Presentation for Shakespeare Set Free Institute, St. Louis, August 2, 2012

1. jrust2@slu.edu

2. Three “Worlds”: Interlocking Spheres
of Action and their Sources
 Athens: Classical
Mythology
 Faerie Forest:
Folklore and
Elizabethan Festive
Culture
 “Rude Mechanicals”:
Working Classes of
Shakespeare’s
England – Artisans
and Artists

3. First World:
Athens
Politics
Law
Marriage
Ruling Class
Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus
Athenian Lovers
Hermia, Demetrius, Lysander, Hele
na

4. Theseus
The Deeds of Theseus Theseus, Duke of Athens, Plutarch, The
From: Athens, Greece Date: about 440- Lives of the Noble Grecians and
430 BC Romanes, 1579. British
British Museum Library, C.38.k.24, p.1

5. Theseus
Amazonomachy: Theseus and
Theseus and the
the Amazons Hippolyte and
Minotaur(Detail)
Deinomache (Vase painting)

6. Hippolyta and the
Amazons
Amazonomachy – Attic – ca.
420 BC New York -
Hippolyte. Promptuarii
Iconum Insigniorum. 1553.
Metropolitan Museum of Art

7. Queen Elizabeth
as Amazon

8. A Midsummer Night’s
Dream
Facsimile of the 1623 First
Folio
Internet Shakespeare
Editions, University of
Victoria (Canada), 2010.
http://internetshakespeare.u
vic.ca/

9. A Midsummer Night's Dream (First
Folio, 1623)
1.1.1-11
 Enter Theseus, Hippolita, with others. 
Theseus. NOW faire Hippolita, our nuptiall Hip. Foure daies wil quickly steep the-selues in
houre nights
Drawes on apace: foure happy daies bring in Foure nights wil quickly dreame away the time:
Another Moon: but oh, me thinkes, how slow And then the Moone, like to a siluer bow,
This old Moon wanes; She lingers my Now bent in heauen, shal behold the night
desires
Of our solemnities.
Like to a Step-dame, or a Dowager,
Long withering out a yong mans reuennew.

10. A Midsummer Night's Dream (First
Folio, 1623)
1.1.20-25
Theseus. Hippolita, I woo'd thee with my sword,
And wonne thy loue, doing thee iniuries:
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pompe, with triumph, and with reuelling.

11. Second World:
Faerie Forest
Traditional English Culture
(Folklore and Festivity)
“Green World”: Crossing between
natural world and supernatural
realm
Echoes Athens but also offers
different perspective on it
Titania, Oberon, Puck

12. A Midsummer Night's Dream
(First Folio, 1623)
2.1.101-110
Titania. The nine mens Morris is fild
vp with mud,
And the queint Mazes in the wanton
greene,
For lacke of tread are
vndistinguishable.
The humane mortals want their
winter heere,
No night is now with hymne or
caroll blest;
Therefore the Moone (the
gouernesse of floods)
Pale in her anger, washes all the
aire;
That Rheumaticke diseases doe
abound.
And through this distemperature, we
see
The seasons alter …

13. Third World:
“Rude
Mechanicals”
World of Art (Artisans and Artists)
Working Class
Metatheatre
Bottom, Quince, Flute, Snout, Snu
g, Starveling
The Mechanicals in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, Old Vic
Theatre, London, 1937

14. Bottom
“Bless thee
Bottom, bless thee!
T h o u a r t
translated.”
Illustration by
Arthur Rackham
( 1 9 0 8 )

15. Pyramus and Thisbe
Act Five
Source: Ovid, Metamorphoses
Plot similar to Romeo and Juliet, but also the Midsummer that might-
have-been if the comic impulse had not won out.

16. The End
Questions?