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LEAD IN
Choose one of the situations below and write a letter to a problem page asking for help with your dilemma. Add as many details as you like.
Situation A. Your father does not approve of the person you love and you know he will never give you his consent to get married. He has someone else in mind that he believes would make a better match but you do not love the other person.
Situation B. You are going to get married. You like your fiance/e and you know that the marriage will be good but you are really in love with someone else.
Situation C. You are in love with a man who is already engaged to be married. Another man has declared his love but you cannot forget your true love.
Situation D. You have been in love with a woman and planning to marry her but suddenly you fall in love with another woman and now you have no feelings for your fiancee.
Each of the situations refers to one of the four main characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius. When you have finished working on the play try to match each character to a situation.
INTRODUCTION ◊ Shakespeare had great powers of imagination and his plays deal with a vast range of topics and situations. In A Midsummer Night's Dream the world of fairies comes into contact with the human world and some very strange things happen.
THE STORY
The play takes place on the day and night before the wedding between Theseus and Hippolyta. Egeus wants his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius. She, however, is in love with Lysander and so she refuses to do as her father says. Egeus asks Theseus to help him. Theseus tells Hernia that under Athenian law a daughter must obey her father, and orders her to marry Demetrius within four days or face death.
Hermia decides to escape from Athens with Lysander to a wood outside the city. Helena, Hermia's close friend, is in love with Demetrius. The two had been lovers but had broken up. Helena, however, wishes to restore their love and tries to win Demetrius's favour by telling him of Hermia and Lysander's plan to elope. Demetrius, followed by Helena, enters the wood to search for Hermia and Lysander.
The wood is inhabited by fairies. When Oberon hears Demetrius arguing with Helena, he tells Puck to pour some magic love-juice on his eyes so that the couple will be reconciled. But Puck makes a mistake and pours the juice on Lysander's eyes, with the result that he falls in love with Helena. Demetrius and Helena have since been reconciled so now both Demetrius and Lysander are in love with Helena while Hermia is ignored.
The lovers' lives have been thrown upside down by the fairies but Oberon decides to make amends.
He tells Puck to put a juice on their eyes while they are sleeping that will restore them to their former state, so, when Lysander wakes up, he is again in love with Hermia. The two form friends quarrel. Theseus and Egeus forgive the lovers for running away and agree to Lysander marrying Hernia. The play ends with three weddings: Theseus marries Hippolyta, Demetrius marries Helena, and Lysander marries Hermia.
CHARACTERS
Humans:
• Theseus, Duke of Athens
• Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, engaged to Theseus
• Egeus, Hermia’s father
• Hermia, in love with Lysander
• Helena, in love with Demetrius
• Lysander, in love with Hermia
• Demetrius, in love with Helena
Fairies:
• Oberon, King of the Fairies
• Puck, a mischievous goblin
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