow. Though she and Hermia are close friends, she is willing to betray Hermia's trust for just a bit of attention from Demetrius. She is quite naive.

Because they all tell the same story.

"But all the story of the night told over,

And all their minds transfigured so together,

More witnesseth than fancy's images

And grows to something of great constancy;

But, howsoever, strange and admirable."

Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream both were written by Shakespeare.

There is an odd parallelism between the two plays, which were written at about the same time and have many similarities in style, especially a lot of rhymed couplets.

In one sense, Dream is like a mirror of R&J. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, Dream is a comedy. The main plot of R&J is very like the plot of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is turned into a ridiculous farce by Quince and crew. Juliet's predicament of being ordered to marry a man when she loves another is also Hermia's. Juliet's solution is the tragic one; Hermia's is comic. Shakespeare doesn't often talk about fairies, but they are a big part of Dream and, son of a gun, there they are in a big long speech by Mercutio.

Day and night symbolism is most important in both plays. The key word in Dream is "moon" and in R&J it is "stars", both features of the night sky, but wholly contrasting ones. In Dream, reality is like the moon, the inconstant moon that nightly changes. Whatever is real, even the love of lovers for each other, can be changed by the fairies. A figurative jackass can become a literal one. But in R&J, reality is as constant as the northern star. The lovers are star-crossed, and those stars are not going to change, nor is there anything that they can do to change what is and what will be. The love of the lovers, far from being as fickle as the moon, will last forever, even into death.

Uncounted numbers. Romeo and Juliet was written in 1595 or so. All the Greek plays were written before that, and all the Roman ones, and the medieval mystery and morality plays. There were even a lot of English plays which we know of which were written earlier, like Gorbaduc, or Gammer Gurton's Needle, or Ralph Roister Doister, or Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, or Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, or anything written by Marlowe. Shakespeare himself wrote a number of plays before Romeo and Juliet, although we cannot be exactly sure how many, because there is no record of the exact order in which they were written.

Venus and Adonis was his first published work, in 1593. He was twenty-nine. Of course we know that he wrote things before that, but they weren't "books" since they were not meant for publication.

In Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Demetrius is in love with Hermia, but Hermia hates Demetrius, as he won't leave her alone, tries to steal her away from Lysander and tries to force her to marry him by saying that she is his 'certain right'. He also previously wooed her best friend Helena, promised to marry her, and then left her as soon as he saw Hermia, so part of her hatred is loyalty to her friend.

A "love triangle" is when three people are involved with each other, either directly or indirectly. For instance, a man dating two different women who might or might not know about each other.

Although the first Quarto version of Romeo and Juliet from 1597 is sometimes called a "bad quarto", it is very similar to the "good quarto"version of 1599. For example, Q1 has "By yonder blessed Moone I swear/ That tips with silver all these fruit trees tops" whereas Q2 has "Lady, by yonder blessed Moone I vow/ That tips with silver all these frute tree tops." The lines are a little different but basically the same.

Or were these not the "two versions" you were asking about? Perhaps you wanted to compare the Hollywood movie version of 1936 with Renato Castellone's film from 1955.

At the beginning of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Demetrius is pursuing Hermia. Later, under the influence of the fairies' love-philtre, he decides that it is Helena who he loves. However, one cannot help but think that the person Demetrius loves the most is himself.